Folk Art (Spring 2005)

, 71V,

MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM * SPRING 2005 * $8.00

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11111 III

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RICCO,MARESCA GALLERY 529 west 20th street 3rd floor nyc ny 10011 212.627.4819 WW W.R

iccb MAR ESCA.CO M

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the finest American country antiques and folk art Patrick Bell / Edwin Hild P.O. Box 718, New Hope, PA 18938-0718

By Appointment: 215-297-0200 fax: 215-297-0300 e-mail: infogoldehope.com www.oldehope.com

Trade figure of a man with articulated arms.

American, c.1900.

Carved spruce with remains of original paint.

Ht. 63.5"

Exhibiting: The Philadelphia Antiques Show, April 8-12

HILL GALLERY

407 W. Brown St Birmingham, MI

(248) 540-9288

)0f

,717:3 )t

Rare Astrology Quilt

Circa 1950

Southern Origin

STURDEVANT HAMBLIN • Portrait ofa Young Boy • c. 1840 • 133/8" x 195/s"

DAVID WHEATCROFT Antiques 26 West Main Street, Westborough, MA 01581 • Tel:(508) 366-1723 davidwheatcroft.com

Trotta Bono

Photograph: Luigi Pellettieri

Antique Native American Art Art of the Frontier and Colonial Periods

Transformation Mask Kuskokwim Mid 19th century. 12"x9" Collected by George Byron Gordon for the Pennsylvania Museum in 1907. Traded to: George Heye, 1907. To: Julius Carlbach, 1951.

By Appointment: (914) 528-6604 • P.O. Box 34 • Shrub Oak, NY 10588 • Email: tb7881834aol.com We are actively purchasing fine individual pieces and collections.

We specialize in collection formation and development.

Antiques,L.L.C.

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George R. Allen •Gordon L. W9cLo1f Phone:(8%)22+-1282

raccooncreek@msn.com Website: www.raccooncree.kanti9ue5.com

arum opening n American 101k Art Winder: with c to expose a Pol9chromect Afro-American figure, Ca. 1830.

WALTERS BENISEK ART S. ANTIQUES ONE AMBER LANE • NORTHAMPTON • MASSACHUSETTS •01060 • (4 1 3 ) 58 6 • 3909 • • BENISEK MARY WALTERS • DON

t EXCEPTIONAI. ARABIAN HORSE WEATHERVANE En A L JEWELL. C.50

FOLK ART VOLUME 30 NUMBER 1/ SPRING 2005

FEATUR

ES

29

Folk Art Revealed Stacy C. Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson Ilk

Homemade Healing Power: After years on the margins of the outsider art world, Emery Blagdon's legendary sculptures and 38 paintings finally emerge Edward M Gomez

46

In Search ofJohn Usher Parsons Ralph and Susanne Katz

54

Outsider Photography: A Dialogue John Turner, Deborah Klochko, and Roger Cardinal

DEPARTMENTS

8

Museum News

67

Acting Director's Letter

13

Clarion Society

70

Miniatures

16

Gerard C.Wertkin Exhibition Fund

71

Americus Group

20

The Collection: A Closer Look

22

Museum Information: Exhibition Schedule, Hours &Admissions

74

Quilt Connection

24

Obituaries

76

Update:The Library

62

Membership Special

77

Museum Reproductions Program

64

Public Programs

78

Space Rental

65

Trustees/Donors

80

Books ofInterest

66

Index to Advertisers

84

Editor's Column

Cover: ANIMALS APPEAR AS PLANTS-DWELLERS OF THE SEA (detail) Eugene Von Bruenchenhein 1962 American Folk Art Museum, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.58 (see page 35)

MEMO Folk Art is published four times a year by the American Folk Art Museum.The museum's administrative office mailing address is 49 East 52nd Street,New York,NY 10022-5905,TeL 3> 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 88.00.Published and copyright 2005 by the American Folk Art Museum,45 West 53rd Street, New York,NY 10019.The cover and contents ofFolk 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 ofthe Cal333 American Folk Art Museum.Unsolicited manuscripts or photographs should be accompanied by return postage. Folk Art assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage ofsuch materials.

Change ofaddress: Please send both old and new addresses to the museum's membership department at 49 East 52nd Street,New York,NY 10022-5905,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 ofobjects or quality ofservices 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 ofobjects or services advertised in its pages.The museum is dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation offolk art and it is a violation ofits principles to be involved in or to appear to be involved in the sale ofworks ofart. For this reason,the museum will not knowingly accept advertisements for Folk Artthat illustrate or describe objects that have been exhibited at the museum within one year ofplacing an advertisement.The publisher reserves the right to exclude any advertisement.

SPRING 2005 FOLK ART 7

EDITOR'S

COLUMN

TANYA HEINRICH

ernacular photography continues to emerge as a relevant and provocative segment ofthe folk art field. My own personal interest dates to the mid-1980s, when I found a cache of discarded Kodachrome slides in the alley behind my childhood home in Los Angeles.The subject was the vacations and celebrations of a family that lived one street over and one generation earlier, and the vivid images captured a lifestyle and a sleepy quality the neighborhood will likely never reclaim. More inspiring to me, however, was the accidental oddity—and artfulness—of the compositions.

In this issue we study the topic of vernacular photography in two ways.

California-based curators John Turner and Deborah Klochko conducted a lengthy and lively conversation during the initial run of"Create and Be Recognized," their traveling exhibition ofphotography- and collage-based artworks.They were joined by art historian Roger Cardinal,who contributed an essay to the exhibition catalog.To complement this dialogue, Librarian James Mitchell delved into the museum's stacks to provide an engaging history of the genre; see pages 54 and 62.

UNTITLED (Typewriter) August Walla (1936-2001) "Folk Art Revealed" is a new installation of the museum's permanent collection. Curators Stacy C. Hollan- Artists' House, Gunning, Austria der and Brooke Davis Anderson have organized the works 1970-1982 into four themes: utility, community,individuality, and Color photograph symbolism, and the juxtaposition of traditional and con12 16" Private collection temporary objects provides for dazzling parallels. For a Currently on view in "Create tempting glimpse, please see our lead story on page 29. and Be Recognized" Emery Blagdon made hundreds of wire sculptures and paintings and installed them,with thousands of twinkling lights, in a large shed on his farm in Nebraska as an energy-filled space to promote healing.The museum re-created the shed in a 1998 exhibition, and the resulting ambience was indeed healing, emotionally if not physically. Beginning on page 38,journalist Edward M.Gomez explores the breadth ofthe artist's work and its chance preservation at the hands oftwo collectors.

The museum has in its collection a particularly arresting portrait, Woman in Pink,by John Usher Parsons. Parsons painted only between the years of 1834 and 1838,when he was convalescing in the Northeast; his true vocation was as an itinerant Congregationalist minister. With very little biographical information to draw upon,longtime collectors Ralph and Susanne Katz carefully pursued his trail to put together the most complete portrait to date. For a look at this very important research, please turn to page 46.

This issue ofFolk Art is dedicated to Director Emeritus Gerard C.Werticin, whose passion for study and scholarship will continue to inspire these pages.

It

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM

PUBLICATIONS/FOLK ART Tanya Heinrich Director ofPublications/Editor and Publisher Lori T Leonard Production Editor Vanessa Davis Assistant Editor Eleanor Garlow Advertising Sales Erikka V. Haa Copy Editor Jeffrey Kibler, The Magazine Group,Inc. Design Cenveo Printers ADMINISTRATION Linda Dunne Gerard C. Wertkin Susan Conlon Robin A. Schlinger Madhukar Balsara Angela Lam Irene ICreny Robert J. Saracena Anthony Crawford Alexis Davis Richard Ho Daniel Rodriguez Beverly McCarthy Katya Ullman

Acting Director/ChilAdministrative Officer Director Emeritus Assistant to the Director ChiefFinancial Officer Assistant Controller Accountant Accounts Payable Associate Director ofFacilities Manager of Visitor Services Assistant Manager of Visitor Services Manager ofInformation Technology Office Services Coordinator Mail Order/Reception Administrative Assistant/Reception

COLLECTIONS S. EXHIBITIONS Stacy C. Hollander Senior Curator/Director ofExhibitions Brooke Davis Anderson Director and Curator of The Contemporary Center and the Henry Darger Study Center Ann-Marie Reilly ChiefIZegistrar/Director ofExhibition Production Elizabeth V.Warren Consulting Curator EDUCATION Diana Schlesinger Janet Lo Lee Kogan

Director ofEducation Manager ofSchooland Docent Programs Director ofthe Folk Art Institute/Curator ofSpecial Projects for The Contemporary Center

DEPARTMENTS Cathy Michelsen Director ofDevelopment Christine Corcoran Manager ofIndividual Giving Pamela Gabourie Manager ofInstitutional Giving Katie Hush Special Events Manager Dana Clair Membership Coordinator Matthew Beaugrand Membership and Special Events Assistant Danelsi De La Cruz Membership Assistant Wendy Barreto Membership Clerk Susan Flamm Public Relations Director Alice J. Hoffman Director ofLicensing Marie S. DiManno Director ofMuseum Shops Sandy B.Yun Assistant to the Director ofMuseum Shops Janey Fire Director ofPhotographic Services James Mitchell Librarian Jane Lattes Director of Volunteer Services Caroline Kerrigan Executive Director of The American Antiques Show EVA AND MORRIS FELD Dale Gregory Ursula Morillo Kenneth R. Bing Bienvenido Medina

GALLERY STAFF Gallery Director Weekend Gallery Manager Security Security

MUSEUM SHOPS STAFF Managers: Dorothy Gargiulo,Jessica Lord, Louise B. Sheets, Marion Whitler Book Buyer: Evelyn R. Gurney; Staff Matthew Beaugrand, Eugenie Boland, Erin Caprara; Volunteers: Angela Clair, Millie Gladstone, Elizabeth Howe,Judy Kenyon, Hiromi Kiyama, Nancy Mayer,Judy Rich, Phyllis Selnick American Folk Art Museum Book and Gift Shops 45 West 53rd Street New York, NY 10019 212/265-1040, ext. 124 Two Lincoln Square (Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets) New York, NY 10023 212/595-9533, ext. 26 MAILING ADDRESS American Folk Art Museum Administrative Offices 49 East 52nd Street, New York, NY 10022-5905 212/977-7170, Fax 212/977-8134,info@folkartmuseum.org, www.follcartmuseum.org

8 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

CD

ALLAN KATZ Americana

------

Extraordinary African American Slave Pictorial Images made from various fabrics, primarily wool, appliqued onto a linen panel. Attributed to Maria, a slave owned by Mary Stevens Witham, of LaGrange, Georgia. Circa 1870.

34"h x 30w. Extensive documentation available.

---

•.---------

Allan & Penny Katz

By Appointment 25 Old Still Road Woodbridge, CT 06525 Tel. (203) 393-9356 folkkatz@optonline.net

Oil on canvas, primitive painting of a young woman in a red dress with blue watch fob and gold pocket watch Artist unknown.

Maryland. Circa 1830.

Dimensions: Height: 28, Width: 24.

Thurston Nichols American Antiques LLC 522 Twin Ponds Road Breinigsville, PA 18031 p: 610.395.5154 f: 610.395.3679 www.antiques101.com

FLEISHE 1616 Walnut Street suite 100/Philadelphia Pa 19103 215 545 7562/fax 545 6140/fleisher-ollmangallery.com

American Folk Art Sidney Gecker WOOD CARVED SCULPTURE OF JACK JOHNSON WOOD AND WOOL(FOR HAIR)• HEIGHT:181/2 INCHES

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

AC

TING

DIRECTOR'S

LETTER

LINDA DUNNE

t is a great honor to have this opportunity to address you in this forum as the acting director ofthe American Folk Art Museum.I joined the museum in April 2002 as chief administrative officer, having previously served nearly twenty years in management positions at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum,Smithsonian Institution, most recently as deputy director and acting director.

Since coming to the American Folk Art Museum I have had the pleasure of working closely with outgoing director Gerard C.Wertkin and the Board ofTrustees to meet the needs and goals of a growing institution, helping to maintain an ambitious schedule ofexhibitions, programs,and special events as well as the launching ofexciting new initiatives. I will continue to work in this capacity to ensure a smooth transition to our new leadership.

On behalfofLaura Parsons, president ofthe Board ofTrustees,I am very pleased to announce that, after an extensive national search, Maria Ann Conelli has been appointed to the position of director of the American Folk Art Museum. Conelli comes to the museum from the Fashion Institute ofTechnology(FIT),where she is currently the dean ofthe School of Graduate Studies and acting dean ofthe School of Art and Design.Prior to her position at FIT,from 1991 to 2001,Conelli was the chair ofthe Smithsonian Institution's graduate programs in the history of decorative arts offered in collaboration with Parsons School ofDesign,the Cooper-Hewitt, and The Smithsonian Associates,in Washington,D.C. She also held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is a trustee and an education liaison for the Skyscraper Museum,New York.

Conelli holds a Ph.D.in architectural history from Columbia University and an M.A.from the Institute ofFine Arts, New York University; she received her B.A.in art history from Brooklyn College. She has been the recipient of numerous Maria Ann Conelli awards and grants,including the National Endowment for the Arts and the J. Paul Getty Post-doctoral Fellowship in the History ofArt and the Humanities,and is a fellow ofthe American Academy in Rome.She has taught in both the United States and Europe,organized exhibitions focusing on architecture, fashion, and decorative arts, and lectured widely on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art, architecture, and landscape design. Maria Ann Conelli willjoin the museum in June 2005.

Gerard C.Wertkin was the eighth director ofthe American Folk Art Museum since its founding in 1961 and served in that position for thirteen of his twenty-four years with the museum. Under his leadership the institution maintained an exceptionally high caliber ofexhibitions, programs,and publications, and his passion and vision are deeply embedded in the fibers of the institution. With Gerry's legacy in mind, the museum's Board ofTrustees unanimously voted to honor him with the title of director emeritus. On a related note,I am delighted to report on a new initiative, the Gerard C.Wertkin Exhibition Fund,

which was established to honor Gerry and the transforming role he played in the life ofthe museum. Contributions to the fund will directly support the development and installation of new exhibitions.To date the fund already stands at nearly $300,000. With gratitude,I thank the 140 supporters who have donated to this very meaningful endeavor.For more information on the Gerard C.Wertkin Exhibition Fund, please contact Christine Corcoran, manager ofindividual giving, at 212/9777170,ext. 328,or ccorcoran@folkartmuseum.org.

•••

As I write these words,the museum just celebrated the opening of The American Antiques Show(TAAS)with a benefit preview,on January 19. By all accounts the gala was a huge success! The show was held this year in New York's newest landmark,the Time Warner Center, and the 47 dealer booths looked beautiful. Special thanks go to Caroline Kerrigan, executive director ofTAAS;executive chair and museum trustee Barry Briskin; show managers Keeling Wainwright Associates,Inc.; and the entire staff of the American Folk Art Museum—the five-day show could not have been accomplished without everyone's hard work. A full report on TAAS will appear in the summer issue ofthis magazine.

The year 2005 brings an exciting lineup ofexhibitions and programs.This spring be sure to see "Folk Art Revealed," a provocative installation ofthe museum's permanent collection;"Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the Collection," which opened in early February and offers a bold and vibrant selection of paintings, sculptures, and quilts; and "Self and Subject," a thoughtful study of the nature ofportraiture that opens March 16.

In conjunction with "Selfand Subject," the museum will offer a daylong seminar on portraiture, on April 8,in conjunction with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, with which we presented a highly successful seminar on jewelry in December. On April 12 we will celebrate the birthday of Henry Darger with A Very Darger Evening,a read-a-thon in which noted fans and audience members will read from the artist's voluminous and engrossing work In the Realms ofthe Unreal.Join us for a special evening with the Enfield Shaker Singers, an a cappella vocal ensemble of children and adults, on May 14; the museum's soaring atrium will be filled with the richness and originality of Shaker songs. And on Sunday afternoons you can enjoy our popular family arts workshops—hands-on crafts projects with themes relating to the objects on view in the museum.For more information on our diverse educational programs, see page 78.

Please join me in welcoming our new director, Maria Ann Conelli, and I look forward to meeting you at the museum in the coming months.*

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

13

Slotin Folk Art Auction Presents the entire contents of Atlanta's Oldest Museum

THE ATLANTA MUSEUM April 30, 2005 Buford, GA Lots for sale include works by Bill Traylor; Howard Finstei; William Hawkins, Sam Doyle, Clementine Huntei; and other 20th C. Masters, Margaret Mitchell's Furniture, Civil War Era Furniture and Artifacts, Joseph E Brown's(Governor of GA 1860's)Desk, Americana, Curios, Southern Folk Pottery Quilts, Canes, Southern Locomotive Memorabilia, Armor Suits, Antique Guns including a rare gun from a Zero plane, Anonymous Sculptures and Carvings, Fun House Mirrors, Antique Coins, Indian Artifacts, and other Rare and Interesting Discoveries.

FREE CATALOG 770 932-1000 • 404 403-4244 • 770 932-0506 fax

Arie Meaders' Vase c. 1965

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LINDSAY GALLERY

Helen LaFrance

CA

•

merican Memories"

70r.

an online exhibition wwvv.lindsaygallery.corn

Clementine Hunter

CONTACT:

Duff Lindsay 986 North High St. Columbus,Ohio 43201 614-291-1973 lindsaygallery@hotmail.com

Janis Price

MINI

ATUR

ES

BY VANESSA DAVIS

FEMALE FIGURE WEARING GHANGRA AND DUPATTA / Nek Chand (b. 19241 / Chandigarh, India / c. 1965-1970 / tinted concrete over metal armature with shells / 33 6 6"/ American Folk Art Museum, gift of the artist with additional support from Charlotte Frank, Kathryn Morrison, Cheryl Rivers, and Steve Simons, 2001.13.2

SIGNS OF THE TIMES Before neon was invented and used in store signs, products and services were advertised with colorful painted signs, sculptures, and trade figures."After the widespread use ofelectrified neon signs began in the 1930s,sculptural architectural decoration fell from fashion and much ofthe visual appeal of the built environment was lost," according to Jan Gilliam, Colonial Williamsburg's manager ofexhibition planning. In celebration ofthe beauty and variety ofthese items, more than 40 ofthem will be on display in "Outside In: Folk Art for the American Landscape," at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum,Colonial Williamsburg (800/447-8679; www.colonialwilliamsburg.org), through June 2006 while the new Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum is under construction.

Colonial Williamsburg is also presenting "Treasures from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum,"from April 16,2005,through December 2006.The show will include old favorites as well as newly acquired and rarely seen objects.

SPECTACLES SIGN Attributed to E.G. Washburn S Co. New York City c. 1875-1900 Painted and gilded zinc The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1957.806.1

QUACK, QUACK, QUACK The fifth in an ongoing series of Ars Medica exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (215/763-8100; www.philamuseum.org), "Quack, Quack, Quack: Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera, and Books" was organized by William H. Helfand, a specialist in the history of drugs and pharmacy in popular media, and runs March 19—June 26.

Highlights of the show include Operationfor Stones in the Head, an early-17th-century engraving illustrating a sleight-of-hand cure for insanity, and The Health Jolting Chair, an 1885 color lithograph of a seated woman demonstrating the ability of electricity to secure the "most highly prized Feminine Attractions." A catalog accompanies the exhibition.

NO-

AToba

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Kills the cco Habit

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Sold & Guaranteed,

I3y All Druggists.

NO-TO-BAC / Maxfield Parrish / 1896 / color relief print / 42 29%" / Philadelphia Museum of Art, The William H. Helfand Collection, 1981

16 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

DARGER DANCE Conveying a landscape of beauty and survival, the Seattle-based Pat Graney Company will be performing The Vivian Girls, inspired by the art of Henry Darger, at the Dance Theater Workshop (212/924-0077; www.dtw.org)in New York May 4-7. A post-performance discussion will be held on May 4 with moderator David Sheingold.

INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART CONVENTION The first International Folk Art Convention will take place Nov. 3-6 at the Rock Garden of Chandigarh,India.The program, organized by the Nek Chand Foundation (www.nekchand.com), brings together a wide range of folk art and art brut experts and enthusiasts from around the globe to discuss the importance offolk expressions worldwide by engaging in a series of critical and celebratory lectures, seminars, and workshops. In addition, participants can enjoy exhibitions of Indian folk art, tours, classes with Nek Chand,films, multimedia presentations, and Punjabi folk music and dance. For more information on the convention program, costs, and arrangements, or to submit a proposal, visit the organization's website.

Emery Blagdon:Healing Magnetism

560 Broadway Suite 405B New York, NY 10012 2 1 2 226 0155 2 I 2 226 3768 Fax Tel www.cavinmorris.com blugriot@aol.com

C1-

THE AMES GALLERY

IS BUILDING FOR .\BR.\ Is

IN AVENUE DEL CONTENTMLINT / RLOOKING THE SPACIOUS. EVER VERDANT.PITHII 2Y PEACEFUL VACONTINENTAL

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Early handmade Americana including quilts, carved canes, tramp art and whimseys.

Exceptional contemporary self-taught, naive, visionary, and outsider art.

kl I t. kl \\I \. 1.\CI I \VI \II I C. ‘1

Bonnie Grossman, Director -""' y

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Tel 510/845-4949 Fax 510/845-6219 S.\ ,F , lillrrirrriprriniii-

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A.G. Rizzolk S-I9, Abraham N. Zachoriah Symbolically Sketched, 1939, ink on rag paper, 25 3/4 x 35 3/4"

www.amesgallery.com

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

17

LAURA FISHER 1050 SECOND AVENUE,#84 (Between 55-56th Sts.)

NEW YORK, NY 10022 11:00-6:00 Monday—Saturday or by appointment

441

Tel (212)838-2596 (after hours) (212) 866-6033

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New York City's largest and finest selection of antique quilts, hooked rugs, coverlets, paisleys, Navajos/Beacon blankets, home furnishings, American folk art, and more...

Amish Square pieced quilt, wool.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, circa 1920.

When in New York City, visit us to discuss ordering: HISTORIC HOOKED RUGS®, our line of outsized rugs and runners in traditional patterns and palette.

FROM THE ORIGINAL®, exact copies of your rug or ours, custom sized and colored to your needs.

MINI

ATUR

ES

FROST RUGS AT MAINE STATE MUSEUM A new intimate exhibition at the Maine State Museum (207/287-2301; www.me.state.us) in Augusta traces the 135-year history of the metal stencil plates used to produce the first commercially manufactured hooked-rug patterns in PRINTED BURLAP, PATTERN 593 / E.S. Frost & Company / Biddeford, Maine /1876-1900 / ink on burlap / 27 x 395/16"/ Maine State Museum, Augusta, 2004.71.1 the United States.

Inspired by the great variety of hooked rugs he saw as a traveling tin peddler, Edward Sands Frost invented the plates around 1870 by cutting out patterns from sheet metal stored in his barn.They were eventually used to produce printed patterns on burlap, which was then worked into hooked rugs."Rugs All Marked Out," on view through 2005,features printed patterns, complete and partially completed rugs made using E.S. Frost 8c Company stencils, and a sampling of the museum's collection of 742 stencil plates.

18 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

ANNUAL HSEAD CONVENTION AND EXHIBITION The annual convention and exhibition ofthe Historical Society of Early American Decoration takes place April 22-24 at the Doubletree Hotel, Charlottesville, Va. An exhibition of decorated tinware, reverse painting on glass, American country painting, bronze-powder stenciling on tin and wood,and painted clock dials will be on display free to the public. For more information or to register, contact Marcie Springett at 434/964-1423.

