Skaters by Thomas Penn, DuSable High School

Vernacular Art Spectacular, DuSable High School

This group of drawings turned up at Maxwell Street some years ago. With the possible exception of “Take your cross and follow me,” which is an earlier piece, they were executed by students of Ethel Nolan, an artist and art teacher at DuSable High School on Chicago’s South Side. I’m guessing she might have saved the best of her students’ work, as represented here. Super fine vernacular art.

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Sign for Jessica's Fashion, Chicago

Wall Art: Generations of Jessica’s

Three generations of great roadside art signage on the wall at Jessica’s Western Wear, Clark near Lunt, Chicago. The art continues to deteriorate, and the store is now called Jessica’s Fashion, but there is still some cowboy gear in the window. What I really want to know, however, is where the Jetsons came in.

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Kedzie Avenue Gems

Kedzie Avenue is one of my favorite Chicago streets. It runs the length of the city and far south to 206th Street in Olympia Fields. It’s got a great name, for an early real estate developer. And of course there is a lot of fine signage along the way.

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Review: Louis Wain’s Cats

Louis Wain would have been important if he had only been the greatest master ever of cute and anthropomorphic felinity, which, around the turn of the 20th Century, he was. His images of kitties were cranked out and reproduced in vast numbers, creating an inexhaustible reservoir of catty charm. Wain would have been important if he were only known for the increasingly bizarre and (before the term was coined) psychedelic cat images he produced toward the end of his life while institutionalized as a schizophrenic. And Wain would have been fascinating if only for the ceramic cats he designed in

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Short Review: George E. Ohr: The Greatest Art Potter on Earth

It’s hard to call Ohr’s pottery anything other than magnificent, and this book has a ton of beautiful images. The strength of his work is such that it is not overpowered by his story, which is saying a lot. Ohr cultivated eccentricity. His biography is uniquely entertaining, and the story of his work and its reception — in his own time and its rediscovery long after his death — is endlessly fascinating. The writing occasionally comes off as a bit too jolly, but I understand the temptation presented by Ohr’s own ebullience. Overall the text is engaging and authoritative.

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