Folk Art (Fall 1993)

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„ ,

FRANK J. MIELE gallery A PREVIEW OF FALL EXHIBITIONS

Peasant Paintings of China September 7 through October 3 Preview September 9, from 6 to 8 PM

Kathy Jakobsen: My New York October 5 through October 31 Artist Reception and Book-signing October 23, from 11 AM to 4 PIVI

The Wonderful, Whimsical World of Richard Gachot November 2 through November 21 Artist Reception November 6, from 3 to 5 PM

A Folk Art Holiday November 23 through January 2

The Gallery features the work of self-taught American artists of the 20th and 19th centuries.

Tues.-Fri. 11-6, Sat. 10-5, Sun. 12-5 1262 Madison Avenue New York, N.Y. 10128 (212) 876-5775

STEVE MILLER • AMERICAN FOLK ART •

WANTED!" AMERICAN FOLK ART OF THIS QUALITY BEAR ATTACK 15"x 14", pine with original polychrome intact. Last quarter of the 19th century.

Taken from a Currier & Ives print and executed by an unknown American artist.

Literature:American Folk Art,Time-Life Books,page 131,illustrated.

17 East 96th Street, New York, New York 10128 (212) 348-5219 Hours: 2:00 P.M. to 6:00 PM. Tues. through Sat. & By Appointment

AMERICAN PRIMITIVE GALLERY CONTEMPORARY SELF TAUGHT AND ANTIQUE FOLK ART

TERRY TURRELL

4 , 1

„

SEPT 14-OCT 23 "Smiling Head" mixed media on paper 22 x 30 inches

"Looking Out" mixed media on wood 24 x 24 inches

596 BROADWAY, ROOM 205, NEW YORK, NY 10012 • (212) 966-1530 • MON.-SAT. 11-6

Eddie Arning

The Janet Fleisher Gallery will be exhibiting the work of Eddie Arning, October, 1993.

Follow the Children, c. 1965 craypas on paper 22 x 32 inches

Janet Fleisher GALLERY 211 Southl7thStreet PHILADELPHIA 1 9 1 0 3I (215)545.7562/7589

WOODARD WEAVE'

Classic American Woven Rugs. Area rugs and runners in authentic 19thcentury patterns.

Our extensive collection of antique quilts and Americana feels very much at home with WOODARD WEAVE'

Visit our gallery Monday-Saturday, 11a.m.-6 p.m.

Rug catalog available.:

THOS. K. WOODARDI 799 Madison Avenue New York, N.Y. 10021 .

Te1ephone:(212)988-2906 Fax:(212)734-9665

AMERICAN ANTIQUES & QUILTS

FOLK ART VOLUME 18, NUMBER 3/ FALL 1993 (FORMERLY THE CLARION)

Cover: Detail ofTOBACCO STORE FIGURE: TURK;artist unknown; eastern United States; 1870-1900;carved and polychromed wood;77x 28 x 28".

Gift ofMr. and Mrs. Francis S. Andrews.

1982.6.8 Folk Art is published four times a year by the Museum of American Folk Art, 61 West 62nd Street, NY, NY 10023, Tel. 212/977-7170, Fax 212/977-8134. Prior to Fall 1992, Volume 17, Number 3, Folk Art was published as The Clarion. Annual subscription rate for members is included in membership dues. Copies are mailed to all members. Single copy $6.00.

Published and copyright 1993 by the Museum of American Folk Art,61 West 62nd Street, NY, NY 10023. The cover and contents of Folk Art are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any manner without written consent. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the Museum of American Folk Art. Unsolicited manuscripts or photographs should be accompanied by return postage.

Folk Art assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of such materials.

Change of address: Please send both old and new addresses and allow five weeks for change. Advertising: Folk Art accepts advertisements only from advertisers whose reputation is recognized in the trade, but despite the care with which the advertising department screens photographs and texts submitted by its advertisers, it cannot guarantee the unquestionable authenticity of objects or quality of services advertised in its pages or offered for sale by its advertisers, nor can it accept responsibility for misunderstandings that may arise from the purchase or sale of objects or services advertised in its pages. The Museum is dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation offolk art and feels it is a violation of its principles to be involved in or to appear to be involved in the sale of works of art. For this reason, the Museum will not knowingly accept advertisements for Folk Art which illustrate or describe objects that have been exhibited at the Museum within one year of placing an advertisement.

AMERICAN DIVERSITY: SELECTIONS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION Stacy C. Hollander

32

AMERICAN FOLK ART AT THE EVERHART MUSEUM: THE COLLECTION OF JOHN LAW AND RHETTA CHURCH ROBERTSON Barbara Rothermel

38

MOSE TOLLIVER:PICTURE MAKER Lee Kogan

44

THEY TAUGHT THEMSELVES: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROGER RICCO & FRANK MARESCA Jenifer P Borum

53

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR'S COLUMN

6

DIRECTOR'S LETTER

13

MINIATURES

14

MUSEUM NEWS

64

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS

66

BOOK REVIEWS

76

TRUSTEES/DONORS

76

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

88

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 5

EDITOR'S

COLUMN

A

ROSEMARY GABRIEL

s we pasted down our last ad and photo credit and put this issue of Folk Art to bed, I was struck by the lively diversity of images laid out before me, both from our authors and advertisers. It is exciting to know that scholars are working in so many aspects of the field of folk art and dealers are offering collectors a myriad of wonderful objects.

Our opening essay, "American Diversity: Selections from the Permanent Collection," by the Museum's curator, Stacy C. Hollander, announces the inaugural installation of an exhibition of works from the Museum's permanent collection and,in answering the ever-prevalent question "What is American folk art?," gives us a concise introduction to the field. The exhibition will open on October 5 and run continuously. As curator, Hollander will present the objects on a rotating basis, so that return visits to the gallery will offer viewers something fresh to see along with their old favorites. One of the Museum's earliest whirligigs, Standing Sentinel, shown here, will also be part of this exhibition.

"American Folk Art at the Everhart Museum," by its curator, Barbara Rothermel, also illustrates many wonderful examples of traditional American forms. Rothermel's essay highlights the pioneering folk art collecting efforts of Rhetta Church Robertson, one of the Everhart's most generous benefactors, and gives us a glimpse at the Robertson collection as it came to the Everhart in 1946.

"Mose Tolliver: Picture Maker," by Lee Kogan, is the first essay to explore the full range of Tolliver's visual intelligence and extraordinary power. This artist, as a chronicler of the world around him and the fanciful world he creates, resists easy categorization.

Kogan has carefully researched her subject and shares with us her insights into the man's life and work, illustrating her essay with some astonishing images.

STANDING SENTINEL Roger Ricco and Frank Maresca, dealers, collecWHIRLIGIG tors, and authors, have written a third book, American Artist unknown Self-Taught: Paintings and Drawings by Outsider Artists. United States Late 19th century In an interview with Folk Art they openly discuss their Wood, paint, metal, motives, ideas, and ambitions, and offer an illustrated glass eyes preview of their soon-to-be-published work. Our inter40/ 1 4x 5" wide at base viewer, Jenifer Borum, met with Ricco and Maresca in Bequest of Richard Bruce their Tribeca gallery and opened up a discussion that is E. Lacont intimate, lively, and informative.

1989.24.1 After fifteen years of participation, the Museum once again prepares for The Opening Night Benefit Preview of The Fall Antiques Show at the Pier. Be sure to see our special Fall Antiques Show section starting on page 21 for a look at some of the wonderful objects that will be offered by the dealers and for information on the special events planned by the Museum, including an important two-session symposium that will be held on Thursday, October 21, the opening day of the show.

If you are in New York this fall, I hope to see you at our Eva and Morris Feld Gallery or the Fall Antiques Show at the Pier. For those who can't make it, we have tried to bring some of these wonderful objects to you.

,deia,871 4;_ke/ 6 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

FOLK ART

Rosemary Gabriel Editor and Publisher Johnson & Simpson Graphic Designers Tanya Heinrich Production Editor Benjamin J. Boyington Copy Editor Marilyn Brechner Advertising Manager Craftsmen Litho Printers Grid Typographic Services, Inc. Typography MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART

Dr. Robert Bishop, Director 1977-1991 Administration

Gerard C. Wertkin Director Karen S. Schuster Director ofMuseum Operations Joan M. Walsh Controller Mary Ziegler Administrative Assistant Mary Linda Zonana Coordinator, Human Resources Sylvia Sinckler Shop Accountant Jeffrey Grand Senior Accountant Gregory 0. Williams Reception Darren McGill Manager, Mailroom and Maintenance Collections & Exhibitions

Stacy C. Hollander Curator Ann-Marie Reilly Registrar Catherine Fukushima Director ofthe Eva and Morris Feld Gallery at Lincoln Square Pam Cartmel Assistant Gallery Manager Glen St. Jean Weekend Gallery Manager Judith Gluck Steinberg Assistant Registrar/ Coordinator, Traveling Exhibitions Gina Bianco Consulting Conservator Elizabeth V. Warren Consulting Curator Howard Lanser Consulting Exhibition Designer Kenneth R. Bing Security Departments

Beth Bergin Membership Director Marie S. DiManno Director ofMuseum Shops Susan Flamm Public Relations Director Alice J. Hoffman Director ofLicensing Ellen Macdonald Director ofDevelopment Janey Fire Photographic Services Chris Cappiello Membership Associate Katie Cochran Development Associate Maryann Warakomski Assistant Director ofLicensing Edith C. Wise Consulting Librarian Eugene P Sheehy Museum Bibliographer Programs

Barbara W. Cate Director Folk Art Institute Lee Kogan Associate Director Folk Art Institute/Senior Research Fellow Phyllis A. Tepper Registrar; Folk Art Institute/Director, New York State Quilt Project Dr. Marilynn Karp Director; New York University Master's and Ph.D. Program in Folk Art Studies Dr. Judith Reiter Weissman Coordinator New York University Program Cathy Rasmussen Director ofSpecial Projects Arlene Hochman Coordinator Docent Programs Howard P Fertig Chairman, Friends Committee Museum Shop Staff Managers:Dorothy Gargiulo, Caroline Hohenrath, Rita Pollitt; Mail Order: Beverly McCarthy; Coordinator:Diana Robertson; Volunteers: Marie Anderson, Claudia Andrade, Judy Baker, Marilyn Banks, Olive Bates, Catherine Barreto, Marsha Becker, Bienvenido Medina, Michele Cicale, Ann Coppinger, Sally Elfant, Millie Gladstone, Elli Gordon,Inge Graff, Dale Gregory, Lillian Grossman, Edith Gusoff, Bernice Hoffer, Elizabeth Howe, Annette Levande, Arleen Luden, Katie McAuliffe, Nancy Mayer, Theresa Naglack, Pat Pancer, Marie Peluso, Frances Rojack,Phyllis Selnick, Myra Shaskan, Lola Silvergleid, Donna Skule, Maxine Spiegel, Mary Wamsley, Marion Whitley, Eileen Wolff Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shops 62 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10112-1507 212/247-5611 Two Lincoln Square(Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th) New York, NY 10023-6214 212/496-2966

JOEL AND KATE KOPP

AMERICA HURRAH

766 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK NY 10021 tel 212.535.1930 fax 212.249.9718

APPLIQUE QUILT:"THE CENTURY OF PROGRESS" Ohio,c. 1933.84"x 74" The World's Fair, held in Chicago in 1933, celebrated that city's 100th anniversary. The theme and title of the exposition was"The Century of Progress."

Sears Roebuck, headquartered in Chicago, announced a national quilt competition six months prior to the fair's opening with cash prizes to the winners. The contest rules stipulated that a bonus of $200 would be given to the grand national prize winner if the quilt design commemorated the theme of the Century of Progress.

Over 24,000 quilts were entered in the contest, but just a small percentage utilized the Century of Progress theme with original designs pertaining to historical events, advances in science, transportation, etc. In the end, quilts crafted in traditional patterns and designs were the only prize winners.

Unappreciated at the time, pictorial quilts created for this event were some of the most original and inventive quilts made in the Twentieth Century. The example above commemorated advances in aviation and transportation and is among the best of the genre.

Oil on linen. Circa 1860, possibly Brooklyn, New York. 41" x 64'! Signed,lower right: "Marsh Painter!'

The clipper ship New York is shown setting out to sea. D.S. Guile was likely a timber supplier to the ship building trade. Brooklyn City directories in the 1855-1860 period list several sign painters named Marsh.

TRADE SIGN PAINTING:"D.S.GUILE-DEALER IN TIMBER"

766 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK NY 10021 tel 212.535.1930 fax 212.249.9718

AMERIC HURRAH

JOEL AND KATE KOPP

JOEL AND KATE KOPP

AMERICA HURRAH 766 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK NY 10021 tel 212.535.1930 fax 212.249.9718

PORTRAIT OF BENJAMIN BACON Oil on canvas. 421 / 2"x 29'0 Benjamin Bacon was born on August 1, 1853.

He was the son of William and Mary Cooper Bacon who lived in Brownheim, Ohio.

cĂ˜ icio Pk" vie,Go in Y PoPie Joy MOOS GALLERY WORKS OF

ART

Exclusive Representation Colour Catalogue $12 p. pd.

Joy Moos Gallery Inc., 355 NE 59th Terrace Miami, Florida Tel. (305) 754 - 9373 / Fax (305) 757 - 2124

33137

A

RICCO/MARESCA

PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS BY OUTSIDER ARTISTS

Frank Maresca • Roger Ricco With tZli

Lik =word

by L nford

From the editors ofAmerican Primitive and Bill Traylor, His Art —His Life, a new book, 294 pages all in full color by 100 self-taught American artists Published by Alfred A. Knopf, available in October, 1993 93A" x 111/4" • 320 pages • $75.00

152 WOOSTER STREET/NEW YORK, NY 10012/212.780.0071

4 4•1?*<: 40\ <4.

ANTIQUE

DECORATIVE

E

L

AND

FINE

ARTS

CIPEDE

A

wonderfully sculptural VELOCIPEDE, or boy's "hand-propeller." Attributed to Andrew Christian of Maiden Lane, New York City, who patented the Velocipede on September 1, 1868. In realistic "used" condition, this exceptional toy retains its original colorful green and yellow paint with decorative lining. Dimensions: length —21",width —21".

COLWILL•McGEHEE ANTIQUE DECORATIVE AND FINE ARTS ANTIQUES • CONSULTING • APPRAISALS

1106 North Charles Street • Baltimore, Maryland 21201-5506 • Telephone (410)547-8607

LETTER

FROM

THE

DIRECTOR

GERARD C.WERTICIN

hen it came to passion for the field of American folk art or for the Museum she helped establish, Trustee Emerita Adele Earnest had few equals. One of a group of six founding Trustees, she spearheaded the early development of this institution and played a critically important role in the Museum's first exhibitions and the growth of its collections. I first met her in 1979, when I worked on an exhibition of Shaker furniture at the Museum, and I recall being overwhelmed by her perceptive and detailed criticism of the exhibition plan and design when it was submitted to her and other Exhibition Committee members. Her great contributions include two books, The Art ofthe Decoy: American Bird Carvings and Folk Art in America:A Personal View, her reminiscences of her life in the field.

Now in retirement, Mrs. Earnest recently moved from Stony Point, New York, to the state of Washington to be near her son, Gene, and his family. As a result, she and her family arranged for almost twenty cartons of correspondence and other valuable archival materials and a collection of books, catalogs, and journals to be given to the Museum as an important permanent resource for research and study.

For many years, the Museum has been associated symbolically with the wonderful Archangel Gabriel weathervane (c. 1840)given by Mrs. Earnest in 1963. To augment this appealing work of art and other gifts through the years, Mrs. Earnest and her family now have promised an exceptionally important pair of wildfowl decoys, two mergansers from the hand of master carver Lothrop T. Holmes(1824-1899)of Kingston, Massachusetts, which, when the gift is complete, will represent major additions to the Museum's already significant collection of decoys. Wildfowl decoys are also at the center of the research materials donated by the Earnest family, containing, among other important papers, rare and early auction and exhibition catalogs. To Adele Earnest and to her son and daughter-in-law, Gene and Mayo Earnest, the Museum owes a profound debt of gratitude for these highly significant additions to the Museum's collections.

The permanent collection is very much on our minds these days as we prepare for the first regular installation drawn from its resources through the generosity of the late Daniel Cowin and his family and friends. This revolving installation will enable the Museum to bring to the public new acquisitions as well as well-loved favorites. Adele Earnest's mergansers will be featured prominently in the first presentation. Among other recent gifts to the permanent collection are several exceptional quilts, including an important appliqué and pieced cotton and chintz quilt(c. 1810)and a stunning "carpenter's wheel" quilt (c. 1835-1845), both from Pennsylvania and given by Museum Trustee Cyril I. Nelson; a sculpted wooden weathervane in the form of a man with hat and pipe from the Bank's Homestead in Fairfield County, Connecticut(c. 1900), donated by Museum Trustee David Davies; and a fine molded-copper weathervane in the form of a Percheron horse, the

VV

PAIR OF RED•BREASTED MERGANSERS Lothrop T. Holmes Kingston, Massachusetts C. 1860-1870 Painted wood Drake:9% x16 x 6'12" Hen: 9a/2 x 16 x 6'' Promised gift of Adele Earnest

gift of Ralph Esmerian, President of the Museum's Board of Trustees.

Irene Reichert, whose gifts to the Museum were highlighted in this column recently, has very thoughtfully added three beautiful applique quilts from the mid-nineteenth century to the other quilts now gracing the collection in her name. A commemorative quilt honoring Admiral George Dewey was given to the Museum by Janet Gilbert in honor of Marie Griffin, and a mid-nineteenth-century birth and baptismal certificate, with hand-colored ink inscriptions and watercolor decorations by Martin Wetzler, was presented by Jerry and Lillian Grossman.

I am delighted to express the warm thanks of the entire Museum family for these wonderful additions to the permanent collection.

It is with sadness that!record the death of two longtime friends and supporters of the Museum, Aniel Thomsen Hubbell of Kiawah Island, South Carolina, and Arthur M. Bullowa of New York. Mrs. Hubbell very kindly arranged for a generous bequest to the Museum, which I acknowledge with deep appreciation. I am also grateful to Mrs. Hubbell's executor, Robert McNair Burke, for his courtesy and attentiveness. Mr. Bullowa, a Manhattan lawyer and patron of the—arts, was a founding Trustee of the Museum and its first legal advisor.

The Museum of American Folk Art is distinguished by its exceptionally committed and warmly supportive Board of Trustees. The members of the Board bring a variety of strengths and a diversity of talents and experience to their service as Trustees. I am pleased to welcome two new Board members, T. Marshall Hahn, Jr., and David C. Walentas. Mr. Hahn, who has recently retired as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Georgia-Pacific Corporation, is a collector of twentieth-century folk art with a special interest in the artists of the rural South. Mr. Walentas, who served on the Board of the Museum in the early 1980s, is a partner in Two Trees Management Co., a real estate firm in New York City; he is also Chairman of Builders Transport of Camden, South Carolina, and has a varied collection of American folk art that includes many fine examples of Navajo blankets.

This summer is being spent by the Museum staff and Board of Trustees in an intensive series of meetings with architects and planners in an effort to refine the Museum's program requirements for its new building. Every day brings more excitement about the future and more determination to see these critical needs met. I look forward to bringing news of these major developments to you before the end of the year. In the meantime I look forward to seeing many of you at the Museum this season for an exceptionally inviting series of exhibitions and events.

My warm wishes and gratitude to you all.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 13

MINIATURES

PURVIS YOUNG (1943-

) COMPILED BY TANYA HEINRICH

Mocha Pottery and English Slipware at Colonial Williamsburg 1994, includes eighty-five slipware Two exhibitions of antique ceramics are currently on display objects crafted in England from about 1625 to the mid-nineteenth at Colonial Williamsburg. They century and ranging from large indicate how one decorative jugs with incised patterns to cirtechnique can produce two cular dishes with stylized royal remarkably different groups of subjects trailed in bold lines. pottery. "Mocha Mania," at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts This exhibit, curated by Leslie B. Grigsby, is accompanied by her Gallery through March 1994, features 350 examples of mocha- new book, English Slip-Decorated banded refined earthenwares char- Earthenware at Williamsburg.

For more information on acterized by bold graphic patterns "Mocha Mania:' call the DeWitt executed in contrasting colors.

Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery This slip-decorated utilitarian at 804/220-7724; for more inforpottery was popular in America mation on "The Best Is Not Too during the late eighteenth and Good For You: English Slipearly nineteenth centuries and was decorated in quantity in pro- Decorated Earthenware," call the duction line settings. "The Best Is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Center at 804/220-7669.

Not Too Good For You: English Slip-Decorated Earthenware:' at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center through March 18, MOCHA EARTHENWARE Creamware and pearlware

Two Boats to Freedom" housepaint and acrylic on plywood 48's 32, 1988

bases C. 1780-1840 Collection of Jonathan Rickard Courtesy of Colonial

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN OUTSIDER/FOLK ART

Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Va.

