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
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Stanley Szwarc’s Visionary Cross Purposes
Stanley Szwarc (1928-2011), a Polish book keeper turned metal worker and then artist after arriving in the United States, gave no indication of being particularly religious, but he did like making crosses. A prolific creator of objects from scrap stainless steel, always demonstrating over-the-top imagination, Szwarc made hundreds of crosses, if not thousands. He produced jewelry, he made crosses to be hung on the wall, and he crafted cruciform objects with no apparent use other than to be carriers of his endless combinations of geometric shapes. Szwarc liked to say that no two of his objects, be they crosses, vases, key fobs or boxes, were alike. The evidence plainly supports that contention while demonstrating a virtuosic artistic vision
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