detour art travels

The Electric Pencil

2012-01-20T09:56:00.002-06:00

THE ELECTRIC PENCIL, the story of Outsider Artist James Edward Deeds Jr. Committed for Life at the tender age of 17 to Lunatic Asylum No.3, Nevada, MO in 1925. Heavily subjected to psychotropic drugs and electric shock treatment, his is a tale of the need to create, even in the most adverse conditions. Deeds executed an extraordinary album of drawings, acknowledged as masterpieces of Outsider Art.

The Future Of Salvation Mountain Uncertain | KPBS.org

2011-12-20T15:20:00.000-06:00

The Future Of Salvation Mountain Uncertain | KPBS.org

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Photo by Angela Carone / KPBS

Above: Salvation Mountain, with the moon rising.

By Angela Carone

The Future Of Salvation Mountain Uncertain

Aired 12/20/11

The creator of a desert artwork known as Salvation Mountain has been placed in a long-term care facility in El Cajon. Now the future of the candy-colored mountain is unknown.

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Photo by Angela Carone

Above: Leonard Knight, outsider artist who spent years building Salvation Mountain out of adobe, straw and paint.

Enlarge this image

Photo by Angela Carone

Above: The truck where outsider artist Leonard Knight sleeps. It's painted in the same style as his monumental work, Salvation Mountain.

Leonard Knight has been building Salvation Mountain out of adobe, straw, and paint for almost 30 years. The colorful, three-story mountain with the words "God Is Love" on its crest sits in the Imperial County desert, east of San Diego.

The 80-year-old Knight has lived at the mountain since 1985, sleeping in the back of a painted pick-up truck and caring for his life's work for hours every day. I made my first pilgrimage to Salvation Mountain in 2008 and wrote about it here (starring a terrifying swarm of flies).

Earlier this month, Knight was placed in a long-term care facility in El Cajon for dementia.

Preservation Challenges

Jo Hernandez is the executive director of Spaces, an organization that helps preserve outsider art. Spaces was instrumental in saving the Watts Towers in Los Angeles.

She has been working with Knight, both in documenting his project and trying to secure its long-term future. Hernandez says without Knight’s daily attention, Salvation Mountain is in jeopardy. "It's out in the middle of the desert and with the way it is formed and the kind of materials [Knight] uses, I just don’t see any possibility that in the end, it will be able to be 'saved.'"

Hernandez is referring to the over 100,000 gallons of paint Knight has used to adorn and layer the mountain. Much of that paint has been donated by the thousands of visitors who've wanted to support Knight's desert dream.

Without attention to deteriorating areas, sun, rain, and even earthquakes will have their way with this relatively fragile mountain. There's also the issue of protecting the mountain from vandals. As of now, a rotating group of volunteers are monitoring it.

Hernandez says it's heartbreaking, but this is a very difficult preservation case. "What we’re really hoping for is that it will be able to be maintained as long as possible so that people can come and enjoy it....But it’s an ephemeral piece and hopefully we can let it die gracefully. I hate to say that, but I'm just trying to be realistic."

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Photo by Angela Carone

Above: Paint cans are scattered all over the land surrounding Salvation Mountain.

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Photo by Angela Carone

Above: One of the interior shrines Knight built inside a portion of Salvation Mountain.

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Photo by Angela Carone

Above: A view of the sun setting from the top of Salvation Mountain.

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Photo by Angela Carone

Above: Artist Leonard Knight.

Hernandez says at her most optimistic, she thinks the mountain could be saved through a combination of financial support and non-profit oversight. She's working with some individuals who've helped care for Knight and the mountain over the years to establish a non-profit to work on the mountain's preservation.

The Land

One of the first steps in determining Salvation Mountain's future is figuring out who actually owns the land. One thing is certain, Knight has been officially trespassing since he began building his monument.

The parcel of desert land in the shadow of the Chocolate Mountains was first given to California by the federal government upon statehood in 1850. It was one of the "school lands," which were parcels in each township given to the state for the benefit of public education. Any proceeds from the sale of those lands would go to support public education.

The federal government took back this desert parcel during World War II for military use - resulting in the slabs that mark nearby Slab City - and it was then returned to the state in the 1960s. The distinct boundaries of what the state actually owns as of today are unknown.

Curtis Fossum is chief officer with the California State Lands Commission, which manages land for the state of California. Fossum says the state definitely owns the land neighboring Slab City is on, but he's not sure about Salvation Mountain. The state hasn't had the resources it would take to find out.

As Fossum points out, the Land Commission manages over four and a half million acres, and Salvation Mountain sits on less than one of those acres. "We are a small office. We don't have the ability to go down there and fence it off. We don't have the funding for it. But we'll be looking at those issues in the coming year."

Fossum says that if the mountain was designated a cultural resource and had to be preserved, "you'd have to have some responsible party to do it and as far as I know, no party has stepped forward to take responsibility of it and make sure it's not a problem."

Thousands of visitors come to Salvation Mountain every year. In 2002, Senator Barbara Boxer entered the mountain into the congressional record as a national treasure. PBS and the BBC have both made documentaries about Knight and his work. Even film director/actor Sean Penn featured Knight in his 2007 film “Into the Wild.”

Hernandez says groups with agendas are a threat to the mountain. Various church groups have approached Knight over the years, offering to adopt the mountain for their own missionary purposes. Knight's always refused, choosing the clarity and focus of one idea: "God is Love."

In the coming weeks, I'll be looking in to why Imperial County has not wanted to manage Salvation Mountain in the past and what the county's role will be in Salvation Mountain's future.

Buol Grotto to be saved by Kohler

2011-10-21T10:08:00.004-05:00

Preservation Wins: Dubuque Yard Grotto to be Preserved
By Sarah Oltrogge

An eleventh-hour rescue to save a rare Dubuque "yard grotto" will ensure its future as a link to a larger regional tradition.

With a strong history for preserving grotto environments such as this, the Kohler Foundation, Inc., in Kohler, Wis., has stepped in and acquired the yard grotto created by Madeline Buol. The grotto will be moved to KFI's conservation studio and restored before moving to its final location, yet to be determined.

Madeline Buol (1902-1986), built her grotto, a conglomeration of embellished concrete typically with a religious theme, in her back yard on Garfield Street in Dubuque in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The home, which remained in the family until recently, was sold to new owners who were not interested in keeping the grotto.

Lisa Stone, curator with the Roger Brown Study Collection (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and author of Sacred Spaces and Other Places: A Guide to the Grottos and Sculptural Environments of the Upper Midwest (1993), came across the Buol grotto while conducting research. Upon learning of its impending fate, she began reaching out to colleagues in the hopes someone would take an interest in saving the work.

"(My co-author) Jim Zanzi and I felt the Buol grotto was historically and aesthetically significant in its own right and therefore very deserving of preservation," Stone said. "The grotto is somewhat, but not completely, unusual having been made by a woman. She developed an original style of surface embellishment and there are lovely details. But the structures were deteriorating and the site needed attention."

The first three major grottos in the region - Grotto of the Redemption (West Bend; blt. 1912-1954), Dickeyville Grotto (Dickeyville, Wis.; blt. 1925-1931) and Rudolph Grotto (Rudolph, Wis.; blt. 1919-1983) - were all built by priests with some help from mostly male parishioners. Women were involved in some of the "spin off" grottos, such as the Paul and Matilda Wegner Grotto (Cataract, Wis.; blt. 1929-1942), and Mollie Jenson's Art Exhibit (River Falls, Wis.; blt. 1938). It was easy to see why it should be preserved.

"We were made aware this existed through Jim Zanzi and Lisa Stone," said Terri Yoho, executive director of the Kohler Foundation. "We knew immediately the work should be preserved. Several museums have been contacted regarding a final home for the collection and we are confident that we will be able to place the work for long term care. For now, the sculptures are being moved to Wisconsin for conservation treatment and documentation over the next few months."

The main part of the Buol grotto is clearly a reference to Father Mathias Wernerus' famed Dickeyville Grotto, about 15 miles away. Buol flanked her Grotto (ostensibly to the Blessed Virgin) with beautifully embellished renditions of the American and Papal flags, and shells arching over flanking side shrines with the words "Religion" and "Patriotism." One of the striking aspects of the Dickeyville Grotto was the pairing of the American and Papal flags, which stated Catholics' loyalty to the country as well as to the Vatican, which was especially important in the post-war years, and Buol picked up on this bold expression while flanking her grotto with wonderfully precarious, tall concrete rosaries.

"The Buol yard grotto is an example of highly original work," Stone said. "Madeline Buol made a marvelous contribution to the genre, and her joy in translating her religious devotion into works of art is expressed clearly and with exuberance."

The Kohler Foundation, Inc. supports education, arts and preservation initiatives in Wisconsin. Since the late 1970s, the preservation of folk architecture, art environments and collections by self-taught artists has been the major focus of the Foundation.

Top photo: Dated 1952, Madeline Buol appears next to her grotto for this photo which appeared in the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald.

Bottom photo: Close of up Madeline Buol and her grotto shrine "Religion."

Detour Art in Park City, UT

2011-09-27T08:24:00.001-05:00

"Iowa" by Melissa Polhamus, Virginia Beach, Va. Courtesy Collection of Kelly Ludwig

Dazzling undiscovered art from America’s back roads

BY GLEN WARCHOL

The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Sep 23 2011 05:46PM
Updated Sep 23, 2011 11:20PM

For many humans, making art isn’t a profession; it’s an obsession.

The most striking example of this primal and irrepressible urge is found among the so-called "outside" artists — amateurs who often are destitute, isolated, marginalized, mentally ill or even imprisoned. The only unifying factor between these folk artists is that they have no formal training in art production or history.

The phenomenon, which has created remarkable edifices, such as the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, Houston’s Beer Can House, and Salt Lake City’s Gilgal Garden, seems to be under-represented in the Intermountain West, and in Utah. Or at least yet undiscovered, according to two experts who spoke recently at the Kimball Art Center’s "Detour Art: Outsider, Folk Art, and Visionary Environments from Coast to Coast."

The Kimball exhibition is drawn from the outsider-art collection of Kansas City-based Kelly Ludwig, who travels America’s blue highways to find and document outside artists. The show presents the spectrum of the often primitive or childlike genre — from the graceful wood carvings of Kentucky’s Minnie Adkins that draw from the folk art of duck decoys, to the crude but powerful tin cut-outs of Betty Sue Matthews, plus the intuitive modernism of Thornton Dial.

Ludwig says outsider art is a "celebration of creativity." She labels the genre as "detour art" because it’s an escape from so-called fine arts, and usually requires driving into rural backwaters to find.

"These artists are thrifty," Ludwig says. "Nothing ever goes to waste. The best definition I can think of for outsider artist is: Ordinary people using the material they have at hand to make art."

