Grief and Praise: Southern folk art as sacred memory

A piece in The Place Speaks: Sacred and Artistic Genealogies of Appalachia. (Photo courtesy of the Reece Museum.)

By Savannah Bennett

When I was growing up, road trips were riddled with talismans and traditions. Lengthy excursions were marked by unique houses, roadside attractions, and stories my family repeated from memory. These geographic markers turned monotonous car rides into scavenger hunts. My sister and I would compete to see who noticed things the fastest, or who could tell the old stories the best. Many of the roadside messages associated with these memories were scattered along U.S. Highway 601 in rural South Carolina.  

One longstanding marker was a simple sign made of white, corrugated metal in the shape of a heart with old, faded lettering that read: “GET RIGHT WITH GOD.” Each trip as our car was drawing near, my dad would count down “three...two...one...,” and in a zealous fervor we would all chant “GET! RIGHT! WITH! GOD!” as we zoomed past the marker. Years passed, and the sign gradually fell into disrepair. Letters went missing one by one, and we would match our shouts accordingly. We helplessly watched the sign’s devolution over time until it was reduced to the partial phrasing “ IGHT WITH   D.” I worried we were the only people who cared about the neglected sign and wondered if there were others who stored the original message in their memory.  

An image of the old Henry Harrison Mayes Sign on Highway 601 before it disappeared. (Courtesy of Google Maps.)

I would learn years later that this was not some random, one-off sign that happened to make our road trips special. Our sign was one of thousands of religious roadside markers crafted and planted by Henry Harrison Mayes (1898–1986), an evangelist and coal miner from Middlesboro, Kentucky. Mayes’ simple yet apocalyptic concrete markers and heart-shaped signs mostly read “Prepare to Meet God” or “Jesus is Coming Soon” or “Get Right With God.” Starting in his early 20s, he spent most of this life on a mission to share his religious convictions with the traveling public. With Signs Following: Photographs from the Southern Religious Roadside, A 2007 book by Joe York, reports that Mayes attached a sign to his bicycle that read “Advertising God Since 1918.”  

Artistic revelations 

In the spring of 2023, I was new to my position as the collections manager at the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University when Dr. Rick Cary, professor emeritus of Art and former dean of Fine Arts at Mars Hill University, asked if I was familiar with the art of the late Rev. Jimmy Morrow. When I sheepishly replied, “no,” he said, “Well, you ought to be.” 

(Cary donated hundreds of his documentary photographs to the Archives of Appalachia at ETSU. His documentary work prioritizes Appalachian serpent handlers, which is how he came to know Morrow and his wife, Pam. Interested researchers can schedule an appointment at the Archives of Appalachia to see Cary’s Work.) 

Cary showed me images stored on his phone of vibrant paintings on salvaged wood panels illustrating a variety of scenes. Rainbows and faceless deities observing lost souls on judgment day; black, horse-drawn carriages transporting the dead during a plague; old church buildings overlooking headstones; figures in dated clothing handling serpents. Several of the paintings were displayed on the walls of the Edwina Church of God in Jesus Christ’s Name, founded by the Morrows in Newport, Tennessee. Over the next two years, I would visit the church with Cary several times. 

“Judgment Day” by the Rev. Jimmy Morrow. (Courtesy of the Reece Museum.)

During those visits, Pam Morrow invited us into the places that she and her husband built on their land. Paintings line the back wall of the church behind the pulpit, where Jimmy Morrow brought to life divine visions that he had experienced. Several of his paintings are rooted in his understanding of the past. He used his art to capture genealogies and stories about the development of serpent handling traditions in southern Appalachia that otherwise might have been lost to time. Some of the largest paintings in the church building depict Morrow’s visions of an eventual judgment day. In vivid colors, the paintings depict figures with distinct facial expressions, and prominent lines of hand-painted narrative contextualizing his visions. Many of the narratives are variations of Biblical scripture, while others describe the stories illustrated in paint.  

Captured memories 

In addition to Morrow’s paintings, the walls were covered with photographs, documents, and newspaper clippings about the Morrows and their church. As a self-taught artist, genealogist, and local historian, Morrow understood the value of preserving memories and events in a variety of forms that he considered equally important. After his death in January 2023, the church became both a storehouse for Morrow’s art and a window to his life’s work. 

