Folk Art (Summer 1998)

FOLK A T MAGAZINE OF THE MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FMK ART*$UMER 1998*$8.00

/frrt.LX 44e• ,5442id

/172' 82>

7

25274 74382

7

.7/7"4074.;71

Q

f

i/ , , 721 .01140Grilt. gtini

L.C. SPOONER

I9

1864- 1955

VISIONARY DRAWINGS OF AN AMERICAN INVENTOR PLEASE VISIT US AT OUR NEW CHELSEA LOCATION

RICCO/MARESCA GALLERY 529 WEST 20TH STREET

THIRD FLOOR NYC NY 10011

TEL 212/627-4819 FAX 212/627-5117 E-MAIL rmgal@aol.com URL riccomaresca.com

L.C.Spooner, Untitled ("The Hired Man's Afternoon Out"), Ink and mixed media on paper, 1933

Ne.77 ( 2.red:Ma s f al-kr/icon pirk re-Sideics

STEVE MILLER • AMERICAN FOLK ART •

WANTED!!!

AMERICAN FOLK SCULPTURE OF THIS QUALITY PILOT HOUSE EAGLE 19th century - 29"in length

17 East 96th Street, New York, New York 10128(212)348-5219 Gallery hours are from 1:00 pm until 6:00 pm,Tuesday through Saturday.

Other hours are available by appointment.

Robert Cargo

FOLK ART GALLERY Contemporary Folk Art • Haitian Spirit Flags Southern, Folic, and African-American Quilts

Sybil Gibson (1908-1995). Portraits of Women. Tempera on paper, ca. 1980-1985.

Image dimensions, top, left to right: 19 x 121/2 inches; 171/2 x 131/2. Bottom: 16 x 121/2; 141/2 x 111/2. For framed dimensions, add 81/2 inches to vertical (first figure) and 8 inches to the horizontal.

Other quality paintings by Sybil Gibson, done between 1970-1985, are available.

2314 Sixth Street, Downtown, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401 • Home Phone 205-758-8884 Open weekends only and by appointment • Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 2 to 5 p.m.

Martin Ramirez

The Fleisher/Oilman Gallery continues to represent the finest works by American self-taught artists.

FLEISHER OLLMAN GALLERY 211 S. 17th Street Philadelphia 1 9 1 0 3 (215)545.7562 (Fax)545• 6140

WALTERS BENISEK ART SA ANTIQUES ONE AMBER LANE • NORTHAMPTON • MASSACHUSETTS • 01060 •• ( 4 1 3) 5 8 6 • 3 9 0 9 • DON WALTERS • MARY BENISEK

Portrait of Amanda Wiggin of Dover, New Hampshire 1845, by Samuel Miller

C.

FOLK ART VOLUME 23, NUMBER 2/ SUMMER 1998

FEATURES

Cover: THREE ANGEL HEADS: Mary

MARY ANN WILLSON: ARTIST MAID Stacy C. Hollander

20

EDGE TO EDGE: SELECTIONS FROM STUDIO ART QUILT ASSOCIATES Stacy C. Hollander

24

GEORGE E. MORGAN:SELF-TAUGHT MAINE ARTIST Chippy Irvine

30

Ann Willson, Greene County, New York, c. 1800-1825, ink and watercolor on paper, 16 x 13", Museum ofFine Arts, Boston, gift ofMaxim Karolik, 50.3886

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 1998 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 endeavors to accept 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 of folk art and 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 that illustrate or describe objects that have been exhibited at the Museum within one year of placing an advertisement.

IN THE MIND'S EYE:EGYPT AND SELF-MYTHIFICATION IN THE ART OF MR.IMAGINATION Hipolito Rafael Chacon

DEP

AR

T

MEN

34

TS

EDITOR'S COLUMN

6

DIRECTOR'S LETTER

13.

MINIATURES

12

BOOKS OF INTEREST

19

FALL ANTIQUES SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT

45

MUSEUM REPRODUCTIONS PROGRAM

48

TRUSTEES/DONORS

50

MUSEUM NEWS

66

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS

61

SUMMER PROGRAMS

63

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

64

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 5

EDITOR'S

COLUMN

ROSEMARY GABRIEL

wo exciting exhibitions,"Mary Ann Willson: Artist Maid" and "Edge to Edge: Selections from Studio Art Quilt Associates," open at the Museum on June 13. Our lead story on Mary Ann Willson, by curator Stacy C. Hollander, offers a glimpse at the delicate, yet powerful watercolors of this 19th-century artist, whose work and life with her companion inspired both the 1969 cult novel Patience & Sarah and an opera by the same name. The opera premieres this summer as part of the Lincoln Center Festival; see pages 20 to 23 for details. In "Edge to Edge," starting on page 24, Hollander highlights five of the twenty quilts on view in this vibrant exhibition and discusses the place of the art quilt in our Museum and in the artworld in general. With her usual aplomb, Hollander clearheadedly lays out the issues and applauds the artistry of the eighteen quiltmakers represented in the exhibition.

The absolutely charming and idiosyncratic paintings of George Morgan will be featured at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine,from July 16 through October 11. In "George E. Morgan: Self-Taught A s this issue Maine Artist," author Chippy Irvine gives us the scant 1.was going known facts about this artist, who was born in 1870 and to press, the did not start painting until he was in his nineties. Her Museum learned essay and the Farnsworth exhibition point out the need with great for further research on this virtually unknown artist. sadness of the The use of Egyptian imagery by African American death of trustee artists is the subject of Professor Hip6lito Rafael emeritus Herbert Chac6n's essay,"In the Mind's Eye: Egypt and SelfWaide Hemphill Mythification in the Art of Mr. Imagination." In this artiJr. on May 8. cle, Chacon leads us through the cultural landscape that A memorial places Egypt as a "beacon" and "anchor" for a commuservice is nity whose history has been "set adrift by the diaspora, planned. The slavery, and racism." Leading into the work of Gregory Fall 1998 issue Wannack,known as Mr. Imagination, Chao& points to will feature a African American artists such as Edmonia Lewis, whose celebration of The Death of Cleopatra was carved in 1876; Richmond his life.

Barth& who used Egyptian themes in his Monumental wall frieze in the late 1930s; and educators, scholars, and authors who avow the destiny of African Americans as tied to Egyptian roots.

This is a beautifully written and provocative essay.

I hope you will find time this summer to read all of the essays—as well as Miniatures, Museum News, and our Director's Letter—for this has been a particularly exciting issue for our publications group to put together. In the Winter 1997/98 issue, we published a photo of our group taken at the 1997 Fall Antiques Show Benefit Preview sans ad salesman John Hood. Well, as promised, here's John.

Before you know it, we will be gathering again at the 1998 Fall Antiques Show Benefit Preview. This year, the show has been moved into mid-November. Please see our announcement on page 45, and be sure to save the Advertising sales date. We look forward to being together again and seeing representative John Hood, you there too.

1998

T A

"tee-Aiczy•;Aze/ If SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

FOLK ART Rosemary Gabriel Editor and Publisher Jeffrey Kibler, The Magazine Group,Inc. Design Tanya Heinrich Production Editor Jocelyn Meinhardt Production Associate Benjamin J. Boyington Copy Editor John Hood Advertising Sales Mel Novatt Advertising Sales Patrick H. Calkins Advertising Graphics Craftsmen Litho Printers MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART Administration Gerard C. Wertkin Director Riccardo Salmona Deputy Director Jeffrey S. Grand Director ofFinance and Operations Susan Conlon Assistant to the Director Natasha Ghany Accountant Daniel Rodriguez Mailroom Beverly McCarthy Mail Order/Reception Collections & Exhibitions Stacy C. Hollander Curator Ann-Marie Reilly Registrar Judith Gluck Steinberg Assistant Registrar/ Coordinator, Traveling Exhibitions Sandra Wong Assistant Registrar Dale Gregory Gallery Manager Brian Pozun Weekend Gallery Manager Gina Bianco Consulting Conservator Elizabeth V. Warren Consulting Curator Howard Lanser Consulting Exhibition Designer Kenneth R. Bing Security Departments Cheryl Aldridge Director ofDevelopment Beth Bergin Membership Director Marie S. DiManno Director ofMuseum Shops Susan Flamm Public Relations Director Alice J. Hoffman Director ofLicensing Joan D. Sandler Director ofEducation and Collaborative Programs Janey Fire Photographic Services Chris Cappiello Membership Associate Jennifer Claire Scott Special Events/Development Associate Mary C.Thomas Development Associate Kathy Maqsudi Membership Assistant Wendy Barreto Membership Clerk Edith C. Wise Consulting Librarian Eugene P. Sheehy Volunteer Librarian Rita Keckeissen Volunteer Librarian Katya Ullmann Library Assistant Programs Lee Kogan Director, Folk Art Institute/Senior Research Fellow Madelaine Gill Administrative Assistant/Education Barbara W.Cate Educational Consultant 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 Arlene Hochman Volunteer Docent Coordinator Lynn Steuer Volunteer Outreach Coordinator Museum Shop Staff Managers: Dorothy Gargiulo, Caroline Hohenrath, Ursula Morillo, Amy Mulkern, Rita Pollitt, Brian Pozun; Security: Bienvenido Medina; Volunteers: Marie Anderson, Olive Bates, Angela Clair, Sally Frank, Millie Gladstone, Katie McAuliffe, Nancy Mayer, Marie Peluso, Judy Rich, Frances Rojack, Phyllis Selnick, Lola Silvergleid, Maxine Spiegel, Myrna Tedles, Mary Wamsley Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop Two Lincoln Square(Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th) New York, NY 10023-6214 212/496-2966 Administrative Offices Museum of American Folk Art 61 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023-7015 212/977-7170, Fax 212/977-8134, http://www.folkartmuse.org

CHRISTIE'S

RI

AMERICAN FOLK ART

Consignments are currently being accepted for our forthcoming auctions Inquiries: Susan Kleckner at 212 546 1181

Rufus Hathaway (1770-1842) Portrait of Captain Sylvanus Sampson, Duxbury, Massachusetts, 1793 Original frame made by Hathaway, original bill of sale signed by Hathaway Sold for $134,500 on January 16, 1998 in the sale of Important American Furniture, Silver, Paintings, Prints, Folk Art and Decorative Arts

502 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10022 tel: 212 546 1000 catalogues: 800 395 6300 www.christies.com

CHARLES HUTSON 1840-1936 DAVID BUTLER

J.P. SCOTT

WILLIAM DAWSON

MARY T. SMITH

CLEMENTINE HUNTER MOSE TOLLIVER "PAPPY" KITCHENS

WILLIE WHITE

MAY KUGLER

"CHIEF" WILLEY

GERTRUDE MORGAN

JOSEPH YOAKUM Jonah and the Whale, 18" x 24", c.1930

WILLIAM PELTIER • FINE AND FOLK ART 376 Millaudon St. • New Orleans, LA 70118 • By Appointment Tel: (504) 861-3196 • Fax: (504) 862-7403 E-Mail: wpeltier@aol.com • Web Site: http://www.peltierart.com

V77VVVT'VVVVrIVTV7VVVVVVVVVVVVVVYw

ROCKY MOUNTAIN QUILTS 400+ Antique Quilts 1750 —1940 Quilts for beds Quilts for walls Quilts for collectors Restoration, washing and custom work 10-5 Monday-Saturday 12-5 Sunday May 1 thru October 1 Call for winter hours 60 min. North of Boston 130 York Street York Village, Maine 03909 Betsey Telford 1-800-762-5940

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 8 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

44

44

44

4 4 4

FINE CHIP CARVED DETAIL THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SURFACE OF THE EAGLE, WITH THIRTEEN GOLD STARS ON THE BASE. ONE OF THREE FULLY DIMENSIONALLY CARVED EAGLES BY THE HAND OF BELLAMY.

Subject to prior sale.

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

ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN HALES BELLAMY. CIRCA 1860-1875.

WALNUT WITH THE ORIGINAL BLACK AND GOLD PAINT. HEIGHT:30 INCHES;WINGSPREAD:59'4 INCHES.

EXTREMELY RARE BELLAMY EAGLE

WILLIAM EDMONDSON

EAGLE,Carved Limestone, 22.25 x 15.5 x 7.25 inches, c. 1930-40

CARL HAMMER GALLERY CARL HAMMER GALLERY,INC.200 W.SUPERIOR ST., CHICAGO,IL. 60610 Ph: 312-266-8512 Fx: 312-266-8510 E-Mail: hammergall@aol.com

DIRECTOR'S

LETTER

GERARD C. WERTKIN

the media. In this respect, the Museum is fortunate that Susan a meeting in April, the Museum's Board welcomed Flamm is Public Relations Director. lam delighted once again A Trustee. elected Joseph F. Cullman 3rd as a newly to acknowledge our indebtedness to her. distinguished businessman, Mr. Cullman is ChairIt with sadness that I record the death of man Emeritus of Philip Morris Companies Emerita Margery Kahn, a good friend of Trustee Inc., having served as the Company's for more than two decades. HavMuseum the many for President and C.E.O. ing come to an appreciation of folk art during years. A native New Yorker, Mr. summers spent in Truro on Cape Cod,she Cullman plays a prominent role in public the Board in 1978. Not only did she parjoined service. He has been a trustee of the Ameriplanning for the Museum's purchase of in ticipate the and can Museum of Natural History the splendid collection assembled by Howard and World Wildlife Fund as well as president of the Jean Lipman, but a gift from her and her husband, Atlantic Salmon Foundation and the Tennis Hall of enabled the Museum to acquire from the LipHarry, Mr. to Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. I am deeply grateful 1832 trade sign of E. Fitts Jr.'s store. important the mans an such at role leadership a assume Cullman for agreeing to Margery Kahn also assisted in transforming the important juncture in the Museum's development.

TRADE SIGN: E. FITTS Jr's. STORE Museum's shop from a small counter in the Museum to a A few steps from my office there is a large cabinet in AND COFFEEHOUSE, artist level emporium carrying a wide variety of books street Shelburne, of vicinity unknown, which the Museum keeps press books that document its Massachusetts, dated 1832, poly- and objects drawn from the traditions of American folk which archive, this of significance accomplishments. The chromed wood, wrought iron, oval: serious illness made it impossible for her to includes newspaper and magazine clippings that date from 2 . Museum of Amen. art. Although 1 223/8 34/ of gift York, role in the Museum for a number of years, New Art, active can Folk take an the founding of the institution to the present, lies in its Margery and Hany Kahn, profoundly felt by all of us. She is one of still is loss her impressive evidence of the growth of public interest in the 1981.12.9 Museum of American Folk Art has always the reasons the the Although represents. it that Museum and the fields been a special place, and we will miss her.

Museum's exhibitions and educational programs have always garnered Of course, the Museum shop, under the creative direction of Marie widespread notice, I am proud to report that the level of appreciation is has been a favorite resource for members and the general DiManno, history. our in demonstratably greater today than at any time years. My special thanks go to Marie DiManno,Caromany for public moving the is coverage press in growth this of example recent A line Hohenrath, Dorothy Gargiulo, and the remainder of the staff at the response to our last presentation,"A.G. Rizzoli: Architect of MagnifiMuseum shop at 62 West 50th Street at Rockefeller Center here in New cent Visions," which was organized by the San Diego Museum of Art. After operating highly successfully at this address for more than York. but reviews, full-page two The New York Times not only published the Museum has closed this location as a result of changes in decade, a Times Furthermore, work. his and artist the to editorial an devoted the building management's leasing policies. As difficult as it is to bid columnist Frank Rich recommended the exhibition to his Op-Ed readfarewell to the Rockefeller Center shop, we now will be able to coners as a Valentine's Day gift—an antidote to the disrepute in which centrate efforts at our flagship store adjacent to the Eva and Morris today. held are often ideas like love and affection too Feld Gallery. I invite all of our loyal customers in Rockefeller Center It should be emphasized that this kind of recognition does not come easily. Not only does it require a track record of excellence in program- to come uptown, where an equally wonderful assortment of merchanming, but information must be transmitted effectively and efficiently to dise is available for sale.

For those of you who live out of the New York metropolitan area, our Museum shop offerings are available by mail. I recommend two Managers Caroline Hohenrath and Dorothy Gargiulo at the Rockefeller Center shop, 1998 Museum publications, both excellent additions to your library. The first, Edge to Edge: Selectionsfrom Studio Art Quilt Associates, at $4.95($4.50 for members), documents our current exhibition of extraordinary art quilts."Edge to Edge" will be on view from June 13 through September 27. The second is Self-Taught Artists ofthe 20th Century: An American Anthology, the catalog of the Museum's exhibition by the same name. This book can be purchased in hardcover for $60.00($54.00 for members)and in paperback for $35.00($32.50 for members). For mail order information, please write to the Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop, Two Lincoln Square, New York, NY 10023. For phone orders, call the shop at 212/496-2966.

"Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology" 5 opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in March and is now en route &" to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta where it will be presented from 2 July 14 to October 20. It is a spectacular show and I urge you see it.*

At

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 11

MINIATURES

i I

COMPILED BY TANYA HEINRICH

.. , • all 1 1 i 1 1 I I 1 , i 1 .1 i F

1 I

.,1 •

i'• ' — '

32" h x 1312 w x 1312" d

TRAMP ART CROWN OF THORNS CROSS

Quilt Exhibitions Roundup Twelve exhibitions showcasing quilts will be on view this summer at the following venues: Flagstaff, Arizona — "Quilting from the Hopi Mesas: Stitched Traditions from an Ancient Community," Museum of Northern Arizona(520/774-5213), through Sept. 30.

San Jose, California — "Quilt National 1997," American Museum of Quilts and Textiles (408/971-0323), through June 28.

Golden,Colorado — "Clues in Blue and White," The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum (303/277-0377), through July 4.

Washington,D.C. — "Contemporary Quilts from the James Collection," The Textile Museum (202/667-0441), through Sept. 6.

Savannah,Georgia — "Crossing Boundaries: Contemporary Art Quilts," Telfair Museum of Art (912/232-1177),through July 12.

Paducah,Kentucky — "National Quilting Association Masterpiece Quilts & Their Makers," Museum of the American Quilter's Society (502/442-8856), through Aug. 1.

Lowell, Massachusetts — "Story Book Quilts: Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton," New England Quilt Museum (508/4524207), through June 14.

Sturbridge, Massachusetts — "Northern Comfort: New England's Early Quilts, 1780-1850," Old Sturbridge Village (508/347-3362), through Jan. 3, 1999.

