Reverend Herman Hayes

b. 1923

Reverend Herman Hayes was born the son of a pipe filter in Elkview, West Virginia.  He got into boxing as a dancing feet middle weight who won 40 of 48 golden gloves bouts.  World War II ended his boxing career as he joined the marines to repair engines on planes in Okinawa.  After the war, Hayes had numerous jobs including door to door salesman selling electric sweepers and magazines but these endeavors left him unfulfilled.  He felt the calling to preach.  He became a Methodist minister pelting out sermons with his sharp and cynical smile. For Reverend Hayes, there is a thread that connects preaching and carving.  “I pick up a scrap of wood that would only lay there and rot, and I redeem it, bring it back to life.  I’m doing with wood the same thing I’m trying to do with some poor sinner’s soul. Redeem it, turn it into something worthwhile.”  Hayes’ characters are carved out of pine, buckeye, poplar, bass, and walnut using a pocket knife, X-Acto knife, and chisels.  Most of Reverend Hayes’s pieces have something about them that evokes a smile.  Mischievous babies bedevil their parents.  Giant women stand on the shoulders of tiny men. Children stand on their heads with three grownups balanced on their upraised toes. The air of a loony sideshow surrounds it all.  Hayes’s work always delights me.  So affordable and so much …… Hayes said, “If something I carve helps somebody laugh away dire circumstances, if it will make a child have delight, I’m glad.” – source: O’Appalachia – Artists of the Southern Mountains by Ramona Lampell and Millard Lampell with David Larkin (1989)