Folk Art (Fall 1997) by American Folk Art Museum

MAGAZINE OF THE MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART * FALL 1997 *

THE FIRST BOOK OF PAINTINGS

139 vivid reproductions â&#x20AC;&#x201D; by a self-taught master to be

published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 1997. Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco are the authors of "American Self-Taught," "American Primitive" and "Bill Traylor: His Art, His Life." WILLIAM HAWKINS: PAINTINGS. 9" x 11". 144 pages. $45.00 (Canada: $63.00). 0-679-45075-0. Available on the internet at http://artnetweb.com/rmgallery/gallerystore.

RICCO/MARESCA GALLERY 152 Wooster Street New York New York 10012 Tel 212/ 780-0071 Fax 212/ 780-0076 E-mail rmgal@aol.com Website http://artnetweb.com/rmgallery

STEVE MILLER • AMERICAN FOLK ART •

•

17 East 96th Street, New York, New York 10128(212)348-5219 Gallery hours are from 1:00 pm until 6:00 pm,Tuesday through Saturday. Other hours are available by appointment.

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FREAK sHoW: SIDESHOW BANNER ART

SWEET MARIE

BY CARL HAMMER AND GIDEON BOSKER CHRONICLE

BOOKS

AVAILABLE AT FINE BOOKSTORES

A Large Selection of Vintage Sideshow Banners Available

CARL HAMMER GALLERY 200 West Superior Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610, 312.266.8512

FOLK ART VOLUME 22. NUMBER 3/ FALL 1997

FEATURES

THE GIFTED AMATEUR:THE ART AND LIFE OF CHARLES WOODWARD HUTSON William A. Fagaly

WILLIAM HAWKINS AND THE ART OF ASTONISHMENT Joanne Cubbs and Eugene W. Metcalf

All Elai of Came

JONATHAN BUDINGTON:FACE MAKER Arthur and Sybil Kern

Cover: Detail ofALLEGORICAL FIGURE: Artist unknown, probably New York City, 1840-1880, polychromed, carved wood, 54 x 17 x 18". Private collection

Folk Art is published four times a year by the Museum of American Folk Art,61 West 62nd Street, NY,NY 10023, Tel. 212/977-7170, Fax 212/977-8134. Prior to Fall 1992, Volume 17, Number 3,Folk Art was published as The Clarion. Annual subscription rate for members is included in membership dues. Copies are mailed to all members. Single copy $6.00. Published and copyright 1997 by the Museum of American Folk Art,61 West 62nd Street, NY,NY 10023. The cover and contents of Folk Art are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any manner without written consent. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the Museum of American Folk Art. Unsolicited manuscripts or photographs should be accompanied by return postage. Folk Art assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of such materials. Change of address: Please send both old and new addresses and allow five weeks for change. Advertising: Folk Art endeavors to accept advertisements only from advertisers whose reputation is recognized in the trade, but despite the care with which the advertising department screens photographs and texts submitted by its advertisers, it cannot guarantee the unquestionable authenticity of objects or quality of services advertised in its pages or offered for sale by its advertisers, nor can it accept responsibility for misunderstandings that may arise from the purchase or sale of objects or services advertised in its pages. The Museum is dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation of folk art and it is a violation of its principles to be involved in or to appear to be involved in the sale of works of art. For this mason,the Museum will not knowingly accept advertisements for Folk Art that illustrate or describe objects that have been exhibited at the Museum within one year of placing an advertisement.

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR'S COLUMN

DIRECTOR'S LEI IER

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW SPECIAL

BREAKFAST SYMPOSIUM

BOOK REVIEWS

MINIATURES

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

66,67

TRUSTEES/DONORS

MUSEUM REPRODUCTIONS PROGRAM

MUSEUM NEWS

FALL PROGRAMS

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 5

EDITOR'S

COLUMN

ROSEMARY GABRIEL

FOLK ART Rosemary Gabriel Editor and Publisher Jeffrey Kibler, The Magazine Group,Inc. Design Tanya Heinrich Production Editor Benjamin J. Boyington Copy Consultant John Hood Advertising Sales Mel Novatt Advertising Sales Craftsmen Litho Printers MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART

he Museum's exciting Fall season begins with our Opening Night Benefit Preview of the Fall Antiques Show at the Armory. This issue of Folk Art features a special Fall Antiques Show section, starting on page 17, that highlights some of the wonderful American antiques and folk art for sale at the show. The section also includes ticket information about our gala Benefit Preview party and the Museum's breakfast symposium "Collectors Speak Out." Look also for our expanded Miniatures section and highlights of our upcoming exhibitions, "The Art of William Hawkins" and "The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America." Our feature stories focus on three painters who are not only from different eras and different parts of the country, but from different worlds. Jonathan Budington, born in 1779, was active as a portrait painter for a very short time. His known works date from approximately 1796 to 1802. Arthur and Sybil Kern, renowned for their impeccable research, have pieced together what little information there is on this early artist by concentrating on the portraits that bear his name, analyzing the works that have been attributed to him, and studying the histories of his subjects. Budington painted the families of affluent Connecticut farmers and property owners. They were Connecticut Yankees, and their "handsome though unostentatious dress," ably captured by Budington, attests to their upper middle-class status. Budington was, most likely, like them."Jonathan Budington: Face Maker" starts on page 41. Charles Hutson, a New Orleans artist, was born in 1840. Unlike Budington, he started drawing and painting at age 65 and continued for 30 years, until his death. Hutson was a man of letters who rejected the law as a profession,fought for the South in the Civil War,and made a modest living for himself and his large family as a schoolteacher. Although recognized in 1942 by Sidney Janis in They Taught Themselves, Hutson is not well known outside of New Orleans. William A. Fagaly of the New Orleans Museum of Art brings Hutson and his highly imaginative works to light in his essay "The Gifted Amateur: The Art And Life of Charles SUNRISE OVER BAY ST. LOUIS Woodward Hutson," starting on page 50. Charles W. Hutson William Hawkins, by comparison, is a widely New Orleans, Louisiana c.1920-1930 recognized African American self-taught artist. Although he was born in rural Kentucky, Hawkins Pastel on cardboard 1 2" 13 9/ spent his adult life in urban Ohio. In "William Private collection Hawkins and the Art of Astonishment," art historians Joanne Cubbs and Eugene W. Metcalf write about Hawkins' pictorial universe, his inventive transformation of his source material, and his "unabashed pursuit of a popular audience." Their powerfully illustrated essay begins on page 58. I hope you enjoy reading this issue of Folk Art as much as we did putting it together, and I look forward to meeting you at the Fall Antiques Show and at our upcoming members' opening receptions for "The Art of William Hawkins" and "The Image Business."

/gee-'027 6 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Administration Gerard C. Wertkin Director Riccardo Salmona Deputy Director Jeffrey S. Grand Director ofFinance and Operations Susan Conlon Assistant to the Director Luis D. Garcia Accountant Natasha Ghany Accountant Charles L. Allen Mailroom/Reception Daniel Rodriguez Mailroom/Reception Collections & Exhibitions Stacy C. Hollander Curator Ann-Marie Reilly Registrar Judith Gluck Steinberg Assistant Registrar/ Coordinator, Traveling Exhibitions Sandra Wong Assistant Registrar Dale Gregory Gallery Manager Brian Pozun Weekend Gallery Manager Gina Bianco Consulting Conservator Elizabeth V. Warren Consulting Curator Howard Lanser Consulting Exhibition Designer Kenneth R. Bing Security Departments Cheryl Aldridge Director ofDevelopment Beth Bergin Membership Director Marie S. DiManno Director ofMuseum Shops Susan Flamm Public Relations Director Alice J. Hoffman Director ofLicensing Joan D. Sandler Director ofEducation and Collaborative Programs Janey Fire Photographic Services Chris Cappiello Membership Associate Jennifer A. Waters Development Associate Claudia Andrade Manager ofInformation Systems, Retail Operations Kathy Maqsudi Membership Assistant Wendy Barreto Membership Clerk Edith C. Wise Consulting Librarian Eugene P. Sheehy Volunteer Librarian Rita Keckeissen Volunteer Librarian Katya Ullmann Library Assistant Programs Lee Kogan Director, Folk Art Institute/Senior Research Fellow Madelaine Gill Administrative Assistant/Education Barbara W.Cate Educational Consultant Dr. Marilynn Karp Director, New York University Master's and Ph.D. Program in Folk Art Studies Dr. Judith Reiter Weissman Coordinator, New York University Program Arlene Hochman Volunteer Docent Coordinator Lynn Steuer Volunteer Outreach Coordinator Museum Shop Staff Managers: Dorothy Gargiulo, Caroline Hohenrath, Kelly Laun, Ursula Morillo, Rita Pollitt, Brian Pozun; Mail Order: Beverly McCarthy; Security: Bienvenido Medina; Volunteers: Marie Anderson, Olive Bates,Sue Ellen Diamond,Sally Frank, Millie Gladstone, Edith Gusoff, Ann Hannon, Bernice Hoffer, Elizabeth Howe,Annette Levande, Arleen Luden, Katie McAuliffe, Nancy Mayer, Marie Peluso, Judy Rich, Frances Rojack,Phyllis Selnick, Lola Silvergleid, Maxine Spiegel, Myrna Tedles, Mary Wamsley Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shops 62 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10112-1507 212/247-5611 Two Lincoln Square(Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th) New York, NY 10023-6214 212/496-2966 Administrative Offices Museum of American Folk Art 61 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023-7015 212/977-7170, Fax 212/977-8134, http://www.folkartmuse.org

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Allegorical Watercolor, American circa 1870. Tells the story of man's journey through temptation, sin and punishment in terms of apocryphal religions that were endemic in those times. The Millerites were one of the better known sects. 41 1/4 inches x 583/8 inches.

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ALLAN L. DANIEL AMERICAN FOLK ART (212) 799-0825 By Appointment Only

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Birth Certificate for Isaac Hander, 1839. Probably Lancaster County, Pa., unknown maker, stylistically related to Samuel Benz.

We encourage you to contact us concerning your fraktur interests. We have numerous examples in stock and are always active buyers and sellers.

DAVID WHEATCROFT 220 East Main Street, Westborough, Massachusetts 01581 508-366-1723

AMERICANA AT AUCTION William Doyle Galleries will offer American Furniture and Decorations, including folk paintings, historical prints, painted furniture, silver and ceramics on Wednesday, November 19, 1997 at 10 am.The sale will be on view November 15-18. For information, catalogues or a free auction schedule, please contact our Client Services Department. For consignment of items to upcoming auctions, please contact David A. Gallager. Illustrated here: Joseph Whiting Stock, John and Albert Pardee, 1840, oil on canvas, 48 x 36". Property from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Denison H. Hatch. ay 4, 1977. Exhibited: Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, Feb

ILLIAM DOYLE GALLERIES AUCTIONEERS

APPRAISERS

175 EAST 87TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10128 TEL: 212.427.2730 AX: 212.369.0892, ON THE WEB: HTTP://WVVW.DOYLEGALLERIES.COM

Keith Goodhart

The King With Beak, 1996, wood, metal and mixed media, 50" x 10.5" x 10"

CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY 560 Broadway, Suite 405B New York, NY 10012

tele: (212) 226-3768 fax: (212) 226-0155 Nev Sculpture Keith Goodhart: Like the First Man September 11 through October 11, 1997

DIRECTOR'S

LETTER

GERARD C. WERTK1N

or a publication with a full-time staff of only two,Folk Art is a prodigious undertaking. Every ninety days, a new issue with a variety of essays and departments must be in the mail to Museum members—including a growing number of universities, museums,and public libraries. Adhering to this schedule would be a difficult enough task were it the only concern of the staff of the magazine, but Rosemary Gabriel, editor and publisher, and Tanya Heinrich, production editor, are also responsible for all printed materials emanating from the Museum.In any year, this typically includes a range of projects,from the editing and production of an exhibition catalog and the processing of information for the Museum's web site to the preparation of educational brochures, invitations, and even business cards. Few museums of any size produce a quarterly magazine of the quality and complexity of Folk Art, now in its twenty-sixth year of publication. It is one of the very special benefits of membership in the Museum of American Folk Art. As director, I am proud of Folk Art's record of public service, and of its gifted staff. I am pleased to recognize Rosemary Gabriel and Tanya Heinrich for their efforts on behalf of the Museum. "Cracking the whip" in order to adhere to Folk Art's production schedule is one of Rosemary's great talents—which means that! must complete this column in early summer in order for you to read it in September,just prior to the exciting Fall season. Ordinarily, this might obligate me to anticipate coming events in my remarks or risk appearing stale, but the Museum has planned so many memorable programs for July and August that comment is more than warranted. Besides, as I sit here on a beautiful Sunday, it is difficult to think too far ahead. Summer at the Museum often implies an exploration into the world of quilts and the generations of women(and sometimes men!) who nurtured this great American tradition. This year is no exception. On July 12, the Museum inaugurated "Old-Time Favorites, New-Time Fashions: Quilt Revival 1910-1950" with the Museum's consulting curator, Elizabeth V. Warren, and her associate, Sharon Eisenstat, exhibition co-curators, as our tour guides. This splendid exhibition is one of a series of chronological presentations of the American quiltmaking heritage that the Museum embarked on several years ago, and it brings us to the threshold of the explosion of interest in quilting characterizing the contemporary scene. If you have not had the opportunity to see "Old-Time Favorites," it remains on view at the Museum until September 28. A full season of quilt-related programming,including workshops, demonstrations, and lunchtime talks, is underway, culminating in the fascinating Quilt Weekend, September 12 to 13. If this is a busy period at home,the Museum's traveling exhibition program is especially broad-based and active this season."Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition," for example, opened at the Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo on July 3,following its American tour. In anticipation of the special celebratory events, Beth Bergin and Chris Cappiello of the Membership Department organized a Folk Art Explorers' Club tour of Norway, which was an outstanding introduction to the country and its folk art. I joined the Folk Art Explorers in Oslo for this international affirmation of the importance of the Museum's programs.

Summer is vacation time, of course, and tens of thousands of Americans and visitors from overseas head for Cape Cod, Massachusetts. If you were on the Cape, as I was, you may well have seen the Museum's exhibition "The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America" at Heritage Plantation of Sandwich. Among the sculptural works included in the exhibition is a fine example from the Museum's collection. A 1981 gift from the Museum's good friends Sanford Smith and Patricia Smith, this figure is of an Indian woman holding a rose; it was carved in the New York City shop of Samuel Robb in the late nineteenth century. Organized by guest curator Ralph Sessions, the exhibit, a comprehensive introduction to a significant art form, will remain in Sandwich until October 19. It opens here at the Museum on November 8. I am deeply grateful to the General Cigar Co., the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Folk Art Society, and Cigar Aficionado for their generous grants in support of this exhibition. For visitors to New York, may I suggest that you consider a meal at the American Festival Café in Rockefeller Center? Stacy Hollander, the Museum's curator, and Ann-Marie Reilly, our registrar, have installed a summer exhibition at the restaurant from the Museum's collection of Latin American folk art, to complement a Latin American theme in the menu. There is always a display of folk art—organized by the Museum—at the American Festival Café, a wonderful place to experience the ambiance of midtown Manhattan and the spirit of America.*

INDIAN WITH ROSE Probably Robb workshop New York City c.1880 Polychromed carved wood 66/ 1 2 17 19/ 1 4" Museum of American Folk Art, gift of Sanford Smith and Patricia Smith, 1981.15.1

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 11

Robert Cargo

FOLK ART GALLERY Contemporary Folk Art • Haitian Spirit Flags Southern, Folk, and African-American Quilts

Herbert Singleton. Moses Receiving the Ten Commandments. Relief-carved wooden panel, enamel paint, 47 x 20 inches, ca. 1988. 2314 Sixth Street, Downtown, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401 • Home Phone 205-758-8884 Open weekends only and by appointment • Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 2 to 5 p.m.

AARON BIRNBAUM Paintings 1960-1996 The Aldrich Museum Of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut will present an exhibition of paintings by the 102 year old self taught painter Aaron Birnbaum from September 14 to November 9, 1997

Aaron Birnbaum is represented by K.S. Art NY. NY.

MOON LiGHT AND cfriUSIC/

The Enchanted World of Gayleen Aiken

GAYLEEN AIKEN Moonlight and Music by Gayleen Aiken and Rachel Klein

Announcing the publication of a new book from Harry N. Abrams Inc. o 째째

04/6 7 EN

o' artist, film star, campec comic cartoonist, musician

%AMP `R../IC/Iti klEiN writer. hiker, musician, collector

Gayleen Aiken is represented by K.S. Art NY. NY.

K.S. Art 91 FRANKLIN STREET NY NY 10013 BY APPOINTMENT 212 219 1489

1895-1982 Limestone Co. Texas African-American, self-taught artist, school teacher and historian.

Webb Gallery

209-211 W. Franklin Waxahachie, TX 75165 • 972-938-8085

E-mail: webbart@onramp.net

SELF OF

URL http:\\rampages.onramp.net\-webbart

-TAUGHT THE

TEXAS

TWENTIETH

ARTISTS

CENTURY

Spirited Journeys An exhibition featuring 150 works of art by 35 Texas artists Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery The University ofTexas at Austin August 29— October 19, 1997 with travel throughout Texas through October 1998

14 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

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For more information or to order the fully illustrated catalog, write the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, 23rd and San Jacinto,Austin, TX 78712 or call 512-471-7324.

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Mark Cole Greene,South Fork Ranch, 1996,Felt-tip marker on posterboard, 24 x 44 in. Courtesy of theWebb Gallery, Waxahachie,Texas. Photo by George Holmes.

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"Perpatraitor," May 23, 1991, ink on paper, 28 x 22 inches

MARILEE STILES STERN

PHYLLIS KIND GALLERY 136 GREENE STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10012 TEL: 212 925 1200 FAX: 212 941 7841

Principal Auctioneer: Christopher Burge #761543

CHRISTIE'S

FOLK ART Christie's is now accepting consignments for our forthcoming sales. Inquiries: Susan Kleckner, Director of American Folk Art at 212 546 1181

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if.,11 4e2% The Laing Family polychrome ink decorated family record book, The Record Book Artist, active circa 1800-1821, Frederick County, Virginia, and Berkeley County, West Virginia, circa 1801. Sold in the Important American Furniture, Folk Art and Decorative Arts sale on June 17,1997 for $36,800.

502 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022 tel: 212 546 1000 fax: 212 980 8163 Catalogue subscriptions: 800 395 6300 on-line: www.christies.com

1997

FALL

ANTIQUES

SHOW

Museum of American Folk Art Opening Night Benefit Preview Wednesday, September 24 6:00-9:00 P.M.

e sure to be with us on Wednesday, September 24, or the 1997 Opening Night Benefit Preview of the Fall Antiques Show at the Armory. Benefit Chairmen Wendy and Stephen Lash and Donna and Elliott Slade, and Advisory Chairman Lucy C. .

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Danziger, are planning a spectacular party for the Show's 19th year. Country Living magazine will join with the Museum as a Corporate Leader of the Preview. All of the wine and liquor for the event

THE JOHN L. HASBROUCK James Bard New York, New York 1865 Oil on canvas 30/ 1 4 50" Museum of American Folk Art, gift of Mr. G.L. (Jack) Reeves, Jr., 1984.18.1

has been generously donated by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., and this year's preview invitation—design and printing courtesy of Christie's—features the beautiful painting The John L. Hasbrouck (1865), by James Bard. Educational Chairmen Kathy Booth, Vera Jelinek, Anne Mai, and Julie Palley have planned a wonderful symposium titled "Collectors Speak Out." The symposium will take place on Thursday, September 25, beginning with breakfast at 8:30 A.M. in the Tiffany Room at the Armory. For more information see page 20, and for Symposium reservations and tickets, please call the Museum's Education department at 212/977-7170.

To make reserva-

tions for the Opening Night Benefit Preview, call Jennifer Waters at the Museum's administrative offices at 212/977-7170. Preview tickets are priced at $750 ($680 of which is tax-deductible) for Benefactors, $500($430 tax-deductible) for Patrons, $300($240 tax-deductible) for Donors, $175 ($125 tax-deductible) for Supporters, and $75 ($25 tax-deductible) for Juniors (those 30 and under). The evening's proceeds help support the Museum's ongoing educational and exhibition programs.

