detour art travels

Kelly Ludwig's invitation is awaiting your response

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 10:14:00 +0000

Kelly Ludwig would like to connect on LinkedIn. How would you like to respond?

Kelly Ludwig

Jill-of-All-Trades

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Kelly Ludwig's invitation is awaiting your response

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 11:52:00 +0000

Kelly Ludwig would like to connect on LinkedIn. How would you like to respond?

Kelly Ludwig

Jill-of-All-Trades

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Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:58:00 +0000

From Kelly Ludwig

Adjunct instructor at KCAI

Kansas City, Missouri Area

blogger,

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- Kelly

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Bud Goldstone, engineer who save Watts Towers, dies at 89

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:20:00 +0000

This has been a tough few months for the folk art world, Mr. Imagination, Ronald Manolio (Eggshelland), Ronald Cooper, Rev. Dennis (Margaret's Grocery), and now NJ "Bud" Goldstone - the engineer who fought city hall to save Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts (Los Angeles, CA).

Bud would send emails every few months, keeping me apprised of the latest news and encouraging me on with Detour Art. His signature really said it all:

"Bud Goldstone; OSU, Purdue Aero Engr; AIC Pro. Assoc.-retired; Apollo Engineering, 'The Los Angeles Watts Towers', pub by Getty Museum & Conservation Institute; "Secrets of Watts Towers"; SPACES Archives"

N.J. "Bud" Goldstone was a professional engineer and member of the Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts, Inc. In 1959, he designed and executed an engineering test that proved the Towers' structural safety. The bulk of the collection consists of Goldstone's detailed photographs and negatives of the Towers, documenting a restoration project completed between 1994 and 2002. The collection also includes the original 1959 structural integrity report and test plan, a set of microfiche from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and additional photographic materials.

Simon Rodia's Towers were constructed between 1921 and 1955 in the Watts area of Los Angeles. Built single-handedly by Rodia, an Italian immigrant, the Towers consist of an elaborate walled enclosure containing seventeen sculptures of thin steel members covered with mortar. The sculptures' surfaces are decorated with a mosaic of tiles, glass shards and objects.

Rodia deeded the property to a neighbor in 1955 when he left Los Angeles to live in the Northern California town of Martinez. After 1955, the towers were neglected and fell into disrepair. The City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety determined the Towers were a public safety hazard in 1957 and ordered their demolishment.

The Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts, Inc. (CSRTW) was immediately formed in an attempt to save the Towers. After a demolition hearing, the City agreed to a lateral stress test, spearheaded by aerospace engineer N.J. "Bud" Goldstone, at the Committee's expense.

On October 10, 1959, Goldstone executed a successful proof-load test, demonstrating the Towers' structural stability. Goldstone continued to serve as a member and an officer of CSRTW from 1960 to 1970, and worked to advance the issue of preserving and restoring the Towers through the 1990s.

In 1975, the Committee, which had preserved the Towers independently for 16 years, gave the Towers and Art Center to the City of Los Angeles for operation and maintenance. In 1978, the Towers were deeded to the State of California. The State undertook an extensive restoration project, but in 1985, responsibility for the Towers was again assumed by the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Repair to damage caused in the 1994 Northridge earthquake was commenced in 1995 and completed in 2001. The Towers are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and are the location of cultural programs.

(from http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2z09q28w/ photos courtesy of Randy Mason and Mike Murphy, Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations)

Rev. HD Dennis, renowned Mississippi folk artist, 1916-2012

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:52:00 +0000

Reverend H.D. Dennis - Margaret's Grocery

Vicksburg, MS

Embellished visionary environment | Created 1994 to present

The Rev. Herman D. “Preacher” Dennis, the man who helped craft the world-renowned Margaret’s Grocery, Vicksburg’s folk-art “Bible castle” on North Washington Street, died Tuesday.

Reverend H. D. Dennis, who is responsible for the architectural look of Margaret's Grocery, was born in 1916 in Rolling Fork, Mississippi and married the widow Margaret Rogers, his fifth wife, in 1979.

(From my visit in 2007)

Sometimes you just get lucky. I had been wanting to meet the Reverend Dennis and his wife Margaret for sometime, and now that I was working on the book, “Detour Art,” I knew this was the time to do it. After a stormy drive from Kansas City, through Arkansas, down Highway 61, and finally to Vicksburg, the clouds parted just as we pulled in front of Margaret’s Grocery.

Margaret greeted us and invited us into the grocery. Margaret and her late husband ran a rural grocery outside Vicksburg on old Highway 61, until he was fatally shot by a neighborhood kid during a robbery. Margaret met Rev. Dennis through the ladies at church. They married in 1979 and began to fix up the place to attract attention, so Rev. Dennis could share the word of God. Rev. Dennis began to paint the building red, white, and some blue, but Margaret added the crowning touches of pink and yellow. Brick towers and signs abound, welcoming “Jews and Gentiles” with various symbols of the double-headed eagle of the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge, of which he is a member. The interior of the store is elaborately decorated with beads and bold paint, and as well is the church bus, which also has pews and a pulpit for preaching.