In the exhibit’s "Indian Chief," Jimmy Lee Sudduth of Fayette, Ala., used dirt, Pepsi-Cola, and leftover house paint to create. Charlie Lucas, also of Alabama, used bicycle sprockets and a broken rake to make "Face."

Terms applied to the genre — including "folk art" and "outsider art" — are fuzzy and getting more so, as academics, collectors and media continue to discover outsider artists, says Duff Lindsay, a collector and dealer in the art form from Columbus, Ohio.

"I call it ‘contemporary self-taught,’" Lindsay says. "Outsider art is almost a historical term now." After all, can anyone be "outside" anymore, asks Lindsay, a former television producer, given the media saturation of the modern world.

It’s nearly impossible for folk artists — with the exception perhaps of the severely mentally ill — to be unaware of the greater world of art and the growing market (and upward-spiralling prices) for outsider art, Ludwig says. But she doesn’t think that scrutiny and study will destroy what’s sometimes labeled art brut; that is, works that grow out of an almost obsessive need to create with "whatever material at hand." "This art just transforms," Ludwig says. "It will evolve."

Ludwig and Lindsay ended a tour of the Kimball exhibit with a challenge to aficionados: Find outsider/folk/untrained artists in Utah.

"This art is everywhere you go," Ludwig says. "But I don’t know of any self-taught artists in Utah. But I know they are there."

gwarchol@sltrib.com

RIP Bob Cassilly - City Museum founder

2011-09-27T08:19:00.002-05:00

Bob Cassilly, founder of City Museum, found dead in bulldozer at his Cementland project

By Dale Singer, Beacon reporter

Updated 4:08 pm Mon., 9.26.11

Bob Cassilly, who turned a collection of unusual artifacts into City Museum, a top tourist attraction in downtown St. Louis, was found dead Monday morning at a former cement plant that was being turned into his next project, Cementland.

CC Licensed Flickr photo by Bill Streeter

Bob Cassilly

Cassilly, 61, was found in a bulldozer at Cementland, 9403 Riverview in north St. Louis. Police had no further details available immediately. Mayor Francis Slay said on Twitter shortly before noon that "The City has lost some of its wonder. RIP Bob Cassilly."

In a stark message, white type on a black background, the museum's website posted a message that said:

"City Musem is saddened by the loss of our founder and inspiration, Robert Cassilly. 1949-2011"

A spokesman for the St. Louis office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it was investigating the scene of Cassilly's death to determine the cause and see whether any health or safety laws had been violated. He said the department has six months to complete a report on the matter and it was too soon to release any information about what its investigation has found.

As word of Cassilly's death spread, tributes to his work began to appear online.

LIVING ST. LOUIS

The Nine Network of Public Media

Bob Cassilly appeared on a segment of Living St. Louis in 2005.

Cassilly, described on the site as a "classically trained sculptor and serial entrepreneur," worked with a team of artisans to create what he boasted had "urban roots deeper than any other institutions'."

In typical fashion, he said on the website:

"City Museum makes you want to know. The point is not to learn every fact, but to say, 'Wow, that's wonderful.' And if it's wonderful, it's worth preserving."

Cassilly’s latest venture, Cementland -- which has been several years in the making and was running behind schedule -- is a 54-acre site at the old Missouri Portland Cement plant that a New York Times article described in a headline in 2007 as “one part cement, two parts whimsy, one odd park.”

The story depicted Cassilly’s vision this way:

“Imagine a park peppered with Mr. Cassilly’s lively animal sculptures, but also with obsolete cement-making machinery grinding away, industrial silos and other remnants of the 54-acre former factory. Then add navigable waterways, waterfalls and beaches atop dirt hills.”

It added:

“Pointing south, he rhapsodized about how downtown St. Louis would look from Cementland: ‘In the afternoon, when the sun shines on the city, you get this nice reflection. You don’t see all the trash and stuff. It’s the best view of the city.”

Panoramic photos of the ongoing work at Cementland can be found here and here; a Twitter feed from "cassilly crew," who describe themselves as "the personal build monkeys of creator Bob Cassilly," linked to them earlier this month.

File photo by Christian Losciale | Beacon Intern

The City Museum's roof opened to visitors in 2009.

City Museum is a regular stop for those seeking an offbeat experience in St. Louis amid more traditional fare like the Arch, the Cardinals, the Botanical Garden and the Zoo. It appeals to all ages with its variety - an aquarium, a funhouse, salvaged materials, a mega slide and MonstroCity, a huge outdoor jungle gym.

In a story about Cassilly and the museum on its 10th anniversary, the Post-Dispatch wrote that Cassilly "admits that he struggles to maintain his passion for City Museum and makes no promises about its future. 'You shouldn't assume things are going to last forever,' Cassilly said. 'It would be great if it all collapsed onto itself like Camelot. We would have had this brief shining ah-moment. But that's just the romantic in me.'"

Actually, City Museum almost collapsed, not under the weight of lack of interest but from a much more prosaic cause: divorce and other legal wrangling.

In 2002, after protracted, bitter proceedings between Cassilly and his former wife, Gail Cassilly, the board of directors at City Museum agreed to sell the attraction to Cassilly, who had guaranteed $1.6 million of the museum's debt, according to a story in the St. Louis Business Journal.

Gail Cassilly had been dismissed the previous year in a dispute over what direction the museum should take, the story said, and Cassilly had expressed displeasure over the museum's non-profit status.

As the couple's divorce dragged on, the museum had problems raising money. Cassilly eventually stopped working there, though he later returned and moved into an apartment in the building.

Despite the acrimony, Gail Cassilly expressed admiration for her ex-husband and pride in what they had built, telling the Post-Dispatch:

"I knew he was the master builder, and he knew I was the master organizer. I don't think it would have opened without that partnership. We really set the mark for fun."

The museum was the subject of other non-fun stories as well. In 2006, a jury awarded $100,000 to a woman who lost two fingers when she put her hand in the "Puking Pig," a metal tank that dumps about 150 gallons of water every 90 seconds or so. The jury said the woman was largely responsible for her injuries.

Last year, the family of a 10-year-old Kansas boy who fractured his skull after he fell 13 feet from the museum's outdoor jungle gym settled its case out of court; terms of the settlement were kept confidential.

Cassilly earned both bachelor's and master's degree in sculpture from Fontbonne after attending the Cleveland Institute of Art. Besides his many works in St. Louis, he created fiberglass hippos for Central Park in New York City; a giant giraffe for the Dallas Zoo; four bronze lions for Busch Gardens in San Diego; and a recreation of ancient stone ruins at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va.

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Cassilly's Cementland, in the Riverview neighborhood of St. Louis

As Folk Art Museum Teeters, a Grave Loss Looms

2011-09-19T13:40:00.003-05:00

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

The American Folk Art Museum recently sold its West 53rd Street building to the Museum of Modern Art. More Photos »

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: September 19, 2011

Please. Someone, everyone, do something to save the American Folk Art Museum from dissolution and dispersal. Or at least slow down the process, so that all options can be thoroughly considered. New York’s contemporary artists, and New York as a whole, need the creative energy of this stubborn, single-minded little institution, its outstanding exhibition program and its wondrous collection, an unparalleled mixture of classic American folk art and 20th-century outsider geniuses.

American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

"Untitled (Two Girls and a Dog Sitting in Garden)" by Henry Darger is in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum. More Photos »

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At the moment it almost seems that the museum’s trustees can’t wait to end their flawed stewardship of this great but historically fragile institution. Last spring, having defaulted on a $31.2 million construction bond, they sold the museum’s 10-year-old building to its neighbor, the Museum of Modern Art, and retreated to its small, rather grim Lincoln Square branch.

The museum tried to put a bright face on things — after all, it had been without a home before, for four years in the 1980s, and had then spent 12 years operating out of Lincoln Square as it went through the tumultuous process of financing and constructing its new building. Now it would be downsized but not defeated, and would regroup and rise once more. The important thing was that its great collection would remain intact.

Or so the story went, until last month, when word came that the trustees are exploring ways to dispose of the collection and dissolve the 50-year-old institution entirely. They are said to be considering ceding the collection to the Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum or some combination of the two. According to people close to events, who were not authorized to speak about the situation, the board heard proposals at a meeting last Thursday from the Smithsonian, the Brooklyn and also from staff members determined to keep the museum going. It will vote on the proposals in a meeting this week. After that the New York state attorney general’s office and the state Education Department would have to approve any transfer. Needless to say, this is an extremely sorry mess, one that may not have needed to happen. Many of the board’s failures of judgment have already been noted, including the choice of a building design that gave the museum a crowded interior, even when empty of art, and a mute, uninviting exterior. In a recent article in The New York Times, Tod Williams, who designed the building with his wife, Billie Tsien, admitted that the building’s facade might have been overly discreet, especially for an institution situated in the shadow of the Museum of Modern Art.

It probably didn’t help that the museum’s last director, Maria Ann Conelli, who took over in the spring of 2005, was a novice who had never headed a museum before and didn’t have much experience with folk art either. But obviously there were several inter-related problems: failures of vision, leadership, fund-raising, trustee giving and marketing. Some articles, sadly, have suggested a failure of glamour: folk and outsider art may not be sexy enough to the big spenders that museum boards need to attract.

But we should be clear about one thing: There was no failure of curatorial vision. During its 10 years in its new home the museum functioned more or less as the center of folk-outsider art research and development in this country, if not the world. It mounted exhibitions of outsider greats equal to any insiders the 20th century produced, among them Martín Ramírez, Adolf Wölfli and Henry Darger, the Chicago recluse who is represented by a gift of some 5,000 artworks and related materials. Drawing primarily from its collection it has organized inspiring exhibitions of quilts, painted furniture, whitework coverings and sandpaper paintings, and the thick-piled, often pictorial textiles known as bed rugs. It took the survey of Thomas Chambers, one of the great undersung masters of 19th-century American marine and landscape painting, originated by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Folk Art Museum’s erasure from New York’s cultural skyline would be a tremendous loss, for the city in general and for its role as a center of both art viewing and art making. A full-blooded expression of centuries’ worth of instinctive, self-taught artistry is crucial in a city as fashion-forward and sometimes art-frivolous as New York. It helps keep artists, especially, grounded and in touch with the essential and visceral nature of their enterprise.

It’s not like this idea is new. Modern art has long taken inspiration from the self-taught: folk art, outsider art, art brut. Its importance was appreciated by no less a visionary than Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, who considered work by self-taught artists to be a “tributary of one of the main streams of modern taste.”

These words appear on a wall label at the Modern next to three paintings by Morris Hirshfield (1872-1946), a Polish immigrant who took up the brush after retiring from jobs in textile and shoe factories. When Barr made his statement, the work of artists like Ramírez, Wölfli and Darger — and others showcased at the Folk Art Museum, including Bill Traylor, Morton Bartlett, Eugene von Breunchenhein and James Castle — was either unknown or yet to be created. I wonder what Barr would say if he were around today to see how much his “tributary” has widened.