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 17

ALLAN KATZ Americana

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Carousel Goat, Charles Looff, Brooklyn, New York, circa 1890

175 Ansonia Road, Woodbridge, Connecticut 06525 • (203) 397-8144

1997

ANTIQUES

SHOW

ghe

MANHATTAN ART & ANTIQUES CENTER The Nation's Largest and Finest Antiques Center. Over 100 galleries offering Period Furniture, Jewelry, Silver, Americana, Orientalia, Africana and other Objets d'Art. 1050 SECOND AVENUE(AT 55TH ST.) NEW YORK, N.Y. 10022

ANTIQUES SHOW Li

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The Museum of American Folk Art presents

PRESENTS COLLECTORS SPEAK OUT Thursday, September 25 8:30-11:00 A.M. The Tiffany Room,Park Avenue Armory Park Avenue and 67th Street New York City Presenters

FIRE-RELATED FOLK ART Kathy Booth THE EYE OF THE COLLECTOR: AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLK TRADITIONS David C. Driskell, Ph.D. AMERICAN FOLK PAINTINGS AND WATERCOLORS J.E. Jelinek, M.D. PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN DECORATIVE ARTS Joan M.Johnson

Moderator

Gerard C. Wertkin Director, Museum of American Folk Art

Tickets

$35 for Museum members $45 for non-members

Exuberant, colorful, folky floral Bouquet room size hooked rug, 9'x12'. Maine, circa 1930.

LAURA FISHER/ ANTIQUE QUILTS &AMERICANA Gallery #84

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New York City's largest, most exciting selection of Antique Quilts, Hooked Rugs, Coverlets, Paisley Shawls, Beacon Blankets, Vintage Accessories and American Folk Art.

Laura Fisher: Tel: 212-838-2596 Monday—Saturday 11AM-6PM The Manhattan Art & Antiques Center: Tel: 212-355-4400 • Fax: 212-355-4403 Open Daily 10:30-6, Sun. 12-6 Convenient Parking • Open to the Public

FALL 1997 FOLK AR I

Includes breakfast and a raffle ticket for one free course at the Folk Art Institute. The raffle will be held following the symposium; ticket holders must be present to win. Note: The Fall Antiques Show will be open to the public at 11:00 A.M. General admission to the show is $10. A special discounted admission ticket is available to symposium participants for $8. This ticket must he purchased in advance, with your symposium reservation. To register, please call the Museum's Education department at 212/977-7170. This symposium is supported by a generous gift from Fred, Jeff, and Alan Lowenfels in honor of George F. Shaskan, Jr.

BRo's 'REAL GEM i01

AG ER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL FREDERICKS

John Sideli Art & Antiques Stylish Objects ofthe 18th, 19th &20th Centuries 214 ROUTE 71 • PO BOX 149 • NORTH EGREMONT, MA 01252 • 413.528.2789

1997

FALL

ANTIQUES

AMERICAN

SHOW

PRIMITIVE

GALLERY

594 BROADWAY #205 NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 966 - 1530

MON - SAT 11 -6

American Folk Sculpture - horses and more at the Fall Antique Show

Rare Greyhound Weathervane with exceptional surface

CA 1860

John Sideli Art & Antiques Stylish Objects ofthe 18th, 19th &20th Centuries ROUTE71 • PO BOX 149 • NORTH 1:C,121:MOVI MA 01252 • 413 528 278L

OLDE HOPE ANTIQUES, INC. Anonymous artist. Oil on flour sack. 1 1/2 x 271/4 inches With original frame. American, c.1890 Pennsylvania decorated chest. Original paint. c.189 46"W. x 2o"D x 26 1/"It.

Patrick Bellâ&#x20AC;˘Edwin Hild 6465 ROUTE 202, NEW HOPE, PA 18938 215-862-5055 FAX: 215-862-0550

1997

FALL

ANTIQUES

SHOW

American Folk Art Sidney Gecker

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN PAINTED BY EMILY EASTMAN LOUDEN,NEW HAMPSHIRE CIRCA 1820 WATERCOLOR ON PAPER 13% x 10% INCHES

226 West 21st Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 (212)929-8769, Appointment Suggested Subject to prior sale.

ELLIOTT & GRACE SNYDER • Box 598 • South Egremont, MA 01258 • 413-528-3581

24 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

WALTERS • BENISEK ART S. ANTIQUES ONE AMBER LANE • NORTHAMPTON • MASSACHUSETTS • 01060 • • ( 4 1 3) 5 8 6 • 3 9 0 9 • • BENISEK WALTERS • MARY DON

UNIQUE DUCK HUNTING BOAT/CONFIDENCE DECOY. EASTERN UNITED STATES. LAST QUARTER NINETEENTH CENTURY. TEN AND ONE HALF FEET LONG.

1 99 7

ANTIQUES

SHOW

BOOK

REVIEWS

Circa 1900. Pennsylvania origin.

Pottery Works: Potteries of New York State's Capital District and Upper Hudson Region

Warren F. Broderick and William Bouck Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Teaneck, New Jersey Associated University Presses Cranbury, New Jersey 1995 288 pages, 255 illustrations $59.50 hardcover

STELLA RUBIN

Fine Antique Quilts and Decorations 12300 Glen Road Potomac, MD 20854 (Near Washington, D.C.) By appointment (301) 943-4187

QUILTS

PROVENCE ...the book availablefrom yourfavorite bookseller ...the quilts availablefrom

Kathryn Berenson 202/686-2727 Exhibiting at the Fall Antiques Show at the Armory September 25 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 28

26 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Pottery Works: Potteries ofNew York State's Capital District and Upper Hudson Region is a valuable book that increases the store of research on this nineteenthcentury ceramics hub, the confluence of the major river and canal system of the Northeast. The authors, Warren F. Broderick and William Bouck, are both natives of the capital city area and have each previously researched and written articles and books on local history, focusing on regional artists and the ceramics industry. Their unique personal insight is evident throughout. The book is organized in chapters that correspond to the cities in which the potteries are located, including Albany, West Troy, Lansingburgh, and Fort Edward. The histories of the individual enterprises have been laid out in detail; the authors' depth of research is considerable, and no owner's deed or directory entry has been omitted. These individual histories, most often convoluted, describe family relationships and falling-outs, buyouts and moves, and are at once charming and tedious. However,as a research guide these same facts are invaluable in tracing the trail of a specific pot or style. It is rather remarkable how much moving and family upheaval occurred in the nineteenth century. Of special interest to the reader is the description of the early manufacture of pottery,

reproduced in the appendix from an 1877 book written by J.S. Bulkeley, The Leading Industrial Pursuits ofGlens Falls, Sandy Hill & Fort Edward. This explanation, one of the few contemporaneous technical descriptions I have seen, helps explain the potting process from clay preparation to finished piece. Also especially satisfying are the visuals used liberally through the text. Old maps, drawings, billheads, photographs of yesterday's pot shops, and views of the sites as they appear today provide graphic reference points and create a broad comprehensive framework upon which to hang facts that are often rather dry. While the abundant photographs of the pots offer excellent illustrations of points made in the text, their amateurish quality, with surroundings of grass and stone walls, are cluttered and distracting at best. I also found that I greatly missed a map of the entire region that would clearly show the location of the potting centers and the rivers and canals that affected their trade. The reproduction of an 1824 map of the area is very difficult to read and doesn't indicate all of the cities and canals that were so vital to the industry. On the whole,Pottery Works is a comprehensive and attractive book and would be a most pleasing addition to the library of anyone interested in following the capital city's ceramics industry through its many stages of development. Unlike most books concerned with pottery, this integrates the discussion of the pots themselves with an encompassing view of the environment in which they were produced. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Meg Smeal Meg Smeal is a professional potter and a graduate ofthe Museum of American Folk Art's Folk Art Institute, where she has taught "The History of American Ceramics."

Sanford Smith's 19th Annual

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW at the Armory SEPTEMBER 25-28, 1997 THURSDAY & FRIDAY

11AM - 8PM • SATURDAY

ANA. SUNDAY

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he Tiffany Room • Park Avenue Armory Information & Reservations:(212) 977-7170

THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY Park Avenue & 67' Street New York City

A "splendid marketplace characterized by a commitment to excellence and an unerring quality in presentation" -Gerard Wertkin, Director Museum ofAmerican Folk Art "A gutsy show...exciting, overwhelming, and frankly, dazzling." -The Maine Antiques Digest "Bound to change New Yorkers' views of antiques shows." -The New York Times

Produced & Managed by SANFORD L. SMITH & ASSOCIATES 68 East 7th Street, New York, NY 10003 • 212.777.5218 Fax: 212.477.6490 email: ssmithasso@aol.com • www.freeverse.com/SLS/fas.html

Ginger Young Gallery Southern Self-Taught Art

.71

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IterN 4'14

By appointment 919.932.6003 Works by more than four dozen artists, including: Georgia Blizzard Rudolph Bostic • Linda Bruton • Richard Burnside Raymond Coins • Yahrah Dahvah • Patrick Davis • Howard Finster Sybil Gibson • Lonnie Holley • Anderson Johnson • Woodie Long R. A. Miller • Reginald Mitchell • Sarah Rakes • Royal Robertson J.P. Scott • Lorenzo Scott • Earl Simmons • Jimmie Lee Sudduth Mose Tolliver • Fred Webster • Myrtice West • Artist Chuckie Williams

For a free video catalogue or a price list please contact: Ginger Young Gallery 5802 Brisbane Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 Phone/Fax 919.932.6003 E-mail: gingerart@aolcom Website:http://members.aol.com/gingerart2/

Taking Flight by Tom Jordan, 1996, 22" tall Sweetgum twigs, leaf skeletons, locust thorns, dogwood bark, locust seed pods, briar thorns, and lichen

CHARLES HUTSON 1840-1936 FEATURING OILS, PASTELS & WATERCOLORS BY CHARLES HUTSON ALSO WORKS BY: ARTIST CHUCKIE,DAVID BUTLER, WILLIAM DAWSON,MILTON FLETCHER, CLEMENTINE HUNTER, MAY KUGLER,SISTER GERTRUDE MORGAN,SULTAN ROGERS,J.P. SCOTT, MARY T. SMITH, MOSE TOLLIVER,EDGAR TOLSON,WILLIE WHITE, CHIEF WILLEY,JOSEPH YOAKUM AND OTHERS. "The Tall Bush," oil on cardboard, 11" x 121/4", c. 1934

WILLIAM PELTIER • FINE AND FOLK ART 376 Millaudon St. • New Orleans, LA 70118 • By Appointment Fax (504) 862-7403 Phone (504) 861-3196

Victor 'Joseph Gait° Jesse Aaron Rex Clawson Mr. Eddy Victor Joseph Gatto (estate) Lonnie Holley S.L. Jones Lawrence Lebduska Charlie Lucas Justin McCarthy Old Ironsides Pry Popeye Reed Max Romain Ody Saban Jack Savitsky Clarence Stringfleld Mose Tolliver Chief Willey George Williams Luster Willis ... and others

EPSTE1N/POWELL 22 Wooster St., New York, N.Y. 10013 By Appointment(212)226-7316

Planetary Scene #3, circa 1950, 24 x 30, Oil on Canvas (One of Gatto's 'Planetary"series,four of which are currently included in The American Museum of Visionary Art's Exhibit, "The End Is Near".)

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 29

MINIATURES

COMPILED BY TANYA HEINRICH

Emery Blagdon Installation In France Emery Blagdon's "Healing artist and inventor in a farmyard Machines" are on view at the shed in north-central Nebraska. Biennale de Lyon d'Art ContemBlagdon believed that each piece porain at the Halle Tony Gamier was imbued with a unique energy in Lyon, France, through Septem- field that promoted healing and ber 24. Organized by curator Har- prevented disease, and that when ald Szeemann, the exhibition the pieces were installed collecincludes the phantasmagoric tively the effects were synergistiassemblage of 377 hanging and cally multiplied. For more inforfreestanding sculptures—of mation, please call The Emery wood, wire, tinfoil, tin cans, ribBlagdon Project in New York bon, and strings of Christmas tree City at 212/732-3644. lights—created by the self-taught FRAKTUR BAPTISMAL CERTIFICATE FOR ISAAC WEIWER, BORN 1819 Attributed to the Durham Township Artist Tmicam Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania C. 1819 Ink and watercolor on paper 16 13" Collection of the Mercer Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania CIRCULAR HANGING SCULPTURE Emery Blagdon Nebraska 1958-1968 Boiler wire, copper wire, steel wire, plastic beads, and tinfoil 49 29" Collection of The Emery Blagdon Project, courtesy of Dan Dryden

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Major Exhibition of Bucks County Fraktur

Aaron Birnbaum Retrospective "Aaron Birnbaum: Paintings Europe as well as bold, vivid, and 1960-1996" will be on view at sometimes humorous images The Aldrich Museum of Contem- abstracted from photographs. A porary Art in Ridgefield, Conn., chartered bus will be traveling from September 14 to November from SoHo in New York City to 9. Birnbaum, a 102-year-old self- the opening reception on Sunday, taught painter who has lived in September 14. To make bus Brooklyn for the last 84 years, reservations or for more informapaints romanticized recollections tion, please call 203/438-4519. of his childhood in Eastern

hi, N11.1 -

30 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

!llial

VERRAZANO BRIDGE Aaron Birnbaum Brooklyn 1994 Acrylic and varnish on wood 19 43" Collection of H.S. Art, New York

An important collection of more than 200 18th- and 19th-century Pennsylvania-German fraktur from Bucks County, Pa., will be on view at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pa.,from September 13, 1997, to January 4, 1998. "From Heart to Hand: Discovering Bucks County Fraktur" will feature the chief forms of the colorful, hand-decorated manuscripts created by parochial schoolmasters within the community, including baptismal certificates, writing samples, house

blessings, bookplates, rewards of merit, and religious manuscripts. A symposium held on October 25 will feature speakers Joel Alderfer, Cory Amsler, Corinne and Russell Earnest, Mary Jane Lederach Hershey,Isaac Clarence Kulp,Terry McNealy, John Ruth, and Dr. Don Yoder. Gerard C. Wertkin will deliver the keynote address. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a catalog. For more information, please call 215/345-0210.

Haitian Art in California "Haiti—Caribbean Spirit: Images of Brush and Chisel" is on view at the Mingei International Museum of Folk Art's Satellite in University Towne Centre, San Diego, through October. The exhibition includes

oil drum sculptures by Georges Liautaud, paintings by Hector Hippolyte, and works from the St. Soleil Commune. For more information, please call 619/453-5300.

TOP LEFT: Dramatic and colorful illustration of a mythical creature, first half 19th century, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. View size 14' x 12", in a painted period frame. TOP RIGHT Illustration of the "Journey to the Temple of Honor," watercolor on papa; signed and dated by the woman who executed the drawing, Clara Dawson, Class of 1871, Newburgh Female Seminary. Bright and mint condition, view size 10" x 16 1/2", in a period frame. BOTTOM LEFT Memorial, watercolor on paper, c. 1820, possibly from Springfield, Massachusetts. Signed at bottom center, "Executed by A.D.)." View size 23" x 18,in a period gilt frame. Another example by the same hand, but unsigned, is in the American Museum in Britain, Bath, England. BOTTOM RIGHT Emotionally honest portrait of a black preacher, second half 19th century, oil on stretched canvas, 25" x 25, unframed. There is another, unfinished, portrait on the back of the canvas.

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FALL 1997 FOLK ART 31

MINIATURES

Gallery at The University of Texas at Austin through October 19. Organized by curator Lynne Adele, the exhibition features works by Chelo Amezcua,Eddie Arning, Henry Ray Clark, C.A.A. Dellschau, Peter Paul Drgac, Ezekiel Gibbs, Mark Cole Green, Felix "Fox" Harris, Frank Jones, Ike Morgan, Xmeah ShaEla'ReEl, David Strickland, Rev. Johnnie Swearingen, and Willard "The Texas Kid" Watson. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 200-page catalog and will travel throughout Texas. For more information, please call 512/471-7324.

UNTITLED Peter Paul Drgac (1883-1976) Caldwell, Texas 1972 Enamel on paper 16 x 12" Collection of Leslie Muth Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Horse Glorified

Matt Lamb in Illinois "Matt Lamb: Obsessive Spirit," on view at the Rockford Art Museum in Rockford, Ill., through October 12,features the work of a self-taught artist who began painting in oils at the age of 85 in 1985. Lamb's heavily painted canvases are dramatic, colorful, and surreal. For more information, please call 815/968-2787.

32 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

"Majesty and Spirit: The Image of the Horse in America" is on view at the New York State Historical Association's Fenimore House Museum in Cooperstown through December 28. With examples of American folk art, American Indian art, and American fine art, the exhibition explores the speed, beauty, strength, and grace of horses and how the animal has transformed our culture. For more information, please call 607/547-1400.

Reassessed and Readymade "Found: The Collector's Eye," an exhibition offound objects both natural and manufactured, will be on view at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago from September 14 to November 15. Organized by curator Eugenie Johnson, the exhibition will provide a new context for such overlooked objects as metal balloon molds, handmade hangers, a gate grown from tree branches, antique bone toothbrush handles, and a tray of glass eyes. For more information, please call 773/929-7122.

Hall, Vogele & Since Hall Two concurrent exhibitions of American folk art at the Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin will augment its permanent reinstallation of"The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art," a collection of 270 works from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. "Personal Voice: Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Ruth and Robert Vogele," featuring works by Felipe Archuleta, William Dawson, Clementine Hunter, S.L. Jones, Carl McKenzie, Simon Sparrow,Jimmy Lee Sudduth, and Charlie Willeto, will be on view from October 10 to December 7. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog. "Since Hall: New Acquisitions of Folk and Self-Taught Art" will feature many of the works added to the museum's collection since 1989, when it acquired the Hall Collection. The exhibition, organized by director and curator Russell Bowman, will include works by Thornton

Douglas Bening

Lone Star Self-Taught The cultural diversity of the vast land of Texas is explored in "Spirited Journeys: Self-Taught Texas Artists of the Twentieth Century," an exhibition of works by a distinguished selection of self-taught artists on view at the Archer M.Huntington Art

UNTITLED (glass eye tray) Maker unknown Italy C. 1920s Wood, felt, and glass 13 7 Collection of Francois Robert

Dial, Sr., Ralph Fasanella, and Bessie Harvey, as well as such European outsider artists as Madge Gill, Adolf Wifolfli, and Friedrich Schroder-Sonnenstern. For more information, please call 414/224-3200.

PAIR OF BLACK FIGURES Unidentified artist Hamilton, Ohio c. 1880 Painted wood, hemp, plastic buttons, glass eyes, plaster, and metal Figure at left: 53/ 1 2 18 19"; figure at right: 56/ 1 2 18/ 1 2 x 19" Collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum, The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art

Matt Lamb Rockford Art Museum Rockford, IL August - October, 1997

Catalog with essays by Donald Kuspit and Michael Hall

Represented exclusively by

Fassbender Gallery 309W. Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60610 312-951-5979 Untitled, 1996, Oil on canvas, 69 x 61 inches.

METRO

C7.1.11 American Folk Art C-01

-STOP 3

COLLINS" â&#x20AC;&#x17E;clik\C AiG 9 831

Bus Stop

carved stood on board with acrylic, approx. 2'x4

RO COLLINS

KOELSCH GALLERY 3202 Mercer Houston, Texas 77027 (713) 626-0175

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 33

MINIATURES

GANADO RED QUILT Jennifer Tsosie INavajoI Flagstaff, Arizona c. 1989 Cotton 60 Collection of the Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing

Conferences and Seminars A two-day intensive conference will be held at the New York University School of Continuing Education in New York City on November 7 and 8."To Express the Spirit of a People: American Folk Art" will offer a series of lectures on folk art and related issues of interest. The sessions will be complemented by a reception and viewing of the exhibition "The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America" at the Museum of American Folk Art, as well as receptions at galleries throughout the city. Speakers will include Gerard C. Wertkin, Stacy C. Hollander, Lee Kogan,and Elizabeth V. Warren of the Museum of American Folk Art, as well as Robert Booth,Paul D'Ambrosio, Nancy Druclunan, Helaine Fendelman,Fred Giampietro, Robert Greenberg, Michael Hall, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Juanita Holland, C.R. Jones, Susan D. Kleckner, Jack Lindsey, Barbara Luck,Frank Maresca, Charlotte Emans Moore,Sumpter T. Priddy III, Betty Ring, David Schorsch, Ralph Sessions, Gayle Wright Sirmans, and Elizabeth Stillinger. For more information, please call conference director Lisa Koenigsburg at 212/998-7130. The Historical Society of Early American Decoration will hold its semiannual convention at the Marriott Hotel in Williamsburg, Va., September 21 to 23. The theme will be "Back to the Future" and will focus on the conservation of artifacts. On view will be decorated papiermĂ˘chĂŠ, tin, and wood items. Admission is free and the public is welcome. For more information, please call convention chairperson Carol Heinz at 703/978-4612.

