outsider art
Mostly photos from an enlightening weeklong stay at The Grateful House in Cedar Bluff, Mississippi. It was a beautiful chance to see another part of Mississippi, and i got a good schooling on the Hill Country & farming/composting/being a good steward of folks & the land. You can learn more about the Grateful House and High Hope Farm here: http://highhopefarm.com/
Lowe Mill gave me the opportunity to do an artist talk for my show Signs & Wonders, and the wonderfully cleaned up interview is now up on youtube. I am not much for talking, much less about my work, so the chance to try and articulate is a little bit like jumping in the deep end with just some floaties on, for me. Really very thankful for all of the hard work Lowe Mill has done and they have made this whole experience just amazing. The youtube video is above, and please subscribe if you are so inclined, as they will continue to add more interviews. There is such a diverse group of artists in this show period and their talks should be up before long. Signs & Wonders is up at Lowe Mill ARTS & Entertainment through January 9th, 2021.
Photos taken around Huntsville, Alabama, with my phone. This was in November when i dropped off my show “Signs & Wonders” and Lowe Mill ARTS & Entertainment.
This small pocket sketchbook was started back before my residency at Azule in 2019. My sketchbook practice usually involves several sketchbooks and journals at once. This particular sketchbook was completed while at Twelve Oaks this year, and served as a sketchbook and journal together, so many ideas surging and bucking at once during that inspirational period. While digging through sketchbooks mining for ideas, i unearthed this one and it seemed like it might be interesting to share it with y’all.
This show was at River Oaks Art Center in Alexandria, Louisiana, from September 4th-26th, 2020. Here is a virtual look at the show for those who couldn’t make it!
8" x 10" mixed media on wood, 2020.
9" x 12" mixed media on wood, 2020.
18" x 24" mixed media on wood, 2020.
10" x 12" mixed media on wood, 2020.
9 3/8" x 9 1/4" mixed media on wood, 2020.
8" x 10" mixed media on wood, 2020.
11" x 12" mixed media on wood, 2020.
14 3/8" x 14" mixed media on wood, 2020.
8" x 10" mixed media on wood, 2020.
9 3/8" x 5 7/8" mixed media on wood, 2020.
4.5" x 4.5" mixed media on wood, 2020.
10" x 12" mixed media on wood, 2020.
15" x 19.5" mixed media on wood, 2020.
15" x 19.5" mixed media on wood, 2020.
15" x 20" mixed media on wood, 2020.
To be uncompromising against a wall of life always asking us to bend or break, a levee of self-possession, never cracking, and never topping her walls. To be uncompromising, like nature in her seasons - summer, winter, they will arrive, they will. Maybe mild but never absent and always moving on.
(This life among people, inside and televised, maybe ain’t right.)
Understanding comes first from other people, and then from experience.
Solitude finds unity.
Does your work show how joyful you are?
A person knowing where to find the ecstatic, but living attic minded instead.
Roughly:
“Experienced something where i was that moment and then i exploded into the cosmos and
i was the bird and the bird was me and,”
i knew - i think - and i really do believe.
“Folks are scared to name Providence, or God, or the Creator” (pointing out we are all creators)
“Nature is the face of God.”
“Providence is neutral.” (To you.)
Out here simply stumbling into awareness. In balance/in Eden. Walk around your mountain, see it all.
“Accept your own authority. It is your story to tell.”
Find the place that you are granted. I went out in the woods and hugged a pine tree the other day. These old oaks have so much warmth in them, and so much strength and stability. These trees have always been around me and with me, and i did really wrap my arms around a scaly brown pine and it stood there, but i believe it must be too old to be embarrassed, and it might be too rooted and loved by Providence to have ever been embarrassed.
When was the last time you had a moment of pure existence.
Thinking then, later, often. Measuring up and measuring down and rounding off. Thinking about ecstasy where it meets humans, and how you aint gonna find it inside a house, probably. So much time taken for granted. Faulkner wrote that we often have exhausted our chance at life before we are done living.
Little bradford pear blossoms coming out one by one and two and three, those grey woods on the side of the path, worn with winter, making a brave and calculated step into spring. You can see by all of this that Providence has been directly under the house and gone out towards the road. She doesn’t ask anything of the oak trees, they have their own time and Providence & the trees both agree. Winter and spring are still holding hands before winter has to return underground, return to Providence’s back to sleep through the summer and dream into the fall.
