Clyde Jones, prodigious folk artist and the bard of Bynum, was born on April Fools’ Day of 1937 and died in 2025, on Christmas Eve. That his life was bookended by two holidays beloved by children seems fitting for the originator of “critter” art. By all accounts, Jones was equal parts jokester and Santa Claus.
Jones famously refused to sell his works, colorful sculptures made of log remnants. The critters, as he called them, are expressive creatures: polka-dotted giraffes, dogs, pigs, and reindeer with eyes crafted from found objects such as artificial flowers, tennis balls, and bottle caps. Instead of selling it, Jones gave his art away to children or charities. Even the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov couldn’t buy one when he tried—legend has it that the Russian-born ballet dancer arrived by limousine to Jones’ modest mill house, where a menagerie of his critters lived outside, only to depart empty-handed.
“I heard him say a number of times that if you’ve got the money to buy his critter, then you don’t need my critter,” said Julie Trotter, a friend of the artist.
Known as “Critter Crossing,” Jones’ Bynum yard featured a sea of critters scattered about in all directions against the backdrop of his house, which he’d also painted with bright murals of animals. The house was a local landmark and folk-art pilgrimage site, and if he was around—and mostly he was, or nearby at least; Bynum’s not big (its current population is around 55)—Jones was happy to greet visitors, provided they didn’t park on his mama’s rosebush.
He was especially delighted to greet children, whom he encouraged to climb and play on the sculptures. He didn’t have to ask twice: The rainbow-hued critters, with their crooked limbs and bulging eyes, beckoned even grown-ups to come play.
“The brightness and light of his art was his personality—it’s what he brought into the world,” said Gilda McDaniel, a friend of Jones’ who for years has overseen the Fearrington Folk Art Show. This year’s festival, held February 21 and 22, is dedicated to Jones and will feature his work alongside a “celebration space” for sharing memories.
No doubt, there will be plenty to talk about: Jones was long a staple of the annual event, though, belying the point of art fairs, his work there was not up for sale. Jones would have a display but mostly circulated, doing what he did best—greeting friends, fans, and other artists.
“The other folk artists all loved him,” said McDaniel. “They looked up to him.”
This year isn’t the first time Jones has been at the center of a festival—after all, he’s had his own namesake arts festival for 24 years, Chatham Arts Council’s annual ClydeFEST, which draws 3,000 people out to the lawn of Pittsboro’s Agriculture and Conference Center. Paused this year to honor Jones’ passing, the free event is set to return in April 2027.
Jones was also active for decades with the nonprofit Haw River Assembly, which used his artwork in its T-shirt designs for the annual Haw River Festival. In fact, a colorful quilt made from these T-shirts covered the coffin at Jones’ funeral in January—an apt representation of his life, as he lay wrapped up in the good works, community, and art he had made on earth.
Creating Critter Country
Now that Jones is a bit of a folk legend himself, his biography can be difficult to discern—after all, it isn’t a Clyde Jones story if it doesn’t have multiple versions.
Like most folks in Bynum at the time, he was a mill worker before he went on to work with his brother Robert as a pulpwood logger. He was working with Robert when a tree trunk fell on his leg in 1979, an injury that left him unable to work.
“He had to have something to do,” said Jones’ niece Loretta Brady. “He started looking at the trees and seeing the critters in there.”
He carved his first critter in March of 1982—a pig. Using his chainsaw to transform cedarwood into animals, he quickly filled up his yard, a scene Brady recalls her mother, Jones’ sister-in-law, describing as a “snake mess.” There were puppies, horses, alligators, reindeer, and those long-necked giraffes, some painted in bright hues, others unadorned, save for bright, plastic daisies as eyes.
“Never seen some of these animals, but that doesn’t really matter,” Jones said of his process once, in an interview with The Chatham Record. “I just see a piece of wood, and they come out.”
One of Jones’ early appreciators was Gene Hamer, who, alongside chef Bill Neal, opened Crook’s Corner in 1982. Hamer first put a dog critter on the restaurant’s roof; soon, more critters joined the dog. Eventually, a roofer said the critters had to come down—or else the roof would.
“Clyde was a part of Crook’s,” said Hamer. “I would go over to Clyde’s and say, ‘I like that one,’ and he’d say, ‘Well, you can take that one.’ ‘I like that one over there.’ ‘Well, that’s not going. That’s staying here.’”
If you don’t already know, Crook’s in the ’80s and ’90s wasn’t just an award-winning restaurant—it was a center of Chapel Hill’s cultural scene. Art was a big part of that. The restaurant acted as a gallery for many local artists, and Jones had work there on a rotating and permanent basis (or at least for as long as they might last—Hamer recalls fixing a cat’s head repeatedly). In exchange, Jones ate for free, coming in early and eating a hamburger at the bar.