MINI

A

TUR

ES

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

RICHARDER

A DEAF ARTIST IN EARLY AMERICA The first exhibition of 19th-century portraitist John Brewster Jr.'s work will be on view at the Fenimore Art Museum (607/547-1400; www.fenimoreartmuseum.org) April 1-Dec.31."A DeafArtist in Early America:The Worlds ofJohn Brewster Jr.," featuring approximately 50 paintings, will assess Brewster's life and art in the context of his four "worlds": his artistic influences, his distinctive painting style and technique, his elite clientele, and his perspective as a deaf person in early America.The show is accompanied by a catalog and is scheduled to travel to the American Folk Art Museum in fall 2006.

AMERICAN PRIMITIVE GALLERY

FRANCIS O'WATTS, WITH BIRD! John Brewster Jr.! New England / 1805! oil on wood panel / New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York

JAMES CASTLE The Idaho Center for the Book's"Icehouse Unto Early Attic: Books and Art," a traveling exhibition ofself-taught Idaho artist and bookmaker James Castle's work,is on view at the Student Union Gallery at Boise State University (208/426-4636; www.sub.boisestate.edu/ gallery) April 29-June 1.

Organized by curator Tom Truslcy, the show includes rare and early works,recently discovered visual narratives, and Trusky's translations and interpretations of Castle's images.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD WITH ONE SHOE OFF! John Brewster Jr. / New England /1807 / oil on canvas / New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

BY FRANCIS DOW

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TED LUDWICZAK sandstone head, 1989, ht. 16 in from the stone heads environment

AARNE ANTON ART & ANTIQUES

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UNTITLED (Crime and Punishment Book)! James Castle (1899-1977)/ Idaho! n.d.(after 1924)! soot on found paper bound with embroidery thread / 2 43/," / Idaho Center for the Book, Boise 1 6/

25 years discovering folk art of the 19m5_205 centuries BASES-custom mounting of art and antiques

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

19

MINIATURES

SAMPLERS AND THEIR CONTEMPORARY INFLUENCE Hella Jongerius, a member of the influential Dutch design collective Droog, has organized a show at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum,Smithsonian Institution (212/849-8400; www.cooperhewitt.org), on view March 4—Sept. 4."Hella Jongerius Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection" consists of a group ofsamplers from the museum's collection of more than 1,000, as well as examples ofrelated objects such as embroidery tools, embroiderydesign drawings, wall coverings featuring embroidery motifs, and penmanship and needlework books.Jongerius designed original textiles for the exhibition, incorporating elements directly inspired by the sampler collection along with contemporary needle-punch techniques. Objects in the show will be on display in their original museum storage containers, so viewers can see the museum's process of preserving and organizing its collection.

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I r '"d'jr gr %rjr" o4'ir1;47,741r:, 41 " 1 391r1r4F :\Yli iiit ": tlirj"16. A' led#fr-..ll a P74/1;41, 41111 JNIII'Mkk.'2'7'.

SAMPLER / artist unidentified / Mexico /1848-1849 / cotton, linen, and silk needlework on linen / CooperHewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, bequest of Gertrude M. Oppenheimer, 1981-28-341

THE AMERICUS GROUP of the American Folk Art Museum brings together folk art enthusiasts under the age of 45 for a variety of engaging educational and social activities.This dynamic group of young art patrons receives unparalleled access to the Museum's resources and gains insight into the vibrant world of traditional and contemporary folk art.

ENJOY EXCLUSIVE AMERICUS GROUP PRIVILEGES, INCLUDING: • Unlimited free admission to the Museum for one person • Invitations for two to members' exhibition previews • Annual subscription to Folk Art magazine

Detail of PAPERCUT FOR BENJ. S. FARRET / artist unidentified / United States / 1848 / paint and ink on cut and pasted paper / 147/8 x 12" / American Folk Art Museum, gift of a Museum friend, 2004.14.2

20 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

• Curatorial tours of special exhibitions, visits with local artists, and tours of private collections • Special members-only sales at the Museum shop and partner institution stores

AMERICAN

—J To learn more about the Americus Group, please contact 0 Christine Corcoran at 212. 977. 7170, ext. 328, or ccorcoran@folkartmuseum.org. MUSEUM

AMERICAN FOLK ART EXTENSIVE SELECTION FROM OVER 90 ARTISTS

• Mary T. Smith "Figure on Tin" 31"x23"

Clementine Hunter "Baptism" 24"x18"

Sister Gertrude Morgan "Clean Train" 12"x10"

Bill Traylor Justin McCarthy Sam Doyle Raymond Coins David Butler Charles Hutson Rev. Johnny Swearingen Popeye Reed Mose Tolliver Jimmy Lee Sudduth Bessie Harvey J.P. Scott J.B. Murry Herbert Singleton Howard Finster Homer Green Charlie Lucas Rev. B.F. Perkins ChiefP.L. Willey Milton Fletcher and more...

PAUL & ALVINA HAVERKAMP(by appointment in New Orleans) 504-866-3505 Visit our website at—www.haverkampfollcart.com ahaverkamp@cox.net

Ginger Young Gallery Southern Self-Taught Art

www.GingerYoung.com By appointment: 5802 Brisbane Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 Phone/Fax 919.932.6003 Email ginger@GingerYoung.com

Roses Are Usually Favored by Sybil Gibson tempera on grocery bag, 18" x 24, 1974

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

21

THE

COLLECTION:

A

CLOSER

LOOK

BY BROOKE DAVIS ANDERSON AND STACY C. HOLLANDER

he mixing ofpatterns and the blending ofraces come together in this domestic scene to illustrate Nick Quijano Torres's personal experience ofPuerto Rico as a diverse,vibrant, and creolized culture.The rhythm and sensuality ofTorres's homeland is illuminated in this small,innocent rendering ofa family portrait. Made with gouache,it shows the artist's grandmother sitting between the artist as a young boy and his sister. Above them, and looking down over them,is a symbolic rendering ofUncle Juan, an army veteran.The three sitters look out at the viewer from a highly baroque decorated interior.

Torres aims in his artwork to depict the story of the mixed-race culture ofPuerto Rico. Inspired to do this after seeing a Puerto Rican art exhibition that expressly celebrated,in his words,"high society, the Anglo experience,"Torres decided to "paint what he knew," and what was not depicted at other art venues.The confluence ofcultures and races is echoed in the interaction ofdesign; a flowery wallpaper, striped carpet, and doily-rich couch seem to symbolize the interface between cultures.

—B.D.A.

T

HURLBURT FAMILY

he schoolgirl exercises known as mourn- MOURNING PIECE ing pieces evolved in part from the clasProbably Sarah Hurlburt (1787-1866) sical iconography that proliferated in ;1=0.1 Connecticut .

1 mi—,74-513:0V-0.

4'''' """ ar"it European fine and arts after c.1808 ' 1.4 -I A 4 4 44 AA se.Zfrt .141-ek archaeological sites such asdecorative Herculaneum and Watercolor and ink on paper Pompeii were unearthed in the 18th century.

17 20" oval (sight) A Y 4 .4 American Folk Art Museum, The discovery ofancient Greek and Roman promised gift of Ralph funerary forms captured the popular imagina—.

• 4.AAA*J.4 -.44...(..,,t...k4,oekeeiP‘AA Esmerian, P1.2001.271 .f-1.

-- .44.t tion and inspired classical attitudes of mourn.1,) ing in a variety of mediums,including ) .

1ak J4 - 4 et.4 1( AA 44.4444.-44'ttst ''`4..t.),) AA , paintings that memorialized famous historical and literary figures. By k A-444 1,0 4-,1 the end ofthe 18th century,this vocabulary had reached the recently .

444 '14, ii formed American republic,where it struck a responsive chord,espefelot,i A virot ) *AA" cially after the death of George Washington in 1799.In Europe,classi3 A.A., cal mourning poses and iconography had been used by artists such as Angelica Kauffmann to memorialize historical and literary heroes.In Young America, mourning art—based upon published images after Kauffmann—was democratized to recognize personal loss as well. Classical motifs were combined with Christian images,such as cleansing waters, houses that represented the material world left behind, and trees with specific religious associations, to form an elegant symbolic system. ' 14k Viqi Early examples embroidered in silk thread on silk were replaced by 0watercolor as this medium became widely available.

This watercolor memorializes Lemuel Hurlburt(1750-1808) and two of his young children, who died in 1776 and 1795. Hurlburt was a farmer in Newington,Conn.In 1773 he married Tabitha Nott (1752-1813),and they moved to West Hartford.The memorial was MEMORIES OF THE VETERAN Nick Ougano Torres (b.1953) probably painted by their daughter Sarah,who would have been 21 at Old San Juan, Puerto Rico the time and possibly a student in a Hartford school,though none has 1984 yet been identified with this composition.The repetition ofthe slim Lacquered gouache on paper figures robed in black,their faces obscured by coal-scuttle bonnets, 61 / 2 61 / 4" creates a wonderful and seemingly unique visual rhythm,as another American Folk Art Museum, gift of Dorothea and Leo like it is not known.

Rabkin, 1984.2.1 —S.C.H.

T

Memories ofthe Veteran is on view in "Folk Art Revealed."

22 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

THE PEN SEEMED TO MAKE ME DRAW...

This is the story of a wily Glaswegian Jewish peddler who discovered his latent talent and became one of Europe's most famous outsider artists.

SCOTTIE WILSON

'Telling us his life story, as this book so engagingly does, we are drawn into the adversity, hardship, and unromanticized comportment of a nomadic man and his obsessive art making.'

Peddler Turned Painter

‘14.,

ANNIE CARLANO—CURATOR, MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART, SANTA FE. NEW MEXICO

'An engaging monograph...which is thoughtfully organized and thoroughly researched.'

BROOKE DAVIS ANDERSON—DIRECTOR AND CURAIOR, THE CONTEMPORARY CENTER, AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM, NEW YORK

'The authors delve into the obscure areas of Scottie Wilson's life and come up with some interesting fresh material. The book illuminates several dark patches in Scottie's biography

ANTHONY I PETULLO AND KATHERINE M. MURRELL

and sets his inspired drawings within their historical and social context.'

ROGER CARDINAL—UNIVERSITY OF KENT, CANTERBURY, ENGLAND

AVAILABLE ONLINE AT: amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com

ISBN: 0-9748740-0-0 (12 pages with 50 illustrations. 34 in color 2004 by Petullo Publishing LLC

LASGOW WORLD WAR I TORONTO PEDDLER LONDON L'ART BRUT

ANTON HAARDT GALLERY CONTEMPORARY FOLK ART FROM THE DEEP SOUTH

The Folk Air

1'1 \l'

7'llIt

ose T

Available at

www.antonart.corn

By Anton liaardt

2858 Magazine Street New Orleans, LA 70115 (504) 891-9080 gallery@antonart.com

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

23

QUILT

CONNECTION

COMPILED BY CHRISTINE CORCORAN AND DANA CLAIR WITH TEXT BY STACY C. HOLLANDER

n 2003 the American Folk Art Museum received the gift of an extraordinary quilt from trustee Cyril Irwin Nelson, whose long-term interest in American quilts and unstinting generosity to the museum have largely shaped the textile collection.The quilt was discovered in 1999 during a quilt day sponsored by the Massachusetts Qfi.lt Documentation Project. At that time it was recorded that the embroidered and appliqued blocks had been made as a friendship or memorial quilt for a minister in New Hampshire during the 1850s, and later assembled during the 1930s by his daughter, Clara Sargent Hickok.

Mid-19th-century album quilts were inspired by the earlier popularity offriendship albums, in which friends penned drawings, poems,and sentiments of affection. Each quilt block was a "page" in the album and was usually signed or inscribed with the name of a different contributor.

Typically,friendship quilts were composed ofidentical blocks, while a sampler album quilt might display a virtual encyclopedia of pieced and appliquĂŠd motifs. Album quilts were usually intended as celebratory gifts, and often commemorated a special moment or occasion. Rarely did such quilts contain explicit symbols of mourning.The abundance ofsuch motifs on this quilt, the tenor of the inscriptions, dated primarily between 1853 and 1854, and the specific memorial notations led to the belief that this quilt was made to commemorate the death of William A. Sargent, elder of the Freewill Baptist Church in Loudon,N.H. Of36 blocks, eight feature a similar appliquĂŠd weeping willow tree; one more such tree is embroidered on an additional

I

24 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

FRIENDSHIP QUILT FOR WILLIAM A. SARGENT / members of the Loudon Freewill Baptist Church / Loudon, New Hampshire / blocks pieced 1850s, assembled later/ cotton with pen and ink and cotton embroidery / 81 x 79"/ American Folk Art Museum, gift of a museum friend, 2003.1.1

block. Nine blocks bear memorial inscriptions, while most contain religious sentiments and expressions offriendship.

Based upon information gleaned from the Freewill Baptist organ the (Dover, NH)Morning Star and the Freewill Baptist register, it now seems likely that this quilt was made in honor of Elder William A. Sargent not as an expression of grief but as a testament offriendship. Sargent was pastor of the Loudon church from 1851 through 1856. He received his license to preach in September of 1849 and was ordained on Nov. 15, 1849,in Loudon Center at the Belknap

Quarterly Meeting.' After leaving Loudon, Reverend Sargent spent one year at the 2nd Gilmanton Church and then removed to the 2nd Lebanon Church in Maine from 1858 until 1860. Several of the deaths of congregants cited on the quilt occurred during Sargent's tenure in Loudon. At least two of these names are commemorated in the Morning Star in 1854, in obituaries composed by"W.A.S.," probably William A. Sargent.*

Notes

1 Elaine Ardia,The Edmund S. Muslcie Archives and Special Collections Library, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine,letter to the author, Dec. 1,2003.

Don't miss the American Folk Art Museum exhibitions "Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the Collection" and "Folk Art Revealed," in which 20 quilts are on view.

Quilt and Textile Events and Exhibitions COMPILED BY ELEANOR BERMAN Callfor Entries Uncoverings 2006: Research Papers ofthe American Quilt Study Group, vol. 26 Submission deadline:July 1,2005 American Quilt Study Group P.O. Box 4737 Lincoln, NE 68504-0737 402/472-5361; www.h-net.org/-aqsg San Jose, Calif.

San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles Still Reflections:The Contemporary Art ofDominic Nash &Jean Neblett March 8-April 22,2005 408/971-0323; www.sjquiltmuseum.org Denver,Colo.

Denver Art Museum Kaleidoscope ofColor:Amish Quilts March 19-June 19,2005 720/865-5000; www.denverartmuseum.org Golden,Colo.

Foothills Art Center Woven Journeys: Contemporary Handwoven Tapestries June 12-July 11,2005 303/279-3922; www.foothillsartcenter.org Golden, Colo.

Rocky Mountain(bat Museum American AppliquĂŠ Artistry: Fine Contemporary Applique March 9-May 21,2005 Small Works:Front Range Contemporary Quilters May 23-July 30,2005 303/277-0377; www.rmqm.org Washington,D.C. Smithsonian American Art Museum High Fiber March 11-July 10,2005 202/357-2020; www.si.edu

Washington,D.C. The Textile Museum Beyond the Bag:Textiles as Containers Through June 5,2005 Textiles for this World and Beyond:Treasures from Insular Southeast Asia April 1-Sept. 11,2005 Annual Celebration ofTextiles Festival June 4-5,2005 202/667-0441; www.textilemuseum.org Tampa,Fla. Tampa Museum of Art African American Quilt Show Through April 3,2005 813/274-8130; www.tampagov.net/dept_museum Paducah, Ky. Museum of the American Qyilter's Society Quilted Cuisine: Quilts Related to Food Feb. 12-April 10,2005 Pens and Needles: 19th- and 20th-Century Signature Quilts April 15-June 10,2005 Fine Focus 2004:50 SmallFormat Quilts May 14-June 17,2005 My Soul Is Fed with Needle and Thread: Quilts byJane Blair May 14-July 10,2005 Contemporary Quilts from Australia June 18-Sept. 18,2005 270/442-8856; www.quiltmuseum.org Boston, Mass.

Museum ofFine Art The Quilts of Gee's Bend June 1-Aug.21,2005 617/267-9300; www.mfa.org

Eleanor Berman is a volunteer at the American Folk Art Museum.

Lowell, Mass.

New England Quilt Museum Thrilled to Pieces: Antique Quilts, 1,000 to 25,000 Pieces Through April 2,2005 Pieces de Resistance: Batik Quilts April 7-June 19,2005 Mavericks:Antique Quilts with Unique Twists June 23-Aug. 14,2005 978/452-4207; www.nequiltmuseum.org Lincoln, Neb. Museum of Nebraska History Great Plains Women:Patchwork Lives Through April 2005 402/471-4754; www.nebraskahistory.org Lincoln, Neb. Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery The Collector's Eye:Amish Quilts from the International Quilt Study Center Collections Through Aug.7,2005 402/472-2461; www.sheldonartgallery.org Brooklyn, N.Y. Pratt Institute Block Party and Annual Q_uilters Guild ofBrooklyn Members' Exhibit April 9 and 10,2005 718/636-3600; www.quiltbrooklyn.org Asheville, N.C. Southern Highland Craft Guild Quilt National Winners Through April 4 828/298-7928; www.southernhighlandguild.org Wilmington, N.C. Louise Wells Cameron Art Museum Layers of Tradition: 150 Years of North Carolina Quilts Through May 15,2005 910/395-5999; www.cameronartmuseum.com

Tillamook, Ore. Latimer Quilt and Textile Center Quinn Corium: Contemporary Art Quits March 8-May 15,2005 Three Uppity Women and the Bead Nuts May 15-July 17,2005 503/842-8622; www.oregoncoast.com/latimer textile Athens,Ohio Dairy Barn Southeastern Ohio Cultural Arts Center Quilt National'05 Winners May 28-Sept.5,2005 740/592-4981; wvvw.quiltnational.com Greensburg,Pa. Westmoreland Museum of American Art Man Made:An Invitational Juried Exhibition Through April 17,2005 724-837-1500; www.wmuseumaa.org Harrisonburg, Va. Virginia Quilt Museum Imagination and Celebration: Contemporary Quilts from the Grand Duchy ofLuxembourg II and Crazy QuiltTreasures from the VQM Collection Feb.5-April 25,2005 The Best ofthe Best:80 Heirloom Quilts from the Collection April 30-July 11,2005 540/433-3818; www.vaquiltmuseum.org La Conner,Wash.

La Conner Wit Museum Evolving Styles:20 Years of Color &Design March 16-May 15,2005 Horizons: Quilts on the Wall Fiber Artists May 18-July 17,2005 360/466-4288; www.laconnerquilts.com

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

25

SUSAN SLYMAN REPRESENTED BY

FRANK J. MIELE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FOLK ART 1086 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK, N.Y. 10028 212.249.7250

GALLERIE JE REVIENS 991 POST ROAD EAST WESTPORT CT. 06880 203.227.7716

TULLY CLARK AND THE WHALE A/C 18 X 24

Graves' Country Gallery Art by the people Rooster

FaceJug

AV.Smith

AV.Smith

of North Carolina

of North Carolina

Juke Joint by Juanita Leonard of Louisiana hours: Fri. - Sat.• 10:30 - 5:00 or by appointment 15 North Cherokee 18116•toil!, California 95240•Phone(209)3885740•(2119)4737089 •email: graves@gravescoontry coin• www.gravescoontry.coin

26 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

Anne Bourassa

Cowboya

www.homeportfolio.corn

48" x 6o"

www.annebourassa.corn

e-mail: abourassa@prexar.corn (207) 872-5236

(215) 842-2168

leIV >110A NVOILI3INV

STRIP VARIATION QUILT (detail) / Mozell Benson (b.1934)/ Waverly, Alabama /1991 / cotton and wool with synthetic yarn /701/2 x 89"! American Folk Art Museum, purchase made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, with matching funds from The Great American Quilt Festival 3,1991.13.9 / photo by Scott Bowron

THE ARTIST AND HIS MODEL (detail) / Morris Hirshfield (1876-1946)! Brooklyn /1945 / oil on canvas / 44 x 34" / American Folk Art Museum, gift of David L. Davies, 2002.23.1 / Art 0 Robert and Gail Rentzer for Estate of Morris Hirshfield, licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

TEL: 212. 977. 7170 FOLKARTMUSEUM.ORG

P1

The exhibition "Folk Art Revealed" invites viewers to contemplate the nature of folk art through four principles applied to a diverse range of oadi ,,,„„ 014 Ar artworks from the museum's collection. These four themes—symbol/ ''iv ''''' Ill" ism, utility, individuality, and community—infuse all offolk art and speak to essential aspects of both traditional and unconventional . ec expressions. The exhibition uses provocative visual juxtapositions and i rr.4 contextual information to help audiences understand the vital roles folk grjr 7 ou. I art plays both as a carrier of cultural heritage and as a reflection of the li_o_gbigii synthesis between traditional ideas and new influences. Three cen_ a_e_e . *oil , • L tithes of art provides visitors with a seldom seen holistic view of the from New England portraits and painted furniture of the eightVit30LISM' 4--Shimar teenth and nineteenth centuries to unorthodox works created by conUTILITY ' C ' I -074"TrieseTe. , 0'.... temporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad. It .'*k!f•, 4,4.44,, '.

•,,, quickly becomes apparent that many—if not most—ofthe artworks in the exhibition respond to more than one of these four themes.This • becomes key to an understanding offolk art as an expression that emerges from patterns ofliving, at times affirming stability, at others 1 resisting convention. Whether they are newcomers experiencing folk art for the first time or seasoned enthusiasts, audiences are drawn to folk art. In its many forms they recognize the shared human impulse to li.., A find beautiful and soul-satisfying solutions to the needs and challenges

r-,-

„„,....,..,..

i

4,„. . , w_ .. ,..

Afield,

By Stacy C. Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson

"Folk Art Revealed' is on continuous view at the American Folk Art Museum.

INDIVIDUALITY "Folk Art Revealed" is made possible by leadership support from the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and major support from the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund.

Additional funding has been provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and the Jean Lipman Fellows.

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

29

SYMBOLISM Some of the most visually potent examples of folk art are those that speak through symbolic language.

In these artworks symbols are used as shorthand for revealing complex meanings through graphic representations. The use of symbols can be inclusive, expressing widely recognized ideas and experiences, or exclusionary, as in the arcane symbolic systems of "secret" societies like the Freemasons.

When the symbols pass from common usage or stem from a personal vision, we no longer hold the key to understanding their original meanings. Works become mysterious and subject to new interpretations.

30 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

asons trace the roots of their secret society to the building of Solomon's Temple,though it is more likely that it arose out of practices of medieval stonemasons'guilds. Modern Freemasonry dates back to seventeenth-century England, and its presence in the colonies was well established by the time of the American Revolution. Freemasonry developed a complex symbolic language intended to be understood only by its initiates.

Many Americans were suspicious of secret societies such as the Masons,which they considered non-egalitarian and threatening.This plaque is in the form of a Master's chart, also called a carpet or tracing board, and employs this system of symbols to illustrate Masonic precepts. It includes several references to Solomon's Temple and Royal Arch Masonry, such as the triangle and circle enclosing a tau cross composed ofthree Ts, and the series ofletters surrounding the compass in the arch's keystone that is a mnemonic device associated with Royal Arch Masonry's Mark Master degree.The ascending letters on the ladder stand for "Faith, Hope,and Charity."This type of chart was probably made for display in a member's home as a token of pride and prestige. —S.C.H.

M

MASONIC PLAQUE IN THE FORM OF A ROYAL ARCH TRACING BOARD Artist unidentified Probably Natick, Massachusetts 1899 Wood with printed and painted paper 18% x 31% x Gift of the Hirschhorn Foundation, 1997.6.4

c...> HOLY ST. ADOLF TOWER Adolf Mini (1864-1930) Bern, Switzerland 1919 Pencil and colored pencil on paper 4" / 2 221 / 301 Promised gift of Sam and Betsey Farber, P10.2000.7

inii

0111* ,

via.

