Cooking-on-Saturday

Bolling, a self-taught African American sculptor from Richmond, Virginia, created small-scale subjects in wood that chronicle with empathy the Black working class in the segregated South of the 1930s and 40s. A store porter by day and an artist by night, he drew thematic inspiration from the daily work and leisure of local residents, including his friends and neighbors. Bolling’s celebrated Days of the Week series pays tribute to the lives and labors of women who followed a rigid schedule of performing domestic activities on specific days—from washing and ironing to sewing and scrubbing.　Cooking-on-Saturday　depicts a woman in a shirtwaist dress, familiar as a maid’s uniform of the time, putting a turkey in the oven for the Sunday meal. The sculpture is composed of two blocks of carefully conjoined wood that the artist carved directly with a jackknife and a penknife, paying close attention to surface texture and grain direction. His keen powers of narrative observation and sophisticated carving skills brought him attention and patronage from leading Harlem Renaissance figures and funders, including Carl Van Vechten and the Harmon Foundation, dedicated to promoting the work of African American artists through touring exhibitions.