Folk Art (Spring/summer 2004)

FOLK ART MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM * SPRING/SUMMER 2004 *

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riccolmaresca gallery 529 west 20th street 3rd floor new york ny 10011 212.627.4819 riccomaresca.com

STEVE MILLER • AMERICAN FOLK ART •

17 East 96th Street, New York, NY 10128 Telephone: 1-212-348-5219, Fax: 1-212-427-4278, E-mail: sharksm@earthlink.net By appointment only.

DAVID WE 441ATCROF I Antiques

Man in Swallowtail Coat Whirligig constructed of wood and polychromed made by Amos Schultz Berks County, Pennsylvania c. 1870 /29 inches high

26 West Main Street, Westborough, MA 01581 • Tel:(508)366-1723• Website: davidwheateroft.corn

JAMES CASTLE

1900-1977

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WWW.JAMESCASTLE.COM

J CRIST GALLERY AND ART SERVICES

The Belgravia Building 465 West Main Street Boise, Idaho 83702 Phone 208 336 2671 Fax 336 5615 Electronic Mail art®jcrist.com

3 Crist is the primary representative for the work of James Castle

Trotta Bono

Effigy Carved Ladder Back Arm Chair New Hampshire Circa: 1780-1810 Thought to be a tribal elder, sachem or chief's chair. With original (native?) ash-splint seat and with classic Northeastern Woodland carved human effigy arm finials.

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By Appointment: (914) 528-6604 P.O. Box 34 Shrub Oak, NY 10588 Email: tb788183@aol.com We are actively purchasing fine individual pieces and collections.

Antique Native Arneric Art of the Frontier and Colonial Perio

FURNITURE

ART

Very fine Chippendale transitional maple and tiger maple tall chest, with finished top above cove molded cornice, having six graduated thumb molded drawers and raised on bracket feet. Old dry finish, and rare original oval brasses with naive recumbent lion. Rhode Island, circa 1780-85.

35 1/4" wide 51 3/4" high, 17 1/4" deep.

Specialists in American Federal Furniturefor over 30 years.

American Federal Furniture

50 Main Street North, Woodbury, CT 06798 Just past Rte. 47 Tel.(203) 266-0303 Fax (203) 266-0707 www.schwenke.com

WALTERS BENISEK ART S. ANTIQUES ONE AMBER LANE • NORTHAMPTON • MASSACHUSETTS • 01060 • • (4 1 3) 58 6 • 39 0 9 • DON WALTERS • MARY BENISEK

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PORTRAITS OF ISAAC AND ELIZABETH RICHARDSON BY JOSEPH H DAVIS WOBURN, MASSACHUSETTS• 1838 • WATERCOLOR AND INK ON PAPER

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FOLK ART VOLUME 29, NUMBERS 1-2 / SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FE

AT

UR

ES

32

Talking Quilts Stacy C. Hollander

Parallel or Precedent: Patterned Brickwork Architecture and Quaker Needlework

42

Damon Tvaryanas

Coming Home! Self-Taught Artists, the Bible, and the American South

54

Carol Crown

62

Alexander Bogardy: Singular Pursuits Margaret Parsons and Marsha Orgeron

DEPARTMENTS

Cover: PSALM 23 GUILT (detail) Lena Moore(d.1965) Canton, Mississippi c.1930 Cotton 65 x 78" Collection of Janet M. Green

Books ofInterest

78

13

Clarion Society

80

Miniatures

20

80

Conversation

28

Museum Information: Exhibition Schedule, Hours &Admissions

82

29

Museum News

Spring Benefit

88

30

Obituary

The Collection: A Closer Look

90

68

Public Programs

Americus Group

92

70

Trustees/Donors

Space Rental

96

76

Index to Advertisers

Museum Reproductions Program

Editor's Column

8

Director's Letter

Folk Art is published four times a year by the American Folk Are Museum.The museum's mailing address is 1414 Avenue ofthe Americas,New York, NY 10019-2514,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 $8.00.Published and copyright 2004 by the American Folk Art Museum,45 West 53rd Street,New York,NY 10019.The cover and contents ofFolk 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 ofthe American Folk Art Museum.

Unsolicited manuscripts or photographs should be accompanied by return postage.FaArt assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage ofsuch materials. Change ofaddress: Please send both old and new addresses to the museum's mailing address at 1414 Avenue ofthe Americas,New York,NY 10019-2514,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 ofobjects or quality ofservices 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 ofobjects or services advertised in its pages.The museum is dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation offolk art and it is a violation ofits principles to be involved in or to appear to be involved in the sale ofworks ofart. 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 ofplacing an advertisement.

11

SPRING/SUMMER 2004 FOLK ART 7

EDITOR'S

COLUMN

TANYA HEINRICH

discovered folk art quite by chance; my first job when I moved to New York in 1992 was with the American Folk Art Museum,and I've been hooked ever since. Exposure to the material was minimal in my hometown of Los Angeles,but then a series of experiences began to click: Simon Rodia's Watts Towers and Tressa Prisbrey's Bottle Village (both routine elementary school field trips), Eli Leon's compelling African American quilt exhibition "Who'd A Thought It," a folklore course with Michael Owen Jones in college, and my own growing collection ofvernacular snapshots. Folk art is widely experienced as a series of personal discoveries, one interest leading to another, and it can elicit quite a visceral response.

