Z.B. Armstrong.
(1911-1993, Georgia)
Doomsday Clocks.
1986.
Signed and dated verso.
Weekly/Monthly Calendar.
Mixed media, painted wood, metal.
Great condition with light surface dirt and wear.
16.5" h x 18.75" w x 6" d.
Exhibited: New Orleans Museum of Art, Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present, 1993-1994.
This was the only piece by Armstrong in the exhibition.
Illustrated: Alice Rae Yellen's book of the same name, page 193, catalog number 4.
Provenance: Gasperi Folk Art Gallery, New Orleans, 1987.
Collection of William A. (Bill) Fagaly (1938-2021), New Orleans.
The Mike Dale Collection.
Est. $2,000-$3,000.
Ship: $65.

Zebedee B. "Z. B." Armstrong was born on October 11, 1911 in McDuffie County, near Thomson, Georgia, where he lived his entire life. After completing grade school, he went to work in the same cotton fields that had been tended by his father and grandfather on the local Mack McCormick farm. From an early age Armstrong showed an aptitude for making things, and would later supplement his income by building furniture for people in his community. He married Ulamay Demmons in 1929 and they had two daughters. Through his church, Armstrong was a member of The Solomon Hodges Burial Society, an organization that helped poor families pay for proper burials and grave markers for family members who had passed. This early concern about facilitating the passage to the afterlife for members of his community would foreshadow his later interests as an artist. After his wife died in 1969, Armstrong went to work as a foreman at the Thomson Box Factory, where he remained until his retirement in 1982.

In 1972, Armstrong claimed that he was visited by an angel who warned him saying, "Our time has gone to waste…Judgment Day will come and at what hour only God knows." After this vision, Armstrong became reclusive and preoccupied with time, the Book of Revelation, and the making of "doomsday clocks and calendars" in order to calculate the exact date of the approaching doomsday. The clocks and calendars were three-dimensional wooden sculptures to which he added grids drawn in black, red and blue permanent marker, a process which Armstrong referred to as "taping with time." He would also add dates and scripture passages and helpful directions like "Top" and "Bottom" so that viewers could study the works properly. After his retirement Armstrong was able to devote his full energies to his constructions. Armstrong is believed to have created almost 1,500 works in his lifetime.

Armstrong's work appeared in the Passionate Visions of the American South exhibition in 1993. In 1997 Roger Manley used Armstrong pieces as an inspiration for and as part of his exhibition The End is Near at the American Visionary Art Museum. According to the Rosenaks' Encyclopedia, Armstrong's work was also shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Armstrong died in 1993 at the age of 82.

William Fagaly, whose collection this wood construction comes from, served for fifty years as curator of African art, contemporary art, and self-taught art at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), also serving as assistant director for over 20 years.