We saw a tree standing down near the water, an alien plant vining up its trunk, all it’s arms outstretched in praise to the sun and to the season. Sunset, for a moment, prehistoric red and bloody and old, birds calling the same as they been doing for centuries. We can’t picture the woods anymore like they used to be, all swampland and patient. But we can see the sunset every day if we bottle up and go.
The water is often so still. We would have missed its glass, it’s complete mirror, if it weren’t for the pelican, all perfect just about the surface.
Worried all the time, waking up in the sunrise-light in bed, worried - but whatever is strangely scratching on the roof is still on the roof - and i am safe still in bed.
i guess back home i need to be outside more. Those woods never seem to hold as much mystery as Mississippi does. Those woods back home seem threatening with snakes and boars and coyotes, all lingering around in the imagination. As with the water, all of the things i’ve seen in that water keeps me scared.
Here i have temporary pelican wings, holding me just above the gulf of reality.
Back home my wings are stumbly pecan-tree-sitting mockingbirds, easily cat-caught and otherwise plainish.
Maybe i need to go out looking for new wings in the swamp. Could tell you about my wings in the delta, but i can’t claim them yet.
A pelican sunning on his totem, ruffling, bringing me back to Old Fort Bayou and the oaks.
Drove to Ocean Springs in another pouring rain. My truck with it’s own wings through the water and puddles, never failing me and so thankful, over bridges and all of the rivers of the interstate.
The house our warm lantern. Providence out swimming, steadily working, touching all of the roots, one by one, so they might unfurl and blossom in the sun.
She is not thinking of us.
Whenever i leave and go too far it is always strange - fog, rain, holding us in another land and time, patiently guiding us back to Ocean Springs’ loving arms.
Back home in Sunset, for just a moment of time, the rain began at 2 am, after the coyotes went to sleep. Rain pouring, cold, clear. Our fall planted hopeful garden too generous. A fallow field is a sure enough sin, but what is one gone to seed? In that rain and cold and clear, gathering the lettuce, the simple rainy loving pages of the next chapter of life.
We was out in what would seem the turtle hour, but it must have been too cold for their reptilian souls, and instead it appeared we were in the sleepy spider hour, all careless webbing across a clear path.
Out steady wondering in our living dream. We have begun to go down the trail backwards and it seems a dozen more side trails exist again. A black dog follows us in the corner of our vision, lurking. Our possum gone.
The alarm jangling at 5:00 am, no raccoon in sight in the morning dark. But we hear him burrowing next to our bed.
A timid hermit crab, more timid than a turtle, steady unmoving, my phone and Lightnin Hopkins crooning, too much for him to bear.
The sky was mist to mist, land obscured to sea, the beach suddenly more yellow and red, more antique, the ocean more brown and blue, a curtain of dreamery the background. High tide at night, low tide in the morning. Sacred shearwaters keep their secrets. Nature been out here so long you can’t disrupt her patterns. She’ll eventually force her way through.
Well the muse, or Providence, as i believe she must be named, went off walking and swam into Old Fort Bayou and went in under the mud among the painted terrapins and gulf coast box turtles, and all of the creatures she has always know & loved. Same as sisters.
Silent bald eagles and speckled hawks over head.
Providence with her toes sinking in.
We went out looking for her. High tide, low tide, in the morning and out through the night.
The storm obscured her and it got cold and she was sinking down, all of her fine fingers lightning into the bayou causing spring to begin rearing all around.
Providence belongs to no one. Even Walter Anderson meant to keep his island. We are only human.
We hung lights in the trees, and stars all lanterned for us. We worked into the night, hoping we could bring her back inside.
She moves spring and she carries slow winter on her back, a fuzzy and drowsy child. She pulses spring to us but she must uncover it from the muck first. It’s been moiling for so long under that muck.
We saw the pine tree muted and knew we would not see a halcyon day.
Out in the woods waiting for heaven to be realized.
Jellyfish on the beach like old lost souls, slimy sea-suns on shore, dangerous & prickly no more. We poke them with our toes and imagine the sand grit of their land skin and the tangles of their insides. Their skin showing everything within.