Savannah Bennett (left) and Pam Morrow looking together at exhibits from The Place Speaks prior to installation. (Courtesy of Dr. Rick Cary.)

After we toured the church, Pam Morrow led us across the yard to a cabin that her husband built for traveling preachers and church visitors to Edwina. Behind the cabin, the Morrow family land stretches into some woods. Much of the backyard has been transformed into a church cemetery, although Morrow elected not to be buried there.  

As we made our short walk from building to building, traces of Morrow’s devotion to memory were everywhere. His hand-built cemetery, a form of sacred ancestral veneration, appears as another example of his admiration for those who came before him, his passion for preserving community memories, and his connection to the landscapes that he knew throughout his life. Folklore passed down about ancestors who came from Ireland to live and die in that place are etched into handmade cement tombstones. 

A small side room in the cabin was filled with more of Morrow’s creations. While he is remembered for his paintings — which lined the walls in large piles — he also wove kudzu baskets, carved and painted kudzu root birds, created dolls and soft sculptures of serpents and historical figures, carved and decorated walking sticks, and built, carved, and painted wooden serpent boxes before using them to transport his wild-caught snakes. I carefully combed through pile after pile of Morrow’s baskets, soft sculptures, carvings, and hundreds of paintings.  

Preserving culture 

The paintings in the church were awe-inspiring, but it was understood that they  

would remain in the church building for the foreseeable future — because that’s where  he wanted them to be. Although the church is certainly not the same without Morrow’s physical presence, his spirit remains, and services continue to be held every Sunday. What Pam Morrow was showing us inside the cabin room, however, was that she had a plethora of her husband’s art that she could no longer keep. She wanted to sell his art to buyers and collectors who would be respectful of his memory and artistic legacy. Through a relationship of mutual trust, she allowed me to acquire some of the art to be preserved in the Reece Museum’s permanent collection and has invited me to keep coming back, and to bring others. Museum colleagues and university faculty members joined me on subsequent trips to Edwina to learn more about, and to collect, Jimmy Morrow’s art. 

The Reece and ETSU faculty in front of Jimmy and Pam Morrow’s church in Newport, Tennessee. All of these paintings were reunited two years later in the Reece Museum exhibition The Place Speaks. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Scott Honeycutt.

 I experienced an immediate connection to Morrow’s paintings when I saw them on Cary’s phone screen. The connection was heightened two years ago when I stood before the art for the first time. Morrow’s work revived evocative memories of traveling down rural South Carolina stretches of U.S. 601 as a kid, craning my neck for a glimpse at Henry Harrison Mayes’ corroded reminder to “GET RIGHT WITH GOD.”  

One of the reasons I find Morrow’s art fascinating within the context of the Reece Museum’s growing collection of Appalachian material culture is that we are actively preserving artworks that similarly communicate passions for ancestral veneration, genealogy, and regional religious practices. Although Morrow’s art is representative of material culture, his creations are distinctly his own. Pam Morrow describes the paintings as “gifts of the Spirit” and fondly remembers that, “Jimmy painted what God showed him.”  

Creative threads  

Speaking to those who knew Morrow — Pam Morrow, Rick Cary, Jenna Gray-Hildenbrand, Abe Partridge — evokes an impression that Jimmy was creating much of his work from divine spiritual messaging that only he received. He lived in Cocke County, Tennessee, all his life and did not look to other folk art or visionary art contemporaries for guidance in creating his pieces. He simply made what he was called to make, and he loved doing it.  

The showroom for The Place Speaks. (Courtesy of the Reece Museum.)

This through line allows curators and scholars to connect the work of visionary artists who likely did not know each other in their lifetimes. As I have worked to share Morrow’s art with Reece Musuem visitors — whetherthrough physical exhibitions, back-of-the-house collections storage tours, or social media posts — people are quick to notice that the art speaks to other folk artists and self-taught artists from the American South. One of the largest connecting threads is prominent 20th century folk artist the Rev. Howard Finster, (1916-2001). 