It could be argued that we need a museum of folk art the way we need a museum of modern art, to shine a very strong, undiluted light on a very important achievement. That undiluted light will be hard to muster in the near future without a building, but the collection exists, and the goal of keeping it together and eventually finding it a new home of its own should be widely embraced.

The first tactic should be simply to buy time. The museum could temporarily suspend the organization of exhibitions and concentrate on straightforward, ideally dense displays of different parts of the collection in the Lincoln Square space. If need be, it could place large swaths of its collection on long-term loan to other New York museums. Or perhaps it could find a larger space to rent for $1 a year, as it does for its Lincoln Square quarters. If you’re wondering what you might do, write letters, organize petitions or just go to the museum’s Lincoln Square galleries (they’re free right now) and put some money in the slotted box near the entrance.

City officials need to look at the intact museum and collection as a civic and business asset, as well as a cultural one. The success of the recent extravaganza of red and white quilts at the Park Avenue Armory — which was organized by the staff of the Folk Art Museum and which attracted thousands of people from around the country — offers compelling evidence.

The transfer and dispersal of the collection should be fought to the bitter end, with every ounce of passion and ingenuity
that the museum and its supporters can muster. New York, so fabulously full of so many kinds of refined high art, needs a museum dedicated to the great D.I.Y. low of the folk and outsider kind.

Bishop's Castle - Beulah, CO

2011-07-10T19:31:00.001-05:00

Bishop's Castle, a set on Flickr.

Nothing can prepare yourself for the moment you see the castle. Winding roads up the mountain, a sketchy cell phone call to the folk art GPS master – Narrow Larry Harris – to be sure if we were on the right path (yeah, I gotta adjust the app coordinates – it was a bit further up the mountain than I thought).

Jim Bishop is high, as he likes to say, high on a drug the government can’t control. It’s called adrenaline and after one look at Bishop Castle, you’d get no argument from me. Soaring towards the clouds for some 16 stories in all, it’s made from stone; hand selected, hand carried, hand lifted and mortared into place by, you guessed it, hand. Jim Bishop’s hands. He’s been working the site for nearly 40 years now, that is when he isn’t busy fighting with the government about giving it up. It’s surrounded by National Forest land, and they’ve been itching to get his for some time now. But that’s another story and it distracts from the sheer magnitude of what he’s created.

16 stories tall? No drawings. Towers and flying buttresses and rooms of glass and stone? No engineers. A fire-breathing dragon on the roof? No plans. No plans indeed, except for those in Jim’s head. (thanks Randy from RVRR for sharing your well-crafted insights, and letting me pass some of them along…)

Cano's Castle

2011-07-10T19:05:00.001-05:00

Cano's Castle, a set on Flickr.

Photos from my recent journeys...just now finishing up the editing.

Entirely made of recycled materials, with more than 100,000 beer and soda cans, hubcaps, screen doors, wooden windows, bicycle reflectors and more, this amazing folk art environment was built by Dominic "Cano" Espinosa, a Native American Vietnam vet. Inspired by "Vitamin Mary Jane" and Jesus, Espinoza has spent over 30 years working on what he calls "Jesus' Castle."

Espinoza began building Cano's Castle in 1980 in thanks for having his life spared during the Vietnam War. The four main structures: "The King" (the largest tower), "the Queen" (the tower standing next to the King), "the Palace" and "the Rook" (flanking the King).

"Rolling Through the Bay" AMAZING Kinetic toothpick sculpture!!!

2011-06-22T17:57:00.000-05:00

Scott Weaver's Rolling through the Bay from The Tinkering Studio on Vimeo.

(courtesy of The Tinkering Studio)

Scott Weaver’s family has lived in San Francisco for 3 generations. Scott started building toothpick sculptures in 1968, when he was 8 years old. Early structures were abstract and about 2 – 4 feet tall. Then he built one sculpture that had a ping-pong ball roll through it. In 1974, Scott started a new sculpture and added the Golden Gate Bridge and Lombard Street, which also had a ping-pong ball roll through it. This is what started what is now Rolling Through the Bay.

Over the years Scott has worked on Rolling Through the Bay, on-and-off, sometimes not working on it for years at a time, to do other projects and get married to his beautiful wife, Rochelle, and have a wonderful son, Tyler.

Scott loves working with toothpicks and hopes to do so for years to come.

Artist’s website

See Rolling through the Bay in action!

Phonehenge West maybe torn down.

2011-06-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

'Phonehenge West' creator found guilty of additional violations

From the LA Times http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/an-acton-man-already-facing-criminal-penalties-for-building-an-elaborate-structure-called-phonehenge-west-without-permi.html

An Acton man already facing criminal penalties for building an elaborate structure called “Phonehenge West” without permits was found guilty Friday of additional building code violations; his creation is likely destined for the wrecking ball.

But the Antelope Valley jury deadlocked on three other misdemeanor charges against Alan Kimble Fahey, who has been released on his own recognizance.

The mixed verdict came three days after Fahey was found guilty of a majority of charges in the controversial case that has played out at the Lancaster courthouse since May 26.

Fahey worked for about three decades on the massive, reddish cluster of structures until county officials ordered him to stop due to building-code violations. His case attracted international attention and support from fans who considered Phonehenge West a work of art, and who sympathized with his clashes with building inspectors.

Fahey’s attorney, Jerry Lennon, said Friday that Fahey could pay fines as high as $500 for each of the 12 counts on which he was found guilty. He is likely to be required to do some community service, and would only be allowed to remain out of custody if he complies with the judge’s orders to immediately vacate the buildings that don’t have permits, Lennon said. Before his official sentencing, scheduled for July 8, Fahey has been ordered to consult with county officials to determine a plan for demolishing the unlawful structures, the defense attorney added.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick David Campbell argued during the trial that Fahey was a proud and talented artist, but also stubborn, and didn’t feel that code enforcement rules applied to him.

Lennon defended Phonehenge West as an artistic creation. The defense attorney insisted that Fahey was aware of the safety issues and wanted to work with code enforcement officials, but that officials ignored him or were too disorganized to follow through.

The jury deliberated six days and had so much difficulty reaching a complete verdict that attorneys at one point were ordered to re-argue certain portions of the case. Jurors twice reported that they were deadlocked on several charges, but Superior Court Judge Daviann L. Mitchell ordered the panel of eight men and six women, including two alternates, to deliberate further.

Prosecutors are expected to announce later whether they will seek to retry Fahey on the three counts on which the jury deadlocked. Fahey has said he will appeal the verdicts against him.

Phonehenge West owner has nine strikes against him — so far

Creator of 'Phonehenge West' to testify in code enforcement case

-- Ann M. Simmons

Photo: Alan Kimble Fahey and his "Phonehenge West." Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

MoMA to Buy Building Used by Museum of Folk Art

2011-05-11T08:24:00.000-05:00

New York Times
By KATE TAYLOR
Published: May 10, 2011

The Museum of Modern Art is buying the building of the struggling American Folk Art Museum on West 53rd Street, officials said Tuesday.

The folk art museum will continue to operate in its much smaller Lincoln Square branch.

The building to be bought is between MoMA and a vacant lot that MoMA sold in 2007 to the developer Hines. The 2007 sale came with an agreement that Hines would construct a building on the lot connecting internally to MoMA on the north side of the block and provide additional gallery space.

Although there are no current plans for Hines to develop, MoMA ultimately planned to expand in that direction, MoMA’s director, Glenn Lowry, said. He said owning the folk museum’s building would allow it to connect its galleries on both sides of the block.

The folk art museum’s building was designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and opened in 2001. It was not clear whether it would be torn down. The folk art museum took on $32 million of debt to construct the 53rd Street building. But attendance never met expectations, and after sustaining investment losses in the financial crisis, the museum defaulted on its debt.

Neither museum would say what MoMA was paying for the building, but the folk art museum’s chairman, Laura Parsons, said it was enough to retire the museum’s debt.

The folk art museum pays $1 a year in rent for its Lincoln Square space, which is only 5,000 square feet, one-sixth the size of the building it is selling.

Ms. Parsons said the folk art museum might put on shows in other locations in the city or put parts of its collection on tour.

Ms. Parsons said she could not say how many of the museum’s staff members would be laid off. She said there was no deadline for vacating the building and that, for now, it would stay open.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 11, 2011, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: MoMA to Buy Building Used By Museum Of Folk Art.

Benetton Cancels Sponsorship of Outsider Artists in Venice Biennale

2011-05-01T20:15:00.002-05:00

Folk Art Museum Show for Venice Canceled

by stephanie cash 04/25/11

Art in America http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/news/2011-04-25/folk-art-museum-venice-cancellation-benetton/

An exhibition of African-American self-taught artists and graffiti muralists, organized by the beleaguered American Folk Art Museum in New York, has been canceled by exhibition sponsor Benetton. The show was scheduled for June 1-30, to coincide with the opening of the Venice Biennale.

"Vision and Vernacular: Eight African American Artists in Venice" was to have been held at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a property owned by the Benetton Group near the Rialto Bridge. Curated by Carlo McCormick and Martha V. Henry, it would have featured works by Outsider artists Lonnie Holley, Mr. Imagination (Gregory Warmack), Charles Lucas and Kevin Sampson, and site-specific murals by street artists Blade (Steven Ogburn), Daze (Chris Ellis), Quik (Lin Felton) and Sharp (Aaron Goodstone).

According to a Benetton spokesperson, the 13th-century Fondaco dei Tedeschi has been unoccupied for many years and "due to its condition, we were unable to obtain the necessary permits, certifications, and finish the modifications necessary to insure the safety of the crowds expected for this exhibition. The project has been postponed to the reopening of the Fondaco after its renovation by Rem Koolhaus." Plans call for the structure to become a retail and exhibition space.

Benetton told A.i.A. that the cancellation is "in no way related to the American Folk Art Museum" and that it hopes to mount an identical exhibition in the future. The fashion house was sponsoring the exhibition, offering the space to the museum for free, and providing exhibition support and an opening-night party.

Reached by phone, McCormick told A.i.A. that Benetton and the Folk Art Museum "bickered every step of the way." Though the reasons for the cancellation were unclear, McCormick suspected it had to do with who would pay for what. He was notified of the cancellation yesterday.

Museum director Maria Ann Conelli stressed to A.i.A. that "it was solely Benetton's decision to suspend the show." She said, "The museum, curators and artists were all surprised by this turn of events, especially since we were ready to open on June 1."

The museum has been in financial straits, and has not made payments on the $30 million it still owes for its $32-million building, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, which opened in 2001 next to MoMA on 53rd Street.

As reported in the New York Times on Feb. 22, the museum entered into a forbearance agreement with ACA Financial Guaranty last summer. That agreement expires on June 30, with payment due in July. The museum's financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, reflect a deficit of $3.6 million. Conelli told the Times in February that the institution had a balanced budget for this fiscal year.

