It’s been some time since I’ve stumbled across anything as nice as these fashion drawings in an antique store, mostly because I don’t spend much time in them any more.
Some new views of the monumental Bottle Cap Inn, and an updated page format.
There are great signs up and down Clark Street. This is part 2 of what will no doubt be a continuing series. Here’s part 1
Interesting sites and details from Chicago and vicinity.
Signs and sights from Pulaski Road. This mosaic sign is one of the best. I’ve never seen another one like it.
Follies of Europe: Architectural Extravaganzas, by Nic Barlow, Caroline Holmes and Tim Knox. Garden Art Press, 256 pages, 286 color illustrations, 2008. ISBN 1-87067-356-5
In the United States, writing on the environments of self-taught artists tends to place them within the outsider art context or, sometimes, within a specifically American tradition of individual expression.
Follies of Europe demonstrates a very different way of looking at these sites. Not only is their individualistic exuberance not distinctly American, but they belong to a tradition of highly personal outdoor extravaganzas going back at least to the 17th Century. Indeed, the book opens with reference to Roman gardens decorated with miniature temples and palaces, which are folly structures par excellence.
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U.S. 11 as it runs between Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama, is an outdoor vernacular art gallery that gives even the beloved Western Avenue in Chicago a run for its money.
I’ve never made it to Carhenge in Nebraska but my colleague Svilen recently did. View his gallery.
Sublime Spaces And Visionary Worlds: Built Environments Of Vernacular Artists, By Leslie Umberger, Erika Doss, Lisa Stone, Jane Bianco and Ruth Kohler. Princeton Architectural Press, 424 pages, 650 color plates and 100 black and white illustrations, 2007. ISBN 1-56898-728-5
This is a blockbuster catalog for a blockbuster show, and perhaps the best book yet published on the subject of art environments.
The structure is conventional—a handful of essays bookend a set of illustrated biographical vignettes (22 in this case, with exceptionally rich photo reproduction). But intelligence and serious intent distinguish this effort from the usual run of coffee table books. The straightforward biography focuses on understanding how the environments and their artists developed, which is especially relevant in a context where the work’s physical evolution illuminates both its meaning and its current state of being. This is a non-incidental consideration for nearly every one of these sites, given their exposure to the elements and to a sometimes-hostile populace. Read the rest of this entry »
Some first-rate signage from the funky Chicago suburbs of Waukegan and Kankakee.
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