Representing David Butler Rev. Howard Finster The Glassman Lee Godie Clementine Hunter O.W. Pappy' Kitchens Sr. Gertrude Morgan Jimmie Lee Sudduth Willie White and many other important Outsider artists Joseph Hollamore Samuel Hollamore Factory Barnstaple, North Devon,

Inscription:"Now lam Corn For To Sur* the Harvis Men When/ They are dray" Collection of Colonial

England

Williamsburg Foundation,

c. 1764

Williamsburg, Va,

, HARVEST JIM

GASPER! GALLERY 320 JULIA STREET- NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130 (504)524-9373

4

Thrown,scriptâ&#x20AC;˘inscribed slipware 2" high 1 14/

14 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

CHARLIE LUCAS

THE NEWSBOY Trade sign for the Pawtucket Record newspaper Artist Unknown Pawtucket, Rhode Island 1888 Carved, assembled, and painted wood with folded tin 42 x 30 n 11" Milwaukee Art Museum from the collection of Michael and Julie Hall

The Michael and Julie Hall Collection at the

Albright-Knox Art Gallery "Common Ground/Uncommon Vision: The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art," which originated at the Milwaukee Art Museum in April 1993, will be on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York,from November 13, 1993, through January 2, 1994. Included in the exhibition, which brings together more than one hundred pieces of American folk art dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, are paintings and drawings, sculpture, religious carvings, whirligigs, ceramics, decoys, toys, walking sticks, and lodge hall paraphernalia. Among the key nineteenthcentury objects is The Newsboy

trade sign of a child worker executed by an unknown Rhode Island artist in 1888.

Accompanying the exhibition is a 336-page catalog featuring the entire Hall collection, an introduction and interviews with Michael and Julie Hall by Russell Bowman, critical essays, and biographies of the artists. After closing at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the exhibition will travel to the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Ariz.; the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Del.; and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Va. For more information, call the Albright-Knox Art Gallery at 716/882-8700.

American Quilt Study Group Seminar Pulitzer Prizeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will be the keynote speaker at the fourteenth annual seminar of the American Quilt Study Group, which will be held October 15 through October 17 in Portland, Maine. Juried papers focusing on the history of quilts, quiltmakers, and related topics will be presented. For more

information send a legal-size SASE(with $0.52 postage) to American Quilt Study Group, 660 Mission Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94105-4007 or call their offices at 415/495-0163.

"Fruit of my Labor" 1993 Sheet steel, welded and brazed, 18"x22".

EPSTEIN/ POWELL Jesse Aaron Rex Clawson Mr. Eddy Roy Ferdinand Victor Joseph Gatto (estate) Lonnie Holley S.L. Jones Lawrence Lcbduska Charlie Lucas Justin McCarthy Old Ironsides Pry Popeye Reed Max Romain Jack Savitsky Clarence Stringfield Mose Tolliver Chief Willey George Williams Luster Willis ...and more

EPSTEIN/POWELL 22 Wooster St., New York, N.Y. 10013

By Appointment(212)226-7316

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 15

MINIATURES

Portraits of Plymouth County "Pride and Prestige: Portraits of Plymouth County, 1750-1850" is currently on display at the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and can be seen in the museum's Lower Hall through February 28, 1994. Twenty-one portraits of historic residents of Plymouth County are displayed with some of the objects that the sitters owned. Artists include Jonathan Trumbull, Joseph Blackburn, Ethan Allen Greenwood, and Jane Stuart, as well as local artists, such as Cephas Thompson

of Middleboro and Bass Otis of Bridgewater.

This exhibition is held in conjunction with portrait tours at the Plymouth Antiquarian Society (508/746-0012) and exhibits of portrait photography at Plymouth Public Library (508/830-4250).

For more information, call the museum at 508/746-1620.

A GENERAL JOHN WINSLOW (1703-1774) Attributed to Joseph Blackburn Probably Boston, Massachusetts C. 1760 011 00 canvas

'Ezekiel's Vision by Charlie Lucas

Metal 92 x 30"

Leon Loard Gallery Exclusive Representative

Charlie Lucas Sculpture and Paintings 2781 Zelda Road Montgomery, AL 36106 1(800)235-6273 in USA 1(800)345-0538 in ALA

16 FALL 1993

FOLK ART

29x 25" Collection of Pilgrim Hall Museum

Flooded Quilt Museum Finds a New Home On July 24, 1993, nearly two years after the unfortunate flooding of its old site, the New England Quilt Museum opened in its new location at 18 Shattuck Street in Lowell, Massachusetts. The new building, formerly the Lowell Institution for Savings, an historic landmark in downtown Lowell, will be converted into a worldclass gallery and information center dedicated to the tradition and art of quilting. Because of its origins as a bank for mill workers, the building will be a living link to quilting's past.

The first exhibition to be held at this new space is "Back

from the Flood," a selection of quilts from the museum's collection. Other exhibitions will run through January 1994, when the museum will close for a few months for remodeling of the interior. The fully refurbished New England Quilt Museum is scheduled to open in April 1994. For more information, contact the New England Quilt Museum, 18 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852,508/452-4207.

JOEL AND KATE KOPP

AMERICA HU } AH

UNTITLED (Bull's head with sunset

766 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK NY 10021 tel 212.535.1930 fax 212.249.9718

and eyes) Minnie Evans c. 1960 Graphite, ink, wax crayon,and collage on paper 11V, x 8/ 1 2" Collection of Dorothea M. Silverman Courtesy Wellington B. Gray Gallery, East Carolina University

Minnie Evans Exhibit "Minnie Evansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Artist," an exhibition presenting sixty paintings and works on paper, will open at Diggs Gallery at WinstonSalem State University in North Carolina on September 11, 1993, and will run through November 6, 1993. Minnie Evans (1892-1987), a visionary and self-taught artist who lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, began drawing at the age of 43. Motivated by exhausting dreams and waking visions, Evans created work that evolved from abstract drawings in graphite, ink,

and crayon to the rich body of lush, color-saturated paintings evoking mandalas and representing the energy of a sophisticated personal mythology. The exhibition, which was organized by and originated at the Wellington B. Gray Gallery at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, is accompanied by a fifty-six-page color catalog edited

by Charles Lovell. For more information, call the Diggs Gallery at 919/750-2458.

Conference on American Material Culture The 1993 Winterthur Conference, to be held on October 8 and 9, will focus on the latest developments in the fast-growing field of American material culture with "American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field." The umbrella of material culture studies now includes a range of subjects, from teacups to landscapes, and that diversity will form the heart of this year's conference. Scholars from universities and museums in the United States, Canada, and England will assemble for six

sessions focusing on the role of the material world in American culture and how people use objects to communicate. Presentations will center on games, maps, furniture, ceramics, clothing, and the environment from early America to the present. For information, call the Advanced Studies Office of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware at 302/888-4649.

NAVAJO PICTORIAL RUG Handspun wool. Circa 1915. 103" x 51': This unusual rug includes a menagerie of highly stylized regional animals including horses, cattle, rams, and possibly dogs.

The inclusion of a camel(second figure from the top) in an antique Navajo rug is unique to our experience.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 17

MINIATURES

Ginger Young Specializing in southern outsider art, pottery, and canes.

By appointment 202-543-0273

Mose Tolliver, Pineapple Lily, 1989, 24" x 24", Housepaint on board

Works by more than four dozen artists, including: Minnie & Garland Adkins Ned Berry Minnie Black Georgia Blizzard Jerry Brown Tubby Brown Richard Burnside Burlon Craig Chuck Crosby Howard Finster Jack Floyd Denzil Goodpaster Lonnie Holley James Harold Jennings

Junior Lewis Woodie Long R.A. Miller Roy Minshew B.F. Perkins Frank Pickle Sarah Rakes "Prophet" Royal Robertson Marie Rogers Q.J. Stephenson Jimmie Lee Sudduth Mose Tolliver Fred Webster George Williams

Jon Ser11894-1993 The master self-taught painter Jon Serl died in his sleep at Lake Elsinore, California, on June 23.

This prolific artist, who created more than 1,200 paintings, remained active throughout his artistic career, which began in 1949, when he lived in San Juan Capistrano. He painted in an imaginative, complex, figurative style, favoring attenuated forms and a varied palette. Serl preferred oil paint as a medium and salvaged materials, such as old boards, Masonite, cardboard, and pressed board, as supports.

Born Joseph Searles in Olean, New York, Serl was also known as Ned Palmer and Jerry Palmer. The artist worked at many jobs—as a singer, dancer, and female impersonator on the vaudeville circuit, as a voice-over and bit actor in Hollywood, and as a waiter, gardener, fruit picker, chuck-wagon chef, and forest ranger—before he devoted himself full-time to artmalcing.

Dr. Susan Larsen, author and curator, wrote in 1988 that Serl was "adept at many things — gardening, cooking, writing, painting, and most of all, survival as a free and independent human being. Serl has had many identities and many faces. Most of us who count him as a fascinating friend know but one facet of his life and personality?'

His first one-person show was at the San Pedro Municipal Art Gallery in 1971; he has also

been represented in other important exhibitions, including "Pioneers in Paradise: Folk and Outsider Artists of the West Coast" (1984), and three exhibitions sponsored by The Museum of American Folk Art: "A Time To Reap"(1985), "Muffled Voices"(1986), and "The Cutting Edge"(1990).

"The Pregnant Virgin," a major painting by Seri, is one of seven paintings by Serl in the Permanent Collection of the Museum of American Folk Art. Serl is included in the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Art and Artists, by Chuck and Jan Rosenak.

—Lee Kogan

For a complete price list send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: Ginger Young PO Box 15417 Washington, DC 20003 Photos and videos of art lent on request. (continued on page 60)

18 FALL 1993

FOLK ART

THE

AMES GALLERY BONNIE GROSSMAN DIRECTOR

2661 Cedar Street Berkeley, California 94708 510/845-4949 • We specialize in exceptional 19th and 20th Century handmade objects. Our extensive inventory includes quilts, carved canes, and tramp art.

• Also naive, outsider, and visionary art.

Ike Morgan, untitled(Two Men), mixed media, L'2".r 26 /2"

r\J

AA1

"ik+I*1441.4

.11P.A&**X4NEFORSPS ti

SAM MY LA ci e S

LYNNE INGRAM SOUTHERN FOLK ART

ioe 19 89

Contemporary art by the self-taught southern hand By appointment • 174 Rick Road • Milford, NJ 08848 • 908-996-4786 • Fax 908-996-4505 Photos available of works by other OUTSIDER/SELF-TAUGHT artists

FALL 1993

FOLK ART 19

A selection ofpropertyfrom the Burton and Helaine Fendelman Collection ofAmerican Folk Art to be offered on October 23, 1993.

ROOMS

WITH

A

VISION

Burton and Helaine Fendelman began collecting nearly thirty years ago to furnish the rooms of their first apartment. Since then, the Fendelmans'extraordinary collection has grown to exemplify their vision and passion for late 18th and early 19th century paint decorated furniture. Sotheby's is pleased to announce that their collection will be featured in our upcoming sale.

THE AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION OF BURTON AND HELAINE FENDELMAN AUCTION: Saturday, October 23, 1993 at 2 p.m.

EXHIBITION: Opens Saturday, October 16, 1993 INQUIRIES: Nancy Druckman at (212) 606-7225, Sotheby's, 1334 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021 Illustrated catalogues are available at our offices and galleries worldwide and through the mail. To order with a credit card, please call (800) 444-3709.

SOTHEBY'S FOUN DED 1744

THE WORLD'S LEADING FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW

The Museum of American Folk Art Salutes 15 Years of Country Living Magazine and the 15th Anniversary of the Fall Antiques Show at the Pier with an Opening Night Benefit Preview, Wednesday, October 20, 1993,from 5:30 to 9:00 p.m. at the Passenger Terminal, Pier 92, Berths 5 and 6 on the Hudson River at West 52nd Street. n the fall of 1979, New York's Mayor Koch proclaimed an "American Folk Art Festival Week," the highlight of which was the Fall Antiques Show Opening Night Benefit Preview, sponsored by the Museum of American Folk Art. Fifteen years later, the Fall Antiques Show remains the premier marketplace for American arts and antiques. Through these years, the Opening Night Benefit Preview has been the principal fundraising effort for the Museum's exhibition and educational programs.

Recognizing the growing enthusiasm for American country THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM; Edward Nicks; Pennsylvania; e. 1847; ell on canvas; antiques, Hearst Magazines launched the premier issue of Country 26x29" Collection of Ralph 0. Esmorian Living magazine that same year. Over the years, Country Living has enjoyed great success and has continued to support the Museum, including its Corporate Sponsorship of the 1993 Fall Antiques Show Preview. In celebration of this joint anniversary, Rachel Newman, Editor-In-Chief of Country Living, graciously agreed to serve as Honorary Chairman of this event.

The Preview invitation, courtesy of graphic designer Ellen Blissman, features a gentle reclining leopard adapted from one of Edward Hicks's Peaceable Kingdom paintings and sets the theme for the evening. Wendy Lehman Lash, Chairman of the Benefit Preview, along with the Advisory Chairmen, Trustees Lucy C. Danziger and Cynthia V. A. Schaffner, envision a harmonious evening in our peaceable kingdom. Topiary tigers and trotting beasts created by Design Chairman Barbara Gallup will grace the forest of spectacular American antiques on view. Beverages will be provided through the generous support of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., along with hors d'oeuvres catered by Creative Edge Parties.

Toasting fifteen glorious years, the Anniversary Chairmen, Karen Schuster, a Cochairman of the first Benefit Preview, and Sanford L. Smith, producer and manager of the Fall Antiques Show since its inception, have organized an Anniversary Committee of former benefit chairmen and friends to help make the Benefit Preview a successful and joyous occasion.

Preview tickets are priced at $750 for Benefactors, $500 for Patrons, $250 for Donors, $150 for Supporters, and $50 for Junior Committee Members. Proceeds benefit the Museum of American Folk Art. To make reservations, contact Katie Cochran at 212/977-7170.

CENTRAL PARK ZOO; Kathy Jakobsen; 1992; oil on canvas; 14 x 26"

Special events include a sale of the painting Central Park Zoo, donated by the artist, Kathy Jakobsen, to be held at the Frank J. Miele Gallery, 1262 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10128. Proceeds of the sale will benefit the Museum of American Folk Art. For inquiries, call Frank Miele at 212/876-5775.

The Folk Art Institute will hold a two-session symposium on Thursday, October 21, in the Mezzanine at Pier 92, Berth 5.(See following page for details.) This symposium was coordinated by Lee Kogan with the assistance of Docent Meg Smeal, and was made possible through the generous support of Master Card International Inc.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 21

Museum of American Folk Art Folk Art Institute Symposium Thursday, October 21,1993 The mezzanine at the Fall Antiques Show at the Pier Pier 92,Berth 5 Hudson River and West 52nd Street New York City

Afternoon Session: 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm New Discoveries in American Folk Art Gerard C. Wertkin, Director, Museum of American Folk Art "Curious Affinities: Masonic Iconography and Shaker Gift Drawings" Stacy C. Hollander, Curator, Museum of American Folk Art "Who Did It? The Prior-Hamblin Dilemma" Elizabeth Warren, Consulting Curator, Museum of American Folk Art "Still More About Quilts: A New Look at the Permanent Collection of the Museum of American Folk Art"

PHOTO CREDI

MY WONDERFUL HUSBAND

Evening Session:6:00 pm to 8:00 pm Collectors and Collecting Avis Berman, Author "Uncommon Women and the Art of the Common Man: The Role of Women in Discovering, Collecting, and Promoting American Folk Art" Betty Ring, Collector and Author "Collecting Girlhood Embroideries: The First One Hundred Years" Charlotte Emans Moore,Author and Curator "In Search of a Romanticized Past: Maxim and Martha Karolik/Edgar and Bernice Garbisch and the Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston"

Carved Figure; elm; circa early 1700s.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, from academic to outsider, from famous to emerging, from 18th century to contemporaryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we have a wide range of works all chosen for their originality and exceptional quality.

MAR!ON HARR!S 101101111111610011.11111"eramewpwas.....,â&#x20AC;&#x201D;,.._-_-__ _ WOODHAVEN,SIMSBURY, CONN.06070

Tr

203-658 9333 Please call for further information. We ship anywhere.

22

FALL 1993

FOLK ART

Symposium Coordinator: Lee Kogan,Associate Director, Folk Art Institute Fees: $15 per session for Museum of American Folk Art members $20 per session for non-members For reservations and information contact the Folk Art Institute at 212/977-7170.

FALL

ANTIQUES

SHOW

he Museum of American Folk Art and participating dealers welcome you with great anticipation to the fifteenth annual Fall Antiques Show at the Pier. The following are just a few examples of the many unusual objects you will find at this year's event. We at Folk Art magazine are enthused by your spirit of collecting and hope this is the year you find that treasure you are seeking.

—TH.

Intensely intricate—LAURA FISHER will be bringing a collection of hooked rugs with dramatic geometric patterns on a condensed scale and kinetic quilts made up of over 10,000 pieces. Shown here is a dazzling RIGHT ANGLES

AO. ...NI -vAO AP, *I 10 AM ....v..COV ". .•, : '' ft1R .°••/; Ai+ vo.

Ale

mo.

.

4111

.411.

PATCHWORK QUILT, C. 1920.

'.

ei—s -..*.-.%.., .. l

, :::,..... .•4.._0....yv ., -Z ;v,e ....d.;iNt iN.;Rs• ...,, .• ,„“. . . ' ...4.....,..,4.. .......3,,,.

L7 ,4: ,7.-,3 ... .... .... 4.0.1r, ....4,-.* ...4. ..e, .0.

,„., lel. .w. --, ..w. .... „

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2.1L.:07, 1 / 1 4 .'.;*.0 %I. ".

-• ,: .

-..7 .

3 I

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... v. ...... N.-

....-1 1•-••• ....p ...i. ,IP

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V, 18 Ne. ,..,

Timely and impressive— BARBARA ISRAEL offers this SLATE SUNDIAL WITH PIERCED BRONZE GNOMON,

inscribed 40° 51

BORAS NON

NUMERO NISI SERENAS, 18" square,

1" deep, c. 1920. Among the many antique garden pieces will be statues, benches, urns, gates, and sconces in cast iron, wrought iron, and stone.

STELLA

RUBIN Fine Antique Quilts and Decorative Arts

12300 Glen Road Potomac, MD 20854 (Near Washington, D.C.) By appointment (301)948-4187 A loyal friend—From

MARNA

ANDERSON, this DOG WEATHERVANE

by Cushing & White, Waltham, Massachusetts, c. 1880,is made of copper with an exceptional verdigris patina, and is 36"long.

It is one of several weathervanes, sculptural materials, and textiles to be featured at the Pier.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART

23

DEALER'S CHOICE

ghe

Dolly's bedtime— KATHRYN offers BERCEAU DE POUPIE IN FIL DE FER, which was made in France in the nineteenth century and measures 20 x 7 x 18".

One of an extensive selection of handmade nineteenth-century French and American doll beds and a complement to her fine collection of traditional quilts and whole cloth bedcovers.

SORENSON

MANHATTAN ART & ANTIQUES CENTER The Nation's Largest and Finest Antiques Center.

Over 100 galleries offering Period Furniture, Jewelry, Silver, Americana, Orientalia, Africana and other Objets d'Art. Open Daily 10:30-6, Sun. 12-6 Convenient Parking • Open to the Public 1050 SECOND AVENUE(AT 56TH ST.) NEW YORK, N.Y. Tel: 212-355-4400 • Fax: 212-355-4403 PRESENTS

LAURA FISHER GALLERY #84

Special form—This 10"-diameter ACOMA POT, C. 1910, will be shown by HARVEY ANTIQUES. Its curve is sensuous, yet it retains its classic, traditional elements.

Harvey Antiques will also be bringing other fine examples of American Indian art to the Pier.

AUNT ELIZA'S STAR pieced quilt, circa 1830,from a superb collection of museum quality, early 19th century chintz quilts.

Antique Quilts Hooked Rugs Coverlets Paisley Shawls Beacon Blankets Vintage Accessories American Folk Art

Monday—Saturday 11 AM-6 PM

Tel: 212-838-2596

24 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

Power and grace—JUDITH a JAMES MILNE will be bringing many exceptional pieces offolk art, including this unique form of a RUNNING HORSE IN CAST IRON. Made in the United States during the nineteenth century, it is 30" high and 23" wide.Judith 8- T....lies Milne ;a spectacuwill also be showi,-, lar swan garden bench.

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW

American Folk Art Sidney Gecker

New York State Blanket Chest. Schoharie County. Rare with the red background. Brilliantly decorated with a basket offlowers, an elaborateflower border, and grain decoration on top and sides. Initialed onfront. Circa 1830. Infine, untouched condition. Length 43'; height 201 / 2'; depth 171 / 2". $9,500.

226 West 21st Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 (212)929-8769 Appointment suggested

MARCY BURNS AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS MIER

P.O. Box 181, Glenside PA 19038 215 576 1559

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 25

DEALER'S CHOICE

A group of early 19th-century carved stone match safes.

Rare and stately—RONALD AND PENNY DIONNE will be bringing this SOLDIER ON HORSE WEATHERVANE, attributed to A. L.Jewell & Company,Waltham, Massachusetts, c. 1850-1867. It is of copper and cast zinc and retains most ofits original gilded surface. 20"long.

Linda & Howard Stein AtThe Lohoska Antique Courte•Route 202 P.O. Box 110Lahaska,PA 189310215-794-7337 Ceremonial art—MARCY BURNS will be featuring this NORTHWEST COAST RAVEN RATTLE, painted wood carving, c. 1890-1900. It would have been used by a Native American shaman. The elongated human figure on his back is about to eat the frog, and on the reverse side is a raven with an adjoining figure that has the unusual element of raised arms and legs.

