Book Review: Mary Nohl Inside and Outside
Posted in Art, Book Review, Outsider Art on April 18th, 2010Mary Nohl Inside & Outside: Biography of the Artist, by Barbara Manger and Janine Smith. University of Wisconsin Press, 134 pages, 165 color images, 145 b/w or sepia images, 2009. ISBN 978-0-6152-5118-9. Soft Cover $29.95.
See my Mary Nohl photos, circa 1990
The first time I saw Mary Nohl’s masterpiece of a home and yard I only knew I was being taken to “The Witch’s House.”
That was its name for a generation of neighborhood kids, including the two who were showing me the one big curiosity in Fox Point, Wisconsin.
The reason for the visit was Nohl’s eccentricity, which made her yard a target for vandals as well as a local landmark. But it didn’t take long to see that the art was far more important than the oddity. I had visited a couple of art environments at that time, including Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden near Summerville, Georgia, and Nohl’s place was clearly one of those. It may have seemed more domestic than heroic, tucked away next to Lake Michigan in its comfortable corner of suburban Milwaukee, but it constituted a clear statement of her personal vision.
Read the rest of this entry »