Reverend Dennis had just gotten out of the hospital the night before, (his heart - he is 91) and was still full of fire and brimstone as he began to preach...and dance. He is an absolutely delightful man, and stubborn as a mule. He kept refusing to return to the porch when his home health care worker came to check on him, instead insisting on showing me around his place, preaching to me all along the way. His message came through loud and somewhat clear, “God is love, he loves all, his black brothers and white sisters...Welcome Jews and Gentiles...” I was truly blessed to get to meet them both.

Concrete cinder blocks, large sheets of heavy metal, and found objects are used to create this art environment. The most commonly used colors on the exterior of this folk art environment were red, white, and pink.

The interior of the market-church is decorated with elaborate candelabras and chalices as well as conventional shelves for groceries. Reverend Dennis also owns a church bus, outfitted with a pulpit and pews.

The Double Headed Eagle atop the signage is not just any eagle: it is that of the 32nd degree of the Scottish Rite. Furthermore, the two pillars flanking the door of the store are marked with the golden letters B and J, initials familiar to all Masons. One of the front windows, which carries the symbol for the Order of the Eastern Star; The matching window on the other side of the facade bears the Master Mason's symbol of a Square and Compasses with the letter G. Considering the region in which this site has been erected, one can safely assume that Reverend Dennis is a member of a Prince Hall Masonic lodge, for most of the members of that jurisdiction are African-American.

1989 interview with Homer Green

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:14:00 +0000

Joe Elmore (tennesseecrossroads.org) interviewed folk artist, Homer Green, in 1989. I have a special affinity with his work, as one of his angels is on the cover of the Detour Art book.

His granddaughter, Janet Greene shared this video clip with me.

KY Folk Artist, Ronald Cooper 1932-2012

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:47:00 +0000

Kentucky folk artist Ronald Cooper died in a hospital in Lexington on Saturday, August 18th, 2012.

Ronald and Jessie Cooper became artists by chance in their mid-fifties. Prior to that, their lives had followed a path common for their generation: early marriage, leaving their home-town for better opportunities, raising four children, working a variety of jobs, financial calamity and major health problems. After a number of years of working in grocery stores and supermarkets in Kentucky and Ohio, the Coopers ran their own country store. When this failed after eight years Ronald was forced to take a job in quality control at a warehouse and Jessie found employment at a nut packaging plant.*

While employed in quality control at Frigidaire, Ronald suffered the first of two heart attacks. Then in 1984, he was critically injured in an automobile accident which left him paralyzed from the waist down. While in recovery, he suffered from clinical depression and began having terrible nightmares which he found he could only exorcise through art. The husband and wife team complemented one anothers work: Jessie creating a world of heaven and Ronald depicting hell out of his own subconscious feelings. Their work quickly rose to fame among in the folk/ outsider art world at an international level.

Adam Mark Brown has produced a film about the Coopers "I Dreamed I Searched for You in Heaven". (http://cooperfolkart.com/about.html) The story interweaves themes of memory, loss, and death in relation to their work and life experiences showing Jessie's own struggle to triumph in retaining memories of her life while succumbing to full-blown Alzheimer's disease and Ronald's struggle after while losing his soul-mate.

*excerpt taken from Raw Vision Magazine's "The Art of Redemption" by Adrian Swain

Ronald worked as an artist from 1987 until 2012, frequently in close collaboration with his wife Jessie. Ronald is best known for his graphic, didactic depictions of hell featuring tortured sinners and naked devils, often portrayed on used pieces of furniture and cabinetry. His work has been shown widely since the early 1990s and is in numerous public and private collections. Visitation for Ronald Cooper will be from 5 to 8 pm at the Boone Nickel Funeral Home in Flemingsburg, Kentucky, on Wednesday, August 22nd. The funeral will take place at 11 am on Thursday, August 23rd at the Flemingsburg Baptist Church. He will be greatly missed by many in the larger folk art community.

Friends may sign the guestbook at: www.boonenickellfuneralhome.com

Eggshelland creator, Ronald Manolio, passes away

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:22:00 +0000

(Story and photos courtesy of Fred Scruton)

For over 50 years Ron Manolio cheerfully hand-painted the (real) eggshells for Betty Manolio’s Eggshelland graph paper designs. I’ve truly never met a person who exuded such giddy delight over bringing pleasure to other people.
The immense regional following that Eggshelland has earned no doubt brought Ron great, and well-deserved satisfaction. During the couple of weeks the annual display lasts, there is a constant stream of visitors, and Easter Sunday brings hundreds and hundreds of often generational admirers. Ron and Betty made me feel like just another member of their big Italian-American family from the (unannounced) first moment I showed up with my big camera at their suburban Cleveland front yard in 2005. According to the articles below, Betty intends there to be one final goodbye display for Easter 2013.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/08/ronald_manolio_creator_of_lynd.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/oh_cuyahoga/eggshelland-creator-ron-manolio-of-lyndhurst-dies-from-blood-infection

(above) Ron taking pictures of visiting posers . (below) Ron and Betty in 2010.

