Winfred Rembert

Winfred Rembert is an African-American artist who hand-tools and paints on leather canvases. Rembert grew up in Cuthbert, Georgia, where he spent much of his childhood laboring in the cotton fields. He was arrested during a 1960s civil rights march. As a prisoner, he learned to make tooled-leather wallets and design on leather.[1] Rembert stretches, stains, and etches on leather and creates scenes from the rural Southern town where he was born and raised.

An award winning documentary film about his life, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert, was released in 2011. It has won awards at the Chicago International Film Festival, Salem Film Fest, Heartland Film Festival, Arlington International Film Festival[2], Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival (now called the Hamptons Doc Fest), the Newark Black Film Festival and the Northhampton International Film Festival.[3]

Another short documentary, Ashes to Ashes, honoring victims of lynchings in the south, featured Rembert, the "only known survivor of a lynching." Ashes to Ashes premiered at the Mountainfilm Festival on May 24, 2019[4][5]

Early life

Winfred Rembert was born on November 22, 1945, in Cuthbert, Randolph County, in the US state Georgia.[6] Raised by his aunt after his mother cheated on her husband, he worked in the cotton fields, making as little as 20 cents per day. Him laboring, in fact, caused him to miss school only two days a week (he could not read or write until high school). But with more tension in the racism around his neighborhood, he cut school at the age of 16.

Rembert has been the subject of two documentaries and several news stories where he is reported to be one of only a few people known to have survived a lynching during the Jim Crow era.[7][8][9][10]

References
  1. Schwendener, Martha (March 16, 2012). "Odyssey Through Jim Crow Era, Carved in Leather". The New York Times. Retrieved October 20, 2012.
  2. Herwick, Edgar B. (III) (October 10, 2012). "Film Festival Brings a Diverse World to the Big Screen in Arlington". WGBH (FM). Retrieved October 20, 2012.
  3. "All Me the Movie News". www.allmethemovie.com. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  4. "Ashes to Ashes". Mountainfilm. 2019-05-07. Retrieved 2019-06-26.
  5. "He Survived A Near-Lynching. 50 Years Later, He's Still Healing". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
  6. Bland, Keiter, Watkins-Owens, Watson, and Panetta. Winfred Rembert: Amazing Grace. Hudson River Museum. ISBN 9780943651415. Retrieved October 23, 2012.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  7. E, William (2013-01-09). "Near lynching, prison time, and segregated south covered in upcoming Flint Institute of Arts exhibit". mlive.com. Retrieved 2019-06-29.
  8. Schwendener, Martha (2012-03-16). "A Review of 'Winfred Rembert: Amazing Grace,' at the Hudson River Museum". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-29.
  9. Dewey, Charlsie (2018-02-05). "Artist Winfred Rembert Documents Black Life with his Paintings". GR|MAG. Retrieved 2019-06-29.
  10. Doherty, Donna; Editor, Register Arts (2010-05-13). "Winfred Rembert's first solo show confirms what many already knew about his leather paintings (video, slideshow)". New Haven Register. Retrieved 2019-06-29.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)

Further reading
  • Adelson, Warren; Reynolds, Jock (2010). Winfred Rembert: Memories of My Youth.. New York: Adelson Galleries. Exhibition catalog.
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