The Venice exhibition had a budget of upwards of $400,000, much of which was provided by individual donors and foundations, including the Ford Foundation.

* An earlier version of this article reported in the first paragraph that the Folk Art Museum canceled this exhibition. The exhibition was canceled by the Benetton Group.

Benetton Cancels Venice Plans - artnet Magazine

BENETTON CANCELS VENICE PLANS

Apr. 28, 2011

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A noteworthy plan to take artworks by eight African-American artists to the 54th Venice Biennale, June 4-Nov. 27, 2011, has been suddenly canceled at the last minute by its corporate sponsor, Benetton. Originally undertaken in collaboration with the American Folk Art Museum, the exhibition was called off because the planned site, the unoccupied and historic Fondaco dei Tedeschi adjacent to the Rialto Bridge, could not be renovated in time, according to the clothing company.

Cynics might be forgiven for suspecting a different reason: The celebration of graffiti in Los Angeles, via "Art of the Streets" at LA MOCA, prompted a conservative cultural backlash as well as a reported eruption of tagging in the museum neighborhood, and the idea of encouraging graffiti in Venice with a prestigious art show must have struck some city fathers as less than a great idea.

Under the Benetton scheme for Venice, curators Martha Henry and Carlo McCormick selected four graffiti artists (Blade, DAZE, QUIK and Sharp) and four Outsider Artists (Lonnie Holley, Mr. Imagination, Tin Man [pictured] andKevin Sampson) to show at the biennale -- plans that are now cancelled. "It seems the Folk Art Museum and Benetton spent all their time fighting with one another rather than getting together to make this happen," said one insider. Will Benetton stiff the eight black artists on their promised payday? Stay tuned.

http://senzala-senzala.blogspot.com/2011/04/benetton-cancels-venice-plans-artnet.html

Marwencol - PBS Independent Lens documentary - therapy becomes art

2011-05-01T10:35:00.000-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.

On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was attacked outside a bar in Kingston, New York, by five men who beat him literally to death. Revived by paramedics, Mark had suffered brain damage and physical injuries so severe even his own mother didn't recognize him. After nine days in a coma and 40 days in the hospital, Mark was discharged with little memory of his previous life.

Unable to afford therapy, Mark decided to create his own. In his backyard, he built Marwencol, a 1/6th scale World War II-era town that he populated with dolls representing his friends, family, and even his attackers. He used the small dolls and props to redevelop his hand-eye coordination, while he dealt with the psychological trauma from his attack through the town's many battles and dramas.

Mark started documenting his miniature dramas with his camera. Through Mark's lens, these were no longer dolls — they were living, breathing characters in an epic WWII story full of violence, jealousy, longing, and revenge. And he (or rather his alter ego, Captain Hogancamp) was the hero.

When Mark's stunningly realistic photos are discovered and published in an art magazine, his homemade therapy suddenly becomes "art," forcing Mark to make a choice between the safety of his fictional town and the real world he's avoided since his attack.

Shot over the course of four years, Jeff Malmberg's documentary intertwines the dual realities of Mark Hogancamp to tell the whole story of Marwencol — a surprising tale of love, secrets, pain, and adventure.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/marwencol/film.html

Roy Sproule.......paints mural and does not like milk

2011-04-05T18:30:00.001-05:00

Self-taught mural artist Roy Sproule donates his time and talents to Phoenix's downtown art scene.

The 27 year-old enlisted airforce, avionics technician stationed at Luke Airforce base saw the wall in downtown Phoenix, and was inspired to promote Valley Youth Theater He began it in March 2008, spending up to 40 hours a week over the course of 18 months, and over $1000 of his savings.

“If you are not saying anything, you are just decorating,” he says.

807 N. 3rd St.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6woN7WINr4&feature=player_embedded

http://www.artinphoenix.com/gallery/RoySprouleArt

http://www.downtownphoenixjournal.com/2009/12/04/man-mural-roy-sprole-valley-youth-theater/

Self-Taught Artists to Exhibit in Venice, Italy at the Biennale

2011-03-30T12:43:00.003-05:00

Mr. Imagination (photo courtesy of Rare Visions)

Lonnie Holley, Gregory Warmack (a.k.a. Mr. Imagination), Charlie Lucas (a.k.a. Tin Man) and Kevin Sampson represent the virtuosity of African American Contemporary Outsider artists. Steven Ogburn (a.k.a. Blade), Chris Ellis (a.k.a. Daze), Lin Felton (a.k.a. Quik), and Aaron Goodstone (a.k.a. Sharp) will represent different aspects of the urban vernacular of Graffiti.

Artwork by Mr. Imagination (from the Detour Art Collection)

THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM

TO EXHIBIT FOR THE FIRST TIME

IN VENICE DURING THE BIENNALE, JUNE 2011

MADE POSSIBLE BY A PARTNERSHIP WITH BENETTON

INSTALLATIONS BY CONTEMPORARY SELF-TAUGHT AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS

New York, NY—The American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) announced that they would partner with Benetton for an exhibition of self-taught African American artists during the Venice Biennale. Luciano Benetton, chairman of the Benetton Group, said “It gives me great pleasure that our first use of Fondaco dei Tedeschi will be an exhibition with an American Museum of such importance that has not been seen in Venice during the Biennale before. My family and I have great respect for the nature of their collection. The work that they have chosen to show is in keeping with the philosophy of the ‘One World of Benetton,’ whose principals have gilded not only our business but our personal philosophy, philanthropy, and lives.”

Lonnie Holley

“The inclusion of these African-American self-taught and graffiti artists at the Venice Biennale will be revolutionary. These artists have never had the opportunity to situate themselves within a broader contemporary art dialogue— but their time has arrived” said Dr. Laura Parsons, president of The American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) board. Maria Ann Conelli, AFAM’s executive director, stated “The exhibition will present a truly American artistic vision to an international audience, and the central location and historic significance of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi ensures the installation will be one of the most visible and celebrated during the 2011 Biennale. While Venice has long prided 2 Itself on presenting the most cutting edge art environments, the exclusion of contemporary self-taught and graffiti artists is a serious omission, but one that will be rectified this June. The American Folk Art Museum has been a national leader in celebrating the contributions made by African-American artists. This exhibition advances the much-deserved stature on an international stage. Who becomes a self taught artist is so interwoven with issues of race and economics. This work tells a great American story.”

Artwork by Charlie Lucas (from the Detour Art collection)

Charlie Lucas

Eight artists have been chosen by AFAM to be showed in Venice. Each will execute an original site-specific installation for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Lonnie Holley, Gregory Warmack (a.k.a. Mr. Imagination), Charlie Lucas (a.k.a. Tin Man) and Kevin Sampson represent the virtuosity of African American Contemporary Outsider artists. Steven Ogburn (a.k.a. Blade), Chris Ellis (a.k.a. Daze), Lin Felton (a.k.a. Quik), and Aaron Goodstone (a.k.a. Sharp) will represent different aspects of the urban vernacular of Graffiti. This exhibition showcases the diversity of contemporary African American self-taught artists by pairing two distinctive yet complementary approaches to art making, using the building’s architecture as inspiration for the work itself.

The four-floor Fondaco dei Tedeschi surrounds a grand glass covered central courtyard. It is for this courtyard that the four outsider artists’ installations will be created. Surrounding the courtyard is an arched passageway, where the four graffiti artists will create their murals.

Benetton’s commitment to this project, in addition to the use of this extraordinary building, includes the involvement of Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research center and educational foundation, who will design and install the exhibition. Further Fabrica students will be assisting the artists with the constructions of their installations.

Said Maria Ann Conelli, “Benetton has proved to be a most generous friend to our Museum. But this is unparalleled. It allows us to show this art on a world stage. We are most grateful to Mr. Benetton. His vision is legendary. ”

Kevin Sampson (photo courtesy of Rare Visions)

ABOUT THE FONDACO DEI TEDESCHI:

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi (Venetian: Fontego dei Tedeschi "The Germans' Inn") is a historic building in Venice, situated on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge. First constructed in 1228, the building was rebuilt between 1505 and 1508, after its destruction in a fire. The reconstruction produced a very functional 4-floor building which surrounds a grand inner courtyard. Its architecture is typical of the cinquecento (Italian Renaissance) style, but the basic concept (and the word fondaco) is derived from 3 a type of building in Arab countries. Like the Fondaco dei Turchi, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi was a palazzo, warehouse, and restricted living quarters for its population, in this case mainly Germanic merchants from cities such as Nuremberg, Judenburg and Augsburg.

At one time this building was the headquarters and restricted living quarters of the city's German merchants. A broad definition was taken of the term German which included what would today be regarded as separate nationalities.

The ground floor of the building is accessible by water and was used for storage, the first floor was dedicated to offices and an upper area contained about 160 living quarters. The facades were covered with frescoes by Titian and Giorgione, but their work has not survived the Venetian climate (fragments survive in the collections of museums such as the Ca' d'Oro).

The German merchants arrived shortly after the building was originally constructed in the thirteenth century and stayed until the Napoleonic occupation. It was one of the city's most powerful colonies of merchants, and consequently the fondaco became an important trading center for goods passing from the Orient on their way towards the Alps. The Venetian Republic took commission on the transactions of the fondaco. In the nineteenth century the leading figure of this community was the wealthy merchant Vittorio Tedeschi who had ties with the Transylvanian Nobility in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In the 20th century the building served as the Venice headquarters of the Poste Italiane. Edizione Srl, the holding company of the Benetton family, having acquired the building, has entrusted it to the renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who will plan its renovation and transformation into one of the city's most important centers for culture and retail.

ABOUT FABRICA:

Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research center, was set up in 1994. The fruit of the Group’s cultural legacy is based in Treviso, Italy in a complex restored and enlarged by Tadao Ando. Fabrica is not a school, advertising agency or university. It is an applied creativity laboratory, a talent incubator, a studio of sorts in which young, modern artists come from all over the world to develop innovative projects and explore new directions in myriad avenues of communication, from design, music and film to photography, publishing and the Internet. These artist-experimenters are accompanied along their research path by leading figures in art and communication, blurring the boundaries of 4 culture and language and transgressing the traditional borders between a diverse range of communication mediums. Communication research at Fabrica services a wide variety of social causes and disciplines such as economics, social or environmental sciences. Fabrica’s aim is to grasp the future by giving innovative exposure to cultural or scientific projects, which open a window onto tomorrow’s world.

For more information go to: http://www.fabrica.it/

ABOUT THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM (AFAM):

The American Folk Art Museum is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of traditional folk art and creative expressions of contemporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad. Based in New York City, The Museum preserves, conserves, and interprets a comprehensive collection of the highest quality, with objects dating from the eighteenth century to the present. Since its founding in 1961, the American Folk Art Museum has built an outstanding collection of more than 5,000 artworks from the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The collection naturally divides into the broad categories of traditional and contemporary self-taught, sharing a common non-academic language and complimentary sensibilities. The artwork under the auspices of Contemporary Self Taught is united by time—most of the work was created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These artists have created a powerful and moving but frequently unacknowledged body of work that is essential to a full understanding of the art and culture of the world.