Eggshelland 2012:

Eggshelland 2011:

Eggshelland 2012 installation:

Thank you Ron, Betty, and the Manolio family.

Montrose, S.D., sculpture park puts one man’s fertile imagination on display - KansasCity.com

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:25:00 +0000

BY DIRK LAMMERS

The Associated Press

Dirk Lammers

Wayne Porter and his Australian shepherd, Bambino, stand in front of a 60-foot-tall sculpture at Porter Sculpture Park.

IF YOU GO …

Porter Sculpture Park: 25700 451st Ave., Montrose, S.D., 1/2 mile south of Exit 374 on Interstate 90; portersculpturepark.com. Open daily 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Memorial Day through Labor Day. Adults, $6; ages 13-17, $4; age 12 and younger free.

More News

MONTROSE, S.D. -- Cartoonlike buzzards wielding a knife and fork, anvil and oversized mallet might seem like an odd way to welcome tourists, but Porter Sculpture Park is no typical roadside attraction.

The vultures representing reincarnated politicians are just a few of the more than 40 quirky creations originating in the mind of Wayne Porter, who uses his blacksmith know-how and appreciation of history to turn twisted concepts into metallic works of art.

The park’s signature piece is a 60-foot-tall Egyptian-style bull’s head that stares down Interstate 90 motorists as they head out to South Dakota’s Black Hills. Porter spent three years creating the 25-ton monstrosity out of railroad tie plates, dubbing it the “World’s Largest Bull’s Head” on a nearby billboard.

“If anyone builds one bigger, I’ll know about it,” Porter said. “And if they did, they’re crazy. I’m not going to argue with them.”

The sheer size of the piece is amazing, and to weld it with such defined form and scale is even more impressive, said Kelly Ludwig, a Kansas City-based graphic designer who lists the park on the iPhone app she created called “Best Road Trip Ever!”

“It is amazingly impressive on its scale,” Ludwig said.

Porter was born in 1959 in St. Lawrence, S.D., and learned to weld in his father’s blacksmith shop. He created his first piece of art, a bronze metal horse, at the age of 12. After earning degrees in political science and history from South Dakota State University, he returned to the town of less than 200 to become a sheep rancher and help his dad in the shop.

Porter passed the nighttime hours by creating sculptures, many of which found display spots around town. An oversized pink metal rocking horse was a favorite of tipsy residents exiting the local bars.

“Two o’clock in the morning, people would just have a ball on it,” he said.

At some point, buses started arriving with people wanting to pay to view Porter’s creations.

“I said, no, no, it’s right on Main Street. You don’t have to pay me,” he recalled. “They said, ‘We’re paying you.’ ”

The prospect of people handing over cash to see his art intrigued Porter more than sheep, so his brother helped him purchase some rolling prairie hills along an interstate exit in Montrose, S.D. He packed up his creations and opened Porter Sculpture Park in 2000.

Winters are spent back home in St. Lawrence crafting in the blacksmith shop, but Porter’s summer home is an onsite camper shared by his trusty Australian shepherd, Bambino.

Porter offers guided tours whenever possible, providing insight into his inspirations while straying off on tangents ranging from his love of unsweetened iced tea and chocolate to the dangers of zombie attacks.

A mowed path lets visitors meander through the many goldfish, dragons, flowers and birds constructed of such junk metal pieces as old farm equipment, a cement mixer and hot water tanks.

A bright blue butterfly flaps its wings atop the pointed finger of a giant yellow hand. Goldfish pour from a two-story-high broken fish bowl as a fly armed with a flyswatter turns the tables on his pests. A spiked club-wielding Jack pops out of Pandora’s box, and skeletal fish holding skeletal umbrellas await a rain that never comes.

“I want to pipe in water someday,” Porter said, noting that the sculpture is created with actual pipe.

A 20-foot-tall upside-down yellow and pink hammer sits behind a pair of red monks that “people mistakenly think are grim reapers.” He originally wanted nine monks, and he hopes one day to add a musical element.

“I love Gregorian chants,” he said.

Ludwig said Porter has curated his pieces in a beautiful way, using wide-open prairie spaces as a canvas while sprinkling hidden whimsies throughout.

“He’s a really talented artist,” Ludwig said. “And for really not having any formal training, it’s really impressive.”

The bronze-colored bull head, which is guarded by four ram-head skeletons, whistles and hums with the passing prairie winds.