'IMP

IN

v;-4

v-,i

dolfWolfli made hundreds ofworks over the course ofa thirty-year artmaking career. He also wrote several manuscripts, totaling fifty thousand pages,thus creating an alternative reality and universe of his own awesome proportions. Wolfli was inspired to explore fantasy so vigorously perhaps because he lived the last halfof his life institutionalized in an asylum for the mentally ill. Working at first with black graphite and later with colored pencil and occasionally collage,Wolfli created remarkable drawings, all employing a set ofemblematic icons and symbols,such as bird forms, musical notes, masked men,cruciform shapes, stars, sluglike creatures, and strings ofbeads. All ofthis iconography can be found in Holy St. Adolf Tower.Text regularly accompanies these motifs, although it is nonsensical; it reads more like free-form poetry or stream-of-consciousness writing.This work is symmetrically structured and is highly organized.It references architecture with its spire bisecting the picture plane; the tower is topped by an eight-pointed star. Square windows on either side frame masked faces, each peering to the left. The grisaille border ofround beads recalls architectural stonework and detailing. Musical notes fill the spire; Wolfli's musical compositions,while discordant and dirgelike, have been performed in the twentieth century by several noteworthy musicians,such as minimalist composer Terry Riley. —B.D.A.

A

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

31

UTILITY The earliest material that we now term folk art was frequently utilitarian in nature, made to meet the basic demands of daily life.

Objects such as furniture and household wares received painted and carved embellishments that sometimes served a function, such as the protection of wood surfaces.

These decorations might reflect the transmission of cultural ideas, prevailing trends, and availability of materials. They were also an expression of the creative desires of their makers, and elevated a mundane object into a work of art.

The idea of utility is often associated with traditional folk art forms, but twentieth- and twenty-first-century works of art demonstrate the endurance of utility as an impulse for creative expression.

CREWEL BEDCOVER Artist unidentified New England or New York 1815-1825 Wool with wool embroidery 100 84" Gift of Virginia Esmerian, 1995.32.1

edcovers used in American homes through the middle of the nineteenth century were largely homemade,though the fabric might be imported or domestically made by professional weavers.This richly embellished bedcover belongs to a small group ofearly textiles ascribed to a period from about 1760 to 1830. Most are worked on a black, or occasionally brown,twill-woven woolen foundation,and they share a similar composition ofa basket offlowers against a field ofvines and flowers.The dense surface embroidery is a combination oflarge and small floral motifs that gives an impression ofsymmetry,though no sections are exactly alike. It is worked in crewel, a worsted yarn ofloosely twisted two-ply colored threads. Drawing upon seventeenth-century English needlework traditions, early American embroidery reinterpreted motifs in a more naturalistic style using fewer varieties of stitches: mainly self-couching Romanian,flat, outline, and stem,though chain, buttonhole, herringbone,and loop stitches were also used.

The group ofcrewel embroidered bedcovers to which this example belongs was made primarily in Massachusetts and then in New York State, as migration from New England increased by the end ofthe eighteenth century. —S.C.H.

B

32 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

n the twentieth century even a utilitarian object,such as a porch chair, was subject to whimsical and conceptual makeovers. Richard Dial—part of the creative Dial family of artists from Bessemer, Alabama—is an accomplished metalworker and fiirnituremaker.In 1984 Richard cofounded Dial Metal Patterns, a small business in metal patio furniture. He learned many of the skills needed to start his entrepreneurial business while working as a machinist at Standard Pullman.This chair is part ofa wrought-iron furniture line Dial called Shade Tree Comfort. Anthropomorphic,stylized, and full of humor,each piece combines utility with Dial's individualistic decorative flair. The idea behind Shade Tree Comfort was to create motifs dealing with comfort and ease: the Comfort ofthe First Born and the Comfort and Discomfort of First Love,for example.The understructure of this wrought-iron chair is enhanced by several accessories: a mop imitating a beard and wood and rope creating the stone tablets ofthe Ten Commandments. Each additive element is a clever detail interpreting the biblical Moses.

—B.D.A.

I

THE COMFORT OF MOSES AND THE TEN COMMANDMENTS Richard Dial (b. 1955) Bessemer, Alabama 1988 Steel, wood, and hemp with enamel paint 57 33 < 321/2" Purchase made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Metropolitan Life Foundation, 1990.3.5

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

33

INDIVIDUALITY Folk art is an effective means of reinforcing conventions, but it also provides a powerful forum for individual expression. At first glance, it may seem to be the work of contemporary self-taught artists that is the most individualistic, even idiosyncratic. However, individuality is found in the unique signature every artist brings to his work, even when creating within a conventional form, tradition, or medium. At times this singular voice is expressed through a sense of whimsy or a highly developed aesthetic identity. Other works reveal a distinctive sensibility that is derived from an artist's strong personal convictions or visions, or from a life lived in isolation.

high degree ofindividuation can be achieved even when an artisan is working within a prescribed convention. A simple utilitarian form such as this sixboard low chest is transformed by the dynamic use of autumnal colors and fanlike patterns to create surfaces that fairly vibrate with energy.The effect is imaginative,rather than that ofan attempt to realistically simulate natural wood graining. As such,this abstract surface treatment may be a rural expression ofthe nineteenth-century aesthetic philosophy ofFancy—or imagination—that was popular in the decorative arts ofthe period. Fantastic and colorful patterns were created through the application ofpigment dissolved in water, turpentine,or vinegar,which was then manipulated while wet using a variety oftools or textured materials,such as brushes, combs,leather,or putty. In this example,the mark ofthe artist's hand is visible in the repeated pattern ofoverlapping fans.The technique is traditional,the result unique.

—S.C.H.

A

LOW BLANKET CHEST Artist unidentified New England c. 1830 Paint on wood 22 x 411/4 x 18/ 1 2" Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation in honor of Jean and Howard Lipman, 1999.83

34 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

GAVIN ASMWORT

ANIMALS APPEAR AS PLANTS—DWELLERS OF THE SEA Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) Milwaukee 1962 Paint on corrugated cardboard 21 24" Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.58

he son of a sign painter and the stepson of a Sunday painter who believed in reincarnation and evolution, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was exposed to creative trades and nonconformist ideas from an early age. Before devoting the second halfof his life to making art, Von Bruenchenhein worked as a florist and a baker. It was a fortunate foundation for the future artist, who eventually found his voice in a wide range ofexpressions: photography, painting, ceramics,sculpture, and poetry. A visionary in every sense of the word,Von Bruenchenhein illustrated his fears of modern war technology and his fascination with other worlds in fantastic, wet-on-wet apocalyptic paintings. He started working on his series of abstract canvases in the mid-1950s, and his subjects are often associated with the threat of nuclear explosions as well as underwater creatures, perhaps in Von Bruenchenhein's mind the inhabitants ofa post—nuclear war world. His fantastic imagery is enhanced by his out-of-this-world techniques: Von Bruenchenhein felt free to employ sticks, leaves,crumpled paper, his fingers, and brushes made from his wife's hair as styluses to apply the paint. He used a jarring combination of colors (secondary colors like green and orange) to great effect, enhancing an otherworldly feeling.

—B.D.A.

T

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

35

COMMUNITY A community is not merely a function of proximity in a particular neighborhood. Communities are formed through a variety of circumstances whose common bonds may be of time, place, belief, or experience. In folk art, this is reflected in the wide range of objects that emerge from the shared system that shapes a community. These expressions may point to a common cultural heritage, such as the decorative arts of the Pennsylvania Germans. Some artworks emerge from institutional environments, such as prisons or schools. Still others may indicate a national sense of community and demonstrate an awareness of popular culture or contemporary issues.

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opular notions ofcommunity evoke a supportive and industrious network of neighbors with commonly held values and aims. Similarly, strong bonds may be formed through less benign circumstances. Strictures ofspace, behavior, and activity due to confinement forge an insular community with its own rules, apart from the world at large.This watercolor captures such an example in its depiction of the looming imposition of prison architecture on the regimented lives ofinmates and their proscribed activities within its walls. Before the early nineteenth century, Massachusetts had no institutions of confinement that held large numbers of prisoners; punishments were generally meted out on an individual basis. From 1804 to 1805 a secure state prison was built on five acres ofland in Charlestown. For the first sixty years in the life of the prison, inmates wore uniforms that were half blue and half red, with painted caps. A yellow stripe was added for repeat offenders, and convicts were tattooed before being released.This was an improvement, though, over previous mutilating punishments, a practice outlawed in Massachusetts about the time the Charlestown prison was built. Originally hailed as a model penal institution, within its first few years the Massachusetts State Prison in Charlestown became notorious for its cruel conditions. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;S.C.H.

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CHARLESTOWN PRISON Artist unidentified Charlestown, Massachusetts c. 1851 Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper "(sight) 2 / 2 201 / 151 Promised gift of Ralph Esmerian, P1.2001.57

ome communities are unexpected,such as the community that evolves from prison life. Prison systems develop into places where prisoners are both colleagues and adversaries to one another, where relationships are established based on power,love, money,and time. Within the environment of prison life, unlikely artistic expressions have flowered over time and over cultures.Tattooing is perhaps the most commonly known artistic expression in prison life, but there are numerous examples of more fully developed arts, which are often allowed to mature in the gray environment ofincarceration. In 1964 Frank Jones was serving a life sentence for murder in Huntsville,Texas, when he salvaged red and blue accountants' pencil stubs from the garbage and recycled discarded paper from the prison office where he worked. He rather quickly developed his singular forms and palette and subjects, architectural structures constructed from barbed wire—like shapes drawn in red and blue. He called them "devil houses" and peopled them with "haints," or ghosts, also clothed in the same red and blue barbed-wire motif that defines every Jones drawing. Each creature smiles,so as, in the artist's words,"to get you to come closer... to drag you down and make you do bad things." Some ofhis drawings recall the architecture ofthe state penitentiary in Huntsville. Communal codes of prison life—the clock, the cell, the barbed wire, the inhuman creatures—are evident everywhere.Jones signed many of his drawings with only his prison number,further marking the community and the culture from which this artwork was born.* —B.D.A.

S

Stacy C. Hollander is the museum's senior curator and director ofexhibitions. Brooke Davis Andersonis the director and curator ofthe museum's Contemporary Center.

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UNTITLED Emery Blagdon (1907-1986) Vicinity of North Platte, Nebraska C. 1956-1984 Paint on wood .61/4" 113 / 4 Collection of William Fagaly

HOMEMADE

AFTER YEARS ON THE MARGINS OF THE OU141dER ART WORLD, EMERY BLAGDON'S LEGENDARY SCULPTURES AND PAINTINGS FINALLY EMERGE

I -11A]A_ II\ POWER

or nearly two decades, the unusual wire sculptures that the self-taught inventor-artist Emery Blagdon (1907-1986) created in almost total isolation on a farm in the Sand Hills region of northcentral Nebraska were the stuff of legend among a handful of curators, art dealers, collectors, and aficionados in the outsider art world.

Only rarely, though, since Blagdon's death had selections from his complex, voluminous oeuvre ever been seen publicly, in a small number of exhibitions.) Finally, early last year came the news that the two American collectors who, together, had acquired the totality of the little-known artist's work shortly after he died had decided to bring to market selections from their comprehensive holdings. With that news, interest in Blagdon rose, collectors scooped up the first offerings of his hitherto unavailable sculptures and paintings, and the American wing of outsider art's pantheon of definitive talentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which is jealously guarded by purists in the fieldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;was forced to make room for a unique and unquestioned master. But exactly who was Blagdon, why did he craft the strange contraptions he left behind, and what did he intend for them to do or to mean? These are questions that, at best, can be only partly answered. With Blagdon's life and work, as with that of many a legendary self-taught artmaker, the mystery that surrounds it is a large part of its allure.

5, Emery Blagdon, c.1984

38 SPRING 2005

By Edward M. Gomez

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Interior of Blagdon's shed with Healing Machines installation, 1986

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39

UNTITLED c. 1956-1984 Paint on wood 171 / 2x163/4" Collection of Susan Yecies

COURTESY CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY.

UNTITLED c. 1956-1984 Wood with steel and copper wire 12 x 7 x 1W Collection of Stephanie Smither

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grew up in North Platte, the largest town or city near Blagdon's farm. As the home of a large Union Pacific Railroad switching yard, North Platte was something of a commercial crossroads. The city also had been the site of a ranch where "Buffalo Bill" Cody spent time between tours of his Wild West Show in the late 1800s.

Christensen and Dryden had known each other since childhood, but it was Christensen who left the area first, in the mid-1970s, when he headed to New York just as punk rock was emerging. He went on to tour with rock bands, while Dryden, who had majored in pharmacy at the University of Nebraska, stayed in North Platte and operated his family's drugstore. Of the two future art collectors, it was Dryden who first saw Blagdon's work; he remains one of the few people who ever saw it in the company of its creator, in its original setting on the reclusive artist's farm.

Dryden recalls that, one day in 1975, a ragged-looking man stopped by his store "looking for'elements'for what he referred to as his `machines.'

He had long, gray, scraggly hair and a full beard, and he was scrawny; I never saw people like that come into the drugstore," Dryden recalled. The young pharmacist, who thought the older man might have been a hobo from the city's railway yard, sold him the ordinary mineral salts,like sodium bicarbonate or sodium chloride(common table salt), that he requested. But when he asked his eccentric-looking customer exactly what kind of "machines" he needed such "elements" for, Blagdon replied that the supplies were for his homemade "healing machines."

"With his crystal-clear, blue eyes, and no sense of [nervous] selfconsciousness at all, he engaged me right away," Dryden recollected. "I was immediately at ease with him."

Intrigued, Dryden asked if he could go see Blagdon's "healing machines," and the older man invited him to visit his farm.

Dryden remembered arriving at Blagdon's place on "a pitch-black night" when "the house looked abandoned." Inside, the kitchen was "a bachelor's mess of pots and pans," but it was out back, behind the house,in a two-room structure that would

COURTESY CAVINâ&#x20AC;˘MORRIS GALLERY. NEW YO

What is known of Blagdon's biography is sketchy. The oldest of six children, he was born in the Sand Hills, a subregion of the Great Plains consisting of wetlands, prairies, forests, and sandy hills. There, he worked on the family farm and attended a country school until about the eighth grade; around the age of eighteen, he left home and became a hobo. Traveling from place to place and working at odd jobs for many years, he explored the western United States before heading back to Nebraska and, apparently, taking up farming again. In 1952, Blagdon's unmarried uncle died and left him a nearly 160-acre property, which allowed the younger man to stop farming himself, lease part of his land to another farmer, and live modestly offthe rental income.'

It was just a few years later, at the age of forty-eight, that Blagdon, with no history of previous artistic activity to speak of, began constructing the mixed-media assemblages and making the related paintings on board that would become his life's work and consume his energy and attention until his death some three decades later. Since he left no diaries or written notes offering any hints about his artistic ideas or intentions, it is impossible to say for certain why Blagdon began producing his sculptures and paintings, where or from whom he might have learned his inventive wire-sculpting techniques (presumably, he developed them himself), or even if he regarded what he created as "art" at all.

"It appeared that Blagdon's few family members who lived in the region and knew what he was up to didn't appreciate what he was doing as art, but they did appreciate his industry, work, and creativity," Don Christensen, one of the two collectors who acquired the artist's oeuvre, said during an interview at his home in New York. "In that rural society, it was rare for someone to devote as much time to a non-farming activity as Blagdon did. It was real research and work, and he thought of himself as an inventor. So his people did respect him."'

Like Christensen, Dan Dryden, a former pharmacist who has also been based in New York for many years,

UNTITLED c.1956-1984 Paint on wood with steel and wire 2 PA" / 171 Collection of John Zorn

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(In the early 1980s, Dryden had sold the family-owned drugstore and started a new career as a sound engineer; eventually, he also settled in New York.) Upon arriving in North Platte, the two childhood friends learned that Blagdon had recently died and had left no will; they also found out that local officials had scheduled a public auction to sell off his belongings.

A poster announcing the countyrun estate auction listed guns, household objects, and farm equipment that would be going on the block. It referred to Blagdon's strange wireand-wood constructions only as "Miscellaneous" and added,"Lots &lots of iron. Lots & lots of metal wire, fancy work." Looking back, Christensen and Dryden remembered that, at the

COURTESY CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY. NEW

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become known as Blagdon's shed, where the former vagabond apparently had been spending most of his time. There, the inventor-artist took Dryden by the hand and led him into the first room,the workshop in which he handcrafted his "machines." He urged his visitor to try to feel the energy fields that the "machines" in the dark workroom supposedly were generating.

Then they walked over to a second, padlocked room.Inside, Blagdon flicked on some switches to light up what, unbeknownst to Dryden, had become his life's work. Dryden remembered seeing the densely packed space come magically to life as "Christmas-tree lights strung throughout hanging sculptures" and "painted light bulbs in coffee cans on the dirt floor" flickered on, bathing the interior in a hallucinatory explosion of color. Beneath Blagdon's freestanding constructions lay stacks of paintings; above, wire sculptures hung from the ceiling and wire ornaments decorated the rafters. According to Blagdon, together, the components of this environment generated electromagnetic, healing energy.

"It was as though the whole creation was some sort of poweremanating battery," Dryden recalled.

Blagdon's elaborate constructions of wire, aluminum-foil strips, and wood scraps filled every nook and cranny of the second room in the 800-squarefoot shed. He also called them "my pretties" and believed that the energy that supposedly emanated from them could help cure arthritis and other ailments.(To make his artworks, Blagdon used pliable hay-baling wire as well as thin- and thick-gauge copper wire that he unwound from old power tools.) Dryden remembered visiting Blagdon again a few weeks later.

"That time I met him out in a field, where he was conducting an experiment in what he called 'an energy hot spot,'" Dryden said. He added that, although the artist believed his creations had curative powers,"Blagdon did not pass himself off as a healer, and when I asked him if he sold his works, he said no."

Christensen did not see Blagdon's shed himself until he and Dryden returned to Nebraska to attend a school-reunion event there in 1986.

time, Blagdon's few surviving relatives were interested only in his old television set, over which they squabbled. The auctioneer who had been assigned to oversee the sale thought the most valuable items on offer were the hundreds oflong, sturdy pieces of lumber that had been found in Blagdon's shed.

It was during this return visit to North Platte that Christensen saw the creations in Blagdon's shed for the first time."The room was totally dark until the lights came on; no light crept in from outside," he recalled. When the lights did snap on, he said, "It was a wonderland. It was absolute funkiness, the evidence of an amazing intelligence that you wanted to get to know."

Acting quickly, before Blagdon's multifaceted, still hard-to-grasp mag-

num opus could be sold as scrap, Christensen and Dryden spoke with the auctioneer and proposed a bid on the entirety of the deceased man's wire constructions and related objects, and their offer was accepted."In an instant, we were no longer speculators," Christensen observed."We had become custodians of this man's vision." Assisted by old friends and relatives in the area when they headed back to Blagdon's farm to begin dismantling and hauling away the contents of the well-stuffed shed, Christensen and Dryden brought tags with which to label each piece. They soon discovered that each object topped with a wire loop was a complete work.

In later years, as Christensen and Dryden carefully examined each of Blagdon's wire creations, some small

UNTITLED (Set of Wire Elements) c. 1956-19134 Steel and copper wire Approximately 6 4" each Collection of John Zorn

Philadelphia. When the Philadelphia Museum of Art displayed Blagdon's shed environment in a traveling show of self-taught artists' works organized by the American Folk Art Museum several years ago, it included recorded sounds of crickets and prairie winds to evoke the ambience of the Nebraska countryside where the large-scale assemblage originally had been installed.'

In New York, the Cavin-Morris Gallery brought Blagdon's artwork to market on behalf of the two collectors. The gallery's founder-directors, Shari Cavin and Randall Morris, have specialized in outsider art for more than twenty years and, like other experienced dealers in the field, have taken a scholarly approach to the material they have handled. At

and some large and monumental in the annual Outsider Art Fair in New scale, they detected certain repeating York, in January 2004, the gallery formal characteristics that allowed presented a selection of Blagdon's them to roughly classify the works wire sculptures and paintings. (The into several categories. Among them: sudden and rather unexpected public pieces whose shapes resemble those of emergence of Blagdon's artwork chandeliers; pieces whose component came at a time when competition parts are symmetrically balanced; among dealers and collectors for pieces that look like cascades of wire fresh finds of high artistic merit in and other materials; and more mini- the outsider art field had become malist "power bundles" that are little especially keen.)

"For us,just as it was for Don and more than long pieces of wood wrapped in wire, suggesting some Dan,getting to know Blagdon's work, kind of primitive batteries. The two figuring out its scope and structureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; collectors photographed Blagdon's it was like an archaeological dig since works, too, and for many years kept there was so little to go by, other than the works themselves," Cavin said. them in storage in warehouses.

For Morris, work like Blagdon's, Over time, Christensen and Dryden allowed selections from their which was all handcrafted from Blagdon holdings to be shown at mostly recycled materials, is both museums in several cities, including "organic" in character and "highly Chicago, Lyon (France), and graphic and sophisticated" in its corn-

position and design. It is the kind of art "that is good for the human spirit," he said.

Christensen and Dryden shared that view, whether or not they believed, as Blagdon did, that the artist's "machines" possessed healing powers. Thus, with both aesthetic concerns and what could be called an interest in the Blagdon oeuvre's spiritual power in mind, for a long time Christensen and Dryden had tried to find a permanent institutional home for their collection in its entirety, without breaking it up. They recognized that Blagdon had probably meant for the many parts of his grand work to function together. Still, separately or together, its many elements needed the attention of professional art conservators, the kind of expert

care that, ultimately, they were not able to provide.

This explained, they noted, their decision to finally bring Blagdon's work to market. It was only reluctantly, they admitted, that they decided to begin allowing portions of a once-integrated work to be sold piecemeal. They were aware, after all, that, in the eyes of some outsider art purists, doing so could be seen to threaten the integrity of Blagdon's oeuvre as a whole. At the same time, however, sales of small portions of the entire work could raise much-needed funds to allow the collectors to keep storing and managing it with at least a modicum of appropriate attention and care.

By the fall of last year, the Kohler Foundation, of Kohler, Wisconsin, which is known for its work in the

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FOLK ART 43

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preservation ofself-taught artists'large-scale outdoor environments, announced that it had acquired the bulk of Blagdon's artwork. The organization plans to conserve the Blagdon material before making a gift of the hundreds of sculptures and related paintings it has obtained to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where they will eventually go on public display.

Perhaps, in time, especially if Blagdon's art can be seen as a whole in an easily accessible manner,individual pieces of his grand creation or the work in its entirety may begin to offer clues to its more specific meanings and purposes. Certainly in its technical complexity and in the startling originality of its vision, Blagdon's art finds accomplished counterparts in such sculptural creations as Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, in Los Angeles, or in the exquisite draftsmanship of such classic European art brut artists as the Polish-born Edmund Monsiel (1897-1962) and the French spiritualist Augustin Lesage (1876-1954).

Blagdon's highly decorative, unusually skillful manipulation of his materials also brings to mind the clever shaped-wire sculptures of a classic modernist like Alexander Calder, who used wire, bottle corks, fabric scraps, and small pieces of wood to craft his Circus figurines of 1926 to 1931. Unwitting echoes of Blagdon's aesthetic can be detected, too, in the penchant of many contemporary artists for employing found or recycled materials as a way of evoking some kind of "spiritual" quality in their work. (Indeed, a whole school of what might be dubbed urban folk art has emerged among certain contemporary artists who appear to be consciously emulating the look and feel ofoutsider art.)

After purchasing the entire contents of Blagdon's shed in 1986, while they were at work dismantling and removing its contents, Christensen and Dryden discovered piles of small, abstract paintings on boards lying on the floor of the "machine"-filled room. "It's a matter of speculation, but maybe Blagdon believed the paintings were energizing the wire sculptures, or vice versa," Christensen volunteered. Dryden added, "There appeared to be a synergistic relationship between them." After everything had been removed from the densely packed shed space, they also found a neatly laid out wire grid that had been lying just beneath the surface of its dirt floor.