Concord,New Hampshire — "Quilts in New Hampshire: Piecing the Story Together," Museum of New Hampshire History (603/226-3189), through Sept. 6.

Raleigh, North Carolina — "Sherri Wood: Parable Quilts," Gallery of Art and Design, North Carolina State University (919/515-3503), through July 22.

Beaumont,Texas — "Sarah Mary Taylor: Yazoo City Quilter," Art Museum of Southeast Texas (409/832-3432), through Aug. 30.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin — "Covering History: Quilts in Wisconsin," Milwaukee Art Museum (414/2224-3200), Aug. 21 to Nov. 29.

a truly exceptional example

Always buying fine examples of American Folk Art, single pieces or entire collections.

J.E. PORCELLI AMERICAN FOLK ART and AMERICANA Shaker Heights, Ohio Tel./fax: 216 932 3270 Appointment and Shows E-mail: jeporcelli@en.com

12 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

APPLIQUED QUILT Nancy Simes Nutter Hoit Kaime (1793-1875) Bamstead, New Hampshire Cotton C. 1860s 86 76" Collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society, gift of Miriam and Deborah Page in memory of Barbara Page Hutchins

JONAH AND THE WHALE Reverend Samuel David Phillips Chicago c. late 1950s Crayon and graphite on oil cloth 54 46" Collection of Turtel Onli C) T. Onli, 1997

Sermons on Scrolls "The Religious Charts of Reverend Samuel David Phillips," featuring the illustrated sermons of an ordained minister and pastor of the Progressive Pentecostal Church of Chicago, is on view at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive

and Outsider Art in Chicago through June 20. Phillips (1890-1973), of African American and Cherokee descent, drew and painted 3-by-6-foot oilcloth scrolls, which he called "charts," for use as visual aids to the bible. This will be the last Intuit exhibition until the organization opens in a new space this fall. For more information, call 773/929-7122.

Rarefindsfrom our unique selection ofcanes Don't miss this!

FAMILY CANOE Morris Okun (1903-1995) Springfield, Massachusetts c. 1991-1995 Cardboard and paint Approximately 24 14" Collection of Martha and Milt Dalitzky

Contemporary Cutouts "The World of Mo," an exhibition of painted cardboard cutouts

by Massachusetts self-taught artist Morris Okun,is on view at the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum in Springfield, Mass., through Aug. 30. Okun,a Russian immigrant, began making his Corrections In the Museum News section of the Spring issue (vol. 23, no. 1, p. 79), we inadvertently miscredited the photographs illustrating "The Image Business Opening and Programming."

The photographer was Richard L. Cummings.

figures in 1991 at the age of 88, illustrating his family, historical figures, and childhood memories of Russia. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog. For more information, call 413/263-6800.

In the same issue, the following images were flopped: Maremaid, by Mary Ann Willson, p. 22; Untitled, by Martin Ramirez, p. 44; and Still Life, by Henry Church Jr., p. 46.

A.G. Rizzoli: Architect of Magnificent Visions through June 23, 1998 San Francisco \lu-i•tim of Modern Art Please contact a., a cuu wish to purchase the book/catalopiefor this show. • We specialize in the works of contemporary naive, visionary, and outsider artists, and offer exceptional 19th & early 20th C. handmade objects, including carved canes, tramp art, quilts, and whimseys.

Bonnie Grossman, Director 2661 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA 94708 510/845-4949, Fax: 510/845-6219

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 13

BRUCE SHELTON

MINIATURES

KATHY MOSES, GALLERY DIRECTOR SHELTON GALLERY STANFORD SQUARE •4239 HARDING ROAD NASHVILLE,TN 37205 •(615) 298-9935 Personalized Portraits The distinct portraiture of two California self-taught artists will be on view at the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum from June 6 through Aug.9."Face to Face: Portraits by Craig Budde & Ted Gordon," organized by curator John Turner, features Budde's carefully carved and drawn portraits of the same idealized fantasy woman and Gordon's bold, symmetrical, rhythmically patterned self-portraits rendered in

ABORIGINE OF THE DREAM WORLD, Ted Gordon, San Francisco, 1986, ink on construction board, 17 x 14", courtesy Charles Locke

ink and colored pencil. For more information, please call 415/775-0991.

Southern Samplers

(Top) Horace Pippin (1888-1946), "A Tribute to Stalingrad" (aka "The Refugees") 1942. Oil on canvas board, 8-1/2 x 12". Illustrated in I Tell My Heart: The Art ofHorace Pippin, p.64.

(Bottom) Howard Finster, "Judge No Man By Yourself," #1000 + 74, 1978.

Enamel on tin, 15x21" including frame. Illustrated in Howard Finster, Stranger From Another World, Man ofVisions Now on This Earth, p.144.

"Virginia Samplers: Young Ladies and Their Needle Wisdom," an exhibition highlighting the great expertise and subtlety of design evident in lesser-known Southern samplers from 1650 to 1850, is on view at Colonial Williamsburg's DeWitt Wallace Gallery in Williamsburg, Va.,

through Sept. 8. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog. The 100 samplers and related embroideries are on view only four hours a day to minimize light exposure; for scheduling and more information, please call 757/220-7724.

Straight to the Heart "Love: Error & Eros," an exhibition that examines the many incarnations of one of the most powerful of human emotions, is on view at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore through May 30, 1999. Organized

by curators Maggie and John Maizels, publishers of Raw Vision magazine, the exhibition presents works depicting love and its many splendors as well as its many sorrows. For more information, please call 410/244-1900.

Grandma Moses in Landscape Survey

William Edmondson (c. 1870-1951). Limestone sculpture, 7 tall x 8 1/2" at base x 6-1/4" deep.

Also works by Tim Lewis, Thornton Dial, Herbert Singleton & Helen LaFrance

14 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Works by Grandma Moses are included in an exhibition exploring the common ground found over a 400-year period of European and American landscape painting."Vernacular Landscape Painting from Brueghel to Grandma Moses" is on view at the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vt., through Nov. 1.

Organized by curator Deborah Anne Federhen, the exhibition will also include French and Flemish medieval paintings, Currier & Ives prints, early American drawings and paintings, an anonymous overmantel, and contemporary American landscapes.

For more information, call 802/447-1571.

Willie Massey 1910-1990 Kentucky

PRESS BLOOM C.A.A. Dellschau Houston, Texas c. 1910-1923 Mixed media 4" 1 4 20/ 3 17/ The Menil Collection

Peahen 13" x8" Folk Art at The Menil Collection The Menil Collection in Houston, taught artist C.A.A. Dellschau.

The exhibition will be on view Tex., will be showcasing a selecfrom June through October. For tion of American folk art from more information, please call their permanent collection this 713/525-9400. summer,including hand-bound aeronautical scrapbooks by self-

Carl McKenzie 1905-1998 Kentucky woodcarver Carl McKenzie died on March 23, 1998, of natural causes at the Morgan County Appalachian Hospital in West Liberty, Ky. Often drawing on popular culture for source material, McKenzie painted carvings that ranged from utilitarian objects to more decorative animal, bird, and human forms, as well as personalized biblical narrative tableaux.

McKenzie's tools were a pocketknife and hatchet, and he preferred soft woods such as white pine and cedar. He also added color to his works,frequently using a dotting technique for embellishment.

Born June 4, 1905, near Pine Ridge,in Wolfe County, Ky., McKenzie worked as a

farmhand,in a tile factory, in coal fields, at a steel plant, and as a truck driver.

Health problems forced McKenzie to retire in 1961, and he spent more and more time carving, something he had learned from his grandfather when he was a child.

McKenzie was honored with an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council(1985), and a sculpture award from the Southern Arts Federation (1987).

In 1994, a retrospective of his works was exhibited at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Art Museum.

McKenzie is survived by a daughter, Essie Lovely, a son, Victor, seven grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren. —Lee Kogan

Snake 10" x 6.5"

Tigercat 18.5" x9.5"

American Pie Elaine Johansen 113 Dock Street • Wilmington, NC 28401 (910) 251-2131

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 15

Doyle Sam (1906- 1985) Collection Includes: "Artist Chuckie" Williams, Ike Morgan, J.B. Murray, Howard Finster, Mary T. Smith, B.F. Perkins, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, David Butler, Clementine Hunter, Royal Robertson, Reginald K. Gee, James Harrold Jennings, Mose Tolliver, Lonnie Holley, Burgess Dulaney, Charlie Lucas, Nellie Mae Rowe, Sarah Rakes, Leroy Almon, Sr., Tubby Brown, Willie White, S.L. Jones, Rhinestone Cowboy, and Albert Louden.

GILLEY8

GALLEQY R

A

M

ES

8750 Florida Blvd.

Baton Rouge, LA 70815 Phone:(504) 922-9225 Fax:(504) 922-9887 Web Page: vvww.eatel.nethoutsider Email: outsider@eatel.net

"Steppin' Out" 29" x 45", Enamel on tin

ANGELA USREY GALLERY an

american

art

gallery

o•raph by axon

•

SPECIALIZING IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTHERN FOLK ART

J L SUDDUTH, WOMAN, 1986, MUD ON BOARD, 18 X 22

16 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

101 FRAZIER AVENUE CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE 37405 423.265.2760 (FORMERLY NORTH SHORE GALLERY)

Braille Drawings by

Captain William E.Jordan (18951965)

Waska.1962Coloredperlaandgraphitempamlnix171i/I6-ve

Exclusive Representative

Barbara

Gallery

Atlanta, Georgia Pb 404-812-96H) / Ex 404-872-9745

Ginger Young Gallery Southern Self-Taught Art For a free video catalogue or a price list contact: Ginger Young Gallery 5802 Brisbane Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 • Phone/Fax 919.932.6003 E-mail: gingerart@aol.com • Web: http://members.aol.com/gingerart2/ By appointment 919.932.6003

Works by more than four dozen artists, including: Rudolph Bostic • Raymond Coins • Howard Finster • Sybil Gibson • Willie Jinks • Reginald Mitchell • Sarah Rakes • Royal Robertson • Lorenzo Scott Earl Simmons • James "Buddy" Snipes • Jimmie Lee Sudduth • Mose Tolliver • Myrtice West Painting by John Henry Toney, Brahma Cow, housepaint on wood 15"x 28", 1997.

Archie Byron

Gallery Barbara Brogdon 1611 Hwy 129 S.• Cleveland, GA. 30528 (706) 865-6345 Fax (706) 219-3112 www.rosehipsart.com • email: rosebips@stc.net

FEATURING: Jim Sudduth•Mamie Deschillie Lainer Meaders•R.A. Miller•Lonnie Holley M.C. 5( Jones v Charlie Lucas v Chris Clark Louise Rich Goodman and Others

18 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

BOOKS

OF

INTEREST

he following recent titles are available at the Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop. To order by mail, call 212/496-2966.

Museum members receive a 10% discount.

T

Adolf Wolfli: Draftsman, Writer, Poet, Composer, Elka Spoerri, editor, Cornell University Press, 1997, 252 pages, hardcover, $39.95 A.G. Rizzoli: Architect ofMagnificent Visions, Jo Farb Hernandez, Abrams, 1997, 136 pages, paperback,$25 American Cabinetmakers: Marked American Furniture, 1640-1940, William C. Ketchum Jr. with the Museum of American Folk Art, Crown, 1995,404 pages, hardcover, $45

Outsider Art: An Exploration of Chicago Collections, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs with Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, 1997, 44 pages, paperback, $18

FOLK

AR

Y

ART

gallery

Self-Taught Artists ofthe 20th Century: An American Anthology, Elsa Longhauser, Museum of American Folk Art with Chronicle Books, 1998, 252 pages. hardcover, $60, paperback, $35

American Windsor Chairs, Nancy Goyne Evans, Hudson Hills Press with The Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum, 1996, 744 pages, hardcover, $125

A Silent Voice: Drawings and Constructions ofJames Castle, Cornelia H. Butler, Fleisher/ Oilman Gallery, 1998,64 pages, paperback, $15

The Bard Brothers: Painting America Under Steam and Sail, Anthony J. Peluso Jr., Abrams, 1997, 175 pages, hardcover,$35

Spirited Journeys: Self-Taught Texas Artists ofthe Twentieth Century, Lynne Adele, Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, The University of Texas at Austin, 207 pages, paperback,$35

New York City Tattoo: The Oral History ofan Urban Art, Michael McCabe,Hardy Marks, 1997, 136 pages, paperback,$30

TEMPOR

AMERICAN

Self-Made Worlds: Visionary Folk Art Environments, Roger Manley, Mark Sloan. and Jonathan Williams, Aperture, 1997, 129 pages, hardcover, $40

The Shaker World: Art, Life, Belief John T. Kirk, Abrams, 1997. 286 pages, hardcover, $60

The Los Angeles Watts Towers, Bud Goldstone and Arloa Paquin Goldstone, Getty Trust, 1997, 116 pages, paperback, $24.95

CON

Redemption Songs: The SelfTaught Artists ofJamaica, Randall Mon-is, Winston-Salem State University Press. 1997, 56 pages, paperback, $15

American Painted Furniture, Cynthia V.A. Schaffner and Susan Klein, Clarkson Potter, 1997, 224 pages, hardcover,$65

Ceramic Sculptures: Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Joanne Cubbs, Fleisher/Oilman Gallery, 1998,54 pages, paperback, $15

FRANK J. MIELE

The Temptation: Edgar Tolson and the Genesis of Twentieth-Century Folk Art, Julia S. Ardery, The University of North Carolina Press, 1998, 353 pages, paperback, $19.95 Tramp Art One Notch at a Time: The Craft, the Techniques dc the Makers, Clifford A. Wallach and Michael Cornish, Wallach-Irons Publishing, 1998, 176 pages, hardcover,$65

The gallery proudly introduces the work of

NORA MAE CARMICHAEL. Coincidentally sharing a middle name with Nellie Mae Rowe, Carmichael's work—like Rowe's—is inspired by divine intervention.

Her drawings of common folk,—the people around her—like those of Rowe, are vibrant, colorful, poignant, powerful and beautiful.

1086 Madison Avenue (at 82nd Street) New York, NY 10028 (212) 249-7250

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 19

Mary Ann Will

T

ART

By

The artist, Miss Willson and herfriend, Miss Brundage, camefrom one ofthe eastern States and made their home in the town of Greenville, Greene County, New York....

One was thefanner(Miss Brundage)... while the other(Mary Ann Willson) made pictures.... These two maids left their home in the East with a romantic attachmentfor each other and which continued until the death ofthe "farmer maid." The artist was inconsolable, and after a brieftime, removed to parts unknown. —Letter from "An Admirer of Art"

20 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Stacy

C.

Hollandet

..igncxil ezfrefrti vr=4".14/ 4,4 , ?1, 74-areev',mix al eryy4.101.4i ' 4.4-e 4-rXri , ,::caL

W

iz,n---",,,.. ,

• THREE ANGEL HEADS c. 1800-1825 Ink and watercolor on paper 16 13" Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gift of Maxim Karolik, 50.3886

4 YOUNG WOMAN WEARING TURBAN c. 1800-1825 Ink and watercolor on paper 77/,, 6/ 1 2" M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Watercolors and Drawings, 1800-1875, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 56.456

hese surprising words, contained in a mid-nineteenthcentury letter by an anonymous "Admirer of Art," have intrigued lovers of American folk art since the 1940s, when it and twenty watercolors were acquired and exhibited by the Harry Stone Gallery in New York. More recently, they have provided the impetus for a novel, an opera, and a partnership between the Museum of American Folk Art and Lincoln Center. The two cultural institutions have long sought an opportunity to join in a cooperative venture because of their status as neighbors—the Museum is across the street from Manhattan's largest per-

forming arts complex—and because of the natural intersection of art and music in American folkways through the centuries. It is somehow fitting that this desire should finally come to fruition through the visionary watercolors of early nineteenth-century artist Mary Ann Willson and the premiere of the opera Patience & Sarah, which was inspired by this glimpse into her unconventional life.

In 1976 Nancy F. Karlins published an article about Mary Ann Willson that remains the most complete record of the artist's work and life.' The primary sources of information that Karlins used were the letter found with the watercolors (now in

the M. and M. Karolik Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); a second letter, similar in content (now in the Vedder Library in the Bronck Museum, Coxsackie, New York); and Picturesque Catskills, Greene County, written by R. Lionel De Lisser and published in 1894. Willson's local reputation as an artist was apparently important enough to merit her being included in De Lisser's history of the Catskills and its significant citizens.

De Lisser's account agrees with the letter in most regards. However, in contradiction to "An Admirer of Art," who once knew the women and wrote plainly and without embarrassment of their "romantic attachment" for each other, De Lisser has expurgated the implication of a lesbian relationship.

In a narrative reshaped for his turn-ofthe-century audience, De Lisser writes that Willson and Brundage had "both of them,in their younger days, experienced a romance that had broken their hearts, and the bond of sorrow between them had drawn the two close to each other in womanly sympathy. Together they had come from the old country to Connecticut, and from there to this place, seeking peace and forgetfulness in the wilderness.

They never told their story or anything in fact, relating to themselves, that could serve as a clue to their identity or past life."2 Since the 1940s, when research began on Mary Ann Willson, no census records, land titles, or other documentation have been discovered that shed any light on the artist or her companion. From the letters and Picturesque Catskills, we know that they lived in a log cabin, that Miss Brundage was the "farmer maid" who worked the small farm with the help of neighbors, and that Willson's works were sold "way to Canada and clear to Mobile!" Perhaps the best clues to the lives of the artist and her companion are the paintings themselves. Accepting that the watercolors were produced in Greenville, we can surmise that the women's years of residence in Greene County were from around 1800 to 1825, based upon the depictions of costumes and other period details. Since Willson left the area shortly after the death of her friend, Miss Brundage presumably died about

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 21

the time of the later works, though no local death notice has yet been found.

It is not known why the two women left Connecticut, but the reasons must have been compelling for them to set up housekeeping on what was then considered the western frontier without any outward means of support.

Yet, it could also be argued that they were simply following a typical migration pattern, as northeastern Yankees, especially those from Connecticut, had begun to displace Dutch settlers in western New York earlier in the century.

At the time her watercolors were discovered, Mary Ann Willson was among the few early nineteenthcentury female artists working in this medium who had been identified.

Rather than commercial watercolors, which at the time were just becoming available, "An Admirer of Art" suggests that Willson's paints may, in fact, have been home-produced from natural sources such as berries and bricks, with only an occasional use of store-bought paint. The paintings are notable for their intense, broad areas of color, decorative patterning, and abstract quality. Willson is known to have used print sources, and the extent of her transformations are apparent in her Prodigal Son series.