34 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

The Folk Art Society of America's 10th annual conference will be held October 16 to 19 in Milwaukee to coincide with exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan. The event's symposium,"Midwestern Folk Environments, Their Conservation and Preservation," will feature presenters Russell Bowman,Bert Hunecke, Tony Rajer, and Lisa Stone. The weekend's activities Quilt Exhibitions Roundup will also include tours of local collections, a gala dinner and Six exhibitions showcasing quilts Museum of Early Southern Decoauction, and discussion groups. will be on view this fall at the rative Arts and Old Salem CollecFor more information, call following venues: tions 1790-1890," Museum of 800/527-3655. "Stories from the Heart: PictoEarly Southern Decorative Arts The Winterthur Museum in rial Quilts from the Shelburne (910/721-7360), Winston-Salem, Winterthur, Del., will present Museum Collection," Shelburne N.C., September 20, 1997, to "Ceramics in America, Museum (802/985-3346), ShelJanuary 11, 1998. 1640-1860: A Seminar in Cele-burne,Vt., through October 26. "Patterns of Progress: Quilts bration of the Twenty-Fifth "Stitches in Time: American in the Machine Age," Autry Anniversary of the Ceramics in Quilts from the Permanent ColMuseum of Western Heritage America Winterthur Conference, lection," Dallas Museum of Art (213/677-2000), Los Angeles, 1972" on October 24 and 25. The (214/922-1200)in Texas through October 18, 1997, to January 25, conference will feature scholarly January 12, 1998. 1998. presentations on ceramics from "Starburst Splendor: Selections "To Honor and Comfort: East Coast archaeological sites from the Minnesota Quilt Project," Native Quilting Traditions," a and the availability of English The Minneapolis Institute of Arts traveling exhibition, National and French ceramics in the (612/870-3000)in Minnesota Museum of the American Indian Colonies and the young republic. through April 19, 1998. (212/825-6700), New York City, For more information, please call "Quilts, Coverlets, CounterOctober 19, 1997, to January 4, 302/888-4600. panes: Selections from the 1998.

African American Art in Ohio and Tennessee Two visual surveys celebrating "Yet Still We Rise: African the vast contributions of African American Art in Cleveland and American artists in the states of Columbus 1920-1970," on view Ohio and Tennessee are on view through October 18 at the Ohio this fall. Arts Council's Rife Gallery Works by self-taught artists (614/466-2613)in Columbus. William Hawkins, Beni Kosh, Works by self-taught artists and Elijah Pierce are included in William Edmondson, Bessie

Harvey, and Joe Light are included in "Visions of My People: African-American Art in Tennessee," on view through October 26 at The Tennessee State Museum (615/741-2692) in Nashville.

de Morgan Sister Gertru 1980) (1900-

Collection Includes: Clementine Hunter, Sam Doyle, Willie Willie, Don McLaws, Leroy Almon, Sr., David Butler, Raymond Coins, Rhinestone Cowboy, Burgess Dulaney, Howard Finster, Reginald Gee, Lonnie Holley, Clementine Hunter, James Harrold Jennings, M.C. 50 Jones, S.L. Jones, Albert Louden, Charlie Lucas, Ike Morgan, J.B. Murray, B.F. Perkins, Sarah Rakes, Royal Robertson, Nellie Mae Rowe, Mary T. Smith, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver, Luster Willis, and "Artist Chuckie" Williams.

GALLEQY

GILLEY8 A

MES

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Sister Gertrude Morgan's "New Jerusalem" 8 1/2" x 7", Mixed media on board

Gene Beecher

Internet Gallery www.hustontown.com sept Gene Beecher recent works Oct Folk Photography real photo postcards Nov Ed Ott celebrating the spirit Exhibiting...Morrow Paddock, David Roth Daniel Toepfer, Ruby C. Williams

H USTONTOWN FORT LOUDON, PA

ebeecher@epix.net

717.369.5248

35 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

FRANK J. MIELE

MINIATURES

CON TEMPOR AR Y AMERICAN FOLK ART

gallery

"CRITTERS" MASKS of BOB JUSTIN September 2 through October 5 This exhibition will feature the pieces from the exhibit, Works by Bob Justin, at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey

1086 Madison Avenue (at 82nd Street) New York, NY 10028 (212) 249-7250

36 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

David Butler 1898-1997 David Butler, a distinguished Butler's first exhibition was 20th-century self-taught artist at the New Orleans Museum of and master of polychromed tin Art in 1976,followed in the late sculpture, died in his sleep on 1970s by a traveling exhibition May 16 at the Saint Mary Guest sponsored by the U.S. InformaHome in Morgan City, La. His tion Service in Eastern Europe. fantastic and whimsical human, animal, plant, and geometric forms decorated his yard in Patterson, La. Discovered by William Fagaly in the 1970s, he was one of 20 artists featured in the seminal traveling exhibition "Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980," organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,in 1982. Fagaly, a longtime friend of the artist, said "Besides Butler's extraordinary art, I admired the way he thought and analyzed things. He was my guru." Born in Good Hope, La., Butler was married, had no children, M and held a series ofjobs that included working in sawmills. In addition to his inclusion in the He retired at 62 after a workCorcoran exhibition, he was part related accident left him partially of"Muffled Voices: Folk Artists disabled. To pass the time, he in Contemporary America," turned to art, an interest he had Museum of American Folk Art from early childhood and adoles- at PaineWebber Gallery, New cence, and focused on decorating York (1986);"Baking in the Sun: his environment. His skills and Visionary Images from the interest in working with his South," University Art Museum, hands may have been sparked by Lafayette, La.(1987);"The Cutwatching and helping his father, ting Edge: Contemporary Ameria carpenter. can Folk Art," Museum of Using a knife and hammer American Folk Art, New York and readily available roofmg tin (1990);"Passionate Visions of and paint, he fashioned colorful the American South: Self-Taught silhouettes, whirligigs, and Artists from 1940 to the Prescutouts. He often mounted these ent," New Orleans Museum of on wooden stakes around his Art(1993); and many others. house and over his windows to Most of these exhibitions were ensure privacy and create a color- accompanied by catalogs in ful play of light and pattern. Butwhich Butler was featured. ler stopped his artistic activity in Butler's work is represented the mid-1980s. After living with in the permanent collection of relatives, the ailing artist entered the Museum of American Folk a nursing home in Morgan City, Art and other museums. where he lived until his death. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Lee Kogan

Be sure to see

• A.G. Rizzoli: Architect of Magnificent Yisions Leroy Almon,Sr. 1838-1997 Leroy Almon, Sr., of Tallapoosa, Ga., died of a massive heart attack on April 19. He was best known for creating polychromed carved relief sculptures, but more recently he had begun to paint. His subjects varied from religious themes and biblical narratives to secular anecdotal works and strong social commentary centered on the African American experience; he was especially interested in "racism and how it affects black Americans." Almon was born in Tallapoosa (northwest of Atlanta), but his family moved to Cincinnati, where he lived until he finished high school. After graduation, he spent six months in the U.S. Army. During a period of employment with the Coca-Cola Company in Columbus, he met the carver Elijah Pierce; inspired by Pierce's art, Almon left hisjob

to become the carver's apprentice for three years. Returning to his hometown in 1982, he remained committed to his art, but also worked as a police radio dispatcher in his community. Almon's works were included in the exhibitions "Outside the Mainstream: Folk Art in Our Time," High Museum of Art, Atlanta(1988), and "Gifted Visions: Black American Folk Art," Atrium Gallery, University of Connecticut, Storrs(1988). His work is represented in the permanent collection of the Art Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke. Almon is survived by his wife, Mary Alice Grayson, and two sons. —Lee Kogan

E'!

Correction In "Hawaiian Quilts: A Nineteenth-Century Myth Dispelled"(Summer 1997, page 43), we incorrectly translated the word kapus in Dorothy Barrere's quote. The sentence should read,"Now the styles are changing, and the kapus[taboos] are waning—but the inspiration for a quilt design remains a personal expression of beauty seen or felt."

Sept.6-Nov. 29, 1997 High Museum of Art Atlanta, Georgia

THE

AMES GALLERY

• We specialize in the

works of contemporary naive, visionary, and outsider artists, and offer exceptional 19th & early 20th C. handmade objects, including carved canes, tramp art, quilts, and whimseys.

Bonnie Grossman, Director 2661 Cedar Street Berkeley, CA 94708 Tel: 510/845-4949 Fax: 510/845-6219

Photo: Ben Blackwell

37 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

-1 41 ( 4.# 1 1:1 74 r.0,2tA • 17 Gallery Barbara Brogdon 1611 Hwy. 129 S. Cleveland, GA. 30528 (706) 865-6345 www.rosehipsart.com email: rosehips@stc.net Photos and Newsletter available upon request

SYBIL GIBSON (1908-1995) Alsofeaturing work by:

Minnie Adkins Georgia Blizzard Richard Burnside Ronald Cooper Jessie Cooper Patrick Davis Minnie Evans Howard Finster

James Harold Jennings Rev. Anderson Johnson Woodie Long Sam McMillian R.A. Miller Bernice Sims Jimmy Lee Sudduth Myrtice West

American Pie Contemporary Folk Artfrom the Southeast Elaine Johansen • 113 Dock Street Wilmington • NC 28401 • (910) 251-2131 Acrylic on Banner Paper 16"x 20"

38 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Works from the Recently Established Larry Connatser Trust

Paintings, Drawings and Collages

September 27 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; November 8, 1997

"Janet" 1989-1995, 27"H x 24"W

Archer Locke Gallery

T-F, 10am-5:30pm Sat. 11am-4:30pm or by appointment

3157 Peachtree Road (Grandview at Peachtree) Atlanta, GA 30305 p - 404.812.9600 f- 404.812.9616 folkdealer@aol.com http://members.aol.comifolkdealeriart.html

Free video catalogs and price lists available upon request.

Windsor Side Chair, Braceback, Fanback, old white paint over black, Rhode Island, c. 1770-90, SW 15 3/4", SD 14", SH 17", OH 36"

June Lambert • American Antiques • Folk and Decorative Arts P.O. Box 1653 • Alexandria, Virginia 22313 • (703) 329-8612 • Fax: (703) 329-6271

LITTLE GIRL WITH KITTEN 1800 Oil on canvas 31 x 28" Inscribed at lower left: "1. Budington Pinxt 1800" Private collection Above: Inscription on Little Girl with Kitten

Jonathan

Budirigton Face Maker By Arthur and Sybil Kern he oil-on-canvas portrait Little Girl with Kitten, signed "J. Budington Pinxt 1800," had fascinated us over the years on each visit to the home of Bertram and Nina Fletcher Little. We were invariably intrigued by the artist's charming depiction of a child in white dress and red slippers, with views of both the interior of the room and the exterior landscape in the background.

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 41

Jonathan Budington

Face Maker

Despite the fact that this painting, one of the icons of early American folk portraiture, has been included in numerous important exhibitions and has been illustrated in many publications, little is known about its creator. There has never been a complete review and evaluation of all Budington's known works. Stimulated by the desire to add to the knowledge concerning this little-known folk artist, we initiated an investigation of his life and work. The earliest known reference to a painter with the name Jonathan Budington is in the 1934 edition of William Dunlap's A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts ofDesign in the United States. The author quotes John Wesley Jarvis, a New York City portrait painter, who in discussing his colleagues remarks, "I was the best painter, because others were worse than bad—so bad was the best. There was a man of the name of Buddington, who shared in face making; but I beat him at it." A second reference to him appears in the index: "Buddington painted portraits in New-York, 1798. 2 The literature contains no further references to a Jonathan Buddington or a J. Budington until the 1957 catalog that accompanied the Connecticut Historical Society's exhibition "Little-Known Connecticut Artists 1790-1810." In its introduction, Nina Fletcher Little wrote, "One of the significant artists whose signature appears on his canvases is Jonathan Budington who is represented in the exhibition by four inscribed canvases, all of which are believed to be of Connecticut origin."3 These four works, all oil on canvas, include Little Girl with Kitten, Father and Son, Man with Cane, and Woman with Spectacles. To obtain information concerning additional paintings by Budington, we consulted many other sources. Groce and Wallace's New-York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America 1564-1860 has the following entry: "Buddington [sic], Jonathan. Portrait painter, NYC, c. 1798-1812. His portrait of a little girl, signed and dated 'J. Budington Pinxt 1800,' is owned by Mrs. Bertram K. Little of Brookline(Mass.)."4 In the December 1985 issue of The Magazine Antiques we found a report on and photograph of the oilon-canvas portrait of George Eliot and his family, recently acquired by the Yale University Art Gallery.' In the lower left corner, in red paint, is the signature and date "J. Budington/Pinxt 179(?)"(the last digit is illegible). It has been pointed out that the style of clothing worn by George Eliot supports a date toward the end of the 1790s.6

42 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

We reviewed the Inventory of American Paintings, Artist Index 1992, of the National Museum of American Art/Smithsonian Institution. This included the following works by Budington: View of Cannon House and Wharf, Father and Son, John Nichols, Mary Hill (Mrs. John) Nichols, and Little Girl with Kitten; it did not mention the portrait of George Eliot and family, but did discuss two oilon-canvas portraits of which we had been unaware: Child ofthe Hubbell Family and Elisha Corning. At this point we knew of seven portraits and View of Cannon House and Wharf that had been attributed to Jonathan Budington, five of which were signed and dated. We studied the signed ones—Little Girl with Kitten, George Eliot and Family, Father and Son, John Nichols and Mary Hill(Mrs. John) Nichols (these last two had previously been identified in the Connecticut Historical Society exhibition as Man with Cane and Woman with Specta-

cles)—to determine Budington's stylistic characteristics, which would allow identification of unsigned portraits. They are all oil on canvas, painted between 179(?) and 1802, with the head and body of the subject turned in a three-quarter view. They are large, ranging in size from 31 by 28 inches to 44% by 557/8 inches. All adult subjects are shown seated, while children are depicted standing, the exception being the Little Girl with Kitten. Although not so in George Eliot and Family, the subjects are positioned adjacent to a window or open doorway; background drapery is included in three of them. These details, plus others observed in the signed portraits, make two significant facts evident: first, that Budington had found a formula he liked, and which he repeated; second, that he was strongly influenced by contemporary folk painters, particularly Ralph Earl, who was active as a portrait painter in Connecticut and New York

JOHN NICHOLS 1802 Oil on canvas 38/ 1 4 30/ 1 2 " Inscribed at lower left: J. Budington Pinxt. 1802" The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford

MARY HILL (MRS. JOHN) NICHOLS 1802 Oil on canvas 381 / 2 30/ 1 2" Inscribed at lower left: 1. Budington Pinxt. 1802" The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford

GEORGE ELIOT AND FAMILY c. 1796 Oil on canvas 44% . 55%" Inscribed at lower left: "1. Budington Pinxt 179191" Yale University Art Gallery, gift of the descendants of the Reverend Jared Eliot, B. A. 1706, and the relatives of Nellie P. Eliot

between 1774 and his death in 1801.7 This second fact is apparent in Budington's earliest known portrait, that of George Eliot and his family.8 Like many of Earl's portraits, this Budington work is of considerable size, measuring 445/8 by 5578 inches. Its commanding size is perhaps meant to reflect the subjects' high standing in their community of

red upholstered, round-backed side chairs and a table covered with a green cloth. Finally, in Budington's painting George Eliot and Family, as well as in his later portraits, Earl's example is followed in the signature being in the lower left corner and in the use of a red vermilion pigment for this purpose.

Killingworth (now Clinton), Connecticut. As in Earl's works, Budington's portraits include many details that reflect the social status, interests and attitudes of his subjects. Earl's influence is also seen in Budington's placement of his figures next to a window or open doorway and in his use of Earl's favorite colors and elements, such as

Quite striking in the depiction of members of the Eliot family are their elongated heads and heart-shaped outlines of cheeks and chin; the result is that there is not only a marked similarity between the Eliots but also between them and most of Budington's later subjects. However, as has been pointed out by Paula B. Freedman,9 this limitation in

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 43

Jonathan Budington

Face Maker

the portrayal of the subjects' physiognomy is made up for by the inclusion of personal and symbolic elements that lead to some understanding of the subjects' character and interests. George Eliot was the son of a successful farmer and landowner and a farmer and landowner himself; his wife was a person of means in her own right as a result of property willed to her by her father. The handsome though unostentatious dress of the Eliots attests to their upper middle-class status. The prominent display of leather-bound books signifies the prosperity of the family, while the legible titles reflect the political attitude of George Eliot and symbolize the importance to the parents of proper deportment, manners, and respect. George Eliot and Family demonstrates many additional stylistic characteristics seen in portraits by Jonathan Budington: outlining of the fingers, hands, and forearms with dark brown paint; a light line that runs down the ridge of the nose, with the adjacent cheek showing a heavy shadow that continues directly into the line of the eyebrow; redness of the knuckles; heavy shadow under the chin; the large ear that stands away from the head; thin, tightly compressed lips; wispy hair; difficulty in the rendering of hands; and vertical shadows in the dress. Many of these same characteristics are seen, to a lesser or greater degree, in portraits by Ralph Earl. The nature of the relationship between Earl and Budington is a matter for conjecture. Budington was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1779. Earl became active there in 1788, following his release from debtor's prison, but remained in the area for no more than a year or so. At the time Earl left, Budington would have been only about nine years old. Although Earl moved about in Connecticut and New York between 1789 and his death in 1801, there is nothing to suggest that Budington was ever his student, and it is unlikely that they ever met. However, Budington undoubtedly became familiar with the work of Earl, who at the time was Connecticut's most important portrait painter, by seeing it hanging in many Fairfield homes."' The connection between Budington and Earl is most evident in three portraits painted by each: John Nichols, Mary Hill (Mrs. John) Nichols, and Father and Son. Budington's portrait of John Nichols, inscribed "J. Budington/Pinxt 1802" in the lower left corner, is an almost exact copy of Earl's 1795 portrait of the same man. Earl's portrait of Mary Hill Nichols depicts her seated indoors, in a round-backed side chair, red drapery hanging behind her and a landscape visible through an adjacent window or doorway; her daughter, Charlotte, born in Greenfield Hill (Fairfield) on June 7, 1795, is seated on her lap. Budington's rendering of Mrs. Nichols—created seven years later, when Charlotte was no longer an infant—omits the child and substitutes a pair of spectacles that Mrs. Nichols holds in her left hand. The two versions, with this exception, are essentially identical. There has recently come to our attention a privately owned oil-on-canvas double portrait that is strikingly simi-

44 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

lar to Budington's Father and Son. Although unsigned, there is no question that it is the work of Ralph Earl and that it served as the model for the Budington piece. Interestingly, after studying a photograph of Budington's Father and Son, the late noted collector and dealer Mary Allis wrote, "This looks much more like Ralph Earl or William Jennys than the other two Budingtons I know." In both paintings, the subjects are positioned in front of red drapery and a window, with the father seated in a green hoop-back Windsor chair; slight differences in the clothing worn by the father and a more adept treatment of the father's hand by Earl are the only real differences. We can only speculate as to why the copies were made; presumably, they were desired by other family members. The Budington painting Little Girl with Kitten, also showing the strong influence of Earl, achieves a dramatic effect through the simultaneous views of the exterior landscape and the interior's strongly patterned wallpaper, the two separated by a white balustrade. The off-center figure of the child in its white dress stands out in sharp relief against the dark background. The viewer's eye moves with great excitement between the figure of the child and the exterior views. Although unsigned, Child of the Hubbell Family presents the stylistic characteristics of Budington's signed works. One significant difference between Child of the Hubbell Family and Budington's signed portraits is the fact that the former is considerably smaller, measuring only 243A by 193A inches; however, the head of the subject comes to the top of the canvas, and the bottom and one side of the dress are not visible, which suggests that the painting may have been cut down from a size closer to that of the others. Because the Inventory of American Paintings indicated that the portrait of Elisha Corning was by Budington and was in the collection of Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum, we sent a request for a photograph of the painting and information concerning it to the Curator of American Paintings, Drawing and Sculpture, Elizabeth Kornhauser. She replied, "The Atheneum's portrait of Elisha Corning is not by Budington." We most definitely agreed, in view of the absence of those stylistic features typically observed in his signed paintings. The final work previously attributed to Budington, View of Cannon House and Wharf, was first brought to general attention by its inclusion in a 1967 exhibition covering two hundred years of painting in America.12 A large oil-on-wood panel measuring 42/ 1 2 by 78 inches, it is inscribed "Jonathan Budington Pinxt/John Cannon/1792" in the lower right corner. It depicts a view of lower Manhattan, featuring the Cannon house, wharf, and American fleet.° Described as "one of the most important American views of the eighteenth century,"I4 it is not only the earliest known painting by Budington and his only landscape, but much more naively executed than the later works. A second phase of our investigation of Jonathan Budington involved a genealogical study of the artist and his subjects. This had two purposes: first, to gain insight into the history and character of each and, second, to determine what, if any,relationships existed between them.