-qaglio Er Molnar,inc.

GAGLIO • KATHLEEN MOLNAR -GAGLI p BOX 375 • WURTSBORO, NY 12790 •(914) 888-50.,

'RANK

20 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

Two-toned beauty—This fine mid-nineteenth century OAKLEAF AND STARS QUILT, in indigo and beige,features sawtooth borders and is superbly quilted. It is from western Pennsylvania and is one of many in an exciting collection to be shown by STELLA RUBIN.

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW

Harvey Antiques

1231 Chicago Avenue Evanston, Illinois 60202 708.866.6766

Painted tin weathervane L.42''

WALTERS • BENISEK ART & ANTIQUES ONE AMBER LANE • NORTHAMPTON • MASSACHUSETTS • 01060 ( 4 1 3 ) 586 • 3 9 0 9 - ( 2 1 9 ) 5 3 3 • 9 4 1 6 DON WALTERS • MARY BENISEK

Amish Crib Quilt Arthur, Illinois Community C. 1900 Mostly wools; 42"x 35" Intuitive design sense, realized and paralleled in a conscious way by "modern" artists, is celebrated in this masterpiece of Amish textile graphic art.

Specializing in American Folk & Decorative Arts

FALL 1993

FOLK ART

27

Wake-up call—From SIDNEY (DICKER AMERICAN FOLK ART, an

impressive, rare ROOSTER WEATHERVANE, maker unknown. Its old red and gold paint on copper is in fine condition and dates c. 1880.

Walking whimsy—This incredible CARVED CANE offered by ELLIOT m Rum depicts five aspects of Masonic symbolism. Obviously sculpted by a master carver, it dates to the mid-nineteenth century. It is black walnut,stands 36 5/8" tall, and was found recently in Indiana.

Jewel Prancing horse, c. 1852, ht. 29"

>ococ

JUDITH AND JAMES MILNE,INC. Model pose— ARTICULATED HORSE AND RIDER, c. 1890, is one of several unusual artist's models from a California collection to be offered by MARION HARRIS. In addition to the horse, Marion Harris will be bringing several figures ranging from six inches tall to life-size.

Fine Pair of Carved Doves 12" high, 17" wide 19th century—one of many fine pieces that we will be bringing to the Fall Antiques Show.

506 East 74th Street New York, NY 10021 212-472-0107

ARCADE TARGET FIGURE WITH MOON FACE. Also look for some recently

Weekdays 9:30-5:30 and by Appointment }C}C -7,

28 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

Try your luck—AMERICAN PRIMITIVE will be showing a collection of antique utilitarian objects like this rare CAST IRON

acquired colorful gameboards and signs.

(All photos and descriptions have been supplied by the dealers.)

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW

Antique furniture and statuary for your garden.

A young stag in zinc on a rockwork base. Attributed toJ. W Fiske, N.Y , circa 1880.

Barbara.Israel

296 Mt. Holly Rd., Katonah, NY 10536

(914) 232-4271,(212) 249-1377 ART AND ANTIQUES

616 526-2040

ELLIOTT

, 1 cr) 1013

19th century French quilted bedcovers... ...one of the arts of the French bedroom.

Kathryn Berenson Quilts

8

7206 Meadow Lane Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815

By Appointment,301/718-0570 Fax: 301/718-9479

P.O. Box 751

Antique French and American Textiles, Doll Beds and other nice things Sculptural horse and sulky wood carving, c 1920 Northeastern, 22' long and 14' high.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 2IP

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW

f

SANFORD SMITH'S 15TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW at the pier OCTOBER 21-24, 1993 Thursday-Friday 11-9 • Saturday 11-8 • Sunday 11-6

PIER 92 W. 52nd St. 8L The Hudson River PREVIEW• October 20th 5:30-9pm a benefitfor The Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Celebrating 15years ofthe Fall Antiques Show 6.Country Living Magazine INFORMATION: Sanford L. Smith & Associates Ltd 68 East 7th St. NYC 10003 (212) 777-5218 Fax (212) 477-6490 Preview (212) 977-7170

411 w.-1" . .4 Y0 -_04.

'TS • -1(24

FINE AMERICANA Saturday,October 30,1993 at 10 a.m.

Bolton,Massachusetts Previews: October 27,2 to 5 p.m.

October 28,2 to 8 p.m.

October 29,2 to 8 p.m.

October 30,8 to 9:30 a.m.

Illustrated catalogue #1541 availablefir $22.00/$26.00 by mail,price list included For further information, please contact Stephen Fletcher at(508)779-6241.

SKINNER

Auctioneers and Appraisers ofAntiques and Fine Art = ‘ 111yeil= MI. r,

The Heritage On The Garden 63 Park Plaza,Boston,MA 02116 (617)350-5400 FAX:(617)350-5429 357 Main Street,Bolton, MA 01740 (508)779-6241 FAX:(508)779-5144

I/1/10 e E T -- Rare Early Works Available -ALSO... LEROY ALMON • L. W. CRAWFORD CHUCK CROSBY • HOWARD FINSTER LONNIE HOLLEY • CLEMENTINE HUNTER JAMES HAROLD JENNINGS • M. C. "5(" JONES CALVIN LIVINGSTON • WOODIE LONG ANNIE LUCAS • CHARLIE LUCAS • R. A. MILLER B. F. PERKINS • SARAH RAKES JUANITA ROGERS • BERNICE SIMS JIMMIE LEE SUDDUTH • ANNIE TOLLIVER CHARLES TOLLIVER • MOSE TOLLIVER BILL TRAYLOR • DEREK WEBSTER MYRTICE WEST • PAULINE WILLIS "ARTIST CHUCKIE" WILLIAMS MOSE TOLLIVER, Star Flowers. c. 1982 19" x 25"

MARCIA

WEBER/ART

and others

OBJECTS, INC.

3218 LEXINGTON ROAD • MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA 36106 • 205/262.5349 Ongoing Exhibitions By Appointment

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 31

WOMAN IN MULBERRY DRESS Isaac Sheffield Probably New London, Connecticut 1835-1840 Oil on canvas 33/8x 27" Gift of Ann R. Coste 1970.1,1

American STACY C. HOLLANDER

32 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

eginning this fall the Museum of American Folk Art will present the inaugural installation of "American Folk Art from the Permanent Collection: The Daniel Cowin Series." This exhibition, which will introduce some of the major themes, forms, and ideas of American folk art in a lively format, marks the first time in its history that the Museum will devote one of its galleries to the permanent display of artworks from the collection. The series is made possible through a bequest from longtime Museum Trustee Daniel Cowin and the fund established in his memory, to which his many friends have given so generously.

As a museum situated in an urban environment, the Museum of American Folk Art welcomes both national and international visitors who enter the galleries with the anticipation of seeing examples of a broad spectrum of American folk art. By initiating this series, the Museum hopes to respond to that need in a manner that will be both visually exciting and informative, so that visitors will leave with an understanding of the cultural importance of American folk art and a sense of wonder at its many beautiful expressions.

What is American folk art? This question has engaged scholars and museum-goers for decades, generating countless articles, exhibitions, symposia, and other avenues of discussion dedicated solely to answering this deceptively simple question. When the Museum of American Folk Art was founded thirty years ago, ideas about the nature of folk art in America were based on assumptions inherited from the first generation of folk art collectors. Since then, the Museum has been expanding the parochial boundaries of

B

the field by exploring new issues, new material, and new ways of viewing and interpreting the art. The Museum's vision has been ambitious, farreaching, and inclusive, embracing works of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in the areas of painting, sculpture, textiles, and decorative arts; and the public's interest in the Museum's programs has been sustained and gratifying. But still the question persists: What is American folk art?

What are the ties that bind us as a family, a community,or a nation? In a country founded on cultural diversity, what are the commonalities that define the concept of "American"? How are cultural heritage, national identity, and individual creativity reflected in objects and artworks made to answer the physical and spiritual needs of the majority of the population? These are some of the questions that we must address to provide a foundation for understanding American folk art.

The answer to these questions lies partially in an examination of the values we live by and the traditions we transmit, as well as the ways in which we communicate these patterns to others through the material we use in our daily lives. The basis of these values and traditions is often determined by enduring factors such as cultural heritage and religion, but it is also influenced by national feelings of patriotism, exposure to different cultural byways, changing needs, and information imparted through the mass media.

Folk art comprises the many formsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;utilitarian, decorative, recreational, ceremonialâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that have arisen in response to these influences. As a medium of cultural continuity and reinforcement, it is inseparable from the hand that makes it and the purpose it serves in fulfilling or reflecting

Diversi

TOBACCO STORE FIGURE: TURK Artist unknown Eastern United States 1870-1900 Carved and polychromed wood 77 x 28 x 28" Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Francis S. Andrews 1982.6.8

Selections from the Permanent Collection

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 33

ANDREW KOBLER

The Daniel Cowin Permanent Collection Gallery

j.

Daniel Cowin 1921â&#x20AC;&#x201D;/992

ince its founding in 1961, the Museum of American Folk Art has

S

built an impressive permanent collection documenting a multiplicity of folk expressions from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and

twentieth centuries. Although portions of the collection have been exhibited

from time to time through the years in New York and elsewhere in the world, the Museum has been obliged to keep much of the collection in storage.

Objects from the permanent collection will now be displayed on a permanent, rotating basis as the result of a generous bequest by Daniel Cowin, who died on May 26, 1992, and the fund established in his memory.

A gentleman of great grace and dignity, Daniel Cowin was a deeply committed Trustee of the Museum of American Folk Art and a generous supporter of its programs. "American Folk Art from the Permanent Collection: The Daniel Cowin Series," a didactic introduction to the field represented by the Museum's collections, is a tribute to him and to the friends and family

LAP DESK or BIBLE BOX Artist unknown Probably Pennsylvania c.1825 Painted wood 12 x 16Y, x 12" Bequest of Samuel L. Meulendyke 1986.5.3

members whose generous contributions made this highly significant program possible. The Museum acknowledges with warm gratitude the kindness of Daniel's wife, Joyce, who now serves as a Trustee; their children, Andrew, Kenneth, and Dana, and the following donors to the Daniel Cowin Memorial Fund: Mr. and Mrs. Harris J. Ashton, Mrs. Sylvia Josephs Berger, Rhonie and George E Berlinger, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brandt, Jonathan L. Brandt, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick M. Danziger, Mr. and Mrs. Maurits E. Edersheim, Jane M. Eisner, Mrs. Eli Ellis, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Evans, Helaine and Burton M Fendelman, Dr. Frederic Charles Fenig, Steven M. Foote, Mr. and Mrs. Richard B. Fracicman, Mr. and Mrs. David T. Green, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard S. Gruenberg, Jr., Ethel Harper, Barbara and Tommy Hess, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer H. Hess, Jr., Harry A. Jacobs, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. John W. Kadlecik, Mrs. William W Karatz, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Kemper, Hilda Kirby, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Klingenstein, Mr. and Mrs. John Klingenstein, Ruth D. Kobin, Mr. and Mrs. Irving S. Levitt, Nadine and Peter Levy, Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon B. Lubar, the Virginia and Leonard Marx Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie P. Ogden, Ann R. Oliver, Michael M. O'Mara, Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Rickershauser, Jr., William J. Ruane, Berelle K. Samuel, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Schaffner, John V. Smith Inc., Peter L. Smith, Hope G. Solinger, Mrs. Philip H. Steckler, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Strauss, Karel Fierman Wahrsager, and Keith S. Wellin.

34 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

STONEWARE JUG J. & E. Norton Bennington, Vermont 1850-1859 Stoneware with cobalt decoration 13% x 9" diameter Museum of American Folk Art Purchase with funds provided

by Bristol-Myers and Acquisition Fund 1992.8.1

MOURNING PICTURE FOR CAPTAIN MATTHEW PRIOR AND HIS SON BARKER Attributed to Jane Otis Prior Portland or Bath, Maine c. 1815 Watercolor on silk; replaced mat and frame 17/ 1 2021/ 3 4x

1 / 1 2 "

Museum of American Folk Art purchase 1992.25.1

aspects of daily life. And when it serves as a medium of communication, our appreciation of it is enhanced through an understanding of the context in which it was made and the cultural standards of the community in which it was produced. But to be viewed as an artistic expression, American folk art must achieve a level of artistic virtuosity that is often a unique and delicate balance ofform and function, tradition and adaptability, shared aesthetic and individual creativity.

Several of these principles are illustrated in the carved and painted panel by John Perates depicting Saint Matthew. This carving, made in the mid-twentieth century by this Greek immigrant, resonates with its maker's deep religious beliefs and cultural identity, yet reveals the influence of his American environment. Perates was a cabinetmaker in Amphikleia, Delphi, and continued to use his woodworking skills when he emigrated to Portland, Maine, where he eventually founded his own company. Though they were never installed, the religious works that he carved over nearly a forty-year period were intended for use in his local Greek Orthodox church. The carvings combine Perates' native religious and aesthetic heritage with the new visual elements introduced through his participation in his adopted New England community. The use of gold, single-color field, and twodimensionality elevate the image into an otherworldly sphere, highlighting the Christian roots of the Byzantine tradition that Perates draws upon, while the panel construction with acanthus leaf—decorated molding is typical of New England architectural and woodworking traditions.

Through folk art we can come to understand the cultural roots of the people who have come to our shores, the traditions that they remembered and brought with them as they adapted to American life, and the ways in which those traditions were maintained and influenced by the conditions they found here and the other cultures they came into contact with. As part of the everyday lives of people, folk art often reflects the concerns, activities, and priorities of those creating and using the works as well as of the periods in which they were made. Many of the early forms of American folk art retain

the strong European influence of the first colonists. The Hanging Candle Box with pinwheel designs exhibits traits of medieval woodcarved decoration and joining techniques that were in use at the time of the early English immigration to the Connecticut River Valley area, while the Lap Desk with painted and incised compass designs is clearly the product of the Germanic cultures that settled into various areas of Pennsylvania.

Folk art is neither simple nor simplistic. Each work represents a complex set of cultural reflexes and assumptions by the maker about himself and his world. In this sense, folk art speaks in many languages: the language of the specific community to which the artist belongs; the language of the external events and factors that influenced the creation of the work; and the personal language of the artist, his creative voice. These languages often must be decoded for the viewer's deeper appreciation of the art Amish women,for example,learned quiltmaking from their non-Amish neighbors after their arrival in Pennsylvania, but the form was not adopted on a wholesale basis without adaptation to the cultural and religious precepts of the Amish community Because of their religious rules, certain aspects of quiltmaking were rejected or changed,

and an aesthetic particular to the Amish emerged. Even within Amish society, further breakdowns of imagery and color separate their quilt styles into more specific forms: center diamond quilts from Lancaster County; nine-patch patterns from Mifflin County; and more worldly patterns with smaller geometric pieces from the midwestern communities. While these divisions might not be apparent to those outside the Amish community, they form a language immediately understood by its members.

Some folk art imparts information about a family rather than a community. A needlework, or a watercolor on silk or velvet, might communicate a family's prestige and the preparation of its daughter for womanhood, marriage, and the management of her own household. The watercolor on silk attributed to Jane Otis Prior—sister of the wellknown artist William Matthew Prior— indicates her family's ability to send her to a school that offered instruction in genteel accomplishments. The form chosen for this work highlights an awareness of the fashionable trend for mourning art prevalent in the early nineteenth century and conveys the young woman's aesthetic sensibilities.

As a memorial to members of her own family—Matthew and Barker Prior, the artist's father and brother, are com-

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 35

CENTER DIAMOND QUILT Rebecca Fisher Stoltzfus Groffdale region, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania 1903 Pieced wool 77 x 77" Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William B. Wigton 1984.25.1

36 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

memorated in this work—it documents a shattering episode in Jane Prior's young life.

The meanings encoded into folk art are often multileveled and accessible to the viewer only to the extent that he or she shares the creator's frame of reference. The gate in the form of an American flag, for instance—one of the first gifts to the museum's collection—is a celebration of America and American identity, and indicates its maker's participation in the wave of patriotism that swept the country at the time of the centennial. It fulfilled its utilitarian function by being used on a farm in upstate New York, yet also exists as a creative expression, its maker's interpretation of an American emblem. Today, however, the gate stands in a museum as a work of art, and though its original function remains part of its history, our response to it is conditioned by its representation as "art" and is different than it would be if the gate were in its original context.

How is twentieth-century material reconciled to the established criteria of American folk art? Part of the answer lies in changing emphases in

American society and the way those changes are reflected in art. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the transition from a community-based society to a familybased one, and ultimately to a psychological emphasis on the individual. The work of the artists that we traditionally call "folk" was bound to the social, economic, and cultural health and priorities of those communities that they served. Artists were self-taught to the extent that they did not receive extensive academic training, though they may have served apprenticeships with artists and craftsmen. In the twentieth century, as mass-produced items have replaced those that were previously handmade for local use, much of that utilitarian function has been rendered unnecessary, and the emphasis has shifted largely to individual creativity and introspection. While there is no doubt that there is a real difference in the work of the twentieth century and the work that came before, we must continue to apply the same standards and discover the roots that inform this art and its relationship to earlier forms, techniques, and purposes. Does twentieth-century folk art express cultural or traditional ties?

Does the work respond to inspirations of religion, patriotism, documentation? One has only to consider William Hawkins' reflections on the urban landscape of Columbus,Ohio,or Edgar Tolson's religious carvings to answer with a resounding yes.

Part of the Museum's mission is to encourage people to open their eyes and recognize the art that is around them. Because it is such a familiar part of our landscape, the material that we consider folk art is sometimes hidden—we simply no longer see it. It is the Museum's intention that this exhibition will instill a spirited appreciation and deepening recognition of the profound role that folk art has played, and continues to play, both in American cultural history and in our own lives.* Stacy C. Hollander is the Curator of the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art. She is the author of Harry Lieberman: A Journey of Remembrance(Dutton Studio Books, 1991).

She lectures widely onfolk art and has written numerous articles and essaysfor this and other publications.

4

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FALL 1993 FOLK ART 37

American Folk Art at the Everhart Museum The Collection of John Law and Rhetta Church Robertson BARBARA ROTHERMEL

redit is given to the French artists, here in America, and to those artists returning from France for the interest aroused in primitive or folk art. These artists had turned their backs on naturalistic and impressionistic art of the nineteenth century. They began searching for the sources of tradition.... Around 1924 artists searching for choice pieces of silver or cabinet makers' pieces came upon paintings or pictures that struck their fancy. They unearthed a great many pictures, some good, some naive, and some startlingly akin to modern art....Some people thought it was a fad but there were those who saw in the work of this group of folk artists something to be reckoned with....Today the value of these early paintings and sculpture has been established and this value has spread to most of the important museums of America."1 One who immediately appreciated the value of these recently unearthed paintings and sculptures was Rhetta Church Robertson, the author of these words, who, with her husband, John Law Robertson, amassed a distinguished and discerning collection of American folk art. (Mrs. Robertson concentrated on collecting American folk art, while Mr. Robertson, an attorney, compiled an important collection of examples of African and Oceanic arts.)

By the late 1920s, Mrs. Robertson had recognized the inherent quality of American folk paintings and sculpture as well as their importance as vital records of national heritage, and her collection was called one ofthe finest of its kind by the New York Sun. Mrs. Robertson's collection of American folk art first came into public view in 1934

SS FALL 1993 FOLK ART

ci 2 2

'I

The late Isabel Robertson Scott, museum patron and daughter of pioneering folk art collectors John law and Rhetta Church Robertson, at the opening of the Everhart Museum's folk art gallery in 1991. Courtesy Everhart Museum

c. 1860

KEN MEDD

BOOTMAKER'S TRADE FIGURE Artist unknown Polychrome wood with horse hair 403/4 x 32 x 16" Courtesy Everhart Museum

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 39

through an exhibition, known for its handsome arrangement of ninetyseven selected works, at the Everhart Museum.In the foreword to the catalog accompanying the exhibition, John Becker characterized the works as "rang[ing] widely from quaintness and oddity to attainment oftrue artistic integrity For the loss of technical facility their makers, in comparison with their contemporary European brothers, supplemented continual originalityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they were almost never dull."2 Mrs. Robertson continued to build and define her collection, filling her home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with paintings, sculptures, furniture, and utilitarian wares from throughout the Northeast. In 1946, Mrs. Robertson offered a sigMrs. Robertson's collection of American folk art first came into public view in 1934...

nificant portion of the collection to the Everhart Museum as a combination purchase and gift. The agreed price for 128 objects was $15,000. In a letter from the Everhart Museum's collections advisory board to the Board of Trustees, Attorney S. Augustus Davis described the importance of Mrs. Robertson's collections in what he called non-professional terms: "Primitive [American] Art is the art produced by people who haven't gone to school or are not influenced by the way Michelangelo or Rembrandt painted or the way some Greek sculptor posed a figure....Some fellow with a flair for business figured that he could make money by building a merry-go-round and taking it from fair to fair. There was no merry-go-round factory so he had the village carpenter and blacksmith build the frame and machinery. He needed animals for the kids to ride so he got 'Hank Smith' [name invented for anonymous carver by S. Augustus Davis], who was always whittling anyway, to carve him some animals. 'Hank Smith'

40 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

became a sculptorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but probably never realized it. 'Hank' could do a pretty fairjob in making a horse out of wood but the giraffe had to be purely imagination. 'Hank' would probably have been ready to fight if you'd have called him an artist but his giraffe should be preserved to tell of the sculptor who never had a lesson and maybe had never seen a statue and certainly had never seen a giraffe.... This is the kind of stuff that is in the collection. Much of its type has disappeared. Now is the time to collect and preserve the best of what remains."3 Since the acquisition of the Robertson collection in 1946, and subsequent donations from Mrs. Robertson, the Everhart Museum has continued to develop its holdings in American folk art, now one of its most important and popular collections. Important works have also been donated by Charles S. Holman, Jr., the Museum Association of Scranton, Inc., and the Estate of Gladys Connell Jermyn.

