Through the 57 years since, Tolson has built everything from barns to his own false teeth (the latter were constructed after Tolson persuaded his dentist to allow him to fashion his own false molars following some rather heavy imbibing by both doctor and patient. )
Walking through the current display of Tolson works in the UK Student Center (where they will remain through Feb. 7), one is impressed with the uniqueness of the finished product, each piece bearing a self-generated, encapsulated existence of its own.   Tolson's touch produces an invariably original statement, though his work is almost arbitrary in its adherence to'the artist's own almost caricaturial view of reality, for
Edgar Tolson has recreated what he knows rather than what he sees.
His own particular perspective is apparent is his Noah's Ark, with streams of animals entering from below while the dove returns to Noah atop the piece, a time-space compression of forty days in a space of several inches.
The consummate Tolson, though, seems to merge in his wooden army of pious, spiritual, rigid dolls, depicting farmers, preachers, train engineers, mountain women--the people with whom he has lived, their faces all decidedly reflecting the features of Tolson's English forebearers.
His hand-carved dolls seemingly record the coalescence of all the contradictions of his life and the entire life-style of the eastern Kentucky mountains.
The unembellished yellow poplar figures are at once frozen rigid in time, yet brimming with latent vio-
lence, staring behind huge eyes agape with humanity, yet seemingly ready to flinch at the sight of life's nausea.
The tens ion-filled figures seem at once both spiritual and visceral, filled with shadings of hatred and impotence, frustration and acceptance, reaching but never touching, mirroring with uncomfortable force the terribly fragile nature of triumph and tragedy. They seem to exist only through their terribly rigid carriage, as if relaxation and collapse would prove inextricable.   Yet, the distillate of their suffering is pure and profound irony--an irony not of defense but of acceptance.
Yet few of Tolson's dolls appear in his three-room home in Campton, for his involvement is too deep for them to remain.   When on one of his frequent week-long benders, Tolson has a recurring dream of his hundreds of dolls:   "They come in this room here and they gather all around me and point their fingers and say 'You made me.   You made me'. "
Tolson turns out his tiny figures with a simple pocket knife, sitting on an old dilapidated green couch, his long bony fingers leaping down yellow poplar boards in long, swimming strokes, his hands moving steadily when carving, though normally shaking noticeably.   (Tolson carved primarily with his right hand until a stroke in 1955 partially paralyzed his right side.   In his usual undaunted style, Tolson learned to perform his craft just as well with his left hand. Although he has since recovered full use of his right side, he continues to turn out southpaw stylings.)
Tolson, like the mountains he loves, has long been badly misused. Just as faceless corporations gouge coal
from the Kentucky hills, leaving only gaping, incurable wounds, collectors have for years exploited Tolson's isolated, anonymous situation, paying miniscule fees for his dolls, then carefully covering their artistic tracks, displaying Tolson's work but denying knowledge of the creator's identity, squeezing the air from the man's work, then pushing him back into obscruity.
However, University of Kentucky sculptor and collector Mike Hall located Tolson recently after several years' worth of bad leads, including erroneous information that the strange Tolson dolls were the creation of some very mythical and very dead mountainwoman.   (Of the latter rumor Tolson says,  "Oh yes, that's true, but I come back as a man.so's ole Mike (Hall) could discover me. ")
Hall, working with photographer Rick Bell, has finally revealed the scope and depth of Edgar Tolson in the current display, ranging from stone dogs and walking sticks to symbolic reenactments of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Within hours of Tolson's Lexington opening, all the current work of the artist was sold and enough orders had been filed to take Tolson's steel spinning through a redwood-size yellow poplar.
Tolson even found himself autographing programs at his opening, faithfully inscribing each with the ri^icl scrawling "Edgar Tolson. Campion, Ky. "  that labels many of his picees.
It is doubtful that Edgar Tolson will ever again be pushed so rudely into the background, will ever again receive the artistic vulture's equivalent of thai Bethlehem Steel red-carpet-foot-in-the-face.   Major museums throughout the country are currently dickering for Tolson's work, and brisk local sales seem a long-term cinch.
Yet, it is doubtful Edgar Tolson will become jaded with his success.   He is an extremely wily character, a master of the bucolic beau geste, beady eyes jumping like black magnet s while homilies drip from his thin lips.
One moment he will be self-effac-ingly mumbling in the direction of one of the Jesus pictures that cling to the thin walls of his shaky home, bemoaning his latest work as "not worth a damn dime. "
Ten minutes later he is surrounded by Camptonites in a small grocery, discussing the same piece.   To the fawning tooops who until recently regarded him as the town degenerate, Tolson will say, head uplifted, "That there's the best piece I ever did do. " His fellow residents are amazed that his works will be on display "up at the university. "
A survivor of the rages within him and without him, Edgar Tolson peeps warily from behind his owl-like spectacles, as hard and as human as any of his creations.
A talented, complex man, an almost ignored, self-gene rated gem of a folk artist, he, like one Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, is a small town boy done made good.
6
January, 1970