In 1964 Derek Webster moved to the United States from Belize. He settled in Chicago and bought a house. In order to distinguish his house from the other houses in the neighborhood, he began building a fence of contorted figures constructed of wood and found objects. His job as night janitor at a hospital provided a source of bright objects such as bottles, and the driftwood he needed came from the shores of Lake Michigan where Webster loves to fish. From embellishing his fence, he evolved into making individual dancing figures often inspired by his memory of Carnival in Belize.

Webster is well known in the midwest. In 1989 he was included in the prestigious traveling exhibition "Black Art - Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art," which originated at the Dallas Museum of Art.

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