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Lot Essay
Can I Play depicts Rembert’s memories of playing marbles as a young boy. Winfred’s Toy Shop, the makeshift store he made behind his mother’s house in Cuthbert, was a favorite memory of his. Rembert made toys out of objects from the town dump and would trade them with his friends’ store bought toys. In 2002, Rembert drove back to his childhood home in Cuthbert. His neighbor was still living there and showed him that his childhood marbles remained.
Born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1945, Winfred Rembert did not start creating art until the age of 51, after two times in jail and a near-lynching. Rembert was born into the Jim Crow South where he grew up picking cotton and peanuts. As a teenager, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was first arrested after one demonstration which ended with him running from armed policemen and stealing an unlocked car as a means to get away. He then escaped jail, was caught once more and hung by a mob of white men, but not killed. He spent the next seven years on a chain gang. Later in life after his release from jail, he married his wife Patsy Gammage and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Patsy encouraged Rembert to use his leather-tooling skills that he learned while in prison to create pictures. His autobiographical work ranges from depictions of joyful memories of his childhood to the realities of the Jim Crow South and incarceration as a Black man. Rembert’s biography Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, a year after his passing.
Born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1945, Winfred Rembert did not start creating art until the age of 51, after two times in jail and a near-lynching. Rembert was born into the Jim Crow South where he grew up picking cotton and peanuts. As a teenager, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was first arrested after one demonstration which ended with him running from armed policemen and stealing an unlocked car as a means to get away. He then escaped jail, was caught once more and hung by a mob of white men, but not killed. He spent the next seven years on a chain gang. Later in life after his release from jail, he married his wife Patsy Gammage and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Patsy encouraged Rembert to use his leather-tooling skills that he learned while in prison to create pictures. His autobiographical work ranges from depictions of joyful memories of his childhood to the realities of the Jim Crow South and incarceration as a Black man. Rembert’s biography Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, a year after his passing.