In these paintings on a popular religious theme, Willson combined two sets of published prints. The American edition is attributed to Cornelius Tiebout, 1790-1795, and is a mirror image of the ones published in 1794

by Laurie and Whittle in England.3 In Willson's hands, the fussy line engravings become dramatic, fiery scenes of isolation and redemption with odd disjunctive touches of gaily patterned areas and whimsical elements.

Mary Ann Willson is often compared to Eunice Pinney because both women were from Connecticut and both painted during the same period. Many of Pinney's compositions are believed to be deeply personal statements, but they are expressed in a refined manner, with pale colors and literal depictions based on print sources.4Intensely colored inks and watercolors, highly decorative patterning, and subjects such as General Washington on horseback, mermaids,

22 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

pelicans, parrots, flowers, and religious themes were prevalent in Germanic communities, where they were used for the production of fraktur and related forms.

Although Willson's work displays these characteristics, they were not common in women's work in the general population.

The mermaid, in particular, is most widely seen in Germanic decorative arts.

According to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, "All of the fraktur examples [of mermen and mermaids] recorded to date by Folk Art Center staff have Pennsylvania or Maryland origins, while the objects, such as weathervanes and tombstones, have either New York or New England provenances."5 Willson's depiction of a mermaid might therefore indicate that she was aware of Germanic decorative traditions, but her heritage is more likely English. Her Maremaid, as she titled it, resembles the subject of an eighteenth-century trade sign and trade card from London: a mermaid with a knotted tail and threepart tail fm.6These images— unlike the fraktur examples—show a scalloped band around the mermaid's waist that is similar to that in Willson's fanciful piece. Collection notes for Maremaid in the files of the New York State Historical Association discuss allusions in this painting to Amazons, the women warriors of Greek myth. Brandishing a weapon in each hand, rather than a mirror and comb, as in the London images, Willson's ideal appears to combine attributes of the Amazon with those of the mermaid.

When one considers also the word play on her own name—Mary Maid—it becomes apparent that this picture of a mythological, seductive, female warrior may have held personal significance for the artist.

The period in which Willson and Brundage migrated to Greenville—the so-called Second Great Awakening—was marked by great religious activity and fervor. Western New York,in particular, was the scene of so many religious movements and revivals that it earned the name "burned-over district." As early as 1784, Connecticut began sending missionaries into the region. Methodism was particularly successful in adapting to frontier conditions, and it attracted many converts. It is possible that reli-

MAREMAID C.1810-1825 Ink and watercolor on paper 12/ 3 4 151 / 2" New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, N-85.61

THE PRODIGAL SON RECLAIMED c. 1815 Pen and black ink and watercolor on paper 12/ 1 2 10" National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, © 1998 Board of Trustees, 1966.13.23

FOLK ART/FOLK OPERA gion played a role in Willson and Brundage's decision to move west. Religious themes are prevalent in Mary Ann Willson's watercolors, and an apocalyptic quality has often been noted in her work. While this in itself is not unusual—religion was deemed an appropriate subject for women during this time—a clue to Willson's personal religious convictions is found in one of her most remarkable works.

Three Angel Heads is an inverted triangular arrangement of three bust-length portraits of women floating in space. Each is wearing earrings and a fashionable headpiece atop her extravagant hairdo. The faces are highly individualized with distinct features, suggesting that they may be portraits of people known to the artist. Despite their worldly appearances, the three women are clearly angels—each has a set of wings extending in different directions and painted red, yellow, or blue. Below the angels are four lines of verse: "Angels now are hovering round us/Unprocevd thay mix the throng/Wondering at the love that crownd us/Glad to joyn the holy Song." With the help of the staff of the Music Division, Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, I have identified these lines as the second stanza of a Methodist hymn,"0 Thou God of My Salvation."7 The hymn was written in the second half of the eighteenth century by Thomas °livers, a follower of John Wesley. Wesley was one of the founders of Methodism in England. In 1766, Methodism gained its first foothold in the United States after being introduced into New York by Philip Embury and rapidly spread by Francis Asbury, the most famous of the early circuit riders. Olivers' hymn became one of thousands incorporated into the Sacred Harp singing tradition that today is best preserved in the South. Not coincidentally, this region still provides fertile ground for vibrant religious folk art. The visual affinity between Willson's work and twentieth-century visionary art stems from the emotional intensity of their shared evangelical heritage.

Willson's Methodist roots also shed some light on her artistic differences with Eunice Pinney. Viewed through the lens of their religious affiliations, Willson's bold and fervent work and Pinney's genteel watercolors become reflective of their respective social classes. Pinney was from an influential Episcopalian family who played a pivotal role in the life of Simsbury, Connecticut; she herself was unusually well educated for a woman of her time. Willson's family history is unknown, but from her attraction to Methodism, which greatly appealed to the masses, rather than to the elite, it may be inferred that her background was more humble.

When Willson's watercolors were#exhibited at the Harry Stone Gallery in 1944, they generated a great deal of interest. Aside from the group of watercolors by Eunice Pinney of Connecticut, they were among the earliest folk paintings discovered in this medium. But they were also exciting because they resonated so strongly with abstract art of the period. As Jean Lipman wrote in the exhibition catalog Miss Willson's Watercolors: "Of all the primitives which have come to this author's attention, none are so strikingly akin to sophisticated modem art as Miss Willson's artless watercolors." She added that, "Miss Willson's paintings cannot be considered as typical American primitives .... The sight of these strangely designed and brilliantly colored paintings is a shock even to the modem sophisticates; the first impression is of a cross between a psychotic's nightmare and the wildest compositions of the Fauves."

More than fifty years later, in a heightened climate of appreciation for visionary art and a growing acceptance of alternative lifestyles, Mary Ann Willson's watercolors continue to burn brightly.* Author's Note: I would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Shelley Langdale, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Shelby Mattice, Bronck Museum,Coxsackie, New York. I am also grateful to the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for their cooperation on this project.

Stacy C. Hollander is the curator ofthe Museum of American Folk Art and curator of the exhibition "Mary Ann Wilson: Artist Maid."

NOTES 1. N.F. Karlins,"Mary Ann Willson," The Magazine Antiques, vol. cx,#no. 5(November 1976), pp.

1040-1045.

2 Quoted in ibid., p. 1043.

3 Ibid., p. 1045.

4 Susan Foster,"Couple & Casualty: The Art of Eunice Pinney Unveiled," Folk Art, vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 1996), pp. 30-37.

5 Beatrix T. Rumford, ed.,American Folk Paintings(Boston: Little, Brown and Company,in association with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1988), p. 317.

6 James Ayres, The Art of the People in America and Britain 1750-1950(Manchester, England: Cornerhouse, 1985), p. 25.

7 Homer A. Rodeheaver, Hymnal Handbookfor Standard Hymns and Gospel Songs(Chicago and Philadelphia: The Rodeheaver Company, 1931), p.

5, and George Pullen Jackson,ed., Spiritual FolkSongs ofEarly America (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J.J. Augustin Publisher, 1953), pp. 115-116.

MARY ANN WILLSON ARTIST MAID ON VIEW AT THE MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART June 13—September 27, 1998

n a unique joint venture, the Museum of American Folk Art has organized "Mary Ann Willson: Artist Maid," an exhibition of watercolors by the little-known early nineteenth-century American folk artist, to coincide with Lincoln Center Festival's world premiere of Patience & Sarah, an original opera based on the artist and her life with a female companion in rural upstate New York.

"Mary Ann Willson: Artist Maid," a jewel-like exhibition of nearly half of the artist's approximately two dozen known works, will be on view at the Museum's Eva and Morris Feld Gallery from June 13 to September 27.

Willson's vivid watercolors are steeped in the conventions of thee. 1800-1825 period in which she was working, but they reveal a startlingly different perspective from that of her contemporaries. Although individual works explore traditional themes such as portraits, birds, flowers, biblical scenes, and genre scenes, she followed her own rules of distortion, color, pattern, and linear rhythm to create exciting works of art that evoke a sensibility that often seems attuned to a twentieth-century sense of abstract design.

Patience & Sarah, with music by Paula M. Kimper and libretto by Wende Persons, is a fully staged chamber opera in three acts inspired

by Isabel Miller's 1969 cult novel of the same name and scored for eight principal singers and a fourteen-piece instrumental ensemble. The opera, produced by American Opera Projects, Inc.(AOP), part of the three-week Lincoln Center Festival 98, will be performed for three evenings only—July 8, 10, and 11 at 7:30 P.M.—at the John Jay College Theater on 10th Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets.

Tickets are $45 each through AOP,and include a tax-deductible donation. For information on the exhibition, call 212/595-9533. For opera tickets and information, call 212/431-8102.

I

Partial funding for the exhibition is provided by Olive F. Watson and by Jeff Soref.

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 23

EDGE Q

uiltmaldng is an art that is rediscovered by every generation; historically, it has provided a voice and creative platform for women when they had no other. In the second half of the twentieth century, the quilt construct has provided a singular wellspring of creativity for artists across boundaries of gender and training. This Summer, the Museum of American Folk Art presents "Edge to Edge: Selections from Studio Art Quilt Associates," an exhibition that features the work of eighteen artists who have chosen fabric, thread, dye, and paint as their medium, and the quilt as their expressive format. As the works on display demonstrate, the quilt continues to offer new possibilities for artistic experimentation and, because of its cultural and emotional associations, the potential for surprise.

In organizing the exhibition, the Museum worked with Studio Art Quilt Associates, a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that functions as an advocacy group for studio quiltmakers. With more than 400 members, SAQA offered a microcosm of contemporary art-quilting trends, and the Museum's invitation to its membership yielded more than 600 submissions in the form of slides. It was interesting that in many cases respondents did not send their most recent work, but examples that were as much as ten years old. Decades after the inception of the art quilt, this seems to suggest a sense of artistic review on the part of the artists themselves, and a coming full-circle in appreciation of their own artistic journeys.

Today it is almost de rigueur to think of quilts in complex terms, but the concept of "art quilt" raises a new set of issues, both aesthetic and philosophical. Penny McMorris and Michael Kile coined the term in 1986, and offered a comprehensive discussion of the transition from bedcover to wall art in their book of the same name. More recently, the history has

24 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

AN ORANGE FOR LUNCH, Barbara Barrick McKie, Lyme, Connecticut, 1997, hand-dyed cotton, computer image sublimation transfer on polyester fabric; machine-quilted, 12 15"

By

Stacy

C. Hollander

TO

EDGE Selections

from Studio Art Quilt Associates been related by Bets Ramsey in Uncoverings 1993 and by Robert Shaw in his new book The Art Quilt.

It is, however, a movement that has been on the defensive since the 1960s, when it first began to flourish. Rooted in the appreciation of fiber arts that emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, contemporary quilts have been called variously "nontraditional," "studio," and "art" to distinguish them from historical bedcoverings, but to some observers these works nevertheless remain imprinted with the notion of applied art or craft. Although many contemporary quiltmakers acknowledge the influence of historical examples, their work has consistently demonstrated an informed and sensitive response to contemporary art methods and issues.

For twenty years, the Museum of American Folk Art has recognized the importance of the contemporary art quilt movement. During these two decades, there has been an enormous change in the visual approach to the quilt tradition. Although the Museum has supported contemporary quiltmakers through its educational program-

ming, quilt festivals, and contests, exhibitions of art quilts at the Museum itself have been rare. Indeed, the proposal to organize and host an exhibition of contemporary quilts sparked one of the more spirited internal debates in my memory about the Museum's identity and mission.

Those in favor of the exhibition argued that American quilts and their history have long been a major aspect of the Museum's focus in terms of collecting, exhibiting, and scholarship, and that studio quilts represented the contemporary extension of this tradition. Those resistant to the idea felt that nontraditional quilts were too far removed in technique, conception, and aesthetic from their historical antecedents, and that they were now outside the sphere of our inquiry.

Interestingly, this conversation paralleled one that has been occurring with increasing frequency as the Museum continues to enter the contemporary arena through the work of self-taught artists. "But is it folk art?" is the recurring question that we are asked to consider as comfortable parameters and clear-cut borders shift, with contemporary artmakers inside and outside the mainstream artworld using similar materials and strategies.

Complicating the matter is the fact that studio quilters, unlike self-taught artists, are often highly trained technicians who have rejected the constrictions of traditional art materials in favor of fabric. While the fabric medium may seem to impose its own limitations, for many of these artists, working with textiles has been a freeing experience that allows them to intensively manipulate a medium both visually and dimensionally. Some

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 25

artists have also expressed a sense of liberation from art-historical impositions, feeling that they can, instead, invent their own references. While the degree of studio training among the artists would seem to support the Museum's hesitance to exhibit art quilts, one might argue that quiltmaking represents one of the single unbroken lines of tradition in American folk arts, whatever its current manifestation engenders.

If art quilts faced some resistance from a museum that supported the movement's growth over a period of many years, how have they been received in the artworld? The answer, not surprisingly, is that the studio quilt has not been welcomed by the artworld, but has been forced to form its own consumer circle: the quilt world.

The idea of "worlds," with their rules of exclusion and inclusion, is especially germane to a discussion of studio quilts. The quilt world has successfully generated many venues for its constituents, whose desire is to see a large cross-section of work by their peers. This world is primarily female, and its organization is more democratic than the elitist artworld, with some level of membership available to virtually anyone who can ply a needle and thread. But it is also a world that is constantly judging itself and which has established a hierarchical structure that, to some degree, parallels the artworld—instead of the Whitney Biennial, for instance, a quilt artist might aspire to Quilt National. Even with the imposition of strict artistic standards, quilt venues have generated a busy, fairlike atmosphere, complete with themed contests, quilt challenges, juries, and prizes, that diminishes the perceived seriousness of the art in the outside world. Although it is making important strides in breaking out into a larger world, the art quilt remains largely confined to its own—principally female—audience.

This dichotomy between spheres of consumption is not lost on the quilters, who themselves refer to the "quilt world" versus the "real world" (read: artworld). A discussion of the exhibition "Diversity!" by Lynn Lewis Young in Art/Quilt Magazine (Spring 1996) highlights some of the issues facing the art quilter:

26 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

"Diversity!" was juried to present current quilts which approach the medium in a unique and innovative way.

Much was said at the conference of who (or whose quilt) was left out of the exhibit.. .In her juror's statement [Yoshiko Iwamoto] Wada discussed dividing the entries into two categories, one based on traditional structure and style and exploring contemporary design and composition, which she rejected for the show, instead focusing on those she described as "very unconventional in design as well as in theme and structure." Selection on the basis of unusual [for quilts]

techniques, approaches, and themes made me wonder if the quilts were truly innovative or just pushing the edge of being called a quilt? Would these works be considered innovative as general fiber art, or as general art? While teabags and X-Acto blades are different materials to make patterns on quilts would they make it in the real world?"

"Edge to Edge" represents my personal, aesthetic response to the hundreds of artworks submitted by members of SAQA. The exhibition was not chosen on the basis of famous names in the field, nor was the selection of twenty works based on innova-

LOST IN TRANSLATION Robin Schwalb Brooklyn, New York 1995 Stenciled, photo silkscreened, dyed and discharge-dyed cotton; hand-appliquéd, machine-pieced, hand-quilted 75 55"

EDGE TO EDGE

Selections from Studio Art Quilt Associates On view at the Museum of American Folk Art June 13—September 27, 1998 merican quilts and their history have long been an integral part of the Museum's exhibitions and collections."Edge to Edge: Selections from Studio Art Quilt Associates" represents the contemporary expression of this tradition and focuses on the diversity of creativity in textiles made during the past decade. The exhibition presents quilts by 18 artists who have chosen fabric, thread, dye, and paint as their medium and the quilt as their expressive format.

An exhibition catalog featuring all of the quilts in full color is available at the Museum's Book and

EDGE TO EDGE

sexEcnoms FROM STUDIO ART QUILT AS.FOCIATES

Gift Shop for $4.95($4.50 for members). To order by mail, contact the Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop,Two Lincoln Square, New York, NY, 10023. You can also order by calling 212/496-2966.

After its engagement at the Museum of American Folk Art,"Edge to Edge" will be on view at the Heritage Plantation of Sandwich, Cape Cod, Massachusetts,from May 9 through October 17, 1999.

The exhibition is presented with the support of Studio Art Quilt Associates, a nonprofit organization, and its corporate sponsors: C&T Publishing, Inc.; Fairfield/Maker of Poly-fil® Brand Products;P&B Fabrics, Inc.; Quitter's Newsletter Magazine; Quitters Only from Springs Industries, Inc.; and Quilts, Inc. The Museum's public programming is funded in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

tion or unconventionality. Instead, I painted—lend depth to the visual field sought quilts that were expressive of and place the viewer in the middle of an individual artistic vision that was the storm. In Hex on Venus Patricia rationally realized through a fiber Autenrieth alludes to women's health and/or quilt-inspired medium. Only issues in the photo-transferred image twenty examples were included of Venus embroidered with an abdombecause of space limitations, and more inal scar and juxtaposed with pieced importantly, because the exhibition is hexagons containing clippings from intended as a showcase for works of women's magazines. The threeart, rather than an opportunity to dis- dimensional retablos of Judith play as many quilts as possible. By Trager—who spent her childhood in chance, rather than by design, "Edge Mexico, and later studied there—are to Edge" includes artists who have personal shadow boxes with quilted been working since the studio quilt interiors that hold meaningful tokens. gained real momentum in the 1970s, The series is a tender memorial to her as well as quiltmakers who are rela- love of Mexican art and culture. Break tively new to the field. The artworks the Silence, by Bonnie Peterson, uses themselves reveal a variety of the assumptions of domesticity approaches and techniques that draw implicit in the quilt to make a strong upon popular culture, social commen- statement about domestic violence.

Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade tary, and art theory, and belie the supmale artist in the exhibition) only (the format. the of posed limitations The passage from traditional are known for their realistic painting quilt to art quilt is beautifully and screen-printing with dyes. Their expressed through Betsy Nimock's experimental work with dyeing techAmericana, which provides a visual niques has had a profound influence and physical link between the past and on other quilt artists. Fraas-Slade (as the present. Incorporating pieced frag- they sign their work) have been colments from several nineteenth-century laborating since the 1970s, when both quilt tops into her assemblage, were undergraduates at Southern ConNimock pays tribute to the genera- necticut State University in New tions of women with whom she feels Haven. They began with oil-based connected through the metaphor of the inks, but were dissatisfied with the quilt. The most prominent element is a way the inks affected the fabric surlithograph portrait of a nineteenth- face. This led to experimentation with century woman who stares solemnly from her position before a lone star. Her iconic image is repeated in many of the diamonds that form additional stars, and according to Nimock,"she is a collective image of all women."