For Christensen,"the whole installation was a big web of connected, grounded energy. The abstract designs on the paintings were diagrammatic, too, and tucked into some of the wire works there were similar drawings on pieces of cereal-box cardboard." In ways that feel as alchemical as they do artistic, Christensen suggested, Blagdon's work "was about using shape

UNTITLED c. 1956-1984 Steel, copper wire, wood, and tinfoil 43 x8x8" Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

and line to effect energy," as though "making shapes was itself a form of energy." Christensen and Dryden have not been able to ascertain whether Blagdon may have approached his work with any religious sense of purpose or not, but they learned, after speaking with his surviving relatives, that he had attended a Protestant church as a youth but had never been an overtly religious person.

Cavin has her own theory to explain why the emergence of Blagdon's art now may be especially timely and its impact, as it becomes more widely known, particularly resonant. "Its intention was to heal, and at a time like this, what could be more relevant and appealing than art that reminds us that there is still another side of human nature, a side that is not about being divisive and killing each other?"

Similarly, Morris pointed out that "what's interesting about so much work by self-taught artists, like Blagdon's, is that, unlike contemporary postmodernist art, it's completely lacking in irony; what it has instead is a sense of urgency and sincerity."

That matter-of-fact quality characterizes the only known film footage of Blagdon, a televisionnews clip from 1980, in which a local reporter asked the leathery old recluse if he could explain how the energy his constructions supposedly generated related to his sculptures. Like a character in a Samuel Beckett play, he replied plainly, with only two words:"I can't." That was the end ofthe interview.

For Dryden, though, "that was enough." For anything and everything, he hinted, that we might ever want or need to know about the peculiar hobo-turned-artist may ultimately lie in the mystery of his art. And in a big way, after all, the many still-unansweredâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and perhaps unanswerableâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;questions that surround it are this unusual work's main subject.* Edward M. Gomez is a graphic designer, ajournalist, an art and design critic, an educator, an author, and an environmental activist. He writes about the visual artsfor the New York Times and numerous nationaland internationaljournals and is a contributor to The Art of Adolf Wolfli: St. Adolf-Giant-Creation (Princeton University Press in association with the American Folk Art Museum, 2003). Gomez has been awarded the Fulbright Fellowship and the NationalArtsJournalism Program Research Fellowship to Columbia University(2001-2002).

UNTITLED c. 1956-1984 Steel, copper wire, tinfoil, paint, and paper 79 x 12 >< 6" Collection of John Zorn

Notes 1 Don Christensen and Dan Dryden,"Grassroots Artist: Emery Blagdon," Kansas Grassroots ArtAssociation Newsletter 8, no.2(1988): 1.

2 Unless otherwise noted,remarks are by Christensen and Dryden from interviews with the collectors at their homes in New York,December 2003.

3 "Self-Taught Artists of the Twentieth Century: An American Anthology" traveled in 1998 and 1999.

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By Ralph and Susanne Katz II\

SEARCH

'JOHN USHER PARSONS

WOMAN IN PINK (detail) Attributed to John Usher Parsons (1806-1874) Maine c. 1835-1840 Oil on canvas 26 x 211/2" American Folk Art Museum, gift of Joan and Victor Johnson, 1999.13.1

ver the years, a few portraits have been attributed to John Usher Parsons (1806-1874), but until recently all that was known about the artist was his name and the fact that he produced highly decorative paintings in Maine in the mid-1830s. A search of the folk art literature turned up just two relatively brief references to the artist or his work.

Curator Stacy C. Hollander, writing about Woman in Pink,in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum, noted his ((sense of abstraction and decorative playfulness," and scholar Nina Fletcher Little, describing portraits that were in her collection at the time, wrote, "Attributed to the little known artist John Usher Parsons, these colorful likenesses, through their freedom of expression, and bold untutored style, epitomize the spirit of true folk art as rendered by an intuitive, although untrained, hand."' Even now that a good deal of biographical information has been uncovered, his career as an artist remains obscure. Portrait painting was not his primary profession, and he painted portraits over a short period of time, leaving no information behind other than the portraits themselves.

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47

John Usher Parsons was born into a large family of prosperous landowners. He was a direct descendant of Joseph Parsons, an original settler of the town of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1630. His ancestors also included various members of the British aristocracy. He was born in Parsonsfield, Maine, on November 1, 1806, to Stephen (1766-1836) and Abigail Moore Parsons (1767-1832).2 His grandfather Thomas Parsons (1735-1811), who had nineteen children, was living in Effingham, New Hampshire, when in 1771 he was granted a large tract of adjoining land to the east, in what was then Massachusetts and is now Maine.' He built a house there and moved into it in 1784, and the town was named Parsonsfield in his honor.

Family members moved between the adjacent towns, several owning thousand-acre farms in the new town of Parsonsfield, while others remained in Effingham, and Parsons reported that he had gone to Latin school both in Effingham and in nearby Limerick, Maine. He later wrote that he had a "great capacity for rapid acquisition of knowledge, which led to superficial habits."' He lamented his poor preparation for college, which had been "very imperfect from haste." His lack of attention did not, however, prevent him from graduating from an accelerated program at the medical school of Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, at the top of his class in 1828, then from Andover Theological Seminary. Parsons married Harriet Hinckley Nye of Bangor, Maine,in August of 1831, and was ordained a Congregationalist minister in New York City a month later.' The couple left immediately for Indiana, where Parsons worked as a frontier missionary. He wrote in his flowery style that this time was "dedicated to labor rather than study" and that he had "sacrificed his love of Science upon the Altar of Christian Philanthropy."

Although he complained of poor health throughout his life, Parsons spent many years as a frontier missionary in Indiana,Wisconsin, Georgia, and Kansas. He founded and directed a seminary in Indiana, and established numerous churches along the way. Parsons was also an educator and the author of numerous articles and books on a variety of topics, including elementary education, orthography, and spelling, as well as on religious themes.' He established a college in Wisconsin and even founded the first mutual insurance company in Georgia. He proudly claimed later in life that he had preached in every state east of the Mississippi and three states west of it. Clearly, he was a restless man of enormous talent and energy who went from one challenge to another, moving from place to place every few years. For a man with chronic pulmonary disease, "which repeatedly compelled him to forgo the duties of the pulpit

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and change his residence, he performed a surprising amount oflabor."'

In 1834 poor health forced Parsons to return to New England from missionary work in Indiana. His wife, Harriet, had died in Madison, Indiana, in April 1832, only seven months after their wedding, and, the following January, he married Rosetta Hebard, a minister's daughter from Attica, New York, who returned with him to New England.' It appears that Parsons painted portraits of relatives and family friends only from 1834 to 1838 while recuperating from his illness. Portraits of known sitters are from Parsonsfield and Effingham as well as Norway, Maine,and New Bedford, Massachusetts. No paintings have yet been found in Indiana or Wisconsin, and it appears that Parsons had stopped painting by 1838, when he returned to his missionary work. Although a good deal is known about Parsons's working life, he remains elusive as an artist. He did not advertise, nor is he listed or mentioned anywhere as a painter. He painted portraits around the age of thirty, but in writing his autobiographical notes at age sixty, Parsons thought so little of his painting career that he did not even mention it. All of his paintings are unsigned except for one self-portrait, and another bearing a label with the initials "J.U.P." Parsons produced fresh, dynamic pictures, but he must have been entirely untrained, at first lacking even basic instruction on stretching and priming his canvases. His unconventional methods resulted in paintings that are fragile and must be handled cautiously. The paintings that we have been able to examine in person, painted early in his career, were on canvases that were not primed or stretched.

If he saw paintings by itinerant portraitist Royall Brewster Smith (1801-1855), who was active around the same time in several towns in the immediate vicinity of Parsonsfield, it is not apparent in Parsons's portraits, which look quite original, flat, and diagrammatic in contrast to Smith's modeled figures.' The unsigned portraits illustrated here are attributed to Parsons based on stylistic similarities, characteristic repeated motifs, and, in some cases, links between artist and sitter. His works, like his writings, tend to be highly decorative, with most of the subjects seated in brightly painted chairs and most of the women in colorful dresses with highly detailed lace collars. The figures are hard-edged, linear, and entirely flat, with little attempt at roundness or perspective. The complexions are pale, with cheeks flushed a distinct pink. The mouths are almost all identical, with firmly set lips. Several of the paintings feature swags of drapery in the background, held back with yellow floral tiebacks.

SELF-PORTRAIT Maine c. 1835 Oil on canvas 28/ 1 2x 221/2" Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Louis Schwartz This self-portrait is the only known painting signed by John Usher Parsons.

SELF-PORTRAIT Maine 1835 Oil on canvas 30/ 1 2x 261/2" Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, gift of Mrs. W.W. Tuttle and Miss Catherine Tuttle The inscription on the paper label affixed to the front of the canvas reads "PAINTED January 27.1835. / by J.U.P."

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The Paintings The two paintings on the basis of which the unsigned works can be attributed to Parsons are the two selfportraits. The first, with a plain background, is the only known painting signed by Parsons. On the reverse, before lining, the inscription reads:"John Usher Parsons, by himself" He sits on a decorated, bright-red chair in a threequarter pose, looking off to the left. Parsons painted the self-portrait when he was about twenty-nine years old, and he maintains a bright-eyed, youthful appearance.

The second self-portrait is attributed to Parsons for a number of reasons. Affixed to the front of the canvas is a large contemporaneous label with a handwritten inscription that reads "PAINTED January 27. 1835./ by J.U.P." The painting is in the collection of Bowdoin College, Parsons's alma mater, and is said to have descended with the other self-portrait and the portrait of his cousin Hannah Foster Parsons.'The likeness bears such a close resemblance to the signed self-portrait that this painting must be considered a self-portrait as well. The subject has strikingly similar facial features and hairline. The right eyebrow is quite distinctive in both portraits. There was no original stretcher, and creases in the paint suggest that the picture had been rolled.

It was painted on a dense canvas painted a dark color but with no ground except under the face. The composition contains details that usually indicate something of the sitter's profession: The subject sits at a table with an open book, and some of the books behind him bear partial titles in Latin, suggesting a man of letters. However, the small

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gold hoop in his left ear and the background scene of ships in a harbor would suggest that the sitter was a seafarer, and there is no evidence that Parsons ever went to sea. The reason for these clues remains a mystery The portrait of Sarah F. Hobbs (1801-1884), painted when she was about thirty-four years old,was discovered in the Hobbs family home, rolled up in a trunk." Sarah Hobbs never married and lived all her life in Effingham.

She was related to the Parsons family by marriage. In her portrait she wears a blue dress with a multicolor sash, a lace collar with ribbons, gold drop earrings, and a gold bead necklace.The portrait was once in the collection of art historian James Thomas Flexner, and he visited Hobbs's grave in the family plot adjacent to her home. Referring to the "strangely powerful" painting by Parsons, who was at that time unidentified, he wrote that it was executed "with the technique of Chinese ancestor portraits. For a plain background, he left untouched a piece of green window-shade material. .. . In flat colors, he placed a decorative body below a face so realistically conceived, despite the distortions of na誰ve vision, that...[t]he result was not varnished or stretched, but kept rolled up in the Chinese manner."

Hannah Foster Parsons, whose portrait descended with the self-portraits, was a first cousin of the artist. Her dark-blue dress is ornamented with a highly detailed embroidered organdy lace collar and cuffs, and unlike the other female sitters, she wears several pieces ofjewelry.

The portrait of Mrs. William E.(Harriet Paddleford) Goodnow descended in her family. It was once in the col-

SARAH F. HOBBS Effingham, New Hampshire c.1835 Oil on canvas (unstretched) 32 . 24" Private collection Sarah Hobbs lived all her life in Effingham, New Hampshire, and was related to John Usher Parsons by marriage.

HANNAH FOSTER PARSONS Parsonsfield, Maine C. 1835 011 on canvas 30 x 24/ 1 4 " Private collection Hannah Foster Parsons was a first cousin of John Usher Parsons.

HARRIET GOODNOW Norway, Maine c. 1836 Oil on canvas 2 20" / 331 Present location unknown

MRS. WILLIAM E.(HARRIET PADDLEFORD) GOODNOW Norway, Maine c. 1836 Oil on canvas 2 261/2 1 33/ Private collection William E. Goodnow joined Parsons and a group of abolitionists in the territory of Kansas in 1855.

lection of folk art collector Nina Fletcher Little, and a label attached to the original stretcher, in Little's hand, reads: "Harriet Paddleford (Mrs. William E. Goodnow) of Norway,Maine. Attributed to John Usher Parsons."' Norway is about fifty miles northeast of Parsonsfield. William E. Goodnow and his brother Isaac were members ofa group of abolitionists that went to Kansas in 1855, as John Usher Parsons did, which suggests that Goodnow and Parsons knew each other." The painting features two of Parsons's characteristic decorative yellow curtain tiebacks. This is probably the most ornate and colorful ofParsons's portraits.

The portrait of Harriet Goodnow shows the eldest daughter ofWilliam and Harriet(Paddleford) Goodnow at around the age of five. William Goodnow took the portraits of his wife and daughter with him to Kansas, but Mrs. Goodnow, because of poor health, chose not to live on the western frontier, and except for short visits, her husband never returned east. The portraits were eventually returned to Maine after his death in 1876." Young Harriet, shown full length, bears rather adult facial features similar to the other portraits, with an especially strong shadow along her nose. This painting was also formerly in the Little collection, and the paper label attached to the stretcher identifies the subject as "Harriet Goodnow Lisbon, Me— Dr. John Usher Parsons.' Harriet was a "fine musician" and a member ofthe church choir. She died in 1845 at the age offourteen.

The portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Moffet of New Bedford, Massachusetts, are the only ones Parsons painted on wood

panel. Both subjects are seated on paint-decorated yellow chairs and hold small red books. Swags of fabric on the inside corners are held back by the characteristic yellow tiebacks. Parsons probably painted the Moffets when he served as the minister of a Congregational church from 1836 to 1838 in Berkley, Massachusetts, a town near New Bedford.

Two portraits of unidentified women bear strong resemblance to the portrait of Mrs. Goodnow: Woman in Blue Dress and,in particular, Woman in Pink. Set in a threequarter pose and gazing at the viewer, they share features of other Parsons women, and Woman in Pink could almost be another portrait of Mrs. Goodnow. Woman in Blue Dress contains the pose and the yellow tieback of the portrait of Mrs. Moffet.

Manfrom Union, Maine shows features typical of a Parsons portrait—the distinctive shape of the eyes, nose, and mouth. Nina Fletcher Little wondered whether it was a portrait of William Goodnow, but she gave no evidence, and we know of no specific evidence to link it with Mrs. Goodnow's or any other known Parsons portrait."

• • By 1838 Parsons was able to resume missionary work, in Wisconsin. His second wife, Rosetta, died in Milwaukee in September of 1843. Parsons married Eliza Safford in Kennebunk, Maine, in December 1844, and, because of his poor health, he decided to move once again, this time to

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COURTESY JOAN R. BROWNSTEIN ART A ANTIQUES, NEWBURY, MASSACHUSETTS

the South.In his notes, Parsons tells of his increasing sympathy with the black slaves in Georgia and describes the destructive effect of slavery on the white population. We also find a notation, in which he refers to himself in the third person, about a sideline to his ministry:"Mr. Parsons regards the Philanthropy of the Gospel as embracing the Present life as well as that which is to come, and when he discovered that the principle of Mutual Insurance was unknown at the South, he got up a company, incorporated as The Southern Mutual Insurance Co., of which he was elected Secretary and Genl Agent. ...The Institution is still in flourishing operation having returned hundreds of thousands...."

Parsons, however, had left to fight against slavery in support of"the sons offreedom,"in the territory of Kansas.

He made two trips to Kansas, the first in March 1855, hoping to prevent Kansas from becoming a slave state.The second trip, with a group of fifty men in July 1856, had to be made overland through Iowa and Nebraska because the shorter route by river had been cut off. Parsons relates an encounter with Missourians who were in Kansas to support slavery, in which he "was arrested by a band of hideous looking ruffians and subjected to an ignominious examination but finally allowed to proceed." His son John Usher Parsons Jr. accompanied him to Kansas and later became a lieutenant in the Kansas cavalry. He died in Kansas at age twenty-three, on December 23,1861.

Returning from Kansas in 1857, Parsons spent the last years of his life working as a minister, first in New Sharon, Maine, then in other towns in Maine,Massachusetts, and on Long Island, New York. By the time he was sixty, three of his six children with Rosetta and all five of his children with Eliza had died. John Usher Parsons died of a stroke at age sixtyseven,in Wellesley, Massachusetts,on May 24,1874.*

Ralph and Susanne Katz were longtime members ofthe American Folk Art Society and have been collecting and studying early Americanfolk artfor more thanforty years. Ralph Katz,MD.,is a retired radiologist. Susanne Katz holds an M.F./1 in sculpturefrom State University ofNew York at Bittliilo and works as a ceramic sculptor andprintmaker. Formerly ofBeillo, they now live in New Hampshire.

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Notes 1 See Stacy C. Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson,American Anthem:Masterworksfrom the American Folk Art Museum(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the American Folk Art Museum,2001), p. 327; and Nina Fletcher Little, Little

By Little: Six Decades ofCollecting American Decorative Arts(New York E.P. Dutton, 1984),pp.260-261,266.

2 Henry Parsons,Parsons Family(New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical Company,1912), p. 209. In the large Parsons family there were several men named John Usher Parsons, all but two of whom can be ruled out as the painter: the John Usher Parsons discussed here and a younger cousin. By correlating Reverend Parsons's whereabouts at certain times with the locations ofthe portrait sitters, we feel confident of our attribution, but there is only strongly suggestive evidence, not definitive proof. All we know ofthe younger Parsons is that he was born in the Effingham/Parsonsfield area in 1813, married there in 1840,and lived the rest of his life in Missouri.

3 J.W. Dearborn,History ofParsonsfield, Maine, 1771-1888(Portland, Maine: Brown Thurston & Co., 1888), pp.240-242.

4 Autobiographical notes, handwritten in the third person by John Usher Parsons c. 1867, Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick,Maine. Unless noted otherwise, quotations in this article come from this source. Excerpts are paraphrased in Nehemiah Cleaveland, History ofBowdoin College with Biographical Sketches ofIts Graduatesfrom 1806 to 1879(Boston:James Ripley Osgood &Co.,1882),pp.386-387.

5 Parsons Family,op. cit.

6 Ibid.

7 Cleaveland,op. cit.

8 Parsons Family,op. cit.

9 See Arthur and Sybil Kern,"Painted

by Royall B. Smith," The Clarion 13, no. 2(spring 1988): 48-55.

10 Kathleen V. Kelley,"Conservators at WRACL Restore Bowdoin Paintings," Between the Lions: The Newsletter ofthe Bowdoin College Museum ofArt 9, no. 1 (spring 1989). Bowdoin indicates that the portrait was painted by its alumnus Reverend Parsons.To further support our theory that the painter was the elder Parsons and not the younger cousin, this self-portrait, to our eye,is more suggestive of a slightly balding twenty-eight- or twenty-nine-year-old clergyman than ofthe younger man,who would not yet have been twenty-two.

11 See James Thomas Flexner, The Light ofDistant Skies:American Painting, 1760-1835(1954; New York Dover Publications, 1969), p. 212.

12 See the catalog for Sotheby's Sale 6612,the Bertram K. Little and Nina Fletcher Little Collection, Part II, Oct. 21 and 22, 1994,lot 793.

13 Little, op. cit., pp.260-261.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., p.266.

16 Nina Fletcher Litde's notes are in the collection of Historic New England,Boston.

MR. AND MRS. MOFFET New Bedford, Massachusetts C. 1837 Oil on wood panel 25 241 / 2"(each) Private collection Parsons served as the minister of a Congregational church in Berkley, Massachusetts, near New Bedford, where the Moffets lived, from 1836 to 1838.

MAN FROM UNION, MAINE Union, Maine c.1836 Oil on canvas 30 25" Courtesy Joan R. Brownstein Art & Antiques, Newbury, Massachusetts

WOMAN IN BLUE DRESS Probably Maine c.1836 Oil on canvas 32 26" Private collection

WOMAN IN PINK Maine C. 1835-1840 Oil on canvas 26 â&#x20AC;˘ 2P/2" American Folk Art Museum, gift of Joan and Victor Johnson, 1999.13.1

,RNEL

COURTESY STEPHEN SCORE. INC., BOSTON

COURTESY NORTHEAST AUCTIONS, PORTSMOUTH. NEW HAMPSHIRE

OUTSIDER A Dialogue I feel the shadows are

Curators JOHN TURNER and DEBORAH KLOCHKO have organized "Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge," an exhibition of photography- and collagebased artworks that is on view at the

telling us how much we have overlooked that is right before us. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;FRED RESSLER, 2004

George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, in Rochester, New York, through April 10. On November 20, 2004, during the show's run at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco, the curators sat down in Oakland, California, with their collaborator, art historian ROGER CARDINAL, to share their thoughts on photography and the genesis of the exhibition.

ROGER CARDINAL Let's think about the map we have drawn.Throughout art history there has always been a territory with different things happening, and the boundaries have been drawn and redrawn in different ways.

Photography had not been thought of as a likely candidate for inclusion in the outsider canon because photography seems,on the face of it, mechanical, and it has a very strong documentary slant. We had probably envisaged it as functioning within such contexts as newspaper and book illustrations in a way other forms of art do not normally do.That ensured that it was not an obvious candidate.

DEBORAH KLOCHKO Photography has a relatively young history when you compare it with painting or sculpture. For the longest time photography was just trying to position itself as art. It was considered an outsider within the art field. So now,the idea of talking about folk and vernacular photography is relatively new in the field. It is not surprising that we are just now starting to talk about outsider photography.

JOHN TURNER Within the photography community, how arefolk and vernacular photography defined?

Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge

By John Turner and Deborah Klochko, with an essay by Roger Cardinal / Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco /156 pages, 155 images, full color, $40 hardcover Available at the American Folk Art Museum Book and Gift Shop. Members receive a 10 percent discount on all shop items.

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DK Vernacular is the current, popular segment of photography. People are now looking at family albums as artistic expressions and collecting anonymous snapshots. Folk has always been a part of photography.The everyday uses of photography in terms of quilts, photo-jewelry, or handmade frames to display photographs have been there from the beginning. People really embraced photogra-

phy in their lives as soon as it was available.

There were painted tintypes that mimicked the appearance offolk paintings. By heavily painting over the tintype you remove any kind of perspective, any sense of background, so that it looks like a folk painting. Albums, especially Victorian albums, were heavily decorated and collaged together.There was the sense ofthe individual really creating something that was accepted within the community and understood to be a normal activity.

RC I was thinking about the limners, who were these transient people who would go around doing ready-made portraits. They would size you up and knew how to do a beard, and then if you had a beard you would look like the last person with a beard, and the next one too. And presumably the photographer did much the same.

DK That is exactly what they did.There were itinerant photographers.They had their wagons or tents and would travel around setting up the same pose, shooting the same likeness.

RC And then the real moment of discovery comes in 1888 when Kodak comes out with the accessible camera that anybody could use.

DK It is the beginning of the "snapshot." It takes photography out of the studio and puts it in the hands ofevery person who can afford it. There are some limitations, but anyone can make photographs from that point on.There is a freshness that begins to happen in the images. At the same time you begin to see that certain subjects are repeated again and again. Family, trip, house, baby, possessionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;these are common themes that run through the photographs.

RC So you have wedding pictures, graduation pictures, baptism pictures, so the big moments of people's lives get recorded.

DK Photography is basically a mechanical process.The original image is made with a camera usually, with some type offilm, and there are exposure issues that you have to at

PHOTOGRAPHY UNTITLED Richard Sharpe Shaver (1907-1975) Summit, Arkansas n.d.

Hand-colored gelatin silver print mounted on board 2" 1 10 â&#x20AC;˘ 8/ Collection of Brian Tucker Shaver, a science fiction writer, used photography to illustrate his belief that rocks contained the visual record of an ancient underwater race of extraterrestrials he called the Merms.

