Outsider Art Exhibit: Part 2

On Thursday, I shared some photos of my favorite artists at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibit, "Great and Mighty Things:  Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection." I've shown you six of the 27 artists I really enjoyed from the exhibit, and I have several more pieces that I want to share with you today. 

The exhibit's catalogue is an incredible book, by the way, with photos and information so complete that you will feel as though you went to the museum yourself.  It is available online, so you may want to consider adding it to your Gift Wish List!

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Top half of "Words of Jesus Only," by Howard Finster, 80-5/16x27-1/2 altogether;
painted on the reverse side of cut-out interior plywood paneling

There have actually been several books written about Howard Finster's art, and he seems to be included in just about every Outsider Art publication you pick up.  He created 47,000 works over his 25 year career, and he worked to save people through his art.  He preached at revivals and published religious writings over his lifetime, and caught the attention of popular culture when REM filmed a 1983 music video in his Paradise Garden, a place he created to spread his religious message through his art.  He even appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson! 

The Bonovitz collection included a couple of very interesting shadowboxes, in which Finster used multiple layers of glass to create a kind of three-dimensional effect to his work:

Model of a Space Hotel to Come, by Howard Finster, 1983

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"Two Blonde Women with Blue Checked Background," by Lee Godie, 23"x29",
opaque watercolor and ballpoint pen on primed canvas

Lee Godie was one of the few women whose works were included in this exhibit.  She was a Chicago artist who focused on portraits and still lifes.  She used to sell her works near local landmarks, and seems to have made quite a reputation for herself in her community. 

"Mr. Blue Bird," by Lee Godie, 26-1/2"x17-1/4", ballpoint pen ink on primed canvas

Some of her canvases were made from discarded window shades, which makes her a master example of re-use!

"Woman with Blue and Brown Sconces," by Lee Godie, opaque watercolor and ballpoint pen on primed canvas

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"Man and Woman Holding Hands," by Bill Traylor, c. 1939-1942,
graphite and colored pencil on tan cardboard faced with cream paper

Bill Traylor was born into slavery around 1853, and died in 1949.  He worked most of his life as a laborer once freed from slavery by the Emancipation Proclamation.  When he couldn't work anymore, he would spend his time drawing near the back door of a pool hall in Montgomery, Alabama.  He drew mainly on found materials, like pieces of cardboard boxes and old posters.  He got additional drawing supplies from a young artist named Charles Shannon, who advocated for his work, but always preferred rough, irregular cardboard as his drawing surface. 

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Part of "Filigree Drawing with Pen and Ink," by Consuelo Gonzalez Amezcua, 19-3/4"x16",
pen and colored inks on illustration board with collaged thin tan paper

Gonzalez Amezcua was born in Mexico, and grew up in Texas.  She worked in a Five-and-Dime, made art, and never married.

Detail

Her work reminds me of the current Zentangle craze, and I loved the simplicity of her use of ballpoint pen to fill in the spaces not covered with intricate designs.

"Butterly Fantasy," by Consuelo Gonzalez Amezcua

Detail; I guess we are not the first generation to feel the need to "put a bird on it"!

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Part of "Blue Monday (Reversal") by George Widener, 2010, 44"x80";
ballpoint and fiber-tipped pen inks over pieced papers

I think that George Widener is the only living artist featured in the Outsider Art exhibit.  He is a numerical savant with Asperger's Syndrome.  He turns his records of dates and numbers into patterned arrangements in his art.  As the exhibit catalog puts it, he "animates the mathematical sequences in his mind." 

Detail

The audio tour says that he shows a series of dates that will on Mondays for thousands of years.  For me, above all, I enjoyed the graphic nature of his work, not to mention the intricate detail.

Detail

Widener also has a fascination for certain catastrophes, especially the sinking of the Titanic.  The exhibit catalog explained that another man named George Widener went down with the ship, and the artist's 50th birthday fell on the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, making him especially feel its significance. 

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After seeing the exhibit, I feel like I and the people whose blogs I read are all engaged in our own form of outsider art.  Many of us lack any kind of formal training, and pursue art because of some internal need to exercise our creativity and see life from a creative point of view.  We don't run in professional artistic circles (even if we do very successfully create our own online artistic communities!).  The kinds of things that I saw at the museum are the kinds of things we are doing--using unorthodox materials, non-realistic representations of people, intricate designs in the spirit of Zentangle, art journaling on discarded library books--it's all here!