Other works from Mrs. Robertson's collection are in the permanent holdings of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum of American Folk Art in Williamsburg, Virginia, giving further credence to the importance of Mrs. Robertson's role as one of the earliest serious collectors of American folk art.

Undoubtedly the most important work of American folk art in the Everhart Museum's collection is a bootmaker's trade figure, which, according to scholar and author Jean Lipman, is dated circa 1860 and was probably made in Pennsylvania.4 This polychrome wood and horsehair shop sign is considered somewhat unusual in that it does not overtly portray the product of the shop owner, but rather suggests that the tradesman catered to the needs of a woman who could afford both a horse and the luxury of a riding outfit. The bootmaker's trade figure has been a popular object in exhibitions around the world, and was on loan to the U.S. Pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, the Whitney Museum of American Art (1974), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1974), the M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum

SHIP'S CHANDLER Artist unknown c. 1850 Polychrome wood 39"tall Courtesy Everhart Museum This store figure is like many found along the Northeastern seaboard. It was given to the Everhart Museum in memory of Rear Admiral George S. Bryan.

KEN MEDD KEN MEDD

SEWING BIRD

BULL

SCRIMSHAW

Artist unknown

Attributed to a prisoner at

Date unknown

Old Newgate Prison,

Artist unknown c. 1828-1835

Polychrome wood, metal,

Newgate,Connecticut

Engraving on sperm whale

velvet

c. 1830

tooth

Wood

7,/2 x 234'

20/ 1 2x 30 x

Courtesy Everhart Museum

Courtesy Everhart Museum

Courtesy Everhart Museum

SCRANTON PHOTO SIC

Inscribed "remember me" 171 / 2' tall

DOWER CHEST Artist unknown Dated 1787 Polychrome wood with metal lock 22/ 1 2x 52 x 22/ 1 2' Courtesy Everhart Museum This painted dower chest is typical of Pennsylvania Dutch artistry.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 41

in San Francisco (1974), the Governor's Mansion of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1979), the Westmoreland Museum of Art (1989), and other museums and university galleries. It began its loan history at The Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949.

The charming portrait of a young girl holding a rose, by an unknown artist, dated circa 1820, is also well-traveled, and was included in a Smithsonian-sponsored exhibition of American folk art that toured Europe in 1954. The carved wooden bull, dated circa 1830, is attributed to a prisoner at the Old Newgate Prison in Newgate, Connecticut. The bull's tail is much longer than is found in nature, but possibly the fellow in jail couldn't "He needed animals for the kids to ride so he got 'Hank Smith', who was always whittling anyway, to carve him some animals."

get a second look at his mode1.5 The freestanding sewing bird of polychrome wood includes bowls for holding sewing notions, metal spool rods for thread, weights for holding textiles, and a velvet pincushion. It bears the carved inscription "remember me," and perhaps was made by a young man for his beloved.

These objects, along with a wooden giraffe carved by the anonymous "Hank Smith" and many others primarily from the distinguished collection of Rhetta Church Robertson, are the nucleus of the Everhart Museum's current installation of American folk art, which opened in January 1991. This installation traces six themes in the tradition of folk art, including recreation and leisure, patriotism and the military, free enterprise and trade, rural life and the farm, home life and the family, and religion and life passages. The exhibition was

42 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

funded in part by Isabel Robertson Scott, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, who throughout her life remained a loyal and generous patron of the Everhart Museum in her own right. Mrs. Scott, who was also a philanthropic supporter of Keystone Junior College, Pennsylvania, and the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, died in May of this year at the age of 83. In her honor, and in honor of the contributions of John Law and Rhetta Church Robertson, the Everhart's folk art gallery has recently been named the Robertson-Scott Gallery of American Folk Art. All museums rely on patronage, both through gifts to the collections and through monetary donations. Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, and their daughter, Mrs.Scott, have given the Everhart Museum a wonderful legacy of American folk art, the art of the people and of the nation, in a collection which remains one ofthe finest ofits kind.* Barbara Rothermel is currently Chief Curator ofthe Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She earned her B.A. in art and cultural historyfrom Hood College and a Master ofLiberal Studies(museum emphasis)from the University ofOklahoma, and has done further graduate study in art history at the State University ofNew York. Ms. Rothermel has taught and lectured widely on a variety ofart history topics, including her specialization, the arts ofaboriginal Australia.

NOTES 1 Mrs. John Law Robertson, "Afterthought," Early American Folk Art: The Collection ofMrs. John Law Robertson (Scranton, Pa.: Everhart Museum, 1934).

2 John Becker, "Foreword," Early American Folk Art: The Collection of Mrs. John Law Robertson (Scranton, Pa.: Everhart Museum, 1934).

3 S. Augustus Davis, Attorney and Counselor-at-Law, Letter to the Everhart Museum Board of Trustees, January 24, 1946.

4 Jean Lipman and Alice Winchester, The Flowering ofAmerican Folk Art, 1776-1876(New York: The Viking Press in cooperation with The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974), p. 160.

5 S. Augustus Davis, Attorney and Counselor-at-Law, op. cit.

GIRAFFE CARROUSEL FIGURE Artist unknown c. 1840 Carved wood with paint remnants 49½x 32' Courtesy Everhart Museum This carrousel giraffe was referred to by S. Augustus Davis as being made by the anonymous"Hank Smith."

GIRL WITH STYLIZED ROSE Artist unknown C. 1820 Oil on canvas 30% x 20N" Courtesy Everhart Museum

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 43

44 FALL 1993

FOLK ART

frican-American contributions to American life and culture have been diverse and in several fields have been acknowledged and thoroughly documented. Recognition of self-taught AfricanAmericans' unique contributions in the visual arts, which has long been overdue, has come only in the last decade or so. The Montgomery, Alabama, artist Mose Tolliver is one of those who have been so recognized.

The vitality of Tolliver's life and art must be examined in the broad context of the African-American experience, which began when masses of people were uprooted from their homeland, sold into slavery, and dispersed through a middle passage to the Caribbean Islands, South America,and the United States. The Civil Rights movement triggered a radical change in the African-American experience. With the beginning of a breakdown in traditional social and cultural barriers among a group which continues to be deprived, but which is no longer ignored, there has simultaneously been a remarkable flowering of visual expression and a wider recognition ofthis expression by the public and the "art establishment."

On a personal level, Tolliver's creativity reflects a triumph of the human spirit. His life of hardship took a devastating turn for the worse in the late 1960s when he suffered a work-related accident that seriously damaged his leg muscles and tendons, severely impairing his mobility.

Rather than sinking into paralyzing despair, Tolliver, after a period marked by alcoholism and depression, sought solace, strength, and renewed vigor in the full-time pursuit of painting.

Tolliver's lively images exemplify the type of folk expression that the curator and author Holger Cahill described as going "straight to the fundamentals of art, rhythm, design, balance, [a n d] pro-

A

UNTITLED

On a flat surface, the thick-

1981

ness of the form suggests a

Tempera on wood

bulging, plump figure actively

17 x 34%"

pressing at the sides of the

National Museum of American

support.

portions which the folk artist feels instinctively." "The work of the best of them:' he wrote, "has a directness, a unity and a power which one does not always find in the works of the standard masters."2 Tolliver has been greeting visitors in his modest home in Montgomery, Alabama, for more than fifteen years. The sociable artist is a hero in his conservative community. His pictures hang on the walls of neighborhood homes and have won the admiration of townsfolk as well as artists, collectors, dealers, and museum professionals nationwide. Tolliver is considered an important contemporary southern African-American self-taught painter and his reputation has risen steadily with exhibitions of his artwork: "Full Spectrum," conceived by Michigan Art Train, Detroit, Michigan (1978);"Transmitters: The Isolate Artist in America," Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1981); "Mose T," his first solo exhibition at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama (1981-1982); and "Black Folic Art in America (1930-1980)," Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.(1982-1983).3 Tolliver's art resists simple categorization. Informed by the world around him (his southern experience and his use of local materials and subjects), he works as a folk painter, often creating in the workshop tradition; and his art is that of a spirited picture maker who has developed a distinct vocabulary ofform.It can also be demonstrated that his oeuvre reflects his African roots.

To explore the full range of this artist's visual intelligence and extraordinary power, one might begin with an examination of the subtle African resonance in his work, its subject matter and techniques. The African associations are generic, not specific. Nothing Tolliver says betrays a conscious belief in or knowledge of African religion or culture, in which animalsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibiansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;play a major role, yet Tolliver often uses Africa-specific animal images in his work. Although birds and amphibians are indigenous to the rural South and local references must be considered sources of inspiration, it seems more than mere coincidence that these animals are significant in the mythology, folk tales, and culture of western Africa to which African-Americans trace their roots.

Birds and bird staffs (walking sticks with carved bird-head tops or bird images)are associated with Osanyin, god of herbal medicine among the Yoruba people of Nigeria, and these objects represent a metaphoric seat of power. "The persistent equation of bird with head, as the seat of power and personal destiny, is ofthe essence in comprehending elaborations of this fundamental metaphor."4 The bird seems naturally to hint at transcendence and freedom.

Tolliver's hard life, MICHAEL FISCHER

Art, Smithsonian Institution Gift of Estelle E. Friedman

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 41

ME AND WILLIE MAE

turally transmitted African

1987

references. The artist claims

Housepaint on wood

that the birds and the "dis-

300 24"

played" figures in the back-

William Arnett Collection

ground are nothing more than pictures on the wall.

The birds over the heads of the two figures suggest strong cul-

46 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

GRII I I,

e*,

UNTITLED Late 1970s

looking at this painting. It

Housepaint on wooden gun

begins,"A man had a wife and

rack (Originally, dried turkey

a whole passle of young'uns

feet dangled on a string from the upper center of the rack.)

23% x 24'

and they didn't have nothin' to eat.... He went hunting wid his gun....He knowed he didn't

Anton Haardt Collection

have but one load of ammuni-

Zora Neale Hurston's "A Tall

tion....All of a sudden he spied some wild turkeys settin'

Story" comes to mind when

up in a tree on a limb...."

UNTITLED

This painting is one of the

Figures and Birds

most spatially complex and hauntingly beautiful corn-

Mid-1970s Housepaint on plywood

positions this artist has

23% x 337/8"

undertaken. The overlapping,

Milwaukee Art Museum

lyrically curvaceous forms featuring an ice-blue foreground

Michael and Julie Hall Collection

tree are balanced by the dark, womblike, curvy interior peopled by small, dark figures.

compounded by his physical handicap, would surely make the bird—with its freedom to fly—a favorite subject.(Tolliver's remark "Birds go fast, flowers slow" is not a profound prophetic or philosophical statement but the artist's pragmatic way oflooking at things with humor; he observes that his bird paintings sell quickly—much faster than his flower paintings.5)His sensitivity to the anatomy of birds and his ability to endow them with personalities—from sweet and humorous to fierce—suggests an innate correspondence with nature related to possible syncretized African traditions in which animals possess human traits.

Because the snake sheds its skin throughout its life, it has had both mysterious and immortal qualities attributed to it, and therefore is symbolically important in many cultures.6 In western African art, snakes are carved in relief on wood, painted on flat wall surfaces, worked into jewelry design and other metal forms,and depicted in textile design.

According to William Ferris, Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at The University of Mississippi, the snake is the most common image in African-American folk art.7 Tolliver's use of the snake motif in the 1980s seems more consciously inspired by the Bill Traylor work he saw at the 1982 Corcoran exhibition, including that reproduced as the cover for the exhibition's catalog, than by these cultural traditions. But the persistent repetition and variation on the snake subject, combined with depictions of the "terl" (turtle) hint at African "retentions"(or cultural sources).

Long before he began to paint, Tolliver used tree and plant roots in his artmaking. Tolliver could decorate roots at no cost, and may have been drawn to them by his heritage.

Roots endowed with spiritual power are linked to Kongo (western African)beliefs8;in Kongo myth,the spirit Funza, distributor of minkisi (charms), was himself twisted in a root. The trees planted at gravesites "signify the spirit; their mots literally journey to the other world."9 The spiritual power in roots inspired the sculptures of both Bessie Harvey and the late Ralph Griffin; Tolliver's use of roots may link him to these other contemporary self-taught AfricanAmerican artists. Two painted roots are evidence of Tolliver's early attempts to apply color to the plant. He blended several colors together, displaying a penchant for the "wet on wet" technique, a process using very few basic colors that, when skillfully applied, yields a myriad ofgently semiblended color tones.

Tolliver often enlivens his work with a dotting technique reminiscent of African and African-Atlantic painted embellishments on sculpture, wall painting, house facades, shrines, and body decoration, especially among the Yoruba and Kongo peoples. Dotting as an important decorative element can also be found in the works of the contemporary folk artists David Butler, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Johnnie Swearingen.

The likely African origin of this dotting technique is further reinforced by a western African EpalElefon—type headdress, in which, according to Henry John Drewel, an art historian at the University of Wisconsin, "colored dots and circles, usually white, on darkened wood masses, when seen at dusk performances, create ephemeral images that reinforce spirituality as they minimize mass."8:1In another Epal Elefon example, multicolored dots and circles enliven a plain

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 47

surface, dynamically transforming the sculptural object during performance."Professor Robert Farris Thompson,a Yale University art historian, agrees that dotting may have roots in Africa and links to Caribbean culture, and suggests that the dotting technique may relate to mediation, a way of communicating with the spirits at "points of power," the "grand boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead."12 The decorative dotting in Tolliver's turtle and bird paintings and in an early work depicting a hunting scene simultaneously releases kinetic energy and functions as a skillful, perhaps socially significant, camouflage. The dots add a vibrancy that makes the forms pulsate. In the hunting scene, the dots are rather small, but in later works they are larger and rhythmically juxtaposed for a more dramatic, lively effect.

Although Tolliver is unaware of his precise AfricanAtlantic lineage, the similarity of his works' subject matters, techniques, and styles to the works of other AfricanAmerican artists operating in isolation from each other strongly suggests a common source.

Early memories of Tolliver's farm life in the rural South are illustrated in three ofhis paintings: Cotton, 714rkey Shoot (executed on a wooden gun rack), and Windmill Pumping Oil on Pike Road. The artist's move from the farm to the city is depicted in several paintings: a family portrait called Me and Willie Mae, Saturday Night Dance, and the schematic Schoolhouse, a portrayal of a building across the street from Tolliver's home. World events are also documented. The cutaway compositional scheme of Tolliver's Freedom Bus reveals a striking absence of passengers, recalling the 1956 Rosa Parks incident that led to the significant yearlong Montgomery bus boycott, which Tolliver says he found personally painful. While the gravity ofthe event is underscored, Tolliver slyly allows the bus's racing wheels to take on an animated and almost giddy life of their own, suggesting the spirit of survival so aptly expressed by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in his "We Shall Overcome" speech.

Although Tolliver is not a churchgoing Christian, religion, an essential part of southern culture, nonetheless resonates in some of his paintings. Good Time Jivin', a portrait of Adam and Eve, Black Jesus, a "crusell" (crucifix) picture, and an untitled picture that suggests Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden all draw on biblical themes.

The conjuring aspects of folk religion are suggested in Moodooja Indian and Devil Man,in which animal bones are attached to the African Toma maskâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;like face.

Anna Robertson(Grandma) Moses and the contemporary artists Eddie Arning and William Hawkins have used popular material to stoke their imaginations; likewise, Tolliver finds inspiration in similar material. Using periodicals, books, and pictures found or brought to him, he transforms images in a singular, personal styleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a dollar bill inspired his George Washington; a transfer-printed china plate in his home inspired Mary and the Bible; a picture postcard sent

by Anton Haardt, a Montgomery friend, was the source of the Statue ofLiberty; an exhibition poster from Nall Hollis, an Alabaman artist living in France, moved him to create his Nall Lady;and a colored anatomical drawing brought by yet another friend and patron, Annie Laurie Gunter, inspired

41 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

Mose Tolliver 1991

his Skeleton Man (also called Dry-Bone Charlie).

Dr. Robert Bishop, the late Director of the Museum of American Folk Art, who first visited Tolliver in 1978, recalled seeing art books around Tolliver's house. Techniques ofthe Masters, by Hereward Lester Cook, Curator of Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, or the exhibition catalog Pablo Picasso, by Alfred Barr, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, may have inspired Tolliver's charming early painting Petrus Manach. Manach, who had been painted by Picasso in a work influenced by Van Gogh, was Picasso's first art dealer. Both the book and the catalog have color illustrations ofthe early Picasso painting; each of Tolliver's two known renderings of Manach are pared-down versions of the Picasso painting that retain the essential mustache and red tie.

Ancient Egypt, a Time-Life book Tolliver retrieved from a trash pile, was the unlikely source for some of his paintings.13 This book's picture of Ka,God of the Dead,the Egyptian spirit of the Soul, was the source for Tolliver's favorite female image: the erotically "displayed" female.14 Tolliver transformed the god's thrusting vertical arms into legs for his celebratory variation ofthe original "displayed" woman. The artist called this, at various times, Moose Lay, Oyster Girl, Lady on an Exercise Rack, and Girl on a Tricycle. In an earlier version, the legs were short and curved. Both forms continue to interest the artist as he continues to paint this favorite subject.

Existing dwelling on the Rittenour property off Route 231, Pike Road area outside Montgomery, Alabama. This house or one like it fits description of Tolliver's

ELIOT ELISOFON

earliest home.

Raymond McLendon, an amateur painter and one of Tolliver's employers, encouraged the artist to take up painting after his accident.

The Mythical Ka, the Immortal spirit said to dwell in every man, is depicted here with arms upraised and a goddess standing on its head."

National Museum of African Art, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives Smithsonian Institution

It is likely that southern folklore—collected tales, beliefs, and superstitions—especially that dealing with metamorphosis, animism, conjuration, and magic, is a rich source for Tolliver. Southern African-American belief in metamorphosis and animism may be relics of African days.

The Yoruba people,for example, believed that humans could change into animals and other natural objects, such as trees, rocks, and shrubs.15 These beliefs may shed light on some of Tolliver's subjects: his undulating, embracing trees; his Prince Owl—Half Man Half Owl;16 his Ants Lady, who is half woman—half creature; and his half horse—half man combination. The rich southern oral tradition and popular culture are reflected in the witty titles of Tolliver paintings, and the variations of these titles are reminiscent of the improvisation associated with southern folk tales and music. The artist's sense of humor and fun are expressed in his Good Time Jivin', a depiction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.17 Other Tolliver paintings have the peppy names Jitterbug Sally, Scooby Dooby,18 Dynaflow Lady, and Hello Heaven, Goodbye Hell, all of which sound a bit like popular song titles. Light may be shed on some of Mose's slangy titles if they are considered in the context of regional slang. Jig-Jack Lady, which seems to refer to a prostitute, is one of Tolliver's repeatedly used titles and relates to "jig-jig," which means copulation; and "moose," as in Moose Lady, is slang for a young girl.

Both academic and folk artists often create in the

workshop tradition, whereby families and/or others participate in creating a single work of art. One may recall the Skillen family carvers of the nineteenth century and the Finster and Meaders families of this century. Several Tolliver family members and friends have created with Mose.

The communal effort does not necessarily diminish the artist's credibility or power;it merely explains some pictures that are puzzling for their unusual combined elements and stylistic dissonances, and makes Tolliver scholarship difficult. The several Foxdog paintings signed by Mose in the late 1980s, for example, seem actually to be the work of his daughter, Annie Tolliver.

In recent years, Tolliver family members have been encouraged to nurture their own talents and to sign their own paintings.19 Tolliver's children, Annie, Charles, and Jimmy, who worked with Mose alongside his deceased wife, Willie Mae, and others, are now painting on their own. A painting of a Madonna-like subject, Chinese Indian appears to be mostly the work of Mose; the decorative painterly brushstroke dabs seem to be Mose's work, but the figure's tapered hands seem to have been painted by someone else.

Tolliver's personal aesthetic sensibility includes "going into" paintings by others and then signing the work with his own name. He enjoys these "paint-ins" and approaches them with a special flair. He embellishes paintings, photographs, and prints brought to him: a bird or two here, a figure or flower there. Painting over photographs, old

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 49

television tubes, and other recycled material was especially common in his early works. Sometimes, as in a portrait of Willie Mae done over a photograph, the result is striking.

This collaborative method has been encouraged by, among others, the young Cincinnati artist Andrew Van Sickle, who has done several paintings with Tolliver. Mose has also "gone into" paintings with the contemporary selftaught artists R. A. Miller (of Georgia) and Calvin Livingston (of Alabama).

