Vernon Burwell Site, Rocky Mount, NC
The Site
After his retirement, Vernon Burwell installed tableaux in his Rocky Mount, North Carolina, yard that paid tribute to African American heroes including Martin Luther King, Jr.; Coretta Scott King; Sojourner Truth; and John Baker, North Carolina’s first black sheriff. His subject matter is wide ranging, including the Vietnam War, American politics, the Bible, and animals. Burwell’s treatment of the animals’ postures and features is so nuanced and animated that each of them projects a sense of individual personality. The jungle-cat motif—one of few he repeated—may have struck a chord with Burwell as a symbol of African heritage and pride; an animal of strength, perseverance, and kingly domain over the land, the agile cat always lands on its feet.
Burwell began his sculptures by constructing a skeleton made of found metal objects such as steel rods, pipes, and clothes hangers. He then applied concrete (a mix of lime, gravel, sand, cement, and water) to the armature, sculpting the figure as he went along. Although most of his estimated two hundred pieces are smaller than three feet tall, he recorded making one or two life-size sculptures.
After his death in 1990, the site was dismantled. The John Michael Arts Center has two of his jungle cats in its collection.
Vernon Burwell
1916–1990
Vernon Lee Burwell’s life encompassed the height of Jim Crow oppression and the struggles and successes of the American civil rights movement. Burwell was raised by a community of North Carolina sharecropping families after being orphaned at age thirteen. Retiring from the railroad in 1976, Burwell decided to reflect on the dramatic changes he had witnessed during his lifetime, and a nascent pastime of making animals and figures in painted concrete grew into a passionate full-time engagement.
After his daughter died in 1987, Burwell was grief-stricken and stopped making work until his death in 1990.