In 2002, when the North Carolina Museum of Art hosted a yearlong outdoor installation of Jones’ critters, Hamer helped Jones transport them in his pickup.
“We just loaded the back of it with animals and drove over to Raleigh,” Hamer said. “All these people came out with white gloves on. And they started delicately taking all those animals off the back, which we had just 45 minutes earlier just piled in the back of the truck.”
By that time, Jones’ work had already been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, the American Visionary Art Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art.
“He really wanted people to just engage directly with his work—that was how he went about everything. He was really pure of heart in that way.”
Roger Manley, former director, the gregg museum of Art & design
Roger Manley, retired director of North Carolina State University’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design, put Jones’ artwork in several important shows he curated, starting with the North Carolina Museum of Art’s 1989 exhibit Signs and Wonders: Outsider Art Inside North Carolina.
He also curated the show at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum and Jones’ first solo exhibition of paintings—and added a handful of critters to the Gregg’s permanent collection. (“We had to quarantine them and disinfect them to keep insects from getting into the collection,” said Manley.)
“He really wanted people to just engage directly with his work—that was how he went about everything,” Manley said. “He was really pure of heart in that way.”
A specialist in outsider art, Manley pointed out that while Jones’ trajectory is similar to that of many self-taught artists, the term “outsider” isn’t quite accurate: Jones “was almost central to his community rather than being outside of it.”
Another institution that includes Jones’ work in its permanent collection is Wilmington’s Cameron Art Museum, which has hosted an annual holiday event since 2010 based on the critters.
“It is this making art for art’s sake and civic engagement that distinguishes Clyde Jones from other self-taught North Carolina ‘outsider’ artists,” wrote Cameron Curator Ben Billingsley in response to a query about Jones.
And what did Jones think of the high regard his art was receiving?
“He said that he didn’t understand the attraction, but he was thrilled that children got into his work,” said Hamer, adding that when Jones began working in schools with kids later in his career, he entered a “glitter period.”
“While the paint was still wet, he’d just dump glitter all over them, you know, a handful at a time like you’re feeding chickens,” Hamer said. “We would have shows at Crook’s and then be vacuuming that stuff up for months.”
Crook’s wasn’t the only restaurant where Jones operated on what he called a “horse trading” model. The artist had a long-standing friendship with John Dimos, proprietor of Captain John’s Dockside, a Chapel Hill seafood restaurant where you would find Jones most Friday nights. Not coincidentally, Captain John’s contains the largest collection of Clyde Jones paintings available anywhere—works now thankfully preserved from the harsh conditions of Jones’ un-air-conditioned house.
If you are looking to go see some of Jones’ work, Captain John’s is a great place to start before continuing to Bynum, where some critters still can be found in the neighborhood around Jones’ house, although, as his neighbor Stephan Meyers put it, “the herd has thinned.”
Meyers, who moved four doors down from Jones in 2007, first met the artist at a neighborhood wedding where Jones escorted the bride to the altar on the front of his lawn mower.
Meyers went on to assist Jones with errands and his art-making, eventually spearheading a fundraising campaign to help cover the artist’s medical expenses. Like Jones’ friends and family, he’s now both grieving the loss of Jones and trying to figure out the best way to preserve his remaining art.
The critters, made of wood, do what wood is supposed to do: biodegrade. Jones got sick just before 2020 and was never really able to return to making art after that. Time is tough on outdoor art; like their maker, many of Jones’ critters are now returning to the earth. Like their maker, it is hard to let them go.
Clyde and Charlie
“One sunny summer day, I was sitting on a picnic table in front of his steps, where Clyde was sitting. I was kicking my feet, and out of the blue, Clyde said, “Charlie don’t like that. I’d stop if I were you.” “Who’s Charlie?” I asked. “You haven’t met Charlie? Why, he lives here. He’s a snake.”
This went on for years—talking about Charlie. I’d pull up to his house, and he’d shout at me because I almost ran over Charlie. Another time I came and he told me to be careful, as Charlie scared someone earlier who visited. … One time I commented on how clean his floor looked—usually it was covered in peanut shells and orange rinds. Clyde looked around and said, “Huh, Charlie must have been hungry.” I’d laugh every time. None of the neighbors nor I had ever seen Charlie. Clyde is a big jokester, and he loves the repeat of a joke.