Two porpoises, sent perhaps by Providence herself, asking us to stand at the shore and watch. Asking us for patience. They move in no pattern and appear where they will. In the same way the pine tree told us to be patient, today was not our day. Watch, wait. Heaven is all around.
(pelicans on tide totem poles, they know their hour.)
The filtered light, the cloudy light, the rain, the moon, the stars, the morning sun, the mid afternoon sun, these oaks catch every bit of it and i am beginning to believe they must be moving slowly all of the time. Their wooly coats highlight them fine as lines, fine as lightning, living.
He knows his boat rides smooth but the pine already told us to stay home.
We are out closely looking for patterns among the tree’s skins. Hoping that realization also comes from within.
There’s been gospel all through the house. Music quiet in the evening with raccoons scuffling around, maybe on the roof, my heart in my throat at two in the morning. But it’s just age old nature and her daughters, the trees dropping leaves & limbs in the wind, the raccoons and all of their kin out looking to eat. The trees and their canopies covering us at all times, in the pouring rain, where everything gets to be so glistening & bright, and new paths sure enough open up.
we was in New Orleans in November or December. And i was out in the French Quarter, the whole Mississippi river keeping me from home. And looking at those buildings. Tiresome just to get back. Tiresome to walk in all the pastel colors on the dirty pavement, and the tourist music shrouding in the humidity. I looked up with tremendous regret & sadness, that i had lost all of my love & wonder for a place that used to be my only dream.
The oaks here gave me new eyes. Sometimes those eyes come in on my heels, leaves all over the ground. Now in this time, this year, New Orleans echoing all of it’s ever-present love and even the terrifying river bubbling in chorus on the pavement shores. The colors & the light & the sound all vibrant and beautiful & embracing. Ducks and their partners all across the water, canadian geese loud & proud, a heron stretching his neck to croak low down across the river. Pelicans all strange and lizard-like on their piers. The river is high but the land doesn’t seem worried. They reckon they’re all the same.
We are here always at our crossroads, there is left & right, up & down, sky & ground. We are at another crux of winter & spring. Summer seems to still hold us in it’s loving arms. All of the tender green things are bravely curling upwards. Winter and it’s passing hanging down & skeletal, pine diamonds rainy & saturated. Brush washed down with water & tide & calling. All of these paths always opening to us if we are out looking for it. Vivid in the rain, living in the rain, all of these trees an umbrella, forgiving their weather-mother and letting some through down on us, happy and spattering in the water and mud. Trees is blushing with spring.
I was afraid and i am still afraid to lose my sight like i had with New Orleans. To go home and see Louisiana is another harsh shake. To be here at Twelve Oaks sure seems like heaven within all comparisons. The rain carried us back to Mississippi, just like a portal, again. We came through safe and glad. New eyes came to greet me, all the leaves, in the woods, in the rain.
We are here in the quiet resurrection, the restoring of life to death among the plants and animals. It is so silent out here. Birds and squirrels and other creatures quiet in their winter. The rain muted by the trees. The resurrection swelling from beneath our feet, spring is always promised, but before it is spring, it is mighty cold and mirrored, everywhere. All of nature watching and all of nature knowing just when to come through.
Blossoms just as beautiful in their pre-blossoming.
The electricity, all of the power & light, buzzing in the wires. You can hear it from the ground. Tizz-tizz-tizz. Fierce & benign together. Night falls out here, truly stumbling it seems, from the ground up. From the roots up it gets dark, the tops of trees last before the sky. If we aren’t out walking by five we will miss it falling up. Our house answers in the darkness, it’s yellow lights warm & prayerfull, our little beacon in the night woods.
i’m out here watching the pollen move in the way the water moves, but on top of it and quietly. Gunshots ring out in succession acrost the bayou. I don’t know what season it is but i assume it’s feathered. That makes it alright. Pop! Pop! Pop! The camera answers in its own quiet succession; snap-snap-snap. Lighting-timing-different birthing-and that’s alright. Grawk! Grawk! Grawk! A heron croaks nearby. Another, different shot, cracks and thunders in the air, from the road. Pow-wow-wow-wow. Thunder in the air buzzing and answering late into the night, holy-holy-holy. Across the grass and all of the reflections of the sky & gentle trees that have seen all of this before - all of it. And that’s alright.