I feel as though Outsider Art by its very nature stretches our understanding of the definitions of the terms "art" and "artist," and can help us use those words even more freely about our own creative pursuits.

Thank you for letting me share this very meaningful art tour with you!

Outsider Art Exhibit: Part I

Earlier this month, I went to the Outsider Art exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, entitled, "Great and Mighty Things:  Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection."

Spectacular.

I didn't think that I would be allowed to take photos inside the exhibition, so I took a picture of this trolley advertisement out front, thinking it would be the only visual I could share with you from my amazing day at the museum.  Incredibly, this is one of the few special exhibits allowing photography!

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Outsider artists are self-taught artists.  They haven't gone to art school and they don't run in professional art circles.  They lie outside the canon of traditional Western art.  In some cases, they use unorthodox materials.  In many cases, their biographies seem to include interpersonal and mental health issues.  Often, they do not seek recognition for their work, but their work has been discovered and valued, sometimes before and sometimes after their deaths.  

An essay by Ann Percy explains:  "...the best outsiders produce work that is, variously, out of the ordinary, edgy, visionary, imaginative, proselytizing, obsessive-compulsive, or popular-culture-driven, often raw or crude in execution but also masterful in color choices and composition."

There were 27 different artists represented in this exhibit, and I'll share six of them with you in this blog post, and a few more in the next.

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"Prayer" by Elijah Pierce, 1966

Elijah Pierce used paint and glitter (love it!) on carved wood for this piece entitled "Prayer", and created his own frame.  He was known for these kinds of colorful carved wood panels, often with biblical scenes, African American figures, and images from American life.  Pierce was a barber and a preacher by trade, and created and displayed his work in his Ohio barbershop.  His works have been described as "sermons in wood."

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"Red Vest With Buttons," by James Castle, 9-1/2"x6", cardboard and string

I am already a huge fan of James Castle's work.  Philadelphia had an exhibit of his work alone a few years ago, and I was enthralled by both his biography and his body of work.

"Abstract Construction," by James Castle, 4-3/4"x5-1/4", found card  and string

Castle was born deaf in 1899, and never acquired language--never speaking, writing, or reading.  And yet he created hundreds of hand-bound books, and incorporated all kinds of text and graphic imagery, making use of food cartons, cigarette packs, matchboxes, envelopes, and other "detritus" as his art materials.  Much is made of his technique for mixing soot and spit, and applying the mixture with sticks to create many of the lines in his pieces.

"Red Dresser," by James Castle, 4-1/4"x5-1/4", cardboard and string, soot and spit stick-applied lines

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"Assemblage of Faces," by Simon Sparrow, 56-1/2"x107"x3-1/2"

This absolutely spectacular mosaic-style piece by Simon Sparrow is created with glitter, paint, plastic figures, shells, jewelry, buttons, beads, and glass (to name just some of the materials!).  Notice that it is 107 inches long; that, according to my weak math, is over five feet long!

The artist also created the wooden frame as an extension of the art inside, a feature of some of his other works as well.

Here is a close-up of some of Sparrow's materials:  shells and beads and plastic figures and glitter, oh my!

Notice the plastic Star Wars figures!

A booklet provided for children attending the exhibit challenges them to find as many faces as they can within Sparrow's assemblage of faces.  In many cases, there are faces WITHIN faces.  It is a fun challenge to try to identify them all.

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"Balance" (54"x18-1/2"x8") "Airplane" (78"x19"x4-1/2"), and "Single Balance" (43-1/4"x6"x6-1/2") from Emery Blagdon's "Healing Machine"

Here are three sections from Emery Blagdon's Healing Machine.  Blagdon used iron, brass, and copper wire for his sculptures, along with materials like aluminum foil, nails, can pop tops, masking tape, and bandages.  Some portions of his healing machine include jars or bundles of different minerals hanging around the space.

Blagdon's mother died of stomach cancer, and his father died of lung cancer, so he spent the last 25 years of his career trying to ward off disease with this creation.  His plan was to channel the earth's electromagnetic energy for its healing powers.  He built more than 600 segments like these three in a shed on the farm where he lived.  Sadly, Blagdon died of cancer himself in 1986.