Porter, during a recent tour, heads inside, pointing and warning of some bats hanging from the rafters. They look real, but they’re actually sub-sculptures he uses on his tour. He laughs, then ascends the staircase and jumps into the porch swing for a few sways before continuing.

Porter also claims the “world’s largest ball of invisible twine” but says he’s unsure where he placed the piece.

How many people visit each year? Porter has no idea.

“When I’m really busy I can’t count them,” he said. “And when I’m not busy it’s not worth counting them.”

Porter’s latest project is a 40-foot-tall horse that will top Leonardo Da Vinci’s proposed masterpiece by about 16 feet and weigh more than the bull’s head. (Da Vinci was commissioned to build the largest horse statue in the world in the 15th century, but he never completed the project, though modern versions have been made.) Porter’s horse is back in St. Lawrence and could take years to complete. He has no idea how he’ll transport it to Montrose.

The man who has had no formal art training has another ironic bucket-list item.

“I want to take an art class sometime,” he said.

Posted on Tue, Jun. 05, 2012 03:29 PM

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/05/3643627/a-prairie-art-oasis.html#storylink=cpy

More tributes to Mr. Imagination

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:24:00 +0000

There has been an outpouring of love and remembrance all across the country...

Mr. Imagination, Gregory Warmack Obit Photo. Courtesy, the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

For prolific Atlanta artist “Mr. Imagination,” sleep was rare

Saporta Report
by Michelle Hiskey

“No pictures,” artist Gregory Warmack told us when we stepped inside his cramped, one-story home in northwest Atlanta last fall.

That directive felt like when visitors are told to take off their shoes or cover their heads when entering an unfamiliar house of worship.

The home of Warmack, better known in modern art circles as “Mr. Imagination,” was indeed a portal to a spiritual realm. We didn’t expect an airy studio and someone dressed all in black. As a self-taught “visionary” artist, Mr. Imagination sculpted his own organic world where even circadian rhythms bowed.

In thick borders around each room and hallway, his layered, meticulously encrusted creations resembled masks, animals and common items like musical instruments. What he made them out of – bottle caps mostly, but also paintbrushes and other scraps – inspired me to think of him as “Mr. Re-Imagination.”

With a collection of things that had already lived once as common objects, he had wired, hammered, plastered and placed them into an extraordinary new life. A few miles from the headquarters of the world’s most iconic brand – Coca-Cola – Warmack had compelled leading museums to carve out space for the lowly bottle cap.

He had done that with himself, too. After a 2009 fire destroyed his house in Pennsylvania and much of his art, he started anew in Atlanta.

His work, which appears in permanent collections including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Smithsonian, was so vibrant and prolific that there seemed no end to it. But last week, that end came suddenly when Warmack, 64, died in hospice of complications from a blood infection.

“I don’t sleep much,” he said on our tour, when asked how he created the boggling amount of sculptures crammed into his home. (Our mutual friends were with us, and he had agreed to photographs taken earlier by one of them, which are reprinted here).

Under his roof, there was no readily apparent place for rest. His environment and productivity suggested that the basic need for stopping and shutting down didn’t exist in his world.

He – like Ben Franklin and other insomniac geniuses – operated contrary to conventional wisdom.

Just across town, at the Centers for Disease Control, insufficient sleep is considered a serious public health issue, tied to chronic diseases and vehicle accidents. At this week’s “Sleep 2012,” the annual meeting of professional sleep experts in Boston, their common enemy is insomnia. More sleep = more health.

For Mr. Imagination, less sleep was part of his calling. When night fell, there were too many things to make, to get out of his head and into three dimensions.

To recap his life, this from his obituary:

Warmack was born in Chicago in 1948, the third of nine children who gave church concerts together as the Warmack Singers. An inveterate collector of rocks, beads, trinkets, and myriad cast-off objects, Warmack started making and selling jewelry in his late teens. He also carved bits of bark, wood, and stone into faces that strangely resembled African tribal masks or Egyptian kings.

In 1978, a week after having a premonition that someone was going to kill him, Warmack was shot twice while selling his handmade jewelry on the street. He went into a coma and had an out-of-body experience that changed him forever. Reflecting that change, he renamed himself “Mr. Imagination.”

Mr. I began using new and different types of recycled materials in his art, most notably the bottle caps he is still best known for today.” In 2002, Mr. Imagination left Chicago for Bethlehem, Pa., ‘to put down some roots and grow some vines.’ …

“Years ago my great aunt predicted I was going to be a minister, and in a way she was right,” Warmack said. “I think every artist is a minister and a messenger in a way.”

Perhaps Warmack met his basic needs by tapping into spiritual sustenance. God was a big part of Warmack’s personal history and art, though to appreciate it, viewers didn’t have to believe in a higher power.

The art itself – like most self-taught, outsider or visionary art – suggested communication with another world. Around the clock, the art came to be because Mr. Imagination couldn’t not create it.