Falling asleep with the fog crawling up, clouds rolling in from the gulf, that mist on the fine hairs of my arms looking down startling. We are at home here in this house and prayin ground, the mist treating us as a globe and going all around but never to the door. All of the fox holes and turtle holes and snake holes woke up with fog all around, instincts keeping them unworried, to be an animal must be mostly a strange dream. (To have spent so much time in the woods coming up, and pining for it the rest of the time, i can’t name very much and can’t understand how i never set out to know.)
Glad to have the memory of writing-it-down, it makes it almost appear as if time has gone by slower. The mist and fog has been enveloping and slowing. A man with a boat the other day told me about horn island, and said as if it was all clear & simple math - “yes, all of this fog, we are in a holding pattern waiting for the rain to come and break it, break into cold weather.” It feels just like that, a holding pattern. These time here a holding pattern, certainly, an animal dream and the fog is all around.
(Yaupon, a dear friend mentioned that this plant’s leaves are caffeinated and make a fine tea.)
i couldn’t believe when i walked in (let me see if i can start again.)
all of these creatures are here, they leave their tunnel homes, they leave-their-leavings, you can tell. Their homes are dark and deep, pine bedded, muddy, always quiet. You could be staring up at the night sky by staring down into this earth. The tunnels through the grass, the saw grass, the underbrush, the roots. There is a tree here with roots crossed like a dozen hands and the tree (a young water oak) leans impossibly. It is still alive, limbs getting in where they can, this tree ain’t grew how it was supposed to and the other trees have no time now to move. Growing towards the light or storm bent or both. Some of these pine trees have their hips cocked and i wonder why.
These hidden creatures, Lord let me be a hidden creature. A possum at night unworried yet, slow and knowing. An armadillo blind in the day and especially at night among the flood lights. Let people know i lived a little while and somewhere among them but help me from being all seen.
(Tiny pink possum footed and armadillo shelled and hoot-owl-voiced but otherwise gone.)
(seen the storm coming last week. But it already happened. i seen this storm coming all day today. feel so care-free and safety netted we just go out walkin. Its hard to worry much when all your time is in your own hands.) We seen this rain comin. Been tasked with watchin. (took a wrong turn walking on the bridge peering into the fog and wound up back on government.)
the leaves fall as the moths in the light, racing carefully to the ground. Hoping nothing never gets old.
Leigh Anna Newell said the other day that “art is as a faithful friend,” and she is sure enough right on. But it also feels like my whole body. Taken for granted. Ever present. Susceptible to its private kinds of needs. (A faithful friend bound to hollering yowlering if forgotten.)
Seen that black snake in his snake hour, from a distance. We was out past turtle hour and before pelican hour. Couldn’t hardly believe the luck of it, providence placing that snake in the air to be seen. Too coiled up to come back down without careful thought. Perfect and testing the air with his tongue, brave enough to get close but not enough to reach out and feel. But by looking you could guess.
Said it out loud the other day, it feels like i’m in high school again - back then i was driving to Monticello, Florida, or to Thomasville, Georgia, every moment of it breathtaking and heart swelling and so beautiful. It has been a strange thing to feel the chill of, i guess, adrenaline (a word i would volunteer with? anything else) or excitement or, well, shivery love. All of this music, all of this vision, all of these people, too much to bear in all of their shimmering beauty. Ocean Springs, East Beach, Biloxi, Diamondhead, Shearwater, Cat Island, all of the names of these places - thank God!
Hoping to keep new eyes all of the time, small snails all clustered as milky ways, gulfy-salty-blue-gray-days, to see and keep seeing in this new world. It seems on the edge of magic. (Wilbur has his long-leash now, been hooked on cypress knees and sturdy trees but he is always quiet, always watching, star-gazey, mid-day and helps me hope.)