A Baptist minister from Georgia, Finster is described by scholars as a folk artist, outsider artist, and visionary artist. From divine inspiration, he created art using a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, and found-material assemblages. Called “a man of visions,” Finster received his first vision at age 3, an image of his deceased sister Abbie Rose walking down out of the sky. He produced more than 46,000 works of art, achieving national fame during the 1980s after artistically collaborating with rock bands such as R.E.M. and Talking Heads. Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia, contains thousands of examples of his art and functions as a historic landmark, museum, and folk art pilgrimage site. I visited Paradise Garden to better understand Finster’s artistic output and life story. It’s a site I will return to again and again.  

There is much to observe in Finster’s art, and many of his chosen themes align with Morrow’s paintings, including depictions of animals and creatures, some of which may reference the end of the world or judgment day; presumed self-portraits and referential figures; and a range of emotions, human experiences, and facial expressions.  

Finster’s application of animals, mythical creatures, legends, and landscapes complements the artworks Morrow was producing around the same time and later. It seems unlikely, however, that Morrow would have been aware of Finster. Morrow’s work was focused on the histories and legends of his immediate community, while Finster is often remembered for referencing pop culture and Americana in his artworks.  

An exhibition 

Examining the similarities and differences between Morrow’s art and other artists  represented in the Southern folk art sphere and the Reece Museum’s permanent collection led to my curation of The Place Speaks: Sacred and Artistic Genealogies of Appalachia, which is on display at the Reece Museum through Dec. 12, 2025. My role as collections manager predominantly involves studying and caring for the artifacts in our permanent collection and overseeing new acquisitions, such as our subcollection of Morrow’s artworks. As I process each new artifact and observe it, assess its condition, and build a safe home for it, I am witnessing patterns in our eclectic collection’s history and quietly noticing how our artifacts communicate with one another. These objects represent living, breathing history that tells the stories of our culture. They are not passive items to be locked away indefinitely.  

Morrow’s artworks speak boldly with other pieces in our collection by lauded artists such as Bessie Harvey, R.A. Miller, Abe Partridge, and William Cross. The Place Speaks also features works by Rick Cary, Howard Finster, Aaron McIntosh, William Fields, Katie Murphy, Kristy Moeller Ottinger, and Stacy Kranitz. The layout of the gallery is an intentional homage to the ways in which Jimmy Morrow used visual art and documentary materials to communicate an ever-evolving narrative rooted in Appalachian placeness.  

Click the photo above for more information on the exhibit.

The Place Speaks values multiple forms of communication, living ties, and expressions of relationality that are facilitated through visual art. Through the representation and interpretation of Appalachian animism, the artworks selected for display offer examples of landscapes, plants, and animals that communicated with the artists. Additionally, this exhibit honors Morrow’s practice of collecting and documenting oral histories and folklore through his art. The Place Speaks features a variety of methods and mediums in which Appalachian artists are recording histories, folklore, mythologies, and genealogies that shape the region I am so lucky to call home.  

Signs of time 

The last time my dad drove down highway 601, he noticed that the sign by Henry Harrison Mayes was gone. We’re not sure what happened to it, and it’s left a hole in our hearts. After doing some research, I was comforted to learn that, despite our beloved sign’s disappearance, there are folk art enthusiasts across the South who have created maps and tracked where Henry Harrison Mayes’ signs still exist. There are admirers from all over the country who have come to love Mayes’ signs as much as my family does.  

This realization was bittersweet. I miss the sign that had such a large part in shaping my memories, but feel grateful for all the collectors, scholars, and enthusiasts who band together to fill the gaps when our memories fade. This is why I love my job as a collections manager so dearly: Each task that I take on plays a small part in humanity’s collective tendency to remember, to preserve, to protect.  

My hope is that The Place Speaks: Sacred and Artistic Genealogies of Appalachia encapsulates the importance of our memory-making and story-keeping. When I enter the gallery, I feel the artworks and their makers communicating in my bones. If you’re lucky, you might feel them, too. 

Savannah Bennett is the collections manager at the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University. She holds a master of arts degree in Appalachian Studies, a Heritage Interpretation and Museum Studies certificate, and a bachelor of music degree in performance.