“Visionary art begins by listening to the inner voices of the soul,” the Baltimore museum website explains in its definition of the genre.

“Visionary artists don’t listen to anyone else’s traditions. They invent their own. They hear their own inner voice so resoundingly that they may not even think of what they do as ‘art.’ [They stay on the intuitive path of learning to listen to the small, soft voice within.”

In Warmack, that inner voice might just have been a tad bigger, a bit louder – allowing “Mr. Imagination” precious hours for all the wondrous phoenix art he left behind.

Chicago artist ‘Mr. Imagination,’ famed for using bottle caps, dies in Atlanta

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago artist known as “Mr. Imagination,” who charmed his audience with riotous, joy-filled works made of thousands of bottle caps and found materials, has died in Atlanta.

The rough-hewn art of the self-taught Mr. Imagination, whose real name was Gregory Warmack, can be found “all over the world,” according to Cleo Wilson, executive director of Chicago’s Intuit: the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art....read more

Mr. Imagination remembered for his Bethlehem artwork

Lehigh Valley Live

Famed artist Mr. Imagination left Bethlehem in 2008 shortly after a fire destroyed his South Side home but his presence is still found throughout the city.

There’s his bottle cap mule outside of the Banana Factory. The millennial arch at Lehigh University. And the grotto-like bathroom he built inside of Home & Planet.

Local friends say that presence will live on following his death Wednesday. Mr. Imagination, whose real name was Gregory Warmack, died of an infection at an Atlanta hospital at the age of 64, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, a newspaper in his hometown.

“It’s been over five years since he’s been gone, but you can still feel his presence, especially on the South Side,” said Loly Reynolds, a city artist who said she considered Mr. Imagination her “art dad.”
Mr. I, as he’s also called, was crushed emotionally following the fire at his house and took up a friend’s offer to move to Atlanta, Reynolds said. While living there, Mr. I. was pursuing his dream of opening a museum of his work, known as outsider art, Reynolds said...read more

Mr. Imagination is Dead, Long Live Mr. Imagination

Derivative Works
It is a sad day for Chicago art. Today learned today that the great Chicago artist, Mr. Imagination, has died.

I got to know Mr. Imagination in the early to mid 90s when he lived in an apartment at Clark and Sheffield. He had a regal bearing and a gentle intelligence that always made me feel like I was before some ancient king. His thrones and staves, all made from bottlecaps and other make-ready items, might have helped with that impression as well. But it all befit him...read more

Famed Outsider Artist, Mr. Imagination, Dies

Bethlehem Patch

World-renowned intuitive artist, Mr. Imagination, who left his mark while he lived in Bethlehem, dies in an Atlanta hospital. He was 64 years old.

Famed outsider artist Gregory Warmack, better known to his friends and fans in Bethlehem and across the world as Mr. Imagination, has died in an Atlanta hospital, according to The Chicago Sun Times.

Mr. I, as he was often called, became well-known for fanciful creations made of discarded items like paint brushes, ping-pong paddles and lots and lots of bottle caps.

A Chicago native, Warmack moved to Bethlehem in 2002 “to get more peace and green in his life,” according to the Facebook page of Intuit, the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago.

Artists like Mr. Imagination are known as "outsider" or "intuitive" artists because they have had no formal arts education or training.

Mr. I became a fixture in the local arts community, working at the Banana Factory teaching children and creating art that added a distinctive character to the space around the gallery, including the “bottlecap mule” and the unique painted and bejeweled bus shelter that sits on Third Street outside of the gallery...read more

Trade Street 'Memory Wall' creator dies in Atlanta

Winston-Salem Journal

The artist known as "Mr. Imagination," who created the "Memory Wall" on Trade Street in 1999, died Wednesday in Atlanta.

The artist, whose real name was Gregory Warmack, died of an infection at Grady Hospital. He was 64.

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art brought Warmack to Winston-Salem nearly 13 years ago as a visiting artist to work on the wall, which is near the Campbell Transportation Center. Warmack and a group of volunteers completed work on 55-foot concrete wall, which features sculptures surrounded by stones, beads, seashells, bottle caps and other objects.

Remembering Mr Imagination: March 30, 1948 – May 30, 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:01:00 +0000

Mr. Imagination with his work at Folk Fest in Atlanta, 2009

Mr. Imagination embodied art and the creative spirit. The third of nine children, he was born on the South Side of Chicago in March 1948 as Gregory Warmack. While living there, he was seriously wounded in a shooting, and during his near-death state felt he was whisked across time and space, where cultures and civilizations revealed themselves to him in a way that he now translates into art.

I would love to think that he is now happy in those fantastic worlds that were revealed to him all of those years ago. Home with the kings, and Pharoah (his beloved dog) and all things of great beauty.

