Nathaniel Barrow

b. 1936

Nathaniel Barrow of Helena, Arkansas was born in 1936 near Coffee Creek, Arkansas.  At the age of 10, he took up carpentry under the tutelage of an uncle who made rabbit boxes, narrow wooden traps he baited with apple chips and set in thickets on his way to work in the cotton fields.  Nathaniel made rabbit boxes and wheelbarrows. Like his uncle, he drew his patterns in the dirt until he was satisfied, then transferred the pattern to wood. When he was 15, he quit carpentry.  He did not take it up again until the age of 50 when, after an auger accident in which he lost one of his feet, he made 2 wooden airplanes which he mounted on poles in his front yard.  He made his living repairing lawnmowers, feeding chickens, and performing sundry carpentry jobs. For a period of over 4 years, 1987 – 1991, his work was often exhibited in Oxford, MS, Memphis TN, and he hit the big time when he was featured in a Hirschl and Adler show in New York in 1990 alongside artists Henry Ray Clark and Angela Palladino.