Some of the artists use the labor-intensive process of quiltmaking to understand, control, and preserve an experience. In Driving Through the Snow, Judith Dierkes captures the dual emotions of fear at being trapped in a blinding snowstorm and awe at the beauty of nature's fury. The structural levels of the artwork—layers of fabric RETABLO AL NINES PERDIDO, Judith Trager, Boulder, Colorado, 1996, covered with paint, quilt- embroidered canvas lined with quilted cotton, mixed media, ed, varnished, and spatter- 23 19 7"

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

27

new fiber-reactive dyes that bonded with the molecular structure of the fabric, leaving the texture unchanged.

In 1979, they began to use brushes to paint with the dyes, creating a variety of impressions.

According to Fraas-Slade, Seguin "addresses the subject of water literally and symbolically." It is the image of an island with a lighthouse off the Maine coast, and it captures a particular moment in time when the artists were caught in an unexpected and intense squall. Seguin expresses their gratitude at sighting a safe harbor, but also acknowledges the power of the sea. Fraas-Slade describe their process as follows: As collaborators for twentythree years, our work has involved the quilted textile surface. We have developed a process of painting (sometimes combined with screen-printing) with permanent fiber-reactive dyes on cotton fabric. A single piece of cloth is painted, then layered with cotton batting and muslin backing, stitched and mounted on linen and framed. The quilt format is an integral part of our visual communication, a montage of landscape, objects and pattern alluding to the collaged method of quiltmaking. The quilt surface can add to the emotional response of the viewer. It is our intent to play off the rich heritage of the quilt and connect it with the perception of a particular place.

While Fraas-Slade were pioneers of dye painting, Barbara Barrick McKie is intrigued by today's new techniques—she uses computer imaging to fuse the real and the unreal. An Orangefor Lunch started as a conventional still-life exercise in a drawing class. Struck by the composition of an orange, a paper bag, and a napkin.

McKie began to experiment with scanning real objects into her computer and reproducing the images onto fabric.

The knife and the inside of the orange were created using this technique, while the bag, orange peel, and background are made from hand-dyed fab-

28 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

rics. The piece led to a whole series of food-related compositions explored through computer-manipulated images.

Drunell Levinson is the only artist in the exhibition who uses unorthodox materials to bring realworld references into the realm of the artwork. Levinson is intrigued by the tactile and visual qualities of the quilt format, particularly the possibilities posed by repetitive patterning. She uses nontraditional materials to mimic the structure of a quilt, while making ironic statements about "women's work." Baby Blanket is composed of brightly colored, eye-catching aluminum foil wrapped condoms that are

tied together in rows. Levinson began using condoms to "degender" quilts, which are still seen as essentially feminine objects.

Paula Nadelstern and Robin Schwalb are two artists who have developed personal idioms that are beautifully expressed through their quilts. Although their visions are dissimilar, each brings a classicism and an intensely focused exploration of a unique visual theme into her work.

Schwalb is seduced by words—both the qualities of the marks that constitute language and their meaning. She describes her use of language as a balance between "an appreciation of their

HEADLIGHTS ON THE BELT PARKWAY Rosemary Hoffenberg Wrentham, Massachusetts 1997 Clamp-dyed, hand-dyed, and screen-printed cotton; machine-pieced and machine-quilted 55 39"

DRIVING THROUGH THE SNOW Judith Dierkes Memphis, Tennessee 1992 Tie-dyed and acrylic-painted cotton; machine-pieced and hand-quitted 2" 1 2 45/ 1 45/

abstract beauty [and] the desire to include the 'found art' of relevant texts." She is sensitive to the impulse to read a text, thereby disrupting the viewer's response to the art itself, and employs several devices to circumvent this reaction: "using individual letters or ideograms from exotic or obsolete languages; by using the text decoratively as a repeating pattern in the background; by so cropping and chopping the text that it becomes illegible; or by concealing the text in the quilting." Although Schwalb denies that she is a linguistic deconstructivist, the narrative in Lost in Translation is decoded one letter at a time per each two-inch block across the entire surface of the quilt. First Dream, an evocative and monochromatic study of consciousness versus unconsciousness, features a line of poetry by Alice Meynell trailing like smoke through the composition.

Paula Nadelstern is mesmerized by the fractured images produced by kaleidoscopes: she pieces hundreds of slivers of fabric into jewel-like, faceted and patterned wheels. Nadelstern revels in the sensuousness of the fabric, cutting it into minute pieces only to reconstruct it in kaleidoscopic

images that have grown increasingly complex and subtle over the years.

Ironically, the results of her profoundly meditative, introspective work are oversized, crystalline structures. The Museum was first introduced to Paula Nadelstern and Robin Schwalb in 1991, when the former organized the exhibition "Citiquilts" as part of the Museum's The Great American Quilt Festival. At that time, Nadelstern discussed the challenges of quiltmaking in a New York City apartment (The Clarion, Spring 1991). She wrote that her "non-existent long-distance viewing space has shaped the direction of my kaleidoscopic work, causing me to rely on intricate detail and inherent symmetry." Today the detail is even more refined, but she can play with an "asymmetrical symmetry," as in Eccentric Circles.

In contrast, Nancy Erickson's large-scale work demands distance to comprehend the narrative offered in a graphic, almost pop style. Erickson's messages derive from her concerns about maintaining—or perhaps creating—a balance between man's and beast's claims upon nature. Exodus is an older work based on what has become a recurring theme in Erickson's vision. The cartoonlike construction from 1987 reveals a lion prowling through an apocalyptic scene of decay and destruction.

According to Erickson, "The works from 1986 to 1987 involve large lions in a protective mode amid the detritus of previous human occupation." Erickson holds degrees in zoology and nutrition, lending intellectual underpinnings to her activism regarding environmental and preservationist issues. She is also a figural painter with an MFA in painting from the University of Montana. She started working with fabric during the 1960s, finding greater

textural variety and expressivity in this medium. Erickson takes a formal approach to her fabric paintings, working from drawings before transferring the image to fabric. She is not afraid to work outside the imposed geometry of the quilt. The discrete forms are a hybrid of painting and appliqué, and they shape the actual silhouette of the finished piece. The irregular outline intensifies the muscularity of the inherently powerful images of articulated lions and architectural elements.

Upon considering these and other studio "quilts," it quickly becomes evident that contemporary quilt artists feel a latitude, indeed a mandate, to push the idea of the quilt in extreme directions, sometimes through imagery, other times through materials, and most frequently through technical innovations. What comes through is a sense that the art quilt is most successful when it is being truest to its own nature and history. Much of the quilt construct that was viable in the nineteenth century remains equally relevant today: artistic intention; political, social, or personal sentiment; response to contemporary aesthetic movements. Quilts, as women have always known, are more than they are purported to be, and as these twenty artworks eloquently show,they are still very much here to prove it.

Author's note: Although I could not discuss each of the artists whose work is represented in the exhibition I would like to acknowledge their contribution: Patricia Autenrieth, Eliza Brewster, Judith Dierkes, Nancy N. Erickson, Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade, Rosemary Hoffenberg, Ann Johnston, Debra Kam, Drunell Levinson, Eleanor McCain, Barbara Barrick McKie, Paula Nadelstern, Betsy Nimock, Emily Parson, Bonnie Peterson, Robin Schwalb, and Judith Trager.*

Stacy C. Hollander is the curator ofthe Museum ofAmerican Folk Art and the curator ofthe exhibition "Edge to Edge:Selectionsfrom Studio Art Quilt Associates."

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 29

George E. Morgan

)

BRIDGE DIVIDING RIVER 1963 Oil on canvas board 20/ 1 2 t< 17" Private collection

30 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Self-Taught Maine Artist By small exhibition of the work of a virtually unknown Maine selftaught artist will open this July at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. "George Morgan: Self-Taught Painter of Maine," organized by curator Susan C. Larsen, will feature fifteen of the twenty extant paintings done by this artist between 1962 and 1963, when he was in his nineties.

George E. Morgan (18701969), painted scenes of Randolph, Gardiner, Hallowell, and Augusta, Maine. Until recently, he was unknown outside of these areas. Morgan didn't start to paint until he was ninety-one years old. When he did, it was while he was a resident in several rest homes to which he was confined.

In Unexpected Eloquence: The Art in American Folk Art(Annandale-

A FRESHET, HALLO WELL, MAINE 1963 Oil on canvas board 4" 1 4 x 12/ 1 16/ Private collection

on-Hudson, N.Y.: Raymond Saroff for the Estate of Howard Rose, in association with The Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College, 1990), Howard Rose, the principal collector with Raymond Saroff of Morgan's work, tells us that Morgan, while in several rest homes, pursued the usual art therapies, including painting-by-numbers, but "sketches on cardboard indicated a talent for more individual expression." As for how Morgan made the transition from painting-by-numbers to the fascinating maplike memory pictures that were to follow, we can only speculate.

Far from painting conventional cityscapes in situ, Morgan "embarked ... ," to quote Rose,"on an oeuvre of about 20 small paintings of which at least a third, in terms of pictorial sophistication, in the strict and total adjustment of design elements, in statement, transformation and inventive interplay of a few simple motifsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an arc, a bloc of parallel dashes, an angled lineâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;recalls the work of some of the elegant 'little masters' of modernism, a Feininger, or an Arthur Dove."

In a newspaper article about Morgan that appeared in the Daily Kennebec Journal on February 18, 1966, three years before his death, Ruth Henderson reported that Morgan was "discovered" by a neighbor, Anne K. Wardwell, a local dealer in antiques with a keen eye, who visited Morgan and must have seen something in his efforts. Wardwell, who collected "the old-fashioned type of painting termed primitive," encouraged Morgan to produce original work, calling him an innate primitive painter. She became a benefactor by supplying him with paints, brushes, and canvas boards. The sketches on cardboard that intrigued her, though elementary and none too attractive, were the beginnings of Morgan's a memory paintings of the towns where .1 he had spent all his long and uneventâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;,1 ful life. How he remembered these

Chippy

towns in his mind's eye, and then went on to paint them in a unique way,is the magic of his art.

About the article that appeared in the Daily Kennebec Journal, which outlined Morgan's biography, Rose wrote: "The facts [of Morgan's life] are so thoroughly mundane the reporter could do nothing with them." It is not Henderson's fault. One can almost hear Morgan answering her hapless questions dutifully, murmuring on with stories of his past. Morgan was by then ninety-five years old, and at that age the scenes of his earlier life had to be more vivid than contemporary events.

He is cloyingly described as a "spry little man who is happiest when he is painting," and it is stated that "he never felt the need of glasses, his bright blue eyes have a twinkle and his handclasp a firmness that belies his age."

Morgan arrived in Augusta at age eighteen. He described for Henderson, with a typical gaffer's accurate but tangential information, that he worked for three months in a furniture factory, until the place was torn down to make room for the cotton mill extension, adding that he stayed at "Ed Percival's on Long Hill, now in the heart of Augusta's downtown business section, adjacent to Sand Hill." Next he worked for many years as a harness maker, following the business with his family to Randolph, but his wife, Etta Allen, got homesick, returned to Augusta, and he soon rejoined her. She was his first wife, and the mother of five of his children.

After his wife died, he married Olive Bussey; she too predeceased him.

Morgan also worked at the Commonwealth shoe factory in Gardiner. R.P. Hazzard, the superintendent there, took Morgan with him when he opened his own shoe business. Morgan became a member of the "famous"(according to Morgan) Hazzard Band, which was made up of Hazzard factory workers. Playing bass

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 31

horn would seem to have been the high point of Morgan's quiet life.

"I've blown the horn from the mouth of the Kennebee to Bangor," he said.

Morgan's most atypical and conventional painting, probably based on a photograph, shows the Hazzard Band, in full array, assembled in front of the factory. Even Morgan's military experience was uneventful—though he was a member of the Maine Militia for many years, Morgan was deemed too old to serve in World War I. It seems he wanted to serve, though; he even went to Camp Keyes and met with a company captain, but to no avail."We sat on a stone wall and talked for a long time. But they didn't have any place for me in the ranks."

All Morgan's specific and remembered details were, however, pertinent to his art. He faithfully translated the memories of his boyhood and young adulthood into maplike renderings of each town he had lived in. On the back of his paintings, which feature sawmills, streetlights, early automobiles, and even a horse at a water trough, there are scribbled notes describing the names of the streets, owners of the buildings, local ponds, narrow gauge railways, and bridges, as well as anecdotal information such as "On the corner of Closson and Central streets is Eddie DowIan's place. I used to get milk at his father's place when I was a boy." The birds-eye outlook of these works has a logical viewpoint, but it is not perspective as we know it. Rather, it is a personal aesthetic perception—the cold hard facts being expressed in heightened color—that is intriguingly and unmawkishly pleasing.

Morgan kept in touch with Wardwell, who seemed anxious to promote his work as a dealer. A letter to Wardwell from James M. Smith of the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia, reads,"I had hoped to get a look at the paintings which the 92 year old gentleman had painted . . . . The museum, of course, is interested in contemporary folk artists . . . ." The relationship between Morgan and Wardwell was formal. He always addressed her as "Mrs.," never as Anne, though he often misspelled her last name as "Wardwill," but then, he

32 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

even misspelled his own name on one of his paintings. He made requests to her for turpentine and brushes, and sent her Christmas cards. A few bits of correspondence remain. One letter reads,"I have 4 Paintings of Hallowell all Dry if you would like them.

Respectfully Yours, George E. Morgan." His writing, understandably, got shakier as he aged. A rather pathetic

letter dated December 31, 1964, reads, "Dear Mrs. Wardwill. I would not get any more Boards for painting I havent [sic] done any Painting for 2 months and do not think I will do any more.

Wishing you and yours the best of health I remain as of old, George E. Morgan."

When Morgan died at the age of ninety-nine, all of his paintings

HAZZARD BAND, GARDINER, MAINE 1962 Oil on canvas board 1 4" 12/ 1 4 16/ Private collection

RAILROAD STATION 1962 Oil on canvas board 9/ 1 2 Private collection

HALLOWELL RIVER 1963 Oil on canvas board 1 4" 12/ 1 4 16/ Private collection

became the possessions of Anne Wardwell. She kept them together as a collection, except for one, which in November 1963 was sold to Mrs. Ellerton M. Jette, chairperson of the Friends of Art at Colby College and the wife of a prominent Maine industrialist. On the back of a photograph of the painting, Wardwell wrote, "The only one soldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she and husband (the Jettes) are collectors of distinction.

Betsy (Mrs. Andrew Wyeth) fairly begged to buy one of his paintings.

Also the Jettes wanted me to let them know if I ever decided to sell the collection. It is a very impressive collectionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;AKW" The collection was eventually sold to Johnston, who in turn sold it to a pair of dealers in North Salem, New York. This couple contacted Raymond Saroff and Howard Rose, knowing of

Morgans, he exclaimed, "There they are! You've got them!" Bishop had heard about these paintings and knew the towns depicted, having himself come from Maine, but he had no idea what had happened to them. Almost thirty years after the artist's death, in a local-boy-makes-good exhibition that he himself would probably have relished, the work of George Morgan will finally be seen by the public.*

Buy Copley's, etc.! Many of their ptgs. are donated to Colby Art Museum. They drive a Rolls Royce,& a Bentley!"

In 1975, in a letter to Mrs. Sumner C. Johnston of Connecticut, a dealer friend, Wardwell, who was getting on in years, listed her George Morgan collection, giving sizes and comments. Of two of the paintings she wrote: "I'm not sure of these measurements as they are upstairs and I cannot go up." Evidently, the painter Andrew Wyeth and his wife were Morgan admirers, for later in the letter Wardwell wrote: "Forgot to tell you that

their interest in folk art, and it was Editor's note: "George Morgan: decided to divide the works between Self-Taught Painter of Maine" will be the two couples. As it turned out, this on view from July 16 through Octodecision proved unfeasible. Each pair ber 11, 1998, at the Farnsworth Art wanted the same paintings. The only Museum in Rockland, Maine. For solution was to keep the collection information, call 207/596-6457. intact, so Saroff and Rose sold off some of their other artworks, and with the money bought all of Morgan's Chippy Irvine writesfor various magapaintings. zines and is afeatures editorfor Design Later in the 1970s, Robert Times, a contributing editorfor Art and Bishop, who was then the director of Antiques magazine, and the author of the Museum of American Folk Art, nine books on design, architecture, and came to Saroffs New York apartment fabrics. Her most recent book, Elegant to see his growing collection. Accord- Linens, will be published by Little, ing to Saroff, when Bishop saw the Brown/Bulfinch thisfall.

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 33

THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA Edmonia Lewis American 1876 Marble 63 â&#x20AC;˘ 314 â&#x20AC;˘ 46" National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, gift of the Historical Society of Forest Park, Illinois, 1994.17

By Hipolito Rafael Chacon

he use of Egyptian imagery in the work of Gregory Warmack, known as Mr. Imagination, can be perceived as part of a much larger pattern, for Egypt has been a persistent and sometimes necessary feature in the artistic and cultural landscape of the African American community. An often tendentious and ideological bond exists between African American artists and Egypt because both Egypt and Africa have served as cultural beacons and anchors for a community whose history has been disrupted and set adrift by the diaspora, slavery, and racism. The centrality of Egyptian and Egyptianoid themes as personal iconography in the art of Mr. Imagination reveals that a notion of Egypt, no matter how stereotypical, is important for the development of individual as well as cultural identity, and that the two may indeed be inseparable.

T

34 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

.0 , 4

,:•••

•

116'

•

- • 4

Iffil

Mr. Imagination at work on his construction GRO1TO Elliot Donnely Youth Center 39th and South Michigan Avenue, Chicago 1995 Poured concrete and mixed media 18 12 12' Photo courtesy Carl Hammer Gallery

Western culture knows two different Egypts. There is the empirical Egypt, known as the crown of Africa, the land of the upper and lower Niles, with its fertile delta, historic annual floods, and renewing myths of Isis and Osiris. This is the Egypt of centuries of dynastic history, the great funerary culture with its multivalent deities and its enigmatic cult of the dead, the theocratic state of pharaohs Cheops, Ramses, and Tutankhamen, the land of the Ptolemies, of Antony and Cleopatra, of the Islamic and Napoleonic invasions, of Ottoman and British rule, of Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak.