He would carefully slice and then photograph segments of rocks and hand-color the prints to give emphasis to particular patterns; sometimes he projected his images onto canvas and built up the surface with glue and paint.

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least be somewhat aware of.There are a lot ofrules. What is exciting about outsider photography is that those rules don't apply anymore.

RC There are rules with regard to certain standards. People were aware that a good photograph should conform to a particular set ofexpectations.In the world ofphotography, people like Ansel Adams would actually write the rules by saying,"This is how a photograph should be. It should be in focus, it should have such and such an exposure time,and it should aspire to be an idealization ofthe landscape."Which is a paradox because a photograph is meant to be simply objective, dispassionate. Now,the outsiders in a way are on a similar track,going toward transformation rather than replication ofwhat they see.

DK No,I don't agree. Photography,I think, appeals to the outsider artist who uses it because ofits validation, its truthfulness.That is why many individuals gravitate toward photography. It seems real and can be interpreted as real. From the introduction ofphotography people have embraced it as truthful, and individuals who have a different grasp ofreality gravitate toward using photography because it adds elements that are seemingly very real.

JT The artists we have selected for "Create and Be Recognized" used photography as another tool in their vocabulary ofexpression. Roger has talked about outsider photography as being personal and private, and created for usually an audience ofoneself.

Whenever outsider art is discussed, we run into the same problem—that there are big differences between one artist and another. So it is actually very difficult to generalize about the uses of outsider photography.In some cases it is a documentation ofthe private and personal,in other cases it is a means of letting people visualize what the artist is trying to say about the world and their surroundings. Richard Shaver and his "rock books" are a good example. He went through the process of slicing rocks and photographing them to support his notion ofthe prehistory ofthe world.

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DK For Shaver the photograph is evidence. He embraces it as proofof his beliefs. For him the accepted truthfulness ofphotography helps justify what his visions are. What he actually sees.

RC He is quite pedagogic. His work presupposes an audience that wants to know and that may be misguided.It is training us how to see properly.[Fred] Ressler, equally, is telling us that the foliage on the wall is there for everybody to look at. Ifyou just train your eye, you will actually have a more poetic insight into the world. Somewhat ofa mystical insight.

DK It is also the notion ofphotography as "scientific" evidence, which was one ofthe early uses ofphotography.

JT Like Shaver, Ressler sees it as a documentation ofthe truth.

DK Alexandre Lobanov is the other one whom I wanted to point out because he is also using it as evidence.

Evidence ofhis existence, evidence of the visual vocabulary he has created because of his inability to speak or to hear. He had to create this way of communicating to the world.To overcome his powerlessness, because of his institutionalization and his inability to really communicate except through this rich imagery ofweapons—after all, photography is about shooting...

JT What is also interesting about Lobanov's series ofphotographs is the position of prominence he has constructed by using oversize frames, placing himselffront and center, surrounded by his weaponry. His own fantasy world placed in front ofthe camera. By putting himselfwithin the frame he gives himselfa level of importance and validates the fantasy.

What is remarkable about these documentations,which he did over a period ofyears, is you can see him literally age in these photographs.

DK The presentation ofhis finished image is reminiscent ofboth Russian icons and early photographic portraiture.The cased daguerreotypes and ambrotypes show the sitter from the head down to the waist,centered,with a frame around the image.Lobanov is referencing these two different approaches.

LILA, NATIVE AMERICAN PRINCESS (DAUGHTER)/ Fred Ressler (b. 19411/ Florida /1996 / Fujicolor print / 6 • 4"/ private collection Ressler photographs the play of shadows from sunlight passing through trees onto the side of his Florida house; when the first image he had taken was printed, he discovered in it the features of a face—in his mind that of an angel or a spirit.

UNTITLED / Alexandre Lobanov (1924-2002)/ Russia / c. 1970 / color photograph / 7.5"/ collection of abcd, Paris Lobanov, deaf and mute from the age of seven and institutionalized as an adult, created elaborately staged self-portraits with the help of a local studio photographer. He constructed props, backgrounds, hats, and frames for his compositions, most of which reflect his fascination with guns, the military, and Soviet symbols.

UNTITLED / artist unidentified / France /c. 1860-1870 / albumen prints mounted on paper /13 x 10"/ courtesy Galerle Sabine Schmidt, Cologne, Germany These images are part of an album of photographs discovered in France in the 1980s. While the original intent of the imagesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;many of which are disturbingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; remains unknown, the elaborately well-planned scenes represent an early example of photo-collage, manipulation, and tableau.

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RC There must also be a Russian symbolic context,all the emblematics of the image,the czar, the sacred icon with the kind of heraldic surround that might appear on coins or banknotes.

DK The nineteenth-century anonymous French album is very engaging to look at and to think about in the context of photo history. It is following all the rules and yet breaking all the rules at the same time. Obviously, the maker used a large-format camera; the process ofthe day was the albumen print and wet collodion negative. So he or she coated their own glass plates. There is a very formal quality when you look at a finished image made up ofa collection of photographs that were cut and pasted together. The edges ofthe final image are completely ignored,or at least not dealt with in a traditional manner. So you have this funny breakup of the edges from the center ofthe photograph,and it is the story being acted out that is really important.I believe the story becomes so powerful for the person creating it that they don't really care what the edges look like.

Again, using photography makes it real even though it is completely staged!

JT Howard Finster used family snapshots,images that were normal shots ofthe family on vacation, the family in front ofthe church,things ofthis nature.

RC The prints hang around,he picks out one ofthem one day and says,"I can use this," then incorporates it in one ofhis designs.

JT He used some ofthe photographs to reference his own fame and to elevate his importance.The other collection ofphotographs he used was more or less in a scrapbook format,a family album in which he introduced himself, his relatives, and his environment to the world.It was his autobiography.

RC Yes,it is, and that is also pedagogic,talking to the audience."Gather round folks and I will show you who is hereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;this is my brother,this is my aunt, and this is where we are all going."

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JT Finster really did not have a serious connection to the world ofphotography, but he valued the photographic image in terms ofrepresenting and consolidating his fame.

He also used photography as part of his pastoral work. He would write a sermon about,I don't know,about the ant moving the mountain,then at the top ofhis sermon would be his portrait, the fellow who wrote that sermon. So he was connecting word and image,and giving the image as much import as the written word. He used the same photo-portrait of himselfon calling cards that he made from pieces ofscrap paper. Finster always told people that not only are the paintings and the message important,but so is who gave him that message. Even though he would say,"It came from the almighty God," he made it clear that it also came through the body of Howard Finster. A lot of his analogies about how life worked were based on photography. One ofthe quotes that we used in the show talks about how thoughts are like pictures that end up getting developed in the brain. So he was conscious about the use ofphotography and he used it as a form of self-publicity DK As this conversation progresses it is becoming dear how difficult it is to come up with a definition ofoutsider photography.

IT I think through this discussion we are basically pointing out what it isn't.

RC Our methodology here is still very primitive. We are looking at only about fifty potential candidates.Ifwe had five hundred,we would be more confident ofwhich way to go.We have got to be careful not to say that we already know what we want.

DK It is exciting to consider that there may not be a straight definition for outsider photography,so that there is still the possibility of discovery out there.That is why the exhibition has three fairly broad categories in which to begin a dialogue on outsider photography: collage, photomontage,and manipulation/tableau. There is a quote from Rudy Rotter that we used in Create:"IfI keep my eyes and mind open,I see new things that I

haven't seen before." As the curators of the exhibition we have found it very exciting to look for what we have not seen yet.

JT People without a background in photography may think that a photo is constructed only through pushing a button. We have to be very clear as to why we are using a photographichistory model for this particular exhibition.

DK Within the field, the definition of photography is a much broader one than just a camera with film. From the beginning, photography has been looked at as a manipulative medium.

It ranges from hand-coloring, because they didn't have actual color in the very earliest processes, to the ability to cut and paste, making a new whole from various photographic fragments.

Not everybody had a camera,or the skill to shoot the image or process and print it, but they did have access to the finished photograph. So they could do collage, making something more out ofit.They put photo-emulsions onto fabric and from that they could do everything from homemade quilts to souvenir scarves.There was photojewelry and photo-buttons,items that people could adorn their clothing and themselves with,so it is notjust about picking up a camera and taking a picture. It is about manipulation in all forms.

RC I think that manipulation is interesting. We find the outsider photographer gravitating toward such tricks as cutting out pictures from magazines and newspapers, pasting them onto a page,drawing around them to integrate them,finding one photograph that could be melded onto another, or inserting oneselfinto the preexisting photographs, making a jokey intervention. A lot of humor goes into this, too, by way ofstrange juxtapositions. C.T. McCluslcy's use ofcollage is remarkable in that he is bringing together spatially antagonistic photographs, disrupting our sense of where we are standing.Thanks to the interplay ofthe various images, we are rushing everywhere,and these devices are very,very impressive. He is not trying to convince you that you are looking at a true photograph with

UNTITLED (School Days 19471 Howard Finster (1915-2001) Summerville, Georgia 1988 Photo-collage with ink and pencil on paper 10 8" Collection of John Denton Finster was enamored with the power of photography and used it in several formats. In addition to collages using photographs of himself and family members, the artist sometimes incorporated into his work a portrait of himself selfInked from the plate for the image that accompanied his byline for his column of sermons that ran in the local newspaper.

UNTITLED McClusky (life dates unknown) Oakland, California c. 1940s-1950s Mixed-media collage / 4" 131 / 4,153 Collection of John Turner Little is known about McClusky except that he worked in a circus as a clown and spent the winter seasons of the 1940s and '50s at a rooming house in Oakland, California, where he made some fifty-three collages with found materials.

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all these sixteen different elements put together. He is saying this is how it's done.

JT I think what we were talking about in the exhibition was not only the photographer taking a picture, but the artist being the subject oftheir own pictures. In essence, we show work that places the artist in front ofand behind the camera.Photography is shown to be part ofthe outsider's artistic toolbox and vocabulary.

DK There are others for whom photography is more than a tool. It is fundamental to their vision, and I think Joe "40,000" Murphy is one ofthose.

The notion of reality—that is the power ofthe photographic image.

Murphy put himself at the center of most ofhis pieces. He was there in his uniform,surrounded by adoring individuals,some ofthem famous,some ofthem not so famous; and I do not think he could have done it in any way other than through photography.

JT In most ofthese photographs, Murphy is in the center and he is the important one.The celebrities are on his right or left and he has this confident gaze,showing that he belongs there.'What is interesting about his work is that when these situations were not available he would fabricate them using collage. Cutting a picture ofhimselffrom one photograph and putting it onto another. Such as the one in which he is reviewing the ushers at the ballpark, almost like a general checking his troops. What do you think an exhibition on outsider photography might look like in ten years?

DK I do not think it will be called outsider photography in ten years. It will be more integrated into art in general or into the larger history ofphotography. But they will not be using that term.The exhibition—it is probably sooner than ten years from now,more like five years—will break away from all ofthe categories that we have created in defining the medium.It will be about looking at all the photographers we know and putting them in new and different categories, breaking away from the established boundaries.

Removing those boundaries and beginning to move across the various

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

59

archives is really what is important.It is not so much about tightening up a definition ofoutsider photography,but about taking away the definitions so that we can explore the existing material with fresh eyes and new ideas.

This is the real treasure—how do we rethink all ofthis work,what were the motivations, how many different ways can we engage with this work— because so much has been classified and put into little boxes or file folders, or specific kinds of museums or specific kinds ofcategories, when in fact those definitions may be limiting and very inappropriate.That is the exhibition ofthe future.

DK Roger,you once said that art takes us where we have not been before,and you used the phrase they werejourneys into strange places.That is exactly what this work and the curatorial process have been about—ajourney into a strange place. But it is a wonderfully strange place.

JT What do you get from looking at these photographs?

RC And moreover,it's notjust one place,is it?

the photographer,saying"How about looking at this? Turn it upside down, have another look or come a bit closer." Shaver does it by drawing us in, as if he were saying,"Have another look at this and you will see something you have not thought of." And I think that's a very magical kind ofthing.

it would limit what we see or what we open ourselves up to finding out there.

So it is the journey that is really important.* For thepast thirty years,John Turner hasphotographedfolk environments. He is adjunct curator oftwentieth-centug Americanfolk art at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco, and has organized exhibitionsfor the Smithsonian Institution, the American Folk Art Museum,and the Yerba Buena Centerfor the Arts. He is the author of

Howard Finster, Man of Visions:The Life and Art ofa Self-Taught Artist (1989).

Deborah Klochko is an author, a curator, and an educator. Formerly the director ofThe Friends ofPhotography, located at the AnselAdams Center, San Francisco, Klochko served as executive editor ofSee, an award-winningjournal ofvisualculture. She has also worked at the Calffbrnia Museum ofPhotography, University ofCalifornia, Riverside;the InternationalMuseum ofPhotography, Rochester, New York;and the Prints and Photographs Division ofthe Library ofCongress, Washington, D.C. Roger Cardinal is the author of Outsider Art (1972)and co-author

ofMarginalia: Perspectives on Outsider Art (2001).He

RC Oh,a sense ofexhilarated awareness ofthe world and a strange sense that I cannot take it away with me—it has got to be in the photograph.That complicity ofsharing something special, as though you get this nudge from

60 SPRING 2005

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DK Perhaps the worst thing to happen in the process ofdoing this exhibition and book would be if we actually came up with an absolute or definitive definition ofoutsider photography.That might be the biggest mistake,because

is an authority on French surrealism and is currentlypreparing a book about the arts ofprehistog,seen in terms oftheir aesthetic impact. He isprofessor emeritus ofliterary and visualstudies at the University ofKent at Canterbury,England

DOROTHY WATCHES DALEY FISH Joe "40,000" Murphy (1897-1979) Chicago c. 1960 Photo-collage 8 121 / 4" Collection of William Swislow Murphy worked for fifty years as an usher at sporting, entertainment, and political events in Chicago.

Photographed with many of the famous and not so famous, the artist placed himself at the center of his fabricated world by manipulating his images through collage.

'-I

vI116 . 0

OUTSIDER ART • ART BRUT • CONTEMPORARY FOLK ART RY449 Winter 2004/5 $13.50/C6.95/E 13.00

RAWVISION#49 MAMMI WATA

MARY WHITFIELD ISAIAH ZAGAR www.rawvision.com

UPDATE:

THE

LIBRARY

BY JAMES MITCHELL

n this column I will occasionally report on new acquisitions in the museum's Shirley K. Schlafer Library We recently have been able to strengthen our holdings in the area ofvernacular photography.The museum has long had an interest in early American photography as a form offolk art and has published several articles in this magazine on such subjects as daguerreotype portraits and hand-colored 19thcentury photographs.' Several recent books help to extend this interest into the 20th century With the widespread popularity of small, affordable cameras and film processing services beginning in the late 19th century, a new genre developed: the snapshot.2 Rather than relying on the professional photographers who replaced itinerant portrait painters after the public introduction ofthe daguerreotype in 1839, individuals could take their own photos of their families and surroundings. Like many forms of folk art, these have been so ubiquitous and common,seemingly non-artful, that they long escaped critical attention. Indeed,as photography struggled to be accepted as high art, its canon was formed in part by excluding these generally anonymous objects. Douglas Nickel has argued that art photography in fact emerged (one struggles not to say "developed") as a reaction against such "casual, inept" amateur work.'Soon,however, the repressed vernacular returned as an influence in the work offigures ranging from Walker Evans in the 1930s to Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, and beyond.These artists show the value to be found in such anonymous,"throwaway" scraps of paper.The reportorial and documentary impulses that underlie their work largely operate by

I

62 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

culling moments from the great surrounding blur of life. In that sense, the work of the professional photographer is like that of the collector ofsnapshots, digging through boxes ofsomeone else's old memories at a flea market. It takes a while to find the good ones, but by now several people dedicated to the hunt have amassed large collections ofsnapshots. Robert Flynn Johnson's collection,from which some examples were included in "Snapshots:The Photography of Everyday Life, 1888 to the Present," the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's (SFMOMA)groundbreaking 1998 exhibition, has just been published as Anonymous: Enigmatic Imagesfrom Unknown Photographers(New York:Thames 8c.Hudson,2004). And the photographer Christian Skrein's collection, exhibited at several European museums in 2004,is presented in the accompanying catalog, Snapshots: The Eye ofthe Century (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2004). Both present large groups of similar material, organized into obvious categories: portraits, landscapes,funny animals,crime scenes,"eros."This approach adds little to the disparate selection in Other Pictures:Anonymous Photographsfrom the Thomas Walther Collection (Santa Fe, N.Mex.:Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), which was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2000. But in that, the curators seemed to have fallen back on a familiar form of connoisseurship: emphasizing those photos that feature the uncanny or unexpected (double exposures, odd shadows, and reflections).

The newer books, perhaps following SFMOMNs lead, have a broader approach,featuring images we all might find in our

TINSEL PAINTING / artist unidentified / United States / C. 1860 / reverse painting on glass, foil, and hand-colored photograph, with stamped-brass mat / 111 / 2 14" / American Folk Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Day Krolik Jr., 1979.3.1

own collections. I think at this unpainted areas. Wreaths and stage it's more useful to present floral garlands are common that larger mass ofdata with little memorial symbols, but in this curatorial intervention.' example it is impossible to interWhile these books present a pret definitely. Despite the awkmore mundane vernacular, a ward rendering and rather loose recent exhibition organized by composition, it is a precious and Geoffrey Batchen at Amsterdam's adoring tribute.* Van Gogh Museum,"Forget Me Not: Photography and RememNotes brance," examines more ornate 1 See Addison Thompson and Lesa work.' Batchen's extensive essay Westerman,"Photographic Folk Are expands on his earlier writings on 19th- and 20th-Century Handvernacular photography, particuColored Photographs,"Folk Art 18,no. larly on items that have been 2(summer 1993):40-49;Julian Wolff, embellished or decorated in ways "Daguerreotypes as Folk Art," The Clarion 11, no.4(fall 1986): 18-24; that further emphasize their and Roderic H.Blackburn,"Flashes of materiality.' Batchen discusses the Soul: Photography vs. Painting," how such modifications as handand Cynthia Elyce Rubin,"Shaker coloring, collage, and the use of Stereo Views," The Clarion 3, no. 1 elaborate frames, cases, or (winter 1977-78):50-53 and 54-56. albums, while seemingly under2 See particularly Douglas Nickel's mining the representational vera- account of this history in Snapshots: city of the image—its identity The Photography ofEveryday Life, as a pure window on reality— 1888 to the Present(San Francisco enhance its function as a memory Museum ofModern Art, 1998).

3 Ibid., p. 11. device and sensuous artifact.

A tinsel painting from c. 1860 4 See also Close to Home:An American Album, accompanying an exhibition in in the American Folk Art the fall of2004 at the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection demonMuseum,Los Angeles. strates this process. A small 5 The slim but beautiful catalog is hand-tinted photograph of a published by Princeton Architectural young child,framed with a Press, 2004. stamped-brass mat,is further 6 See especially the essay "Vernacular surrounded by a reverse painting Photographies,"in Each Wild Idea: on glass—crinkled foil applied to Writing, Photography, History(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,2001). the back shows through the

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A Collectors' Opportunity in the Outsider Artsi n the Heart of the Appalachian Mountains!

View of Tablerock from Wiseman's View.

Photograph by local photographer Jeff Stark, ,4

May 6, 7, 8, 2005

OUt 40

SIdER AY'r ExPO

oq II

"The Expo promises to be a unique and high-quality market event in the outsider-art field thanks to the non-profit status and impressive organizational experience of the sponsoring organization (Historic Morganton Inc.), and the k-Y* dedicated group of professionals that has been assembled as this event's I Ltr—i.a L) i steering committee." \4*1 Ct —Tom Patterson, independent critic and curator; special Expo consultant

4 hi,- <‘,4'1

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OUTSIDER INTUITIVE VISIONARY SELF-TAUGHT ART BRUT

11

Harold Crowell, one of Morganton's resident Outsider artists, at work at, Signature Studio Xl. i r FOR MORE INFORMATION: PO Box 1472 Morganton, NC 28680 828.438.5252 downtownmorganton@compascable.net www.downtownmorganton.com/expo.html

t.14 41 /V A

A Day in the

Country Folk ArtShow & Auction

Saturday,June 4,2005 Morehead,Kentucky•9 a.m.- 3 p.m.

Formerly held in lsonville, Kentucky's only folk art show is now held at the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead. This annual event features the work of more than 50 folk artists from Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, and other states all under one large tent.

Purchase carvings in wood and stone, primitive paintings, canes, painted furniture, art from found objects, and much more, directly from the artists.

For more information call the Kentucky Folk Art Center at 606.783.2204.

ci

Kentucky Folk Art Center • 102W.First Street • Morehead,KY 40351 I 606.783.2204 KFAC is a cultural, educational and economic development service of Morehead State University.

www.kyfolkart.org

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MUSEUM

REPRODUCTIONS

PROGRAM at.

BY ALICE J. HOFFMAN

4 ) :1 I*14 Prf

FOLK ART

Representing more than 300years ofAmerican design, from the late 1600s to thepresent, the American Folk Art Museum Collection"brings within reach ofthe public the very best ofthepast to be enjoyedfor generations to come.

ttO•

Two selections from the Home Sweet Home II collection by Andover Fabrics, based on the museum's Baltimore-Style Album Quilt Top (1849-1852), top.

COLLECTION

News from Museum Licensees Share our legacy;look for new products from our family of licensees,featuring unique designs inspired by objects from the museum's collection. *Stark Carpet Corporation Wall Art... Rich in Timeless Tradition! Stark Wallcovering,a division of Stark Carpet Corporation, is the museum's newest licensee. Stark, a center ofinspiration for more than 60 years to designers demanding the highest quality, coloration, and authenticity of product,is introducing a series of hand-painted scenic murals featuring American country, sea, and cityscapes for home and office. On behalf of the museum,decorative scene painters Rubens Teles and James Adams created the prototypes for this series by adapting and combining details from paintings and archival material in the museum's collection. Each mural will include 20 continuous panels that can be arranged in a variety of ways. Customers have the option of purchasing just one ofthe panels, all 20,or any combination in between. Available exclusively through Stark Wallcovering (info@starkcarpet.com). * Andover Fabrics Home Sweet Home II! Andover Fabrics designer Kathy Hall drew inspiration from the museum's elegant 19th-century Baltimore-Style Album Quilt Top for this second series in the museum's Home

64 SPRING 2005

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Sweet Home edition of printed fabrics for home sewing projects.

Series II is available in soft flannel with either a dark or light background. Motifs adapted by Hall from the quilt top include a peacock,a floral cornucopia,a floral wreath,flower baskets, a watermelon,a fruit compote,and birds. Each of these images symbolizes hospitality and friendship, presenting myriad design possibilities and heartfelt sentiment.

To view the entire Home Sweet Home II collection, visit Andover at www.andoverfabrics.com;for information on where to purchase this series, contact Andover at info@andoverfabrics.com or 800/223-5678. * Henredon It's not about nostalgia, it's not about yesterday, it's about forever! The museum has created a heritage of style to be enjoyed by all .the new America Collection,a furniture collection that stands for quality, timelessness, a strong sense of the American spirit, and a pride of place.The Collection, manufactured and distributed by Henredon,captures both tradition and innovation, adding a touch of history and authenticity to a classic or modern,urban or country,setting.To find out where you can see and purchase this collection offinely crafted wood and upholstered furniture for the living room,dining room,and bedroom,contact Henredon at customerservice@henredon.com or 800/444-3682.

*Takashimaya Domo arigato gozaimasu Thank you very much!