For more information go to: http://www.folkartmuseum.org/

ABOUT THE BENETTON GROUP

The Benetton Group, present in 120 countries around the world, has its core business in fashion apparel: a group with a strong Italian character whose style, quality and passion are clearly seen in its brands, the casual United Colors of Benetton, the glamour oriented Sisley, the leisurewear brand Playlife. The Group produces over 150 million garments every year. Its network of around 6,000 contemporary stores around the world, offers high quality customer services and generates a total turnover of over 2 billion euro (before final customer sales). 5 The development of Benetton's commercial network, characterized by prestigious locations in historic and commercial centers and by the high level of customer services offered, has been supported by a major program of investment worldwide. As in the case of the commercial network, a constant commitment to innovation, a crucial factor for development, has always characterised the Group’s business organisation, from communication to IT, from research into new materials to integrated logistics.

For more information go to: http://www.benettongroup.com/

(unless otherwise noted, all photos © 2011 Kelly Ludwig all rights reserved)

Detroit's Tyree Guyton to put 10,000 shoes on Heidelberg Street

2011-03-05T07:19:00.002-06:00

Heidelberg Street; photo by Jeff Nyveen

Tyree Guyton is planning to cover a street in Midtown for several weeks as part of a series showcasing the works of Kresge art fellows next month.

The medium? Shoes.

"I think it's going to take 10,000," he said Wednesday. The Heidelberg Project, a nonprofit founded by Guyton, officially announced the project Tuesday.

The "Street Folk" installation will cover all of Edmund Place from Woodward Avenue to John R. Street with shoes. It's meant to address the issue of homelessness, with the shoes symbolizing life on the street and also those who use the streets and pass by homeless people every day, he said.

"How can we not see it?" he said of people sleeping in doorways and on heat vents. "We're all a paycheck away from the streets."

Guyton is working with a shoe distributor and collecting donations to hit the estimated 10,000 mark. Some of the shoes will be painted, contain notes or be otherwise artfully touched up.

"If people need shoes, we welcome people to take them as well," said Heidelberg Project Executive Director Jenenne Whitfield.

University Cultural Center Association President Sue Mosey helped obtain permission from the city of Detroit for the project, Whitfield said.

Guyton, a 2009 Kresge visual arts fellow, is preparing the work as part of Kresge Arts in Detroit's Art X Detroit series, produced by the UCCA. Kresge Arts in Detroit is a fellowship program funded by The Kresge Foundation and administered by the College for Creative Studies.

The program runs in two-year cycles, and the first cycle wrapped up at the end of 2010. The first year of the cycle awards $25,000 fellowships to visual artists and the second year to literary and performing artists.
The fellowships were awarded to 18 visual artists in 2009, followed by nine performing and nine literary artists in 2010. The next cycle will give 12 awards for each category, said Mira Burack, assistant director for Kresge Arts in Detroit.

Also for each cycle, two artists receive a $50,000 Kresge Eminent Artist Award.

Art X Detroit is the first showcase of the works of these artists, who were commissioned to produce pieces specifically for this series. Many, such as Guyton, are working to meet the deadline of April 6, the day the series begins. The series runs through April 10, but some works, including Guyton's, will stay up through April 24.

Two highlights will be the unveiling of a public art installation by Charles McGee, who won Kresge's first Eminent Artist Award in late 2008 as the fellowship program kicked off, and performances by musician Marcus Belgrave, who won the award the following year.

McGee is working on a 20-foot wide by 8-feet tall curved panel to appear at John R. Street and Farnsworth Street on the grounds of the Rackham Building, said Annmarie Borucki, marketing manager at UCCA. Called "Spirit Renewal," it likely will be composed of black and white figures that portray a sense of motion, a theme to McGee's previous works, she said. It will be part of UCCA's Midtown Loop Greenway project.
McGee donated the piece to Kresge, which in turn donated it to the city, with UCCA as caretaker.
The Kresge Foundation set up Kresge Arts in Detroit as a way to directly support artists, as opposed to funding organizations, Burack said.

The Kresge fellowships are highly sought-after by Southeast Michigan artists.

"There is no other fellowship that we know of now that directly supports metro Detroit artists," Whitfield said.
Oliver Ragsdale, president of the Virgil H. Carr Cultural Arts Center, said it is rare for grants to support individual artists and that Kresge deserves credit for filling a void in arts funding in recent years.

"My gut feeling is that a lot of communities would be jealous that such a grant exists," he said. "They're the players that stepped up as various organizations have gone away."

Other works for Art X will appear in a long list of Midtown establishments, including the several museums that populate the neighborhood, the Magic Stick, G. R. N'Namdi Gallery, Leopold's Books and The Scarab Club. The main exhibition will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

Besides art exhibits and installations, also planned are panel discussions, performances and readings, for a total of 50 different elements to the series.

A website, artxdetroit.com, is planned to go live this week.

Meanwhile, shoes for Guyton's installation are coming from Guyton's fans far and wide. The Heidelberg Project, begun in 1986, has drawn fans and visitors from throughout the world. The project is a house and large yard on Heidelberg Street in Detroit's east side that's covered with discarded items. Whitfield said 275,000 people visit the house every year.

During a telephone conversation Wednesday, he said he'd just received a box of shoes from Iraq. Kuninori Matsuda, consul general at the Japanese consulate in Detroit, happened to stop by The Heidelberg Project last month and later sent in a pair, as did two students from Cairo who had come by as part of the filming for a television documentary called "On the Road in America."

"We put the word out there," Guyton said.

from Crane's Detroit March 3, 2011
Gary Anglebrandt

Visual arts preview: Mr. Imagination

2011-03-04T13:09:00.000-06:00

By Eileen Drennen

For the AJC

5:47 p.m. Thursday, February 3, 2011

"Wait right here," Mr. Imagination says before ducking back into the dark, art-choked living room of his compact ranch, in the northwest Atlanta neighborhood of Riverside.

The renowned visionary artist emerges into bright sunlight with three blackened sticks and a reverent smile. With the air of a weathered rock star -- black beret, lots of silver rings, a goatee he sometimes braids with copper wire -- he looks barely 50, much less 62.

"These are the first three bottle-cap staffs I ever made," he says of the singed metal-and-wood pieces. "They had been in my first show at Carl Hammer [Gallery in Chicago]. I managed to save them from the fire. They were stuck to the floor in a cube of ice. Had to use a crowbar to get them out."

The man whom Rebecca Huffberger -- founder and director of the American Visionary Art Museum - calls "one of the supreme practitioner of visionary art" in the world has earned a reputation as a genius of creative reuse, deeply original, highly prolific, a model of perseverance.

His works have traveled the globe and landed in permanent collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. While Atlantans may recall the 11-foot Coke bottle he decorated for the 1996 Olympics, or have seen one of his large installations at House of Blues locations in Las Vegas, Chicago or Orlando, they may not know he moved here just over two years ago, and makes his grand local debut in a show at Barbara Archer Gallery on Feb. 17.

With it, the much-loved artist who defies most self-taught artist stereotypes -- he's from the urban North, a seasoned networker and famously gregarious -- hopes to let the art world know he's back, stronger than ever.

For while he's made a nice living in the transformation business for decades by taking the castoffs of others -- industrial sandstone, old bottle caps, paintbrushes, wood and cement -- and turning them into big-ticket works of art, these past few years have challenged even his relentless optimism. His latest body of work isn't so much centered around reclaiming what others had thrown away as it is salvaging what pieces of his own art survived a devastating 2008 house fire -- and finding new life in them.

It was three years ago last month that Gregory "Mr. Imagination" Warmack faced the latest in a long line of epic tragedies, when his home and studio in Bethlehem, Penn., caught fire while he was away. By the time he got back, he was met with the blackened remains of a life he'd spent decades building: art made by himself and others, collections of books and artifacts, and the charred and frozen bodies of his dog Pharaoh and several cats. Friends from all over the world responded with benefits and offers of help. But the scale of the loss, and his conviction that some "so-called friends" had stolen work before he got back to town, sent him into a tailspin.

His favorite number is three, he says, lining up yet another trio of rescued remains -- three charred cans of spray paint -- along a porch railing. Past, present and future; life, death, rebirth.

His story can be told in three parts, the first and longest in Chicago, where he was born and raised, recovered from a gunshot wound and a coma, and made a name for himself his as a gifted artist and teacher. Industrial sandstone, in which he carved faces, figures and names, was where he started; worldwide fame came courtesy of his bottle-cap creations -- giant thrones and mirrors and even a hat and suit of his own clothes.

The second starts in 2001, when his brother died. He left Chicago for Pennsylvania, where he built new networks, turned his home-studio into a community arts center and traveled far and wide, teaching workshops and making art. Then that world went up in flames.

In the spring of 2009, he moved to Atlanta, certain the city's rising Phoenix was a sign. Fellow artist and Riverside neighbor Lake Sirmon, who'd known him from Chicago, had been after him to move South.

After the fire, she said, "it was important for him to be somewhere that he had somebody he knew he could trust." Too many people had "attached themselves to him just to further their own ends." Personal connection was what he needed to heal, she thought. So was Atlanta's combination of green spaces and city life -- in which he found "new trees. . .and different ways of working."

He brought some of the burnt things he'd salvaged and stored the rest. One day, he was able to see the beauty in what survived; see a power in what the fire hadn't been able to take. Something had shifted.

"Even though I lost lots of things," he said, "I still have my gift."

Sirmon's friend Keith Sharp helped Mr. I find an old house on a large lot not far from the river, where he envisions a new home, with a sculpture garden and lodging for visiting artists. When the rains came a few months later, flooding the house and outbuildings to the tops of their doors, the plan was put on hold. Still, pointing out the place's possibilities on a recent sunny day, the artist noted with relief a set of deep black burn marks around a window and exhaust fan. Maybe, he joked, it's fireproofed.

"He's one of those people that brings people together," Sharp said. "He's a catalyst."

Meanwhile, he's made new roots, led workshops for kids and seniors, and started to work. He's repaired some of the damaged works, left others in their burnished state, and set about making things he'd never tried before.

The art world may think he's done, he said, given how long he took off from work. But they need to think twice.

"Mr. I," he said, "is about to rise!"

Visual Arts Preview

Mr. Imagination

Opening reception 7-9 p.m. Feb. 17. Exhibit runs through April 9. Barbara Archer Gallery, 80 Elizabeth St., A012, Atlanta. 404-523-1845, http://www.barbaraarcher.com

Thorton Dial Retrospective

2011-02-21T17:00:00.004-06:00

Josh Anderson/The New York Times
Thornton Dial in his studio in Bessemer, Ala.

