Cyril Billiot was born in 1911 to a family of nine children who grew up in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, in a French-speaking family, and is of Houma Indian descent. He never went to school but learned to read, write, and speak English from friends and coworkers in the sugarcane fields. Cyril started carving at age ten by watching the old folks caring and making baskets. His earliest works were gun stocks made for neighbors, small pirogues and alligators made from wood. Cyril used to sell these by the side of the road, but he hasn't done this for years. He prefers caring tupelo wood, and paints his carvings. He makes a variety of animals and other figures including roosters, tigers, elephants, angels, Adam and Eve, the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam and the presidents. Cyril gets his inspiration from pictures in books and magazines. He added images t o his repertoire for his own pleasure, and not because collectors forced him to do so. Cyril's work is easy to distinguish from that of his son Ivy because of its appealing roughness. In 1997 he seemed to have stopped working, in part because of increasing age-related ill-health and in part because he was so deeply saddened by the untimely loss of his daughter Evelyn. Cyril's work is in the permanent collection of the Louisiana State Museum, the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Art Museum of Southeast Texas.
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Abe Lincoln 8 x 10 x 6 carved and painted wood $600 |
