Alva Gene Dexhimer  (1931 - 1984)

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Alva Gene Dexhimer was born in 1931 in the little town of Clarksburg, Missouri and lived in Missouri his whole life. When he was 5, he suffered a severe head injury when he fell off a tractor, which left young Alva with considerable learning impairments.Alva refused to go to school after the eighth grade. Much of his education consisted of drawing while other children were being instructed. Alva drew throughout his life.

As a teenager, Dexhimer was employed by his dad, a carpenter and general handy­man. He and his brother Abraham lived with their parents until his parents passed on. His sister offered the two brothers a lot on their land near Syracuse, Missouri. They parked a trailer on the land in 1972. Shortly after this, Alva began to build a variety of things from scrap wood, with a handsaw and hammer.

He built miniature chairs, gunracks, birdhouses, crosses and wooden rifles inscribed with "INGODWETRTST" (Alva was illiterate). He painted these things with housepaint or enamel, which his sister supplied him with. These constructions were placed in the yard in front of the red, white and blue trailer in the hope that passersby would purchase some of the work.

Every now and then, someone would stop to take a look. After letting the visitor look around for a little while, he would take them into a small barn behind the trailer which was filled top to bottom with paintings- on cardboard, shoesoles and other scrap materials from a nearby shoe factory, paper, and plywood. Some were framed in fancy, handpainted frames in an attempt to make them more marketable. Alva used a lot of different of sources for his work:

He scanned through newspapers, magazines, and books for images that appealed to him. He loved Comicbooks with a western theme. You can see cowboys like Gene Autry again and again in his work.

Many years ago, an artist from Iowa accidentally stumbled upon the trailer, and began to tell the world about Alva Dexhimer. Dexhimer's work was part of FOLK ART/FOR SALE, put on by the Kansas City Art Institute, and in DELIBERATE LIVES- A Celebration of Three Missouri Masters at the First Street Forum in St. Louis. His work is included in many important collections all over the United States and Canada.

Alva developed diabetes in his fifties. Complications caused  a stroke and, many months later in 1984, Alva Dexhimer passed away at the age of 52.

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