Featured Help with Gourd Art

We have this gourd with some nice artwork all over it and was wondering if anyone else has seen anything like this before? Or if anyone could help us with any information about it, possibly even age? We greatly appreciate any help. TIA!

 

Looks like it might be the work of this North Carolina artist -


https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news...cle_518c613d-04f0-5523-9b69-cfafec096997.html

 

Thank you so much for sharing that! We believe that’s the artist after looking at her work. How did you find that? We have tried researching and could not find anything.

 

A true piece of Folk Art with a capitol 'F'. Miss Cunningham may well turn out to be a North Carolina Grandma Moses someday-she's good.
Reminds me a tad of NA Ledger Art and painter L.S. Lowry.

 

& that's why ya gotta luv Antiquers !!
We get er done !

 

I can't access the link due to legal issues, probably because I'm in Europe.

It is a very evocative piece, concerning a very dark page in US history.

 

Nita Cunningham is the name to look up.

 

Thanks, mos.

 

I tried googling "Trail of Tears painted gourd" (among other attempts) and looked at the resulting images. The picture of her work jumped out as similar, which led to the article. You gotta love the internet.

 

The article was written in a local paper in 2016, at which time she was 92 years old. It refers to her as a North Carolina native, but the newspaper is from East Wenatchee, which is in Washington state. Some relevant highlights -

"Nita Cunningham likes to stay busy. For most of her 92 years, the North Carolina native has sewed clothing for the family, made doll clothes for the kids, turned found objects into pieces of folk art."

"She began painting Indian and Western scenes on flat and smooth rocks she would find. The scenes grew larger and the rocks heavier. She began painting on seashells, then on large, smooth-surface ornamental gourds. When she found a man who grew the gourds she liked, she bought all he had."

"One of her favorite scenes depicts the "Trail of Tears," the devastating exodus of Cherokee Indians from their land east of the Mississippi River to Oklahoma during the Indian Removal Act of 1830 under President Andrew Jackson. Several gourds show the journey, each one different."

"You have to look closely. They all tell a story," Cunningham said as she turned the gourd in her hands to show Indians circling down trails from their homes in the Appalachian Mountains and joining others on their long migration to desert high plains of Oklahoma."

 

Thank you, 2many. So good to learn more of the background, and be able to 'place it'.

 

We don't have many painted veggies in the house,but could make an exception w/ Granny Nita.

 

Lily "Juanita" (Nita) Cunningham
January 27, 1924 - January 12, 2021
born in NC and family moved to Washington at age 12

Lily "Juanita" (Nita) Cunningham - 2021 - Heritage Memorial Chapel Funeral Home (tributearchive.com)