Been out walking on east beach, where Wilbur can run at liberty without me (he is snoring on the couch now), and there was these strange formations, strange like oyster shell buildings but on the flat of the beach. Looked just like rocks - just like lava rocks, porous, scrapey. Put my boot on one of them the other day. Exclaimed out loud. Whoa. It sunk into the sand, because it was sand, too. (humans, all tender humans, too)
The sky was vivid, cerulean, blue, against the next rain cloud. The pine tree patterned up as a warm and crimson brown quilt. Grow how you want to. So much of what we come upon seems so jaw dropping and too purdy to be true. We still sleep at night with no real understanding of all we have seen and said. Been interrupting folks, too, too excited to be polite though that’s still shameful. I know less-than, less-better-than, and please forgive. Life has begun to feel extremely important, extremely rare, extremely flash-in-the-pan. And i guess that means i got to shout out loud at the worst times, all of the time. (shh - like a —-)
We woke up this morning! Hoping to see the fog that carried us down out and through New Orleans to my parent’s house. Thick and terrorsome, like a dream before it turns to a deep water night mare. The last two days all fogged up like maybe they never happened in real human time. We woke up early this morning, hoping for fog. There was no true fog, just a steady and obscuring grey, nothing creeping up and blanketing to the house (yet but still praying.) Wore my boots out, but i been sinking down, ankles and socks attentive to the mess around them that soaks. It’s January. The snakes are all hidden, the mosquitos mostly-quiet, we could be barefoot. We could be barefoot.
A finger-drawn notice on the back of a traveling and hauling truck, sooted, it said winning lottery numbers next week 11 21 2010 etc all of these numbers and all of these words and all of these people, all distilled in the quiet and by the spirits of this house. I don’t want to win no lottery. Done already won.
Galaxies and jewels all around. We woke up this morning! Like i said. Been out through the morning, no fog, just coating, out through the new-mud, through the champagne glasses, through the pearls of rain and dew, another patient dinosaur at our feet among the leaves, their amber eyes perfect. We met a dog and his human, too not-awake to be quiet, interrupting like i said - interrupting their morning. This house is mine, for now, for a moment, but this land has belonged to this man and his dog longer than i could know it.
The thing about the woods is, when you are in it, with your dog, it feels like it belongs to you, and it’s your own quiet no trespassing sign time, and i done trespassed for the fog that weren’t there. We won’t wake up to trespass no more. Every wildlife, every change and shift, like a single gift and sight i have never seen before.
We interrupted and trespassed and dreamed in the morning with no real fog. The alarm started at 6 am. We went back to bed after our 6:50 am walk. Two dreams just like an actual living life, a dog at the windowsill curious, and a strange man peering through once his dog had done. We got up and got out, but it never felt like i was awake til noon. This has been my experience for a few years now - dreams so strange and sometimes terrifying and at the edge of knowing if it were true or false. Dreams so mundane (mundance!) sometimes that its hard to distinguish later what really went on.
( i feel my feet are ruined by just a handful of years in the stables of racehorses - water and rinsing and drying and rinsing and walking) woke up this morning (thats three times now) and knew how to say. Every time i get up to walk around these days i feel like i’m not in my own body, but in my grandmother’s. Her slight and leaning and bending frame, like an old wind whipped pine, hovering over all of her young pines & peoples to help them instead of her own. She seemed as though she was always seeing right. People that see me, despite me and all of the strangeness i have, i smile, and they see her. All of her justice commonplace now. Was never, ever, somehow, still twistingly grangrishly about this fact: never my great grandfather i was named after. He was, his sister, his brothers, these long-and-tall-and-strong-folks. Simple, i guess. Plain-working. Proud? Angry? Strict. Providing. Despite now having and holding his name i am not him, and can’t resemble him, or any of his family, except barely by the truth of blood. I’m his great-granddaughter and i am more Welsh-looking-raised-by-wolves-family. And i never been mad about it. Only pining.)
All of that is to say, i can’t believe you could have read all of this. Thank you. My whole heart a tall person-named, strict & wirey & a thankful body of love. Grandmotherly or modernly. We seen a toad, after all of our meditations. He was hopping, nervous, outside of our reach and strange from our turtle-hours. Patient for photography & thankful for that. All of nature around us is alike, in some way that we do not immediately see (how could we.) Barefoot, amongst the sleeping snakes & syrup mosquitos. Barefoot into the hazy water, gladful for it’s cool-warm ripplings, like maybe if we go out this way in a semi-holy baptism, God will look on and smile, smile, smile.