The other Egypt known to the Western world is an intellectual construct, created primarily in the minds and narratives of its northern Mediterranean neighbors.' This concept of Egypt is based on a long history of trade and contact, but it is mostly an artifice, a projection of the European mind since the time of imperial Greece and perhaps before. This Egypt can be perceived in the writings of Herodotus, the papal collections of Renaissance Italy, and the Orientalist fantasies of Napoleonic France, Victorian England, and late twentieth-century America. It is the mystical Egypt of the Crusaders, the Knights Templar, the Masons, the Rosicrucians, the Shriners, the pyramid-power groupies of the 1960s and '70s, and the Egyptomania and Egyptophilia of the 19905.2 American culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries features some of the most provocative manifestations of this romantic Egypt. The evidence can be found in places as unlikely as Memphis, Tennessee, and Cairo, Illinois, American cities whose geography, histories, and cultures seem completely at odds with those of their namesakes. The mascot of Southern Illinois University's sports teams, for example, is the saluki, an otherwise venerable dog from ancient Egypt. Variations on the romantic theme can also be perceived in American visual arts, work both high and low, including Egyptian revival architecture, art deco design, works from the Harlem Renaissance, and those epic Hollywood films starring Claudette Colbert, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlton Heston, and Yul Brynner. And this notion of Egypt is also prevalent in commerce and pop cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one of the most popular attractions in Las Vegas, Nevada, is the Luxor Casino, which features an enormous building in the form of a pyramid in black glass with replicas of the Sphinx and other Egyptian monuments. Some New Agers see the building of these structures as the cyclical return of spiritual agents present in ancient Egypt.'

In the nineteenth century, the widespread appeal of the romantic Egypt necessitated the creation of the academic discipline of Egyptology.4 As was the case with the romantic Egypt, Egyptology was forged out of imperialism,colonialism, racism, and adventurism, but the discipline

36 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Detail from "Dance," one of ten cast-stone panels

WALL FRIEZE Richmond Barthe United States 1936-1939 Cast-stone relief Ten panels totaling 80 feet long Installed at the Kingsborough Houses, Brooklyn, New York Harlem River Houses U.S. Treasury Art Project Photo courtesy Margaret Rose Vendryes

Clay sketch for "Moses, Aaron, and Hezekiah," detail from "Exodus: The Green Pastures," one of ten cast-stone panels

nevertheless attempted to distinguish between the "real" Egypt and its more sensational counterpart. Archaeology, history, epigraphy, and connoiseurship provided the emerging science with an air of rationality and sobriety, and therefore with legitimacy and respectability. These two Egypts, the scientific one and its more popular alter ego, still coexist as historical artifacts within Western culture, and both lay claim to the reality that is Egypt. The origins of both Egypts and the degree to which each enhances or diminishes the reputation of the other are still open to debate.

There is an historical and ideological line of thinking that connects both the empirical and the romantic Egypt to African America and impacts the arts within that community. The Old Testament narrative of Moses leading the

BOTTLECAP THRONE Mr. Imagination Chicago 1998 Bottlecaps, mixed media 75 30 12" Collection of the artist Photo courtesy Carl Hammer Gallery

Israelites out of bondage to the promised land prevails in the hymns of the Black Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches of the south. In the spiritual "Go Down, Moses," for example, Egypt figures as the exotic if oppressive backdrop for the activities of God's chosen people: Go down, Moses Way down in Egyptland Tell old Pharaoh To let my people go.

When Israel was in Egyptland (Let my people go.)

Oppressed so hard they could not stand (Let my people go.)

THRONE Mr. Imagination Chicago 1995 Mixed media 1 2 8" 19 6/ Collection of the artist Photo courtesy Carl Hammer Gallery

Since Emancipation and Reconstruction, an interesting reversal in the stereotype of Egypt has taken place.

Among educated African Americans at the turn of the century, Egypt was no longer perceived as the land of slavery and toil for the Israelites; instead, it became a source of great pride for former slaves and their descendants. Concurrent with the emergence of Egyptology and the dissemination of archaeological and historical information, Egypt began to be appreciated as a great African nation and indeed as the cradle of Western civilization. In 1903, noted educator and writer W.E.B. Du Bois viewed the destiny of African America as implicitly tied to ancient Egyptian roots; for him, one stood at the beginning of time, the other at the end of history: "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman,the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with the second sight in this American world."'

The longing for African roots and identification with the achievements of ancient Egypt can be said to have climaxed during the Harlem Renaissance, especially in the work of its writers and poets, but also its visual artists.

According to literary historian Arthur P. Davis, the writer Zora Neale Hurston portrays Moses in her 1939 epic Moses: Man of the Mountain, "not as a Jew, but as an Egyptian prince with a social consciousness and as a seer who went to the mountain and 'talked' with God."6 And in the poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," Langston Hughes reveals a reverential though intimate relationship with Africa and Egypt: My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.7 The tradition has continued in the late twentieth century. In "Woman Me," for example, Maya Angelou's poetic voice extols the aristocratic lineage of the African American woman: Your tears,jeweled strewn a diadem caused Pharaohs to ride deep in the bosom of the Nile...

Visual artists, especially sculptors such as Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Sargent Johnson, and Richmond Barthe, utilized formal devices such as the flattened forms of relief carving to evoke ancient Egyptian figural art; some even borrowed physiognomic and decorative details from Egyptian sculpture.' There was a felicitous union between these historicisms and the general trend toward geometricity and simplification in modernist abstraction.

The figural and spatial stylizations of painters Aaron

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 37

Douglas and Jacob Lawrence, for instance, can be shown to demonstrate the effective conflation of African art and Cubist tendencies.

The persistent affection for Egypt as progenitor of African American culture can be perceived in the popular arts as well. The musical group Earth, Wind, and Fire's cosmic connections to the land of the pharaohs in the mid-1970s expanded the Black Pride movement with musical and theatrical panache. In the 1980s, Eddie Murphy played an African prince from an Egyptianoid court in the comedic film Coming to America. And more recently, pop superstar Michael Jackson partook of the Egyptian mystique in one of his recent productions. In these cases, the artists have drawn on Egyptian "roots" to great economic success and social appeal both within and without the African American community In academic circles, the Black Athena controversy has raised the question of the primacy of Egypt in the development of western European and African cultures.9 And the question of whether Egyptian culture was a part of black Africa or developed sui generis or was influential in the course of Western civilization leads to yet another important discussion)째 In the modern world, whether by adoption or not, Egypt has been a powerful element in African American arts.

As noted earlier, the romantic Egypt has been a crucial factor in the development of the art and identity of Mr. Imagination. In spite of the prevalence of Egyptian and Egyptianoid themes in Mr. Imagination's sculpture, however, there are few direct ties between his thinking about Egypt and the rich intellectual tradition of African American artists of the twentieth century. His highly personal version of Egyptian art and culture is inspired more by Hollywood than by Egyptology. That does not preclude the notion that Mr. Imagination's romantic version of Egypt is not meaningful. His image of Egypt is subjective and metaphysical, and it has played a significant role in the development of his sense of integrity and self-worth as an artist and an African American.

Sculptures of pyramids, body parts, dogs, and sarcophagi and relief portraits of pharaohs and princesses were among the first of Mr. Imagination's works to receive the attention of gallery dealers and collectors in Chicago and to bring national notoriety to this self-taught artist. These early works, carved from a soft, sandstonelike industrial byproduct that Mr. Imagination collected from a local smelter, had a quasi-archaeological patina and were clearly Egyptianoid in content. The artworld received them as the prolific expressions of a fantastic primitive because of their simple design, use of materials, and uplifting, if seemingly naive, message. When asked about his overall theme,

38 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Mr. Imagination responded that beauty is everywhere, that junk can be transformed into art, and that the creative process is open to all.

His message seemed to answer the spiritual void of the cynical and tired artistic status quo of the 1980s.

Mr. Imagination's mature works are more ambitious in design and more sumptuous in detail than his early works. These sculptures include richly decorated thrones, staffs, vestments, and the now famous paintbrush people. They are fashioned out of discarded furniture, tools, and other recycled objects, and covered in flattened bottle caps, imitation gems, and inexpensive stones. These latest works are self-referential in that they feature the likeness of a bearded king as their primary subject. The work, coupled with Mr. Imagination's public success and emerging sense of business savvy, creates an image of an artist much more in control of his themes and the course of his career. In some circles, he is no longer perceived as a newly discovered savant, subject to the fickle tides of the art market and the critical status quo, but rather as an untiring self-promoter. Indeed, Mr. Imagination keeps a feverish schedule of production and exhibition, and he travels extensively, conducting workshops and public lectures. Not only does he give away samples of his sculptures at these events, but he liberally hands out Xeroxed and autographed photographs of himself dressed in full regalia of his own design and seated on one of his thrones.

He presents an image of a beneficent and enlightened pharaoh who graces us with his largesse and visionary presence. Lately, he has promoted a video of one of his exhibitions set to comedian Steve Martin's popular novelty song "King Tut." Although his message is unwavering, his persona as fairy-tale king and art celebrity inevitably opens the possibility of careful self-promotion and market manipulation.'I When asked about his bearded portraits of pharaohs with jeweled headdresses, Mr. Imagination states that he does not know precisely what inspired them.

Suggesting obvious sources of inspiration for his interest in Egypt proves fruitless. As a child, he did not follow archaeological discoveries in National Geographic magazine, nor can he remember ever having seen the Egyptian mummies and assorted artifacts at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History near the city's lakefront or the many funerary objects at the Oriental Institute on the South Side. He did not attend the Tutankhamen exhibition when it came to Chicago in the 1970s. Instead, he points to the near-fatal shooting in 1978 that left him in a coma for six weeks as the source of much of his imagery. He states that although he grew up making all sorts of objects inspired by African masks, staffs, and clothing, he believes that his coma was pivotal to the development of his creativity. He is convinced

PAINTBRUSH PORTRAIT Mr. Imagination Chicago 1977 Mixed media 8'2 9 2' Collection of the artist Photo courtesy Carl Hammer Gallery

SELF PORTRAIT STAFF Mr. Imagination Chicago 1990 Mixed media 42 13 - 4" Carl Hammer Collection

House of Blues Restaurant Garden Entrance Mr. Imagination DOWNTOWN DISNEY West Side Lake Buena Vista, Florida 1997 Mixed media Photo courtesy House of Blues

that he was transported back in time and witnessed many previous incarnations. Upon waking, he began to carve stone figures and felt much like an archaeologist removing layers of sand, dust, and dirt to reveal images that beckoned to him from the past. In fact, he wishes that someone with expertise in Egyptian art would study his works carefully because he is certain that the past chose him as its messenger to the present.

With their probing, all-knowing eyes, most of Mr. Imagination's carved pharaohs and bearded rulers bear an uncanny similarity to the artist. Certainly, they may be reappearances of ancient ancestors, but they also represent

the charged possibility of self-mythification by an artist who perceives himself as a shaman. Therefore, the portraits are most likely manifestations of himself in the guise of a pharaoh. Mr. Imagination prefers that his portraits be interpreted as evocations of ancient Egyptians, some of which happen to be previous incarnations of himself. Africanist Janice Brill viewed Mr. Imagination as a modern Santeria priest, or babalawo: For an artist who models so much of his work on his own physiognomy, Mr. Imagination is surprisingly free of the assertive ego which has defined the cre-

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 39

ative personality in the modern era. He is, rather, the model for everyman, from everywhere, in every time. Much of his work recalls the ancient civilizations of the Nile and the Niger.... He is the messenger from those places to ours, reminding us of the continuity between past and present, between present and future. In exhorting us to recognize and recover the beauty and wonder around us, he speaks with the wisdom of those who preceded us on behalf of those who will follow.12 Indeed, the case of Mr. Imagination is strikingly reminiscent of the Tibetan Buddhist delog, an individual who, according to author China Galland, "is unwittingly catapulted onto the spiritual path...by accident, 'involuntarily,' usually because of a serious illness": Beset by fears, visions, and hallucinations, imagining oneself at the mercy of terrible storms, tossed this way and that, the everyday world disappears from view and one is surrounded by death. The delog has reached the underworld or the 'hereafter.'

Some stories record the actual physical death of the delog who returns to life bearing information known only to the dead or messages from them. The return from the underworld, as well as the knowledge of the descent, was used to help the living, a motif akin to shamanistic experience . . . . Thence the value of both the experience and the delog for the community.13 Mr. Imagination's ties to ancient Egypt, though clearly based on personal belief and spirituality, are no less "real" than the romantic or empirical versions of Egypt presented in popular culture and academia. These perceived ties are not just vehicles for self-expression, but also the means of delivering the socially relevant messages of personal empowerment, cultural pride, and the power of art to transform lives. His ties, though apparently disconnected from the African American intellectual and artistic tradition, function in both the personally and culturally edifying ways that the traditional hymn or the spiritual did for his ancestors. For Mr. Imagination, the bond to ancient Egypt, no matter how irrational it may appear, is a matter of faith.

We may choose to believe him or not, but it seems to me that it would be a truly irrational or foolish response if we did not pay heed to the message because we are skeptical of the messenger.* Author's note: This article was first presented as a lecture at the College Art Association meeting on February 13, 1997,in New York."In the Mind's Eye: Egypt and SelfMythification in the Art of Mr. Imagination" is dedicated to the memory of Janice Brill, teacher, scholar, and Africanist.*

Hipolito Rafael Chacon is an assistant professor ofart history and criticism at the University ofMontana, where he began teaching in 1994. Chacon received his A.B. in artfrom Wabash

40 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in art historyfrom the University of Chicago. He has curated numerous exhibitions, is widely published, and lectures regularly on a broad range ofart topics, including African American and Latin American art.

NOTES 1 Peter A. Clayton, The Rediscovery ofAncient Egypt: Artists and Travelers in the 19th Century(New York: Portland House, 1982),esp. pp. 177ff.

2 Antonia Lant,"Egypt in Paris," Archeology(December 1994), p. 96.

3 Philip A. Zemke writes in "Return of the Pharaohs," Aima Shanti(Autumn 1996), no. 3, pp. 9f: "Humanity is at it again: building pyramids as symbols of immortality. The Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas and San Francisco's Transamerica Building are only the most obvious such edifices, for all our skyscrapers are quasipyramids constructed to house the rituals of corporate pharaohs.

They symbolize our culture's desire to be acknowledged as obedient servants of the divinely guided pharaohs of conspicuous consumption....The same agents of strong and weak tendencies (some term them consistent vibrational streams) active in Egypt are active once again."

4 Clayton, op. cit.; Fred Gladstone Bratton, A History ofEgyptian Archeology(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968); and Leonard Cottrell, The Lost Pharaohs: The Romance ofEgyptian Archaeology(New York: Greenwood Press, 1951).

5 Cited by Hoyt W.Fuller in The Black Aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle Jr.(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), p. xxii.

6 Arthur P. Davis, From the Dark Tower(Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974), p. 117.

7 Davis argues that Hughes' early treatment of Africa was "little more than a literary pose, a kind of literary Garveyism, and neither the New Negro poets nor their readers took it seriously" (p. 66). See also Langston Hughes,"The Twenties: Harlem and its Negritude," African Forum (Spring 1966).

8 Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance(New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 168.

9 See Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, trans. Mercer Cook(Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1974); Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (London: Free Association Books, 1987); and the essays in Ivan Van Sertima, ed., Egypt Revisited(New Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction Publishers, 1993).

10 It is important to note that the bonds between Egypt and African American intellectuals and popular artists, though not uninformed, are artificial and romantic. They can be perceived as ideological in that they serve greater sociological purposes. One might argue that there is a deep psychological need for maintaining strong ties to that great African civilization beyond satisfying the needs of art and culture. It is tempting to speculate on whether this is a result of the egregious attempts by American and British slave owners to thoroughly sever their slaves' bonds with the African homeland.

11 Scott D. Atkinson in his introduction and Tom Patterson in his essay for the exhibition catalog Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists(Chicago: Terra Museum of American Art, 1994) articulate Mr. Imagination's artistic vision and message well.

12 Janice Brill and Hipelito Rafael Chaco'', Healing and Transformation in the Art ofAfrica and African America(Crawfordsville, Ind.: Wabash College Art Department, 1994), p. 9.

13 China Galland, Longingfor Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna(New York: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 79. Mr. Imagination describes his coma in terms of the classic near-death experience. He saw himself floating in a tunnel of light, from which he heard ancient voices.

25 YEARS OF COLLECTING MOSE TOLLIVER www.antonart.com

ANTON HAARDT GALLERY MONTGOMERY,ALABAMA (334)263-5494 • NEW ORLEANS ANNEX (504)897-1172 MOSE TOLLIVER BY HENRY CADEN HEAD t

Exclusive Representation

CARL HAMMER GALLERY,INC. 200 W.SUPERIOR ST., CHICAGO,IL. 60610 Ph: 312-266-8512 Fx: 312-266-8510 hammergall(a'aol.com

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 41

8lotin Folk Art Auction Presents the sale of The A. Everette James Collection Currently on exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum (TN) & St. James Place Museum (NC)

Also Exhibited: Fisk University (TN) • Benedict College (SC) • Fine Arts Museum of the South (AL) • Chowan Arts Center (NC) • Elizabeth City University (NC) • Winston-Salem State Univ.(NC) • Fayetteville State Univ.(NC) • Museum of Art Greenville (NC) • Tank Museum Rocky Mount(NC) • Sowtooth Center Winston-Salem (NC) American Visionary Art Museum (MD)

Artists Represented: Steve Ashby William 0. Golding Clementine Hunter Sister Gertrude Morgan David Butler James "Son" Thomas Mary T. Smith Howard Finster Jesse Aaron Raymond Coins Charley Kinney Nellie Mae Rowe Mose Tolliver Juanita Rogers Prophet Royal Robertson Rev. Ronald Musgrove B.F. Perkins Lonnie Holley Henry Speller Inez Walker Simon Sparrow Dilmus Hall (sculpture) Eddy Mumma Rev. Gillespie Lanier Meaders

J.B. Murry Z.B. Armstrong Joe Light Emily Lunde Lawrence Lebduska Ike Morgan Sarah Mary Taylor Gerald Hawkes Vernon Burwell Sybil Gibson Clyde Jones Sergio Vergos Purvis Young Charlie Lucas Archie Byron Rev. Hunter Columbus McGriff Q.J. Stephenson Richard Burnside Leroy Almon S.L. Jones Jake McCord Bernice Sims Hubert Walters Fred Webster Many, Many, More!!!

