Freeman Vines is an artist who has found inspiration in an unlikely place– a tree that was once used in a lynching of a Black man. “Nobody believes me. The wood actually lives. Each wood has an inner spirit, and if you listen you will find some magnificent stuff on it,” said the 78-year-old North Carolinian.
A luthier and an artist, Vines creates sculptural guitars that have been so well received that they are now part of a traveling exhibition. The guitars are also featured in “Freeman Vines: Hanging Tree Guitars”, a new book published by The Bitter Southerner.
The title of the book and the exhibit both reference the “haunted wood” from a lynching tree that Vines used to make a series of guitars.
When it comes to his artistic process, Vines says, “I enhance it a little, but that’s all. I respect the characteristics. I don’t try to alter the wood no way.”
He also tries to imbue his work with some of his own personal history. Noting that his name is really “Free Man”, not “Freeman”, a name passed down the line in his family since slavery, the land Vines grew up on means a lot to him. His family has been there since slavery times.
Vines also took time to learn about the man who was lynched in the tree, Oliver Moore, a 29-year-old Black man accused of raping two white girls. According to newspaper accounts, a mob of 200 men took Moore from the jail on Aug. 19, 1930, hanged him and riddled his body with bullets 200 yards from his house.
When asked about the hanging tree wood, Vines reiterates what he says in the book:
“I say it’s strange he’s dead and the tree is still living.”
While Vines has since moved on to creating from new trees, he says he will never forget the hanging tree. But now, he is just proud of the fact that today, as an old Black man, he can have an exhibit in a museum.
However, it’s important to note that Vines’ work extends beyond creative expression–it is a form of ancestor veneration for a collective ancestor who can now be elevated through Vines’ act of care and consideration for a Black man he never knew.