It turns out the oaks here, in the front, they’re already named. Who? What? Why? When? Hard to tell to know. Faith, Hope, Charity. The storm came through, a couple days late, i can’t tell about mother nature or it’d be a sin. Like making fun of the teacher while they’re teaching. She is all powerful and she is assertive, and she came through. These trees, roots below & limbs above, they encircle us and it is hard to worry, with that knowing. They might be her children from longer than before hurricanes was invented.
so she came through. It rained, there was thunder, i had heard Walter Anderson say thunder rolls holy holy holy. This was more a growl, the way Wilbur grows at folks from the windows, because he feels deep down he should, but he loves everyone, he doesn’t - couldn’t - mean it, really. It were a growl. It weren’t a hymnal nor a psalm, either.
There was no wind to tear our crosses of power lines down. There was no wind to shake our foundations and our sidings and our roof. We always had our power - the lights never shimmered scared. Thankful it werent hurricane season. But the way i love this place i’d lay out on the roof if that meant i could be here somehow, in the peak of a hurricane, hollering and angry as hell.
(the truth is i have holes in my pants and paint on all of my clothes and for as safe as i feel i am always scared)
it seems as if all of nature is here to mirror. in a broader world, you can imagine what that might mean. here, the mirrors in the leaves cup the sky plainly. The water, all around, all secretive about how deep the mud is. Shattered with pine needles, same as champagne glasses. Taking photos, not seeing good yet, not knowing i am in that murk, too.
i am borrowing this computer that i’m typing on and photo editing on. The camera is borrowed. The house is borrowed. All of this time is mine, truly to my soul its mine, but its borrowed, too. Everything looks so fine on this camera, on this computer. Can’t quite tell if it’s just being here, where everything is better and more alive, or if it’s some technology that i won’t ever know, or if it’s rose glasses cuz this fountain of youth water helps the vision and your memory of it all (making everything looks sharp, and well exposed, and intentional, and ultimately, beautiful - in a world so exhausted by beauty)
An illustration from outsider artist Henry Darger. Source: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/the-mysterious-story-of-outsider-artist-henry-darger-the-vivian-girls-of-the-realms-of-the-55476
This is a question i am asked often. Usually, i sort of look slanty-eyed at the person asking it, as though they are saying “are you sure you’re an outsider artist?” Though they never mean it that way - it’s a genuine question. “What is an outsider artist? You’re a folk artist!”
It’s a good question. The answer is sort of a funny one. My definition is someone who doesn’t fit in. That can mean socially, but i mean it more in terms of genre. Where would you put my mules? They’re not part of a movement, they’re not fine art. They don’t fit in neatly anywhere, and as someone said recently, outsider art is “art with an accent.” Love that idea. Art that is distinctly of that person and their own little outside current from the river, making their own art-creek. Upon investigation, i am still probably wrong. Not sure where my mules belong.
But so much for my flourishy folky explanation. There are a lot of terms that can be used almost interchangeably. Folk, naive, outsider, art brut, raw art. All essentially terms to describe someone who is making art outside of the Art World. They don’t necessarily show at galleries, or even show their art to anyone else, or call what they’re making art. These are the definitions but the gist is, outsider art and folk art are nearly the same, and generally refers to people who did not go to school to learn how to draw. There is a BA in art studio to my name, but i don’t think the handful of painting classes i took taught me how to paint - i had never used acrylics before college - and i still ain’t understand them now!
Washday by self-taught artist and Louisianian Clementine Hunter.
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/self-taught-artist-clementine-hunter-painted-bold-hues-southern-life-180970572/
Outsider art:
“Art produced by self-taught artists who are not part of the artistic establishment.
Self-taught or naive art makers with little or no contact with the main stream art world of their institutions. They may exhibit extreme mental states, unconventional ideas or create elaborate fantasy worlds.”
Folk art:
This term is used in European countries to define art made in the context of folk culture; clothes, toys, cookware, jewelry- Mexico’s alebrijes are a good example. More commonly over here, it is used to describe untrained or artists, whose work is shaped by experience and not by formal art training. They may make art with what they have on hand, like Howard Finster - house paint, old wood, car doors, bicycle grease. Algiers, Louisiana, has the Folk Art Zone as maintained by artist Charles Gilliam. He makes art out of wood that has washed up out of the Mississippi river near his house.
Examples include Henry Darger, James Hampton, Annie Hooper, Leonard Knight, Howard Finster, Charles Gilliam, Missionary Mary, CM Laster, Butch Anthony, Clementine Hunter.
