Hampton Burks is a Georgia artist working with native materials found not too far from his home. Having no formal education in the creative arts, the artist falls in the classification of "folk artist" or "outsider artist."
The beautifully sculptured pieces are made of Georgia "heartpine" knots left from old stand yellow pine trees long ago rotten away, leaving the very hard and durable "fatlighter" knots in beautiful hues of red and yellow. Also used is the stone steatite in pastel colors of pale gray, blue, or green which is collected in Georgia and neighboring South Carolina. Pieces of driftwood collected from nearby lakes and rivers are also sometimes used when suitable pieces are found.
This is the shop that Hampton built in his backyard to sculpt and to store his raw materials. For the most part "Chuck" uses common tools available anywhere. The chisel he uses the most is from the Victorian age and was bought for a quarter at an estate sale. The mallet that he uses to strike the chisels is a 80+ year old juggling pin that he bought in an antique shop in Delaware for a dollar and modified. Interestingly, almost all the work is done using just a handful of tools.
The artist, Hampton Burks ("Chuck"), resides in Georgia.
The artist specializes in sculpting the faces of "Mountain Hoogies", the long haired, long bearded mountain men of times long ago past that roamed the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains. These are basically the same type of carvings done for centuries in European countries called "wood spirits", or "spirit faces," as he learned from his friend and master carver, Lewis Holloway. As a child he would go with his family to Glasgow, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, to visit his uncle and his family. He would sit and listen to stories told by his uncle about the "Mountain Hoogies", and their having one leg longer than the other due to having to walk on the unlevel sides of the mountains all the time.
Finishing a career in retail management that spanned almost a quarter of a century, "Chuck" went back to school at the Burke County Emergency Managent Agency and became an emergency medical technician and fire fighter to add a little excitement in his life that he had previously not known in the business world. Greatly enjoying this, he attended the Medical College of Georgia and became a paramedic. Having majored in marketing and management after high school at the University of Georgia many years previously, he found the emergency medical and pharmaceutical studies taxing, but still managed to graduate valedictorian of his class at MCG.
It was while working as a paramedic that the artist suddenly had the time to devote to his "carvings" that he had not previously known, and started sculpting stone. It wasn't too long before he was written about in a full page story in the local newspaper, and more people started wanting his carved faces. He started accepting offers from the surrounding libraries to display his works, and had some pieces displayed and sold by a local merchant. The artist states, "It's something that I've always wanted to do since I was a small boy. My father could carve wonderful small figures and such, and I've always to express some artistic talent in wood and stone."
His "handyworks" in wood and stone grace the collections of admirers across the country. Surprisingly to him, it is professional artists with extensive formal training that comprise one of the largest groups of collectors of his efforts.
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© 1998
Designers: Scruffy & Roscoe
