If you took the cutoff from Highway 61 into Vicksburg, Mississippi, and had need of 1. sundries 2. spiritual uplift or 3. a powerful folk-art environment, you could stop at Margaret’s Grocery. The Rev. H.D. Dennis, who encased the country store inside and out with his sculpture and fantastic architecture, would preach you a personal sermon while his wife Margaret stood ready to meet your earthly needs. These pictures are from 1995. The site decayed after the couple’s passing, but rehab is happening under the auspices of the Mississippi Folk Art Foundation and its director, Suzi Altman. You can learn
Continue readingCategory: Art environment
Vollis Simpson Whirligig Garden
After Vollis Simpson died in 2013, his massive back-country whirligig garden in Lucama, North Carolina, was relocated to the center of nearby Wilson. Simpson ran a machine shop, did heavy equipment repair and was involved in moving houses. In retirement, he started tinkering with odd parts he had lying around. And he started making whirligigs. Big ones. His original whirligig park was the world’s most spectacular concentration of these wind machines. They still impress in their Wilson location, perhaps even more at night. Check out these videos. Scroll down for two photo galleries. Here are still photos of the whirligigs in
Continue readingQ.J. Stephenson’s Earth Museum/Occoneechee Trapper’s Lodge
Q.J. Stephenson’s Earth Museum/Occoneechee Trapper’s Lodge in Garysburg, North Carolina, was on my list of places to visit for years. Finally made it early one morning in September 2025. It’s a sweet little spot whose story you can read at Spaces Archives.
Continue readingLakefront Carvings Walking Tours – 2025
I’m giving four walking tours of Chicago’s fabulous lakefront rock carvings over the summer of 2025:
Continue readingSome New Creations at the Point
A visit to Promontory Point this week turned up a number of impressive new rock carvings, and a few old ones I hadn’t noticed before. Kudos to @CosmoTeocal for the first one. These are just so many more reasons that the Point’s limestone must be preserved.
Continue readingThe La Rabida South Gallery
Several of the Chicago lakefront’s most magnificent rock carvings reside on the stones south of La Rabida Hospital near 65th Street and the lake. For the last several years many of these carvings were inaccessible or invisible under the water. But with the lake’s level having fallen in the last few years they are now mostly visible (as of spring 2025). These 200 or so carvings, I believe, are the last large group that remained to be documented as part of my Lakefront Anonymous project. Here are highlights from this group. There are many more carvings around La Rabida hospital.
Continue readingThe Fabulous World of Mr. C’s
Whether Mr. C’s Steak House in Omaha swarmed with kitsch or charm is all in your point of view. But take a look at the faces in its dioramas. Each is said to have represented a local notable. Yano and Mary Caniglia had a drive-in restaurant on 30th Street that they rebuilt and reopened as Mr. C’s in 1971. It was a classic local institution and one of those rare places where you could dine inside an art environment. It closed in 2007. You can read more about Mr. C’s, including its disappointing racial history, here: https://northomahahistory.com/2017/12/06/a-history-of-mr-cs-restaurant-in-north-omaha/
Continue readingRIP Jeff Elersic, artist
I never met Jeff Elersic, who died Dec. 14, 2024, at 70 years old, but I did manage to photograph his house/tirade in Geneva, Ohio, northeast of Cleveland. In common with a number of other art environments (W.C. Rice’s, Royal Robertson’s and Jesse Howard’s among others), Elersic’s expressed an uncomfortable degree of rage. To say his language was not measured is an understatement. But it was artfully written and arranged, and he was an excellent colorist. Have a look. Images are from 2016. You can view a short obituary here and read more about him at Spaces Archives.
Continue readingReview: Singular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments
Singular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments, Jo Farb Hernández, 5 Continents Editions, 2 volumes of 532 pages each, 1,050 color illustrations, 2023. ISBN: 979-12-5460-018-4. Hardcover, $350 I began my review of Jo Farb Hernandez’s first study of Spanish art environments, 2013’s Singular Spaces, with the observation that is was “so epic that even a large-format volume of nearly 600 pages can’t get the job done, so a bonus CD adds thousands more thumbnail pictures and hundreds more pages of text.” Turns out it wasn’t enough. In the 10 years since that publication, she
Continue readingThe Poles of D Bill – Near Normal
When D Bill, a retired toolmaker for Caterpillar Tractor, began carving utility poles, it must have seemed natural to him to create detailed engineering drawings for each design. The carvings are whimsical and imaginative, the drawings, technical, detailed and to scale. D Bill, who preferred an initial to his full name Darwin, mostly sold his work at the annual Sugar Creek Arts Festival in the nicely named Normal, Illinois. But he also used it to decorate his spread in Danvers, a few miles west. The poles were scattered around his house and workshop and lined the long driveway up
Continue reading