Jerry Coker

b. 1938

Jerry Coker was born in Arkansas in 1938. He is well known for his metal masks, which he calls “identity masks.”  These are meant to “illuminate” the 388 most interesting people he has met from his rural childhood.  He shapes these personalities from salvaged, rusty roofing tin and wood. Coker also fashions small standing metal sculptures and wall metal reliefs from scrap roofing metal and wood. His striking masks have a vaguely familiar look – perhaps a cross of the work of the French artist Jean Dubuffet and some of the institutionalized artists that Dubuffet collected.  Coker, however, is not institutionalized, although he is fond of saying, “I’m a screwed up guy.  I traveled as a musician with pop bands, I graduated from college, but what I really want to be is a classical sculptor, and what I am is a folk-stream Expressionist, a self-taught Cokerian.” Each mask has a name and every work is different, yet the style of the artist is easily recognizable.   ⁴