Letting His Life’s Work Do the Talking

By CAROL KINO
Published: February 17, 2011, The New York Times

THORNTON DIAL has never been one for talking much about his artwork. Ask him what inspires his monumental assemblages, made from twisted metal, tree branches, cloth, plastic toys, animal bones and all manner of found materials, and he is likely to respond tersely, as he did while showing me around his studio here one bone-chilling day last month.

“I mostly pick up stuff,” he said. “I start on a picture when I get a whole lot of stuff together. And then I look at the piece and think about life.”

Now 82, Mr. Dial has had a lot of life to think about — especially over the last year, during which he endured hernia surgery, pneumonia, a stroke and heart problems. Only recently did he return to making art in this cold and cavernous space at the back of Dial Metal Patterns, a fabrication shop run by his children. As he huddled in a chair, looking frail and slightly wary, his three sons hovered about him protectively.

For one paintinglike piece, made on canvas-covered plywood, Mr. Dial had used branches, metal, clothing, paint and a pair of work boots to create a lean figure fording through a tall jungle. “That’s Obama,” he said. “I show the struggle he got through without getting bit.”

Another, saturated with powdery white pigment, presented a baby doll nested in a field of cotton-covered twigs and twisted steel. A rope encircled the doll’s neck, suggesting a noose or an umbilical cord. “That’s the way they come,” Mr. Dial said, chuckling, when asked about the rope’s significance. “You probably see many things in my art if you’re looking at it right.”

Because Mr. Dial is self-taught and illiterate, he has generally been classified as a folk or outsider artist. But that pigeonhole has long rankled his admirers, because his work’s look, ambition, and obvious intellectual reach hew so closely to that of many other modern and contemporary masters, from Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg to Jean-Michel Basquiat. “If anybody else had created a major opus of this scope,” said Joanne Cubbs, an adjunct curator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, “he or she would be recognized as a major force in the art world. Instead Dial struggles at the margins.”

But his marginalization may not last much longer. Mr. Dial’s first career retrospective, “ Hard Truth,” opens at the museum in Indianapolis on Friday. And on March 19 the Andrew Edlin Gallery in Chelsea will open Mr. Dial’s first solo gallery show in New York in 11 years. “This feels like the moment when the cultural world is ready to understand Mr. Dial and perhaps to embrace him,” said Ms. Cubbs, who organized the museum survey.

That exhibition, which runs through Sept. 18 before traveling to New Orleans; Charlotte, N.C.; and Atlanta, includes examples from many different periods, starting with the pictures that made Mr. Dial’s name in the early ’90s, when he used the tiger to symbolize the struggles and triumphs of African-American life. He has continued to invoke the specter of slavery, in pieces like “High and Wide (Carrying the Rats to the Man),” a large 2002 construction in which a grinning Mickey Mouse toy is chained to the hull of a ship.

The show also includes work he made in response to the 2001 World Trade Center attack and the gulf war: sculptures like the monumental “Crosses to Bear (Armageddon),” dated 2001-4, in which a nine-foot-high expanse of rusty iron crosses is festooned with rag and rubber detritus; and paintings that appear to be made from torn and bloodied American flags, like “Don’t Matter How Raggly the Flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together” (2003).

“The power and clarity of his work measures up to any artist of any color in the last decades,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, the director of the museum, noting the works’ superficial resemblance to those by Julian Schnabel and Anselm Kiefer. “But unlike those figures this work is imbued with an experiential dimension. For Dial, politics is personal.”

Certainly Mr. Dial has one of the more amazing art historical biographies on record. Although he had little formal schooling, he developed an intimate acquaintance with postmodernist art-making materials early in life.

Born in 1928 in a cornfield in the tiny rural hamlet Emelle, Ala., and raised by his great-grandmother, Mr. Dial went to work as soon as he could walk, harvesting sweet potatoes and corn, and gathering twigs and “the stuff my great-grandmother needed to make fire,” he said. After her death Mr. Dial and his younger half brother went to live with another relative in Bessemer, a small industrial town, where he hauled ice, poured concrete, raised cattle, did carpentry and laid bricks, among other things, until he found employment as a metalworker at the local Pullman-Standard boxcar factory. He worked there on and off until it closed in 1981.

All the while — throughout his long marriage to Clara Mae Murrow, who died in 2005, and the birth of his five children (one daughter died at 28 from cerebral palsy) — Mr. Dial was quietly observing and honing his skills. “I was just watching people that make stuff,” he said. “I watch everything.”

He was also making things himself, from the functional, like fishing nets and lures, chimneys, bricks, funerary monuments, furniture and houses (“I made a whole lot of them and tore them down,” Mr. Dial said) to the less obviously useful, like animal sculptures made from tin and tree branches or plastic bread wrappers, or a slave ship built from metal and wood. As his sons recalled, during another interview in the shop office with nearly a dozen relatives and family friends in attendance, Mr. Dial would come home from work, watch the evening news, do some farming out back with his children and then set to work making things again.

Even with something ostensibly practical like a lure, “it was odd, the way he took his time and painted them and stuff like that,” his son Richard said. “Whatever he worked on had to be different from somebody else.” Mr. Dial was so prolific, he added, that his wife often made the boys tidy up by burying his old work in the yard. (Mr. Dial has said in the past that he sometimes hid his work himself because he feared the attention it might attract during the Jim Crow years.)

Life changed dramatically for Mr. Dial in the late ‘80s, when he was discovered by William Arnett, a wealthy white Atlanta collector who was obsessively scouring the South for unheralded African-American work. (Among his discoveries are the Gee’s Bend quilters, whose work toured to 12 museums in a widely lauded show.)

Mr. Arnett was smitten from the start. “Dial possessed a combination of pride, dignity and determination, along with a wry sense of humor,” he wrote in an e-mail. “His earliest artworks demonstrated an unlimited creative imagination. All he lacked was encouragement and opportunity.”

For Mr. Dial the meeting was transformative. “He didn’t have to bury stuff anymore,” his son said, “because Mr. Arnett would give him money for things, and Daddy was kind of fascinated. There was a point where he said, ‘Ya’ll been laughing at me, but look at what the man just paid me for doing this.’ ”

Or, as Mr. Dial put it, “That’s the time I did start thinking about art.”

Mr. Arnett gave him a monthly stipend in exchange for right of first refusal, which allowed Mr. Dial to make art full time. Mr. Arnett visited frequently, and introduced Mr. Dial to curators and other collectors, including Jane Fonda, who remains a major supporter. He also set the wheels in motion for Mr. Dial’s first museum exhibition, “Image of the Tiger.” Organized by the critic Thomas McEvilley, it opened at two New York institutions, the Museum of American Folk Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in November 1993. The show seemed poised “to break down the border between outside and inside,” Mr. McEvilley said. Critically it was successful: “He has a genuine talent that he brandishes fearlessly,” Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times. But soon after the opening “60 Minutes” ran a segment that suggested Mr. Arnett was exploiting the folk artists whose work he had championed, particularly Mr. Dial. Suddenly “my show died on the vine,” Mr. McEvilley said. And so did several other major exhibitions of Mr. Dial’s art in the works.

Since then, although Mr. Dial has exhibited in galleries and been included in many group outsider art shows, as well as the 2000 Whitney Biennial, he has had only one other major museum solo exhibition, “Thornton Dial in the 21st Century,” at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in 2005. (Mr. Dial, who remains close to Mr. Arnett, memorialized the debacle with the 2003 self-portrait assemblage “Strange Fruit: Channel 42”: it involves an eyeless scarecrow-like creature wearing a bloody tie strung up from a television antenna.) Yet the event had one positive effect on Mr. Dial, Ms. Cubbs said: “It made him re-evaluate what the relationship would be between his art and its audience, and his work became more complex and powerful.”

How did he do that? Mr. Dial isn’t telling. “I remember all of my art,” he said, “but I can’t talk about all of it, because I did it 20 or 30 years ago. You ain’t going to think about all you done did in life either.”

But pressed to explain why he makes art in the first place, he finally found an answer: “I make it for people to love.”

A version of this article appeared in print on February 20, 2011, on page AR28 of the New York edition of the New York Times.

Ground breaking for new Visionary Art Park in Houston

2011-02-21T09:37:00.001-06:00

Smither Park is a new visionary art park in collaboration with the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art and the Smither family, in honor of John H. Smither. Using recycled materials, Dan Phillips creates a fun community environment.

Folk Art honored at the San Francisco Ariport

2011-01-20T18:42:00.002-06:00

Second Chances: Folk Art Made from Recycled Remnants Now on View at SFO

SAN FRANCISCO — Folk art made from recycled remnants demonstrates the adaptive nature of traditional crafts and the resourcefulness of artisans around the world. In the absence of new or customary materials, craftspeople turn discarded scraps into objects of beauty, utility, and whimsy.

Second Chances, a new exhibition now on view at San Francisco International Airport’s Terminal 3, showcases many of the ingenious creations transformed from trash by artisans across the globe. The more than 200 objects on view include such inventive pieces as Senegalese scrap metal briefcases, Mexican license-plate dustpans, Moroccan water containers made from rubber tires, and colorful South African baskets made from telephone wire. More fanciful, decorative objects range from a bird sculpture made from toilet paper mâché and magazines to an entire dress made from Mary Jane wrappers. Images of built environments, such as Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers (c. 1921–1954), a complex of structures mostly built from discarded materials, are also on view.

The objects presented in the exhibition are on loan from the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, with additional objects provided by the Ames Gallery Berkeley, California. Photographer and designer Kelly Ludwig provided digital images for the exhibition.

Second Chances is on view in Terminal 3, Boarding Area F from January through June 2011. The exhibition is located post-security and is only accessible to passengers ticketed for travel through Terminal 3.

Images from the exhibition are available for download from http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/about/news/pressres/exh-secondchance.html.

SFO Museum
The SFO Museum program was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public. The Museum was granted initial accreditation from the American Association of Museums in 1999, reaccredited in 2005, and has the distinction of being the only accredited museum in an airport. Today, SFO Museum features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation. For more information, please visit www.flysfo.com/museum.

S - F - O

Clyde Angel - an elusive story

2010-12-04T20:38:00.002-06:00

I love this piece of art attributed to the artist Clyde Angel, aka Vern Willits. After it found it's way into my home, I tried to find out more about the artist and walked into a world of point/counterpoint. Of course, I am very aware of the "telephone game" nature of folklore and know that every story is that of the storyteller.

There are conflicting reports about Clyde Angel and his status as an outsider artist. Some accounts believe that Angel has been struggling for many years with mental illness. It was said that he was fearful of meeting people, preferring instead for people to see him through his art. Reportedly he worked alone using a welder’s shop in Iowa, creating beautifully intricate pieces of figurative metal sculptures. His work typically featured animal and human forms with certain elements of nature like stars or flowers.

All I know to be true is what I said earlier, I love this art.

So, how did this all get started?