FATHER AND SON 1800 Oil on canvas 41 x 35s/e" Inscribed at lower left: "1. Budington Pinxt. 1800" The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 45

Jonathan

Budington

Face Maker

The first question that had to be answered was whether the J. Budington who had signed five of the six known portraits was Jonathan Budington, as has generally been assumed. A review of published Budington genealogies and Connecticut census records and town histories dis-

closed no other Budington that satisfied the time and location requirements set by the dates on the paintings and the places of residence of the subjects. Although the Connecticut Census Index and town records show a Jonathan Budington residing in the town of Groton in 1810, 1820, and 1830, one in Ledyard in 1840, and another in Stonington, based on the fact that five of Budington's subjects were residents of Fairfield County, Connecticut,it seems most likely that the artist was the son

48 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

of Walter and Ruth Couch Budington of the town of Fairfield. The first of their seven children, he was baptized at Fairfield's First Congregational Church on August 15, 1779.15 On June 13, 1820, he was married in New Haven, about 15 miles from Fairfield, by Harry Croswell, Rector of Trinity Church. At the time, both the groom and his bride, Sarah Peck, were residents of New Haven.'6 Sarah, the daughter of Jesse S. and Sally Peck, was born in New York City on July 3, 1799.17 Jonathan and Sarah had one child, Ruth Ann, who was born on April 22, 1821, and baptized at New Haven's Trinity Episcopal Church on January 21, 1823.18 The death of this Jonathan Budington, Ruth Ann's father, three days earlier on January 18, 1823, was reported in New Haven's Connecticut Herald, Columbian Register, and Connecticut Register, and the Hartford Courant and Hartford Times.19 The obituary in each of these newspapers gives nothing more than date of death and his age of 42. Despite an intensive search of cemetery records of Connecticutâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; including Milford, where his parents were buried; Fairfield, where he was born; and New Haven, where he diedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we have not as yet been able to determine Jonathan Budington's place of burial. Following his death, his wife and daughter moved to Dunkirk, New York, where Ruth Ann was living in 184120 and where Sarah was still living in 1862.2' There is no listing of a Jonathan Budington either in the New York or Connecticut census from 1790 through 1830. However, he is recorded as a portrait painter in the New York City directories of 1800 to 1805 and 1809 to 1812. Despite the fact that he spent at least nine years in New York as a painter, the only painting known to have been done there by a Jonathan Budington is the signed View of Cannon House and Whatf. Strangely, this is dated 1792, eight years before he is first listed in the city directory. Also puzzling is the fact that in 1792 the Budington of Fairfield, who was baptized in Fairfield in

CHILD OF THE HUBBELL FAMILY Attributed to Jonathan Budington c. 1800 Oil on canvas 24/ 3 4 193/4" Museum of American Folk Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William E. Wiltshire III. 1979.16.1

BROTHER AND SISTER IN WHITE DRESSES Attributed to Jonathan Budington c.1800 Oil on canvas 25% 313/8" The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

1779, would have been only about 13 years of age. There are two possible explanations. One is that considering the very naive quality of this work, along with the precociousness of the artist, it might have been done by a thirteenyear-old.22 The alternative is that there was a second Jonathan Budington, also a painter, residing in New York City. This latter possibility is supported by the fact that View of Cannon House and Wharf is much larger than any of the portraits done by the Budington of Connecticut, that

it is on a panel rather than on canvas, that it is signed in the lower right rather than the lower left corner, that the entire first name rather than just the initial is inscribed, and that the five known subjects of the portraits were all residents of Connecticut and not of New York. The first known portrait to have been painted by the Jonathan Budington of Fairfield is his 179(?) George Eliot and Family. Depicted in this work are George, Jr., his wife, Patience Lane, and their only son, Ely August. The son of

a landowner, George Eliot, George, Jr., was a prominent farmer and property owner in Killingworth, Connecticut. On December 23, 1790, he married Patience Lane of Killingworth. Family ties appear to be the link between the Budington of Fairfield and George Eliot, Jr., of Killingworth, approximately forty miles to the east. Patience Lane Eliot was the daughter of Grace Budington Lane, sister of Walter Budington, Jonathan's father.23 Further evidence of the Budington-Lane connection is found in the distribution

of the estate of Patience's grandfather, Noah Lane: "Set to Miss Irene Budington During her Natural Life...in consideration of her kind & affectionate Service in my family...the use & improvement of one third of the Mansion house in which I now dwell."24 Child of the Hubbell Family descended through the Hubbell family of Greenfield Hill, Connecticut, but the identity of the subject is unknown. However,in 1788 Ralph Earl painted the double portrait of David Hubbell (born

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 47

Jonathan

Budington

Face Maker

1778) and his sister Sarah (born 1781), and seven years later the portraits of their parents, David and Sarah Perry Hubbe11.25 The child of Budington's portrait may be Sarah Hubbell, a younger sibling, or another child of the Hubbell family. A possible connection between the Hubbell family and Jonathan Budington is through the painter's younger brother, Captain Samuel Couch Budington, whose son of the same name married Delia Rebecca Hubbe11.26 A review of the published Hubbell family genealogy discloses many instances of intermarriage, in the late eighteenth century, between members of the Burr and Hubbell families. Budington's portrait Father and Son was found to be connected to the Burr family. Word-of-mouth recommendation in the family may, therefore, have been responsible for Budington getting the commission to paint the Hubbell child's portrait. Still another possibility is that just as Budington had copied Earl's portraits of John and Mary Hill Nichols, Child of the Hubbell Family may again represent his copy of an earlier portrait by Earl. Unfortunately, the present whereabouts of Earl's double portrait of David and Sarah Hubbell is unknown, so that comparison is not possible. Like the Hubbells, John and Mary Hill Nichols were residents of Greenfield Hill. John was born there in 1754 and after his marriage to Mary Hill, who was born about 1756, they moved to nearby Easton. He was a well-to-do farmer who owned a considerable amount of land, a blacksmith shop, and a sawmill. They were parents of twelve children.27 From what is known of the painting, identification of the subject of Little Girl with Kitten is impossible. Although the painting has carried its title for an indefinite period, we would like to suggest that it may be inappropriate since the subject could be a boy just as well as a girl. In 1800 children wore dresses until about four or five years of age regardless of their sex, as is demonstrated in Ralph Earl's 1790 portrait of Mrs. William Taylor and Son Daniel. Daniel, two years of age and looking chronologically about the same as the child in Budington's portrait, wears a frock very much like that worn by the child in Little Girl with Kitten. Of interest is the fact that Daniel also sits in a small hoop-back chair and holds a cat in his lap.28 We would recommend a change in the title of Budington's painting to Child with Kitten. An old note in the files of the National Gallery of Art indicates that Budington's portrait Father and Son was found at the Burr homestead in Greenfield Hill and that the sitters might be Ebenezer Burr (Jr.) and his son, Timothy. Ebenezer, the son of Ebenezer Burr of Fairfield, Connecticut, was born in 1760 and around 1787 married Amelia Goodsell of Greenfield Hill; their first child, Timothy, was

48 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

born on September 3, 1788.29 In 1800, when Father and Son was painted, Ebenezer was forty-two and Timothy was twelve. The figures in Budington's portrait are indeed compatible with individuals of these ages. Supporting evidence for concluding that the subjects of the double portrait are Ebenezer and Timothy comes from Fairfield Land and Probate Records, which indicate that the house where the portrait was found was built by Ebenezer Burr about 1790 and passed to his son, Timothy, when Ebenezer died?' The final part of our investigation involved a review of all available books, articles, and auction catalogs dealing with early American folk art in a search for additional paintings that could be attributed to Jonathan Budington. Although there were several that seemed like they might have come from his hand, there was only one with a sufficient number of the characteristics of the signed portraits to permit a fairly certain attribution to him. We found Brother and Sister in White Dresses in an exhibition catalog of The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia.3I A visit to

that museum enabled us to study the portrait in great detail. Judging from the style of clothing worn by the subjects, the portrait was painted about 1800, a time when Budington was active. It measures 25/ 3 4 by 313 / 4inches, well within the size range of his known portraits. Finally, although the children are presented in an interior somewhat different from the artist's usual choice, Budington's stylistic characteristics are quite evident. Particularly striking is the resemblance of the smaller child to Timothy Burr.32 A review of the known facts concerning the life and work of Jonathan Budington reveals that during his lifetime of forty-three years he produced a total ofjust seven known portraits. These were all painted between approximately 1796 and 1802, and five of the known subjects were residents of the Greenfield Hill-Clinton, Connecticut, area. Although many questions concerning the artist's life and work are still to be answered, our study has given greater emphasis to the influence upon him of the paintings by

VIEW OF CANNON HOUSE AND WHARF 1792 Oil on wood panel 42/ 1 2 x 78" Inscribed at lower right: "Jonathan Budington Pinxt/John Cannon/1792" Collection of H. Richard Dietrich, Jr.

Ralph Earl, has presented what is known concerning the seven portraits that remain as Budington's legacy, and has suggested the likely existence of two Jonathan Budingtons, one in Connecticut and painter of the known portraits, the other living in New York City and painter of View of the Cannon House and Wharf as well as those unknown early portraits noted by Jarvis. It has further established the Budington of Fairfield as an important painter of some of the early residents of Connecticut and, using Budington's colleague John Wesley Jarvis' terminology, an adept "maker of faces."*

Arthur and Sybil Kern are researchers, writers, and lecturers on early Americanfolk art. This is their seventeenth published magazine article; their work has appeared in Folk Art, The Clarion, The Magazine Antiques, and Antiques World. They also served as guest curatorsfor the exhibition "Painters ofRecord: William Murray and His School" at the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art and the Albany Institute ofHistory and Art.

NOTES 1 William Dunlap, History ofthe Rise and Progress ofthe Arts of Design in the United States,(a reprint of the original 1834 edition) vol. 2, part 1 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969), p. 76. 2 Ibid., vol. 2, part 2, p. 470. 3 "Little-Known Connecticut Artists 1790-1810," with an introduction by Nina Fletcher Little, Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, vol. 22, no.4(Hartford: The Connecticut Historical Society, October 1957), p. 104. 4 George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, The New-York Historical Society's Dictionary ofArtists in America 1564-1860(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 93-94. The authors incorrectly spelled the name of the artist with two d's. 5 "Museum Accessions," The Magazine Antiques, December 1985, p. 1124. 6 Paula B. Freedman,"In the Presence of Strangers: Jonathan Budington's Portrait of George Eliot and Family," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, Spring 1988, p. 26. The painting has for some time been given a probable date of 1796; however,on close examination of the inscription we found that the last figure was totally illegible. 7 Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Ralph Earl: The Face ofthe Young Republic(New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 10-15,30-67. 8 The painting descended through the Eliot family and was a gift to the Yale University Art Gallery to honor the family's association with Yale University, which dates to the beginning of the eighteenth century. 9 Freedman, op. cit., pp. 23-27. 10 In 1789, a visitor to Greenfield Hill commented,"Here are many family portraits, lately done by Earle [ski, who has painted many in this part of the country." Samuel Davis, Journal ofa Tour to Connecticut - Autumn of 1789,"Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society"(Boston: 1869-70), p. 18, cited by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Ralph Earl: The Face ofthe Young Republic, p. 251. 11 Letter to Julie Aronson, then Research Assistant, American Art, at the National Gallery of Art(Washington, D.C.)June 13, 1985.

12 "American Paintings for Public and Private Collections: An Exhibition of 200 Years of Painting in America," Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York City, December 4, 1967â&#x20AC;&#x201D;January 13, 1968. 13 Robert Bishop, Folk Painters ofAmerica(New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979), Plate 25. 14 Ibid. 15 Connecticut Church Records, Fairfield, First Congregational Church, 1694-1806, p. 18, Connecticut State Library, Hartford. 16 Vital Records at New Haven Town Clerk's office, Marriages Book IV 1820-1830,Part I, p.475. 17 Darius Peck,A Genealogical Account ofthe Descendants in the Male Line of William Peck(Hudson: Bryan & Goeltz, Steam Book Printers, 1877), p. 101. 18 The Parish Register, Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut. 19 Hale Collection: An Indexfor the Vital Records in the Early Connecticut Newspapers, Connecticut State Library, Hartford. It is erroneously recorded that Budington died on January 21; he died three days earlier and was buried on January 20. We have been unable to determine the reason for Jonathan Budington's obituary appearing in the Hartford newspapers. 20 The Probate Record for Ruth Ann Budington, District of Fairfield, vol. 33, p.4, on October 4, 1840, records the appointment of Samuel Budington, brother of Jonathan, as guardian of the person and estate of Ruth Ann Budington of the town of Dunkirk, New York, a minor of about seventeen years of age. The Town of Fairfield Index Land Records, vol. 46, p. 23, on February 19, 1841,records that Samuel Burlington was authorized to sell the real estate of Ruth Ann Budington, then "a minor under the age of twenty one years." 21 Peck,op. cit. 22 Jonathan Budington was baptized in 1779, but it is not known how soon after birth this took place. It is, therefore, possible that he was older than thirteen years when the View ofthe Cannon House and Wharf was painted. 23 Richard Walter Nielson, The Budington Buddington Family, (Nielson Publishing Company, 1989), p. 117. 24 Probate Records for the District of Saybrook, Town of Killingworth (Microfilm Collection, Connecticut State Library), cited by Paula B. Freedman, op. cit. p. 29, footnote 33. Freedman points out that Grace's older sister, Irene, took over responsibilities as mistress of the Lane household when Grace Budington died. 25 Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Ralph Earl: Artist-Entrepreneur, vol. 1(Boston: Boston University, 1988), pp. 292, 293. 26 Bible and Family Records, Connecticut State Library, Hartford, vol. 10, pp. 70, 72; Walter Hubbell, History of the Hubbell Family(New York: J. H. Hubbell & Co., 1881), p. 331. 27 Nina Fletcher Little, Paintings by New England Provincial Artists 1775-1800(Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1976), pp. 98, 100. 28 Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Ralph Earl: The Face ofthe Young Republic, p. 165. 29 Julie Aronson,in Deborah Chotner, American Naive Paintings (Washington, D.C.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 37. 30 Material relating to the Land and Probate Records kindly given to the authors by Deborah Chotner, Assistant Curator, American and British Paintings, National Gallery of Art(Washington, D.C.). 31 Dennis R. Anderson, The Gift ofAmerican Naive Paintings from the Collection ofEdgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch:48 Masterpieces(Norfolk, Va.: The Chrysler Museum of Art, 1975), p. 27. 32 An interesting possibility is that the children depicted are siblings of Timothy. A published genealogy for the Burr family discloses that he had numerous younger brothers and sisters.

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 49

The

Gifted

Amateur The Art and Life of Charles Woodward Hutson Charles Hutson in his attic studio, c. 1930. Photograph courtesy of his family.

By William A. Fagaly

n his trailblazing 1942 book, They Taught Themselves, New York art dealer

and scholar Sidney Janis focused on the

work of thirty self-taught artists, all of whom worked in the first decades of the twentieth century. Some of the more well-known included Morris Hirshfield, John Kane, Anna Mary Robertson "Grandma" Moses, and Horace Pippin. Another, whose name and career has been overlooked by many in recent years, is New Orleans artist Charles Woodward Hutson.

50 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

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South Carolina history, he received his bachelor of arts degree at South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) in Columbia with the intention of following in his father's footsteps by practicing law. When South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, his plans were suddenly interrupted and he joined the effort to fight for his beloved South and the new Confederate States of America. Hutson volunteered as a private in the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, which later became Company A of Infantry Battalion, Hampton's Legion, and the first time he saw action—in the Battle of First Bull Run

teers. Under General J. E. Johnston, Hutson served until the battery's surrender in Greensboro, North Carolina, at the end of the war. "On May 2d, 1865, I was paroled on the surrender of Johnston's army. This ended my career as a soldier. The end was a great grief to us all, to the armies in the field and to the women and children at home—many of them not now in their own homes but scattered widely over the State as refugees trying to escape the Federal annies."4 He went back to South Carolina, at first traveling on foot and later riding a mule. Upon his return home, he discovered that his family had retreated to Orangeburg following the destruc-

THE TEMPEST: PROSPERO, ARIEL AND CALIBAN c. 1925-1935 Oil on prepared academy board 24 18" Private collection

Courtesy of William Peltier, New Orleans

In reflecting on his long and multifaceted life, Hutson often referred to his nonprofessional status in the endeavors he undertook. He felt that the circumstances that brought him to be "an amateur soldier," "an amateur teacher," "an amateur writer," and finally, after coming to art at age sixty-five, "an amateur artist," were accidental and a matter of fate or predestination rather than the result of any plans. In the opening paragraph of his unpublished memoirs, which he wrote for his children and grandchildren near the end of his life, he says, "If it were not that readers find interest in all sincere autobiography I would not undertake to ransack the past and set down my reminiscences. For not only is there not about my name the prestige of greatness won in any field of effort but moreover I have not in my mild career come into close contact with the great." His selfeffacing analysis of his life, however, does not do justice to this erudite and talented man's achievements. While his history reveals a richness and fascinating variety of activities and accomplishments, it is the last third of his life as an artist that is the focus of this essay. Charles Hutson, the eldest child of William Ferguson Hutson and Sophronia Lucia Palmer Hutson, was born on September 23, 1840, in McPhersonville, South Carolina. Being the fifth generation of the patrician Hutson family to reside in South Carolina, where his paternal ancestor William settled after arriving from England a century before, young Charles was raised at Inverness, the family plantation, in a genteel environment of grace and civility. He reports, "We knew only from books anything of life beyond the circle of the gentry we grew up amongst. There was no middle class, strictly speaking, in our part of the country."2 He learned to read at age four and, as a child, was more at home in his father's library than anywhere else, though he also haunted the local bookstore to pore over the books. He immensely enjoyed Homer and Virgil, as well as Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott. After obtaining his early education at a private school and being well read at an early age, particularly in

in Virginia—he received a minor wound above the temple. He reported of the experience, "[T]he enemy were armed with the six-shooting revolving rifle, and their fire was incessant. Never have I conceived of such a continuous rushing hailstorm of shot, shell, and musketry as fell around and among us for hours all together. We who escaped are constantly wondering how we could possibly have come out of the action alive."' Later he was captured during the Battle of Seven Pines and held prisoner for three months at Fort Delaware. In late 1862, as part of a prisoner exchange, he was transferred to Beaufort Artillery Volun-

tion—by General Sherman and his army—of eight homes belonging to members of the Hutson family. Attempting to recover from the emotional and physical ravages of the war, Hutson once again pursued his dream of becoming an attorney by studying law while teaching at a small school in Sparta, near Orangeburg. After Hutson was admitted to the South Carolina State Bar the following year, his father set him up for practice by buying him a law library, renting him an office, and turning over to him a number of cases. The younger Hutson soon reluctantly came to the realization that the politi-

FANTASTIC NO.2 C. 1925-1935 Oil on prepared academy board 12/ 1 4x 181/2" Collection of Ahina and Paul Haterkamp

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•

cal and economic conditions in the post war South were not favorable for a career as a lawyer, and he returned to his alma mater to study German, French, Italian, and Spanish. Thus began his longtime livelihood as an instructor at a variety of private schools, colleges, and universities. He was a Professor of Greek and then Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Louisiana State Seminary (later to

become Louisiana State University). While there, he met Mary Jane Lockett, whom he married at her home in Marion, Alabama, on July 5, 1871. Over the next twenty years, they had ten children, two of which died at an early age. The firstborn was their daughter Ethel, who would grow up to become an artist, secretary for the Southern States Arts League, and art museum administrator at the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art (now

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the New Orleans Museum of Art) in New Orleans. In the 1870s, financial conditions remained bleak in the South. From 1873 to 1881, Hutson, to support his ever-growing family, taught at schools in Jacksonville, Alabama; Charlotte, North Carolina; Spartenburg, South Carolina; Americus and Brunswick, Georgia; and Springfield, Kentucky. For the following eight

years, he taught modern languages and history at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. In 1889 he returned to his alma mater to teach, following the experience with short stints in Thomasville, Albany, and Cuthbert, Georgia. Finally, from 1893 to 1908, when he retired from "amateur" teaching at the age of sixty-eight, Hutson was a professor of English and History at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College in College Station.