Mr. I with the guitar that was featured in the window of Bergdorf-Goodman in NYC

Both prodigious and prolific, the incredible world of Mr. Imagination is “a work of art in progress.” Mr. Imagination’s talent was such that when handed an object, he saw in it things that the rest of us couldn’t see. This extraordinary gift allowed Mr. Imagination to transform common material into resplendent objects of art with new life, vitality and meaning.

At Folk Fest in Atlanta, 2009

In 2002, he moved to Bethlehem, PA to create art near his friends at Lehigh University. Seven years later, he experienced a devastating house fire destroying his home, killing his beloved dog Pharaoh and charring much of the work he had stored there. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, he salvaged what he could to create new work.

Pharoah
(courtesy of Randy Mason and Mike Murphy, Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations)

(courtesy of Randy Mason and Mike Murphy, Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations)

In August 2009, he relocated to Atlanta, GA. With the help of many friends, Mr. Imagination bought a home to create an Angel Garden for all the children and artists of the world to come together and bring artistic life to everything that has been thrown away and discarded.

Also in 2009, Intuit presented Mr. Imagination with its Visionary Award in celebration of his incredible persistence, vision and contributions to self-taught and outsider art.

His work attained national and international recognition. He also was committed to inspiring communities with a series of outdoor embedded concrete sculptures (or “grottos,” as he calls them).

Detail from the Memory Wall in Winston-Salem, NC

The ever-active Mr. Imagination was commissioned by the city to build a memory wall outside the offices of the Winston-Salem Transit System. Residents were invited to bring mementos and artifacts from their own lives that Mr. I could incorporate into a concrete wall and bench located near one of the busiest bus stops in town.

Detail from the Memory Wall in Winston-Salem, NC

(portions of this was excerpted, rearranged and mangled from Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art)

More about Mr. I:

detour art travels: Visual arts preview: Mr. Imagination

Mar 04, 2011

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, ...

detour art travels: Self-Taught Artists to Exhibit in Venice, Italy at the ...

Mar 30, 2011

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 ...

detour art travels: AVAM goes to Bergdorf Goodman!!!

Jun 30, 2009

AVAM goes to Bergdorf Goodman!!! Mr. I, fresh from the art debacle in Salina, in front of the window display featuring his art. (photo from Modelizing, the art of Window Shopping) ...

detour art travels: Mr. Imagination controversy in Salina, KS

Jun 17, 2009

After the Salina City Commission rejected Mr. Imagination's installation -- grotto sculptures on downtown planters -- local artist Katy England said she and Mr. Imagination, also known as Greg Warmack, are forging new plans.

detour art travels: Mr. Imagination's Fire

Jan 29, 2008

On Sunday, January 20, 2008, Gregory "Mr. Imagination" Warmack's home, gallery, collections and art studio in Bethlehem, PA was gutted by fire. Everything was lost including the centerpiece of the house, his bottlecap ...

detour art travels: More Mr. I news...

Jan 31, 2008

Daryl Nerl, a writer for the Bethlehem Daily Star, just posted a nice write up about the flickr site that I set up to collect photos for a book for Mr. I. Also rumored to be in the works is a fundraiser at Intuit in Chicago at the end of ...

detour art travels: Mr. I benefit at Intuit

Feb 05, 2008

Please join Intuit February 28th from 5-8:00pm as we host a fundraising benefit for Mr. Imagination. This event will include a silent auction, video and slideshows of Mr. Imagination's work. Food and wine has been generously ...

Road Trip SXSW

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 20:01:00 +0000

Road Trip SXSW, a set on Flickr.

The road to South by Southwest - and back again...in a hundred or so photos.

The Electric Pencil documentary looking for funding

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:56:00 +0000

Five years ago, New York based artist and art dealer, Harris Diamant, discovered an extraordinary hand made album containing 283 drawings done on ledger sheets from State Lunatic Asylum No. 3, in Nevada MO. The unknown artist was given the name THE ELECTRIC PENCIL, based on the title of a single drawing.

The album and drawings look like artifacts from a distant time; arresting portraits of people with startling eyes wearing 19th century clothing, Civil War soldiers, antique cars, fantastic boats and trains, country landscapes with roaming animals, and other drawings that seem fanciful and bizarre. Who was this artist? The artwork is a treasure-trove of clues… a diary that tells a story in the artist's own personal symbolic language.

http://electricpencildrawings.com

This feature length, broadcast quality documentary is looking for funding via kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1265412620/the-mystery-of-the-electric-pencil

Charlie Stagg, visionary artist dies at 72

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:35:00 +0000

The house that Charlie Stagg built is a sprawling complex of beams and bottles and concrete, with a big domed building that serves as his studio. Charlie did the work himself, hauling all the materials in "the way bugs do it," he told the guys from Rare Visions," a little at a time." He also sculpted huge helixes, DNA-like strands of color that reach second story heights.