Some sources (including Tom Patterson "Reflections on twenty-five years in the Self-taught/"Outsider" art field" and Jeff Huebner, "Has Anyone Seen Clyde Angel?," Chicago Reader, April 14, 2000, pp. 1, 31-37.) have reported that "no one who has exhibited or purchased work attributed to Angel has ever met him, and his work has only made its way into the self-taught art field due to the efforts of one Vernon Clyde Willits Jr., a sculptor who received an associates arts degree in 1976 from Mount Saint Clare College in Clinton, Iowa, and who has been responsible for introducing and supplying the work to the dealers and curators who have shown it. It's hard to come away from the Reader article unconvinced that both Angel and his work are actually Willits' creation."

A rebuttal from Beverly Farber Kaye, Beverly Kaye Gallery, www.artbrut.com :

After reading the Patterson article, "Dust Storms in the Parallel Art Universe", I was upset by his conclusion about the validity of the artist, Clyde Angel. I referred to the Huebner article that Tom Patterson sited, which he said made it hard to be "unconvinced that both Angel and his work are actually Willits (the agent's) creation."

The author of the original article, Jeff Huebner, did not come to that same conclusion.

The two highly respected dealers mentioned in the article did not come to that conclusion.

Certainly, there are questions, but until they are answered, no one can safely come to that conclusion without severely damaging the reputation and marketability of the artists' work. Now the art has been discredited. It was withdrawn from the Outsider Art Fair. If this is a sham, that would have been the right thing to do. But, nothing has been proven yet to anyone except Tom Patterson and readers who believed his conclusion, without reading the original article for themselves.

Let's look at the facts. There seems to be no public record of a Clyde Angel. The agent's job, however, is to protect a mentally ill artist from an audience he has repeatedly stated he does not want to meet. If Clyde does exist, seems like the agent's doing a good job. The name "Clyde Angel" might be made up, taken from the actual middle name of the agent. Could this have been a ploy to keep at bay seekers of an artist unable to deal with society? We really don't know! Everyone knew that the agent was a retired fireman and sculptor. This was made known as soon as Sherry Pardee saw the sculpture and introduced it to the art world. Is there other information that has swayed the opinion of Mr. Patterson, that has not been mentioned in this article?

I am deeply troubled. I don't know the answer.....only the agent and Clyde Angel....whoever that is, know the answer. I yearn for the truth. I wish I could end with the comment, "The jury is still out", but the jury has already convicted. It makes me shudder. In a court of law the burden of proof would not have been met. But there has been a public execution.

For years the art community has debated the existence of Clyde Angel, "highway wanderer". His works captured the hearts and fascination of collectors at the Outsider Art Fair in New York, when veteran dealer Sherry Pardee first showed his works. When the work was banned from the show, as questions about the veracity of the person and the sculpture were brought into question, some dealers, myself included, stood by the work. Judy Saslow and her Chicago gallery was a top advocate for Angel's work, and I personally thank her for her steadfastness.

-- Beverly Farber Kaye

So, imagine my delight to receive an email today from his niece...

"I am Vern Willits' niece. Vernon Jr, aka Skip Willits, is my cousin. I don't know the answers to your questions. Although we were close when we were younger, the families have drifted apart and we are not in contact at this time."

"What I can tell you is that Uncle Vern was not institutionalized in my memory. He had three daughters and one son - Skip - who is listed as the artist's "agent"

"If you still have an interest, I would be interested in exploring that with you."

"A photo of the family circa early 60's."

L > R James Austin, Abby Willits, Jane Austin, Vernon "Skip" Willits, Jacque Willits, Jenny Austin, Harvey Nichtern, Vern Willits Sr. Not pictured, Vern's daughter Billie Sue Willits

"I have more photos of Uncle Vern circa 1988 or 89- taken at a visit to their home with my then three-year-old son."

"Uncle Vern was mentally sound. Although these things were not much discussed back in the day, I do have one uncle who was committed to a mental health facility after he returned from WWII. That was his wife's brother, no blood relation. During time spent at his home, I did not note any evidence of ill health ever."

"My son called him Grandpa Uncle Vern, and while I can see the art as a possibility, the back story is full of fabrications."

"Get in touch if you're interested in discussing this issue further."

One last thing...for now...

Clyde Angel, 1920 - 2006

By Skip Willits

My father was Clyde Angel, an artist who made a name for himself by producing a powerful body of work while fiercely protecting his identity and privacy from the art world until the day he died. I didn’t say this while he was alive because he asked me not to. I knew him as Vernon Clyde Willits for most of my life. He was a welder in a small factory called Climax Engines in Clinton Iowa for 40 years. He was a family man, an avid swimmer, a traveler, a very curious soul always up for an adventure. In his retirement he took up cross country skiing. He loved books. The local library used to get rid of their old books in a dumpster that sat behind his house. He couldn’t stand to see these books thrown away, so nightly he would sneak over to pull them out. His studio and house were filled with these old discarded library books.

My dad was a product of the great depression, a World War ll vet and, like many of his generation, a man of tools and reality. He lived a factory life, usually working 10 hour days, 6 days a week, paid his bills on time. Whenever he found a little time for himself he was content in making crafty, clever works which often took the form of visual jokes; nut and bolt figures that appeared to be chasing each other, a depiction of a snow skier’s trail going through a pine tree, or flowers made out of metal pipe. He also busied himself making utilitarian constructions; stainless steel house boats, spiral staircases, porch railings. Family and friends would continually request all sorts of repair jobs and welding projects, all of which he enthusiastically took on. These craft objects and welding projects continued to give him great pride through out his life, even after his success as Clyde Angel.

In the early 1990’s, several years after his retirement he began to make uniquely strange and powerful artworks out of steel found objects and other media. He was very prolific but secretive and at times ritualistic in this new form of art making. I first discovered his new direction when I found 3 pieces of his “secret artwork” hidden under a pile of scrap steel I was getting ready to discard. These objects were startling to me and the way in which he made them bizarre, compared to his normal craft. This new artwork was out of context with his usual daily life. Through drawings, writings, wall reliefs and sculpture objects he referenced his past, present and where he thought he was going in a most unusual way. The people he knew, pets he’d had, traumas experienced were all part of his subject matter. While talking to him about this work it became clear to me that it was an essential part of his life and he could no more have stopped this new type of image making than stop his breathing.

The new artwork gave him great satisfaction but at the same time made him uncomfortable. He felt that he would be ridiculed or perhaps considered an eccentric if he showed it to anyone who was used to his ‘normal’ work. Also, he was personally unsure of where this new inspiration came from; this feeling of obligation to “make these things” puzzled him. In a peculiar way I think he was almost embarrassed by what he was making. He knew the questions would come; Why such a compulsion to create, why did he go in such a strange direction at this point in his life, why such wild outlandish figures and writings. Perhaps he didn’t want to know the answers.

Though he intuited that this new work wouldn’t be accepted in his local world he still had a desire to “get it out there.” I convinced him to let me show his work to some people who could help do this, but he insisted on anonymity. And so he created his new name, Clyde Angel. Clyde because it was his middle name, but more importantly because Clyde was the name of his father whom he loved dearly and admired greatly. The Angel part I’m not so sure of.

Though I tried to convince my dad many times to let me introduce him to the people who admired his work, he refused. This stand that he took didn’t make things easy for those who admired his artwork or represented him. The art world demanded the proper credentials and a face to go with the art. When he refused the uproar it created sometimes over shadowed his artwork. Some, like gallerist Judy Saslow understood his request to let the artwork speak for itself, “If you want to know me, know me by my art.”

The idea that all artists, through their art, aspire to leave something behind that will let future generations know they were here, to make a statement about themselves, their experiences, who they loved, who they were – that’s all he wanted to do. In his stubbornness and wisdom he accomplished all of this.

In his lifetime I stayed quiet; I honored my father’s wishes. Now things have changed. When he was alive we talked with each other everyday, often times about art. I don’t have that luxury anymore. In the three years since his death I’ve done a lot of thinking about the meaning of his life and art, where things should go from here. What to do with what I know and what was left to me.

Two weeks before he died I took him to the circus. He always loved a good circus. His favorites were the acrobats on the flying trapeze. Once he created a sculpture depicting the Great Wallendas. During this part of the show I leaned over and told him I thought the acrobats looked like his artwork. He just smiled and kept watching the show.

“I remember flying down the deep inside the wind.” – Clyde Angel

Mamie Deschellie - Navajo "Accidental Artist" 1910-2010

2010-12-01T08:14:00.000-06:00

Folk art superstar' Mamie Deschillie died Friday

By Alysa Landry The Daily Times

Posted: 11/29/2010 10:39:04 PM MST

FARMINGTON — Friends and family members of Mamie Deschillie remember the woman as an internationally appreciated folk artist who put family first.

Deschillie, a Fruitland woman known as a "folk art superstar," died Friday in Farmington. She was 90.

Deschillie was an accidental artist, said her daughter, Jane Jones. Deschillie began crafting figures from cardboard and mud after her husband of 39 years, Chee Ford Deschillie, died in 1979, when she was 55.

"She was never one to ask for things," Jones said of her mother. "She was so proud, strong-hearted, independent."

Deschillie picked up art as a means to keep her mind busy and her purse full, Jones said. The woman's media of choice were mud and cardboard, based on traditional "mud toys," or figures made of sun-dried earth or clay and originally intended as toys for children. Navajo are believed to have used the toys from 1880 to 1940.

Born July 27, 1910, in Chaco, Deschillie attended boarding school through the third grade. She married at age 16 and settled in Burnham, where she wove rugs, herded sheep and raised five children.

Her career as a folk artist began in the 1980s when a pawn shop owner noticed her frequent transactions and collection of old turquoise jewelry and invited her to bring in some mud figures.

Deschillie also painted, made collages and crafted cardboard cutout figures and adorned them with traditional attire and jewelry. The figures have captured the attention and imagination of art and history aficionados far and wide, Jones said.

Deschillie made the figures from cardboard she saved from the Dumpster and adorned with recycled materials or those given to her at art shows. Figures ranged from traditional Navajo people to cowboys riding roosters to circus animals she saw only in books.

Even as her art career blossomed, however, Deschillie continually put her family first, often bragging about its growing numbers. She is survived by two daughters, Jones and Mary Johnson; one son, Jerome Deschillie; 17 grandchildren, 60 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren.

"She became a grandmother when she was in her 30s," Jones said. "She was always bragging to the other grandmothers how many grandkids she had."

Deschillie showed her art throughout the West and eventually gained recognition worldwide for her "true folk art," said Robb Lucas, manager of Case Trading Post at the Wheelright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe.

Deschillie's art can be found in many local galleries and museums, the Smithsonian Institution and private collections around the globe, he said.

"She was just a pretty phenomenal individual in terms of Navajo folk art," Lucas said of Deschillie. "She developed all kinds of new forms with her mud toys and her cutouts and her paintings. It was really true folk art. The art she created came from the heart, the world around her and her imagination."