November 14 & 15, 1998 Atlanta, Georgia The North Atlanta Trade Center • 1-85 & Indian Trail Rd.(Exit 38)

For a Fully-Illustrated Catalog w/ many color photos •($25) Slotin Folk Art Auction 5967 Blackberry Ln. Buford, GA 30518 • 770 932-1000 • Fax 770 932-0506 • Email slotingnetdepot.com

The World's Greatest Self-Taught Art Show and Sale

Folk Fest'98 Self-taught Art • Outsider Art • Visionary Art Southern Folk Pottery • Anonymous • Folk Art

THE EAU* AS WA S: . ?OwS<P:AFTA PASS ,tp"

80 of the Nation's Finest Exhibitors

Atlanta, Georgia August 14,15,16,1998 The North Atlanta Trade Center / 1-85 & Indian Trail Rd.(Ex.38) Friday,August 14, • 5-10pm • $15 Saturday,August 15 • 10am-7pm • $6 Sunday,August 16 • 10am-5pm • $6 Folk Fest,Inc.5967 Blackberry Ln.Buford,GA 30518 • 770 932-1000 • Fax 770 932-0506

********** •+;411:$0.4.

NO

( ilAKA, l et "'

•-it

1(•

* * * *

*

* 4+0:5104% 1.,,tlitr i....,..

Sanford Smith's 20th Anniversary Celebration

Nitr r47* • -0(•

*

*

FALL ANTIQUES SHOWat the Armory *NEW DATES*

*

*

*

NOVEMBER 19-22, 1998 THURSDAY & FRIDAY NOON-9PM SATURDAY 11AM-7PM • SUNDAY NOON-6PM

PREVIEW NOVEMBER 18TH

*

6Pm-9Pm

To Benefit the Museum of American Folk Art Information 6'Reservations: 212.977.7170

SYMPOSIUM THURSDAY NOVEMBER 19 1" Tiffany Room • Park Avenue Armory Information & reservations: 212.977.7170

THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY Park Avenue & 67th Street, New York City Generousfunding is provided by COUNTRY LIVING Magazine to benefit the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art

SANFORD L. SMITH & ASSOCIATES 68 East 7th Street New York, NY 10003 212.777.5218 Fax: 212.477.6490 • email: smith@freeverse.com

*

HYPOINT

SAVE THE DATE

AMERICAN ANTIQUES & FOLK ART •

2-Piece Tramp rt Clock Shelf

JANE S. CIEPLY 847-540-0615 • BARRINGTON, IL 60010

Contemporary

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 18, 1998

Navajo Art

Folk

Johnson Antonio

THE MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART FALL ANTIQUES SHOW BENEFIT PREVIEW

Roger Armstrong Delbert Buck Mamie Deschillie Lulu Herbert Edith Herbert John Leland Holiday

Join us in celebrating 20years

Dennis Pioche Lorenzo Reed Ned Tom Harold Willeto Robin Willeto Mathew Yellowman

Jan Thiede-Smith 26 Beaver Street New York, NY 10004 Please call: 212.825.9295

For information, please call Jennifer Scott, Special Events Coordinator 212/977-7170 CAROUSEL HORSE WITH JEWELS!Marcus C. Illions / Coney Island, New York / c. 1915 Polychromed wood, leather, metal, horsehair, colored glass / 461/2 x 42w 10" / Museum of American Folk Art, gift of the City of New York, Department of Parks and Recreation

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 45

WANDA'S QUILTS

FOLK ART BY "THE BEAVER"

P.O. BOX 2012 OLDSMAR,FL 34677 813-855-1521 Web Site: www.thebeaver.com E-Mail: smile@thebeaver.com

Beaver says a big

"THANK YOU" for all the prayers, cards, phone calls, and concern for him.

He is still in the hospital, doing much better and still painting as usual.

'I'M CRAZY SO SUE ME" The American Nut HOUSE PAINT AND MAGIC MARKER ON CANVAS 12x16"

Contemporary woodfired, alkaline glared, stonewarefolk vessels

by Kim Ellington, Catawba Valley, NC.

ERIC *FOLK* , N '1' I (.1 I

V S

Showcasing Important Americana Including:

SIGNIFICANT 18TH ec 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN FURNITURE

EARLY-MID 20TH CENTURY CRAFTS

ANTIQUE FOLK ART

CONTEMPORARY FOLK POTTERY

CONTEMPORARY FOLK PAINTING Open Mon-Sat, 10am-5pm 64 Biltmore Avenue • Asheville, North Carolina 28801 • Tel.(828) 251-1904 • Fax (828) 251-0884 AMERICAN FOLK IS A COLLABORATION OF CHARLTON BRADSHER AMERICAN ANTIQUES AND BLUE SPIRAL I, A DIVISION OF NEW MORNING LTD.

48 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

WORKS BY:

• Jesse Aaron • Vernon Burwell

Kimball M.Sterling, Outsider Art Auctioneer August 14, Atlanta, Georgia

• David Butler • Miles Carpenter • Henry Ray Clark • Raymond Coins • Sam Doyle • Howard Finster • Clementine Hunter • James Harold Jennings • Charlie Kinney • Noah Kinney • Joe Light • Willie Massey • Carl McKenzie • Lanier Meaders • J.B. Murray • Rev. B. F. Perkins • Dow Pugh • Royal Robertson • Juanita Rogers • Nellie Mae Rowe • J.P. Scott • Wellmon Sharlhorne • Herbert Singleton • Mary T. Smith • Henry Speller • Jimmie Lee Sudduth • Rev.J.S. Swearingen • James "Son" Thomas • Mose Tolliver • Myrtice West • George Williams • Luster Willis • and others

THE WARREN AND SYLVIA LOWE COLLECTION AUCTION

LANTON,1983 -0TI-IE SUN" DOYLE, JACK -"BAKING IN SAM EXHIBITED

wan.ive on the Internet! www.livebid.com Sale Preview: Friday, August 14, 10 am - 5 pm Northeast Atlanta Hilton Ballroom Atlanta, Georgia Full-color catalog available $40

125 West Mar

reet Johnson City, TN 37604 (423) 928-1471

Auction: Friday, August 14, 5 pm

5993 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard

Call (770) 447-4747 for special hotel rates

10% buyers fee

www.sterlingsold.com

phone and absentee bidding

kimsold@tricon.net

MUSEUM

REPRODUCTIONS

PROGRAM

ALICE J. HOFFMAN

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK 1-41711.'11:61°

Representing over 300 years ofAmerican design,from the late 1600s to the present, the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art CollectionTm brings within reach ofthe public the very best ofthe past to be enjoyedfor generations to come.

New Directions The Museum welcomes its newest licensee:

American Pacific Enterprises, Pineapple Log Cabin

*Gallery Partners. Welcome back! Gallery Partners is once again creating scarves for the Museum and has added ties to its product mix. Ties and scarves for today's man and woman—featuring images from "Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century," the Museum's currently traveling exhibition—are now available.

News from Museum Licensees Share our legacy; look for new products from our family of licensees, featuring unique designs inspired by objects from the Museum's collection.

* American Pacific Enterprises Sold out! Seven designs from the Museum's easy-to-care-for bedcover series—Forever Diamonds, Spinning Spools, Barn Raising, Blazing Star, Tumbling Blocks Variation, Pineapple Log Cabin, and Flying Geese Patch—were featured in an hourlong Museum of American Folk Art/QVC broadcast on April 27. * Manticore Products,Inc. Desktop wallpaper! The America's Art Quilts Screensaver features 25 quilt images, striking examples of individual creativity, from the permanent collection of the Museum of American Folk Art. Enjoy any image while your computer is idle. * Mary Myers Studio Nodding Special... Mary Myers has cre-

48 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

American Pacific Enterprises, Huntington Tumbling Blocks

Family of Licensees

ated "nodding" wooden animals—a goat and a pig—inspired by the Museum's collection of nodding challcware figures. Just like chalk-ware, no two pieces are exactly alike, as each is individually painted.

Special Event Elizabeth Warren,former Curator at the Museum and Consulting Curator since 1991, was the guest host on the Museum of American Folk Art CollectionTm/QVC Hour on Monday, April 27. Liz, as we affectionately call her,is an internationally respected quilt expert who,like the Museum,takes quilts seriously. She recently coauthored Glorious American Quilts: The Quilt Collection ofthe Museum ofAmerican Folk Art and cocurated two quilt exhibitions for the Museum,"Victorian Vernacular: The American Show Quilt" and "Old-Time Favorites, New-

Time Fashions: Quilt Revival 1910-1940." During the broadcast, Liz noted which quilt patterns in the Museum's permanent collection provided inspiration for the bedcovers by American Pacific Enterprises that were featured on the show. We would like to extend a special thank-you to old and new friends of the Museum who made a purchase that day.

Dear Customer Your purchase of Museumlicensed products directly benefits the exhibition and educational activities of the Museum. Thank you for participating in the Museum's continuing efforts to celebrate the style, craft, and tradition of American folk art. If you have any questions or comments regarding the Museum of American Folk Art Collection,TM please contact us at 212/977-7170.

Abbeville Press(212/888-1969) gift wrap book with gift tags and quilt note cube.* American Pacific Enterprises(415[7821250)quilts, shams, and pillows. Andrews & McMeel(816/932-6700) traditional folk art songbook.* Carvin Folk Art Designs,Inc. (212/755-6474) gold-plated and enameled jewelry.* Concord Miniatures(800/888-0936) 1"-scale furniture and accessories.* Danforth Pewterers, Ltd.(800/222-3142) pewterjewelry, keyrings, and frames.* Dynasty Dolls (800/736-4438)collectible porcelain dolls.* The Echo Design Group,Inc.(212/6868771)scarves.* Enesco Corporation (800/436-3726)decorative home giftware collection.* Gallery Partners(718[797-2547) scarves and ties.* Graphique de France (800/444-1464) note cards.* Hermitage des Artistes(212/243-1007)tramp art objects.* Imperial Wallcoverings,Inc.(216/464-3700) wallpaper and borders. James Hastrich (800/962-2932) miniature painted furniture reproductions in limited editions.* The Lane Company,Inc., including Lane/Venture and Lane Upholstery (804/369-5641)furniture (case goods, wicker, and upholstered furniture) and mini-chests. Limited Addition (800/2689724)decorative accessories.* Manticore Products,Inc.(312/595-9800)screensavers, mousepads, and coasters.* Mary Myers Studio (800/829-9603)nutcrackers and nodders.* Sullins House(219/495-2252) peg-hook wall plaques; gift, desk, and vanity boxes; decorative mirrors; and fire and dummy boards.* Syratech Corporation (617/561-2200)holiday and decorative home accessories.

Takashimaya Company,Ltd.(212/3500550) home furnishings and decorative accessories (available only in Japan). Tyndale,Inc. (773/384-0800)lighting and lampshades. Wild Apple Graphics, Ltd.(800/756-8359)fine art reproduction prints and posters.* *Available in the Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop. For mail-order information, call 212/496-2966.

IAN?

A,

Location: Northeast Atlanta Hilton Ballroom • 5993 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard • Atlanta, Georgia

Kimball M. Sterling presents real outsider, visionary,folk art ...

thie. 2ND 0 NU

a_ Fr')

ROO 0•1111

a.., e lieges film 40 fi •irlowir SO 'to itilaifiaroggiqpie

eipal01111111a. soup

ou SID tts

Of alga 41119 e" •" 6 •P' V)

••• .

011"1"1 " 11.• 1 11111 00111010 or air bor woof ••••• • ••••••• efee••• • • 1.0. " 4 •

.90111.sea

11)40i1111111111111,.. 1IV ••••I g•• I Ln go eeI

4111

WICK

4aI

oge 11.41.11•

•glee••••••reeeeleira

00.1.01thE

t FO1

E!:

Street, Jo

CD 0-

•ese••••••••.•,04910 w toloweimes•upge gosod.

9 ,t CD

St. IR SW

CI)

Friday,August 14th, 10 a.m.- 10 p.m. = cct -0

it

S.

a *Sib* *es

E

klk •

I I

t

,opOrfeta- -1

.,

s

, III.I. i k t

I

A

Fine outsider art dealers and artists selling important works of art • For free brochure, call (423) 928-1471 • background art by Benny Carter

onvP tt,

TRUSTEES/DONORS

MUSEUM

OF

AMERICAN

FOLK

ART

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Executive Committee Ralph 0.Esmerian President Frances Sirota Martinson, Esq. Executive Vice President and Chairman, Executive Committee Lucy C. Danziger Executive Vice President

Joan M.Johnson Vice President Bonnie Strauss Vice President L. John Wilkerson Treasurer Jacqueline Fowler Secretary Anne Hill Blanchard Samuel Farber Julie K.Palley

Members Joyce B. Cowin Joseph F. Cullman 3rd David L. Davies Vira Hladun Goldmann Susan Gutfreund Kristina Johnson,Esq. Nancy Mead George H. Meyer,Esq.

Mrs. Daniel Cowin Mr.& Mrs. Edgar M. Cullman, Sr. Mr.& Mrs. Edgar Cullman, Jr. Joe & Joan Cullman Susan R. Cullman Lucy & Mike Danziger Peggy & Richard M. Danziger David L. Davies Raymond C. Egan Ralph 0.Esmerian Samuel & Betsey Farber Bequest of Eva & Morris Feld Jacqueline Fowler

Vira Hladun Goldmann Cordelia Hamilton Joan & Victor Johnson Johnson & Johnson Kristina Johnson Susan & Robert Klein Lipman Family Foundation Paul Martinson, Frances Martinson & Howard Graff in memory of Burt Martinson Nancy & Dana Mead George H. Meyer Lauren & Keith Morgan

Cyril I. Nelson Bequest of Mattie Lou O'Kelley Julie & Sandy Palley and Samuel & Rebecca Kardon Foundation George & Myra Shaskan The Smart Foundation Mr.& Mrs. Thomas W.Strauss Maureen 8z Richard Taylor David & Jane Walentas John & Barbara Wilkerson Robert & Anne Wilson Three anonymous donors

Alvin J. Bart & Sons Beard's Fund Robert & Kathy Booth Mr. & Mrs. Steve Burnett John R.& Dorothy D. Caples Fund Christie's Cravath, Swaine & Moore Peggy & Richard M. Danziger Duane, Morris & Heckscher Gallerie 721 Gateway 2000 T. Marshall Hahn,Jr. Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies Barbara & Dave ICrashes Louis Dreyfus Corporation The Joe & Emily Lowe Foundation, Inc. Eric Maffei Vincent & Anne Mai MBNA America, N.A. Morgan Stanley Foundation New York City Department of Cultural Affairs New York State Council on the Arts The New York Times Company Foundation Philip Morris Companies Inc. Steven Piccone, Merrill Corporate Dorothea & Leo Rabkin Marguerite Riordan William D. Rondina The William P.& Gertrude Schweitzer Foundation, Inc. Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons, Inc.

George F. & Myra Shaskan, Jr. Peter J. Solomon Sotheby's Lynn Steuer Time Warner Unilever United States, Inc. Two anonymous donors

Lauren S. Morgan Cyril I. Nelson Trustees Emeriti Cordelia Hamilton Herbert W. Hemphill, Jr. Jean Lipman George F. Shaskan, Jr.

CAPITAL CAMPAIGN DONORS The Museum of American Folk Art has announced a $26 million campaign to construct and endow a new home on 53rd Street. More than $13 million has been raised as of January 1, 1998,from the following donors: Edward V. Blanchard & M. Anne Hill Florence Brody Carroll M.Carpenter Edward Lee Cave

RECENT MAJOR DONORS FOR EXHIBITIONS AND OPERATIONS The Museum of American Folk Art greatly appreciates the generous support of the following friends:

$100,000 and above Estate of Daniel Cowin Lucy C.& Frederick M.Danziger Ralph 0. Esmerian Estate of Laura Harding The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund L. John & Barbara Wilkerson Anonymous $50,000-$99,999 Edward V. Blanchard & M. Anne Hill General Cigar Company Joseph Martinson Memorial Fund Julie K. & Samuel Palley Barbara & Thomas W.Strauss Fund Anonymous $20,000449,999 Burnett Group Edward Lee Cave Peter M.& Mary Ciccone Mrs. Daniel Cowin David L. Davies & Jack Weeden Raymond C.& Susan Egan Virginia S. Esmerian Samuel & Betsey Farber Jacqueline Fowler

Vira Hladun Goldmann Mr.& Mrs. John H. Gutfreund Joan M.& Victor L. Johnson National Endowment for the Arts Restaurant Associates Industries, Inc. The Smart Family Foundation Inc. Two anonymous donors $10,000-$19,999 Bear, Steams & Co. Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Virginia W.Cochran Country Living The Dietrich American Foundation & H. Richard Dietrich, Jr. William B. Dietrich & William B. Dietrich Foundation Kristina Johnson,Esq. Mr.& Mrs. Robert E. Klein The LEF Foundation Kiyoko & Nathan Lerner Fred, Jeff,& Alan Lowenfels in honor of George F. Shaskan, Jr. The Magazine Group Marstrand Foundation George H. & Kay Meyer The Pinkerton Foundation Schlumberger Foundation, Inc. Jean S. & Frederic A. Sharf Fund Anonymous $4,00049,999 American Folk Art Society ARTCORP Cecille Barger & Myron Benit Shure

$2,000-43,999 A La Vieille Russie, Inc. ABC,Inc. Amicus Foundation, Inc. David & Didi Barrett Bergen Line, Inc. Ellen Blissman Mr.& Mrs. James A. Block Richard Braemer & Amy Finkel Barry D. Briskin Edward J. & Margaret Brown John R. and Dorothy D. Caples Fund Cigna Joseph 8z Barbara Cohen Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Culhnan 3d Michael & Janice Doniger Richard C.& Susan B. Ernst Foundation Scott & Lauren Fine Fortress Corporation Jay & Gail Furman Peter & Barbara Goodman Warren & Sue Ellen Haber Marion Harris & Jerry Rosenfeld Stephen M. Hill (continued on page 52)

50 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Always a source for significant buying •

•

I

HANCOCK SHAKER VILLAGE A village like no other and two great shows...

A4,4:45• ., .

WILTON ANTIQUES MARKETPLACE SHOWS September 20 Sunday, 10-5

AMERICANA ARTISANS

To benefit Drum Hill

DAR

THE

Admission $6.00-$5.00 with card or ad

CRAFTS SHOW July 11 and 12

December 6 Sunday, 10-5

Saturday & Sunday

A benefit for the John G. Corr Memorial Award Fund

Admission $6.00-$5.00 with card or ad

AMERICAN CRAFTSMANSHIP at its best...