Tolliver's paintings also lend themselves to formal analysis. An intuitive painter, Tolliver creates variations of simple, repeated images with very few colors. His wellbalanced sinewy linear rhythms,color harmonies, and staccato brushstrokes, which he uses to depict trees, flowers, birds, turtles, snakes, sheep, cows, horses, vehicles, and a myriad of people both real and imagined, are executed in a lively musical language. His spartan color palette creates intriguing shades that interact subtly. His "wet on wet" technique results in a huge spectrum of color tonalities derived from only a few original hues. Since the 1970s, his palette has alternated between closely related color harmonies and sharply contrasting ones. Dr. Mitchell Kahan, Director of the Akron Art Museum and curator of "Mose T"(1981), the first one-person exhibition of Tolliver's art, describes this varied palette in the catalog accompanying that exhibition.

Early experimentation involved both very thick and thin application of color. Color preferences varied, and his early choices may have been influenced by paints that were brought to him by others. Light pinks and bluesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;bedroom colors â&#x20AC;&#x201D;may have been brought to him by friends and neighbors on completion ofhousehold paintjobs. But Tolliver also favored a bright palette of vibrant colors: saturated bright red, yellow, and orange.

Tolliver generally fills the ground surface with only a few elements. Forms rarely overlap. The picture surface occupies the foreground plane. Simultaneous perspective, often showing interiors(ofhouses, buses, and airplanes)in a cutaway scheme, a method of visual description also used

by Bill Traylor and other folk artists, is common. Figures are strongly frontal, and in iconic stances, with large rounded heads and tiny hands and feet. There is frontal placement of the eye even in profiles.

He readily admits that he enjoys painting erotic subjects, especially the Moose Lady. According to Newton, Massachusetts, psychoanalyst Mark E Poster, Tolliver, ... through his child-like forms, expresses adult desires. This playful presentation celebrates sexuality without shame or aggression. If beauty is ultimately derived from sexual interest, its appreciation is often accomplished by repressing the connection. While Freud shocked Victorian society with his discovery of childhood sexuality, and Mapplethorpe scandalized segments of contemporary society with graphic depiction of adult sexuality, Tolliver pleases with child-like images. He creates a joyful and nonthreatening experience by helping us to feel more open and free in our pleasure-seeking.20 Although folk art is a conservative form that changes more slowly than its academic counterpart, Tolliver's art has

50 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

HOOTIN OWL TOTIN' STICKS IN HIS MOUTH TO BUILD HIS NEST 1987 Housepaint on wood 23/ 1 4x 18" William Arnett Collection

MARY AND THE BIBLE 1988 Housepaint on wood / 2" 241 / 2x 181 William Arnett Collection

ASKING FOR FOOD FOR HER AND HER 6 MONTH OLD BABY

MARTI GRIFFIN

WORRIED LADY TRAVELING THROUGH THE JUNGLE

OVER IN NORTH AFRICA 1988 Housepaint on wood 31/ 3 4 x 14" William Arnett Collection

not remained static. While his pictorial expression has been consistent, his subject matter has broadened to include some remarkable abstractions—variations on images as diverse as George Washington and the Virgin Mary. His materials—paints (he prefers housepaint, which he calls "pure" paint), brushes, supports, hangers—have also changed. He has made the transition from the slower-drying oils to water-based paint. He now uses soda can pull tabs attached to the backs of his paintings for hanging, rather than the twine, dental floss, and lamp cord of an earlier period. Less reliant on others than in the early years, Tolliver now makes his own color choices—he orders his paintsfrom a local paint store. In the mid-1980s Tolliver began signing his paintings using ink and, later, Magic Marker. His signature appears in several forms, including "MOSE T," "MOSE,""M.T.," and "ESOM."(The "S" always appears reversed.)

Born Mose or Moses Ernest Tolliver, July 4, 1921,21 to tenant farmers Ike and Laney Tolliver22 on Charles Rit-

tenour's land in the Pike Road community southeast of Montgomery, Alabama,23 Tolliver was one of twelve children. He remembers that his parents' house was "just a shack, but my mama had pictures all over the walls."24 Tolliver attended school until he was eight or nine, when he moved to nearby Macedonia, where he worked for Frank Holt, owner of a Montgomery dry-cleaning business and operator of a small Macedonia truck farm.25 Running low on funds, the Tolliver family became part of the large southern urban migration, moving to Montgomery in the thirties to a house on Sternfield Alley, a street that later became part of Interstate 85.26 Tolliver, who loved to garden, helped to support himself and his mother by caring for local people's yards and flower beds; he also earned money doing general maintenance chores—painting house interiors and exteriors and doing some carpentry and simple plumbing.

In the early forties, he married a longtime friend, Willie Mae Thomas of Ramer, Alabama, in a ceremony held at the nearby South Union Street Baptist Church. Soon after his wedding, he spent only a few months in the Army, managing to bring about his own discharge so that he could return to his wife. He fathered thirteen children, eleven of whom are still alive. To support his large family, Tolliver did mostly unskilled maintenance work; he admits that taking care of his family has always been a struggle.

Over a twenty-five-year period, Tolliver worked intermittently for the Carlton McLendon family, at first doing yardwork and household chores and later working in the shipping and delivery section of McLendon's Furniture Company. It was at that job in the late sixties that a thousand-pound crate of marble fell from a forklift driven

by Lucian Garner and landed on Tolliver. As a result, Tolliver was left unable to walk without crutches, and he was forced to stop working. After more than a year of severe low spirits, Tolliver saw some works painted by Raymond McLendon, Carlton's brother and shop manager. Watching the amateur painter at work, Tolliver thought,"He done it, I can do it, too." McLendon offered to pay for art lessons, but Tolliver declined and began to paint on his own. Tolliver admits that he finds painting rehabilitative. "I paint to keep my head together."22 Willie Mae Tolliver died in 1991; this was another stunning tragedy in the artist's life, but he appears to have recovered and currently seems to be in good health and spirits, busy with orders and visitors. Chet Goldstein, owner of the Campus Collection, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has used several Tolliver designs on the T-shirts he manufactures; Mose collects royalties on each shirt sold. Deck The Walls, a frame and print shop in a Montgomery shopping mall, also features Tolliver artwork, for which there is a steady demand.

Tolliver family artwork also appears annually at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts, a three-day folk festival in Northport, Alabama. Auction galleries, too, have created a market for Tolliver paintings. An important Tolliver work from the Robert Bishop collection was sold at Sotheby's in January 1990. Garth's, Wolf's, Skinner's, and Litchfield Gallery have also attempted to market Tolliver works. Tolliver's paintings have already found a place in the collections ofthe following national institutions: the Museum of American

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 51

Folk Art, the National Museum of American Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum,the Montgomery Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the High Museum,the Akron Art Museum,and,since1992, the New York State Historical Association.

The increased commercial activity and huge demand for folk paintings has caused great concern among folk art scholars —there is fear that excessive demand leads to repetition, the deterioration of quality, and the artist's response to marketplace taste rather than his own. While these concerns are justified, one should remember the long historic precedent for folk artisan painters, especially among the itinerant portrait painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who considered their work (portrait "likenesses") part of a business enterprise, not primarily an artistic expression. The commercial aspect does not necessarily lead to poor quality; in fact, in some cases, it encourages an artist to focus on quality. However,the interaction of artist and patron does, undeniably, alter an artist's creative output and affect him and his artwork both positively and negatively.

Tolliver fiercely protects his freedom of choice. For the most part, he remains unspoiled by all the activity, publicity, and monetary success. When he is feeling well, he continues to paint, on average, six to ten pictures per day (the typical output of his earlier years) while seated at the side of his bed and using his personally fashioned brushes and "pure" paint. Some of his production paintings may well seem less inspired than others, but overall, he is a solid artist who has painted some contemporary masterpieces and still occasionally paints remarkable pictures. His communication through his art and his distinctive personality bring great pleasure to him and his audience of patrons and friends.* Lee Kogan is Associate Director of the Folk Art Institute and Senior Research Fellow of the Museum of American Folk Art. She is curator of "Mose Tolliver: Picture Maker," an exhibition being planned by the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art. Kogan was Senior Research Consultant of the Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists,

by Chuck and Jan Rosenak, and is Coordinator of theforthcoming exhibition "Thornton Dial: Image ofthe Tiger" NOTES 1 Holger Cahill, American Folk Sculpture(Newark, N.J.: The Newark Museum, 1931), p. 13.

2 Holger Cahill, "Introduction," American Primitives(Newark, N.J.: The Newark Museum, 1930), p. 13.

3 Of the twenty artists included in this seminal exhibition, only three—David Butler, Mose Tolliver, and George Williams—are still alive. Of the three, only 'Tolliver and Williams are presently involved in artmaking.

4 Robert Farris Thompson, Flash ofthe Spirit: AfricanAmerican Art and Philosophy(New York: Vintage Books, 1984), p. 45.

5 Recounted in a telephone conversation with Randall Morris, October 1988.

6 Geoffrey Parrinder, Library ofthe World's Myths and Legends: African Mythology(New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1987), p. 24.

7 William Ferris, "Black Art: Making The Picture From Memory," Black Art—Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art(Dallas, Tex.: Dallas Museum of Art, 1989), p. 80.

52 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

8 Thompson, op. cit., p. 131.

9 'bid, pp. 138-139. Also see Robert Farris Thompson, The Four Moments ofthe Sun (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1981), pp. 186-193, for discussion of the emblematic tree.

10 Henry John Drewel, African Artistry—Technique and Aesthetics in Yoruba Sculpture (Atlanta, Ga.: The High Museum of Art, 1980), p. 89.

11 Ibid., p. 17. Professor Drewel refers to an illustrated article by Marsha Vander Heyden,"The Epa Mask and Ceremony," in African Arts, 10(2):14-21, 1977.

12 Robert Farris Thompson, interviewed by Lee Kogan (Yale University, New Haven, Conn.), May 30, 1989.

13 Lionel Casson, ed., Great Ages ofMan—A History ofthe World's Cultures: Ancient Egypt(New York: Time-Life Books, 1965, 1970), p. 81. Tolliver discussed this source with the collector Bill Arnett in 1986. The artist added that the more horizontal variation of the "displayed" woman was his own idea.

14 The representation of a woman with her legs spread apart has historic roots dating back thousands of years. Examples have been noted in many diverse cultures as early as the Neolithic period, 7th millenium B.C. This author is currently researching the "displayed" female in historic and contemporary art.

15 Niles Newbell Puckett, a southern folklore scholar, in Folk Beliefs ofthe Southern Negro(New York: Negro Universities Press, 1925), p. 148. Puckett quotes A.B. Ellis, Yoruba Speaking People, 1894.

16 'bid, pp. 205-206. According to Puckett, conjuration and voodoo are significant in southern African-American culture. The hoodoo, or root doctor, practices powerful folk medicine and can transform himself into different forms. He cites a narrative collected in 1900 about Shadrach, a hoodoo who is strong enough to transform himself into a screech owl by shedding his skin. According to the story, the devil frequently borrowed Shadrach's skin.

17 The popular source for this painting was an exhibition poster illustrating a wooden sulpture by the Kentucky carver Carl MacKenzie.

18 Scooby Doo was a dog in a nationally syndicated television cartoon of the 1970s, popular during Mose Tolliver's early period.

19 Previously, paintings created by family members and friends sometimes bore Mose Tolliver's signature.

20 Personal note from Mark E Poster, M.D., to author, dated December 21, 1991.

21 In a personal interview with Lee Kogan, December 7, 1991, at the Montgomery residence of Susie Tolliver, the artist's sister, born August 12, 1917, Susie claimed that her brother Mose is four years younger than she.

22 The 13th Census of the United States(1910—Montgomery County, Precinct 12, Porters, vol. 86 107 sheet 1, #15)lists Mose Tolliver's parents, Ike(55)and Laney (28), and several of his older siblings: Estelle (7), Arthur(4), Josh (3), and Amile (2). Unfortunately, neither the Tolliver family nor Charles Rittenour, the man who owned the land they lived on, could be found in the 1920 census.

23 Montgomery County, Alabama, map from Records in Montgomery County Probate Office compiled by Alabama Relief Administration, 1936 Project SF 4-96. Courtesy State of Alabama Department of Archives and History. Property 26 in the Pike Road community was owned by C.W. Rittenour, precisely as Mose recollected.

24 Mose Tolliver, interviewed by Lee Kogan(490 Sayre Street, Montgomery, Alabama), August 7, 1992.

25 Frank Holt was listed in Pollc's Montgomery Directory, 1926, with a business address in downtown Montgomery and a residence on Woodley Road, Macedonia.

26 Polk's Montgomery City Directory, 1937, lists Ike and Laney Tolliver living on Sternfield Alley.

27 Mose Tolliver, interviewed by Lee Kogan (490 Sayre Street, Montgomery, Alabama), July 27, 1991.

TWO BLUE DOGS Ray Hamilton 1989 Ink, ballpoint pen, and watercolor on paper 15 x 35" Collection of Lanford Wilson

They Taught Themselves An Interview with Roger Ricco & Frank Maresca JENIFER P. BORUM

Gallerists Roger Ricco and Frank Maresca are partners in more than just art dealing. In addition to running a gallery thatfeatures a variety ofself-taught artists, they have published three books together: American Primitive: Discoveries in

n these days of urban irony and deep cynicism, with so many artists painting out of the side of their mouths, it was a deep sense of relief to come across a group of painters who believed in something and laid it down uncensored. I realize that this work, as lightly as it can possibly be presented, will come crashing down on the heads of a lot of people who thought they knew what art

Folk Sculpture (Knopf, 1988); Bill Traylor: His Life and Work(Knopf, 1991); and their most recent study, American Self-Taught: Paintings and Drawings by Outsider Artists (Knopf, 1993). Featuring aforeword by the playwright Lanford Wilson (whose text has been excerpted here), this 320-page book presents 294full-color reproductions ofpaintings by one hundred artists. I interviewed the team of Ricco and Maresca on a hot summer day in their Tribeca gallery.

—J.P.B.

was. I thought I knew, was pretty cocky about it in fact, and it slapped me(as mother would say)into next Sunday. It's a mystery why it has been so little known for so long. When writers for the trade journals and papers have found time to witness this work, they have received it well. More and more these artists are being represented in our museums. Many painters, always ahead of everyone, have known this work, been deeply influenced by it, as is obvious, and collected it for years. Actually just now it's rather hot. God save us from the oblivion of fashion—the last thing anyone wants is for self-taught art to become the flavor. As you have probably gathered by now,I'm a fanatic. Still, being very level-headed, I know this book will introduce many new artists that will become very important to many new people. I'm happy to help you make their acquaintance.

—Lanford Wilson Excerpted from Lanford Wilson's foreword to American Self:Taught:Paintings and Drawings by Outsider Artists, with permission from Alfred A. Knopf,Inc. Copyright 1993 by Frank Maresca/Roger Ricco.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 53

MOTHER'S DAY 0.W.(Puppy) Kitchens 1973 Oil on board 181/2 x u1 / 4" BlumertiFioreCollection

UNTITLED John "J.B." Murry 1985-1986 Tempera on paper 28 x 22" Museum of American Folk Art Gift of Elizabeth Ross Johnson 1985.35.20

Folk Art: Yourfirst book, American Primitive: Discoveries in Folk Sculpture, announced your eclectic taste. The same is true of American Self-Taught: Paintings and Drawings by Outsider Artists. Would you comment on the relationship ofthe latter to theformer? Are they both part of your aesthetic vision?

Frank Maresca: All we've done, really, is build upon that which other people, like Bert Hemphill, began. American Primitive was never meant to be an encyclopedia; it is a collection of threedimensional works that we believe are important for various reasons.

American Self-Taught is, loosely speaking, a companion volume which focuses on two-dimensional work—it is also not encyclopedic, but rather a collection of works that reflects our personal vision and our vision as a gallery. Our aesthetic is bordered on one side by design, and on the other, maybe, by mystery, magic, power.

FA:In your new book you include a number ofartists who have become known to the public as "outsiders." Why do you prefer the term "self-taught"?

54 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

FM: Well, again, we are building upon what we like to consider a solid foundation, and the name is really taken from Sydney Janis's book They Taught Themselves [1942]. There is a foreword in that book that was written by Alfred Barr, the former director of the Museum of Modern Art, and if you read that piece, you will find that nothing has changed. People are still wrestling with definitions, with labels. There seems to be a definite need to place everything in a nice, neat, little box, but this type of art doesn't lend itself to nice, neat, little boxes. There is not one name that is totally correct to define the entire field, but if there has to be one name, it would seem that "self-taught" is the most correct in most instances.

Roger Ricco: I would like to add that these two books are very similar, but the times in which they were published are very different.

When American Primitive came out in 1988, very little had been published on the type of work we featured in it—tin cutouts by David Butler, carvings by Raymond Coins, anonymous weathervanes, and so on. We knew the work was there, we put it in print, and then we had to give

it a name, and not everybody agreed. When it came to American Self-Taught, there were many more years of public knowledge and acceptance of this field. But again, a name had to be sought.

FA:Do youfeel, then, that "selftaught" is the term leastfraught with baggage?

FM:I think it is the most correct in that you're not making any sort of value judgment of the person who created the work.

FA: Many ofthe artists that you show in your gallery and that you included in your new book are known, to put it bluntly, to be on the psychological edge —visionary or psychotic. Yet the term "self-taught" downplays the visionary, extreme characteristics ofthis art. Would you like to comment on this?

FM:It's really very simple. We place the art into three categories.

Folk art generally comes out of a tradition. "Outsider," or, as the Europeans call it, art brut—the art of the insane, according to Dubuffet—refers to people who have produced an entire body of

work within an institution, or people who live and function so far outside the mainstream of society that they warrant a separate category. Then there is "self-taught," which is the most encompassing of these terms. It is often the case that an artist who is defined as "self-taught" may very well have aspects of folk, and aspects of outsider, in the work. Surely they don't have to be purely self-taught, as in the case of David Butler or William Hawkins, people who drew upon their African-American heritage;[in these cases] you have to say that you have a tradition there. But at the same time, they are completely different from someone like Martin Ramirez, who was institutionalized, and whose imagery relied on his Mexican heritage. But in general, when we talk about someone who is self-taught, we are talking about someone who is operating without any prior knowledge of art history, totally non-art-historical.

FA: Who are yourfavorite artists?

FM: Our favorite artists are contained in the book.

RR: We made no attempt to be fair in terms of showing as much as we could of what is going on out there. The editing really had to

THE CIRCUS ACT Ellis Ruley c. 1940-1950 011 00 cardboard 27 x 21" Collection of Sini Von Reiss

SELF PORTRAIT WITH CHICKENS Jimmie Lee Sudduth 1988 Mud and paint on wood 31/ 1 4 x 24" Collection of Louanne LaRoche

do with [such questions as] Do we like the work? Is his or her work important? Is his or her work consistent? In other words, are these really great artists? These are the ones we like. And people will disagree with us.

FA: What responses to American Self-Taught, negative or positive, do you anticipate?

FM: We were interested in bringing something to the public that they have not already had their fill of. We have one Horace Pippin in the book, and I'm sure some will say, "Why are there not six Horace Pippins in the book? You have six David Butlers. Certainly Horace Pippin is far superior to David Butler!" We are not saying one is more important than the other; we're not making that judgment call. A lot has been said and written and published on Pippin.

We're interested in breaking new ground, bringing new images to light, rather than taking up a lot of page space with information that is already contained in other books. The whole world knows Grandma Moses, so what's the point? How many volumes are out just on her work?

FA: This book includes a wide range ofartists,from traditional, well-known self-taught artists like Morris Hirshfiekl and Bill Traylor, to relative unknowns such as Ray Hamilton and Freddie Brice. What is the one thing that these artists have in common?

FM: Excellence.

FA:Do youfeel that some in the field will disagree with you?

FM: Yes. FA:In that case, do youfeel that you've taken a risk?

RR: It doesn't really seem like we've done anything unusual; this is just what we do.

FM:In a sense, you can say that this is art without risk. The artists who have created the work really have no concept that they are taking a risk. Artists with a knowledge of the art continuum know that they might be taking risks by going outside the norm.

RR:That is what links these [selftaught] artists, no matter what their psychological situation.

That's the connecting link.

FM: An artist's worst enemy is fear. And this is art that is produced without fear. None of these

people are saying to themselves, "Am I good enough?"

FA:So that is what the category "self-taught" is all about?

FM: That's what it's all about.

RR:Most artists begin by trying to make art, whereas I think these other people make pictures and things, without the sense that they are necessarily making art. Now I don't mean that William Hawkins didn't think that he was making something beautiful, but he didn't necessarily see it as art.

FM:It's purely a form of communication. That's what all of this boils down to; either you're making wallpaper, which doesn't communicate a lot, or you're making something that communicates a thought or emotion to another human being. I think it falls into these two very distinct categories.

FA: Why did you choose Lanford Wilson, a playwright, to write the introduction to this book, instead ofan art historian or a known figure in thefield?

FM:It was because of Lanford's feeling for the work, rather than his knowledge of it. He is exactly in keeping with the spirit of the book, and the way in which we put it together. Lanford happens to be particularly good at writing about feelings.

FA:So many self-taught/outsider artists who have becomefamous, such as Adolf Wolfii, Heinrich A. Muller, the Postman Cheval, and the Gugging artists, are European. European outsiders dominated last year's "Parallel Visions" exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum. Why have youfocused on American artists in this book, and in your other books as well?