Deschillie's art has a kind of childlike quality, Lucas said.

"She worked with children, and that kind of characterized her art," he said. "It always had a childlike quality."

Late in life, Deschillie moved to a horse trailer in Fruitland, south of the San Juan River near Farmington. She worked on her mud and cardboard figures at home, Jones said.

"She made a lot of figures," Jones said of her mother. "She timed herself once. She could make a mud figure in five minutes, or a whole herd of animals in one day."

Deschillie was active in the community, serving as president of the Upper Fruitland Senior Citizens Association and volunteering with children.

She is remembered as a traditional Navajo woman who spoke little English and always dressed in velvet, Lucas said.

"We always looked forward to when she visited us," he said. "She spoke Navajo and we spoke English, but there was communication and we always found her to be a dignified woman, always dressed traditionally with her jewelry. We're really going to miss her and her art. She was just very unique."

Funeral services are at 10 a.m. today at All Saints Episcopal Mission Church, in Farmington. Interment will follow at Greenlawn Cemetery.

A near-naked lady, War and a gaggle of Orange Show hippies took over Finger Furniture

2010-11-09T10:09:00.000-06:00

From CultureMap Houston:By Shelby Hodge

November 9th, 2010 at 8:24 AM

Only Orange Show founder and patron Marilyn Oshman could have convinced Rodney Finger to clear out the Bargain Basement in his Gulf Freeway Finger Furniture store and open up the 50,000 square-foot space for the Orange Show gala. She asked and he succumbed. Long-term family friends and all that.

It took three days to empty the space of the 1,500 pieces of marked-down furniture that were stored there. Just ask Finger general manager John Dean, who seemed a little bemused on Saturday night at the irreverent transformation.

Thanks to Finger and Dean, the Orange Show enjoyed a new venue that had most of the 700 guests loving the elbow room and the open sight lines. This party is all about seeing and being seen, costumes a must and attitude a plus. No one exhibited more attitude on this night than Wendy Niziol, who dressed sans top. Instead of traditional clothing, Niziol topped her very low-slung black slacks with body paint. And she was quite the hit.

Somehow that fit in with the "Kaleidoscope" theme that had the majority of guests revisiting the '70s. Afro wigs, pink wigs, go-go boots, hippie beads, bell bottoms, Pucci knock-offs, mohawk coifs and lots of orange punctuated the whacky fashion/costume scene. Gala chair Franny Koelschled the parade in a Pucci-esque dress.

After a two-hour cocktail schmooze, the crowd sat down to dinner by Picosand dance music by War, yes the original rock band. These guys had so much fun with the dance-crazed crowd that they extended their 72-minute performance, guaranteed by contract, to 123 minutes. No extra charge.

Among the costumed characters prowling the vast hall were Barbara andMarks Hinton, Renea Abbott and Greg Manteris, C.C. Conner and D.L. Groover, Elizabeth Winston-Jones and Sam Jones, J. Michael Soliz, Shelley and Andy Weathers, Larry Harris and Glen Larner.

Opting for street attire were artist James Surls, Finger Furniture marketing and PR director Roseann Rogers and hubby Dr. Aashish Shah, Ginger andJack Blanton, Kelli and Eddy Blanton, Wendy and Jeff Hines, Beverly and Dr. John Berry, Suzy and Dick Bergner and all those handsome gents in tuxedos.

Great review of Folk Fest

2010-09-06T09:40:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of Lynne Brown, Folk Art Messenger:

Good News! THE FOLK ART MESSENGER is going to the designer today and is
already full, so I will give you my report on Folk Fest on our FASA
"chatline."

There were 100 booths and thousands of people, especially on Saturday,
August 21, when sales were brisk and some dealers told me that it was
their best fair ever. (Micki Beth Stiller of Cotton Belt told me this.)
Many established dealers brought masterpieces from the A List that they
had been holding back for quite awhile.

I was ready to buy, and so was my family! Jim bought a huge AB the
Flagman red eagle which projects from the wall. Margaret found hand
made folk art in the traditional mode from artist Wayne Ayers of
Chappell Hill, Texas. He practically sold out his booth on Saturday,
especially to one dealer in N. C. Wayne, a former brick layer,
specializes in copying traditional Americana from the book SPIRITUALLY
MOVING. His weathervanes and whirligigs are noteworthy. "I could have
sold that fish and that dog many times," he said. His craftsmanship is
superb, and his prices are almost unbelievably low. Ross bought another
Son Thomas head from Micki Beth Stiller. It has such haunting eyes. He
also bought two drawings by Bobby Williford from Bruce Shelton. Bobby's
intense, highly detailed dreamscapes are filling up Ross's condo. I
bought THE SWORD SWALLOWER by Levent Isik, at Duff Lindsay's wonderful
booth.

Jeannine Taylor's quadruple booth was excellent! She featured the work
of four artists only, so each artist could present a body of work. Ab
was one of the artists, and his work this year was stronger than ever.

There was much talk about Andrei Palmer, a young self-taught artist from
Stone Mountain, GA, adopted from Romania at the age of 6. He sold 4 of
his handmade vintage cars and took special orders for 8 of them by
Saturday afternoon. Each car takes about 2 weeks to make and the price
is right at $100. each. He mostly uses recycled cardboard. It was fun
to open up the door of each and check out the complicated interiors.
Georgine Clarke put her stamp of approval on them, and so did Marion
Harris, who, it is rumored, will present a selection of them at Outsider
Art Fair in February.

Another artist causing a stir was Brenda Davis of Alabama. Marcia Weber
had one of her masterpieces, FINANCIALLY BLESSED. Marcia discovered her
and has been representing her for four years. Look for this work at
Outsider Art Fair where Marcia will have a booth for the first time.
Congrats, Marcia!

Bruce New made his debut at Lindsay Gallery (discovered by dealer Mike
Smith). These abstracted pen and collage style drawings would appeal to
young collectors. Duff featured the memory paintings of Janis Price, of
Newark, Ohio, which boasted vibrant colors, strong composition and
attention to every detail.

My friends Tim and Karen Chambers of Highlands, N. C. brought their
colorful chickens to the fair and did very well with them. Tim said,
'I was blown away by all the imaginations in this room. I wish we had
done Folk Fest before now, and we will definitely come back next year!"
They took a small part of Aaron Hequembourg's booth. Aaron has been
artist in residence at the Bascom in Highlands. He has a unique style,
evoking the southern heritage of the farms and the people who loved this
way of life in "the old days."

Bruce Shelton presented some new sculptures by Tim Lewis, and I thought
THE LAST SUPPER was an especially fine example of Tim's stone carving.
Shelton also had a selection of very powerful drawings by the late Roy
Ferdinand of New Orleans. Bruce told me that he is presently working on
a book about Helen La France, who is still living, but is not creating
art any longer.

Jimmy Hedges had more work by Alan Wayne Bradley, who has recently moved
to Oregon. I was sorry to hear that he is leaving the South. Bradley
is an artist to watch.

Minnie Adkins was looking very well, and her booth featured, not just
her work and that of her grandson, but also various Kentucky carvers.
They placed her on row one, certainly where she deserved to be.

A group of collectors sat around eating BBQ and analyzing the way Folk
Fest has evolved over 17 years. We decided that the first five years
were all about the King of Folk Art, Howard Finster. You could find his
work in every other booth. Then arrived the era of Mose T and Jimmy
Lee, with their work omnipresent. Lately it's been Cornbread and
Michael Banks, just peppered throughout North Atlanta Trade Center.

Kate Boccia , a lovely woman from Alpharetta, GA, provided a handsome
space for the new, more abstracted work of Michael Banks. Michael was
there throughout the weekend, meeting people and explaining his new
work. See the last RAW VISION to see a great example of this new work.
Margaret, our daughter, has written a review of Ted Oliver's show held
in Tryon, N. C. One artist she selected from this huge exhibition and
sale was Michael.

You can figure out what captured my imagination at Folk Fest. Kudos
also to Jeanne Kronsnoble of Main Street, Le Primitif, Gordon Gallery,
Ginger Young, Potteryman, and ladies of Around Back at Rocky's Place.

I will not dwell on the problem of faux folk art.

I am thankful for the herculean efforts of Steve and Amy who continue
to build on their successes, who do a memorable job with all of their
publicity, whether on video, on billboards, in print, on radio. It is
up to collectors to do homework, talk to artists and dealers, and make
your choices of the work you love and art that will greet you when you
come home.

Lynne Browne, Senior Correspondent for THE FOLK ART MESSENGER

Help Save Margaret's Grocery!

2010-09-02T11:13:00.001-05:00

Margaret's Grocery is in danger of falling into disrepair. Pepsi is giving away over a million dollars to fund the Top 10 ideas, and by voting for Margaret's Grocery, we can help move it up in the rankings!

Goals

Restoration of Folk Art Icon, new roof, paint, protect, security fence,

GallerySee all videos & photos

Overview

The "Restore Margaret's Grocery/Rev.Dennis's Castle"  project will restore and refurbish a Folk Art Icon created on HWY 61 many years ago that has amazed travelers from around the world for years. The place currently is in bad shape and in need of a new roof, a security fence,outdoor security lighting, restoration of folk art creations, retouching of painted folk art signs and works of art, and preservation of folk art. Also Perpetual care of property. Interior restoration including carpentry and plumbing and electrical. Would like to able to maintain Folkart for years to come for others to learn from and enjoy and inspire.

How will the 50K be Used?
Budget Notes: will protect original folk art creations and restore to original design and colors. try to fix inside to original look and folk art creations.

detour art travels

The Electric Pencil

The Future Of Salvation Mountain Uncertain | KPBS.org

The Future Of Salvation Mountain Uncertain

Buol Grotto to be saved by Kohler

Detour Art in Park City, UT

RIP Bob Cassilly - City Museum founder

READ MORE FROM THE BEACON

LIVING ST. LOUIS

As Folk Art Museum Teeters, a Grave Loss Looms

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: September 19, 2011

Photo Slide Shows

Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum

‘Approaching Abstraction’

Related

Options Dim for Museum of Folk Art (August 25, 2011)

Folk Art Museum Considers Closing(August 20, 2011)

American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Readers’ Comments

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Roy Sproule.......paints mural and does not like milk

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Visual arts preview: Mr. Imagination

Thorton Dial Retrospective

Ground breaking for new Visionary Art Park in Houston

Folk Art honored at the San Francisco Ariport

Clyde Angel - an elusive story

Mamie Deschellie - Navajo "Accidental Artist" 1910-2010

Folk art superstar' Mamie Deschillie died Friday

A near-naked lady, War and a gaggle of Orange Show hippies took over Finger Furniture

Great review of Folk Fest

Help Save Margaret's Grocery!

Goals

GallerySee all videos & photos

Overview

How will the 50K be Used?