Wilton High School Field House

Traditional crafts,folk art and fine furniture This is the premier summer showcase for 95 nationally acclaimed artists and artisans working in the traditional manner today to create the heirlooms of tomorrow.

EARLY BUYING 8:30-10:00 am

ANTIQUES SHOW August 15 & 16 THE PRE-EMINENT BERKSHIRE SHOW This expanded show features fine antiques, including Shaker furniture and artifacts, country and period furniture and appropriate decorative accessories,textiles, ceramics, garden objects,folk art, prints, books and English and continental objects, all exhibited in the magnificent ROUND STONE BARN and under tents.

$5 admission; $15 to Show and Village Show managed by Marilyn Gould,(203) 762-3525

Hancock Shaker Village Junction of Routes 20 & 41,Pittsfield, MA For information: (413)443-0188

Route 7, Wilton, Connecticut The best buy . . . The best pickings. . . $15.00 per person The finest one-day shows in America, featuring 130 distinguished dealers showing a wide range of authentic antiques and decorative arts in room settings.

Choice Americana, including country and formal 18th and 19th century furniture, folk art and fine art, prints and maps, ceramics, textiles, silver, jewelry, American Arts & Crafts period and native American arts, is offered.

Produced by Marilyn Gould •

Merritt Parkway: Exit 39B from the west Exit 41 from the east

•

1-95: Exit 15, north 8 miles

•

1-84: Pt 7, south 12 miles

•

Metro North railroad to Cannondale Station

WILTO

Only 50 miles from New York City

MCG Antiques Promotions (203)762-3525 to Chicken St., Wilton, Conn.06897

TRUSTEES/DONORS

MUSEUM

OF

AMERICAN

FOLK

ART

Continuedfrom page 50

International House of Blues Foundation J & H Marsh & McLennan,Inc. Personal Client Services Harry Kahn Allan & Penny Katz Steven & Helen Kellogg Mr.& Mrs. Ronald S. Lauder Fred Leighton, Ltd. Patrick M.& Gloria M. Lonergan Maine Community Foundation Michael & Gael Mendelsohn Keith & Lauren Morgan Norwegian Tourist Board The Overbrook Foundation J. Randall Plummer Daniel & Susan Pollack Drs. Jeffrey Pressman & Nancy Kollisch Raymond & Linda Simon Louise M.Simone Nell Singer Mr.& Mrs. Elliot K. Slade R. Scudder & Helen Smith Richard & Stephanie Solar Spaulding The Judy & Michael Steinhardt Foundation in honor of Ralph 0.Esmerian Patricia A.& Robert C. Stempel Donald & Rachel Strauber Stanley & Doris Tananbaum Jim & Judy Taylor Peter & Lynn Tishman United States Trust Company of New York Don Walters & Mary Benisek Irwin H.& Elizabeth V. Warren Peter & Leslie Warwick Anonymous 81,00041,999 Alconda-Owsley Foundation Mama Anderson Mr.& Mrs. James A. Block Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Block Mr.& Mrs. Sheldon Bonovitz Botanica Marvin & Lois P. Broder Diana D. Brooks Lawrence & Ann Buttenwieser Carillon Importers Inc. Cirker's Moving & Storage Co., Inc. Liz Claiborne Foundation The Coach Dairy Goat Farm Katie Cochran & Michael G. Allen Conde Nast Publications Mr.& Mrs. Edgar Cullman, Jr. Lewis B.& Dorothy Cullman Cullman & Kravis, Inc. Marion Dailey Mr.& Mrs. Allan Daniel Mr.& Mrs. Robert E. Denham Derrel B. DePasse Don & Marian DeWitt

52 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Mr.& Mrs. Charles Diker Mr.& Mrs. Jack Dodick Eve Dorfzaun Nancy Drucicman The Echo Design Group, Inc. Mr.& Mrs. Alvin H. Einbender Theodore & Sharon Eisenstat Epstein Philanthropies Fairfield Processing Corporation John Farber & Wendyll Brown Burton & Helaine Fendelman Mr. 8z Mrs. Bruce Geismar Fred & Kathryn Giampietro Mr. Howard Gilman Dr. Kurt A. Gitter & Ms. Alice Yelen Eric J. & Anne Gleacher Barbara Goldsmith The Goodnow Fund Barbara L. Gordon Baron J. & Ellin Gordon Eugene M. Grant and Company Robert M.Greenberg Stanley & Marcia Greenberg Bonnie Grossman Anne Groves Agnes Gund & Daniel Shapiro Cordelia Hamilton Mr.& Mrs. James Harithas Robert F. Hemphill, Jr. Ellen E. Howe Robert J. & Fern K. Hurst Sandra Jaffe Linda E. Johnson Harvey & Isobel Kahn Louise & George Kaminow Mr. & Mrs. Gerald P. Kaminsky Mr.& Mrs. Michael Kellen Diane D. Kern The Hess & Helyn Kline Foundation Mr.& Mrs. Stephen Lash Mr.& Mrs. Jerry Lauren Mark & Taryn Leavitt Diana Lee in memory of Seymour Margulies Barbara S. Levinson Peter & Nadine Levy Lynn M. Lorwin Dan W.Lufkin & Silvia Kramer Christopher & Linda Mayer The Helen R.& Harold C. Mayer Foundation Judith McGrath Robert & Meryl Meltzer Mr.& Mrs. Stanley G. Mortimer, III Cyril I. Nelson Philip V. Oppenheimer Mr.& Mrs. Richard D.Parsons Burton W.Pearl, MD Guy Peyrelongue Mr.& Mrs Daniel Pollack Mortimer & Eugenie Propp Irene Reichert Mr. & Mrs. Keith Reinhard Betty Ring

John & Margaret Robson William D. Rodina The San Diego Foundation Charmaine & Maurice Kaplan Fund Mr.& Mrs. Marvin Schwartz H. Marshall Schwarz Stephen Score Joseph & Janet Shein Mr.& Mrs. Ronald Shelp Harwicke Simmons Joel & Susan Simon Mr.& Mrs. Elliott Slade Sanford L. Smith George & Susan Soros Mr. & Mrs. William Stahl, Jr. David & Ellen Stein Mr. & Mrs. Geoffrey Stem Mr.& Mrs. Jeff Taff Cathy E. Taub & Lowell C. Freiberg Maureen Taylor David Teiger Tiffany & Company Mr.& Mrs. Peter Tishman Mr.& Mrs. Michael A. Varet Gerard C. Wertkin G. Marc Whitehead John & Phyllis Wishnick Susan Yecies Mr.& Mrs. William Zabel Two anonymous donors $500â&#x20AC;&#x201D;$999 Joe C. Adams Ted Alfond Ms. Mary Lou Alpert Richard C.& Ingrid Anderson R. Randolph Apgar & Allen Black James & Deborah Ash The Bachmann Foundation, Inc. Jeremy L. Banta Frank & June Barsalona Henry Barth Dr. & Mrs. Alex Berenstein The Bibelot Shops Peter & Lynn Bienstock Mary F. Bijur Mrs. Helen Bing Seema Boesky Jeffrey & Tina Bolton Joseph & Joan Boyle Ian G.M. & Marian M. Brownlie Gale Meltzer Brudner Guy K. Bush Robert T. Cargo Cavin-Morris Gallery The Chase Manhattan Foundation Matching Gift Program Karen D. Cohen Suzanne Cole Mr. & Mrs. Stephen H. Cooper Judy Cowen Michael F. Coyne & Monica Longworth

Cathy Cramer Mr.& Mrs. Lewis Cullman Susan R. Cullman Kathryn M.Curran Julie S. Dale Aaron & Judy Daniels Gary Davenport Keith De Lellis Michael Del Castello Alvin & Davida Deutsch Mr.& Mrs. Gerald T. DiManno Lynne W.Doss Cynthia Drasner Howard Drubner Arnold & Debbie Dunn Alfred Engelberg Mr.& Mrs. Anthony Evnin Ross & Gladys Faires Frank & Fran Frawley Ken & Brenda Fritz Galerie Heike Curtze Daniel M. Gantt Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Geismar William L.& Mildred Gladstone Harriet & Jonathan Goldstein Mr.& Mrs. Baron J. Gordon Mrs. Terry S. Gottlieb Howard M.Graff Marilyn A. Green Peter Greenwald & Nancy Hoffman Grey Advertising, Inc. Susan Rosenberg Gurman Robert & Elizabeth Harleman Pria & Mark Harmon Brian C. & Ellen Harris Mr.& Mrs. James Hartithas Audrey B. Heckler Herbert W.Hemphill, Jr. Stephen Hessler Robert L.& Marjorie Hirschhorn Leonard & Arlene Hochman Rebecca Hoftberger Raymond E. Holland Carter Houck Robert J. Hurst Imperial Wallcoverings, Inc. Laura N.& Theodore J. Israel Mr.& Mrs. Thomas C. Israel Pepi & Vera Jelinek Ann Jocelyn/Bank of New York Betty W.Johnson & Douglas F. Bushnell Guy Johnson Robert J. Kahn Cathy M. Kaplan Dr.& Mrs. Rudy Kasni Fran Kaufman & Robert C. Rosenberg Leigh Keno Mary Kettaneh Jonathan & Jacqueline King Barbara S. Klinger (continued on page 54)

Patricia Palermino Studio Contemporary Folk Art

CRAIG FARROW Cabinetmaker

-EL! 1 111 •

'22.?.$11lIPM," •.. „„„

"Go Fish” 20 x 24 acrylic on canvas

9029 Greylock Street, Alexandria, Virginia Phone: 703-360-4757 Fax: 703-360-4114 Web Site: http://www.cdad.com/palernnino Represented by

FRANK J. MIELE GALLERY 1086 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10028 Tel: 212-249-7250

ST. Madeleine Sophie's Center ‘i* Serving Adults with Developmental Disabilities Jackie Leong Fancy Pants 18th-century spoon rack

Greetin9 Cards

Prints Ori9inal Art 2119 East Madison Avenue El Cajon,CA 92019-1111 Phone: 619.442.5129 E-mail: stmsc@cts.com Website: www.cts.com/king/stmsc

History and Artistry in Wood 17th and 18th Century American Furniture Reproductions P.O. Box 828 Woodbury, CT 06798

Please call 203-266-0276

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 53

TRUSTEES/DONORS

MUSEUM

OF

AMERICAN

FOLK

ART

Continuedfrom page 52

Lee & Ed Kogan Mr.& Mrs. Theodore A. Kurz Robert A. Landau Evelyn & Leonard A. Lauder Wendy & Mel Lavin Mr.& Mrs. John Levin James & Frances Lieu Mimi Livingston Monica Longworth & Michael F. Coyne Ian W. MacLean Earle & Carol Mack Richard & Gloria Manney Michael T. Martin Virginia Marx Mr.& Mrs. John A. Mayer, Jr. Grete Meilman Mr.& Mrs. Robert Meltzer Robert & Joyce Menschel Mr.& Mrs. Danny Meyer Evelyn S. Meyer Timothy & Virginia Millhiser Ira M. Millstein Mr.& Mrs. Keith Morgan

Randall Morris & Shari Cavin Museums New York Ann & Walter Nathan Mr.& Mrs. Bernard Newman Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Newman Victor & Susan Niederhoffer Mr.& Mrs. John E. Oilman Paul L.& Nancy Oppenheimer David Passerman William & Terry Pelster The Perrier Group of America Anthony J. Petullo Mr.& Mrs. Laurence B. Pike Terry R. Pillow Mr.& Mrs. Jack Rabin Mr.& Mrs. F.F. Randolph, Jr. Mr.& Mrs. Milton S. Rattner Ricco/Maresca Gallery Mr.& Mrs. Peter C. Rockefeller Roger & Alyce Rose Mr.& Mrs. Martin Rosen Mr.& Mrs. Winthrop Rutherford, Jr. Mr.& Mrs. Selig D. Sacks Merilyn Sandin-Zarlengo

Judy A. Saslow Diane H. Schafer Linda & Donald Schapiro Paul & Penelope Schindler Margaret Schmidt Richard J. & Sheila Schwartz Mrs. Stewart Seidman Mr.& Mrs. Robert Shapiro Arthur & Suzanne Shawe Bruce B. Shelton Dr. Christian Shriqui Randy Siegel Mr.& Mrs. Raymond Simon Nell Singer Dr. Meredith F. & Gail Wright Sirmans John & Stephanie Smither Sotheby's Geoffrey A. & Elizabeth A. Stern Mr.& Mrs. Donald Strauber Mr.& Mrs. Victor Studer Myles & Roberta Tanenbaum Rubens Teles & James Adams Donald & Barbara Tober

Dorothy Treisman Mr.& Mrs. Raymond S. Troubh Anne Vanderwarker Andrew Vansickle Mr.& Mrs. George Viener Karel F. Wahrsager Clifford & Gayle Wallach Mrs. Sue Ann Weinberg Bennett & Judie Weinstock Mr.& Mrs. Roger Weiss Herbert Wells Anne G. Wesson Jane Q. Wirtz Mr. & Mrs. Tim Zagat Jon & Rebecca Zoler

John Martin 6allery 7010 E. Main Street, Scottsdale AZ85251 602-423-9160 800-943-9160

You are cordially invited to attend the

Grand Opening of the new Kentucky Folk Art Center 2 PM Friday, June 26, 1998 Kentucky Folk Art Center 102 West First Street Morehead, Kentucky 40351 Phone: 606/783-2204

54 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Representing over 35 Native American Artists Navajo Folk Art, Pottery, Oculpture, Weavings

SELF TAUGHT,

')20/1/v6-4 AND FOLK ART FAIR JUNE 19-21, 1998

• •

OUTSIDERS OUTSIDE

Harbert Judith Racht Gallery 13707 Prairie Road, Harbert, Michigan Saturday 11-6pm, Sunday 12-6pm Opening Night Preview Party Friday, June 19,7-10pm

'INTIIII' SEPTEMBER 18-20, 1998

OUTSIDERS INSIDE

Chicago White Tower Building 847 West Jackson, Chicago, Illinois Saturday 11-8pm, Sunday 12-6pm Opening Night Preview Gala Friday, September 18,5:30-8:30pm For information call 0 4\ 616/469.1080 Presented by Judith Racht Gallery

MUSEUM

NEWS

Artist Thornton Dial with curator Elsa Longhauser

BY TANYA HEINRICH

Philadelphia/New York n Thursday, March 5, the ris Hirshfield, Leroy Person, Margrand setting of the tin Ramirez, Eugene Von BruenPhiladelphia Museum of chenhein, and Joseph Yoakum Art made for a triumphant openprovided the opportunity for intiing reception for the installation mate viewing of the highly perof the Museum of American Folk sonal way in which each of the Art's long-awaited major travelartists used patterns as a central ing exhibition "Self-Taught element or as a device for manipArtists of the 20th Century: An ulating space and texture. A highAmerican Anthology." Nearly light of the show was the debut of 300 works by 31 self-taught a newly discovered group of artists spanning the century were drawings by Ramirez on loan grouped in careful juxtapositions from the Guggenheim Museum. in gallery upon gallery, each room opening up with dramatic voices that demand reckoning. Therecreation of Emery Blagdon's Healing Machines, a dense environment originally housed in a Nebraska barn, with subdued lighting and the mesmerizing sounds of crickets, provided a counterbalancing ambiance.

Museum trustees, staff, members, and friends made the journey Special events coordinator Jennifer Scott to Philadelphia, where Museum of American Folk Art director Gerard C. Wertkin and Philadelphia Museum of Art director Museum trustee Nancy Mead and her husband, Dana Anne d'Harnoncourt welcomed guests and gave thanks to sponsors and the exhibition curators, Elsa Longhauser and Harald Exhibition project coordinator Szeemann. The exhibition will Lee Kogan, exhibition curator travel to Atlanta; Fort Worth, Elsa Longhauser, and director Gerard C. Wertkin Tex.; Rochester, N.Y.; and z Columbus, Ohio, returning to ' the Museum of American Folk 2 Art in New York in 2000.

The members' reception for "Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: Perspectives on Patterning," the smaller and more tightly focused satellite exhibition organized by curator Elsa Longhauser and on view concurrently at the Museum's Eva and Morris Feld Gallery in New York, was held on Monday, March 16. White walls and sparse installation of works by self-taught artists MorCurator Stacy C. Hollander, registrar Ann-Marie Reilly, and assistant registrar Judith Gluck Steinberg

58 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

Kelly 8c Massa Photography

0

Don Christensen with Emery Blagdon's Healing Machines

EPSTEMPOWELL 22 Wooster St., New York, N.Y. 10013 By appointment(212)226-7316

Jesse Aaron Rex Clawson Mr. Eddy Victor Joseph Gatto (estate) Lonnie Holley S.L. Jones Lawrence Lebduska Charlie Lucas Justin McCarthy Old Ironsides Pry Popeye Reed Max Romain Ody Saban Jack Savitsky Clarence Stringfield Mose Tolliver Chief Willey George Williams Luster Willis ...and other outsider artists

Sarah Rakes Benny Carter James Harold Jennings Mary T. Smith Vollis Simpson Jim Sudduth Melissa Polhamus Mr. Eddy Minnie Evans

Nose Tolliver S.L. Jones Gerald DePrie Clyde Jones Bessie Harvey Henry Speller B.F. Perkins

Billy Ray Hussey Steven Abee Stacy Lambert BurIon Craig David Jarrell Raymond Coins Charlie Simmons J.B. Murry Harold Crowell

Museum Charlotte Zander SchloB Bonnigheim

Sava SekuliE March 7 - July 12,1998

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FOLK ART & SW-TAUGHT ART Mike Smith • At Home Gallery • 3916 Pondfield Court Greensboro, North Carolina 27410• Athorne98@aol.com

0,44e,

GALLIRY

By Appointment Only

Josef Wittlich July 18 - November 1,1998 Matija Skurjere November 7 - March 1999 HauptstraBe 15, D-74357 Bonnigheim, Germany Tel.07143-4226 Fax.07143-4220 Opening Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.

