Hello, my name is Megan Nauer, and I am the Marketing and Communications Coordinator. Today, I will be reading the Preserving Heritage section panel for David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History along with label text and audio descriptions for two highlighted works.

David Driskell was born in Eatonton, Georgia, but raised mostly in North Carolina. He recalled a blessed family life of self-sufficiency along with harmony and familiarity with nature. Mary Lou Cloud Driskell, his mother, was an herbalist and a quiltmaker, experienced in strip quilting and other needle crafts. His father, Reverend G. W. (George Washington) Driskell, was a skilled ironsmith and builder, and his grandfather, William Driskell, was skilled in smithery, carpentry, and bark weaving. The artist described all of these as African in origin. The spirits of Driskell’s ancestors make regular appearances in his work, both overtly and covertly. Small churches and angels, as in Let the Church Roll On, conjure his father, who liked to make drawings of angels. The essence of his mother, the Southern folk healer, is seen in works such as The Herbalist. Agricultural knowledge passed down from one generation to the next is suggested in the symbolism of The Farmer and His Wife. Driskell created distinctive iconographies that drew upon African and American history, Southern folklore, and Black experiences. With his personal iconography, he reminds us that the otherworldly may be expressed in the earthbound and the divine expressed in the commonplace.