Ten years of lakeshore projects in Chicago have destroyed scores of vernacular stone carvings, but the most recent project has uncovered some fantastic examples. These are installed on the stretch of new lakeshore at Fullerton Avenue. (See my collection of more than a hundred other lakeshore carvings here.) For those who follow such things, a closer look at this “Easter Island” carving revealed a signature and date: RS -05- (see the bottom of the photo). It is very cool that someone was making carvings of this complexity in 2005 — certainly the most recent I’ve seen. Where this rock originally
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Some Milwaukee Signs
A brief swing through Milwaukee is enough to turn up some fine examples of roadside art.
Continue readingFrom the corporate slogan department
“Providing solutions for your specialty needs” It’s a medical equipment rental company, by the way.
Continue readingReview: Ray Yoshida’s Museum Of Extraordinary Values
Ray Yoshida’s Museum Of Extraordinary Values by Karen Patterson My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’ve had the privilege of seeing Ray Yoshida’s art collection only twice, the first time in 1994 when I was co-curating a show of bottle-cap art for Chicago’s Intuit. Ray was gracious and loaned some pieces. His collection was spectacular, but tellingly, it did not seem out of the ordinary. If it was finer than many I had seen (my own included), it was not fundamentally different in style and approach. The mix of Maxwell Street flea-market finds with masterpieces is a hallmark of the
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Review: The Family Circus: Daily and Sunday Comics, 1962-63
The Family Circus: Daily and Sunday Comics, 1962-63 by Bil Keane My rating: 5 of 5 stars I liked Peanuts as a kid but I loved Family Circus. Where Charles Schulz used his kids to make universal points, Bil Keane tried to be about real kids and real parents. It was a chronicle of post-war suburban life, and I could relate. It also was probably the greatest source of insight I had into the parental point of view (well, along with Dave Berg’s The Lighter Side comics in Mad Magazine, with had some similarities to Circus in style and point
Continue readingSpam {comment|message|kudos} of the {day|week|month|year}
Every once in a while I take a look in my spam folder and find something really {awesome|amazing|very good|superb|fantastic|excellent|great}. This is one of the better examples — kind of a how-to for composing a spam comment. Really, it’s a template you could apply to writing almost any kind of message. I’m sure “samanthablanchette@—.com” would be happy for {other folks|folks|other people|people} to make use of it. {I have|I’ve} been {surfing|browsing} online more than {three|3|2|4} hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. {It’s|It is} pretty worth enough for me. {In my opinion|Personally|In my view}, if all {webmasters|site owners|website
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Roadside Indiana
A roadside art trip on the gyros trail through northwest Indiana ended in Michigan City. Not so much gyros there, but some fine paintings, including one of the best wall signs I’ve seen, at Up-In-Smoke Rib Shack. Also some lovely constructions by Tim Bruce along the way.
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The Gyros Project
The Gyros Project Rebuilt and Expanded More gyros signs, hundreds of them! Each a bit of vernacular art genius The Gyros Project started as a way of collecting fine examples of Chicago-school hand-painted business advertising. The gyros was a graphically strong object, with lots of sellers all over the city, and typically promoted via one-off signs. Hot dogs, the most commonly advertised product on Chicago streets, were less interesting since they tended to be merchandised via Vienna Beef-supplied printed materials (not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just wasn’t my primary interest). I also had a particular affection for the gyros in
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Lawrence Avenue Vernacular, Again
Lawrence Avenue is a paradise for muffler men and auto parts, not to mention food images. Click here for an earlier installment of the Lawrence Avenue gallery of vernacular art.
Continue readingReview: John Baeder’s Road Well Taken
“John Baeder’s Road Well Taken,” by Jay Williams, Vendome Press, 272 pages, 300 color and b&w illustrations, 2015. 978-0865653191. Hard cover $45 John Baeder is legendary among roadside architecture enthusiasts for Diners,” his book of photorealistic diner paintings that turned out to be one of the most culturally influential publications of the 1970s. Baeder, the subject of a new biography by art historian and curator Jay Williams, appreciated 20th century roadsides and the buildings that populated them before they became old, when they were just ugly rather than a source of popular nostalgia.Widespread fascination with highways like Route 66 and
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