Simon Sparrow

Art Brokerage: Simon Sparrow American Artist: b. 1925-2000. Simon Sparrow was an American folk artist, a painter and mixed media artist who was born in West Africa and grew up in North Carolina on a Cherokee Reservation. He was a self-taught artist and received a Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award (WVALAA) in 2012. Sparrow's work is considered folk art and his piece Assemblage with Found Objects is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum on the 3rd Floor, Luce Foundation Center. Simon Sparrow began creating art at age seven and also began his practice of informal and street preaching in his youth. He moved to Philadelphia and enlisted in the army in 1942. He later moved to New York before settling in Madison, Wisconsin. Sparrow is best known for his mixed media constructions and paintings, which he began creating once he moved to Madison, Wisconsin in the 1970s. One of his pieces, "Simon Sparrow Outsider Art Picture, ca. 1980" was appraised on Antiques Roadshow in July 2009 for $6,000-8,000. On 20 May 2012, Sparrow was posthumously awarded a WVALAA along with 13 other honorees.