336/664-0022

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 57

MUSEUM

NEWS

ARTIST CHUCKIE BURGESS DULANEY SYBIL GIBSON GLASSMAN REV. J. L HUNTER

Upcoming Fall Exhibition

M.C. 5( JONES

asterpieces of American Folk Marquetry," the first large-scale examination of the little-known art form with important connections to folk art and vernacular furniture, will be on view at the Museum of American Folk Art from Oct. 3, 1998, to Jan. 10, 1999. Marquetry, the exquisitely detailed surface decoration of furniture with patterns and pictures made from wood chips or veneers, was brought to this country in the 1840s by skilled

-M

CHARLEY KINNEY R. A. MILLER REGINALD MITCHELL ROYAL ROBERTSON SULTAN ROGERS ISAAC SMITH

REV. JOHNNIE SWEARINGEN

German immigrants and subsequently was made distinctly American. Marquetry is often called "men's quilting" because it was produced exclusively by men and because of the similarity between many folk marquetry designs and quilt patterns. The exhibition will include more than 75 pieces dating from 1820 to the 1970s from the collection of Robert and Marjorie Hirschhorn as well as from the Museum's collection.

MUSE TOLLIVER

Children's Winter Workshops he winter series of the highly successful Sunday children's workshops— held twice a month and based on the Museum's current exhibition, special holidays, or a related performance in the gallery—included a vibrant story hour and singalong on March 15 by cast members of the New York City Opera's production ofPaul Bunyan. The overflow audience of children, parents, and opera lovers was treated to a grand performance,following an earlier workshop in which youngsters created storybooks about heroes. Docents Beth Connor and Anne Martocci plan and implement the artmalcing workshops with the help of volunteer Caitlin Kilts and docent Kristen deBruyn.

On Feb. 17, 18, and 19, children from New York City schools and community centers participated in activities sponsored by the Chase Sports & Arts in Schools Festival. The Museum invited paperfolding instructor and performer Gay Merrill Gross

T ATLANTA '98 Folk Art Show AUGUST 13, 14, 15 & 16 8:00 A.M. UNTIL 8:00 P.M. DRURY INN & SUITES 5655 JIMMY CARTER BOULEVARD NORCROSS, GA

Featuring Works By: Benny Carter Charles Simmons & Others Newly Discovered Artist Reverend J.A. King & Others

SOUTHERN FOLK ART PICKER P.O. Box 1312, Ridgeway, VA 24148

(540) 956-3669

58 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

to create a fun and educational introduction to folk art through folded paper models that highlight objects in the Museum's permanent collection. The morning and afternoon workshops were followed by docent tours of the permanent collection gallery.

Special thanks go to docents Debra Ash, Mercedes Bierman, Joyce Eppler, Roberta Gaynor, Bella Kranz, Shirley Lindenbaum, Jeanne Riger, Marilyn Schwartz, Marion Shapin, and Lynn Steuer; interns Xiao-Qi Chen, Yan Yuan Chen, and Pat Wells; and staff members Madelathe Gill, Dale Gregory, and Arlene Hochman.

Two children working closely together during a Sunday workshop

Video

Lanier Meaders

"turning" the

FACE JUG

RizzoII Response he exhibition "A.G. Rizzoli: Architect of Magnificent Visions," on view at the Museum from Jan. 17 to March 8, enjoyed high attendance and positive reviews in The New York Times, augmented further by a thoughtful editorial on Feb. 2 and opinion on Feb. 14. Programming highlights included the exceptional lecture "A.G. Rizzoli: Architect of Hallucinations" by art historian Dr. John MacGregor on Feb. 11, and the symposium "From Many Perspectives: The Work of A.G. Rizzoli" on Feb. 19. Presenters at the symposium

T

30 minutes Dr. John MacGregor

included design architect Kevin Day, professor of psychiatry Dr. Everett P. Dulit, clinical psychiatry instructor Rachel Goodman Edelson, and dealer Bonnie Grossman, who is also the primary researcher on the artist's life and work. The program was moderated by exhibition curator Jo Farb Hernandez.

Rizzoli symposium speakers Dr. Everett P. Dulit, Kevin Day, Jo Farb Hernandez, Bonnie Grossman, and Rachel Goodman Edelson

Norwegian Videotape Available duced as part of the education prohe stunning installation of gramming while the exhibition the exhibition "Norwegian was installed at the Nordic HerFolk Art: The Migration of a Tradition" has been preserved on itage Museum in Seattle in 1997, features more than 100 piecesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; videotape for further study and ornate woodcarvings, colorful enjoyment. Jointly organized by weavings, and decorative painted curator Dr. Marion J. Nelson, the objectsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;photographed in great Museum of American Folk Art, and the Norwegian Folk Museum, detail. The footage is accompanied by narration and Oslo, with the coopa soundtrack of Noreration of Vesterwegian folk music heim,the Norwegianplayed on unusual American Museum in native instruments by Decorah,Iowa,"NorNorwegian musiwegian Folk Art: The cians. Copies of the Migration of a Tradig video can be ordered tion" was on view at for $24.95 each from the Museum of John Sabella and American Folk Art in WOOL BASKET I ULLKORGI WITH MEDIEVAL DECORATION, at Associates New York in the fall artist unknown, Fjagesund, 888/719-4099 of 1995. The 40Kviteseid, Telema rk, Norway, 15th to 17th century, wood, (toll-free). minute video, pro-

T

4

141

1127 B Highway 52 East, Dahlonega, GA 30533 Phone:(706) 864-8362 Web: www.potteryplus.com E-Mail: Nettie estc.net

Strong and Rare Examples of Traditional Southern Folk Pottery and Folk Art We specialize in locating the unusual Visit us at FolkFest '98 North Atlanta Trade Center Atlanta, Georgia August 14th, 15th and 16th

17 7 17 3/,, 17", Fylkesmuseum for Telemark og, Grenland, Skies, Norway, BM 1954-22 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 59

MUSEUM

NEWS

Museum docent Candy Martinez with artist Willie White at the home of William Peltier

/ YjJiJT Magazine the magazine devoted to the art quilt.

*slitti(ttarT ook Service* The Art Quilt by Robert Shaw THE new resource for what's going on in art quilts! Over 300 quilt photos in glorious color plus great articles $85

Special for Folk Art readers: Free Shipping! $4).

*** Send SASE for our list of art 81 quilt books *** To subscribe,send check for $28($38us overseas):

T/Itleg- Magazine / Folk Art Offer PO Box 630927/Houston,TX 77263-0927 fax 713/975-6072

(MC/V accepted)

Arancy "Weaver Fine & Folk _Art Conservator Contemporary yolk .Art_potter and 1Voodcarver 76 Weaver Road Ph (770) 748-7035

Cedartown,GA.30125 Email restorer@mindspring.com

http://w-vvw.mindspring.co m/—restorer/restorer.htm

60 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

useum members from many parts of the country enjoyed a tour to Louisiana—from New Orleans' famed French Quarter to a bayou that is home to alligators, snakes, turtles, and birds—April 14 to 19.

The Folk Art Explorers participated in a wide variety of activities, including visits to private collections and artists, tours of two plantation houses, a swamp tour at Alligator Bayou, receptions at several folk art galleries, and the opportunity to sample some delicious Creole and Cajun cuisine.

New Orleans folk art collectors Paul and Alvina Haverkamp, William Rose and Tom Schlunz, Betty-Carol Sellen, Barbara Louviere, William Fagaly, and Kurt Gitter and Alice Yelen welcomed the group to their homes. Visits with Louisiana folk artists Willie White, Lorraine Gendron, and May Kugler were also on the itinerary. The group had the opportunity to see work by a wide range of Southern folk artists when visiting galleries and dealers such as Richard Gasped, Gilley's Gallery, Southern Tangent Gallery, William Peltier, and Barrister's Gallery, where Dr. Regenia Perry spoke to the group about Louisiana folk artists. Fine Louisiana architecture was appre-

M

Specials for Folk Art readers: 4 quarterly issues for $28.($38 overseas) Sample copy $7($10us overseas)

save $5(US only, foreign add

Folk Art by the Bayou

Collector and author Betty-Carol Sellen fright) in her New Orleans home with Evelyn Meyer

ciated as the group viewed several typical New Orleans homes as well as Madewood Plantation, a national historic landmark owned by Naomi Marshall, and St. Enuna's, a plantation home owned by Shelby and Marie Gilley.

Folk Art Explorers' Club tours are open to all Museum members and their guests. Several tours a year are planned by the Membership Office and publicized in Folk Art and the Quilt Connection newsletter. A tour to Italy is planned for October 1-12.

For more information, please call Beth Bergin or Chris Cappiello at 212/977-7170.

Hotel Reminder en making your plans o stay in New York City, note that members of the Museum of American Folk Art are entitled to a discounted rate at the Radisson Empire Hotel, conveniently located just two blocks from the Museum's Eva and Morris Feld

Wt

Gallery at Lincoln Square. The hotel, situated in an exciting neighborhood just steps away from Central Park,features nicely furnished rooms and a full line of amenities. Call 212/265-7400 for reservations, and be sure to ask for the Museum of American Folk Art rate.

JOHN C. HILL • ANTIQUE INDIAN ART 6962 E. 1ST AVE,SCOTTSDALE,ARIZONA 85251 (602)946 2910 • e-mail antqindart@aol.com \NI*

It's more than just another credit card it's a contribution.

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN nsigi FOLRART EVA AND MORRIS FEED GALLERY AT LINCOLN SQUARE

AIBNA

4

53'2'9 ][YL 567.8 5329

EXPIRES 501rOln

C BARD COLE

Now you can help raise money for the Museum of American Folk Art simply by making a purchase with your No-Annual-Fee Museum of American Folk Art Gold MasterCard?

HOPI: Snake Dancer,striding, circa 1900,9 X" high

TRAVELING

EXHIBITIONS

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

May 23—August 9 A Cast of Characters: 19th-Century Chalkware from the Museum of American Folk Art Brandywine River Museum Brandywine Conservancy Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania 610/388-2700 July 14—Oct. 20 Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology High Museum of Art Atlanta, Georgia 404/733-4400

Oct. 31, 1998—Jan. 24, 1999 Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology Presented in two parts at Amon Carter Museum Fort Worth, Texas 817/738-1933 and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Fort Worth, Texas 817/738-9215

Every time you make a purchase with your No-AnnualFee Museum of American Folk Art Gold MasterCard, MBNA America° Bank,the card's issuer, makes a contribution to support the Museum of American Folk Art. Your No-Annual-Fee Museum of American Folk Art card also benefits you in a big way with credit lines up to $50,000 and up to $500,000 Common Carrier Travel Accident Insurance on charged fares The Museum of American Folk Art card features...

• No Annual Fee! • Additional cards at no cost for family members or associates.

• Worldwide acceptance at millions oflocations.

• A bank that is always available, 24 hours a day,365 days a year.

Best of all, it's backed by a 24-hour commitment to Customer Satisfaction that has made MBNA one of the leading issuers of bank credit cards.

Request your NO-ANNUAL-FEE Museum of American Folk Art Gold MasterCard today!

Call 1-800-847-7378 TTY users, call: 1-800-833-6262 Please mention priority code FDNI when you call.

There are costs associated with the use of this card. You may contact the issuer and administrator of this program, MBNA America'Bank, to request specific information about the costs by calling 1-800-847-7378 or writing to P.O. Box 15020, Wilmington, DE 19850. *Certain restrictions apply to this benefit and others described in the benefits brochures sent soon after your account is opened.

MBNA and MBNA America are federally registered service marks of MBNA America Bank, NA. MasterCard is a federally registered service mark of MasterCard International Inc., used pursuant to license. @ 1997 MBNA America Bank, N.A. ADG-OAAB-8/97 ADG-8-4-97 ADG-H-5

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 61

_ edittie5 rxf Manta ESTABLISHED 1973

,5pecinlizin9 in the Eccentric expressions of ,Southern jolk czirtists "White House" by Nellie Mae Rowe(1900-1982) Crayon on Paper, 17 1/2" x 23 1/2" Signed Lower Right, Dated 1982 Exhibited at the White House, 1982

5325 ROSWELL ROAD,NE ATLANTA,GA 30342 404-252-0485/FAX 252-0359

Southern Vision's Pottery and Folk Art PO Box 526 • Seagrove, NC 27341 (336) 381-3090

DISCOVER the largest museum collection of American Folk Art prints. Colorful guilts, samplers, portraits, landscapes.

Over 150 prints beautifully illustrated in new full color catalog. Send $6.00:

Lainer Meaders • Reggie Meaders • Louis Brown Terry King • Davis Brown • Hewell Family

HEDGEROW HOUSE 6401 East Rogers Circle•Boca Raton, Florida 33487-2647 Tel (561) 998-0756 • Fax (561)998-0763

C.J. and Billy Meaders • Nub Meaders E.J. Brown • Anna King Crystal King • B.B. Craig Specializing in

Southern Folk Art,Pottery If you want it, we canfind it!

12 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

SUMMER

PROGRAMS

EDORTOLS011

The Temptation

MINE(3111151501 The following programs will be held in conjunction with the exhibition "Edge to Edge: Selections from Studio Art Quilt Associates" at the Museum of American Folk Art's Eva and Morris Feld Gallery, 2 Lincoln Square, on Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets, New York City, and are free to the public unless otherwise specified.

LECTURES EDGE TO EDGE: SELECTIONS FROM STUDIO ART QUILT ASSOCIATES Curatorial lecture Stacy C. Hollander, curator Thursday, June 18 6 P.M. Thursday Lunchtime Talks 12:30 P.M. Bring your lunch.

Lectures begin promptly at 1 P.M.

July 9 KALEIDOSCOPES AND QUILTS Paula Nadelstern, quilt artist and author, Kaleidoscopes and Quilts July 16 QUILTS OF CONSCIENCE Lee Kogan, director, Folk Art Institute July 23 THEN AND NOW Cathy Rasmussen, director, Studio Art Quilt Associates A discussion of selected quilt artists' earlier work in comparison to their current styles

QUILT WEEKEND Sept. 11-12

Edgar Tolson and the Genesis of Twentieth-Century Folk Art

IURY PNVAIIE,IVI-CEH FOLK MIT

JULIA S. ARDERY

"A welcome addition to the all-tooslim library of thoughtful studies , on key contemporary folk artists, among whom Tolson looms."

—Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

eir

All-Day Quilt Workshop Friday, Sept. 11 10 A.m.-4 P.M. PAINTING TECHNIQUES ON FABRIC FOR QUILTMAKERS Yvonne Porcella, quilt artist, author, and president of Studio Art Quilt Associates Fee: $85; materials fee: $25 Administrative Offices, 61 W.62nd St., 3rd floor Morning Symposium Saturday, Sept. 12 10 A.m.-12 P.M. Free to the public THE ART QUILT: AN OVERVIEW Robert Shaw,author, The Art Quilt THE NEW WEST— THE NEW QUILT Yvonne Porcella, quilt artist, author, and president of Studio Art Quilt Associates PIECING A QUILT OF LIFE: THE INNER AND OUTER JOURNEYS OF CREATIVE WOMEN Dottie Moore, quilt artist Afternoon Quilt Guild Demonstrations Meet the Quilt Artists Saturday, Sept. 12 1-5 P.M. Free to the public

The exhibition "Edge to Edge: Selections from Studio Art Quilt Associates" is presented with the support ofStudio Art Quilt Associates,a nonprofit organization, and its corporate sponsors: C&T Publishing, Inc.; Fairfield/Maker of Poly-fil® Brand Products;P&B Fabrics, Inc.; Quitter's Newsletter Magazine; Quitters Only from Springs Industries, Inc.; and Quilts, Inc. The Museum's public programming is funded in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

46-411 376 pp., 7 x 10, 10 color / 77 b&w photos $45 cloth! $19.95 paper Available in .a.erback and in a "acketed cloth limited edition at bookstores or by toll-free order The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill Phone (800) 848-6224, Fax (80) 272-6817 • http://sunsite.unc.edu/uncpress/

e

-

i

Quilts Coverlets CounterpaneS

Quilts, Coverlets, & Counterpanes

the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and Old Salem Collections I PAULA W. LOCKLAIR •Whether woven, lob A embroidered, patchwork, or g IA appliquéd, the 39 bedcoverings highlighted here offer igt 4 new insights into _ the lives, talents, and imaginations

•

fromihr• hhorom 0( birtY ar1.1 Decorative Arts ior.iherri

of American

women in the early South.

$16.95 paperback 8 'A x II, 62 color plates, 5 b&w photos Distributed for Old Salem, Inc. at bookstores or by toll-free order The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill Phone (800) 848-6224, Fax (800) 272-6817 • http://sunsite.unc.edu/uncpress/

SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART 63

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

An early 20th century folk carving of a man plowing with an oxen, 17"x7"x2-1/2"

Send a self-addressed stamped envelope for our monthly Folk-Art and Americana price list

INDEX

TO

ADVERTISERS

American Folk

46

John C. Hill

61

Rosehips Gallery

18

American Pie

15

Hypoint

45

St. Madeleine Sophie's Center

53

The Ames Gallery

13

Kentucky Folk Art Center

54

Shelton Gallery

14

Barbara Archer Gallery

17

Knoke Galleries

62

Steve Slotin

Art/Quilt Magazine

60

MBNA America

61

Sanford L. Smith & Associates

44

At Home Gallery

57

42,43

MCG Antiques Promotions

51

Southern Folk Art Picker

58

Robert Cargo Folk Art Gallery

2

Main Street Antiques and Art

64

Southern Vision's

62

Christie's

7

John Martin Gallery

54

Kimball M.Sterling

Frank J. Miele Gallery

19

Jan Thiede-Smith

45

The University of North Carolina Press

63 16

47,49

Country Living

Inside Back Cover

Epstein/Powell

57

Steve Miller

Craig Farrow

53

Museum Charlotte Zander

57

Angela Usrey Gallery

Fleisher/011man Gallery

3

Patricia Palermino Studio

53

Walters/Benisek

4

Sidney Gecker

9

William Peltier

1

8

Wanda's Quilts

46

Back Cover

J.E. Porcelli

12

Nancy Weaver

60

Gilley's Gallery

16

Pottery Plus

59

Yard Dog

58

Anton Haardt Gallery

41

Judith Racht Gallery

55

Ginger Young Gallery

18

Carl Hammer Gallery

10,41

Ricco/Maresca Gallery

Inside Front Cover

62

Rocky Mountain Quilts

8

Giampietro

Hedgerow House

64 SUMMER 1998 FOLK ART

AMERICA'S SOURCE FOR FOLK ART AND ANTIQUES A

Publication

of

Hearst

Magazines.

A

Unit

of

the

Hearst

Corporation

(212) 861-8571 . TUESDAY - SATURDAY • 11 - 5:30

HURON COUNTY, CANADA, C. 1880 . L. 62 INCHES www.giampietro.corn

25 EAST 73RD STREET NEW YORK 1 00 2 1

'ampietro

CAROUSEL HORSE BY JOHN GEMEINHARDT