FM: Because there is less information on the American artists, as you have implied.[When you talk about] European outsider art, you're talking about a field that goes back to the Prinzhorn collection, which dates to the beginning of this century. The American cousin is a much younger child, and after all, we are here, and there seems to be more of a need for information in the American sector.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 55

UNTITLED (Pentecostal Church) Artist Unknown c. 1950-1.955 Fabric dye on cotton sheet

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RR:This doesn't mean that we are disinterested in the Europeans.

FA:Are you planning other books for thefuture, and ifso, will you stay with American artists, or will you bring in Europeans?

FM: Without being terribly specific, I can say that we do have other book projects in the works, and that it is entirely conceivable that one or more of those projects will span the oceans.

FA:As we have already established, your books are primarily visual documents, and your mode ofexpression lies in your curatorial/editorial choices. Therefore, the works must speak for themselves. What is your decision-making process in selecting artists and works to includefor publication?

RR: Well, first, we choose artists because they have proved themselves to us over a period of time, and second, because they complement each other on the page.

FM:Certainly there were works that we wanted to include, but we knew in advance that they would

55 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

cSPE&AEN Kw

be difficult to reproduce,juxtaposed next to each other. We have always had to compromise.

We view each book we do as if it were a film. If an image doesn't work with the rest, then your film doesn't hold together, it jumps. We try to hold it together.

RR: As with a film, the reader is engaged in a period of time, in looking at the book from beginning to end. There is a power in these images. We are trying to suspend time; that's what we're trying to do. The criticism will be there if you're looking for something different than what we've done.

FA: Who did you intend to be the audiencefor your new book?

FM: This is probably, for us, the most important aspect of the whole thing. It's what I like to call "crossover?' I would hope that the book will be recognized by the contemporary art establishment. I hate the fact that these are two separate fields—self-taught/folk and contemporary. I would like to

see the two merge. And it's starting to happen. Self-taught art has always provided an inspiration to mainstream artists. I don't think that there has necessarily been a desire to keep it a secret. But maybe protecting sources has contributed to this separation—artists aren't always terribly anxious to say, "Hey! This is what I've been looking at!" And often the reference or source material is stronger than the work that is derivative.

FA:Do youfeel, then, that selftaught art implicitly challenges the very edifice of mainstream modern and contemporary art?

FM: It really challenges everything. Not only does it throw things into question, it throws things into chaos.

FA: Who else belongs to your audience?

FM: The book is really intended for two different groups of people: people who are aware of the work, currently committed to the field, and people who are completely unaware that this work exists. We hope that people will open up the book and ask,"Where has this been?" We want to educate through presentation. All we ask is that you look at it.*

Jenifer P Borum lives in New York, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the City University ofNew York's Graduate Center. She has writtenfor Folk Art magazine (Winter 1992193, pp. 59-60; "LAracine in Context: Collection de 'Art Brut and the Outsider Archive")and is a regular contributor to Artforum magazine.

American Self-Taught: Paintings and Drawings by Outsider Artists, by Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, with a foreword by Lanford Wilson (Knopf,1993), can be purchased at the Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop or ordered by mail through the Museum's offices at 61 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023,for $75.00, plus $6.00 shipping and handling. Add applicable New York state tax.

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Nellie (1900-1982) Mae Rowe Collection includes: J.B. Murray, Howard Finster, David Butler, Sam Doyle, Clementine Hunter, Mary T. Smith, Jimmy Sudduth, James "Son" Thomas, Royal Robertson, James Harold Jennings, Mose Tolliver, Lonnie Holley, B.F. Perkins, Luster Willis, Raymond Coins, Charlie Lucas, Junior Lewis, William Dawson, Leroy Almon, Sr., M.C. 50 Jones, "Artist Chuckle" Williams, Ike Morgan, Herbert Singleton, Burgess Dulaney, Dwight Mackintosh, Sarah Rakes, S.L. Jones, Rhinestone Cowboy and others.

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FALL 1993 FOLK ART

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20 YEARS OF COLLECTING MOSE TOLLIVER

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MINIATURES

CHUCK ROSENAK

(continuedfrom page 18)

Zebedee("LB.")Armstrong,Jr. 191.1-1993

SO FALL 1993 FOLK ART

Tom Wells, a local dealer and folk art collector.

Armstrong is included in the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Encyclopedia of TwentiethCentury American Folk Art and Artists, by Chuck and Jan Rosenak. Examples selected from his six hundred works have been exhibited at the High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; The Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina; and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Pennsylvania.

He will be included in the exhibition "Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present" at the New Orleans Museum of Art, which opens in October.

—Lee Kogan

CHARLES LOCKS

Zebedee("Z.B.") Armstrong, of Thomson, Georgia, creator of patterned calendars and containers, died on March 31, after a two-year nursing home stay. He was 81 years old.

Armstrong's compulsive tracking of time was linked to a vision he had in 1972 in which an angel predicted the end of the world. Some of his calendars, painted and lettered on a variety of flat and three-dimensional reclaimed or constructed objects, are clocklike, with movable hands attached to their faces. Characteristic of Armstrong's assemblages is a painted white base coat with grid lines, which he called "taping," applied in black, red, and blue magic marker to create segmented shapes over all the surfaces.

The artist was raised in McDuffie County, Georgia, and worked on a farm picking cotton.

After his wife's death in 1969, he was employed by the Thomson Box factory, where he remained until his retirement in 1982, when his art became his full-time interest. His work was discovered by

James Henry("Son Ford")Thomas 1926-1993 "Son Ford" Thomas, noted clay sculptor and one of the last significant Delta blues musicians, died on June 26 in Greenville, Mississippi, from complications following a stroke he had suffered the month before. He is best known for his "black gumbo" clay skulls and figures in coffins. He lived in Leland, Mississippi.

Born near Eden, Yazoo County, Mississippi, on October 14,1926, Thomas attended school through the fifth grade, and then worked the fields with his sharecropper grandfather. He left farming in 1961 and for ten years worked at the Stoveville Cemetery as a gravedigger. From 1971 on, he supported himself as a musician— composing, singing and playing the harmonica, piano, and guitar—and as a clay sculptor.

The artist's nickname, "Son Ford," was acquired at school, and was the result of his persistent interest in creating models of Ford tractors in clay. His first skull was made when he was approximately ten years old to scare his grandfather, who was afraid of ghosts.

Thomas's art was first nationally recognized in 1981, with the exhibition "Black Folk Art in America: 1930-1980" at the Corcoran Gallery, Wash-

ington, D.C.; subsequent shows in which Thomas's works were exhibited include "Baking in the Sun: Visionary Images from the South," University Art Museum, Lafayette, Louisiana (1987); "It'll Come True," Artist's Alliance, Lafayette, Louisiana (1992); and the forthcoming "Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present," at the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana (1993).

William Ferris, author of Local Color: A Sense ofPlace in Folk Art and Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, Oxford, writes, "Thomas... translates his dreams and visions into blues, folktales, and sculpture. Artists like Thomas repeatedly point to memory, dreams, and visions as the emotional core of their work." Thomas executed many variations of a few themes; he often repeated the same visual image, but in execution, every work was unique.

Thomas's strong belief in universal brotherhood is exemplified by his statement that "White folks and black folks got to learn to live together. You may not need me today but you'll need me one day. I may not need you today, but I'll need you one day. We all going to the same place, and that's down in the clay."(Quoted by William Ferris).

The artist is represented in the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Encyclopedia of TwentiethCentury American Art and Artists,

by Chuck and Jan Rosenak.

—Lee Kogan

••••••••••••••••••••••• • JACK SAVITT • • GALLERY • 2015 Route 100 • Macungie,PA 18062 •

(between Macungie and Trexlertown)

Iknolitt ittie}ries rif Atlanta 131A13LISHI D 1973

INVESTMENT QUAliTy 1 9Th ANd 20d1 CENTURy AMERiCAN ART

Peaceable Kingdom •

Jack Savitt, Representing

•

•

JACK SAVITSKY

•

20th Century American Folk Artist • Drawings • Acrylics • Oils For Appointment Call

(215)398-0075 4+4+4+4+44+4+4+44444+4+ Edward "Jazz at the Stuyvesant Casino" 18" X 24" Pastel and Craypas on Paper

MOSE TOLLiVER "SELF PORIRAil" PAiNI ON Wood 24" x I 9''

Mar JAZZ

ESTUYVESANT CASINO bv

rt has always served as a therapeutic tool in mental health care..."

-Olga Koniahin, Director North Richmond Day Hospital Special Exhibition: Work from St. Vincents Mental Health Ward,September- October 1993 To recieve a newsletter on our collection of American & International Folk Art call or write:

.- 14111 3 Charles St., NYC 10014(212)989-3801 riii"

JESSE AARON LERoy AIMON, SR. RiCkARd BURNSidE ARCI-liE ByRON NEd GARTIEdgE RAyMONd CoiNs UlyssEs DAVIS WILLIAM DAWSON BURgESS DulANEy MINNIE EVANS REV. HOWARd FiNSTER Sybil Gibson REqiNE GilbERT RAlph GRIFFIN BESSIE HARVEy LONNIE HollEy CIEMENTINE HUNTER JAMES HAROId JENNiNcS

CliARIfy KiNNEy Sr. EOM WilliE MASSEy LANIER MEAdERS J. B. MURRy MATTIE LOU O'KEllEy REV. B. F. Ptakiris DAME' PRESSFEy JUANITA ROgERS NEWE MAE ROWE 0. L SAMUELS LORENZO SCOTT HERbERT SiNcLETON JIMMIE LEE Sudduih SON TliOMAS MOSE TORIVER INEZ NATLIANiEl WAlkER LUSTER WILLIS

5325 ROSWELL ROAD,N.E.• ATLANTA,GEORGIA 30342 (404)252-0485 • FAX 252-0359

FALL 1993

FOLK ART

61

Fine example of a pine, board-sided rocking horse in original paint.

Probably American,early to mid-nineteenth century.

MARILYN SIMMONS ANTIQUES AMERICAN COUNTRY 18TH & 19TH CENTURY Interior Consultation &Appraisal 17620 Copperwood Lane Wayzata, Minnesota 55391 Phone:612 473-5638 Shows & By Appointment

SMALL BLANKET CHEST Small blanket chest with original polychromed decoration, Pennsylvania, last half of the 19th century, H 91/29, L 131/2% D 730,

v ' Coeept `ANr:_wilitle

AMERICAN ANTIQUES FOLK AND DECORATIVE ARTS

P.O. Box 1653 • Alexandria, Virginia 22313 • (703) 329-8612

62 FALL 1993

FOLK ART

BLITZ ANTIQUE NATIVE AMERICAN ART LTD.

Late 19th c. miniature cradles, 7" to 10"

P.O. Box 400 Crompond, New York 10517

(914) 739-9683

ESQUELETO contemporary American folk art and related art objects

price list and photos available

22 Carpenter Court Oberlin, Ohio 44074 216-775-2238 Hours: Mon.- Sat.,1-5pm

DEBORAH BANYAS

"Hearts of Gold"

12"x11"x7"

FALL 1993

FOLK ART

69

MUSEUM

NEWS

THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS Johann Fischer Austria 1986

Upcoming Exhibitions September 18—November?,1993 " riven to Create: The Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught and Outsider Art:' organized by Russell Bowman of the Milwaukee Art Museum,represents a crosssection of works of major selftaught artists from Europe and America. The Museum's commitment to exploring the expanding field offolk art is highlighted in this insightful presentation of selftaught art that considers the parallel development of, as well as the differences between, European and American expressions.

Included are approximately ninety paintings and works on paper ranging from the late 1930s to the present. Among the artists represented are Eddie Arning, James Dixon, Johann Fischer, Madge Gill, William Hawkins, Michel Nedjar, Martin Ramirez, Bill Traylor, Scottie Wilson, Adolf Wolfli, and Joseph Yoakum.

A fully illustrated catalog with essays by Roger Cardinal and Russell Bowman will accompany the exhibition. The exhibition, which, after its initial presentation in New York City, will travel through the summer of 1995, is sponsored at the Museum of American Folic Art by The Olsten Corporation, a leading provider of supplemental staffing and health care services in North America.

D

Colored pencil on paper

November 16, 1993—

16 x 12"

January 30,1994

Anthony Petullo Collection

-

October 5,1993—ongoing

merican Folk Art from the Permanent Collection: The Daniel Cowin Series" spearheads the opening of an entire gallery devoted to the Museum's permanent collection.

The inauguration of this newly installed exhibition, selected by the Museum's Curator, Stacy C. Hollander, will introduce visitors to some of the major themes and forms of American folk art as interpreted through works of art from the Museum's collection, to be shown on a rotating basis. The question "What is American folk art?" will be addressed through eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century painting, sculpture, textiles, and decorative arts.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous bequest of Daniel Cowin, a former Museum Trustee, and through the funds established in his memory.

THE UNITED STATES

hornton Dial: Image of the Tiger:' is the first major museum exhibition of the work of this self-taught African-American artist. Held simultaneously at the Museum of American Folk Art and The New Museum of Contemporary Art, this traveling show explores the development and meanings of the complex symbol of the tiger in the expressive imagery of Dial's paintings and watercolors. The guest curator is the well-known contemporary art critic Thomas McEvilley.

A full-color book with essays by Thomas McEvilley and the noted poet, playwright, and essayist Amiri Baraka will be published by Harry N. Abrams to coincide with the exhibition. This exhibition has been made possible by grants from The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. and the National Endowment for the Arts.

48 x 96"

TIGER CAT

From the collection of

Thornton Dial

James and Barbara Sellman,

1989

Richmond,Virginia

Enamel, plastic tubing, Bondo, and industrial sealing compound on wood

64 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

T

Gaerie Bonheur Laurie Carmody Since 1980

InternationalForkArt 9243 Clayton 1(aaa St. Louis, MO 63124

By Appointment(314)993-9851 F.B. Archuleta Janet Munro Milton Bond Canute Caliste, Grenada Chuckie R.A. Miller Mamie Deschillie Amos Ferguson, Bahamas Milton Fletcher Haitian Art & Masters Boscoe Holder, Trinidad Georges Liautaud, Haiti Justin McCarthy Mexican Artifacts Rafael Morla, Dominican Rep.

Antoine Oleyant, Haiti B.F. Perkins Katarzyna Gawlowa, Poland Juanita Rogers Jack Savitsky Lorenzo Scott Jose Antonio da Silva, Brazil Jimmy Lee Sudduth Horacio Valdez Voodoo Flags & Bottles Fred Webster Malcah Zeldis Woodie Long Sybil Gibson (and, many others)

Horacio Valdez "Nuestro Senor de Esquipulas" 1982

Roberta Stokes American Diary Paintings October â&#x20AC;˘ November, 1993

Roberta Stokes lives and works in Houston, Texas. She paints memories of her childhood and family vacations as a means to convey the humanistic underpinnings of moments accessible to everyone. Her American Diary Paintings record moments of complex longing, the lasting Impressions of times experienced, lost and regained.

MN Gallery 2707 Colquitt

Houston, Texas 77098

"Vacation Series",1991, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 34"

â&#x20AC;˘

713-526-6450

FALL 1993

FOLK ART 65

MUSEUM

NEWS

"Basket of Shells" Yaa Dwamena, eighth grade

A Creative Partnership n April 22,the Museum of American Folk Art was the setting for a special educational program for a group of young students from the Annunciation School in Manhattan, an event that demonstrated how museums and businesses can collaborate to improve the educational and cultural life of their communities. The program was initiated and sponsored by 1st Nationwide Bank, a Corporate Member of the Museum.

Students from the Annunciation School's fourth through eighth grades came to the Museum to enjoy a tour of"Bob Bishop: A Life in American Folk Art" and to learn about the various folk traditions represented in the exhibition. The bank provided lunch and drawing supplies for the forty participating students, who were asked to draw their favorite folk objects. The students'artwork was then displayed at 1st Nationwide Bank's Forty-second Street branch, across from Grand Central Station. Depositors at the bank were asked to vote for their favorite drawing. The winning student, Alfi Fulgencio, received a $100 Certificate of Deposit from 1st Nationwide Bank to be used toward his future education.

"Our bank is committed to improving the lives of young people," said Phyllis H. Warden, the Branch Vice-President for 1st Nationwide's Grand Central Office, who conceived and produced the program."We see the branches of our bank as active members of the communities in which they are located:' Ms. Warden noted that the majority of the bank's depositors took the time to really examine all of the drawings

0

SI FALL 1993 FOLK ART

"Commemorative Patriotic Quilt"

before choosing a favorite. The display heightened the awareness in the midtown community of both the Annunciation School and the Museum.

Alfi Fulgencio, an eighthgrader, won the prize for his rendering of the portrait "Young Girl in a Red Dress:' by an anonymous New England painter. "Portraits, works depicting animals, and cityscapes were the overwhelming favorites of the students:' said Catherine Fukushima, Gallery Director. "We see that the impulse to interpret everyday life is an aspect offolk art that is appealing to everyone."

The Museum congratulates Alfi Fulgencio and all the young artists of the Annunciation School, and thanks 1st Nationwide Bank for making special programs for children, like this one, possible.

GAVIN ASHWORTH

Michael Garcia, sixth grade

"Young Girl in a Red Dress" Alfi Fulgencio, eighth grade

The Modern Primitive Gallery The Modern Primitive Gallery proudly announces our association with Ray Benson

and the opening of our New York location.

Leroy Almon Sr. Leroy Archuleta Richard Burnside Bruce Burris Pris Butler Archie Byron Mamie Deschillie Minnie Evans Sybil Gibson Lonnie Holley James Harold Jennings S.L. Jones Charley Kinney Roland Knox M.B. Mayfield Jake McCord

Anthony Milella R.A. Miller Mister Eddy Valton Murray Jeff Payne B.F. Perkins O.L. Samuels Lorenzo Scott Bernice Sims St. E.O.M. Jim Sudduth Mose Tolliver Sarah Mary Taylor Terry Turrell Purvis Young Kurt Zimmerman

J.B. Murry Ray Benson 457 West 57th Street#407 New York, N.Y. 10019(212)974-9422 1402-4 North Highland Avenue,Atlanta,GA.30306(404)892-0556

-i4crIA.,.6oAciik. folk artist

for more information please contact: priscilla magers fine folk art 3111 university boulevard houston, texas 77005 (713) 661-3896 P.J. Hornberger

Down E3y The River

Acrylic 41-1/2 inches by 30-1/2 inches

FALL 1993

FOLK ART 67

MUSEUM

NEWS

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS Mark your calendars for the following Museum of American Folk Art exhibitions when they travel to your area during the coming months:

THE AMERICAN COLLECTOR, LTD. TRADITIONAL AMERICAN FOLK ART Salt Glaze Redware Face Jugs Dolls Weavings Theorem Paintings Lighting Baskets Wood Carvings Scherenschnitte Folk Furniture

OUTSIDER ART FEATURING Tubby Brown

R.A. Miller

Homer Green

New England Primitive Paintings

By Natalee Everett Goodman

AMIDST THE BEAUTIFUL GREEN MOUNTAINS OF VERMONT IN PICTURESQUE MANCHESTER VILLAGE

HISTORIC ROUTE 7A DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM THE EQUINOX HOTEL (802)362-1002

August 14—October 10, 1993 Visiones del Pueblo: The Folk Art of Latin America The Corcoran Gallery of Art Washington, District of Columbia 202/638-1439 September 13—November 9, 1993 Patterns of Prestige:The Development and Influence of the Saltillo Serape St. Louis County Department of Parks and Recreation Clayton, Missouri 314/889-2863 November 1, I993—January 5,1994 Visiones del Pueblo: The Folk Art of Latin America Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Los Angeles, California 213/744-3466

December 6, 1993—January 28, 1994 Access to Art8:All Creatures Great and Small Evansville Museum of Arts and Science Evansville, Indiana 812/425-2406 January 24—March 20, 1994 Visiones del Pueblo: The Folk Art of Latin America The Art Museum at Florida International University Miami, Florida 305/348-2890 February 13—April 10, 1994 Santos de Palo: The Household Saints of Puerto Rico Fowler Museum of Cultural History Los Angeles, California 310/825-4361

November 22, 1993—January 17, 1994 Santos de Palo: The Household Saints of Puerto Rico San Antonio Museum of Art San Antonio, Texas 210/978-8100 For further information contact Judith Gluck Steinberg, Coordinator of Traveling Exhibitions, Museum of American Folk Art, Administrative Offices,61 West62nd Street, New York, NY 10023, 212/977-7170

Taking Our Shows on the Road ach year the Museum presents a selection of traveling exhibitions at the annual conference of the American Association of Museums. The Museum's Traveling Exhibitions Program presently includes sixteen thematic exhibitions that feature works from its permanent collection, as well as exhibitions organized by the Museum from outside collections. This year's AAM meeting was held in Fort Worth, Texas.

E

Judith Gluck Steinberg at the Museum of American Folk Art booth at the 1993 Ameri• can Association of Museums Conference.

(continued on page 74)

MI FALL 1993 FOLK ART

DOUBLE

GALLERY

MI AMERICAN FOLK ART/VINTAGE DESIGNâ&#x20AC;˘

Post Office Box 41645 Los Angeles, CA 90041-0645

Interior Scarecrows Made by a midwestern farmer, who would dress the figures, placing them around his house, to give an impression that someone was home. Kansas c. 1920.