During this intensive period of teaching and moving his family from town to town crisscrossing the South, Hutson managed to author and have published two novels and a number of essays. His book titles include The Beginnings of Civilization (1887), Out of a Besieged City (1887), A History of French Literature (1889), and The Story ofLanguage (1897). During this time, he also contributed articles, often without pay, to the leading periodicals of the day, including The Southern Presbyterian Review, The Land We Love, Scott's Monthly, Hearth and Home, The Southern Review of Baltimore, The Southern Magazine, The Home Monthly, The University Monthly, The Sunny South, The Home Journal, The Literary World, Century, and The Bookman. So much for his claim to having been only an amateur writer! While providing a fascinating insight into his experiences and interests, his unpublished memoirs My Reminiscences, written around 1917 and 1918, are generally lacking in any meaningful discussion regarding his career as an "amateur artist." After observing his daughter Ethel making art upon her return from studying at Newcomb College Art School in New Orleans and while he was still teaching in Texas, Hutson, at the age of sixty-five, attempted his first sketch in pastel of a watering tank for cattle with a sunset on the Texas prairie. Upon his retirement, Hutson moved his family to New Orleans, where his mother and wife had family ties, and continued to draw en plein air mainly the landscape around him in South Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast and occasionally images he had stored up in his mind of the "low" country of his youth in South Carolina, the mountains of Appalachia he saw in Virginia during the war, the grassy prairies of Texas, the Southern pine forests, watery marshes and sandy beaches from Texas to Florida, and the city parks of New Orleans. "I did not lack pleasurable employment, for I painted a great deal and read innumerable French novels and a good many in Spanish."5 Dear to his heart were images of the familyouting campsitesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;depictions of

SUNSET C. 1920-1930 Pastel on paper 13/ 3 4x 97A" Pdvate coder:Um

pitched tents and hammocks in the woods or at the seashore. Hutson adamantly resisted his daughter's attempts to teach him the rudiments of academic drawing and linear and aerial perspective that she had learned in art school; he preferred to remain free and paint as an "amateur." He indulged his new passion for making art—first using pastel, then watercolor, and later oil—almost every

the cardboard backs of the innumerable writing tablets he consumed for his own voluminous unpublished poems, novels, short stories, and translations of others' writings. Pastels sometimes were even executed on fine sandpaper. Having an abhorrence of starting a work on stark white board, he encouraged his grandchildren to "prepare" the surface by dabbing colors on it before he began his composition.

LIGHT IN THE FOREST c. 1910-1920 Pastel on sandpaper 10% x 13%" Private collection

day until his death in New Orleans at age ninety-five on May 27, 1936. His obituary headline in the New Orleans newspaper The Times Picayune referred to him as "dean of artists."6 Hutson was patriarchal in appearance, with a long white beard and serene blue eyes. When talking about his art, a year before his death, he claimed that he was "still learning."7 While working on paper and prepared artists' board, he often used

During this thirty-year period of art production, he made hundreds of artworks that, mainly at the urging and promotion of his daughter Ethel, did not go unnoticed. His work was first shown publicly at the Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1917, and in 1925 he was awarded the prestigious Blanche Benjamin prize from the Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans for the best Louisiana landscape—his On the Banks ofthe Bogue

Falaya. Commenting on the award, he said, "The judges here couldn't decide between three of the pictures so they were sent to New York. Just after the decision was made one of the judges there told a New Orleans newspaper man about the 'young fellow' whose picture had been chosen. 'He must be extremely young,' this man said, 'because his work is a little immature but particularly it is unusually modern.' I do not think that gentleman believes yet that I was eighty-five at the time."8 At age ninety-one he had his first one-person museum exhibition, featuring forty-seven oils, at the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art in 1931; in 1948, twelve years after his death, the museum held another show, this one featuring twenty paintings, and in 1965 it organized a full posthumous retrospective with a handsomely illustrated catalog. Other posthumous exhibitions have been held in Houston, New York, Baltimore, Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. After an exhibition of the work of self-taught artists in April 1945 at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D.C. that included works by John Kane, "Grandma" Moses, Charles Walther, Reynolds Beal, Horace Pippin, and Hutson, who was represented by seventeen paintings, Duncan Phillips purchased three of Hutson's landscapes for his collection. The family's artistic legacy continued with granddaughters Louise Finke and Carl Hutson Wilke, who became artists in the New Orleans area. Today, two of Hutson's greatgranddaughters, Patricia Whitty and Kathleen Trapolin, operate the Northshore Studio School of Painting and Drawing in Slidell, Louisiana, and each enjoys a successful career as an accomplished artist. New Orleans architect Peter Trapolin and children's art teacher Mary Sue Roniger, and San Francisco painter Charles Hutson Trapolin are yet others who claim Charles Hutson as a family ancestor. While the greater part of Hutson's art celebrates the diverse beauty of America's natural environment, views derived from literary and mythological subjects are more common in his later works. These are done mainly in oil, which he began using in

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1923 as he felt it was "the loftier medium." (Simple genre scenes with figures, interior scenes, still-lifes, and portraits were of little or no interest to him). With bits of delightful mischievousness and whimsy on the part of the artist, these fascinating pictures, with titles such as Atlanta's Race and Odysseus a Suppliant to Princess Nausikaa, are often puzzling. The imagery refers to happenings in old myths, forgotten legends, literary episodes, the plays of Shakespeare, and the Bible. The Last Vision of the Great God Pan, a work in oil on stippled academy board, demonstrates the point well. As properly dressed Victorian ladies walk toward the entrance of what seems to be a church, cavorting nude wood nymphs dance in a circle in the forest as others lounge at the side of a mountain lake. Perhaps Hutson is alluding here to the story told by Plutarch of the death of Pan, which is associated in Christian legend with the death and resurrection of Christ and implicitly with the end of the pagan era. The Tempest: Prospero, Ariel and Caliban, another oil executed on academy board around 1930, depicts the scene from Shakespeare's play when Prospero, the artist and Duke of Milan, holds an ancient cosmic symbol, the swastika, in front of Caliban, the half-human child of a witch, who is trapped on Prospero's imaginary Mediterranean island. Overhead hovers Ariel, an airy woodland spirit, who assists Prospero in his deeds. Yet a third example of these bizarre pictures is another oil on academy board, Fantastic No. 2, which shows two somersaulting figures in the air above a forested horizon at a water's edge. It is believed that this is an illustrative reference to the Lafcadio Hearn essay "Spring Phantoms," originally printed in the New Orleans newspaper The Item on April 21, 1881, and subsequently edited by Charles Hutson and published in 1914 by Houghton Mifflin Company in Hearn's book Fantastics and Other Fancies.9 A newspaper writer for New Orleans' The Morning Tribune astutely observed in 1926, "One intuitively knows that the artist chuckled to himself while he 'made pictures' of these fantastic subjects. For it is

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prankish painting. They are just the with NOMA,Fagaly has organized more sort of pictures Peter Pan would have than sixty art exhibitions. He has also served as guest curator at The Corcoran done had he ever grown old."° Hutson had an innate sense for Gallery ofArt in Washington, D.C., the the rudimentary elements comprising Contemporary Arts Center ofNew Orleans, the Museum ofAmerican Folk good art: line, form, color, shape, and Art in New York, and the Portland Art composition. His daughter Ethel once Museum in Oregon. Fagaly has published observed, "He often said that those more than sixty articles and essays in who affected a scorn for 'form' failed numerous publications. to realize that form was a vital factor in life as well as in art. 'Even in the art NOTES of cooking,' he would say at the 1 Charles Woodward Hutson, My Remibreak-fast [sic] table, 'you can see niscences, unpublished manuscript how the same batter, cooked as a waf- (family of the artist, c. 1917-18), p.1. 2 Ibid., p. 47. fle, a muffin, or a battercake becomes 3 Ibid., p. 76. an entirely different thing.'"11 Hutson 4 Ibid., p. 126. had an uncanny facility for abstracting 5 Ibid., p. 177. a landscape without losing or being 6 "Final Rites Held for C.W. Hutson, untruthful to the natural elements. He Dean of Artists," The Times Picayune was often referred to as a modernist, (New Orleans), Friday, May 29, 1936. and Ruth Brandao reported in The 7 W.M.Darling,"One-Man Show is Item-Tribune Hutson's feelings in his Given by Artist, 94, Nearly Blind," The typical modesty and humor, —But as a Times Picayune(New Orleans), Monday, matter of fact,' he says, his blue eyes March 25, 1935, p.4. twinkling, and his steady hand reaching for his brush, 'I really don't like modern art. The reason that I am a "modernist" is because I am very near-sighted...'"12 He was equally adept in rendering the humidity-laden atmosphere of the South, which refracts light and which trained artists struggle a lifetime to capture. He constantly challenged himself to create a variety of effects of light and light on water, as demonstrated in Six Pines, Four Pines at Water's Edge, Sunset, and Light in the Forest. This remarkable man—this "amateur"—could be the topic for articles on fields other than art, considering the areas of study in which he excelled throughout his rich and rewarding life. His memoirs are a trea- 8 Ben C. and Roulhac Toledano,"The sure trove of historical, sociological, Life, Time and Art of Charles W. Hutson," in Charles W. Hutson 1840-1936 and cultural information on and (New Orleans: Isaac Delgado Museum of insights into the times in which he Art, 1965), unpaginated. lived. His daughter Ethel summed it 9 Hutson edited two other volumes of up best: "[I]n spite of poverty, re- Lafcadio Heam's writings from the files verses, disappointments, even the loss of New Orleans newspapers: Creole of loved ones, he kept his serene faith, Sketches(1924)and Editorials(1926), his love of God and man, his joy in both published by Houghton Mifflin. nature and in all things beautiful, in art 10 "Hutson's Art Pleases All But Critical," The Morning Tribune(New and letters particularly."3* Orleans), Wednesday, January 27, 1926. 11 Sidney Janis, They Taught Themselves, William A. Fagaly is the assistant director (New York: The Dial Press), p. 162. for art and the curator ofethnographic 12 Ruth Brandao,"N.O. Artist, 91,is art, contemporary art, and American selfPainting 50 Paintings," The Item-Tribune taught art at the New Orleans Museum of (New Orleans), Sunday, August 30, 1931. Art(NOMA). During thirty years oftenure 13 Janis, op. cit., p. 161.

SIX PINES c. 1910-1920 Watercolor on paper 14 x 10" Collection of Ken Paris

FOUR PINES AT WATER'S EDGE c. 1910-1920 Pastel on paper 8% x 105/8" Private collection

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Courtesy of William Peltier, New Orleans

am Hawkins and the Art

PRUDENTIAL N.Y.C. Columbus, Ohio 1985 Enamel on Masonite 38 â&#x20AC;˘ 48" Private collection

By Joanne Cubbs and Eugene W. Metcalf

illiam Hawkins painted the world and its wonders. His universe was inhabited by grinning Tasmanian tigers, red-eyed rhinos, spotted turquoise cheetahs, and other exotic creatures. In his paintings, he traveled imaginatively to amazing places, capturing scenes from America's Wild West, the snow-draped land of the Alps, and the mysterious Taj Mahal. Hawkins' nearly encyclopedic repertoire of subjects not only traversed great distances but also spanned millennia, from the birth of Jesus Christ to the death of George Washington, from the gigantic dinosaurs of the earth's evolutionary past to images of the contemporary urban landscape surrounding the artist's home in Columbus, Ohio.

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In one major work, Con[q]uest of the Moon #I, Hawkins' fantastic journeys finally led him to the far reaches of outer space. This painting, which chronicles the first manned landing on the moon, depicts a lone black astronaut planting a giant U.S. flag on the moon's surface. Set against the dark background of an endless cosmos, the remote figure is framed by an explosion of red stars and yellow comets that resembles the fiery apocalypse of a science-fiction movie. A flurry of expressionistic brush strokes further illuminates the scene of this heroic moment in the history of the twentieth century. Ironically, the source for Hawkins' fantastic work was a composite of familiar popular images documenting the Apollo astronauts and their first trip to the moon in July 1969. Reproduced in Life magazine, National Geographic, and countless newspapers across the country, the famous lunar photographs showed Edwin Aldrin and Neil Armstrong raising the U.S. flag on the Sea of Tranquillity. Years later, when Hawkins appropriated these unforgettable images, he infused his work with the collective memories and symbolic meanings that they inspired. Adopting and refashioning the icons of public imagination, Hawkins created a body of work that is both grounded in and redefines our common understanding of the meaning of our history and culture. "I don't copy what I see. I make it better": Hawkins' Popular Sources Hawkins' appropriation of popular sources was a characteristic strategy of his artmaking. Even as a young boy learning to draw, he reportedly copied photos and printed sources in order to render a series of early animal studies. Throughout his later years as an artist, Hawkins would continue this practice, culling mass media images from postcards, newspapers, books, advertisements, and magazines to use as inspiration for his paintings. Calling this process his "research," he stored his treasure trove of imagery in a battered suitcase and kept it near the dining room table that often served as his painting easel.' One popular source used repeatedly by Hawkins was a history text for young readers called The Golden Book of America. Particularly fascinated by the book's pictures of wild animals and scenes from the Old West, Hawkins converted the cartoon image of a mastodon into a snarling green apparition and turned the book's cover illustration of an 1844 painting, Buffalo Hunter, into a surreal, abstract drama. Borrowing from countless other sources, Hawkins continually appropriated popular images from earlier centuries. In his painting Apotheosis of Washington, for example, he mimicked a black-and-white stipple engraving done by Philadelphia artist John James Barralet around 1800. The original print, which pictured Washington being carried off to heaven by angels, helped to consecrate the departed president as a national hero. When Hawkins transformed this historical image into a contemporary one, he engulfed the fallen leader in an expressionistic host of feathered figures and swirling clouds, reinvigorating and updating the idea of Washington as a popular deity. Although Hawkins drew inspiration from the most ordinary sources, he possessed a special genius for convert-

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ing the mundane into the marvelous. Much of this magical transformation resulted from his improvisational methods of painting. Espousing the philosophy that "you paint as you go," Hawkins practiced a free-form strategy of image making that produced many fantastic and unexpected results. Starting with a level board for his "canvas," Hawkins often poured a thick foundation of enamel paint across his image plane. Working with colors directly from the can, and using a single brush or stick, he then began to manipulate the tacky paint surface in an impromptu manner. Pushing, mixing, dripping, swirling, and scumbling pigment, he built up rich visual textures as he began to "shape out" the form of his emerging subjects. Working and reworking his pictures, Hawkins never erased his original compositions. Instead he added to them, or painted over them, creating in many works a kind of layering in which earlier images show through and intermingle with later formal inventions. Hawkins' painterly improvisations sometimes resulted in a complete metamorphosis of the subject itself. This was particularly true for the familiar repertoire of animal characters that he had been studying and drawing for years. As he painted, he often changed the shape and identity of his creatures. According to Hawkins,"Once you start something, you can turn it into anything: a rhino or a billy goat with horns, whiskers, and goatee. And then you can turn around and make a big-hipped horse with a bushy tail out of him.... I can turn it into anything I want to."2 At these times, Hawkins consciously departed from his original source, engaging in a kind of free association, a process he described as "working from the knowledge in my head." 3 Hawkins' improvisational approach to painting, his mastery over changing forms and shifting identities, was rooted in the same vernacular traditions that support other

TIGER AND BEAR Columbus, Ohio 1989 Enamel, collage, and mixed media on Masonite 42 48" T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. Collection, High Museum of Art, Atlanta -

1111

TASMANIAN TIGER #3 Columbus, Ohio 1989 Enamel and mixed media construction on Masonite 48 48 4" Gael Mendelsohn Collection

African American art forms, like jazz and story telling. As scholar Henry Louis Gates has shown, this tradition of improvisation, which contrasts the repetition of a known theme with its ongoing and creative revision, is the central rhetorical principle of black vernacular expression. As in Hawkins' use of everyday popular sources, the more mundane the original theme or text, the more dramatic is its revision. In this sense, Hawkins' transformation of ordinary images might be likened to Charlie Parker's brilliant jazz improvisation of "April in Paris" or saxophonist John Coltrane's creative reframing of the popular song "My Favorite Things."4 Improvising Stories and Telling Tall Tales Hawkins himself was reputed to be a great teller of stories, and his improvisational approach to image making reminds one of a master storyteller weaving a startling or unexpected tale. As in the crafting of a folk story, Hawkins' artistry does not depend simply on his ability to dream up

new characters or images, but rather to place his wellknown characters in surprising new contexts that alter or invert their meaning and logic. There is, for example, Hawkins' painting Prudential NYC, in which a giant incarnation of the notorious Prudential rock is seen rising high above the Manhattan skyline. Inspired by a banal advertising slogan, the artist's re-creation of this monster monolith wryly mocks the promise of safety and security that its image is supposed to inspire. Here, as in many of his paintings, Hawkins used exaggerated scale and even the strategy of gargantuism to create drama, humor, and irony. His subjects, which are often grandiose and larger than life, are much like the protagonists of a contemporary tall tale. Although there had always been a sense of a larger story lurking behind Hawkins' images, the narratives in his paintings took a dramatic twist in 1986, when instead of merely quoting images from his archive of popular pictures, he began to incorporate actual printed sources directly into the surfaces of his paintings. With this use of

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Charles BeeMold

WILL1A11.L AW.KUi ytIORN,Kyo) collage, Hawkins' imagery took on greater complexities of meaning and deeper ironies. One of the masterpieces of this genre is his Tiger and Bear. In this primal scene of conflict between a ferocious tiger and giant black bear, a magazine photograph of a nesting bird appears between the two figures, juxtaposing the symbols of birth and new life with those of violence and death. In another image pasted above, monkeys scurry up palm trees as if trying to escape the threat of carnage below. Elsewhere, a duplicate of the monkey photograph is joined by a topographical view of the scene, adding a cinematic sense of shifting space and perspective to the drama. Combining found images to create a kind of conceptual puzzle, Hawkins' Tiger and Bear offers a powerful commentary on the elemental forces and relationships in nature. But because its images continue to carry their old associations even as they assume their new roles, the meaning of the work becomes multiplied. There is, for example,

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a wonderful irony in Hawkins' choice of a carnival poster tiger to represent his fierce protagonist of nature, for circus beasts conjure the tragic sense of nature lost, of nature tamed, caged, and castrated. Similarly, Hawkins' images of monkeys and palm trees, drawn from a travel guide to the tropics, represent a romanticized vision of nature in which its raw and brutal forces are "civilized" by our touristbrochure fantasies and desires. "I'm nothing but a junk man": Hawkins as Artistic Recycler Hawkins' increasing use of collaged elements intensified his involvement with the spectacle of contemporary image culture. Drawing his ideas from the glut of popular images around him, he took creative advantage of the accelerated image production that characterizes our times. In a world saturated with the visual wealth of countless human cultures and historical periods, he became an expert at manip-

BUFFALO HUNTER # 1 Columbus, Ohio 1985 Enamel on Masonite 39 x 48" Private collection

REARING STUD HORSE Columbus, Ohio 1987 Enamel on Masonite 2" 1 48 x 56/ Marvill Collection

materials, and anything else he could sell or reuse. Hawkins converted some of this refuse into artistic materials, using old house enamels as his paint source and discarded plywood, Masonite, sheet metal, and even tabletops as his painting surfaces. Proud of his skill at making trash into treasure, and recognizing the value of things other people found worthless, Hawkins recontextualized and enshrined some of the garbage he collected in a museum that he built in the front rooms of his house. He also decorated his car with recycled plastic flowers, hood ornaments, tires, and beer cans.

BUFFALO HUNTER, anonymous, c. 1844, oil on canvas, 40 x 51'/8. From The Golden Book of America, adapted by Irwin Shapiro, 1957, courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, gift of Harriet Cowles Hammett Graham in memory of Buell Hammett; source material courtesy of Lee Garrett.

