"Yard shows are about metamorphosis: here, the functions and meanings of broken and rejected objects are transformed and given new significance. Junk is the emergent stuff of rebirth and, like so much of African American culture, the elements of Rev. Kornegay's display embrace a multiplicity of meanings. Vision must oscillate between "seeing" the odd, recycled parts that make up these groupings for what they are and for what they might represent in their ensembles." - Grey Gundaker
The Reverend George Kornegay lived in the south central Alabama township of Brent between Tuscaloosa and Selma in Bibb County. He and his wife, Minnie Sue, raised twelve children and partially supported the family by growing peanuts and cotton in their three and a half acre terraced front yard. An ordained minister of the AME Zion Church, Kornegay pastored three congregations - Grove Hill, College Hill, and Marietta - and worked part time for a lumber company. As his family grew, he expanded his unique hand-built house to twenty one rooms and replaced his crops with flower gardens. These gardens were later transformed into a panoramic ensemble of monuments made from commemorative objects (hubcaps, pots, shells, bottles, tools, chains, stones, telephones, fans, televisions, etc.) most of which are painted silver and white - traditional colors that, in Africa, are used to mourn and honor the dead - and red, black, and pink symbolic of his American Indian, African, and European ancestors. At age ninety (in 2003), Reverend Kornegay handed over the care of the yard to his daughter, Annie.
Kornegay's profound and complex works are structured from biblical imagery, African American traditional ideography, a concern for social justice, a penchant for verbal/visual punning, and an exquisite design sense. The yard was an extention of his pastoral work. "Before I retired, I preached all the things that can be told in words", he explained. "Now I'm preaching the things that can't be said. I don't just tell people what's here". A chance meeting of Kornegay in 1992, when his yard was in its prime, resulted in an interview and photo shoot. The silent videos on this page are assembled from stills taken that afternoon. Kornegay's descriptions are in plain text quotes. Scroll down to view.