Over the years, I played along with his imaginary friend Charlie, asking about his well-being and what he’d been up to, and would be rewarded with an elaborate story. One Friday, I picked Clyde up, and he said we needed to go to town first so he could pay his light bill. The problem was he had no idea where it was. … I’m picking up paper everywhere, looking for the bill. … Finally, I picked up a load of clothes and stuff from a chair and threw them on his bed. It was much heavier than what it looked. Before I could ask him what was in the chair, Clyde said, “You better wait outside. Charlie don’t like to be throwed.” I looked across the room where I had thrown his stuff, and there indeed was Charlie, all bunched and knotted up, reared up, staring straight at me. I was out the door and in my car in one step—heart pounding, terrified. Charlie was huge!
Clyde meanders out about five minutes later with the bill in hand. I kicked it and we made it in time to pay his bill. The whole way I listened to a mix of haranguing about how mean I am to Charlie, punctuated by bursts of maniacal laughter imitating my face when I saw Charlie.”
—Julie Trotter, as told to Andrea Richards
Meyers and others hold hope that a nonprofit or a regional art institution might preserve Jones’ house, turning it into a living museum dedicated not just to folk art but to the kind of community that made a phenomenon like Clyde’s Critter Crossing possible in the first place. After all, that’s what happened just down the road when Bynum’s general store closed in 2006, and the community banded together to form the nonprofit Bynum Front Porch.
“Clyde saw a special magic both in children and nature.”
david tate, former board member, haw river assembly
Jones certainly logged his time at that store and, when he was healthy, was a fixture at any Front Porch event. He might even have potatoes (which he called “footballs”) left over from Captain John’s or a few Cheetos in his pocket to feed a dog. No wonder children and animals were drawn to him.
“Clyde saw a special magic both in children and nature,” said David Tate, a former board member of the Haw River Assembly, recalling a visit from Jones to Tate’s daughters’ Carolina Friends preschool. “The children were sad when a large poplar tree that had long dominated the playground had to be cut down to build the new schoolhouse. But Clyde came and turned the tree into two huge reindeer and helped the children paint them. It became a day of celebration, and the tree had a second life as critters.”
Cheryl Chamblee, executive director of the Chatham Arts Council, recalled that there are many stories of children gathering around Jones.
“It’s really exciting when this person who is an artist is in their ball cap, takes out their chainsaw, and starts making something in front of you,” Chamblee said. “I mean, who does that in front of a group of 10-year-olds? You’re seeing art happen right there.”
A Reciprocal Community
For a decade, Jones’ friend Julie Trotter picked him up on Fridays at four o’clock to take him to dinner at Captain John’s.
“He had this amazing scope and range of friendships and people that would stop by, bring food—other people, loggers, and stuff would bring him cedar trees, because that’s what he makes the critters out of,” said Trotter. “When you first meet him, you think, ‘Wow, I’m the only person helping him.’ But it just takes a second to see what an amazing community he has set up. … It’s reciprocal. Clyde is doing as much for others as others are doing for him.”
For Trotter, seeing firsthand how difficult Jones’ daily life was, even when he was healthy—he didn’t drive, and survived off just enough money to cover his bills—offered insight into how much art mattered to him.
“He was brave enough to live life on his own terms,” said Trotter.
Those terms valued art over commerce, people more than things. There’s perhaps no better testament to Jones’ role in community life than ClydeFEST, started by the Chatham Arts Council in 2002. For years, Jones and friends would create wooden “Clyde Critter cutouts,” plywood pieces cut into animal shapes suggestive of his critter sculptures, which kids would then paint and glitter and take home.
Creating a cutout was the centerpiece festival activity, a fun opportunity for kids to create their own art, outdoors, and with all the freedom that affords, to make a big, giant mess. (These cutouts, Chamblee assured me, will be back in 2027; they still have Jones’ original templates for them.)
The cutouts allowed Jones to gift his art even further than he could get with his critters. It showed. Whereas you once saw Jones’ critters beside every mailbox in Bynum and outside every elementary school in Chapel Hill and Chatham County, suddenly, after a ClydeFEST, every kid had a new critter cutout to hang. One man can make only so much art—but a community? They can put critters everywhere.
For Meyers, Jones’ art carries “a sense of joy and wonder and whimsy.”
“It’s accessible, I don’t have any highfalutin words. It’s just art, and as some art does, it’s just something that talked to me,” Meyers said.
From the scale of ClydeFEST, and of Jones’ influence both in Bynum and beyond, his work reaches and inspires many—kids, adults, maybe even dogs.
For Chamblee, who has helmed many a ClydeFEST and will soon do so again, Jones’ legacy is this: “One, love kids. Just love kids. And two, be you. Clyde was always the same person, whether he was talking to his neighbor or Mikhail Baryshnikov or the First Lady of North Carolina.”
“That’s Clyde’s legacy because he was himself,” Chamblee continued. “And look at what an impact that made.”
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