The Midwest Art Quarterly
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May 2, 2024
Jerome, MO
Right off exist 172
Larry Baggett, Trail of Tears Memorial, late 20th century
This art environment is in a small town in south central Missouri, near Rolla. Larry Baggett, late in his life, decided to deck his property with grottos and stiff sculptures when he heard that the Trail of Tears had run past his land. While his Indians are certainly caricatures, there's something enormously touching about some rural white guy learning about a long-past injustice and, out of bigness of heart, devoting the last chunk of his time on earth to commemorating it. The memorial is in slight disrepair and seems unfinished—the sculptures are diffuse and unintegrated with the landscape—but at times has all the unaccountable vigor and inventiveness of the best outsider art: movement enters Baggett's figures in the least likely ways. The best single piece is a flower-ensconced pourer of water near the entrance, whose canted total form seems impossible against the bulkiness of any one of its parts.
—Troy Sherman