Gullah artist, Vietnam veteran Johnnie Simmons tells tales with wood

At the ARTworks gallery in Beaufort on Wednesday, Gullah artist Johnnie Simmons picked up a small rectangle of wood on display. Using a technique called pyrography, Simmons had burned into the wood an image of a man fishing.

"This is the story of a fella ... he was fishin' and the game warden show up, saying he's caught too many fish," Simmons began, reading the piece as if it were a storybook.

Many of Simmons' pieces do have text on them, offering a narrative to go with the image.

In "Game Warden and Fisherman," the warden asks why the fisherman has caught more fish than allowed, to which the fisherman cheekily replies, "Ant the mind" -- Gullah for "that's not mine."

Such humorous depictions and quirky slices of life abound in Simmons' art, which draws from his St. Helena Island upbringing.

"I like to remember the old," he said, recalling memories of '50s and '60s St. Helena. "Old houses, old people, old ways of life."

Many of his pieces show farm plots, skinny plow horses and pecking chickens. There are also Biblical scenes, like "Baptizing Bob," that were inspired by Simmons' work as a Baptist preacher. Then there are etchings of school buses from his time as a Beaufort County bus driver. Once he has drawn an image on the wood, he burns it with a heated tool. Then he adds color with acrylic paint.

Sometimes, Simmons doesn't have to come up with an image or a narrative. The wood tells him its story.

"I read the wood first. Some already have pictures in them," he said.

Simmons, now a Yemassee resident, will have 35 pieces on display at ARTworks beginning Friday, with an opening reception at 5:30 p.m. The exhibit runs through March 7.

A Vietnam War veteran, Simmons began creating art as a form of therapy when he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He started by painting rocks in the craft room of a VA hospital where he was undergoing a six-week PTSD program.

When he got home, he picked up a wood-burning kit and some lumber at Walmart.

"It seemed doable," he said.

Many, many pieces later (he stopped counting after 300), Simmons has found moderate success as an artist.

He was one of six South Carolina artists featured on the 2011 ETV documentary "Uncommon Folk," along with the late Sam Doyle, who was also from St. Helena.

He will also be featured in the book "When the Spirit Speaks: Self-taught Art of the South" by Margaret Day Allen, out this month. The book highlights the work of 32 self-taught artists who have been largely unrecognized beyond their immediate neighborhoods.

Simmons seems excited and amused by the exposure. Still, the best way to learn about his work is by hearing Simmons tell the stories himself.

Almost invariably, they all start the same way.

"This is the story of a fella ..."

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This story was originally published February 5, 2015 at 12:29 PM with the headline "Gullah artist, Vietnam veteran Johnnie Simmons tells tales with wood."