The Vidor, TX visionary artist had been in and out of the hospital recently and died early Monday after suffering burns at his home after losing consciousness and falling in an open fire pit. Stagg, who lived in an unconventional home that began as an art research project in 1981, has created work that has been featured in the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and the New York Times. His work is also on display at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas.

The above photos are courtesy of Larry Harris

More beautiful photos and a moving tribute can be found on his grand-nephew Ryan Price's website. http://thoughtsbyryan.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/a-tribute-to-a-great-artist-charles-stagg/

An excerpt from the Houston Chronical,
Reclusive Vidor artist dies following burns
By Allan Turner
Updated 11:38 p.m., Monday, February 20, 2012

"The only way you can progress to cultural enlightenment," Stagg said in a 2010 interview, "is to get where you're not comfortable anymore. ... You choose to be creative rather than accumulate things. I don't have anything against money. I just can't spend my life doing false things to accumulate it. I do what I have to do, and if it doesn't work that way, I've had a good life."

He 'lived his art'

Although early in his career Stagg produced pastoral paintings and portraits, his mature art was marked by a series of spiraling wooden sculptures resembling strands of DNA. One of his larger works, Tree of Life, which stands 40 feet tall, is featured at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum. Smaller works are on view at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont.

"He was an artist who lived his art," said Lynn Castle, the Beaumont museum's executive director. "The wood for a lot of his sculptures came from the pine trees on his property. He would rely on the material to guide the direction of the art."

Despite his training, Stagg was viewed by many as a folk artist.

"He was very eccentric," Castle said. "But he was very well-spoken about his own art. He could talk very intelligently about his influences and why he did what he did." Visitors to Stagg's compound often found it littered with fine art journals and magazines.

"His wood carving was pretty amazing," Houston art collector Stephanie Smither said. "He would take branches of trees and whittle them to make all kinds of forms. ... The way he could make movement, create movement in a piece of wood was so interesting."

Stagg's grand-nephew, Ryan Price, a College Station wedding photographer, said the sculptor was a "deep thinker" who enjoyed mentoring younger artists. "He really cared a lot about building up people, spurring them on," Price said.

No neighbors

Stagg said he chose a life of relative solitude because he found art world "committees" and conviviality adverse to his work. "This is what I'm going for and I can't be pressured by others," he said.

His compound, which at the time of his death consisted of several outbuildings and a bottle-studded, cone-like domicile about 30 feet in diameter and 20 feet tall, sat about a mile from the nearest road.

He lived without neighbors, computers or air conditioning, although visitors frequently would arrive - children in tow - without notice for impromptu tours. Friends in the Beaumont art community often donated truck loads of cans, which Stagg stacked and coated with concrete, and bottles.

Among Stagg's few modern conveniences were a small electric fan and a radio, on which he listened to National Public Radio broadcasts. Stagg's residence burned in 2006, and, recently, he lived in a small travel trailer while he rebuilt.

Stagg, who suffered from a heart condition, received severe burns after he lost consciousness and fell into an open fire pit, according to the Beaumont Enterprise. He died Monday at the University of Texas Medical Branch's Blocker Burn Unit. Price said Stagg recently had suffered ill health and "been in and out of the hospital."

"I'm just trying to live a good life that's productive," Stagg said in 2010, "and to help people through knowledge."

allan.turner@chron.com

Book "Surgeon" creates amazing art

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:23:00 +0000

Atlanta transplant,Brian Dettmer, uses knives, tweezers and surgical tools to carve his masterpieces one page at a time. He never adds any artifacts to the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or any other reference books that serve as his canvas.

Dettmer manipulates the pages and spines to form the shape of his sculptures. He also folds, bends, rolls, and stacks multiple books to create completely original sculptural forms.

"My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception," he says.

"The richness and depth of the book is universally respected yet often undiscovered as the monopoly of the form and relevance of the information fades over time. The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world. By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge." Dettmer is originally from Chicago, where he studied at Columbia College.

20th Anniversary of the Outsider Art Fair

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:52:00 +0000

Creating Artworks Without a Net

The 20th Anniversary of the Outsider Art Fair

By KAREN ROSENBERG

Published: January 27, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/arts/the-20th-anniversary-of-the-outsider-art-fair.html?_r=1

REPRINTS

Let’s all agree that “outsider artist” is a term of convenience, encompassing the self-taught, the visionary, the geographically isolated, the mentally ill or developmentally disabled, and (in one memorable episode) Homer Simpson. And in that spirit, we must judge the Outsider Art Fair, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, not by its title but by the vitality and variety of works on offer.

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James Estrin/The New York Times

Aldo Piacenza's church of wood and metal at the Dean Jensen Gallery's booth at the Outsider Art Fair.

Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia and more.

Go to Arts Beat »

A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.

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James Estrin/The New York Times

Tin-foil animals by Dean Millien at the LAND Gallery's booth. The fair has drawings by famed outsiders like Henry Darger as well.