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Jon Serl spent his early life with his family of traveling vaudevillians.  Themes from that life are evident in his work, including this piece:

"Family Band," by Jon Serl, 43-3/4"x104"

Serl painted mainly with oil on fiberboard.  He is said to have painted every day, creating over 1200 works before his death in 1993.

"Three Figures," by Jon Serl, 82"x50"

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I am going to end my first post about the art show with the Artist Books of Purvis Young.  Several of his books were displayed in a glass case (hence the shadow of my hands holding my iPhone in the picture above!).

Young never went to high school, and spent time in a Florida jail as a young man for breaking and entering.  In jail he began making art, and dedicated his life outside of jail to improving his community.

Young used old library books and magazines for his artist books, and drew or pasted his own imagery over top of them.  Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

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I have several more artists and works of art that I want to share with you, so I will save them for a second post so as to not overwhelm you all at once!

I walked out of this exhibit feeling the same way I did after seeing James Castle's work a few years ago:  honored to have had the opportunity to see this work, and fascinated by the unorthodox lives and styles of all of these people.

Everything in this exhibit appealed to my own personal aesthetic (well, maybe not the chicken bone sculptures right at the entrance, but that's another story!), and I have such respect for the people who created these pieces with such pure intentions--to honor their divine calling, to save the lost, to beautify their communities, to heal the sick and dying, or simply because it was WHO THEY WERE, their very identities.

No other word but "spectacular."

More in my next post.

Art Journal Round Robin: New Pages!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am participating in my first Art Journal Round Robin this year with Janet, Mary, and Danielle.  Our books have now made their way around to every person, and have just begun their second journey to each participants' home.

Most recently, I have had the pleasure of working in Mary's art journal.  I just love the vibrant colors of her book's cover; it has a modern graffiti-style.

I'll take you on a quick tour of its already-amazing pages, and then share the two spreads I contributed before passing it on.

From the book-creator and owner herself, Mary:

You can see her hand-painted papers from the cover on the left side, and Mary's signature pen-and-ink portraits on text pages on the right.

Her next spread incorporates colorful and quirky flowers, and a fun border, which I always think of as "Teesha-style."

Here's another great Mary portrait with graphic elements in the borders.  Now that I've sent the journal on, I'm not sure whether Mary completed three spreads in the journal, or if I have accidentally included a spread of hers from someone else's book.  No matter; it is only our gain to see more examples of her work!

And from Janet:
If you know Janet's work from her blog, then you know that she is a prolific portrait artist, and she shared a signature lady's face in Mary's journal.

I love that swooping hat and those full lips on this flirty lady!

Janet is also great with texture, as evidenced on this second spread in Mary's journal.  I'm not sure if she used modeling paste through a stencil with this, but it makes for a very tactile journal experience!

From Danielle:

Danielle's signature style, I have come to see, includes scrapbooking elements, combined to create art journaling spreads with plenty of positive messages.

Her pages give you lots of fun elements to look at as your eyes move across her spreads.

And now for my contributions to Mary's book:

I have included one black acrylic-painted silhouette in each of our art journals.  I've tried to make sure that each one has been quite different, with its own positive message:  reach for the stars, stretch yourself, believe in yourself.   This time the message is a little different:  "Balance is over-rated.  Enjoy life out of balance."

I can't remember where I heard that quotation, but it has stuck with me like no other!  Whenever I read articles about trying to achieve balance in my life, I always think of this quotation, and it brings me some peace!  (Did I turn that "B" around intentionally, or was it a mistake?? I'll never tell!)

For my second spread, I decided to let the beauty of some of the vintage documents from the Allentown Paper Show speak for themselves, with the addition of a few stickers and borders.  I would be pretty content to glue a document to every page of a book and just flip through the pages, admiring the printed text, handwriting, and graphics.  But that's just me!

Mary's book is looking awesome, and it will make one more round to each of our homes before returning to her so she can check out the final product.  Now for me, it's back to Janet's book for another couple spreads.  An art journal round robin keeps you on your artistic toes!

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I am linking up with Aimee's Glue It Tuesday, so stop by her link list to see what other great glue projects are going on around the country and the world!