Herbert Singleton American, 1945-2007

Herbert Singleton was arrested as a young adult for various narcotics crimes and spent thirteen years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola between 1967 and 1986. After his release, he began making clay snake sculptures. Distraught by the fragility of unfired clay, Singleton switched to wood and began carving long axe handles into walking sticks, primarily used as weapons. His customers were pimps, drug dealers, and horse-and-carriage drivers in New Orleans' French Quarter. In fact, one carriage driver notoriously killed a robber during a mugging with one of Singleton's sticks, and thus they became known as "Killer Sticks."

In the 1980s, he turned to more complicated and political narratives on found planks, chifforobe panels, and doors, chronicling the poverty, drug abuse, and violence that plagued his Algiers neighborhood. He painted his carvings in bright colors with ordinary household enamel and inscribed them with such cautionary phrases as "Who do we trust?"

"He was a major force in the world of self-taught art," said William Fagaly, curator of African Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art. "He wasn't imitating anyone else. He had his own voice, a very strong voice. He addressed African-American issues, race issues, inequality and New Orleans traditions like jazz funerals, which are unique to this city. His pieces are not just powerful but beautiful."