By appointment only: (310) 652-5990

We Specialize in Unusual American Folk Art

MAIN STREET ANTIQUES and ART Colleen and Louis Picek Folk Art and Country Americana (319) 643-2065 110 West Main, Box 340 West Branch Iowa 52358 On Interstate 80 Send a self-addressed stamped envelope for our monthly Folk-Art and Americana price list

Early 20th-century folk art courting couple carved by Jonas Bergren from Bishop Hill, Illinois

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 69

CALL FOR SUBMISSI0 for the second

Susan B Ernst American Textile Award s onsored by the Museum of American Folk Art The Museum of American Folk Art is pleased to call for submissions for the second Susan B. Ernst American Textile Award. This biennial award was established by Margot and John Ernst in memory of his mother, Susan B. Ernst, to promote original research in the field of American Textiles.

To be eligible for the $1,000 cash award, any previously unpublished research paper on any aspect of American textiles from the seventeenth century to the present may be submitted. The range of subjects may be interpreted broadly to focus on the textiles themselves or on their patterns or images, textile technologies, cultural context and other textile-related categories.

Papers must be limited to 3,000 words and may be accompanied by color slides and/or black and white photographs to support your research. The deadline for submission is March 1, 1994. The winning essay will be published in FOLK ART, the Museum's quarterly publication. The winning entry will be kept on file at the Museum's library as part of its American Textile collection.

Julia Arvin was the first Susan B. Ernst American Textile Award winner for her paper. "Design and Cultural Analysis of Chilkat Dancing Blankets," analyzing the weaving techniques and culture of the Tlingit Indians of the Alaskan coast, which was published in the Winter 1992-93 issue of FOLK ART magazine. Entries or inquires may be sent to: Susan B. Ernst Textile Award, Museum of American Folk Art, 61 West 62nd Street, NY, NY 10023.

Contemporary Folk Art, Crafts &Jewelry

KELLY째 GILLIS 29 America's Cup (next to the Marriott) Newport, RI 02840 (401) 849-7380

70 FALL 1993

FOLK ART

Eldred Wheeler Gallery 3941 San Felipe Houston,Texas 77027 (713)622-6225

Scherenschnitte by Claudia Hopf

EIGHTH ANNUAL - THE NATION'S LARGEST°

Los Angeles Tribal and Folk Art Show Representing a broad variety of collecting areas including: ABORIGINAL • AFRICAN • AMERICAN FOLK • AMERICAN INDIAN • ARCHITECTURAL • ARTIFACTS • BASKETS • BEADWORK • CANES • CARVINGS • CLOTHING • COWBOYS • DECOYS • ESKIMO • FEATHER WORK • FURNITURE • HIMALAYAN • INDIAN • INDONESIAN • JEWELRY • MASKS • METAL • NAIVE ART • OCEANIC • ORIENTAL • OUTSIDER ART • PAINTINGS • PHILLIPPINE • PRE-COLUMBIAN • QUILTS • RUGS • SAMPLERS • SANTOS • SPANISH-COLONIAL • TEXTILES • TRIBAL ASIA • TWIG & WIRE • TRADE SIGNS • WEAPONS • WEATHERVANES

100 Dealers Of Folk & Tribal Arts Saturday, November 13 11:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.

Sunday, November 14 11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium Santa Monica, California General admission $7.50

Benefit Preview Eurgencio Lopez, Garden of Eden, carved cottonwood, Cordova, N.M.

Memory Art shoe shine box, Mexico, c. 1940's.

Friday, November 12, 6:00-9:00 p.

For free colour brochure or further information, please contact Caskey-Lees, P.O. Box 1637, Topanga, California 90290, 310-455-2886.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 11

VIP IP•4111110 qPIP

WWII',".11011011Pqr

ICYreF af.14 ART© , C02; 47 The Leading Folk Art Show in the Nation! Featuring the awardwinning, top quality handcrafted Folk Art of hundreds of outstanding Artisans from across the country. V Bringing for sale quality Reproductions & Country "Heirlooms of the Future"! V All Juried shows V Many product catagories V French Country, Victorian, Southwest & Country-Western items V All Country decorating needs for sale! V 4.,10

11

1993 FALL-WINTER SHOW DATES Longmont, CO September 3-5 Boulder County Fairgrounds

Morristown, NJ October 1-3 Mennen Arena

Davisburg, MI October 22-24 Springfield-Oaks Center

Waukesha, WI September 10-12 Expo Center

Miami, Fl October 8-10 Coconut Grove Convention Center

Edison, NJ October 29-31 Raritan Center Expo Hall

Farmington, CT* September 10-12 Polo Grounds Indianapolis, IN September 17-19 State Fairgrounds

Uniondale-Long Island, NY October 8-10 Nassau Veterans Memorial Coleseum Glens Falls, NY October 15-17 Civic Center Arena

Toronto, ONT Canada September 17-19 Exhibition Place Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN September 24-26 State Fairgrounds

Tampa, FL October 15-17 State Fairgrounds Special Event Center

Upper Marlboro, MD September 24-26 Prince George's Equestrian Center Columbus, OH October 1-3 Expositions Center & Fairgrounds - Laushe Bldg.

Syracuse, NY October 22-24 State Fairgrounds Horticulture Bldg.

Atlanta, GA October 22-24 Atlanta Expo Center

"Country!

FOLK ART SHOWS,INC. P.O. Box 111 Ortonville, MI 48462 (313)634-4151

Del Mar, CA October 29-31 Del Mar Fairgrounds Long Beach, CA November 5-7 Convention & Civic Center Rochestesr, NY November 5-7 Rivereside Convention Center Fresno, CA November 12-14 Fresno Fairgrounds Niagara Falls, NY November 12-14 Convention & Civic Center

Pleasanton, CA November 19-21 Alameda County Fairgrounds Indianapolis, IN** November 26-28 (Thanksgiving Weekend) State Fairgrounds Timonium, MD** November 26-28 (Thanksgiving Weekend) State Fairgrounds Saratoga Springs, NY December 3-5 Harness Raceway, Grandstand Building Somerset, NJ December 3-5 Garden State Convention & Exhibit Center Upper Marboro, MD December 10-12 Prince George's Equestrian Center

West Springfield, MA November 19-21 Eastern States Exposition Fairgrounds

Novi, MI December 10-12 Novi Expo Center

SHOW TIMES FRIDAY EVENING 5 P.M. to 9 P.M. - ADM. $6.00 (Early Buying Privileges) SATURDAY & SUNDAY 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. - ADM. $5.00 Special Friday Show Hours: *Farmington, CT,Sept. 10, 1 - 7 p.m. & ** Thanksgiving Weekend IN & MD Shows Nov. 26: 12 Noon to 9 pm

V Catering to both Retail & Wholesale buyers V Please call or write for local driving directions and/or hotel accommodations and/or Exhibitor & Advertising information V Publishers of Country Folk Art©, TOYBOXTm & Yippy-Yi-YeaTM Magazines

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BARBARA OLSEN Shakers • oil • 24" A

30"

BARI3ARA OLSEN STUDIO

18781 Chillicothe Chagrin Falls, Ohio 44023 (216) 543-2452 FAX (216) 543-2453 Cal/for gallery referral or studio appointment

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 73

MUSEUM

NEWS

WILTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

CELEBRATION OF

AMERICAN CRAFTSMANSHIP

snow NOVEMBER 13 & 14, 1993 SATURDAY 10-5 ak SUNDAY 10-5 ADMISSION $6.00 - with CARD / AD $5.00

WILTON HIGH SCHOOL FIELD HOUSE ROUTE 7, WILTON, CONNECTICUT •One of the most acclaimed showcases for "collector quality" traditional and contemporary work, featuring 150 professional artists/craftsmen from 20 states, exhibiting in room and gallery settings.

•Fabulous folk art, both traditional and original, fine handcrafted furniture, ceramics, textiles, fine art, prints and a full range of accessories that will complement the home; also, jewelry, specialty foods and unique holiday gifts and old world Christmas objects and decorations. *SHOW SPECIAL... $100.00 gift certificates to be used in exhibitors booths. Two drawings each day.

MANAGED BY MARILYN GOULD

•Merritt Parkway: Exit 39B from the west Exit 41 from the east •1-95: Exit 15, north 8 miles 1-84: •At. 7, south 12 miles •Metro North railroad to Cannondale Station

WILTON HERITAGE MUSEUM, 249 DANBURY ROAD, WILTON, CT 06897 203 762-7257

74 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

(continuedfrom page 68)

Members'Tour: Chicago and Milwaukee he Museum's Folk Art Explorers' Club brought together twenty-one members from around the country for a journey along the shores of Lake Michigan, visiting ten private collections in four days. The Chicago-Milwaukee tour, which took place June 8 through June 13, featured collections of both traditional and contemporary folk art.

One stop, which was at the home of noted collectors Jim and Beth Arient, consisted of the viewing of over five hundred examples of contemporary folk art, and included a catered lunch.

A cocktail reception was held for the group in the office loft of graphic designer Robert Vogele.

Bernard and Betty Fae Nusinow hosted a delightful party in their beautiful Lake Shore Drive apartment where the group was able to view their impressive whirligig collection. Judy Saslow thrilled the group with her extensive art collection, which includes a large number of works by Bill Traylor.

The group also toured the Strombecker Corporation's toy factory and offices to view Chairman Myron Shures collection of twentieth-century folk art.

T

In Milwaukee, Anthony J. Petullo led the group through his stunning collection of European and American self-taught art, giving members and their guests a preview of the collection that will be exhibited at the Museum this Fall. In addition, the itinerary offered collections of Amish quilts and antiques, private gallery receptions, visits to the DuSable and the Milwaukee Public Museums, and a special tour at the Milwaukee Art Museum led by its director Russell Bowman.

The Museum heartily thanks the following members for helping to make the tour such a success: Jim and Beth Arient, Russell Bowman, Stephen and Faith Brown, Dick and Jane Cieply, Giindiiz Dagdelen, Bradley and Bailey Davis, Gael Grayson, Carl Hammer, Ruth Horwich, Dean Jensen, Lisa Kovacevic and the employees of the Strombecker Corporation, Bernard and Betty Fae Nusinow, Anthony J. Petullo, Judy Saslow, Mike and Cecile Shure, and Robert Vogele.

Folk Art Explorers' Club tours are open to all Museum members and their guests. For more information about upcoming tours, please call Beth Bergin or Chris Cappiello at 212/977-7170.

Fall Classes at the Folk Art Institute he Folk Art Institute, a division of the Museum of American Folk Art, offers Fall and Spring semesters of varied, stimulating courses in the field of American folk art that can lead to a certificate in Folk Art Studies or can be audited (that is, taken on a not-for credit basis). Exciting hands-on craft

T

classes are also offered on a notfor credit basis.

Fifteen-week lectures include Outsider Art, Folk Art in American Life, Traditional and Communal Expressions in Folk Art, American Furniture—Fine and Folk, and Collectors and Collections. Hands-on craft classes are given as five-session courses or single full-day workshops, where various craft techniques are

L_ —IAIL_

,BINGHAm vANcc

psei

0.4 Loik' 4 °S1

INGHAM OM VANCE

Judy Saslow discussing one of her Bill Traylor works with German collector Werner Kohn on the Chicago tour.

BINGHAM and VANCE GALLERIES

From left: Christopher Cappiello; Julia Weissman, co-author of TwentiethCentury American Folk Art and Artists; Myron B. Shure, Chairman, Strombecker Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; Beth Bergin

taught—make a charming rag doll, paint a canvas floor cloth, explore advanced appliqué techniques, and much more.

For information, write the Folk Art Institute at 61 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023, or call the Institute at 212/977-7170.

Presently Featuring the Works of: Carl Scharver Silvio P. Zoratti Okey John Canfield "Popeye" Reed Hugh "Gray Eagle" Issel Tim Karash David Saguia Howard Finster

Mark Vance Sherrie Bingham Chicatelli 12801 Larchmere Boulevard Shaker Heights, Ohio 44120 216-721-1711 Outsider Art

Folk Art

FALL 1993

FOLK ART

75

BOOK

REVIEWS

My New York Kathy Jakobsen Published by Little Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, London, 1993 $15.95 $19.95 in Canada Kathy Jakobsen's My New York, written and illustrated in her distinctive, exuberant style, is an anecdotal and personalized tour of New York City seen through the eyes of a young girl.

Jakobsen's enthusiasm for the city is recorded in her lively images, which include the Empire State Building, the Central Park Zoo, the American Museum of Natural History Ellis Island, the Sixth Avenue Flea Market, EA.O. Schwartz, the Plaza Hotel, Chinatown, and July Fourth fireworks.

However, the artist-author is also sensitive to the everyday sights and activities within the city: juxtaposed with these important landmarks and events are the quiet harbor, a cutaway look at some of New York's underground pipes, busy streets, and towering buildings under construction. A few pullout pages highlight panoramic views and soaring architectural heights.

ALAN ROUSH & ASSOCIATES PRESENTS FOLK ART BY

BRYAN MCNUTT 11020 AUDELIA ROAD, SUITE B101 DALLAS, TEXAS 75243 PHONE: 800-458-9542 DAuAs: 214-553-1586

76 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

Originally from the Midwest and currently a resident of Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and three children, Jakobsen draws upon experiences she had when she moved to New York as a young artist; her eight years as a New York resident provided inspiration for her vibrant paintings.

The concise, straightforward text of My New York never intrudes on the well-scaled and clearly laid out photographic reproductions. The richly detailed drawing style and bright palette support Jakobsen's delightful animated paean to New York.

Lee Kogan is Associate Director ofthe Folk Art Institute and Senior Research Fellow ofthe Museum ofAmerican Folk Art.

Save the date: The Frank J. Miele Gallery, 1262 Madison Avenue, NYC,cordially invites you to an artist reception and book signing on October 23 from H am to 4pm. For more information, call 2121876-5775.

JIM LINDERMAN 20TH CENTURY SELF-TAUGHT ARTISTS AND FOLK ART

Adirondackfurniture hand carved with birds andfish

by Bill and Phyllis Duffy

JUSTIN MCCARTHY MAX ROMAIN DILMUS HALL "CEDAR CREEK" CHARLIE FIELDS S.L. JONES VICTOR JOSEPH GATTO LAVERN KELLEY WILLIAM DAWSON "POPEYE" REED CLARENCE STRINGFIELD ANDERSON JOHNSON SIMON SPARROW MOSE TOLLIVER "ARTIST CHUCKIE" WILLIAMS CHARLIE DIETER JAMES HAROLD JENNINGS

530 WEST 46 STREET NEW YORK, NEW YORK (212) 307-0914

BY APPOINTMENT

KRISTIN HELBERG Naive Painter • Grained Boxes, Mirrors and Accessories • Vinegar-Painted Furniture Showroom in Washington, D.C. area. Painted furniture commissions gladly considered. By appointment only.

(301) 681-5210 P.O. Box 1941 • Silver Spring, MD 20915

Large standing cupboard: 90" x 30" x 16" Large hanging cupboard: 54" x 24" x 8" Medium hanging cupboard: 36" x 23" x 9"

THE LIBERTY TREE Contemporary Wood Carvings 104 Spring Street Newport, Rhode Island 02840 Lynn de la Valette 401-847-5925

FALL 1993

FOLK ART 77

MUSEUM

TRUSTEES/DONORS

OF

AMERICAN

FOLK

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Executive Committee Ralph Esmerian President Frances Sirota Martinson, Esq. Executive Vice President and Chairman, Executive Committee Lucy C. Danziger Executive Vice President Bonnie Strauss Vice President Peter M. Ciccone Treasurer Mrs. Dixon Wecter Secretary Judith A. Jedlicka Joan M. Johnson Theodore L. Kesselman Susan Klein Cynthia V. A. Schaffner George E Shaskan, Jr.

CURRENT

MAJOR

The Museum of American Folk Art greatly appreciates the generous support of the following friends: $100,000 and above Ben & Jerry's Homemade,Inc.* Estate ofThomas M. Conway* Estate of Daniel Cowin Ford Motor Company Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Joseph Martinson Memorial Fund* Two Lincoln Square Associates* $50,000499,999 Asahi Shimbun* The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. 520,000-$49,999 Marilyn & Milton Brechner* Chinon, Ltd.* Country Living Mr.& Mrs. Frederick M. Danziger Mrs. Eva Feld* Estate of Morris Feld* Foundation Krikor William Randolph Hearst Foundation* Kodansha, Ltd.* Jean & Howard Lipman* Philip Morris Companies Inc. Restaurant Associates Industries, Inc. $10,000-$19,999 Amicus Foundation* Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Mr.& Mrs. Martin Brody* Lily Cates* Joyce Cowin* David L. Davies* and Jack Weeden Mr. & Mrs. Alvin Deutsch Fairfield Processing Corporation/Poly-fil®

TS FALL 1993 FOLK ART

Members Florence Brody Joyce Cowin David L. Davies Raymond C. Egan T. Marshall Hahn,Jr: Barbara Johnson,Esq. George H. Meyer, Esq. Cyril I. Nelson Maureen Taylor David C. Walentas Robert N. Wilson

Honorary Trustee Eva Feld Trustees Emeriti Adele Earnest Cordelia Hamilton Herbert W. Hemphill, Jr. Margery G. Kahn Alice M. Kaplan Jean Lipman

DONORS

Daniel & Jessie Lie Farber* Walter and Josephine Ford Fund* Taiji Harada* Estate of Aniel T. Hubbell Joan & Victor L. Johnson* Shirley & Theodore L. Kesselman* Masco Corporation® Kathleen S. Nester® New York Telephone* Dorothy & Leo Rabkin* Schlumberger Foundation Samuel Schwartz* The William P. and Gertrude Schweitzer Foundation,Inc.* Mr. & Mrs. George F. Shaskan, Jr.* Mrs. Louise A. Simone* Barbara and Thomas W. Strauss Fund Robert N.& Anne Wright Wilson* $4,00049,999 American Patchwork & Quilting Joan Bull The David and Dorothy Carpenter Foundation* Tracy & Barbara Cate® Cone Communications,Inc. Country Home Mr. & Mrs. Edgar M. Cullman Department of Cultural Affairs, City of New York Zipporah S. Fleisher Jacqueline Fowler® Evelyn Frank in honor of Myra and George F. Shaskan, Jr. IBM Corporation Mr.& Mrs. Robert Klein* Leman Publications George H. Meyer National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council on the Arts The New York Times Company Foundation, Inc. Quilter's Newsletter Magazine

Ramac Corporation The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. Herbert and Nell Singer Foundation, Inc. Sdtheby's Mr.& Mrs. Stanley Tananbaum® Time Warner Inc. V.I.P Fabrics Mrs. Dixon Wecter* $2,000-$3,999 American Folk Art Society® Estate of Abraham P. Bersohn® The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation Mr. & Mrs. Edwin M. Braman® Mr.& Mrs. Edward J. Brown® Capital Cities/ABC Mr.& Mrs. Peter Cohen Conde Nast Publications Inc. Consolidated Edison Company of New York Mr.& Mrs. Joseph F. Cullman III Gary Davenport Mr.& Mrs. Donald DeWitt* Mr.& Mrs. Alvin Einbender® Margot & John Ernst Richard C. and Susan B. Ernst Foundation First Nationwide Bank Colonel Alexander W. Gentleman Concordia: A Chamber Symphony,Inc. Cordelia Hamilton® Justus Heijmans Foundation Johnson & Johnson Wendy & Mel Lavitt® Marsh & McLennan Companies MasterCard International Inc. Christopher & Linda Mayer® Morgan Stanley & Co., Incorporated PaineWebber Group Inc. Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation Rockefeller Group,Inc. Betsey Schaeffer* Robert T. & Cynthia V. A. Schaffner

ART

"Unconventional Objects After 1492" American Folk Art Architectural Embellishments Trade Symbols Vintage Photography "Oddfellows Ark" OHIO C. 1890

1333 Abbot Kinney Blvd. • Venice, CA

"'"..

. " ""

90291 • (310) 452-3909

--'71,11119199111979191719919,

BUONO)

fiR

INe*,4110,\fievriel

Gallery Strong Southern Folk Art Featuring The Paragons OfThe South.

James Harold Jennings

Charlie Brown Burlon Craig Michael Crocker Billy Henson Chester Hewell

Grace Hewell Charles Lisk Lanier Meaders The Meaders Family Marie Rogers And

Leroy Almon Alpha Andrews Tubby Brown Richard Burnside Howard Finster Others:

Mary Greene James Harold Jennings R. A. Miller Sarah Rakes Annie Wellborn

Barbara Brogdon Hwy. 129 S., P. 0. Box 491,Cleveland, GA 30528

706-865-6345

FALL 1993

FOLK ART

79

"The Beaver "Beaver's Happy Cat" Watching Butterflies

•

HOUSE PAINT ON PLYWOOD

WANDA'S QUILTS P.O. BOX 1764 • OLDSMAR,FLORIDA 34677 (813)855-1521 WORKS BY THE BEAVER" CAN BE SEEN AT THE "POSH PINEAPPLE, BELLEAIR, FLORIDA. ALSO, EVERY SECOND WEEKEND OF EVERY MONTH AT THE DON SCOTTS ANTIQUE SHOW, ATLANTA.

NANCY THOMAS SELF-TAUGHT ARTIST

Nancy Thomas Studio Gallery Ballard Street â&#x20AC;˘Yorktown VA 23690 804-898-3665 Fax 804-890-0967

Aaylic on wood and metal 27"x 20"

ured by the sight arid smell of dinner, a bear carries San to his destinations.

See St. Nick and other exclusive holiday salt-glaze stoneware ornaments,tree toppers and tabletop items in our color catalog.