Takashimaya and the museum have reached a milestone—Takashimaya's 21st year as a museum licensee.Takashimaya introduced its customers to the wonderful world of American folk art by creating America CollectionTm boutiques within its Tokyo,Osaka,Yokohama,and Kyoto department stores. Now, through its mail-order catalogs, Takashimaya will reach an even wider audience. The museum truly appreciates Talcashimaya's longstanding and continuing commitment to featuring the museum's America CollectionTm oflicensed products throughout Japan.

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 American Folk Art Museum CollectionTM, please contact us at 212/9777170.

Family of Licensees Andover Fabrics(212/760-0300) printed fabric by the yard and prepackaged fabric craft kits. Chronicle Books(800/722-6657) note cards.' Crossroads Accessories,Inc. (800/648-6010)quilted fabric totes, handbags,travel cases, and cosmetic bags.* Denyse Schmidt Quilts(800/621-9017)limited-edition quilt collection, decorative pillows,and AFAIVI eye pillows.' Fotofolio(212/226-0923) art postcard books and boxed note cards.'

FUNQuilts(708/445-1817)limited-edition quilt collection.' Gibson(212/354-8840) portfolio and boxed note cards and jigsaw puzzle.' Henredon(800/444-3682) wood and upholstered furniture. LEAVES PureTeas(877/532-8378)loose tea in decorative tins.'

MANI-G'Raps(800/510-7277) decorative gift wrap and coordinating accessories* Mary Myers Studio(757/481-1760) wooden nutcrackers, tree ornaments,and table toppers.* OnThe Wall Productions,Inc.(800/788-4044) Magic Cubes." Ozone Design, Inc.(212/563-2990)socks.' Pfaltzgraff(800/999-2811) By Request•The America CollectionTm dinnerware. Stark Carpet Corporation/Stark Wallcovering(212/752-9000) hand-painted scenic murals. Takashimaya Company,Ltd.(212/350-0550) home furnishings and decorative accessories (available only in Japan). *Available in the American Folk Art Museum Book and Gift Shop.

OH I/

AMP

FOLK ART TION

HOME SWEET HOME II Op 462 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 10018 1.800.223.5678 \Nâ&#x20AC;˘ww.andoverfabrics.com

www.makoweruk.com

Morefabulous "Home Sweet Home" hooked wool rug reproductionflannels from Andover Fabrics' designer Kathy Hall, and the American Folk Art Museum.

ndover `Fabrics" makower uk

TS EN EV E VAT PRI AT THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM Host a private event in the museum's award winning building at 45 West 53rd Street in midtown Manhattan.

Cocktail receptions for up to 300 guests Seated dinners for up to 120 guests Auditorium with full range of audio/visual technology for meetings and conferences AMERICAN

0 LL MUSEUM

For more information and to arrange a site visit, please contact Katie Hush at 212. 977. 7170, ext. 308, or khush@folkartmuseum.org.

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BOOKS

OF

INTEREST

BY EVELYN R. GURNEY

he following titles are available at the American Folk Art Museum's Book and Gift Shop at 45 West 53rd Street, New York City.To order, please call 212/265-1040. Museum members receive a 10 percent discount.(* New titles)

T

American Anthem: Masterworksfrom the American Folk Art Museum, Stacy C. Hollander, Brooke Davis Anderson, and Gerard C. Wertkin,American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N.Abrams,2001, 432 pages,$65 American Fancy:Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840, Sumpter T. Priddy III, Chipstone Foundation,2004,250 pages,$75 American Folk Artfor Kids, Richard Panchyk,Chicago Review Press,2004,118 pages,$16.95 American Painted Tinware:A Guide to Its Identification, Volume III, Gina Martin and Lois Tucker, Historical Society of Early American Decoration,Inc., 2004,140 pages,$48.50 American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, Stacy C. Hollander, American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001,572 pages,$75 American Self-TaughtArt:An Illustrated Analysis of20thCentury Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies,Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, McFarland &Company,2003, 322 pages, $45

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Architecturefor Art,American Art Museums 1938-2008, Scott J. Tilden,ed., Harry N.Abrams, 2004,238 pages,$60

Darger:The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum, Brooke Davis Anderson, American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams,2001,128 pages,$29.95

The Art ofAdobr WOyfli:St. AdolfGiant-Creation, Daniel Baumann and Elka Spoerri, American Folk Art Museum in association with Princeton University Press,2003, 112 pages, $29.95

A DeafArtist in Early America: The Worlds ofJohn BrewsterJr., Harlan Lane,Beacon Press,2004, 208 pages,$35

* Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the ModernistImpulse, Josef Helfenstein and Roxanne Stanulis, eds., Krannert Art Museum,2005,208 pages,$40

Henry Darger:Disasters ofWar, Henry Darger,ICiyoko Lerner, and Klaus Biesenbach, KW Institute for Contemporary Art,2004, 213 pages,$29.95

Collecting American Folk Art, Helaine Fendelman and Susan Kleckner, House of Collectibles, 2004,196 pages,$12.95

Howard Finster(1916-2001), Norman Girardot, Diane LaBelle, and Ricardo Viera, Lehigh University Art Galleries, 2004,90 pages, $32

Coming Home:Self-TaughtArtists, the Bible, and the American South, Carol Crown,ed., University Press of Mississippi in association with the Art Museum ofthe University of Memphis,2004, 304 pages,$65(hardcover), $30(softcover) Create and Be Recognized:Photography on the Edge,John Turner and Deborah Klochko,Chronicle Books,2004,156 pages,$40 Critters A to Z, Barbara Lovenheim,ed., American Folk Art Museum in association with BIL Charitable Trust,2003,80 pages, $12.95

Extraordinary Interpretations: Florida's Self-TaughtArtists, Gary Monroe,University Press of Florida,2003,132 pages, $34.95

*How to Look at Outsider Art, Lyle Rexer, Harry N.Abrams, due May 2005, 176 pages, $22.95 James Castle:His Life andArt, Tom Trusky,Idaho Center for the Book,2004,190 pages,$29.95 (hardcover),$19.95 (softcover) Lonnie Holley:Do We Think Too Much?IDon't Think We Can Ever Stop, David Moos and Michael Stanley, eds., Holzwarth Publications,2004,78 pages,$20 North Carolina Pottery:The Collection ofthe Mint Museum,Barbara Stone Perry, ed., University of North Carolina Press,2004,210 pages, $24.95

One IsAdam, OneIs Superman:The OutsiderArtists ofCreative Growth, Leon Borensztein,Chronicle Books,2004,131 pages,$40 The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball, Elizabeth V. Warren,American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams,2003,150 pages,$29.95 Raw Vision Outsider Art Sourcebook, John Maizels,Raw Vision,228 pages,2002,$29.95 * The Shipcarver's Art:Figureheads and Cigar-Store Indians in Nineteenth-Century America, Ralph Sessions,Princeton University Press, due May 2005, 240 pages,$75 Tools ofHer Ministry: The Art ofSister Gertrude Morgan, William A.Fagaly, American Folk Art Museum in association with Rizzoli,2004,120 pages,$35 Vernacular Visionaries:International Outsider Art, Annie Carlano, Museum ofInternational Folk Art in association with Yale University Press,2003, 156 pages,$45 Work Life, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Monacelli Press, 2000,270 pages,$60 You Are Here:Personal Geographies and Other Maps ofthe Imagination, Katharine Harmon,Princeton Architectural Press,2004,192 pages,$19.95

MUSEUM

NEWS

BY VANESSA DAVIS

NEW DIRECTIONS M.A.from the Institute ofFine fter an extensive national Arts, New York University; she search, Maria Ann Conelli received her B.A.in art history has been appointed to the position of director of the Ameri- from Brooklyn College. She is a recipient of a grant from the can Folk Art Museum. Conelli National Endowment for the comes to the museum from the Arts and holds fellowships from Fashion Institute ofTechnology the J. Paul Getty post-doctoral (FIT),where she is currently the program and the American Acaddean ofthe School of Graduate emy in Rome. She has served as Studies and acting dean ofthe curator ofexhibitions focusing on School of Art and Design.Prior architecture,fashion, and decora1991 from FIT, to her position at tive arts, and lectured widely on to 2001, Conelli was the chair of 16th- and 17th-century art, the Smithsonian Institution's architecture, and landscape graduate programs in the history design. colin offered arts of decorative Laura Parsons, president of laboration with Parsons School of the Board ofTrustees,said ofthe Design and the Cooper-Hewitt, appointment,"After a thorough National Design Museum, and careful search,I am delighted Smithsonian Institution, both in to welcome Maria Ann Conelli to New York; and The Smithsonian the American Folk Art Museum.

Associates,in Washington,D.C. She brings to our museum leaderthe at She also held positions Metropolitan Museum of Art and ship skills that includeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but certainly are not limited toâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the is a trustee and an education liaidevelopment of programs in son for the Skyscraper Museum, collaboration with other organiNew York. zations,fund-raising, an underConelli holds a Ph.D.in standing of artistic, curatorial, and architectural history from conservation issues, and a track Columbia University and an

A

Ralph Esmerian greets patron members

record offacilitating the physical and intellectual growth ofinstitutions. As a distinguished art scholar and exemplary administrator, Maria is the perfect choice to lead this museum in the 21st century', Conelli, expressing her pleasure in accepting the appointment, said,"I am honored to serve as the new director ofthe American Folk Art Museum.I look forward to continuing its fine tradition of outstanding exhibitions and public programs and will work to bring the museum to a wider audience through enhanced collaborations and partnerships."

Maria Ann Conelli will join the museum in June 2005.

To ensure a smooth transition into this new leadership, Linda Dunne has been named acting director. Dunne joined the American Folk Art Museum in April 2002 as chief administrative officer, having previously served for nearly twenty years in management positions at the CooperHewitt. She has worked closely

Acting Director Linda Dunne

with outgoing director Gerard C.Wertkin and the Board of Trustees to meet the needs and goals of a growing institution, helping to maintain an ambitious schedule ofexhibitions, programs, and special events as well as the launching ofexciting new initiatives.

Gerard C.Wertkin retired from the museum at the end of 2004. At its quarterly meeting on Dec.7,the museum's Board of Trustees unanimously voted to honor him with the title of director emeritus. Wertkin was the eighth director ofthe American Folk Art Museum since its founding in 1961 and served in that position for 13 of his 24 years with the museum.

SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE atron members were invited to an exclusive reception on Oct. 19 to celebrate "Masterpieces of American Jewelry" and "Blue."The festive event was very well attended, and guests enjoyed a jubilant atmosphere as well as intimate tours explicating some ofthe stunning works on view. Ralph 0.Esmerian,chairman ofthe museum's Board of Trustees and curator ofthe jewelry show,the inaugural exhibition ofthe National Jewelry Institute, highlighted specific gems and pieces ofjewelry and the story oftheir making; the show closed Jan. 23.

p

Stacy C.Hollander,senior curator and director of exhibitions, walked guests through a wide array ofartworks imbued with various luminous shades ofblue, detailing the fascinating history ofthe pigment;"Blue" closes March 6.

Patron members receive all the benefits of membership plus invitations to special receptions at the museum,the homes ofcollectors, and New York galleries. For more information on becoming a patron member,contact Dana Clair, membership coordinator, at 212/977-7170,ext. 346,or at dclair@follcartmuseum.org.

SPRING 2005

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MUSEUM

Standing in front of Marino Auriti's Encyclopedic Palace are (from left) Director Emeritus Gerard C. Wertkin; Auriti family members Colette Firmani McDonald, Mary Firmani, Marina Haynes, Marie Auriti Haynes, and Andrea Haynes; and Brooke Davis Anderson, director and curator of the Contemporary Center

NEWS

FRIENDS OLD AND NEW ore than 400 museum members and friends gathered on Nov. 15 to celebrate the exhibitions "Blue" and "Folk Art Revealed.""Blue," organized by Senior Curator Stacy C. Hollander,traces the artistic, economic, and cultural meanings of the color blue as expressed in quilts, pottery, paintings, and other expressions offolk art."Folk Art Revealed," organized by Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson,director and curator ofthe museum's Contemporary Center,juxtaposes traditional examples offolk art with the contemporary work ofself-taught artists to explore the nature offolk art through artwork from the museum's rich and extensive holdings, many of which are new acquisitions that are on view for the first time.

As part of"Folk Art Revealed," the towering architectural model Encyclopedic Palace ofthe World has taken up residence in the Cullman/Danziger Family Atrium. Built in the 1950s by Marino Auriti, the structure was created to represent a museum that would house all of mankind's greatest achievements. Encyclopedic Palace was donated to the museum by Auriti's family, and after extensive conservation it was reconstructed for this exhibition for the first time in many years.

While recent additions to the collection like the Encyclopedic Palace are now on view,the two exhibiBeth Thompson (left) and Nikki Springer tions also showcase some old favorites. One member commented that seeing the masterpieces ofthe collection was like visiting with "old friends."

Whether old or new, the museum friends, the members,and the works of art all shared a spectacular evening celebrating the museum and Volunteer Diana Zanganas and Mary Zanganas its accomplishments.

M

68 SPRING 2005

Me Corcoran, anager of individual giving

FOLK ART PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT FLYNN

Trustee Didi Barrett (center) 1 with Alec and David Barrett

Docent Arlene Hochman (left) and Senior Curator Stacy C. Hollander

"Folk Art Revealed" graphic designers Alicia Cheng (left) and Sarah Gephart, of mgmt.

Folk Art staff (from left) Lori Leonard, production editor; Vanessa Davis, assistant editor; and Tanya Heinrich, editor and publisher

Drunell Levinson,1011)se Baby Blanket(1996) is featured in "Folk'Art Revealed" Pamela Gabourie, manager of institutional giving

(from left) The Magazine Group principals Richard Creighton and Jane Ottenberg with Folk Art designer Jeffrey Kibler

Cathy Michelsen, director of development

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69

MUSEUM

NEWS

Teen docent Luis Jimenez taking notes on objects on view in "Folk Art Revealed"

SUPPORT FROM ALTRIA n Oct. 7, Marianne Pohle, supervisor of contributions at Altria Corporate Services,Inc., presented the museum with a check for $75,000 in support ofthe upcoming exhibition "Examining Martin Ramirez: A Self-Taught Mexican Artist," the first major retrospective of the 20th-century master, which is scheduled to be mounted at the museum in 2007.

A generous and steadfast sponsor of the American Folk Art Museum,Altria Group,Inc.,is a leading supporter ofthe arts, funding innovative and culturally diverse programs throughout New York City and across the nation.The museum is grateful to Altria Group for its support

0

through the years, which has assisted in the presentation of outstanding exhibitions and edu-

LEAVE A

LEGACY Through a bequest, you can provide enduring support for the American Folk Art Museum. The CLARION SOCIETY recognizes individuals who have remembered the museum in their wills and through other planned gifts. Members of the Clarion Society will be listed annually in Folk Art magazine and receive invitations to exclusive events throughout the year.

If you have made a bequest to the American Folk Art Museum or would like to do so, please contact Christine Corcoran at 212. 977. 7170, ext. 328, or ccorcoran@folkartmuseum.org.

THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM (detail) / Edward Hicks (1780-1849)/ Newtown, Pennsylvania / 1846-1848 / oil on canvas /26 x 29 3/8" / American Folk Art Museum, promised gift of Ralph Esmerian, P1.2001.59

70 SPRING 2005

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TEEN DOCENTS cational programs to the New York community and its visitors from around the world.

Director Emeritus Gerard C. Wertkin with Altria's Marianne Pohle

en charming,curious, and artistic students from Vanguard High School and Urban Academy in New York City are attending the museum every Wednesday until June to study folk art and learn how to present the objects in the museum's collection to their peers. Beyond their docent training, they are honing publicspeaking skills and learning about careers in the arts through informative conversations with members ofthe museum staff.

On Nov. 3,Ann-Marie Reilly, chief registrar and director of exhibition production,led the teen docents on a behind-thescenes tour of"Folk Art Revealed" during its installation.

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!!!

Olivia Pitula concentrating on her selection of beautiful beads

FAMILY FUN WITH FOLK ART! he education department's Family Art Workshops, which are held on Sundays, have been drawing record numbers with fun events like BEADazzled!,which was offered on Sept.26 and Jan. 23. Esther Esses, beadworker and jewelry designer, demonstrated to approximately 50 participants

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each session how to make delightful beaded bracelets and pins.In March,April, and May, the museum will present workshops on collage, quilt patterns, stationery design,fraktur, decorated Polaroids, and folk art dolls.

For more information,see page 78 or pick up a Public Programs brochure.

GERARD C. WERTKIN EXHIBITION FUND he Board ofTrustees is delighted to recognize the generosity of more than 140 contributors to the Gerard C. .

Wertkin Exhibition Fund,which is already approaching $300,000.

The fund was established to honor the museum's director emeritus, who brought national recognition to folk art as a foundation of American culture through the production ofsuperb exhibitions and related programs.

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The cash reserve created will provide the critical support necessary to ensure that future exhibitions maintain the caliber of scholarship on which the American Folk Art Museum has built its reputation. For more information about these and other giving opportunities, contact Christine Corcoran, manager ofindividual giving, at 212/977-7170,ext. 328,or at ccorcoran@folkartmuseum.org.

he Board of Trustees of the American Folk Art Museum is pleased to announce the establishment of the

au

vvei tmn

to honor its retiring director and the transforming role he has played in the life of the museum. Contributions to the fund will directly support the development and installation of new exhibitions. For further informa-

FOLK ART AND FOLIAGE he Folk Art Explorers spent Amish crafts, textiles, and furniture. A private tour ofthe new Oct.28-29 soaking in the Lancaster Quilt &Textile exceptional foliage and folk Museum was a highlight, as were art ofsoutheastern Pennsylvania.

On the first day, the group visited tours ofthe Heritage Museum, the Lancaster Historical Society, historic Bucks County where they toured the Mercer Museum, and Wheatland,James Buchanan's estate. For informaOlde Hope Antiques,and two tion on upcoming Folk Art spectacular private collections Explorers trips,contact Dana never before seen by any group Clair, membership coordinator, at from the museum.After spend212/977-7170,ext. 346, or at ing the night in Doylestown,the dclair@folkartmuseum.org.

Explorers traveled to Lancaster County home to the finest

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tion, please contact Christine Corcoran, manager of individual giving, at 212. 977. 7170, ext. 328, or ccorcoran@folkartmuseum.org.

AMERICAN FOLK ART

MUSEUM 45 W. 53RD ST NEW YORK CITY

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

71

MUSEUM

NEWS

Panelists (from left) David Krashes, Elizabeth V. Warren, Suzanne Rudnick Payne, Paul S. D'Ambrosio, and Michael Heslip

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR he second annual members' Holiday Party, held on Dec. 13,was a rousing success!

Some 500 members,friends, and family crowded the museum to enjoy the exhibitions,listen to music,and celebrate the season.

Guests enjoyed cookies and punch and mingled to holiday favorites performed by the Celebration Singers of St. Cecilia Choir. A balloon artist created a variety ofanimals and headgear for delighted children. Madelaine Gill, the museum's family programs coordi-

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nator, designed holiday art-making and gallery activities,including a scavenger hunt for objects on display throughout the museum.A free door-prize drawing,a 20 percent discount in the Book and Gift Shop,and a parting gift ensured that all ofthe museum's friends went home with a little something special.

The membership department wishes to thank the museum's members,friends, and stafffor helping to make this party a smash hit!

PORTRAIT SYMPOSIUM ollectors and Dealers Talk It Over, a daylong seminar on 19th-century American folk portraits cosponsored by the American Folk Art Society, was a resounding success,judging from audience response to a questionnaire sent as a followup.The fully subscribed program consisted ofwell-known collectors, dealers, auction-house staff, and curators who presented talks on issues of quality, conservation, and dating of portraits, as well as the art ofJohn Brewster and the Prior Hamblen School. Speakers and panelists included Patrick

C

Bell,Paul S. D'Ambrosio,Ralph Esmerian,Stephen Fletcher, Michael Heslip,Stacy C. Hollander,David ICrashes, Suzanne Rudnick Payne,Stephen Score, Margaret Spicer,and Elizabeth V.Warren. A lively panel discussion,"Finding,Buying, Collecting,and Paying for Folk Portraits," was followed by a wine-and-cheese reception in the museum's Cullman/ Danziger Family Atrium and provided further opportunities to ask questions, participate in discussion, network,and have fun!

JEWELRY STUDY DAY Members discounts make holiday shopping even more fun!

The St. Cecilia Choir fills the Cullman/ Danziger Family Atrium with carols

n Dec.3 the museum cohosted Inspired Design:Jewelry through the Ages,a study day on jewelry organized in collaboration with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design,and Culture(BGC), and the Museum of Arts & Design(MAD).The day began with "The Fine Art ofthe Faux," a lecture by Joyce Jonas, president,Joyce Jonas &Associates, Inc.Tours of"Castellani

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and Italian Archaeological Jewelry," at BGC;"Masterpieces of American Jewelry," at the American Folk Art Museum; and "Seaman Schepps: A Century of New York Jewelry Design,1904-2004" and "Treasures from the Vault," at MAD,presented a thorough look atjewelry,fine and faux.

A reception at MAD provided a refreshing conclusion to the program.

CORRECTION In Folk Art 29,no.4(winter 2004/05),in the Museum News item on Quilt Day XI,we misidentified one ofthe featured speakers in the accompa-

72 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

nying photograph.The person pictured on the far right is Merikay Waldvogel. We regret the error.

GARY SNYDER FINE ART

WORKS OF ART BY JANET SOBEL

PO Box 1945 Murray Hill Station, New York, NY 10156 212 871 1077 gary@garysnyderfineart.com modernamericanart.com

NEW ENGLAND'S PREMIERE SUMMER SHOW V,IGHT4

THURS. AUG. 11, 10AM - 7PM AUG. 12, 10AM - 7PM FRI. AUG. 13, 10AM - 4PM SAT.

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FRI. & SAT. $8.00 ADMISSION THURS. $10.00 INCLUDES RE-ENTRY

SHOW INFORMATION: 603-585-9199 FREE 2005 NHADA SHOW BROCHURE Includes Info, on area Hotels, Airport & Show Directions

RADISSON Visit our website at:

www.nhada.org

THE CENTER OF NEW HAMPSHIRE 700 ELM STREET, MANCHESTER, NH

Sponsored by: The New Hampshire Antiques Dealers Association

603-625-1000 (Request NH Antiques Show Rates)

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

73

MUSEUM

INFORMATION

A Deaf Artist in Early America HOURS AND ADMISSIONS American Folk Art Museum

AMERICAN

45 West 53rd Street A 1)(..af -

(between 5th and 6th Avenues) New York, NY 10019

0

Artist in' Early

212/265-1040 www.folkartmuseum.org

MUSEUM

ArnerIC: The Worlds of John

MUSEUM HOURS Tuesday-Sunday Friday Monday

10:30Am-5:30pm 10:30Am-7:30pm Closed

SHOP HOURS Saturday-Thursday Friday

10:00Am-6:00Pm 10:00Am-8:00Pm

ADMISSION Adults Students/Seniors Children under 12 Members

$9 $7 Free Free

Group tours available, call for information: 212/265-1040

Brewster Jr. Public Transportation Subway:E or V to 5 Avenue/53 Street F to 47-50 Streets, Rockefeller Center Bus: Ml,M2,M3,M4, M5,M6,or M7

$35.00 hardcover Friday evening 5:30-7:30pm

Free to all

John Brewster Jr. (1766-1854) was one of the most prominent early American portrait painters. His hauntingly beautiful portraits have a directness and intensity of vision that were rarely equaled.

This new biography provides an unprecedented look at Brewster as a member of the Federalist elite, a Deaf man, and an artist, and features a 24-page color insert.

