W.C. Rice’s cross garden art environment in Prattville, Alabama, near Montgomery, was one of the nation’s fiercest roadside views. The drift of his message was crystal clear, although the specifics were sometimes arcane. Rice, whose cross fixation extended to the large wooden one he wore around his neck, was said to be quite friendly to visitors. His signs and crosses stretched along two sides of the road. On one side was a shed that served as a chapel. On the other the signs and crosses filled a large vacant lot below a hillside trailer park that Rice owned. The messages
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Review: Gatecrashers
Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America, by Katherine Jentleson, University of California Press, 264 pages, 53 color photographs, 18 b/w illustrations, 2020. ISBN: 9780520303423. Hardcover, $50 Gatecrashers might best be described in terms more typical of a page-turner novel than an art book—it’s a story of tragedy and triumph, of drama and historic happenings. The overarching tragedy is the opportunity lost in the 1930s to open up the definition of art to myriad forms of creativity beyond the academy. That process seemed to be gaining momentum until it was precipitously halted in the early 1940s. It only restarted in earnest
Continue readingReview: Photo/Brut
Photo / Brut, by Bruno Decharme and others, Flammarion in collaboration with the American Folk Art Museum, New York, and abcd, Paris, 320 pages, 2020. ISBN: 978-2080204325. Hardcover, $55 Among the varieties of art brut creation, photography has historically received limited attention. A newly extensive, if not definitive, exploration built around the great ABCD art brut collection of Bruno Decharme takes some steps to remedy that situation. Photo / Brut, the exhibit and catalog, boasts impressive scale, and Decharme’s deep art brut experience gives him standing to help define what art brut photography might mean. That’s not exactly what this
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A Chicago Nativity In Spectacular Fashion
I’m as guilty as anyone of overusing the concept of “greatest ever,” but this nativity scene is a legitimate candidate for the title. A full-blown, if temporary, art environment, it is the work of retired fashion designer and cosmetologist Jim McCall. You can read about McCall and the site and see more photos in this Block Club Chicago story. More art environments here.
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Whirligig Gardens: Make The Wind Speak
Wind power today usually means alternative energy, but there are those who harness it as a source of personal expression: The whirligig makers. Vollis 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, in an out-of-the-way field in out-of-the-way Lucama, North Carolina, was the world’s most spectacular concentration of these wind machines. Simpson died in 2013, but the whirligigs were preserved and relocated to a dedicated park in nearby Wilson, where they
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Review: Walks to the Paradise Garden
Walks to the Paradise Garden: A Lowdown Southern Odyssey, by Jonathan Williams, photos by Roger Manley & Guy Mendes. Institute 193, Lexington Kentucky and New York, 352 pages, 100 color images and 80 black and white , 2019. ISBN: 978-1732848207. Hardcover, $45. It’s a shame this book wasn’t published as intended in the 1990s. Not only would its author have still been alive, but so would most of the artists he encountered on his travels across the back roads of the South. Inspired by William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, Jonathan Williams, poet, publisher and lover of the vernacular, undertook a series of
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Art Environment Fit For A Queen
You’re not too likely to stumble upon this art environment in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. It’s on an out-of-the-way dead-end street. But it’s worth the hunt. Alex Rico turned his home into a literal castle to honor his late wife Gisela, who died at 34. “I told my kids I want to do something so I could remember your mom. Not in the cemetery. This is something I see every day,” Rico told the news site Block Club Chicago. You can read the full story and see pictures here and below. See more art environments here.
Continue readingFred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park: Two Visits
Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park, the fabulous art environment in Phillips, Wisconsin, circa 1997 and 2007. There is plenty to be said about Smith and his creations. For more information, visit its Spaces archive page or the Friends of Fred Smith site. Back to Wisconsin: The Roadside Genius State.
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What Is Outsider Art?
I wrote this little essay about 25 years ago, when the concept of outsider art was new to the also-new World Wide Web. The real experts hadn’t yet gone online, and something was needed there to explain this kind of art. Like many of us, I’ve learned a lot since then, and the recent death of Roger Cardinal, whose 1972 book “Outsider Art” originated the term, made me consider revising the essay. It has a bit of history about it, at least for me, though, so I’ve left it as is. My views about the term have changed, however,
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Review — Outliers and American Vanguard Art
Outliers and American Vanguard Art, by Lynne Cooke. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 412 pages, 450 color plates, 2018. ISBN: 978-0226522272. Hardcover, $65 Outliers and American Vanguard Art, filling several rooms at the National Gallery of Art, is a dauntingly large-scale show. And at five pounds, 412 pages, 450-plus illustrations and a 10 x12 form factor, its catalog is even more daunting. But, despite some excess imbrications and fixed subject positions, the art and the important points being made are plenty sufficient to interest non-academic readers. Curator Lynne Cooke’s core premise is that the story of modernism is woefully incomplete absent
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