WHISTLE JACKET, by George Stubbs (1724-1806), 1761-1762, publication unknown; source material courtesy of Lee Garrett.

ulating signs and images and at exploiting the multiple associations and borrowed histories inherent to them. In the most fundamental sense, Hawkins was an artistic recycler, salvaging overused and cast-off popcultural signs and symbols that he refashioned and reused. In concert with the postmodern theorists of our time, Hawkins believed that recyclingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the process of borrowing, quoting, and recontextualizing objects, images, and ideasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is the best metaphor for the way meaning is constructed and understood in our modern universe. In this view, innovation depends not on the invention of new things but on the creative reworking of the image-saturated and object-laden world that we already have before us. Not surprisingly, Hawkins' recycling of images was connected to his almost lifelong occupation as a recycler of discarded goods. From his earliest days in Columbus, he often foraged through local dumpsters and alleyways to find aluminum cans, cast-off cardboard, scraps of building

One major motivation for Hawkins' recycling efforts was his need to support himself and his family. Finding and selling discarded materials became an important source of income, in addition to the many jobs and occupations that he pursued over the years. Never wanting to rely on a single means of livelihood, Hawkins commented, "If you can't make it one way in life, try something else. I don't depend on no one thing." At one time or another, Hawkins worked as a truck driver, deliveryman, carpenter, plumber, housepainter, and the proprietor of a flophouse. To this impressive list of practical skills and entrepreneurial activities, he added his work as an artist, an undertaking that he viewed as another good way to make a living. "I paint my pictures to sell": Playing to the Market As early as the 1930s and 1940s, Hawkins had reportedly found a small local market for his drawings. He began painting seriously around the 1970s, and by the 1980s, he

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was selling his work to a growing national audience. Hav- once explained, "You've got to be smart not to draw the ing little patience with the normative "art for art's sake" same painting again.... There's always another way." In the philosophy, Hawkins viewed his relationship to the market end, Hawkins would never compromise his ability to as an integral part of his artistic activity. In fact, it was his engage and astonish his viewers. concern for the marketability of his art that encouraged his use of widely popular imagery. His later use of collage was The Art of Astonishment similarly inspired by a desire to engage his audience with a Hawkins' aesthetic of astonishment was born of his vigorfamiliar range of subjects. The technique of collage also ous attempts to create great art and to capture the marketallowed Hawkins to hasten his art production, for the place. Always hoping to surprise and move his audience, ready-made images saved him the time and effort of Hawkins created amazing visual spectacles filled with bold, detailed painting. abstract forms, explosive color combinations, energetic Hawkins' unabashed pursuit of a popular audience brush strokes, and flamboyant decorative patterns. Using for his work would be a form of heresy to those who believe such artistic strategies to create a sense of high drama, that such market concerns are antithetical to the production Hawkins wanted his paintings to conjure the heightened of "true art." This notion is especially enforced with regard experience of"walking into a theater." to the work of self-taught artists who are supposed to remain At the heart of Hawkins' high-effect aesthetic was naive and disconnected from the marketplace. For these his notion of the "real." In contrast to the conventional defiartists, naivetĂŠ about the market is seen as necessary proof of nition of realism as a means to imitate the visual appeartheir incorruptibility by the cultural forces that, it is feared, ance of things, Hawkins' idea of the real arose from a would quickly taint their unique creative vision. Interest- desire to make his images more powerful and provocative, ingly, Hawkins' efforts to please the popular market had the charged with the intense emotion and conceptual intrigue opposite effectâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they enhanced his creative energy and that would fascinate his audience. For him, it was the level inspired his innovation and experimentation. One example is of this engagement, and not the verism of his images, that Hawkins' development of the painted frames used to border determined how "real" his paintings were. his images. First created because he could not afford to buy One of the ways in which Hawkins attempted to cregallery frames, his earliest borders were simple strips of ate a greater aesthetic impact was to incorporate threecolor. But by 1981 his framing had become more involved, dimensional elements into his work in a process he referred and soon he was adding elaborately patterned banding. to as "puffing out." He mixed cornmeal or sawdust with Hawkins felt that such framing made his work more attrac- enamel paint to create a modeling compound that he used tive and salable, because it looked finished and "ready to to build out his pictures and add areas of texture or low hang." Yet more than an interesting decoration or sales ploy, relief. Sometimes Hawkins affixed coal dust, plaster, pieces Hawkins' frames became an integral part of his composi- of wood, and various other found materials to his paintings tions, creating visual intrigue and enhancing the overall to enhance their physical presence. impact of the works. In one mixed-media painting, Tasmanian Tiger When market demand called for the repetition of a No. 3, Hawkins molded the head and ribcage of the beast particular subject, Hawkins did not hesitate to comply. But out of wood and metal sheeting. He also sculpted fangs for rather than duplicating a past image, he sought to make its gaping red mouth, enabling the creature to lunge out each version new and exciting. In fact, Hawkins viewed frightfully from the picture plane. In addition, Hawkins this task as a challenge to his virtuosity as an artist. As he gave the creature two long-lashed human eyes, cut from a LAST SUPPER #6 Columbus, Ohio 1986 Enamel and collage on Masonite 241 / 2. 48" Collection of Robert A. Roth

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CONMUEST OF THE MOON #1 Columbus, Ohio 1984 Enamel on Masonite 48 x 56" T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. Collection, High Museum of Art, Atlanta

magazine photograph, which peer out strangely from its orange-and-black-striped face. The artist kept a collection of miscellaneous hands, eyes, and faces that he snipped from printed sources to order to incorporate into his painted figures. This sudden contrast of extreme photographic realism with Hawkins' more abstract, painterly depictions confounds one's sense of reality. The surreal juxtaposition also fulfilled the artist's desire to create images that would surprise his viewers. In his words, "Everyone will go around...and say, ooh,I've never seen nothing like that." "I am the greatest painter In the world": Hawkins and the History of Art

Hawkins' larger-than-life aesthetic matched his flamboyant personality and ego. Viewing life as a competitive struggle, he constantly tried to best his rivals. Whether as a truck driver or painter, Hawkins sought to excel, and he was not

shy about promoting himself. "I'm as smart as any man that ever lived," he boasted. "I can beat any man out there in the world." Not coincidentally, Hawkins' aspirations and grand self-assertions neatly corresponded with Western culture's romantic myth of the artist as an individual of exceptional genius and accomplishment. In fact, Hawkins' pride as an artist was tangibly reflected in the giant inscription of his signature and birthdate that appeared so conspicuously within the decorative framing of his paintings. Although Hawkins' exaggerated signature broadcast his identity as an artist, it also seemed to parody the art-world conventions that fetishize artistic individuality and authorship. In addition to adopting aspects of fine art ideology, Hawkins used quite a number of well-known historical paintings as sources for his own work, including masterpieces by such artists as Eugene Delacroix, Jean-Francois

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The Art o On view at the Museum of American Folk Art, October 4窶年ovember 2, 1997 rganized by curator ,Stacy C. Hollander, "The Art of William Hawkins" is the first New York ospective of the work of this well-known contemporary African American selftaught artist. Hawkins was#born in Madison County, Kentucky, on July 27, 1895, a fact that is recorded on all of his works. He moved to Columbus, Ohio,in 1916, and died there in 1990. Hawkins' dynamic paintings of cityscapes, people, and animals were frequently based on photographs and other published images gathered over a lifetime. After 1986, he began to incorporate some of these collected images into his paintings as collage elements, creating startling visual juxtapositions. Painted with enamel paint on Masonite and plywood, these large-scale JACOB'S RAM dramatic works convey a Columbus, Ohio thoughtful sense of reality and c. 1986 man's role in the world. Funding Enamel on Masonite / 2" for the exhibition has been provid- 36 381 Museum of American Folk ed by Thomas K. Figge, T. MarArt,#gift of Dan and Jeanne shall Hahn, Jr., and friends of the Fauci. 1991.20.1 Museum of American Folk Art. The exhibition will coincide with the publication of a comprehensive book of the artist's work. William Hawkins: Paintings, by Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, and published by Alfred A. Knopf, explores the full breadth and dizzying diversit of this art, and features 139 color plates. William Hawkins: Paintings may be purchased from the Muse., um Shop for $45(members $40.50), with an additionat charge of $5 for postage and handling. To order, pleas write to the Museum or call Beverly McCarthy at 212/977-7170.

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Millet, Roger van der Weyden, Ammi Phillips, Edward Hopper, and Vincent van Gogh. Harkening back to the tradition of medieval and Renaissance nativity scenes, Hawkins also painted several images of the birth of Christ that mimic art-historical models. In his Adoration of the Wisemen #2, he used an image of the Mona Lisa as the Holy Mother but wrinkled the face of the tiny, cutout reproduction in order to exaggerate her infamous smile. In addition, Hawkins made at least eight different versions of Leonardo da Vinci's famous Last Supper. Working not from an original reproduction but from a vernacular pastiche featuring Christ and the Apostles as African Americans, he created several renditions in which the heads of the figures, as well as the plates of food in

front of them, are photographic collages. In Last Supper #6, a motley group of magazine characters gathers around a Good Housekeeping table setting of spaghetti, beef stew, and chicken potpie in a parody of one of the most celebrated images in art history. As evidenced by these radical, and perhaps blasphemous, transformations of famous masterpieces, Hawkins was not trying to quote the icons of Western art history with special reverence. For him, they were merely part of the larger visual world from which he recycled any imagery that caught his fancy. In fact, he often expressed a kind of antagonism toward the dominant art world, especially its mainstream or academic masters. According to Hawkins,"I was born to be an artist. All these other people had to study to be an artist. That's the reason I'm so great. I was born to do these things." Championing his own selftaught stature, Hawkins turned his lack of privileged training into a sign of special accomplishment.

But beyond such posturing, it is important to consider Hawkins' complicated relationship to the fine art world and to the larger art/culture enterprise. Considering Hawkins' economic and social marginalization, his claims as an artist and his challenge to dominant art history were subversive acts. For to adopt the art-world language of painting was to assume the power and status of that world, to succeed in its terms. In still another sense, the radicalness of Hawkins' work lies most profoundly in his appropriation, transformation, critique, and even inversion of Western art-world canons, codes, and practices. Boldly recycling what is considered to be the dominant art enterprise, Hawkins claimed and re-elaborated the conventions of that world with new authority. With characteristic resourcefulness, Hawkins developed a brilliant repertoire of expressive strategies that seemed to mix and match the most renowned experiments and achievements in the history of twentieth-century art. His self-styled abstraction, Jackson Pollack "skies," daring decorative flourishes, and unorthodox adoption of found pictures and materials challenges the nature and official categories of artistic representation. While always retaining an essential connection to the popular, Hawkins used his painterly inventions to push his appropriated stock of vernacular images to the edge of their familiarity. Creating novel meaning from the most mundane and unexpected sources, his art continues to tweak our perceptions, confound our understandings, and astound our sensibilities.*

Joanne Cubbs is an art historian and thefounding Curator of Folk Art at the High Museum ofArt in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author ofmany publications, including Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Obsessive Visionary(John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 1988). Eugene W. Metcalf Jr., is Professor in the School ofInterdisciplinary Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His most recent book is The Artist Outsider: Creativity and The Boundaries of Culture (Smithsonian, 1994). Cubbs and Metcalfrecently coauthored the essay "Sci-Fi Machines and Bottle-Cap Kings: The Recycling Strategies ofSelf-Taught Artists and the Imaginary Practice ofContemporary Consumption" in Recycled Re-Seen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap(Harry N. Abrams, 1996). NOTES 1 For biographical information and unattributed quotations from the artist, the authors are gratefully indebted to the research and writings of Gary J. Schwindler. See particularly Popular Images, Personal Visions: The Art of William Hawkins, 1895-1990 (Columbus, Ohio: Columbus Museum of Art, 1990)and William L. Hawkins 1895-1990(New York: Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 1990). The authors would also like to thank Frank Maresca and Laura Wiley for their assistance and encouragement. 2 Roger R. Ricco, videotaped interview with William L. Hawkins, 1986. 3 Ibid. 4 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 63-64.

Thelmage Business -

On View at the Museum of American Folk Art, November 8, 1997â&#x20AC;&#x201D;January 11, 1998

wooden figures that we a common sight on the e streets of urban and small-town America in the 19th century declared that the country was "open for business!" These shop and tobacco store fig-,ures represent a major sculptural tradition within the history of - American art."The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in &America," organized by guest curator Ralph Sessions for the Museum of American Folk Art,examines the origins, sources, and practice of shop figure carving and traces its development , from the earliest English and Amenexamples to its decline in the 'early 20th century. Several important aspects of American social history _ are addressed, including racial and gender stereotyping, the emergence INDIAN PRINCESS WITH ., of a national popular culture, and CROSSED LEGS Incised "S.A. Robb, Carver, the birth of modern commercial 114 Centre St." on base advertising. Sessions has selected New York City 1888-1903 more than 60 figures from major Polychromed wood public and private collections for 72" high the first comprehensive presentation Collection of Allan and of this important sculptural tradition Penny Katz ,in more than 25 years. "The Image Business" opened on May 11 at the 'Heritage Plantation of Sandwich in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and will be on view there until October 19. After its presentation at the Museum of American Folk Art, from November 8 through January 11, 1998, the exhibition will be at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland from February 18 through April 12. Generous grants were provided for the exhibition by the General Cigar Co., the American Folk Art Society, Cigar Aficionado, and the National I Endowment for the Arts. .$1 rile carved

canI

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 81

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WILTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY CELEBRATION OF AMERICAN CRAFTSMANSHIP November 15-16, 1997 Wilton High School Field House Wilton, Connecticut

WILTON,the acclaimed venue for the finest in collector-quality traditional and contemporary folk art and hand crafted furniture, supports the talented artisans of today who are keeping alive the folk crafts of the past. This exciting show features the work of 150 artists-craftsmen who are creating objects for the home, unique gifts and holiday specialties, handsomely presented. Comprehensive in its offerings, with quality as its keynote, it continues to be the most impressive show of its type in the nation. Managed by Marilyn Gould

*** EARLY BUYING: SATURDAY 8-10 AM, $20 PER PERSON. A unique opportunity to take advantage of wholesale ordering or retail buying before crowds fill the floor.

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TRUSTEES/DONORS

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ART

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Executive Committee Ralph 0. Esmerian President Frances Sirota Martinson, Esq. Executive Vice President and Chairman, Executive Committee Lucy C. Danziger Executive Vice President Bonnie Strauss Vice President Joan M.Johnson Vice President L. John Wilkerson Treasurer Jacqueline Fowler Secretary Anne Hill Blanchard

Members Edward Lee Cave Joyce B. Cowin David L. Davies Samuel Farber Vira Hladun Goldman Susan Gutfreund Kristina Barbara Johnson, Esq. Susan Klein George H. Meyer, Esq. Cyril I. Nelson

Julie K. Palley David C. Walentas Trustees Emeriti Cordelia Hamilton Herbert W. Hemphill, Jr. Margery G. Kahn Jean Lipman George F. Shaskan, Jr.

RECENT MAJOR DONORS The Museum of American Folk Art greatly appreciates the generous support of the following friends:

$100,000 and above Estate of Daniel Cowin Mr.& Mrs. Joseph Cullman 3d Lucy C.& Frederick M. Danziger Ralph 0.Esmerian Sam & Betsey Farber Ford Motor Company Estate of Laura Harding Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc. The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. Philip Morris Companies Inc. Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in conjunction with Norwegian Visions David C.& Jane Walentas Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund L. John & Barbara Wilkerson Anonymous S50,000—$99,999 The Coca-Cola Company David L. Davies & Jack Weeden General Cigar Company Johnson & Johnson Joseph Martinson Memorial Fund NYNEX Corporation Julie K.& Samuel Palley Barbara and Thomas W.Strauss Fund Anonymous $20,000—$49,999 Arista Records, Inc. Burnett Group Edward Lee Cave Virginia G. Cave Peter M.& Mary Ciccone Mrs. Daniel Cowin Raymond C.& Susan Egan Virginia S. Esmerian Vira Hladun Goldman Mr.& Mrs. John H. Gutfreund Joan M.& Victor L. Johnson National Endowment for the Arts Restaurant Associates Industries, Inc. The Smart Family Foundation Inc. Time Warner Robert N.& Anne Wright Wilson Anonymous 810,000—$19,999 Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. Anne Hill & Edward Vermont Blanchard Bristol-Myers Squibb Company

72 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Virginia W.Cochran Country Living The Dietrich American Foundation & H. Richard Dietrich, Jr. William B. Dietrich & William B. Dietrich Foundation Fortress Corporation Jacqueline Fowler Kristina Barbara Johnson, Esq. Susan & Robert E. Klein The LEF Foundation Kiyoko & Nathan Lerner Fred, Jeff,& Alan Lowenfels in honor of George F. Shaskan, Jr. The Magazine Group George H.& Kay Meyer The New York Community Trust The Peter Norton Family Foundation The Pinkerton Foundation Schlumberger Foundation, Inc. Jean S. & Frederic A. Sharf Anonymous $4,000—$9,999 ARTCORP Beard's Fund Michael R. Bloomberg John R. and Dorothy D. Caples Fund Christie's Cravath, Swaine & Moore Department of Cultural Affairs, City of New York Duane, Morris & Heckscher Gallery 721 Gateway 2000 Mr.& Mrs. Ronald S. Lauder The Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation, Inc. Eric Maffei Vincent & Anne Mai Marstrand Foundation MBNA America, N.A. Merrill Lynch Morgan Stanley Foundation New York State Council on the Arts The New York Times Company Foundation Leo & Dorothy Rabldn Marguerite Riordan William D. Rondina The William P. and Gertrude Schweitzer Foundation, Inc. Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons,Inc. George F. & Myra Shaskan Mr.& Mrs. Elliot K. Slade Sanford L. Smith 8c Associates, Ltd. Peter J. Solomon Sotheby's Lynn Steuer

$2,00043,999 ABC,Inc. American Folk Art Society David & Didi Barrett Patrick Bell & Edwin Hild Bergen Line, Inc. Ellen Blissman Mr.& Mrs. James A. Block Robert & Kathy Booth Richard Braemer & Amy Finkel Edward J. & Margaret Brown Cigna Joseph & Barbara Cohen Country Home Mr.& Mrs. Edgar M.Cullman Allan & Kendra Daniel Richard M.& Peggy Danziger Michael & Janice Doniger Nancy Druckman Richard C.& Susan B. Ernst Foundation Burton M & Helaine Fendelman Scott & Lauren Fine Jay & Gail Furman Fred & Kathryn Giampietro Peter & Barbara Goodman Warren & Sue Ellen Haber Stephen M. Hill J & H Marsh & McLennan, Inc. Personal Client Services Pepi & Vera Jelinek Harry Kahn Allan & Penny Katz Steven & Helen Kellogg Barbara & Dave Krashes Jerry & Susan Lauren Mel & Wendy Lavitt Patrick M.& Gloria M. Lonergan Macy's East Maine Community Foundation Michael & Gael Mendelsohn Keith & Lauren Morgan Norwegian Tourist Board John E. Oilman The Overbrook Foundation J. Randall Plummer Daniel 8z Susan Pollack Polo Ralph Lauren Drs. Jeffrey Pressman & Nancy Kollisch Joseph & Janet Shein Raymond & Linda Simon Louise M.Simone Nell Singer R. Scudder & Helen Smith Richard & Stephanie Solar (continued on page 74)

AMERICA*MI,YES! In Our Washington, D.C. Gallery

"Animals in Folk Art" June-August 1997 Featured Artist: Kristin Helberg Plus 18 Other Contemporary Folk Artists 2020 R Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. Phone: 202-483-9644 Visit Our Web Site: americaohyes.com For information or a copy of our newsletter, Folk Art Collecting, call:

1-800-FOLK-ART

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FALL 1997 FOLK ART

TRUSTEES/DONORS

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Continuedfrom page 72 Spaulding The Judy & Michael Steinhardt Foundation in honor of Ralph 0. Esmerian Donald & Rachel Strauber Stanley & Doris Tananbaum Jim & Judy Taylor Peter & Lynn Tishman United States Trust Company of New York Don Walters & Mary Benisek Irwin H.& Elizabeth V. Warren Peter & Leslie Warwick Anonymous $1,000â&#x20AC;&#x201D;$1,999 Alconda-Owsley Foundation Marna Anderson Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Block Marvin & Lois P. Broder Diana D. Brooks Lawrence & Ann Buttenwieser Carillon Importers Inc. Cirker's Moving & Storage Co., Inc. Liz Claiborne Foundation The Coach Dairy Goat Farm Katie Cochran & Michael G. Allen Conde Nast Publications Lewis B.& Dorothy Cullman Cullman & Kravis, Inc. Marion Dailey Oscar de la Renta Michael Del Castello Derrel B. DePasse Don & Marian DeWitt Mr.& Mrs. Charles Dilcer The Echo Design Group,Inc. Mr.& Mrs. Alvin H. Einbender Theodore & Sharon Eisenstat Epstein Philanthropies Mr.& Mrs. Anthony Evnin Fairfield Processing Corporation Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Geismar The Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc. Dr. Kurt A. Gitter & Ms. Alice Yelen Eric J. & Anne Gleacher Barbara Goldsmith Barbara L. Gordon Baron J. & Ellin Gordon Eugene M.Grant and Company Robert M.Greenberg Stanley & Marcia Greenberg Bonnie Grossman Anne Groves Mr. and Mrs. James Harithas Marion Harris & Dr. Jerry Rosenfeld Robert F. Hemphill, Jr. Ellen E. Howe Robert J. & Fern K. Hurst Sandra Jaffe Linda E. Johnson Harvey & Isobel Kahn Maurice C.& Charmaine Kaplan Diane D. Kern The Hess and Helyn Kline Foundation Robert A. Landau Mark & Taryn Leavitt Diana Lee in memory of Seymour Margulies Fred Leighton Barbara S. Levinson Peter & Nadine Levy