"Lane is the first to really delve into the truth of what life might have been like for John Brewster Jr., a deaf artist in the boomtown environment of Federal Period Maine and northern New England. This groundbreaking book will lead to a new understanding not only of John Brewster Jr. but of the roles of artist and patron in early America." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Tom HARDIMAN,executive director, Portsmouth, Athenaeum (NH)

Beacon Press www.beacon.org

74 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

BEACON

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE On view at the American Folk Art Museum

Traveling Exhibitions

Ancestry and Innovation: African American Artfrom the Collection Floor 2 Through Sept. 4,2005

Tools ofHer Ministry:The Art ofSister Gertrude Morgan Intuit:The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago 312/243-9088; www.art.org Through May 28,2005

Selfand Subject Floor 3 March 16-Sept. 11,2005 Folk Art Revealed Atrium and Floors 4 and 5 On continuous view

American Anthem:Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville 615/244-3340; www.fristcenter.org Through May 1,2005

BARN STAR PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS ITS 2005 FAMILY OF SHOWS •A

FEATURED EVENTS OF

.

I

I

ANTIQUES WEEK IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Antiques the at Center

MID * WEEK IN

MANCHESTER ANTIQUES SHOW

formerly Philadelphia's Navy Pier Antiques Show

Friday, April 8• Saturday, April 9 Sunday, April 10 Eighty-five exceptional exhibitors in Americana plus selected European exhibitors, all in room settings and air conditioned comfort.

Located at the Wayfarer Inn, 121 S. River Rd,Bedford, NH (Call early for reservations at(603)622-3766)

The Pedford Pickers Market ...

Quality,Antiques Show Friday, August 12 Early Buying: 9am -11am,$25 General Admission:IIam -4pm, $8

i

1 ghe

I

10, I Siring Alit* 4 Slaw

I

IN SEPTEMBER

Saturday, September 10

Carty —13ulers

Early buying,9am - 11am,$15 General admission, 11am - 5pm,$7 Rain or shine. 100 dealers in a festive outdoor atmosphere. Located at the original Carrell Homestead at 92 Canaan Road(Rte 44) Salisbury. CT.

gliday,1lam — 7pm Saturdin, 10am -5pm,610 126 antiques specialists present 18th, 19th and Early 20th c. antiques Same weekend as York Tailgate Antiques Show.'

Toyota Arena, East Hall

This show benefits the Salisbury Visiting Nurse Association

TWO SHOWS! ONE LOCATION! Located at the Toyota Arena,York Expo Center, York Fairgrounds,334 Carlisle Ave.,York,PA

Russell Carrell's Original

Antiques In A Cow Pasture One Day Market

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(It Treview *

I .p

A fast-paced one-day show featuring Ill fresh-to-Antiques Week dealers.

Outdoor barbecue, on-site shipper and free parking.

Spring Antiques Show 6 anti gkty 7

49,

111 outstanding Americana specialists display 18th, 19th and 20th C. antiques in room settings.

TWO GREAT SHOWS! ONE CONVENIENT LOCATION!

Antiques at the Center is located in Hall D of the PA Convention Center 1101 Arch Street Philadelphia, PA

ghe pennnivania

Wednesday, August 10 9am - 7pm,$10 Thursday, August 11 11am - 4pm,$10

IN NOVEMBER

The pork PickersMarket ,statiques Show

THE PENNSYLVANIA

ANTIQUES SHOW OCTOBER 21 AND 22 FRIDAY, 10AM - 7PM,$10 SATURDAY, 10AM - 5PM,$10

Saturday, May 7 Early Buying: 8am -10am,$15 General Admission:10am -5pm. $8 Join over 100 dealers as they present a wide variety of antiques and collectibles including toys, textiles, 18th, 19th and early 20th c. furnishings and accessories.

antiques specialists present 18th, 19th and Early 20th c. antiques in room-settings

Over 200 American

Located at the Toyota Arena York Expo Center, York Fairgrounds 334 Carlisle Ave., York,PA

Toyota Arena, West Hall

FOR EVENT INFORMATION CALL (845)876-0616 6 111 L_: BRAN STAR PIO

IA 44

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www.barnstar.com

PSNIA psmashows.org

OBITUARIES

BY LEE KOGAN

ROY FERDINAND (1959-2004)

JUDITH ALEXANDER (1932-2004) rt patron and benefactor Judith Alexander died in her sleep on Dec. 15,2004.

Alexander owned the Alexander Gallery,in Atlanta, and called herself a "representative of artists," but she was much more than that. She was a visionary art dealer whose passionate beliefin the artists who interested her made her an incomparable advocate and friend. She was nationally known for her uncompromising and single-minded goal to gain respect and recognition for the artists she represented, such as Linda Anderson, Georgia Blizzard, Ned Cartledge, Carlton Garrett, Dilmus Hall, and Nellie Mae Rowe.

Alexander was born on March 31, 1932.The daughter of a prominent Atlanta attorney,she studied painting with Hans Hoffman at the Art Student's League,in New York,and at the Philadelphia Academy of Art and the Barnes Institute,in Philadelphia, before opening the New Arts Gallery in Atlanta in 1956, introducing the work ofabstract expressionists to the South. After seeing the seminal 1977 exhibition "Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Artists, 1770-1976,"she began to champion folk art and artists at the Alexander Gallery, which she opened in 1978.

Alexander's keen intelligence, sharp wit, and sensitivity were matched by her generosity The American Folk Art Museum values her many gifts, which total more than 40 objects, to its permanent collection.The most

A

76 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

recent acquisitions—Freedom Quilt by Jessie Telfair and Mourning Urn by Georgia Blizzard—are on view in "Folk Art Revealed." Alexander has

made major gifts to other institutions as well,including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem,in New York; the High Museum of Art,Atlanta; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans.

She is survived by a brother.

oy Ferdinand, an urban narrator ofthe seamier aspects ofinner-city New Orleans life, died of cancer on Dec. 3.In thousands of powerful works on paper, Ferdinand depicted Gert Town,a drugridden section of the city where drugs,crime,and violence dominated daily life. In the last few years, he created sculptures using a papier-mâché technique.

Ferdinand served briefly in the U.S. Army and was a member ofthe Black Tigers, a neighborhood gang,for more than a decade. Over the years he held jobs as a private security guard, a sign painter, and a morgue assistant, and he also worked for the deputy sheriff. In the last few years, however, Ferdinand suffered from health problems and was intermittently homeless.

According to Ferdinand,a meeting in the late 1980s with local artist and dealer A.J. Boudreaux inspired him to pursue art, and drawing became a necessity. In a profile ofthe artist in the spring 2004 issue ofRaw Vision, he is quoted as saying,

"Drawing is something automatic for me now,like smoking." He drew on poster board with pen, ink, markers, and watercolors, and his cheerful palette con-

which she believed had particular inspirational and spiritual powers.

On the backs of her works she pasted copies ofold press reviews from private vocal performances she had given at Carnegie Recital Hall. She often framed her works herself; using recycled materials.

Halozan immigrated to the United States from Graz,Austria, in 1956. Over the years she worked as an occupational thera-

pist, in the garment industry and for a realtor. She also ran a beauty shop. She sang as a hobby.

Her neighbor and friend Andree Lockwood recalled recently that Halozan once remarked,"People love my paintings.I don't know why.They are really not very good, you know.Why do you think that is?"

Lockwood responded,"They are exuberant,full ofhope and joy"

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trasted sharply with the harsh subject matter he depicted.

Works by Ferdinand have been shown in the New Orleans Museum of Art and the American Visionary Art Museum,in Baltimore, and his drawings are in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art,in New Orleans,and the House of Blues. He is survived by a brother and three sisters.

BERTHA HALOZAN (1917-2004) ew York City artist Bertha Halozan died of multiple system failure on Thanksgiving Day. Halozan was a wellknown figure in Manhattan, selling her paintings on the street for years near Lincoln Center.

Beginning in 1978,the signature subject for thousands of her paintings was a smiling, pigtailed, blue-eyed Statue ofLiberty a monument she often visited and

N

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THE SHIPCARVERS'ART Figureheads and Cigar-Store Indians in Nineteenth-Century America Ralph Sessions Among the most popular and ubiquitous sculptures in nineteenth-century America were the ship's figurehead and the cigar-store Indian. The vast majority of these engaging human figures were created by shipcarvers.

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The Shipcarvers' Art is the first book to assess the artistry and history of these two closely related crafts in a single volume. Richly illustrated and elegantly written, it brings these marvelous figures alive once more.

240 pages. 90 color plates. 32 halftones. 9 x12.

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800-777-4726 U.S. www.pup.princeton.edu

GIVE A GIFT OF .!

IP..

ERSH MEMB AND SAVE $10 OFF ANY CATEGORY Purchase a gift membership and mention this ad to receive $10 off any level of membership. Contact the membership office at 212. 977.7170, ext. 306, or e-mail membership@folkartmuseum.org.

Senior/Student $50 $40 Sale Price Individual Sale Price

$65 $55

Dual/Family Sale Price

$85 $75

Membership includes unlimited free admission to the museum, an annual subscription to Folk Art magazine, and a 10 percent discount at the museum Book and Gift shop.

Patron Membership starts at $150 and benefits include a host of special events and programming. Please contact the membership office for more details!

AMERICAN

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TIN MAN / David Goldsmith (1901-1980)/ Long Island City, Queens, New York / c.1930 / paint on galvanized sheet metal 172 x 25 x11" / American Folk Art Museum, promised gift of Ralph Esmerian, P1.2001.355

MUSEUM

SPRING 2005 FOLK ART 77

PUBLIC

cipte//3.50

PROGRAMS

Berenberg Gallery

.•< 4 Clarendon Street Boston, MA 02116

seif-taue'

t617.536.0800

`N4C-

Unless otherwise specified, all programs are held at the American Folk Art Museum,45 West 53rd Street, New York City Programs are open to the public, and admission fees vary Program tickets include museum admission. For more information, please call the education department at 212/265-1040,ext. 102,or pick up the museum's public programs brochure.To purchase tickets, please call 212/265-1040,ext. 160.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS FILM SCREENING THE NATHAN LERNER ANNUAL LECTURE

Nancy Suthe land

www.berenberggallery.com

In the Realms ofthe Unreal Jessica Yu,filmmaker Thursday, March 17 6:30 PM; discussion to follow $15;$10 members,seniors, and students This innovative feature-length documentary, directed by Academy Award®—winning filmmaker Jessica Yu and produced by Susan West,explores the parallel lives of Henry Darger.

READ-A-THON

ANTIQUE TEXTILES VINTAGE FASHIONS SHOW & SALE i r

A Very Darger Evening Tuesday, April 12 7:00 PM;light refreshments $10;$5 members,seniors, and students To celebrate the birthday of Henry Darger, noted fans of his voluminous work In the Realms of the Unreal will read from his 15,000-page manuscript.

MUSIC

I Am Filled with Heavenly Treasures The Enfield Shaker Singers Saturday, May 14 6:30 PM $15; $10 members,seniors, and students Music is an integral part of Shaker life. Tonight this a cappella vocal ensemble of children and adults will explore the richness and originality of Shaker music.

125 BOOTHS • FABRICS

2005 MONDAYS MAY 9 JULY4 SEPT.5

QUILTS TRIMMINGS BUTTONS LINENS OLD JEWELRY LACES ANTIQUE CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES (4?"

EARLY ADMISSION 9:30AM $20 GENERAL ADMISSION 11:00 AM

OH HOST HOTEL -STURBRIDGE Route 20, Sturbridge. MA (jot. MassPike& I-84) LINDA ZUKAS 207-439-2334

I TO SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

7

The Enfield Shaker Singers

WALK-IN WEDNESDAYS

1:30 Pm;light refreshments 1110(includes museum admission) Free to members,seniors, and students Women Portray Women in Textiles March 30 Lee Kogan, director, Folk Art Institute, and curator ofspecial projects, The Contemporary Center Prison Art in America April 20 Phyllis Kornfeld,prison art expert LET'S TALK FOLK ART

Tuesdays at 12:30 Pm This slide-talk series takes place at the Donnell Library Center,20 West 53rd Street; admission is free Traditional Objects in "Folk Art Revealed" March 22 Stacy C. Hollander,senior curator and director ofexhibitions Contemporary Objects in"Folk Art Revealed" April 19 Brooke Davis Anderson, director and curator, The Contemporary Center

SHIPS BY JOHN TAYLOR RUG WEEKEND

FAMILY ART WORKSHOPS

Workshop:Hook the Blues Friday, March 11; 10:00 AM Workshop:Hooked Octagonal Shoulder Bag Saturday, March 12; 9:00 AM Talk:Art Rugs:The Art of Playing Cards Linda Rae Coughlin, rug hooker and curator Saturday, March 12; 12:30-1:30 PM Demonstrations by rug hookers' guilds Saturday, March 12; 11:00 Am-4:00 Pm

Madelaine Gill,family programs coordinator Sundays,2:00-4:00 PM $10 family; $5 member family

STUDY DAY DR. JOSEPH M. WINSTON ANNUAL MEMORIAL LECTURE

American Portraits: Presentation ofSelfand Subject from the 18th to the 21st Centuries Friday, April 8 12:30-5:30 PM;light refreshments $125;$100 members(AFAM or BGC),seniors, and students This program has been organized in collaboration with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture in conjunction with its exhibition "Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy" and the American Folk Art Museum's exhibitions "Self and Subject" and "Folk Art Revealed."

Imagine This!

March 6

MARCH 3-26, 2005 GARDE RAIL GALLERY WWW.GARDE-RAIL.COM 110 THIRD AVENUE SOUTH SEATTLE, WA TEL 206.621.1055

Light& Dark Quilt Patterns March 20 Say It with Symbols Stationery April 3 Big Deal!

April 17 Smile!Polaroid Portraits May 1 Folk Art Dolls May 15 GALLERY TOURS TAKE A BREAK FOR FOLK ART

USS CONSTITUTIIIII PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER TAYLOR

Informal lunchtime talks with museum curators Selected Thursdays at noon Free with museum admission DROP-IN EXHIBITION TOURS Tuesday窶認riday, noon and 2:00 PM Free with museum admission Tours are facilitated by experienced and knowledgeable Folk Art Institute fellows and docents. Please call the museum for more information, or check times upon visiting the museum.

SCHOOL AND ADULT GROUP TOURS

For information about school and other group tours, please contact the education department at 212/265-1040,ext. 381,or grouptours@follcartmuseum.org.

www.churchstreetart.com Evening events at the museum are madepossible through the generous support ofNancy and Dana Mead Family art workshops are sponsored by D'Arty and Dana G MeadJr. and Susan and Mark C.Mead Additionalfiindingfor education isprovided in part

by Citigroup Foundation, ConsolidatedEdison Company, the New York State Councilon the Arts, and the New York City Department ofCulturalAffairs.

Church Street Art Gallery specializes in self-taught, outsider and folk art (with a few exceptions).

Church Street Art Gallery 34 Church Street 窶｢ Lenox, MA 窶｢ Tel. 888-637-9633

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART 79

TRUSTEES/DONORS

AMERICAN

FOLK

ART

MUSEUM

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Executive Committee Ralph 0. Esmerian Chairman ofthe Board Laura Parsons President Frances Sirota Martinson,Esq. Vice President Lucy C.Danziger Fire President Barry D. Briskin Treasurer Taryn Gottlieb Leavitt Secretary Didi Barrett Edward V. Blanchard Jr. Joyce B. Cowin

Samuel Farber Joan M.Johnson Selig D. Sacks, Esq. Members Akosua Barthwell Evans Barbara Cate David L. Davies Laurence D. Fink Jacqueline Fowler

Susan Gutfreund Robert L Hirschhorn Kristina Johnson, Esq. Michelle L. Lasser Nancy Mead Cyril I. Nelson J. Randall Plummer Margaret Z. Robson Bonnie Strauss Nathaniel J. Sutton

Richard H. Walker, Esq. L John Wilkerson Trustees Emeriti Joseph F. Cullman 3rd (1912-2004) Cordelia Hamilton George F. Shaslcan Jr.

CAPITAL CAMPAIGN DONORS The American Folk Art Museum is grateful to the following donors who have contributed a combined total of more than $33.8 million toward the construction and endowment of its new home at 45 West 53rd Street: Marjorie W.Abel James 8c Gail Addiss Dr.& Mrs. Karl P. Adler Alconda-Owsley Foundation Judith Alexander George R.Allen & Gordon L Wyckoff, Raccoon Creek Antiques American Capital Access The American Folk Art Society Barbara Anderson Ingrid &Richard Anderson Mama Anderson Marie T. Annoual Aarne Anton Barbara Ardizone Marion Armstrong R.R.Atkins Foundation Lois S.8c Gad Avigad Joan 8c Darwin Bahm Marcia Bain Lori Ann Baker, Baker &Co.Designs Ltd. Marianne E.Balms Bankers Trust Company Barn Star Productions,Inc. Didi 8c David Barrett Jimi Barton, Rhinebeck Antiques Fair Joyce 8c Ron Bassin,Bird In Hand Denny Beach Patricia Beatty Mary F. Beck Judy &Barry Bell in honor ofAlice & Ron Hoffinan Philip 8c Leah Bell Laurine Hawkins Ben-Dov Mrs. Arthur M.Berger Julie M.Benson Big Apple Wrecking&Construction Corporation Mrs. George P. Bissell Jr. Diana H.Bittel Edward V. Blanchard Jr. &M.Anne Hill Lenore & Stephen Blank Bloomberg L.P. The Badman Foundation Booth Ferris Foundation Robert, Katharine &Courtney Booth Catherine 8c Chris Botta Marilyn W.Bottjer Ronald Bourgeault, Northeast Auctions Edith S. &Barry D. Brisldn,The Shirley K. Schlafer Foundation Susan Brodish Florence Brody Sheila 8c Auron Brog R. Scott Bromley The Brown Foundation,Inc. Curtis F. Brown,Hayden Goldberg Mr.& Mrs. Edward James Brown Gail Brown Marc Brown &Laurent ICrasny Brown

80 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

J. Bruce Antiques Fred &Theresa Buchanan in memory of Sybil Gibson Charles 8c Deborah Burgess Jim Burk Antique Shows The Burnett Group Joyce A.Burns Marcy L Burns,American Indian Arts Paul &Dana Caan Lewis P. Cabot Elinor B. Cahn Mr.&Mrs.Donald Campbell Bliss 8c Brigitte Carnochan John W.Castello in memory of Adele Earnest Caterpillar Foundation Donald N.Cavanaugh & Edward G. Blue Edward Lee Cave Virginia G.Cave Shari Casio & Randall Morris Peter P. Cecere Sharon S. Cheeseman Christie's Richard &Teresa Ciccotelli Barbara L Claster Lori Cohen Alexis & George Contos Judy Angelo Cowen Foundation Mrs. Daniel Cowin In memory ofDaniel Cowin Jeanne D.Creps Mr.& Mrs.Edgar M.Cullman Elissa F.8c Edgar M.Cullman Jr. Joe &Joan Cullman Susan R. Cullman Catherine G. Curran Kendra & Allan Daniel David 8c Sheena Danziger Lucy &Mike Danziger Peggy & Richard M.Danziger David L.Davies Joseph Del Valle Vincent &Stephanie DiCicco H.Richard Dietrich Jr. Mr.&Mrs.Charles M.Diker Patricia McFadden Dombal Colette &Jim Donovan Kathleen M.Doyle, Doyle New York Deborah &Arnold Dunn Ray 8c Susan Egan Gloria Einbender Sharon &Ted Eisenstat Elitzer Family Fund in honor ofAnne Hill 8c Monty Blanchard David &Doris Walton Epner Joyce & Klaus Eppler Ralph 0.Esmerian Susan H.Evans In memory of Heila D. Everard Sam &Betsey Farber Nancy Farmer &Everette James Mike &Doris Feinsilber Bequest of Eva & Morris Feld Elizabeth C. Feldmann M.Finkel&Daughter Fireman's Fund Insurance Company Deborah Fishbein

Alexander &Enid Fisher Laura Fisher, Antique Quilts & Americana Jacqueline Fowler Beverly Frank Gretchen Freeman &Alan Silverman Mrs. Albert D.Freiberg Susan 0.Friedman Alvin E.Friedman-Kien,M.D. Furthermore,the publication program ofthe J.M. Kaplan Fund Galerie St. Etienne,Inc. Gallery ofGraphic Arts, Ltd. Rebecca &Michael Gannon Judy &Jules Garel Rich &Pat Garthoeffner Garth's Auctions,Inc. Sidney &Sandra Gecicer Nancy Gerber Morad Ghadamian Sima Ghadamian Merle &Barry Ginsburg James & Nancy Glazer Mr.&Mrs.Merle H.Glick Carla T. Goers Edith H.Goldberg Russ & Karen Goldberger Mrs.Toni L Goldfarb Tracy Goodnow Art &Antiques Ellin & Baron Gordon Howard Graff Jonathan Green Nancy M.&Ben S. Greenberg Greene & Mays American Antiques Marion E. Greene Blanche Greenstein &Thomas Woodard William &Shirley E.Greenwald Peg &Judd Gregory Audrey Elkinson Gruff Bonnie Grossman,The Ames Gallery Pat Guthman Alan 8c Elaine Haid Robert&Linda Hall Cordelia Hamilton Ken & Debra Hamlett Nancy B. Hanlon Jeanne & Herbert Mansell Deborah Harding Marion Harris &Jerry Rosenfeld Harvey Art& Antiques Audrey Heckler Donald Heller, Heller/VVasham Nina Hellman Jeffrey Henkel Mr.& Mrs. George Henry Mr.& Mrs. Samuel Herrup Ann Hicicerson & Martha Hickerson Antonio Hidalgo The High Five Foundation Frederick D.Hill Pamela &Timothy Hill Kit Hinrichs Robert& Marjorie Hirschhorn & Carolyn Hirschhorn Schenker, The Hirschhorn Foundation Historical Society of Early American Decoration Arlene &Leonard Hochman

Mr.&Mrs.Joseph C.Hoopes Jr. Carter G.Houck Sr. Evelyn Houlroyd Ellen E.Howe Mr.8c Mrs. Philip Howlett Allen &Barry Huffman Peter D. Hynson Antiques Paul Ingersoll In the Beginning Fabrics Thomas Isenberg In memory of Laura N.Israel Thomas &Barbara Israel Martin 8c Kitty Jacobs,The Splendid Peasant Johnson &Johnson Joan &Victor Johnson ICristina Johnson,Esq. Louise & George Kaminow Julie &Sandy Palley and Samuel 8c Rebecca Kardon Foundation Allan &Penny Katz Edwin U. ICeates, M.D. Steven & Helen Kellogg Jolie Keiser 8c Michael Make Richard ICemble & George Korn,Forager House Collection Mrs. David]. Kend Leigh Keno Amy Keys Phyllis Kind Joe K. Kindig III Jacqueline &Jonathan King Susan & Robert E. Klein Nancy Knudsen Nancy Kollisch &Jeffrey Pressman Greg K. Kramer David &Barbara ICrashes Dr. Robert &Arlene ICreisler Sherry &Mark Kronenfeld Robert A.Landau Bruno & Lindsey LaRocca Michelle 8c Lawrence Lasser William & Karen Lauder Jerry & Susan Lauren Wendy &Mel Lavitt Mark &Taryn Leavitt The Edith and Herbert Lehman Foundation,Inc. In memory of Henry J.&Erna D. Leir John A. Levin &Co.,Inc. Morris Levinson Foundation,Inc. Bertram Levinston, M.D. Levy Charitable Trust Judy Lewis The Liman Foundation Lipman Family Foundation The 2000 Lipman Fellows Bruce Lisman In memory ofZeke Liverant Nancy MacKay Nancy&Erwin Maddrey Anne 8c Vincent Mai Maine Antique Digest The Jane Marcher Foundation Paul Martinson, Frances Martinson & Howard Graffin memory of Burt Martinson Mr.8c Mrs. Christopher Mayer Mrs. Myron Mayer

