Hawkins Bolden lived in Memphis all his long life. An avid baseball player as a child, he dreamed of playing professionally but was blinded as a result of a baseball accident when he was seven or eight. Resourceful and independent, he took to making homemade crystal radios for listening to baseball games, and to gardening vegetables. In the mid-1960s, when he was in his 50s, he began to construct sculptures in his yard, scarecrow figures made from salvaged odds and ends from nearby alleyways. He would drill holes for eyes into pots and cans, add strips of garden hose for a tongue, a shred of carpet for a goatee. Some of his sculptures were recognizable faces, some were filled with 20 or 30 eye holes. Some had a third eye.

He filled his yard with such totems, constantly reworking his assembled sentinels. In his 80s, by then an acclaimed folk artist, his work began entering museum collections nationwide.

The accident that blinded him involved his identical twin brother Monroe, the person he was closest to. Hawkins was catching, Monroe at bat, and Hawkins stood to receive a bad pitch, thinking his brother wouldn’t swing for it. But he did, and connected with Hawkins’ head. It was Monroe who later taught him to make radios. Monroe left for the army at age 18 and served for five years before dying from meningitis, and Hawkins spent the rest of his 90-year life filling his yard with watchful eyes.

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Links:

• SCARECROW by Hawkins Bolden - Jay Wehnert, The Intuitive Eye

  
  

• The Sound of Music in Hawkins Bolden’s Scarecrows – Rebecca Bengal, Oxford American, December 10, 2024

  
  

• Hawkins Bolden (1914 - 2005) - American Folk Art Museum

  
  

• Hawkins Bolden Untitled - Smithsonian American Art Museum

  
  

• Hawkins Bolden Untitled - High Art Museum

  
  

• Video: documentary MAKE, directed by Scott Ogden and Malcolm Hearn, about four American self-taught artists: Prophet Royal Robertson, Hawkins Bolden, Judith Scott and Ike Morgan.

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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