A Darger “blengin.” Source: https://theartstack.com/artist/henry-darger/cat-headed-blengin?product_referrer_user_id=429585562
Art Brut or Raw Art:
Art Brut is the French term for outsider art, first coined in 1948. “Work created in solitude and from pure and authentic impulses-where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere.” - Jean Debuffet.
“Raw because it is 'uncooked' or 'unadulterated' by culture. Raw because it is creation in its most direct and uninhibited form. Not only were the works unique and original but their creators were seen to exist outside established culture and society. The purest of Art Brut creators would not consider themselves artists, nor would they even feel that they were producing art at all.” - https://rawvision.com/about/what-is-outsider-art
Examples include: Bill Traylor, Adolf Wolfi
Raw art by Adolf Wolfli work from https://www.wikiart.org/en/adolf-wolfli/untitled
Raw art by Bill Traylor from https://www.moma.org/artists/7464?=undefined&page=1&direction=
Naive Art: “Simple, unaffected and unsophisticated - usually specifically refers to art made by artists with no formal training.” - the Tate.
”The definition of the term, and its "borders" with neighboring terms such as folk art and outsider art, has been a matter of some controversy. Naïve art is a term usually used for the forms of fine art, such as paintings and sculptures, but made by a self-taught artist, while objects with a practical use come under folk art. But this distinction has been disputed. Another term that may be used, especially of paintings and architecture, is "provincial", essentially used for work by artists who had received some conventional training, but whose work unintentionally falls short of metropolitan or court standards.“ - wikipedia.
Artists include: Maria Prymachenko, Grandma Moses, Henri Rousseau, Horace Pippin.
Naive artist Horace Pippin - http://www.myblackhistory.net/Horace_Pippin.htm
Naive artist Maria Prymachenko - https://www.aboavetusarsnova.fi/en/exhibitions/the-fabulous-world-of-maria-prymachenko
This was written back in August, and after a review i suppose y’all can see it. Be interested to know what y’all think. The heck is outsider art anyhow?
There had been a poll at some point, yall had asked for more behind-the-scenes things and in the studio stories.
I am very fortunate to have room for a studio, room where i can close the door and leave it a disaster. Very thankful for my studio practice, and that i also have the two blessings of time and space. Many in-progress photos i do not share in real-time because i have this superstition about eyes on unfinished work. They get to see the light now that they’re all done.
The year started with my dad asking me how many works i had made in 2018. No idea. No way to tell. 2019 began the numbering, which i am faithful to, and May 1st saw painting #200 come to completion. It began with wood sized 6”x6” through 9”x9”, inspired surely due to artist Mariah Hope. I got to know her over the course of my first residency in Ellijay, Georgia. Still thinking about my time there and surprised in the unexpected ways it is still helping me along, many months later.
This work was an exhalation, so many thoughts that had been buzzing transferred onto smaller paintings. Figuring, sorting, fighting. That must have been eighty or so paintings. The next superstition i’ve bared in public already: i always sweep and clean my studio after something feels done - usually a big project or say, eighty smaller paintings.
Wompus cat is usually on hand, or in my lap, if she can manage it. She’s getting older and beginning to spend more time thinking about being outside - her spring days have seen her on the porch, a little nervous about venturing much further out. Despite missing her in my daylight studio hours, she still logs time with me up there at night.
Recently i have moved rooms for where i paint, after sprucing up the walls of the studio in the photos. We live in an old house, no central air or heat, and the room i moved into has a working window unit and working fan. You can imagine how an upstairs room might start to heat up in the humidity of a Louisiana summer.
The new room is bare bones, i have spread everything out on the floor, and i sort of work in a circular motion around the room. There are often two to three paintings going on at once, sometimes more.
Nearing painting #220 so far this year, and working towards 100 mules for Finster Fest, close to 60 mules are in the herd. Been anxious to begin making larger paintings again, one has met completion but the other two are stalled in puzzlement.
Howard Finster
Almighty Mule Movers - 1
There is no way of knowing where the introduction started. He died when i was young. He is a folk art hero, one of those names along with Bill Traylor, Grandma Moses, Clementine Hunter, Henry Darger, John Henry, etc., that folks just know. He is so startlingly his own style, and has made such a mark in folk art, but also in Georgia, that is is strange to think folks do not know who he is. His work is a part of major museum collections and regular folk’s collections. He was out there, lit by his own fire for creation, and lit by God’s word.
