When I first began my cemetery explorations in earnest, I began recognizing and admiring the work of Eldren Bailey but I didn’t know who was until taking a tour at Oakland Cemetery a few years back. Not only was Eldren Bailey a funerary artist he was also a folk artist, and his home and yard in Atlanta were full of religious iconography as well as effigies of Civil Rights activists.
Eldren Bailey was born in 1903 in the tiny town of Flovilla, Georgia. In the 1940’s he settled in Atlanta and became a cement mason, specializing in grave-digging and self-taught headstone carving for local African-American cemeteries.
Using a special type of plaster of his own creation, Bailey personalized gravestones with floral motifs and crosses. He also included the name of the funeral home as well as honorifics as a way to give respect to the African-American community. The use of Mr, Mrs, Miss were often withheld from Black adults during slavery and Jim Crow and beyond. With Bailey’s use of these titles on gravestone, it became a way to offer respect, dignity, and personal agency to the community and the dead.
He is often considered a cornerstone of Southern vernacular art, blending his skill in funerary work with deeply personal social, economic, political and religious themes.
At home, he spent nearly 30 years filling his yard with large concrete and plaster sculptures. Among these were life-sized tributes to John F. Kennedy and Hank Aaron. There were also Afro-centric stylings featuring urns, dogs and large birds. He even extended art to the inside of his home, covering the interior walls in molded concrete to resemble a Renaissance grotto.
Sadly, after Bailey’s death many of his yard works were lost or stolen and eventually his house was torn down and only a scarred and empty plot marks the spot. A few of his remaining sculptures are on now on display at the High Museum in Atlanta.
Eldren Bailey is buried at the historic South-View Cemetery. His grave marker is one of his own works and stands over 5 feet tall!
His legacy continues in the many individual gravestones he crafted that can be found in cemeteries all over the South.
Read, Watch & Learn
My recommendations:
Souls Grown Deep has an in-depth article complete with lots of photos.
Souls Grown Deep is dedicated to promoting the work of Black artists from the American South and supporting their communities by fostering economic empowerment, racial and social justice, and educational advancement.
Spaces Archive is another excellent source for Bailey and other outsider artists.
SPACES—Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments—is dedicated to the study, documentation, and preservation of art environments and self-taught artistic activity. It is currently a preservation project of Kohler Foundation.
Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta has an archival blog post about Bailey’s work and life.
An old video interview with Bailey can be found here. The story aired on WSB-TV Channel 2 Action News in 1975.
Adventures into History explores the St. John Cemetery in Waverly Hall, Georgia.
This African American cemetery, originally a burial ground for enslaved people on the Boddie Plantation, holds a wealth of historical significance and unique artistry. Heavily features Bailey’s works.