The thread linking the fair’s 36 booths is a personal compulsion to make art, without a rulebook and with whatever materials happen to be at hand. At Marion Harris, for instance, are tiny peach-stone carvings by A. W. Gimbi, a 19th-century barber from McAdoo, Pa. They make up a none-too-practical tool kit of hammers, corkscrews, fishing hooks and other utilitarian objects — each no more than an inch in height.

At Lindsay Gallery, charts drawn on rolls of oilcloth by a Pentecostal minister, the Rev. Samuel David Phillips (1890-1973), illustrate sermons in a naïve hand but with plenty of preacherly imperative. You imagine the members of his flock sitting bolt upright in their pews after gazing at “Rome,” which depicts a bloody crucifixion, the flaying of St. Bartholomew and a pack of lions feasting on martyrs in the Colosseum.

The nightmarish scenarios in Penny Rockwell’s solo presentation at Pavel Zoubok tell a very particular story of mental illness. During a psychotic episode three decades ago, Ms. Rockwell had visions of electrical plugs bursting into flame; she eventually checked herself into Bellevue. After treatment, she started to confront her fear in black-and-white drawings and collages. In the most gripping of these works, the plug is a dragon-like creature that breathes flame from fraying wires.

If Ms. Rockwell’s drawings stoke anxiety, a group of drawings by Jim Work, at the Pardee Collection, seem meant to soothe it. Mr. Work, a developmentally disabled artist born in 1944, renders neat ribbons of highway and tidy brick houses in cheerful pink and green crayon on paper grocery bags. He seems to be guided by an inner GPS, drawing arrows on the roads to indicate the direction of traffic.

Some outsider artists have achieved celebrity on par with so-called “insiders”; Martín Ramírez and Henry Darger are examples. Drawings by both men are on view, but the energy of this fair has much to do with the spotlight it shines on many lesser-known figures. C. Grimaldis Gallery has a survey of Giorgos Rigas, a sort of Greek Grandma Moses who lives in Athens but paints the small mountain village of his birth from memory. And Packer Schopf has a focused presentation on Lee Groban (1947-2011), a self-taught Chicago artist whose intense oeuvre includes comic-psychedelic drawings and a 5,000-page epic poem, “A Cure for Insomnia.”

In some cases, familiar names are presented in new ways. The proprietor of MAKE Skateboards, Scott Ogden, is selling limited-edition skateboard decks that feature authorized reproductions of art by Adolf Wölfli and Royal Robertson. With Robertson, a Louisiana sign painter who believed in space aliens and the apocalypse, Mr. Ogden found an artist who easily crosses over from outsider to street art.

Also new to the fair are some high-profile institutional collaborators. One is the Collection de l’Art Brut, the Lausanne, Switzerland, museum of outsider art that houses some 5,000 works amassed by Jean Dubuffet, here showcasing its series of DVDs and monographs on outsider artists. Another is El Museo del Barrio, which is timing the opening of its show of “nontraditionally trained” artists, “Testimonios: 100 Years of Popular Expression,” to coincide with the fair. And as in previous years, the American Folk Art Museum is holding a series of talks.

Then there is an exhibitor called the Museum of Everything, which isn’t really a museum but rather a series of exhibitions of outsider art organized, and lovingly preserved in book form, by James Brett, a London curator.

For this fair, Mr. Brett has designed an attractive bookshop in which real shelves emerge from a trompe l’oeil wall drawing. Leafing through the four volumes of the Museum of Everything’s limited-edition catalog, you can read musings on outsider art by consummate contemporary-art insiders (Maurizio Cattelan and Carsten Höller among them).

At the Museum of Everything, and at the fair as a whole, enthusiasm for unorthodox creative expression meets disdain for the old-fashioned term that commonly describes it. As the Museum’s Web site proclaims, “Death to outsider art! Long live the outsiders!”

The Outsider Art Fair continues through Sunday at 7 West 34th Street; sanfordsmith.com.

A version of this review appeared in print on January 28, 2012, on pageC1 of the New York edition with the headline: Creating Artworks Without a Net.

The Electric Pencil

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:56:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:20:00 +0000

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.

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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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:08:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:24:00 +0000

"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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:19:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:40:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:31:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:05:00 +0000

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!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:57:00 +0000

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!

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Kelly Ludwig's invitation is awaiting your response

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BY DIRK LAMMERS

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By KAREN ROSENBERG

Published: January 27, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/arts/the-20th-anniversary-of-the-outsider-art-fair.html?_r=1

James Estrin/The New York Times

James Estrin/The New York Times

A version of this review appeared in print on January 28, 2012, on pageC1 of the New York edition with the headline: Creating Artworks Without a Net.

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Readers’ Comments

Bishop's Castle - Beulah, CO

Cano's Castle

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

Posted on Tue, Jun. 05, 2012 03:29 PM

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/05/3643627/a-prairie-art-oasis.html#storylink=cpy