Quick Facts
Biography
Winfred Rembert is an African American artist who hand-tools and paints on leather canvases. Rembert grew up in Cuthbert, Georgia, where he spent much of his childhood laboring in the cotton fields. He was arrested during a 1960s civil rights march. As a prisoner, he learned to make tooled leather wallets and design on leather. Rembert stretches, stains, and etches on leather and creates scenes from the rural Southern town where he was born and raised.
A documentary film about his life, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert, was released in 2011. It was announced as "Best of Festival" at the Arlington International Film Festival held in Arlington, Massachusetts in October 2012.
Early life
Winfred Rembert was born on November 22nd, 1945 in Cuthbert, Randolph County, in the US state Georgia. Raised by his aunt after his mother cheated on her husband, he worked in the cotton fields, making as much as 20 cents per day. Him laboring, in fact, caused him to miss school only two days a week (he couldn't read or write until high school). But with more tension in the racism around his neighborhood, he cut school at age 16.