Annie Hooper Site, Buxton, NC
The Site
Devoutly religious, Annie Hooper filled her home with depictions of Bible stories rendered in painted driftwood with cement, putty, and shells. Eventually, a few thousand figures in immersive scenes filled the rooms of her house. Hooper took curious visitors through the installations, intertwining the depicted stories with her autobiography, biblical teachings, and psalms. When her husband fell ill and she could no longer lead tours, she painted explanations of the scenes, often in the form of poems and song verses, on meat-packaging trays.
Annie Hooper
1897–1986
Annie (Miller) Hooper was born in 1897 in Buxton, North Carolina, on Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks. She was raised in a deeply religious household that included three siblings, nine half-siblings, and fourteen foster children. After attending college in Virginia, she married John Hooper, a fisherman from Stumpy Point, North Carolina. They eventually settled and raised their son, Edgar, in Buxton. Hooper was a church organist and wrote poems, songs, and Sunday school lessons, a practice she continued throughout her life.
During World War II, her son was deployed to the South Pacific. Despite his safe return, Hooper’s overwhelming fears for the well-being of her family continued to plague her. Finding strength and inspiration in her illustrated Bible, she began carving figural sculptures out of driftwood, which she adorned with cement, marbles, putty, paint, and seashells.
After Hooper’s death in 1986, her life’s work was cared for by the Jargon Society until its acquisition by the Gregg Museum of Art & Design in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2017 nearly two thousand pieces were acquired by Kohler Foundation, Inc., and dispersed among several institutions. The John Michael Kohler Arts Center received 212 pieces, including Exodus, one of her largest tableaux.