1993 Limited Edition Santa

atch of the Year

ROWE POTTER WORKS 404 England St. Cambridge, WI 53523

1-800-356-5003 NF6J3

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 111

CURRENT

MAJOR

DONORS

Mr. & Mrs. Derek V. Schuster Mr. & Mrs. Ronald K. Shelp* Randy Siegel Joel & Susan Simon* L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation Robert C. & Patricia A. Stempel Mr. & Mrs. Austin Super* William S. Taubman Mr. & Mrs. Richard T. Taylor Tiffany & Co. Gerard C. Wertkin* Women's Action Alliance, Inc. Alice Yelen & Kurt A. Gitter $1,00044999 Herbert A. Allen American Savings Bank William Arnett* The Bachmann Foundation Didi & David Barrett* Michael Belknap Adele Bishop Dr. Robert Bishop* Edward Vermont Blanchard & M. Anne Hill* Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Block Bloomingdale's Dr. & Mrs. Robert Booth Tina & Jeffrey BouIton David S. Boyd Mabel H. Brandon Sandra Breakstone Ian G. M.& Marian M.Brownlie Morris B. and Edith S. Cartin Family Foundation* Edward Lee Cave* Chase Manhattan Bank, N. A. Christie's Liz Claiborne Foundation The Coach Dairy Goat Farm Joseph Cohen Consulate General of Mexico Judy Angelo Cowen The Cowles Charitable Trust Crane Co. Cullman & Kravis Susan Cullman Mr. & Mrs. Richard Danziger Carolyn & Robert Denham Mr. & Mrs. Richard DeScherer Gerald & Marie DiManno* The Marion and Ben Duffy Foundation* Mr.& Mrs. Arnold Dunn Echo Foundation Mr.& Mrs. Lewis M.Eisenberg Bruce Engel Ellin F. Ente*Virginia S. Esmerian Mr.& Mrs. Anthony Evnin Helaine & Burton M Fendelman Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Ferguson Janey Fire & John Kalymnios* First Financial Carribean Corporation Louis R. and Nettie Fisher Foundation M. Anthony Fisher

S2 FALL 1993

FOLK ART

Susan & Eugene Flamm* Evelyn W. Frank Mr.& Mrs. Richard Fuld, Jr. Ronald J. Gard Emanuel Gerard The Howard Gilman Foundation Mr. & Mrs. Eric Jay Gleacher Selma & Sam Goldwitz* Mr. & Mrs. Baron Gordon* Renee Graubart Doris Stack Greene* Carol Griffis Richard H. Haas Terry & Simca Heled* Mr.& Mrs. Rodger Hess Stephen Hill Alice & Ronald Hoffman* Mr.& Mrs. David S. Howe* Frederick W. Hughes Mr.& Mrs. Robert J. Hurst Robert G. James Mr. & Mrs. Yee Roy Jear* Judith A. Jedlicka Dr. & Mrs. J. E. Jelinek Barbara Johnson, Esq.* Mr. & Mrs. Alistair Johnston Isobel & Harvey Kahn* Ka'lir,Philips, Ross,Inc. Lore Kann Foundation Mr. & Mrs. Leslie Kaplan Mary Kettaneh Lee & Ed Kogan* The Lane Company,Inc. Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Lash Mr.& Mrs. Ronald Lauder Jerry & Susan Lauren Estate of Mary B. Ledwith William 8L Susan Leffler Barbara & Morris L. Levinson Dorothy & John Levy Nadine & Peter Levy James & Frances Lieu* Mr.& Mrs. Henry S. Lodge Dan W. Lufkin Robert & Betty Marcus Foundation, Inc.* Marstrand Foundation C. E Martin IV* Leni & Peter May Helen R. Mayer and Harold C. Mayer Foundation Mrs. Myron L. Mayer Marjorie W. McConnell* Meryl & Robert Meltzer Brian & Pam McIver Michael & Marilyn Menne11o* The Mitsui USA Foundation Benson Motechin* Mr.& Mrs. Jeremy N. Murphy Cyril I. Nelson Paul Oppenheimer* Dr. Burton W.Pearl Dr. & Mrs. R. L. Polak Helen Popkin David Pottinger Kelli & Allen Questrom Quilt House YAMA Random House,Inc. Cathy Rasmussen*

Ann-Marie Reilly* Paige Rense Marguerite Riordan Dorothy H. Roberts Daniel & Joanna S. Rose Willa & Joseph Rosenberg* Mr. & Mrs. Jon Rotenstreich Louise Sagalyn The Salomon Foundation Inc. Mr. & Mrs. Oscar S. Schafer Mr. & Mrs. William Schneck Mr.& Mrs. Richard Sears* Mr.& Mrs. Robert Sellars Rev. & Mrs. Alfred R. Shands III Mrs. Vera W.Simmons Philip & Mildred Simon Mr.& Mrs. Sanford L. Smith* Sandford L. Smith & Associates Mr. & Mrs. Richard L. Solar* Peter and Linda Soloman Foundation Sony USA Inc. Sotheby's Mr.& Mrs. Elie Soussa Jerry I. Speyer Ellen & David Stein Kathryn Steinberg Mr.& Mrs. Michael Steinhardt Sterling Winthrop Inc. Swiss National Tourist Office SwissAir Mr.& Mrs. Stanley Tananbaum Takashimaya Co.,Ltd. Phyllis & Irving Tepper* Mr. & Mrs. Raymond S. Troubh Mrs. Anne Utescher* H. van Ameringen Foundation Tony & Anne Vanderwarker Jessie Walker & Arthur Griggs Elizabeth & Irwin Warren* Weil, Gotshal & Manges Foundation Frank & Barbara Wendt Wertheim Schroder & Co. G. Marc Whitehead Mr. & Mrs. S.M. Wrenn Mr. & Mrs. John H. Winkler* Mr.& Mrs. William Zabel $500-$999 A&P Alconda-Owsley Foundation Michael G. Allen Helen & Paul Anbinder Nathan S. Ancell Mama Anderson Anthony Annese Antiques and the Arts Weekly Lois S. Avigad Louis Bachman Dr. and Mrs. George K. Baer

TYSON TRADING CO. 102 HUNTER AVENUE • MICANOPY, FL 33667

904-466-3410

AN IMALSPI RIT PAINTINGS BY

BRIAN DOWDALL

WILTON ANTIQUES MARKETPLACE SHOWS September 19 Sunday, 10-5 To benefit Drum Hill DAR

Admission $6.00 - $5.00 with card or ad ALSO REPRESENTING: Jesse Aaron • Alyne Harris • Mr. Eddy Mose Tolliver• Jimmy Sudduth

AMERICA

December 5 Sunday, 10-5 A benefit for the John G. Corr Memorial Award Fund

Admission $6.00 - $5.00 with card or ad

Wilton High School Field House ROUTE 7, WILTON,CONNECTICUT

OH9117St AL • FOLK ART FROM AMERICA'S LEADING ARTISTS. We are private dealers for serious collectors and galleries; exdusive representative for a number of emerging artists. Our collection includes masterworks of well-known outsiders at "insiders" prices.

Call for a brochure.

1-800-FOLK-ART

* 1* 800 *FOLK *ART *

The best buy... The best pickings...

EARLY BUYING 8:30-10:00 am $15.00 per person The finest one-day shows in America, featuring 135 of the most distinguished dealers showing a variety of authentic antiques in room setting.

Including country and period 18th and 19th century furniture, folk and fine art, prints and maps, ceramics, textiles, silver, jewelry, oriental rugs and architectural elements in a range of prices.

• Merritt Parkway: Exit 39B from the west Exit 41 from the east • 1-95: Exit 15, north 8 miles 1-84: •At. 7,south 12 miles • Metro North railroad to Cannondale Station

Managed By Marilyn Gould MCG Antiques Promotions, Inc. (203)762-3525 Ill Chicken St., Wilton, Cr. 06897

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 83

Important American Furniture, Folk Art and Decorative Arts Auction to be held Saturday, October 23 at 10 am and 2 pm in our galleries at 502 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022. Viewing is October 16 through October 22. For further information, please contact Susan Kleckner at 212/546-1181.

For catalogues telephone 718/784-1480.

Zedekiah Belknap (1781-1858). A Pair ofPortraits of a Man and Woman.

Inscribed on the reverse of the Portrait of a Man, Samuel Dutton,junior.

Born/Died. February 18, 1835. Weighed 338. Estimate: $12,000-18,000

CHRISTIE'S

WEBB

Xmeah ShaElaRe'EL

FOLK ART GALLERY

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN FOLK, SELF TAUGHT/ AND OUTSIDER ART

By Betty-Carol Sellen with Cynthia J.Johanson

WORKS BY

Cyril Billiot Artist Chuckle Rhinestone Cowboy Burgess Dulaney Baltimore Glassman Rev. J. L. Hunter James Harold Jennings R. A. Miller Carl Nash

B. E Perkins Royal Robertson Xmeah ShaElaRe'EL David Strickland Jimmie Lee Sudduth Rev. Johnnie Swearengen Son Thomas Onis Woodard and Face Jugs

Twentieth Century American Folk, Self Taught, and Outsider Art, A Resource Guide, is the most comprehensive compilation of information and resources available.

1 ,,

, -.;

It includes: A directory of 81 museums with folk, self taught, and outsider art in their permanent collections.

,.

Profiles of 135 galleries and the artists they represent.

•

JULIE and BRUCE WEBB 107 N. ROGERS WAXAHACHIE, TX 75165 (214)938-8085

•

Biographical sketches of more than 1,000

artists.

Plus, a listing of books and magazine and

newspaper articles on this exciting field. a The work of over 50 artists is illustrated in full color in a

JOHN C. HILL ANTIQUE AMERICAN INDIAN ART 6990 E. MAIN STREET,SECOND FLOOR SCOTTSDALE,AZ 85251

(602)946-2910

talk

special 16-page section.

ISBN 1-55570-142-6 81/2"x 11'. 500 pages. $90.

Sculpture by Patrick Davis.

To ORDER YOUR COPY OR FOR MORE INFORMATION COMPLETE AND MAIL OR FAX THIS COUPON TO: rdij Neal-Schuman Publishers 100 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013 Fax: 212-219-8916 Telephone 212-925-8650

0Please send copies of 20th Century American Folk, Self Taught, and Outsider Art @ $90 per copy.

0Please send additional information.

Name Institution Address City/State/Zip 01Check or money order enclosed for $ (NY add Sales Tax) 0Charge my Visa/Mastercard No. Signature

Exp.

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 85

CURRENT

MAJOR

Billie Bailkin Arthur & Mary Barrett* Mr. & Mrs. David Barret Mr. & Mrs. Frank Barsalona David C. Batten Robert Baum Helen & John Bender Roger S. Berlind Mrs. Anthony Berns Mr. 8z Mrs. Peter Bienstock Peter & Helen Bing Mr.& Mrs. Leonard Block Mr.& Mrs. J. H. Brandi Michael 0. Braun Mr.& Mrs. Robert Brill Brown Sally & Tim Brown Mr.& Mrs. Lawrence Buttenwieser Michael J. Bzdak Iris Carmel* John Mack Carter Tetsuya Chikushi Classic Coffee Systems Limited Maureen Cogan Stephen H. Cooper Edward & Nancy Coplon Mrs. Arthur Cowen Craftsmen Litho Mr.& Mrs. Lewis Cullman D'Agostino's Allan L. Daniel The Dammann Fund,Inc. Days Inn-New York City Andre & Sarah de Coizart Mr.& Mrs. James DeSilva, Jr. Charlotte Dinger Nancy Druckman Mr.& Mrs. James A. Edmonds, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Ray Egan Mr. and Mrs. Theodore E. Eisenstat Eng & Yee Designs, Inc. Ross N. & Glady A. Faires* Howard & Florence Fertig Mr.& Mrs. R. Fischbein Mr. & Mrs. Alexander Fisher Richard L.Fisher John Fletcher Timothy C. Forbes Honorable & Mrs. Arnold G. Fraiman Mr.& Mrs. Norman Freedman Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien Estelle E. Friedman Mr. & Mrs. Ken Fritz Frieda & Roy Furman The Galerie St. Etienne, Inc. Daniel M. Gantt Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Geismar General Foods Barbara & Edmond Genest Mr.& Mrs. William L. Gladstone Irene & Bob Goocikind* Margo Grant Elizabeth & Robert Gray III Great Performances Caterers Dr. & Mrs. Stanley Greenberg

IN FALL 1993 FOLK ART

DONORS

Grey Advertising, Inc. Connie Guglielmo Anton Haardt Deborah Harding The Charles U. Harris Living Trust Denison H. Hatch George B. & Carol Henry Mr.& Mrs. Richard Herbst Historical Society of Early American Decoration,Inc. Arlene Hochman Mr. and Mrs. John C. Hoode Roberta Mashuta Horton Mr.& Mrs. Albert L. Hunecke, Jr.* Mr. and Mrs. Theodore J. Israel, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Thomas C. Israel A. Everette James,Jr. Guy Johnson Ed Jorgensen Cathy M. Kaplan Louise & George Kaminow* Jazlyn & Gerald R Kaminsky Edward Keating Mr. & Mrs. Michael Kellen Mr. & Mrs. Jeff Kenner Barbara Klinger Barbara & David Krashes Janet Langlois Estee Lauder Naomi Leff Mr. & Mrs. Richard LeFrak Peter M. Lehrer Mr. & Mrs. John A. Levin Mr.& Mrs. John K. Libby Mr.& Mrs. Richard M. Livingston Adrian B. & Marcie Lopez Lynn M.Lorwin Mr. & Mrs. Robert Luchars, Jr. R. H. Macy & Co., Inc. Mrs. Erwin Maddrey Kathleen Mahoney Franklin Maisano Hermine Mariaux Herrnine Mariaux, Inc. Alastair B. Martin Michael T. Martin Robin & William Mayer Mr.& Mrs. Robert McCabe Mr.& Mrs. D. Eric McKechnie Dr. Dillon McLaughlin Grete Meilman Gertrude Meister Gael Mendelsohn Ronay & Richard Menschel A. Forsythe Merrick Mrs. Ralph Merrill Pierson K. Miller Jean Mitchell Arlene & Bruce Nadel Johleen Nester* Helen Neufeld The New York Hilton Mr.& Mrs. Arthur O'Day Kenneth R.Page Mr. & Mrs. Samuel M. Palley Geraldine M.Parker Dr. Burton W. Pearl Mr.& Mrs. Laurence B. Pike

J. Randall Plummer Richard Ravitch Mr.& Mrs. Stanley M. Riker Betty Ring Mr.& Mrs. David Ritter Trevor C. Roberts Richard & Carmen Rogers Toni Ross Richard Sabino Toni Ross & Jeffrey Salaway Mary Frances Saunders Schlaifer Nance Foundation Harrie & Tom Schloss Mary & Aaron Schwartz Mr.& Mrs. Richard Schwartz H. Marshall Schwarz Larry A. Shar Jean S.& Frederic A. Sharf Francisco F. Sierra Skidmore Owings& Merrill Kay Sloman Smith Gallery Mr. and Mrs. Scudder Smith Smithwick Dillon Karen Sobotka Mr.& Mrs. Richard Solomon Amy Sommer William W Stahl, Jr. Mr.& Mrs. Jeff Tarr That Patchwork Nancy E Karlins Thoman Edward I. Tishelman Peter Tishman Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Tuft Susan Unterberg Mr.& Mrs. Michael A. Varet Mr.& Mrs. Royall Victor David & Jane Walentas Clune J. Walsh Jr. Joan Walsh Marco R Walker Maryann & Ray Warakomski Washburn Gallery Yuko Watanabe Mr. & Mrs. Roger J. Weiss Anne G. Wesson L. John Wilkerson Mr. & Mrs. John R. Young Shelly Zegart Marcia & John Zweig *Contributor to Lincoln Square Endowment Fund The Museum is grateful to the Cochairmen of its Special Events Committee, Lucy C. Danziger and Cynthia V. A. Schaffner,for the significant support received through the Museum's major fund-raising events.

CONTEMPORARY Minnie Adkins Jesse Aaron Linvel Barker The Beaver Pricilla Cassidy Ronald Cooper Mr. Eddy Denzil Goodpasture Homer Green Alvin Jarrett Carl McKenzie Hog Mattingly

PRISCILLA CASSIDY

House Paint on Board

BRUCE NASHVILLE, TN

FOLK

ART

Frank Pickel Braxton Ponder Dow Pugh Royal Robertson Sultan Rogers Jimmy Lee Sudduth "Son" Thomas Mose Tolliver Fred Webster Wesley Willis Troy Webb And Others

SHELTON

By APPOINTMENT(615-352-1970)

Also Serving the Following Areas:

Chicago/Milwaukee • Brimfield, MA/New England New Orleans/Houston • Atlanta/Palm Beach • DC/Virginia/North Carolina

NEW ENGLAND'S 10th ANNUAL ULTIMATE CRAFT SHOW & SALE! "Considered the finestshow of its type in the United States" Exceptional artisans featured in EARLY AMERICAN LIFE, COUNTRY LIVING, COLONIAL HOMES & COUNTRY HOME magazines will be offering for sale authentic reproductions of American country & formal furniture & accessories, contemporary folk art, & country crafts.

INCLUDING: Amish quilts, baskets, blacksmith, candles, carvings, clocks, copper, country & formal furniture & accessories, coverlets, decoys, dolls, grain painted items, dried flowers, lamp shades, lighting fixtures, needlework, pottery, primitive portraits, rugs, samplers, scissor cuttings, Shaker items, stencil work, teddy bears, tinsmith, toys, whirligigs, windsor chairs, & more!

10th

ANNIVERSARY SHOW.

limitedtion Special anniversary pieces offered will be craftsmen. by all our

ROYAL PLAZA TRADE CENTER 1-495 and Route 20, Marlborough, Massachusetts Directions: North or South on Rte 495 to exit 24B. Go straight west 1 mile to Royal Plaza sign and turn right.

Friday, October 22,6PM - lOPM, Admission $6.00 Saturday,October 23,10AM - 6PM,Admission $4.00 Sunday,October 24,11AM - 5PM,Admission $4.00

"A Great Way to Augment Your Antique Collection"

Country Folk Art Festival

Judy Marks P.O. Box 134, Glen Ellyn, IL. 60138 (708) 858-1568

FALL 1993 FOLK ART 87

INDEX

TO

ADVERTISERS

7,8,9,17 America Hurrah 83 America Oh, Yes 68 The American Collector, Ltd. 2 American Primitive Gallery 19 The Ames Gallery 25 Mama Anderson 29 Kathryn Berenson Quilts 75 Bingham & Vance Galleries 63 Blitz Antique Native American Art Ltd. 73 Blue Spiral 1 25 Marcy Burns 57 Robert Cargo Folk Art Gallery 84 Christie's 12 Colwill-McGehee 87 Country Folk Art Festival 72 Country Folk Art Show & Sale Country Living Magazine Inside Back Cover 28 Ronald & Penny Dionne 69 Double K Gallery 29 Elliot & Elliot 15 Epstein/Powell 63 Esqueleto Contemporary Folk Art 67 Fine Folk Art 24 Laura Fisher 3 Janet Fleisher Gallery 26 Gaglio & Molnar, Inc. 65 Galerie Bonheur

88 FALL 1993 FOLK ART

14 Gasperi Gallery 25 Sidney Gecker American Folk Art Back Cover Giampietro 58 Gilley's Gallery 59 Anton Haardt Gallery 22 Marion Harris 27 Harvey Antiques 77 Kristin Helberg 85 John C. Hill American Indian Art 88 Hill Gallery 61 Leslie Howard/Alternative Art Source 19 Lynne Ingram Southern Folk Art 29 Barbara Israel Stephen Johnson/Post-Columbian Antiques 79 70 Kelly & Gillis 61 Knoke Galleries 58 Rick Ladd 62 June Lambert 77 The Liberty Tree 77 Jim Linderman 16 Leon Loard Gallery 71 Los Angeles Tribal and Folk Art Show 83 MCG Antiques Promotions, Inc. 69 Main Street Antiques Inside Front Cover Frank J. Miele Gallery 1 Steve Miller 28 Judith & James Milne

Modern Primitive/Ray Benson Joy Moos Gallery Neal-Schuman Publishers Barbara Olsen RM Gallery Roger Ricco/Frank Maresca Rosehips Gallery Alan Roush & Associates Rowe Pottery Works Stella Rubin Jack Savitt Gallery Bruce Shelton Marilyn Simmons Antiques Skinner Sanford L. Smith & Associates, Ltd. Sotheby's Linda & Howard Stein Nancy Thomas Tyson Trading Co. Walters/Benisek Wanda's Quilts Webb Folk Art Gallery Marcia Weber Eldred Wheeler of Houston Wilton Historical Society Thos. K. Woodard Ginger Young

67 10 85 73 65 11 79 76 81 23 61 87 62 31 30 20 26 81 83 27 80 85 31 71 74 4 18

COUNTRY LIVING MAGAZINE AMERICA'S SOURCE FOR FOLK ART AND ANTIQUES Celebrating Our 15th Anniversary At the Fall Antiques Show at the Pier A Publication of Hearst Magazines. A Division of the I karst Corporation.

G}AvPIETRO

Figural Beehive, southern states, circa 1900.

46" high.

Fred & Kathryn Giampietro • 203-787-3851 • 153V2 Bradley Street, New Haven, CT 06511