Upcoming Exhibitions

Archie Byron: Anatomy & Earth

January 12th - May 8th

Archie Byron (1928–2009) lived enough lives to fill several biographies: Navy veteran, brick mason, private detective, gun shop owner, and member of the Atlanta City Council. Somewhere along the way, he also became an artist, creating a visual language unlike anything else in American art.

It began in 1975 when Byron noticed a tree root caught beneath a fence. That spark of curiosity soon gave way to a material of his own invention: sawdust swept from the floor of his gun repair shop, mixed with water and Elmer’s glue, built up layer by layer into dense, earthen reliefs. Out of the detritus of daily labor, Byron molded bodies. Eyes, limbs, and organs detach, mutate, and recombine; male and female merge; people become plants, and roots become animals.

The exhibition at the Bo Bartlett Center brings together these rare, earthen works. Rooted in the experience of a Black man navigating the friction and civic life of Atlanta, Byron’s works reject easy classification, imagining a world of his own making where everything emerges from the exact same substance, but difference stubbornly endures.