74 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Lynn M. Lorwin Dan W. Lufkin & Silvia Kramer Judith McGrath Christopher & Linda Mayer The Helen R.& Harold C. Mayer Foundation Robert & Meryl Meltzer Mr.& Mrs. Stanley G. Mortimer, III Cyril I. Nelson Anthony J. Petullo Guy Peyrelongue Mortimer & Eugenie Propp Ricco/Maresca Gallery Betty Ring H. Marshall Schwarz Stephen Score Joel & Susan Simon George & Susan Soros David & Ellen Stein Patricia A.& Robert C. Stempel Maureen Taylor David Teiger Tiffany & Company G. Marc Whitehead Susan Yecies Anonymous $500â&#x20AC;&#x201D;$999 Joe C. Adams Richard C.& Ingrid Anderson R. Randolph Apgar & Allen Black James & Deborah Ash The Bachmann Foundation, Inc. Frank & June Barsalona Henry Barth Dr. & Mrs. Alex Berenstein Bergdorf Goodman The Bibelot Shops Peter & Lynn Bienstock Peter & Helen Bing Jeffrey & Tina Bolton Joseph & Joan Boyle Gale Meltzer Brudner Robert T. Cargo Cavin-Morris Gallery Suzanne Cole Mr. & Mrs. Stephen H. Cooper Judy Cowen Susan R. Cullman Aaron & Judy Daniels Keith De Lellis Alvin & Davida Deutsch Lynne W.Doss Howard Drubner Arnold & Debbie Dunn Ross & Gladys Faires Frank & Fran Frawley Ken & Brenda Fritz Galerie Heike Curtze Daniel M. Gantt Sima Ghadamian William L.& Mildred Gladstone Harriet & Jonathan Goldstein Howard M.Graff Marilyn A. Green Peter Greenwald & Nancy Hoffman Grey Advertising T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. Cordelia Hamilton Robert & Elizabeth Harleman

Mark & Pria Harmon Brian C.& Ellen Harris Audrey B. Heckler Herbert W. Hemphill, Jr. Robert L.& Marjorie Hirschhorn Leonard & Arlene Hochman Carter Houck Imperial Wallcoverings, Inc. Laura N.& Theodore J. Israel Betty W.Johnson & Douglas F. Bushnell Guy Johnson Robert J. Kahn Cathy M.Kaplan Fran Kaufman & Robert C. Rosenberg Mary Kettaneh Jonathan & Jacqueline King Barbara S. Klinger Mr.& Mrs. Theodore A. Kurz Evelyn & Leonard A. Lauder James & Frances Lieu Mimi Livingston Monica Longworth & Michael F. Coyne Ian W.MacLean Earle & Carol Mack Richard & Gloria Mammy Virginia Marx Grete Meilman Robert & Joyce Menschel Evelyn S. Meyer Timothy & Virginia Millhiser Ira M. Millstein Museums New York Ann & Walter Nathan Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Newman Victor & Susan Niederhoffer Paul L.& Nancy Oppenheimer Burton W.Pearl, MD William & Terry Pelster The Perrier Group of America Terry R. Pillow Mr. & Mrs. F.F. Randolph, Jr. Mr.& Mrs. Milton S. Rattner Irene Reichert John & Margaret Robson Mr.& Mrs. Peter C. Rockefeller Roger & Alyce Rose Mr.& Mrs. Winthrop Rutherford, Jr. Selig D. Sacks Merilyn Sandin-Zarlengo Judy A. Saslow Diane H. Schafer Paul & Penelope Schindler Richard J. & Sheila Schwartz Mrs. Stewart Seidman Arthur & Suzanne Shawe Ronald K.& June Shelp Bruce B. Shelton Cecille Barger & Myron Benit Shure Randy Siegel John & Stephanie Smither Geoffrey A.& Elizabeth A. Stern Victor & Carol Millsom Studer Myles & Roberta Tanenbaum James Adams & Ruben Teles Donald & Barbara Tober Mr.& Mrs. Raymond S. Troubh Anne Vanderwarker (continued on page 76)

"The Beaver" "My American Lion"

24" X 24" HOUSE PAINT ON PLYWOOD

If your Folk Art Gallery would like to carry Vie Beaver"Folk Art call...

WANDA'S QUILTS P.O. Box 1764â&#x20AC;˘ Oldsmar, Florida 34677

(813) 855-1521 E-Mail: bever@kcii.com

TRUSTEES/DONORS

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Continuedfrom page 74 Karel F. Wahrsager Clifford & Gayle Wallach Bennett & Judie Weinstock

Anne G. Wesson Jane Q. Wirtz Jon & Rebecca Zoler

RECENT DONORS TO THE COLLECTIONS Gifts Judith Alexander Ralph 0. Esmerian Jacqueline Fowler Abby and B.H. Friedman Joanne C. Garges

JEAN LIPMAN FELLOWS Co-Chairmen Keith & Lauren Morgan Don Walters & Mary Benisek Founding Members Mama Anderson David & Didi Barrett Patrick Bell & Edwin Hild Robert & Kathy Booth Richard Braemer & Amy Finkel Lois P. Broder Edward J. & Margaret Brown Virginia G. Cave Allan & Kendra Daniel Michael Del Castello Michael & Janice Doniger

The Hirschhorn Foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Robert and Marjorie Hirschhorn and Carolyn Hirschhorn Schenker Janet Hobbie George H. Meyer Leo & Dorothy Rabkin Maryann and Raymond Warakomski

Nancy Drucicman Scott & Lauren Fine Jay & Gail Furman Wendell Garrett Fred Giampietro Peter & Barbara Goodman Barbara L. Gordon Howard M. Graff Bonnie Grossman Anne Groves Warren & Sue Ellen Haber Pepi & Vera Jelinek Linda E. Johnson Harvey Kahn Allan Katz Steven & Helen Kellogg

Barbara & Dave !Crashes Jerry & Susan Lauren Patrick M.& Gloria M. Lonergan Frank Maresca Gael Mendelsohn John E. Oilman J. Randall Plummer Drs. Jeffrey Pressman & Nancy Kollisch Leo & Dorothy Rabkin Betty Ring Marguerite Riordan Stephen Score Jean S. & Frederic A. Sharf Joseph & Janet Shein Raymond & Linda Simon

Come see the many faces offolk art MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART EVA AND MORRIS FELD GALLERY AT TWO LINCOLN SQUARE Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets, New York City Open Tuesday through Sunday 11:30Am-7:30mi, closed Monday 212/595-9533 For Membership information, call 212/977-7170

Book and Gift Shops Columbus Avenue at 66th Street 212/496-2966 Rockefeller Center,62 W.50th Street 212/247-5611

Phrenologiul Head Attributed to A.Ames Evans, Erie County, New York c. 1847-1850 Carved and polychromed wood 1694x 13 x 7/ 1 4 ' Museum of American Folk Art, bequest of Jeanette Virgin. 1981.24.1

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART

76 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

R. Scudder & Helen Smith Richard & Stephanie Solar Lynn Steuer Donald & Rachel Strauber Stanley & Doris Tananbaum Jim & Judy Taylor David Teiger Ski von Reis Irwin H.& Elizabeth V. Warren Peter & Leslie Warwick G. Marc Whitehead Susan Yecies

Handcrafted Niceties and Necessities lox

Please send for our current portfoliofeaturing our unique selection of historically correct handmade items: iron, lighting, pottery, decoys, mirrors, paintings, assorted wooden items and otherfine accessories. $.10.00pp (Refundable with first order)

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PO Box 4104-FA • PORTSMOUTH, NH 03801 TELEPHONE:(603) 547-2011

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NEW F.VGIAND'S 14th ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLK ART

"Unparalleled Traditional Craftmanship" Museum-quality reproductions ofAmerican antiquefurniture & accessories, both country &formal, contemporaryfolk art, and the highestquality traditionalcrafts(?),America's mosttalented artisans. 0000000000000 0000000000000 00 etiiie ° 00 0" 00 C 00

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Country Folk Art Festival Judy Marks PO Box 134• Glen Ellyn, IL 60138 (630) 858-1568

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 77

SOUTHEASTERN ARTISTS CELEBRATE THE BOUNTIFUL SEASON...

FALL COLOR VII

•

THE HARVEST

September 12 - November 8,1997

• Don Bundrick - Furniture Patrick Henry Cardiff - Boomerangs Judith Cheney - Painting Jim Havner - Clay Rodney Leftwich -Clay Ben Owen III - Clay David Stuempfle -Clay Billie Ruth Sudduth - Basketry Jimmie Lee Sudduth - Painting

Daniel Troppy - Assemblage JIM HAVNER • County Fair, clay, 611 x ici"W x 7 1/2"D

And Others Open Mon-Sat, loam•6pm Sun, u2-spm 38 Biltmore Avenue Asheville, NC 28801 704/251-0202

FINE ART • CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CRAFT • CONTEMPORARY SOUTHERN FOLK ART

WORKS BY

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CAN BE SEEN AT

FRANK J. MIELE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FOLK ART 1098 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK, N.Y. 10028 212.249.7250

GALLERIE JE REVIENS ONE RIVERSIDE AVENUE WESTPORT CT. 061380 203.227.7716

78 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Visit the Museum of American Folk Art online.

3RD ANNUAL

THE NEW YORK

TRIBAL ANTIQuEs SHOW

PARTIAL EXHIBITOR LIST Eleanor Abraham Asian Art, NY Afri-Karner, South Africa Alaska on Madison, NY Alexander Gallery, NY All Of Us Americans/Betty Mintz , MD Steven G. Alpert, TX Ames Gallery, CA Ancient Art Of The New World, Inc., NY Michael Andrews, CA Jeff Appleby, CA Arte Textil, CA Art of The Past, NY Les Arts de l'Atlas, France Peter Baker, Canada Joan Barist Primitive Art, NJ Keith C. Barton, NM Guy Bellinkx, Belgium David Bernstein, NY James Blackmon Gallery, CA Blitz Indian Arts, NY Peter M. Boyd, IN Damon Brandt, NY Marcy Burns, PA Caravanserai, Ltd., TX Caskey-Lees, CA Chinalai Tribal Antiques Ltd., NY Conlon Siegal, NM Conru Primitive Art, England Joel Cooner Gallery, TX Dennis G. Crow Ltd., CA Taylor Dole Tribal Arts, NM Dimondstein Tribal Arts, CA Economos Works of Art, NM John Chas. Edler, IN Eric Duncan, CO Galerie Mermoz/Santo Micali, France Galerie Vanuxem, France Irwin & Marjorie Goodman, NY Eleanor Tulman Hancock, Inc., NY Wayne Heathcoat, England Himalayan Tribal Art, CA Sandra Horn, CA Robert Huber, IL Paul Hughes, England Insulinde Indonesian Arts, CA Jewels, CA Mark A. Johnson, CA Leonard Kalino Fine Arts, CA Kelter-Make Antiques, NY David M. Lantz, NY Lariat Trading Co., MT Dorothy Lewis, CA Lewis/Warn Gallery, WA Natalie Linn Indian Baskets, OR Mariposa Ethnic Arts, NY K. R. Martindale Gallery, NM Ron Messick, NM Patrick Mestdagh, Belgium Ramona Morris, CA Robert Morris, CA Morris-Fernandez Trading Co., CA Thomas Murray, CA Jeffrey Myers Primitive Art, NY Judith Nash, NY Marc Navarro, CA Lone Nelson, IL Noir D'Ivoire, France Pan-American Traders, TX James Pongrass, OH Susan Parrish, NY Post-Columbian Antiques, UT Michael Rhodes, NY Orlando Rigono, NY H. & L. Quackelbeen, Belgium Red Quarters, NY Eric Robertson African Arts, NY David F. Rosenthal, CA Second Phase Gallery, NM Merton D. Simpson, NY Stendahl Galleries, CA Stevens Fine Art, AZ J. Mark Sublette, AZ Tambaran Gallery, NY Throckmorton Fine Art, NY Traders Of The Lost Arts, NM Tribal Reality Gallery, NY Trotta-Bono, NY Elaine Tucker, MO Valluet-Ferrandin, France James Willis Tribal Art, CA Yunus Gallery, FL

Photo Courtesy of Donald Ellis. Canada

ASIAN AFRICAN AMERICAN INDIAN OCEANIC ART OF THE AMERICAS AMERICAN FOLK ART

OCTOBER 17, 18, 19, 1997 75

INTERNATIONAL DEALERS EXHIBITING & SELLING PRE-1940 AMERICAN INDIAN, FOLK, DEVOTIONAL, TEXTILE & TRIBAL ART & ANTIQUES THE ARMORY AT GRAMERCY PARK 68 LEXINGTON AVENUE AT 26TH STREET NEW YORK CITY

THURSDAY OCTOBER 16TH 6-9PM -SHOW PREVIEW BENEFITING THE MUSEUM FOR AFRICAN ART PREVIEW INFORMATION 212.966.1313 ExT.116

SHOW INFORMATION MCM PRODUCTIONS 310.455.2886 / 505.995.9678

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MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION

Representing over 300 years ofAmerican des'gn,from the late 1600s to the present, the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Collection brings within reach ofthe public the very best ofthe past to be enjoyedfor generations to come. New Directions

The Museum welcomes its newest licensee: * Manticore Products,Inc. Known for its eco-friendly computer accessories, Manticore will "light up" your computer with a series of screen savers featuring cigar-label art from the Museum's Kane-Greenberg Collection. A coordinating hard-top lexanÂŽ mousepad is also available. News from Museum Licensees Share our legacy; look for new products from our family of licensees, featuring unique designs inspired by the Museum's collections. * American Pacific Enterprises. A classic redesigned! An heirloom design, Spinning Spools, is now available in the Museum's easy-to-care-for bedcover series. *The Echo Design Group,Inc. Dress Up! Jean Teal's artful quilt Designing Dolls Dresses is the design inspiration for the Museum's first scarf from Echo. Teal's quilt, created from 1930s and 1940s fabrics, was a winner in the Museum's 1988 international crib-quilt contest,"Memories of Childhood." The scarf is available with four different-colored bordersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;red, blue, black, and navy. *Enesco Corporation. Santa Claus is coming to town! Music boxes, tree ornaments, mantel accessories, and collectible cloth figures are certain to fill your holidays with joy this season.

10 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

* Tyndale. A cigar is notjust a cigar! It's now inspiration for a series of lamps from Tyndale, featuring designs from the Museum's Kane-Greenberg Collection. American Pacific Enterprises Dear Customer

Your purchase of Museumlicensed products directly benefits the exhibition and educational activities of the Museum. Thank you for participating in the Museum's continuing efforts to celebrate the style, craft, and tradition of American folk art. If you have any questions or comments regarding the Museum of American Folk Art Collection, please contact us at 212/977-7170. Family of Licensees Abbeville Press (212/888-1969)gift wrap. book/gift tags, and quilt note cube.* American Pacific Enterprises (212/944-6799) quilts, shams, and pillows. Andrews & McMeel (816/932-6700)traditional folk art songbook.* Carvin Folk Art Designs, Inc.(212/7556474)gold-plated and enameled jewelry.* Concord Miniatures (800/888-0936) r-scale furniture and accessories.* Danforth Pewterera, Ltd.(800/222-3142) pewter jewelry and accessories, buttons, ornaments, keyrings.* Dynasty Dolls(8001736-4438) collectible porcelain dolls.* The Echo Design Group,Inc.(212/686-8771)scarves.* Enesco Corporation (800/436-3726)decorative home giftware collection.* Hermitage des Artistes (212/243-1007)tramp art objects.* Imperial Wallcoverings,Inc.(216/464-3700) wallpaper and borders. James Hastrich (800/9622932) miniature painted furniture reproductions in limited editions.* The Lane Company,Inc., including LaneNenture and Lane Upholstery (804/369-5641)furniture (case goods, wicker, and upholstered furniture) and mini-chests. Limited Addition (800/2689724)decorative accessories.* Manticore Products,Inc.(312/595-9800)screen savers and mousepads.* Mary Myers Studio (800/829-9603) nutcrackers.* Sullins House (219/495-2252) peg-hook wall plaques; gift,

Enesco Corporation

The Echo Design Group, Inc.

desk, and vanity boxes; decorative mirrors, and fire and dummy boards.* Syratech Corporation (617/561-2200) holiday and decorative home accessories. Takashhnaya Company, Ltd.(212/350-0550) home furnishings accessories and furniture (available only in Japan). Tyndale,Inc.(312/384-0800) lighting and lampshades. Wild Apple Graphics,Ltd. (800/756-8359)fine art reproduction prints and posters.* XPress,Inc.(800/334-0426) mugs. *Available in Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shops. For mail-order information,contact Beverly McCarthy at 212/977-7170.

SLOTIN FOLK ART AUCTIONS Now accepting Consignments For Spring 1998

FOLK EROTIC AUCTION

SLOTIN FOLK ART AUCTION

"Eve" by Elliott Kimball.

"Nude" by Olde Man Block.

"Carved Head" by S. L. Jones.

Space Is Limited Call Now! For more information on the Auction, please call or write: Steve Slotin • 5967 Blackberry Lane • Buford, GA 30518 (770) 932-1000 • FAX (770) 932-0506

MUSEUM

NEWS

Museum of American Folk Art Quilts Tour Japan pproximately 1,800 people attended the opening of"An American Treasury: Master Quilts from the Collection of the Museum of American Folk Art," an exhibition that began its four-city tour of Japan on April 1. This exhibition, which features 50 of the Museum's quilts made from the early 19th century to the presentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including nine that had never before been exhibitedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;was organized by Elizabeth V. Warren, the Museum's consulting curator and coauthor of Glorious American Quilts: The Quilt Collection ofthe Museum of American Folk Art(Penguin Studio, 1996). Warren was invited to Tokyo to help install the quilts at the opening venue and to lecture

Victorian Paint-Decorated Cottage Furniture Susan E. Oostdyk Antiques by Appt. 201/472-4435 or upstairs at the Great Andover Antique Company 124 Main St.(Rt. 206N)Andover, NJ open: Wednesday-Sunday 10-5 closed: Monday/Tuesday 201/786-6384

on the history of American quilts as presented through the Museum's collection. The exhibition tour, sponsored by Pencil Points Co., Ltd., of Japan, a firm that operates the Hearts & Hands Patchwork School and also manufactures reproduction fabrics for quiltmakers, opened in April at the Tokyu Department Store in Tokyo, as part of the store's 35th anniversary celebrations, and went on to the Kobe Hankyu Museum in June. The exhibition will be presented at the Iwataya Department Store in Fukuoka City, Kyushu,from September 9 to 15, and at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Sapporo City, Hokkaido,from September 23 to October 5.

771*---1'

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82 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Opening ceremony ribbon cutting in Tokyo. Left to right: Tetsuya Komori, board member in charge of promotion, Japan Public Broadcasting Corporation; curator Elizabeth V. Warren; Victoria Hoffmann, coordinator for the exhibition; Dale Largent, Second Secretary of Cultural Affairs, American Embassy; [Ms.] Chuck Nohara, President of Pencil Points, Co. Ltd.; and Hideo Fukushima, Director, Tokyo Department Store Corporation Ltd.

