Winfred Rembert (b. 1945), whose work is currently exhibited at the Tillou Gallery in Litchfield, Connecticut, learned the craft of leather tooling while serving on a chain gang in a Georgia prison. A black man who had spent his childhood picking cotton, he had been arrested at a civil rights rally in the 1960's, and given a sentence of 27 years which was shortened to seven.

Following this adversity, Rembert maintained a job and raised a family with whom he shared stories about his youth in The South, in the cotton fields, in church, in the black section of his home town Cuthbert, Georgia, in juke joints and on the chain gang.

These stories eventually became the subjects of his creative art on leather---tooled, carved and dyed with color---which tell of one man's remarkable life.