Plainly Outstanding Works by unschooled African American artists present an astonishing display of vision, ingenuity and energy

Roofing tin, wire fencing, old clothes, used rugs, uprooted trees and bits of costume jewelry have been reclaimed from the scrap heap and transformed into visually powerful works of art in a formidable exhibition that opened early this month at Reynolda House Museum of American Art.

"Ancestry & Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum" brings together about 40 works, made mostly from such ordinary materials, by 18 artistically unschooled black American artists active since World War II. All are from the collection of New York's American Folk Art Museum, where the show was organized by Stacy Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson. Hollander is the folk art museum's senior curator and director of exhibitions, and Anderson (a former director of Winston-Salem State University's Diggs Gallery) is the director and curator of the folk art museum's Contemporary Center.

The exhibition is visually punctuated at intervals by nine wall-mounted patchwork quilts. The most traditional pieces here, the quilts are characterized by rhythmic patterns or less-regular arrangements of their scrap components, using sewing techniques passed down through generations. Particularly striking are a predominantly black on pink "Snail Trail Quilt" by Mary Maxtion (b. 1914) and more free-form strip quilts by Mozell Benson (b. 1934) and Idabell Bester. (Bester died around 1992; her birth date is unknown.).

"A Hen's Quilt" by Pearlie Posey (1894–1984) is the show's only quilt incorporating representational imagery, in the form of stylized chickens cut from different fabrics and arranged in a grid. They relate both visually and thematically to the show's 12 paintings by Clementine Hunter (1886/1887–1988), with their highly simplified images of Southern black rural life and biblical lore, and their limited, pastel-dominated palette.

Hunter is one of this country's most widely known folk artists, but her imagery looks stiff and formulaic compared to the show's two densely composed, organically improvisational drawings by Nellie Mae Rowe (1900–1982). With their silhouetted animal and humanoid figures, simplified plant forms, geometric patterns and bold Crayola colors, they're as visually exciting as the show's liveliest quilt.

During the later years of his life on St. Helena Island, S.C., Sam Doyle (1906–1985) filled the yard of his home with paintings on roofing tin and other scrap materials. Many of these commemorative paintings -- depicting people and scenes from the Bible, U.S. history and coastal South Carolina -- survive today in private and public collections of folk art. Doyle's roofing-tin painting in the show, Dr. Buz, is a fanciful portrait of a legendary "root doctor" or medicine man known as Dr. Buzzard.

David Butler (1898–1997) also used scrap sheet-metal to create art with which he embellished his house and yard in Patterson, La. He typically cut the shapes of animals, humanoid figures or more abstract forms from sheet-metal that he then painted, sometimes adding materials such as wire, buttons and ribbon. He's represented here by six characteristic pieces, including several distinctively stylized birds, a Lady in Stripes and a Valentine-theme work consisting of heart and arrow shapes.

Thornton Dial (b. 1928) has gained widespread attention in contemporary "fine-art" circles for his creative ambition and his work's large scale, thematic sophistication and incorporation of self-devised techniques related to abstract expressionism and assemblage. His roughly 6-by-8-foot, mixed-media relief piece titled The Man Rode Past His Barn to Another New Day is typical in its highly expressionistic painting style, compositional density and use of rural imagery to metaphorical ends, not to mention its use of non-art materials including wire fencing and pieces of old rugs.

The work of Bessie Harvey (1929–1994) has also proven to have crossover appeal, attracting both folk-art aficionados and contemporary fine-art audiences. Her two large painted driftwood sculptures are particularly powerful, exemplifying her aptitude for painting and otherwise transforming parts of chopped-down or uprooted trees to creative evocative, somewhat scary figures. An open-mouthed, frightened-looking rider sits astride the biblically inspired Black Horse of Revelations in one of these pieces. Nine multicolored, snakelike tongues emerge from the mouth of the black-painted tree-trunk figure in her piece titled A Thousand Tongues Can Never Tell.

The show's youngest artist, Kevin Sampson (b. 1954), creates evocative assemblages from objects and materials he scavenges from the streets of Newark, N.J. He paints these composite forms with enamel, sands them and stains them to make them look weathered and time-worn.

Reminiscent of shrines, reliquaries and architectural structures, they're informed by his investigation of his African heritage, his grounding in traditional spirituality and his 18 years of experience as a police officer. Mother Oatman, one of his two pieces here, pays tribute to an old family friend and admired elder in the church he attended while growing up.

It suggests a profusely decorated, elevated house or treasure chest, and its two downward-curving, bead-bedecked wooden components -- originally chair arms, perhaps -- also render it evocative of an upright, proudly confident figure.

Also noteworthy are a mixed-media painting by Thornton Dial Jr. (b. 1953) and an idiosyncratic piece by Willie LeRoy Elliot (b. 1943) that doubles as a chair and a figural sculpture. Titled The Last Frontier, Elliot's piece is made primarily of painted wood but also incorporates a bicycle rear-view mirror and a wine-glass rack.

Artist Kevin Sampson, exhibition co-curator Brooke Anderson and other speakers will discuss the exhibition and related topics during a symposium at Reynolda House on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

■ "Ancestry & Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum" is on view through April 13 at Reynolda House Museum of American Art, 2250 Reynolda Road. For information about special programs in conjunction with the show, call 336-758-5150.