Carleton Garrett

1990 - 1992

Carlton Elonzo Garrett is a wood carver who has achieved recognition for a series of elaborate and colorful machine driven scenes he constructed.  Garrett moved to Flowery Branch, GA when he was 24 years old.  There he sawed, planed, glued, and nailed for 2 Flowery Branch furniture companies.  A religious man, Garrett was also an ordained Baptist minister in 1931.  He preached at the Flowery Branch Baptist Church until 1962.  He started carving in 1940 by making dolls for his daughters.  After 1942, he started to make machine driven scenes – a parade complete with audience, for example, a church complete with choir and minister, and a hospital with moving nurses, doctors, and patients.  When Garrett retired in 1962, he stopped making the machine driven constructions.  He did not seek publicity but Judith Alexander, a folk art dealer in Atlanta, discovered him in the late 1970s and she began to promote his carvings.  Garrett carved from various kinds of wood and painted his sculptures in bright colors.  He used only a drill press, band saw, and pocketknife to make his sculptures and painted the dolls with paint purchased from a local hardware store. The mechanical invention, the brilliant use of color, and the organization of these large works mark Garrett as a true artist.  He had an individual show of his pieces at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in 1981. ²