The Virginia Landmarks Register includes a collection of historic sites associated with significant artists, writers, and musicians. This first “artist-in-residence” piece highlights a Virginia sculptor whose work rose from humble pastime to national prominence.

By Austin Walker | DHR National Register Program Manager

Located along US 460 in the Sussex County town of Waverly, the modest Miles B. Carpenter House (listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 1989) today serves as a museum celebrating one of America’s foremost 20th-century folk artists.

Born May 12, 1889, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Miles Burkholder Carpenter first moved to Virginia in 1902, when his father bought a farm in Sussex County. In need of additional buildings to house his large family and livestock, Carpenter’s father also constructed a sawmill to provide the necessary lumber. After years of working on the family farm, Carpenter struck out on his own in 1912, acquiring an abandoned canning factory and converting it into his own lumber planing mill. That same year, he purchased the two-story frame dwelling that would remain his home until his death in 1985.

Through his ownership of the local sawmill, Carpenter acquired a unique familiarity with wood. This appreciation for the material, together with an artist’s eye for figures inherent in the natural shapes of branches and stumps, led him to carving folk sculpture.

Carpenter’s artistic pursuits first began in 1941 – as his lumber business slowed following the onset of World War II, he started whittling and carving pieces of wood, unable to “sit still and do nothing” while waiting for customers. After seeing his first piece, a polar bear, the burgeoning artist’s wife, Elizabeth, encouraged him to continue while the mill was idle. Carpenter did, later recounting, “in several weeks I made a dog, sheep, deer, rooster, horse, and more different things.” Soon, he was taking requests for small carvings from mill customers, which further motivated him to make more and better pieces.

An increasing demand for housing after the war saw Carpenter’s lumber business recover, leaving him too busy to carve for several years. However, following an accident in 1957 that nearly blinded him, he chose to close the sawmill and shift his attention to selling ice and garden produce. In 1960, he carved and painted a wooden watermelon to attract attention to his roadside stand; soon, he had also carved a pumpkin, a monkey, and large figures of a man and woman to serve as “advertisements.” Carpenter arranged this collection of sculptures on his pickup truck, which he parked beside his stand to attract passing tourists.

Following his wife’s death in November 1966, Carpenter devoted himself fully to his carving. Using his backyard and kitchen for his studio, he fashioned figures that ranged from the whimsical to the frightful using saws, hatchets, chisels, hammers, pocketknives, rasps, and files.

Carpenter’s work came to the attention of the contemporary art world in 1972, and he quicky gained a national reputation among artists, museums, and collectors. His work has since been exhibited around the world, and his sculptures remain in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum at Colonial Williamsburg.

Near the end of his autobiography, Cutting the Mustard, is a 1982 quote in which Carpenter reflects on his medium, and perhaps his own path as an artist:

“There’s an old story about wood, and it’s true. The story is that there’s something in there, under the surface, of every piece of wood. You don’t need no design ‘cause it’s right there; you just take the bark off and if you do it good you can find something.”