Forrest Sawyer and Docent Discuss Hawkins n the middle of a mild May afternoon, ABC News anchor Forrest Sawyer brought his crew into the Museum to videotape an interview for an ABC year-end, in-house project. On his way out, Sawyer stopped by the information desk to chat with two-year Museum docent Frayda

Museum Trustee David Davies, Sandy Palley, and Museum Trustee Julie Palley

Lottis "7-441"

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;triâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;k

Continuous Wire Sculpture

Benefit Country Auction nApril 20, 1997, 350 friends and supporters of the Museum of American Folk Art turned out at Sotheby's in New York City for the Museum's Benefit Country Auction. Thanks to the vision and leadership of Trustee Advisory Chairman Edward Lee Cave and the Trustee Advisory Committee, Lucy C. Danziger and Julie Palley, the bidding was fierce, raising $175,000. Our thanks also go to the exceptionally hardworking Benefit Committee Honorary Chairmen Elissa and Edgar Cullman, Jr.; 18th-and 19th-century Committee members Virginia Cave, Marjorie Chester, Susi and Ray Egan, Suzanne and Michael Payne, and Alice and Roger Rose; 20th-century Committee members Taryn and Mark Leavitt, Gael Mendelsohn, and Judie and Ben-

Pitowsky. She discovered while speaking with Sawyer that he has an interest in the work of painter William Hawkins and is looking forward to visiting the Museum again when the Hawkins exhibition opens in October.

nett Weinstock; Silent Auction Committee members Michele Ateyeh and Penny Schindler; Dinner Chairmen Martha and John Glass and Linda and Christopher Mayer; Junior Committee members Mike Hafford, Hilary Kramer, Ian MacLean,and Alexis Shein; and Catalog Committee members Nancy Druckman, Leslie Keno, John Nye, Kara Short, and William W. Stahl, Jr. The Museum also wishes to extend its thanks to the gifted and dedicated staff of Sotheby's and to all of the volunteers who contributed their time and energy. Most importantly, the Museum owes a profound debt of gratitude to the auction donors, without whom the funds raised by the event would not have been realized.

Jay Potter (212) 749-4967 220 West 98th Street, New York, NY 10025 ABC News anchor Forrest Sawyer with docent Frayda Pitowsky

FALL 1997 FOLK ART SS

MUSEUM

JUDY A SAS LOW

NEWS

GALLERY

Dewey Blocksma, Statue of Liberty, 1997, Mixed Media, 26" x7'

African Art Alaskan Art Clyde Angel Hope Atkinson Minnie Black Dewey Blocksma John Briggs Circus Banners William Dawson Paul Edlin Howard Finster Michael Finster Lee Godie Jesse Howard Clementine Hunter James Harold Jennings Sherman Lambdin Woodie Long Dwight Mackintosh Prison Art Sarah Rakes Charlie Tolliver Bill Traylor Derrick Webster Fred Webster Maria Wnek "Chief" Willey Purvis Young and more 300W. Superior Chicago IL 60610 ph 312 943 0530 fx 312 943 3970 Tuesday - Saturday 10 to 6

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84 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Quilt Revival Exhibition Opens n important chapter in the history of quiltmaldng is documented in the exhibition "Old-Time Favorites, NewTime Fashions: Quilt Revival 1910-1950," which opened at the Museum's Eva and Morris Feld Gallery on July 12. It will be on view through September 28."The Great American Quilt" was all the rage at the beginning of the 20th century. Although inspired by a romantic view of the colonial past, quiltmakers were innovative in the use of delicate, airy patterns in pastel colors. These fresh-looking cotton quilts are distinguished by an attention to detail, precise workmanship, and inventiveness. The Museum's consulting curator, Elizabeth V. Warren, and guest curator Sharon L. Eisenstat have chosen most of the quilts for the exhibition from the Museum of American Folk Art Collection and

KITTEN APPLIQUE QUILT Quiltmaker unidentified Possibly Kentucky 1930 —1945 Cotton (including muslin feed sacks), cotton embroidery 83 67" Museum of American Folk Art, gift of Laura Fisher, Antique Quilts and Americana, 1987.8.1

have included detailed text and related source materials. The opening reception was underwritten by J&H Marsh & McLennan, Inc. Personal Client Services. A series of Thursday Lunchtime Talks—"Appliqué Quilts," "Collecting Quilts," "Quilts of Conscience," and "African American Quilt Traditions"—was held in July and August in conjunction with the exhibition at the Museum;the talks were free and open to the public. A special Quilt Weekend will be held September 12 and 13. Call 212/977-7170 for details.

outsider art fair 1998 self-taught •• 11 •• •• •

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january 23-25 Friday 12-8pm •

Saturday 11-7pm • Sunday 11-6pm

Daily admission $10 • Three-day pass $20

preview january 22nd Thursday 5:30-8:30pm

($50 includes preview, two readmissions & catalog)

festive dinner reception january 22"d, 8:30pm Museum of American Folk Art • Skylight Ballroom, Puck Building • 212.977.7170

the puck building Lafayette & Houston Streets • Soho, New York City symposium: uncommon artists VI Fair Info: SANFORD L. SMITH & ASSOCIATES

Saturday January 24th

Lee Kogan 212.977.7170

212.777.5218 Fax: 212.477.6490 • email: ssmithasso@aol.com

MUSEUM

NEWS

Ulysses Grant Dietz, Lee Kogan, and Gerard C. Wertkin

Institute Graduation Tea and Lecture ommencement Exercises for the Museum's Folk Art Institute were held on Monday,June 2, at the Museum's Eva and Morris Feld Gallery. Lee Kogan,director of the Folk Art Institute, presided over the event. Ulysses Grant Dietz, Curator of Decorative Arts at The Newark Museum and an animated and most engaging speaker, gave this year's Esther Stevens Brazer Memorial Lecture. The lecture, "The Changing Face of the Colonial Revival," accompanied by a splendid slide presentation, was both lively and informative. Kogan spoke on behalf of the Museum's Folk Art Institute and on the accomplishments of this year's graduating fellow, Joan Adler. Trustee Frances Sirota Martinson, Esq., presented Adler with her well-earned certificate. Dale Gregory, the Museum's new gallery manager,and Docent Coordinator Arlene Hochman pre-

Lionel St. Eloi Haiti Metal, Wire & Glass "LA SlRENE" 49"H x 24"W 1990's

Landmark Exhibition Closes

Lglitemationd goei2 ulitt 8ince 1980 Specializing in quality works of art which express JOY in the beauty of God's world, PEACE. GOOD FEELINGS. and the SPIRITUALITY of unique, self-taught artists from around the world.

86 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

raditional folk art lovers from all parts of the country and many tourists from overseas visited "A Passion for the Past: The Collection of Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little at Cogswell's Grant," which was on view from May 3 to July 6. This landmark exhibition featured treasured works from one of the most distinguished collections of American folk art in the United States. A superb assemblage of 18th- and 19th-century paintings and furnishings was shown for the firstâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and probably onlyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;time outside of rural New England. The exhibition was organized by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and the American Federation of

aPettte Tonheu k Jaukie Ccatipod9 (139 (Appointment: 314-993-9851 foc S I 4-993-9260

sented eight-year docent awards to Mercedes Bierman, Debbie Dunn, Joyce Eppler, Nancy Fischer, Millie Gladstone, Arlene Hochman, Barbara Klinger, Ada Lyttle, Miriam Nadel, Susan Oostdyk, Gertrude Quinn, Jeanne Riger, Marilyn Schwartz, Sara Snook, and Lynn Steuer. Five-year docents awards went to Louise Kaminow and Marion Shapin, and a three-year docent award was given to Candy Martinez. Joan D. Sandler, Director of Education and Collaborative Programs,spoke on behalf of the Education department and of the Museum's debt of gratitude to its docent corps and volunteers. Family and friends of the honorees, as well as Museum Trustees, staff, and members attended the event. Deborah Ash, Joan Bloom,and Madelaine Gill hosted the tea and were responsible for the lovely decorations and refreshments.

10046 Conway cRocid S1. gouts, L.A.4o. 63124

Arts. The opening reception was held on Monday, May 5, and was attended by Museum members, trustees, staff, and friends, as well as members of the Little family and Ruth Wolfe, one of the exhibition coordinators and author of "Nina Fletcher Little: Bridging the Worlds of Antiques and Folk Art," which appeared in the Summer 1997 issue of Folk Art.

SAMPLE GRAVESTONE Noah Pratt Freeport, Maine 1787 Carved slate 14 7 / 1 2" Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1991.1050

20TH CENTURY FOLK ART GEORGIA BLIZZARD RAYMOND COINS G.C. DEPRIE MINNIE EVANS HOWARD FINSTER VICTOR JOSEPH GATTO SYBIL GIBSON HOMER GREEN BESSIE HARVEY

RAYMOND COINS

CLEMENTINE HUNTER M.G.JONES JOE LIGHT SISTER GERTRUDE MOB(' MALCOLM MCKESSON JUSTIN MCCARTHY

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JIMMY LEE SUDDUTH WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY 11 AM - 5 PM AND BY APPOINTMENT

MOSE TOLLIVER PURVIS YOUNG

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Museum Charlotte Zander SchloB Bonnigheim

Artists - Circus - Clowns July 5 to December 7, 1997 Tattoo July 5 to December 7, 1997

Debbie Perry

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Kentucky Folk Art Center

102 West First Street Morehead,KY 40351 606.783.2204 Fax(606)783-5034

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FALL 1997 FOLK ART 87

MUSEUM

NEWS Instructor Gay Merrill Gross, surrounded by West Side area children who proudly display their paper crafts

1510 S. Congress Austin, TX 78704 512.912.1613 www.yarddog.com Paperfolding, Papertelling Artist Chuckie Sainte-James Boudrot Burgess Dulaney Sybil Gibson Rev. J.L. Hunter S.L. Jones Reginald Mitchell Royal Robertson Isaac Smith Mary T. Smith Jimmy Lee Sudduth Mose Tolliver Purvis Young and more

apertelling, a combination storytelling-paperfolding performance that is unique to the folk traditions of paperfolding, has recently caught on in America as an effective classroom tool. On May 23, as part of the Museum's ongoing Youth Empowerment Program, Gay Merrill Gross, an internationally known origami teacher, gave a papertelling performance to a group of eager youngsters at the Museum. Through "papertelling," Gross explored numerous subjects, including the environment, history, geography, science, and

art, while giving step-by-step instruction for making a paperfolded box and frogâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to jump in the box, of course. The children were engrossed from the start and delighted with the success of their project. Gross has published several books on the subject. This program was made possible through the collaborative efforts of the Museum's docents, its gallery manager, Dale Gregory, and the parents and volunteers from the local Youth Empowerment Program of the Amsterdam Houses,located in the Lincoln Center area.

Jimmy I-ledges Rising Fawn Polk Art Art Appraisals' Southern Self-Taught Art

Purvis Young P.O. Box 26 Lookout Mountain, TN 27250 706-290-17N

88 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

Where the Magic Happens n May 21,first-graders from P.S. 191 visited artist Milo Mottola's Brooklyn studio as part of the ongoing Carousel Project, a program created by the Museum's Education department. Mottola, recently featured on the PBS television program Reading Rainbow, was commissioned by the Department of Environmental Protection to design the carousel soon to be installed in Manhattan's Riverbank State Park. The Riverbank carousel's unique design is based on fantasy animals drawn by children and developed by Mottola. Highlighting the tour of his studio was Mottola's demonstration of the molding process. Proclaiming Mottola a "magician," the wide-eyed youngsters remained a captive audience as he

Milo Mottola, artist and designer of the Riverbank State Park carousel, demonstrates the molding process to first-graders from P.S. 191.

went on to explain the modern carousel's roots in medieval jousting and to answer a volley of questions. Previously, these students visited the Museum of American Folk Art, rode on the carousel in Central Park, and engaged in numerous in-class projects. The field trip was the last in this year's series of activities devoted to the study of the art and history of the carousel.

Jon Seri (c. 1894-1993) Untitled c. '82 oil on wood 48 x 21"

Minnie Evans Thornton Dial Howard Finster Albert Hoffman Lonnie Holley Louis Monza

Jon Serl Henry Speller Bill Traylor Joseph Yoakum Purvis Young

LUISE ROSS GALLERY 568 BROADWAY NEW YORK

NICK ENGELBERT AND MARY NOHL Objects and Environments September 20, 1997-January 4, 1998 September 20 - Opening Reception September 21 - Day trip to site of Engelbert environment in Hollandale, WI October 17 - Slide-lecture by Ruth Kohler at JMKAC Organ Grinder by Nick Engelbert

John Michael Kohler

Stick Man by Mary Nohl

ARTS CENTER 608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan, WI 53081 â&#x20AC;˘ 920-458-6144 This exhibition has been made possible by a grant from The Wisconsin Arts Board and corporate, foundation, and individual contributions.

FALL 1997 FOLK ART 89

FOLK ART GALLERY A VISUAL JOURNEY

MUSEUM

NEWS

Museum Members Cross the Arctic Circle hirty-nine Museum of American Folk Art members, trustees, and friends, including the Museum director's wife, Barbara Wertkin, traveled to Norway on a Folk Art Explorers' Club tour that took place from June 24 to July 5, 1997. The tour was timed to culminate with the Oslo opening of the Museum's traveling exhibition "Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition" and an informative lecture on the traditions of rosemaling by noted Norwegian rosemaler, author, and teacher Nils Ellingsgard. The trip began in Oslo with some general sightseeing, including a visit with Bjarte Aarseth, a woodcarver who uses traditional Norwegian carving techniques, at the Viking Ship Museum. The group then traveled north, stopping in Lillehammer for a visit at Maihaugen, the largest open-air museum in Scandinavia, and a lunch at Bjorke Gaard, a family farm begun in the 10th century. Next was a visit to the historic city of Trondheim, Norway's first capital, which is celebrating its 1,000th anniversary this year. In Trondheim, the tour boarded the coastal steamer MIS

...featuring traditional Swedish and Norwegian interpretations ofNortheast Kingdom landscape paintings, and handpainted wooden cupboards, recipe boxes, bellows, and more. Lourraine Clough, Artist Hours: Summer Mon.-Fri. 10-5, Sat.-Sun 11-3 26 RAILROAD STREET • ST. JOHNSBURY, VT (802) 748-0173

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90 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

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Left to right: Museum Trustee Joan Johnson and Museum members Denis Keleman, Susan Beneman, and Joanne Foulk at the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway.

Nordlys to spend two nights at sea, traveling up the western coast of the country and across the Arctic Circle. Because it was only a week after the summer solstice, this Arctic voyage through breathtaking scenery was conducted in almost 24 hours of daylight. Disembarking in TromsO, the group visited the Ice Cathedral in this charming Arctic city, home to the northernmost university in the world. Finally, the group flew back to Oslo, where they were joined by the Museum's director, Gerard C. Werticin, for the July 3 opening of"Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition" at the Norwegian Folk Museum—the perfect ending to this Norwegian adventure.

Christopher Gurshin „79-a

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CRAIG FARROW Cabinetmaker

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Ord Acw En9fancf stTfe of Taintinfjs Tin ware, Boxes, Pine wood pieces of distinction

/641.41 ftelaiti4 defaced a vowt older 7 Exhibiting October 24, 25,& 26 at the

Country Folk Art Festival Rte. 20 Marlboro, Massachusetts .11

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Includes 18th Century to 1970's Art & Artifacts, Furniture, Folk Art, Silver, Porcelains, Paintings, Prints & Posters, Pottery, Textiles, Toys, Deco, Moderne, Kitchen, Kitsch, Vintage Fashions, Statuary, Art Glass, Americana Jewelry, Garden, Architectural, Rustic, Asian & More. PASSENGER SHIP TERMINAL

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FALL 1997 FOLK ART 91

FALL

PROGRAMS

The Museum presents the following programs in conjunction with the exhibitions "The Art of William Hawkins" and "The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America." Programs are free and will be held at the Museum's Eva and Morris Feld Gallery at 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets, New York City, unless otherwise indicated. For more information, please call 212/595-9533.

Twilight Lecture Series 6:00 P.M. Thefollowing lectures are presented in conjunction with the exhibition "The Art of William Hawkins." Wednesday, October 8

Twilight Lecture Series 6:00 P.M. Thefollowing lectures are presented in conjunction with the exhibition "The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America."

CURATORIAL LECTURE

Stacy C. Hollander, curator, Museum of American Folk Art

Wednesday,November 12 CURATORIAL LECTURE

Ralph Sessions, guest curator Wednesday, October 22 WILLIAM HAWKINS AND POPULAR CULTURE

JOHN C. HILL • ANTIQUE INDIAN ART 6962 FIRST AVE.,SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA 85251 (602) 946-2910 Kwikwilyaka the Mocking Kachina with Piptu-Wuhti the female caricature. HOPI, circa 1900

Southern Vision's Pottery and Folk Art PO Box 526 • Seagrove, NC 27341 (910)381-3090 Lainer Meaders • Reggie Meaders • Louis Brown Terry King • Davis Brown • Hewell Family

Lee Kogan, director, Folk Art Institute

Wednesday, November 19 ADVERTISING SIGNS: CREATING A MARKET THROUGH VISUAL IMAGES OF THE DAY

Allan Katz,collector and dealer Thursday, October 30 "IF THE PAINTING COULDN'T SELL,IT WASN'T WORTH A DAMN": THE ART OF WILLIAM HAWKINS

Wednesday,December 3 PLAYING INDIAN: WOODEN IMAGES AND LIVING IDEAS ABOUT INDIANS IN AMERICA

John Moore, senior visiting artist, Rayna Green, director, American Skidmore College Indian Program, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Storytelling Washington, D.C. A fatally program for all ages. 6:00 P.M. Free public programming is made Friday,October 31 HALLOWEEN NIGHT TALES OF FRIGHT BY EDGAR ALLAN POE & OTHERS

possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Christine Campbell, performance storyteller Teachers' Workshops TEACHING MATHEMATICS THROUGH QUILTS: A FALL WORKSHOP FOR EDUCATORS Instructors: Maureen E. Casner and Daphne Taylor

C.J. and Billy Meaders • Nub Meaders E.J. Brown • Anna King Crystal King • B.B. Craig Specializing in

Southern Folk Art, Pottery If you want it, we canfind it!

92 FAIL 1997 FOLK ART

Special workshops on teaching mathematics through quilts for educators (grades 4-7; 3rd grade teachers are also welcome) will be held in October and November. Workshop fee is $15 for Museum members,$20 for non-members. A limited number of scholarships are available. For schedule and scholarship information, please call the Museum's Education department at 212/977-7170.

BARBARA BRACKMAN

Layers of History

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FALL 1997 FOLK ART 93

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94 FALL 1997 FOLK ART

TRAVELING

EXHIBITIONS

Mark your calendars for the following Museum of American Folk Art exhibitions when they travel to your area during the coming months: May 11—October 19 The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America Heritage Plantation of Sandwich Sandwich, Massachusetts 508/888-3300

September 3—September 15 An American Treasury: Master Quilts from the Museum of American Folk Art Iwataya Department Store Fukuoka City, Kyushu,Japan 03 3498 6361

July 4—October 1 Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition Norsk Folkemuseum Oslo, Norway 22 12 37 00

September 13—November 9 Quilts Fantastic Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Mount Vernon,Illinois 618/242-1236

August 16—November 9 Amish Quilts from the Museum of American Folk Art James A. Michener Art Museum Doylestown, Pennsylvania 215/340-9800 September 3—September 8 The Romance of Double Wedding Ring Quilts Tokyu Department Store Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo,Japan 03 3498 6361

September 23—October 5 An American Treasury: Master Quilts from the Museum of American Folk Art Mitsukoshi Department Store Sapporo City, Hokkaido, Japan 03 3498 6361 October 11—December 31 America's Flower Garden Putnam Museum of History and Natural Sciences Davenport,Iowa 319/324-1064

For further information, please contact Judith Gluck Steinberg, Coordinator of Traveling Exhibitions, Museum of American Folk Art, Administrative Offices, 61 West 62nd Street, New York, New York 10023, 212/977-7170.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS The Museum's Volunteer Program offers many rewarding opportunities for people interested in serving the public and enhancing their knowledge of American folk art. Enjoy the unique experience of working in one of the most vital art institutions in New York City today. All docents and volunteers receive free tuition for one course per semester at the Museum's Folk Art Institute and a 15% discount on all purchases at the Museum's book and gift shops. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN JOINING OUR PROGRAM, please call Arlene Hochman or Dale Gregory at 212/595-9533 for more information.

"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo" by Leroy Almon, Sr., 1938-1997, Acrylic on Carved Wood 11" x 24", S.L.R., Signed and Dated 1988 on Reverse, 53,250

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Uttotte rtfAtlanta ESTABLISHED 1973

Exhibited: "Lives of Invention and Imagery: Self-Taught Artists", The Society for Contemporary Crafts, Pittsburgh, PA November 10, 1994-March 9, 1995

Specializing in Quality 19th and 20th Century American Art 5325 ROSWELL ROAD, N.E. ATLANTA, GEORGIA 30342 (404) 252-0485 FAX (404)252-0359

Offering other early carvings by Leroy Almon including one done with his mentor Elijah Pierce

CONTEMPORARY FOLK ART BRUCE SHELTON KATHY MOSES, GALLERY DIRECTOR

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