So you can google him as easy as me. You might be better off to talk to that aunt or strange neighbor that you used to have, that collected all that weird stuff and had, like, glass globes and concrete animals in their yard. They probably got to see Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden while he was still alive to greet you. Here’s the story they might generally recall to tell you.
He was born in 1916 in Alabama, one of thirteen children. He had his first vision at the age of three, his deceased sister came down from the clouds to declare that he would be a man of visions. He was born again at the age of 13, and commenced to preaching at age 16. He retired in 1965, and in 1976 he got his next big vision. From Paradise Garden Foundation:
“One day I dipped my finger in some white paint and picked it up, and when I picked it up, it formed a face before I ever seen a face, and I turned it around to look and see if I had too much paint and there was two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and everything. A whole face. My finger looked like a face. And there was a feeling just came over me and said, “paint sacred art”. I said “Lord, I can’t paint. I don’t have no education in that”. So I took a dollar bill out of my wallet and started posing on the picture of George Washington. Some kids were around watching me work and that was the first time I felt I was an artist.”
He was told to paint 5,000 works, and by the 1980s he had hit the mark and moved on to the tens of thousands. By the time he passed in 2001, he had done nearly 47,000 paintings. His work is distinctive, it is his own. It is marked by his love and by his style, and deserve an up-close inspection and a faraway read, too. He painted Elvis and Hank, he painted aliens and cows, he painted dinosaurs and angels. This quote fromFinster is a good summation of how i feel about his work, and from the mouth of the man himself, to boot. He is above all, approachable, with more to offer than it might first appear.
“My work has a spirit in it. I write it in a spirit and people read it in a spirit and that’s the spirit that unifies all humans.””
Paradise Garden is still there today. They have an airbnb that allows you to walk the grounds at night and commune with the visions. The foundation that preserves the Garden just received a grant, it will be wonderful to see the space restored. The following are photos from my visit in September 2018. Walking through art environments tells you, if nothing else, that you are totally capable of anything. You just have to begin.
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
Photo by Church Goin Mule, September 2018
He is a character through and through, one i haven’t even fully dived into - delighted to see so many youtube videos with him speaking in them. This is the main one i am familiar with, which should endear him to anyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YweCaFHEZ50
Further reading:
http://paradisegardenfoundation.org
http://www.cnn.com/travel/article/paradise-garden-howard-finster/index.html
https://savingplaces.org/stories/visions-become-reality-paradise-garden-georgia#.XG4DPlVKhaQ
http://institute193.org/walks-to-the-paradise-garden-a-lowdown-s
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5338048?guests=1&adults=1
Like most artists and writers, and folks that like to keep track of time with words and images, i have drawerfuls of sketchbooks. I am mighty bad at planning paintings, and worse at following through. Whenever i get in a rough spot for inspiration, i turn to that drawerful and see what keeps coming up. Those pages get pinned to the wall so i have to look at them and think about them, and hopefully carry them on through. When the painting gets made, and when you get that painting, you get the sketchbook page, too. It’s a full circle thing. It would be strange if the idea got left hanging without it’s fruit. Anyway. Here’s the first of many sketchbook page posts. Excerpts.
Well, i sat down to the typin board yesterday and avoided doing any work by spending an hour looking for a good photo to use. Then i realized i should probably go get my photo made again. Then i ran out of coffee. Then i ran away from the typin board.
Reading books about how to be an artist, how to make the leap, how to become the story, the first step was to always claim yourself an artist. Just say it already. The next was to learn what your limitations are. Well, i didn’t think i was afraid to call myself an artist. And i didn’t think i had any limitations with sharing stories.
Turns out neither of those things are truly true. So maybe once i have that sorted out, i can come back to y’all with the artist’s story. Right now i need to write it.
In the meanwhile, in that passing time, this blog will be there for all those things y’all wanted to know. What’s involved in the process, who and what inspires me, history-stories, poems, studio practice, and sketchbook glimpses. So lookin forward to sharing those that i love with you here. It turns out not every-body knows who Ma Rainey or Walter Anderson are, after all.
Hey friend, take my hand, let’s head down to the crossroads together.