In honor of Nancy Mayer Kerry McCarthy Milly McGehee Nancy and Dana Mead Mary 0.Mecagni Robert &Meryl Meltzer Charles W.Merrels Evelyn S. Meyer George H.Meyer Jim &Enid Michelman Mrs. E.J. Milano Mr.&Mrs.Samuel C. Miller Judith &James Milne Jean Mitchell Sandra Moers JP Morgan Chase &Co.,Inc. Keith & Lauren Morgan Alden &Jane Munson Lucia Cirino Murphy Drew Neisser Cyril Irwin Nelson New York City Department ofCultural Affairs New York State Margaret&David Nichols Thurston Nichols Mr.&Mrs.Frank N. Norris Jr. Susan Nova Sally W.O'Day Odd Fellows Antiques Bequest of Mastic Lou O'Kelley Olde Hope Antiques Cheryl Oppenheim &John Waters The Overbrook Foundation Patsy Palmer &Talbot D'Alemberte Virginia Parks Paternostro Investments Eloise Paula Rolando 8c Karin Perez Jan Petry Philip Morris Companies Inc. Elizabeth A. Pile Harriet Marple Plehn Trust Carolinn Pocher &William Woody,Darwin Frank &Barbara Pollack Lucile 8c Maurice Pollak Fund Ronald &Debra Pook,Pook 8c Pook Inc. Wayne Pratt,Inc. Fran Puccinelli Jackie Radwin Teresa Ranellone Christopher T. Rebell° Antiques Ricco/Maresca Gallery Julia &Leroy Richie Jeanne Riger Marguerite Riordan John & Margaret Robson Foundation Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund Le Rowell Miss Virginia Carolyn Rudd F. Ransack Antiques &Books,Inc. Selig D.Sacks Judith Sagan Mary Sams,Ballyhack Antiques Jack &Mary-Lou Savitt Peter L. Schaffer Carol Peden Schatt Shirley K. Schlafer Memorial Fund In memory of Esther &Sam Schwartz Marilyn &Joseph Schwartz The Schwarz Gallery, Philadelphia Phyllis &Al Selnick Jean S.& Frederic A.Sharf The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation In honor of George Shaskan The George and Myra Shaskan Foundation,Inc. Roe & Steve Shaw Arthur 8c Suzanne Shawe Harvey S. Shipley Miller &J. Randall Plummer Elle Shushan Jo Sibley John Sideli Eleanor R. Siegal Francisco F. Sierra Elizabeth Silverman

Skinner,Inc., Auctioneers and Appraisers of Antiques and Fine Art Sanford L.Smith &Patricia Lynch Smith Sarah Barr Snook Elliott & Grace Snyder Mr.& Mrs. Peter J. Solomon Sotheby's Maxine Spiegel Nancy T.& Gary,f. Stass Frederick Stecker Stella Show Mgmt.Co. Su-Ellyn Stern Tamar Stone 8c Robert Eckstein Ellen Stone-Belic Rachel &Donald Strauber Bonnie &Tom Strauss The R.David Sudarsky Charitable Foundation Nathaniel J. Sutton Leslie Sweedler John &Catherine Sweeney William Swislow Takashimaya Co., Ltd. Connie Tavel Richard &Maureen Taylor David Teiger Nancy Thomas Tiffany &Co. Jeffrey Tillou Antiques Peter Tillou Pamela P.Tisza Jean L.& Raymond S.Troubh Fund Tucker Station Antiques Karen Ulfers John 8c Kathleen Ullmann Lee &Cynthia Vance Jacob &Ray Van Gelder Bob 8c Ellie Vermillion Joan & Clifford Vernick Joseph &Meryle Viener Robert E. Voellde I.H.& Birgitta XL.von Zelowitz David &Jane Walentas Jennifer Walker Clifford A.Wallach Irene N.Walsh Don Walters & Mary Benisek Warburg Pincus The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Elizabeth &Irwin Warren Nani S.Warren Martha Watterson Weeden Brothers: Bill, Alan,Jack &Don Mr & Mrs. Alan N.Weeden Well, Gotshal 8c Manges LLP Frederick S.Weiser David M.Weiss Jay& Meryl Weiss Ed Weissman Julia Weissman Mr.&Mrs.Peter Wells Ben Wertkin David Wheatcroft Harry Wicks Donald K.Wilkerson,M.D. John & Barbara Wilkerson The Jamison Williams Foundation Nelson M.Williams John Wilmerding Charles &Phyllis Wilson Robert N.Wilson &Anne Wright Wilson Dr.Joseph M.&Janet H.Winston Susan Yecies J. Evelyn Yoder Valerie Young Shelly Zegart Antique Quilts Malcah Zeldis Bernadette Mary Zemenick Steven J. Zick Jon 8c Becky Zoler 27 anonymous donors

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Jose' Garcia Montebravo (Cuba), 2001

Popular and Folk Art from Asia, Africa and the Americas Haitian Paintings • Metal Sculpture • Voclou Flags Cuban Art • West African Barber Shop Signs Latin American Folk Art & Paintings • Ethnographic Art 151 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106 215-922-4041

www.incligoarts.com

'01d Car" ca. 1988 by Jimmie Lee Sudduth

Classic & contemporary folk art

WWW.YARDDOG.COM 0 7 u.

YARD DOG FOLK ART 1510 S. CONGRESS AVE. AUSTIN,TX 78704 512.912.1613 FOLKART@SWBELL.NET

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

81

DONORS

DONORS FOR EXHIBITIONS AND OPERATIONS The American Folk Art Museum is grateful to the following friends who provided generous support for museum programs and operating activities during the year December 1, 2003-December 1, 2004: $50,000 & up Altria Group,Inc. Edward V. Blanchard Jr. Edith S.8c Barry D. Briskin Carnegie Corporation of New York Lucy&Frederick M.Danziger Horace W.Goldsmith Foundation ICelcst and Company The Leir Charitable Trusts Nancy& Dana G.Mead Margaret Z. Robson Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Judy & Michael Steinhardt $20,000-$49,999 American Express Company Didi &David Barrett BIL Charitable Trust Bloomberg LP Dana &Paul S. Coon Cahill Gordon & Reindel Citigroup Foundation Joyce B. Cowin Louise & Edgar M.Cullman David L. Davies &John Weeden Deutsche Bank Vivian & Strachan Donnelley Ralph 0.Esmerian Betsey & Samuel Farber Lori &Laurence Fink Jacqueline Fowler Susan &John Gutfreund Marjorie & Robert Hirschhorn Joan & Victor L.Johnson Barbara 8c David Krashes Latham &Watkins Taryn & Mark Leavitt Frances Sirota Martinson Kay & George H.Meyer National Endowment for the Arts National Financial Partners New York State Council on the Arts Laura &Richard Parsons J. Randall Plummer Dorothea & Leo Rabkin Angela &Selig Sacks Sheannan &Sterling Siclley Austin Brown &Wood LLP Bonnie &Thomas W.Strauss Nathaniel J. Sutton TimeWarner Utendahl Capital Partners Barbara &John Wilkerson $10,000-$19,999 Advent Capital Management LLC Bank of America Bank ofTokyo-Mitsubishi Trust Company Estate of Sylvia J. Berger Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton Con Edison Cravath,Swaine &Moore Credit Suisse First Boston LLC Davis Polk &Wardwell Debevoise &Plimpton Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver &Jacobson LLP Goldman Sachs of New York HIP Health Plans of New York HSBC Securities Johnson &Johnson JP Morgan Chase &Co. Alma Lambert &Chauncey Parker LEF Foundation Lehman Brothers,Inc. Morgan Stanley &Co.,Inc.

82 SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

Pfizer, Inc. SFX Sports Group The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Kate Stettner & Carl Lobell TIAA-CREF TishmanSpeyer Properties Verizon Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz Weil Gotshal & Manges Joyce & George Wein White &Case Tod Williams & Billie Tsien Anne & Robert N.Wilson $5,000-$9,999 Angelo, Gordon &Co. Barbara &James A. Block Bloomingdale's Bristol-Myers Squibb Company John R.&Dorothy D.Caples Fund Barbara &Tracy Cate Dorothy &Lewis Cullman Peggy 8c Richard Danziger The Gladys ICrieble Darn.Foundation Mark Goldman Henry W.Grady Historical Society of Early American Decoration Robert Lehman Foundation Susan &Jerry Lauren Lipman Family Foundation,Inc. Anne 8c Vincent Mai Manoogian Simone Foundation Linda 8c Christopher Mayer Raymond J. McGuire Merrill Lynch &Co.,Inc. Anne &J.Jefferson Miller Richard Miller Morgan,Lewis 8c Bockius,LLP Moses & Singer Pure Imaging Julia 8c Leroy Richie Robert A. Roth Myra & George Shaskan R.David Sudarksy John Tishman Sini von Reis Suzanne &Lester Wunderman $2,000-$4,999 Bob Alexander The American Folk Art Society Molly Ashby & Gerald Lodge Gayle Perkins Atkins 8c Charles N.Atkins Deborah Bergman Virginia &William D.Birch Jill & Sheldon Bonovitz Katharine & Robert E.Booth Judy &Bernard Briskin Yolanda 8c Alvin Brown Marcy Carsey Simona &Jerome A. Chazen Churchill Family Ellie &Edgar Cullman Jr. Susan R.Cullman Kendra ICrienke Daniel &Allan Daniel Sheena &David Danziger Gary Davenport Susan & Raymond C. Egan Gloria Einbender Epstein, Becker & Green Evelyn Frank Marilyn Friedman &Thomas Block Rebecca & Michael S. Gamzon Merle 8c Barry Ginsburg Kurt Gitter &Alice Yelen Anne 8c Eric Gleacher Bruce Gordon &Tawana Tibbs Ann &James Harith.

Halley K. Harrisburg &Michael Rosenfeld Audrey B. Heckler Catherine 8c Richard Herbst Stephen Hessler & Mary Ellen Vehlow

Ruth Horwich House & Garden Ling &Thomas Isenberg Ned Jalbert Vera &Joseph Jelinek ICristina Johnson Penny& Allan Katz Helen &Steven Kellogg Luise & Robert Kleinberg Dorothy C.ICrugman Jo Carole 8c Ronald S. Lauder Betty &John Levin Joyce &Edward Linde Estate ofAda Little Richard Lukins The Magazine Group D'Arcy&Dana G.Mead Jr. Susan &Mark C.Mead Audrey 8c Danny Meyer Loree &Richard Meyer Cynthia & Donald B. Murphy Cyril I. Nelson New York City Department of Cultural Affairs JoEllen &David Oskin David T. Owsley Anthony J. Petullo Jeffrey Pressman & Nancy Kollisch Audrey& Christopher T. Reboil째 Ricco/Maresca Gallery The Grace Jones Richardson Trust The Ida &William Rosenthal Foundation Carol P. Schatt Donna & Marvin Schwartz Janet &Joseph D.Shein Peter L. Sheldon Linda 8c Raymond Simon Smith Richardson Foundation Gary Snyder & Kristen Accola Karen &David Sobotka Patricia A.& Robert C.Stempel Steptoe &Johnson Elizabeth A. Stern Su-Ellyn Stern Donald & Rachel Strauber Claire Vanderbilt Sue &Edgar Wachenheim III Jane &David Walentas Elizabeth &Irwin Warren Sue Ann &John L. Weinberg Sandra &Walter J. Wilkie Janet Winston $1,000-$1,999 A La Vieille Russie,Inc. Marshall Acuff Peg Alston Deborah &James Ash James Asselstine 8c Bette J. Davis The Atlantic Philanthropies Marie &John W.Baldante Jeremy L. Banta Anne H.Bass Jill 8c Mickey Baten Robin Bell Jose Solis Betancourt &Paul Sherrill Helen Bing Ira &Marilyn Birnbaum Lois P. Broder & Marvin Broder Sherry Bronfi-nan Marc 8c Laurene ICrasny Brown Margaret 8c Edward J. Brown Valerie &Jay Brown Marjorie B. Buckley Sharon &Jeffrey Casdin Angela &James Clair George Colettis Judy &Aaron Daniels Deborah Davenport& Stewert Stender Jenny & Richard DeScherer The Echo Design Group,Inc. Barbara &Joseph H.Ellis Equity Resources,Inc.

Judith &Anthony Evnin Helaine &Burton Fendelman Lynne &Donald Flexner Forest Electric Corporation Frances J. Frawley Jill Gallagher Alice &Bruce Geismar Georgia Pacific Corporation Gomez Associates, Inc. Barbara & Peter Goodman Barbara L. Gordon &Steve Cannon Ellin &Baron J. Gordon Victoria Hagan Interiors Connie &John A.Hays Inge Heckel Donald M.Herr High Five Foundation Stephen M.Hill John Howard Ellen E.Howe Stephen Huber Kelly &Webber Hudson Sally Humphrey Barbara &Thomas C.Israel Sandra Jaffe Penny &Alistair Johnston Karen Keane 8c Stephen Fletcher Leigh Keno Mary Kettaneh Phyllis Kossoff Stephanie &Ron Kramer Abraham Krasnoff Robert A. Landau Lindsey &Bruno LaRocca Wendy 8c Stephen Lash Michelle &Lawrence J. Lasser Karen &William Lauder Eugenia A.Leemans Stephen A. Levin Barbara S. Levinson Lone Cowen Levy Ed Lewis Judy Lewis Julie &Carl M.Lindberg Stephan Loewentheil Ninth &Michael Lynne M (Group) Macy's East Ralph Mancini Michael Markbreiter Michael T. Martin Chriss Mattsson Mrs. Myron L. Mayer Gad &Michael Mendelsohn Virginia B. Michel Richard Mishaan Barbara G.Mulch David Muniz&David Lesniak Joshua Nash &Beth Goldberg Natasi 8c Associates Olde Hope Antiques,Inc. Pat Parsons Karin Eriksen Perez & Rolando Perez Deborah C. Quirk Roberta 8c,Jack Rabin Jackie & Howard Radwin Bunny &Milton S. Rattner Richard Ravitch Lisa & Gregg Rechler Paige Rense John Roche Elihu Rose Margot Rosenberg Helene &Jim Rosenthal Alice Rosenwald Shelley &Donald Rubin Janet &Derald H. Ruttenberg Joan Safir Betty &Paul Schaffer Linda & Donald Schapiro Tess &Thomas F. Schutte Cipora 0.&Philip C.Schwartz

Phyllis &Alfred Selnick Semlitz Glaser Foundation Harvey S. Shipley Miller Ruth &Jerome Siegel Mary Ann & Arthur Siskind Skinner Inc. Janine &Michael Smith Stephanie Smither Matthew Patrick Smyth 8c Rachel Etz Grace &Elliott Snyder Peter J. Solomon Jennifer Allan Soros Dorothy &John Sprague Craig Stapleton Ellen 8c David Stein Geraldine 8c Lionel Sterling Nonie &John Sullivan David Teiger Billie Tisch Frank S.Tosto Dorothy C.Treisman Sandra & Howard Tytel Kristin E.Vickery Eve Weinstein Judith &Bennett Weinstock Suzanne &Stephen Weiss Barbara & Gerard C.Wertkin Janis &William Wetsman Jan Whitlock Lyn 8c E.T. Williams Woodard 8c Greenstein The VVRG Foundation Michelle & Robert Wyles Nina &Tim Zagat Zanlcel Fund Rebecca &Jon N.Zoler Susan &Donald Zuckert $500-5999 Harvie & Charles Abney Ethel &Philip Adelman Charitable Foundation Mary Lou &Ira Alpert Peg Alston Linda Lee Alter Serena Altschul Jody &John Arnhold Ray Azoulay June &Frank Barsalona Serena &David Bechtel Judi &Barry Bell Lee &Paul Belsky Ralph Bermudes Joan &Robert Bernhard Mrs. George P. Bissell Constance Black Karin Blake Interiors Adele &Leonard Block Sam Blount Dena L. Bock Marilyn & Orren Bradley Nancy &James Braithwaite Linda &James H. Brandi Patty &Steve Brink Brenda Brody Mark Brossman & Roberta Holinko-Brossman Barbara Bundy Guy K.Bush Miriam Cahn Gabrielle 8c Frank Casson Virginia G.Cave Sharon S. Cheeseman Marjorie Chester Circuit City Foundation Stephen H.Cooper 8c Karen Gross Katie Danziger & Steven Horowitz Ed & Pat DeSear Mary A.Donovan Maureen D.Donovan Cynthia E.Dozier Deborah & Arnold Dunn Charles P. Durkin Shirley Durst Claire &Alfred C. Eckert Sharon &Theodore Eisenstat Robert Ellison Elsmere Foundation,Inc.

Margot &John L Ernst Tania &Thomas M.Evans Bobbie Falk Pauline &Laurence Feldman Ron Feldman Thomas K. Figge Susan & Henry Fradkin Maxine 8c Stuart Frankel Foundation Margot 8c Norman Freedman James Friedlander 8c Elizabeth Irwin Richard Gachot Daniel 8c Lianna Gantt Judy &Jules Garel Barbara Gimbel Mildred 8c William L. Gladstone Edmund Glass Helen &Peter Strom Goldstein Arthur Goldstone 8c Susan Goldstone Tracy Goodnow Art 8c Antiques Barbara L Gordon Donald J. Gordon Nanette 8c Irvin GreifJr. Nancy &Tim Grumbacher Samuel L.Guillory Anton Haardt Gallery Margery Hadar David H.Haffenreffer Marion Harris &Jerry Rosenfeld Anne &John A.Herrmann Jr. Sanford L Herzfeld &Audrey I. Dursht Lisa W.Hess Walter Hess Jr. Frederick D.Hill Arlene & Leonard Hochman Nancy Hoffman & Peter N. Greenwald John Horvitz Michael T.Incantalupo Jill & Ken Iscol Theodore Israel Helen &Martin Katz Emily 8c Leslie Keno Phyllis Kind John J. Kirby Jr. Marcy & Michael Klein Barbara S. Klinger John ICoegel, Esq. Betty 8c Arthur Kowaloff Peter &Jill Kraus Charlotte W.Krinsly Sue-Ellen 8c Mark Laracy Robert Lerch Nadine 8c Peter Levy Robert A.Lewis Shirley &Sherwin Lindenbaum Bruce Lisman Randall Lott 8c Nancy McCall Nancy B. Maddrey Eric Maffei Esperanza G.Martinez Barbie &John A. Mayer Jr. Ray &Judy McCasIcey Patricia &Samuel D. McCullough Dianne &James Meltzer Lisa 8c Buxton S. Midyette Jean Mitchell Bettina P. Murray Museum Association of New York Ann &Walter Nathan David Nichols Randy Nielsen Ella 8c Michael Nierenberg Cinnie &Stephen O'Brien Stephanie 8c Robert Olmsted Kenneth R. Page Elbert Parsons Jr. Paul V.Patemostro Betty Pecore Jeffrey Peek James Pesando Janet Petry & Angie Mills Campion A.Platt Harold Pote & Linda E.Johnson Martha S. Price Rene Purse 8c Stuart Zweibel The Quilt Complex Raccoon Creek Antiques

Catherine &F.F. Randolph Irene Reichert Paul Reiferson &Julie Spivack Alyce & Roger Rose Stuart Rosen Lois & Richard Rosenthal Toni Ross Amy 8c Richard Rubenstein Nancy 8c Frank E. Russell Jeanne & Robert Savitt Nancy & Henry Schacht Thomas Schloss Margaret Schmidt Sonia & Carl J. Schmitt Sue Schuck Jean 8c Frederic Sharf Geri &J.Peter Skirkanich Axle Sklar-Weinstein Stephanie 8c Richard L. Solar Ann & Richard Solomon The Splendid Peasant Nancy &William Stahl Stark Carpet Lisa &Stuart Sternberg Carol Million Studer

Eleanor &John M.Sullivan Jr. Milton S.Teicher Thyssenkrupp Elevator Corp.

Joan &Barry Tucker Utility Electric Co. Cynthia Vance Alfred G. Vanderbilt Karel F. Wahrsager Mary J. Wallach Pat 8c Donald Weeden Brenda Weeks-Nerz Amy &John S. Weinberg David Wheatcroft Lisa &David Wolfe Rosalie Wood John &J.Evelyn Yoder Robert Young Malcah Zeldis Susan 8c Louis Zinterhofer Marsha & Howard Zipser Jan &Barry L Zubrow Barbara &Benjamin Zucker

RECENT DONORS TO THE COLLECTIONS Judith Alexander Mr.8c Mrs. Darwin Bahm Mr.& Mrs. Henry Buchbinder Bliss Carnochan Joseph Bailey Cole Marcella Deysher Judy Doenias Ralph Esmerian Betsey 8c Sam Farber Jane Ferrara Mr.& Mrs.James Goodman Ray Kass & Dr.Jerrie Pike Chapman Kelly Mrs.Jean B. Krolik Carl Lobell& Kate Stettner

Leszek Macak Kenneth 8c Cherie Mason Richard McDermott Miller Cyril Irwin Nelson David Owsley Francis Portzline Mr.8c Mrs. Francis Fritz Randolph Jr. Suzanne Richie Stephanie Smither Maurice C.8c Patricia L.Thompson Elizabeth,Irwin &Mark Warren Kathyanne White Vicki & Larry Winters Reverend Nancy Zala

The Intuit Show art of folk and outsider

September 30 October 2, 2005 Chicago Image Bill Traylor, Black Bull c 1939-43, 11 25" x 17 25" Courtesy Cod Hammer Gallery

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art 312-243-9088 intuit@art.org www.art.org

SPRING 2005

FOLK ART

83

EPS1E1N/POWELL 66 Grand St., New York, N.Y. 10013 by appointment 212-226-7316 email: art.folks@verizon.net •Justin McCarthy (oils and drawings)

• Mose Tolliver •Jesse Aaron

•Victor Joseph Gatto (estate) • Max Romain • Rex Clawson (representing)

•and many other folk/outsider artists

• S.L. Jones ('81-'83 drawings) "Garden of Eden" Rex Clawson, 2004, 18x24, ink/marker on paper

• Old Ironsides Pry

INDEX

TO

ADVERTISERS

Allan Katz Americana American Primitive Gallery The Ames Gallery Andover Fabrics Anne Bourassa Antique Textiles Vintage Fashions Show &Sale Anton Haardt Gallery Authentic Designs Barn Star Productions Beacon Press Berenberg Gallery Cavin-Morris Gallery Church Street Art Gallery David Wheatcroft Antiques Epstein/Powell Fleisher Oilman Gallery Garde Rail Gallery Gary Snyder Fine Art Ginger Young Gallery Graves'Country Gallery Hill Gallery Indigo Arts

84 SPRING 2005

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9 19 17 65 27 78 23 77 75 74 78 17 79 3 84 11 79 73 21 26 2 81

Intuit:The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art Jackie Radwin Kentucky Folk Art Center Laura Fisher Lindsay Gallery New Hampshire Antiques Show Northeast Auctions Olde Hope Antiques,Inc. Paul &Alvina Haverkamp Petullo Publishing Princeton University Press Raccoon Creek Antiques Raw Vision Ricco/Maresca Gallery Sidney Gecker American Folk Art The Southern Appalachian Outsider Art Expo Slotin Folk Art Auction Susan Slyman Thurston Nichols American Antiques Trotta-Bono Walters-Benisek Art & Antiques Yard Dog Folk Art

83 Back Cover 63 18 15 73 Inside Back Cover 1 21 23 77 5 61 Inside Front Cover 12 63 14 26 10 4 6 81

Americana: Folk to Formal Manchester, NH April 1-3, 2005

lull NH lie. #2109

Works from the Studios of John Gadsby Chapman and Conrad Wise Chapman,Part II Property from a Long Island, New York Collector Mochaware from the Bill Lewan Collection, Part III American Glass form the Collection ofPamela and Donald Levine, Part II Duncan Phyfe Furniture from the Collection of Beverly and Richard Kelly

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NORTHEAST AUCTIONS by RONALD BOURGEAULT,LLC 93 Pleasant Street Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03801 tel.(603) 433.8400 fax (603) 433.0415 www.northeastauctions.com

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