With this issue we introduce two new columns that address this idea of discovery or rediscovery."Conversation," the first in what promises to be an interesting series ofinterviews with collectors, scholars, and dealers in the field,can be found on page 28."The Collection: A Closer Look," on page 30,will focus on one or two objects from the museum's holdings—some new acquisitions and some pieces we may not have seen for a while. Another exciting change longtime readers may notice is Jeffrey Kibler's redesign ofthe magazine.Jeffis an immensely talented designer,and this is his forty-ninth issue ofFolk Art,the last thirty-eight with his fine colleagues at The Magazine Group in Washington,D.C.We hope you like it.

Our cover story is "Talking Quilts," by Senior Curator CHILD WITH A BASKET Stacy C.Hollander—it showcases a sampling ofgraphic Artist unidentified quilts featuring the written word on view at the museum Mount Vernon, Kennebec through August 1. Damon Tvaryanas provides in-depth County, Maine research into the uncanny link between Quaker needlec.1815 Oil on wood panel work samplers from southeastern New Jersey and pat/ 4" 34 181 terned brickwork architecture in the same region. Carol American Folk Art Museum, Crown gives us a peek at her traveling exhibition "Coming gift of Alice M. Kaplan, Home! Self-Taught Artists, the Bible, and the American 1977.13.1 South";readers in the New York area will be able to see the show at the American Bible Society in Manhattan in 2005. Finally, Margaret Parsons and Marsha Orgeron present the drawings and paintings of Alexander Bogardy, a Hungarian immigrant with an eclectic career whose devout Catholicism and love offemale beauty inspired his work.

My mentor and friend Rosemary Gabriel, who recently retired as editor and publisher ofFolk Art,is an incredible, generous teacher, we worked together closely for ten and a half years. Sometimes,giddy with exhaustion from meeting deadlines, we would engage in the fantasy"If you could have any museum object, what would it be?" Rosemary, an avid gardener, usually selected Child with a Basket, a perfectly apt painting to usher in the new seasons, poised as the subject is for picking spring blossoms.(My own personal favorite, The White House,can be seen on page 30.)

We're combining the spring and summer issues this year. We'll see you again in September.

I

8 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM

PUBLICATIONS/FOLK ART Tanya Heinrich Director ofPublicatiorzs/Editor and Publisher Lori T Leonard Production Editor Vanessa Davis Assistant Editor Erildca V. Haa Copy Editor Jeffrey Kibler, Design The Magazine Group,Inc. Eleanor Garlow Advertising Sales Craftsmen Litho Printers ADMINISTRATION Gerard C.Wertkin Susan Conlon Linda Dunne Robin A. Schlinger Madhukar Balsara Angela Lam Irene Kreny Robert J. Saracena George Y. Wang Wendy Barbee Anthony Crawford Daniel Rodriguez Beverly McCarthy ICatya Ullman

Director Assistant to the Director ChiO-Administrative Officer ChiefFinancial Officer Assistant Controller Accountant Accounts Payable Associate Director ofFacilities Director ofInformation Technology Manager of Visitor Services Assistant Manager of Visitor Services Office Services Coordinator Mail Order/Reception Administrative Assistant/Reception

COLLECTIONS & EXHIBITIONS Stacy C. Hollander Senior Curator/Director ofExhibitions Brooke Davis Anderson Director and Curator of The Contemporary Center and the Darger Study Center Ann-Marie Reilly ChiOegistrar/Director ofExhibition Production Elizabeth V. Warren Consulting Curator EDUCATION Diana Schlesinger Rebecca Hayes Lee Kogan

Director ofEducation Manager ofSchool and Docent Programs Director ofthe Folk Art Institute/Curator ofSpecialProjects for The Contemporary Center Laura Tilden Education Assistant

DEPARTMENTS Cathy Michelsen Director ofDevelopment Christine Corcoran Manager ofIndividual Giving Pamela Gabourie Manager ofInstitutional Giving Katie Hush Special Events Manager Suzannah Kellner Membership Manager Radhika Natarajan DevelopmentAssociate Dana Clair DevelopmentAssistant Danelsi De La Cruz Membership Assistant Wendy Barreto Membership Clerk Susan Flamm Public Relations Director Alice J. Hoffman Director ofLiceruing/Executive Director of The American Antiques Show Marie S. DiManno Director ofMuseum Shops Richard Ho Manager ofInformation Systems, Retail Operations Janey Fire Director ofPhotographic Services James Mitchell Librarian Jane Lanes Director of Volunteer Services EVA AND MORRIS FELD GALLERY STAFF Dale Gregory Gallery Director Ursula Morillo Weekend Gallery Manager Kenneth R. Bing Security Bienvenido Medina Security Treenia Thompson Security MUSEUM SHOPS STAFF Managers: Dorothy Gargiulo, Louise B. Sheets, Marion Whitley; Book Buyer: Evelyn R. Gurney; Staff Eddie Bang,Sandy B.Yun; Volunteers: Angela Clair, Millie Gladstone, Elizabeth Howe,Judy Kenyon, Hiromi Kiyama, Arlene Loden, Nancy Mayer,Judy Rich, Frances Rojack,Phyllis Selnick American Folk Art Museum Book and Gift Shops 45 West 53rd Street New York, NY 10019 212/265-1040, ext. 124 Two Lincoln Square(Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets) New York, NY 10023 212/595-9533,ext. 26 MAILING ADDRESS American Folk Art Museum 1414 Avenue ofthe Americas, New York, NY 10019-2514 212/977-7170, Fax 212/977-8134,info@folkartmuseum.org, www.folkartmuseurn.org

Trade Sign Removed from the Allen Franck Ornamental Iron Company in Sarasota, Florida Mixed metals Circa 1950 Measures 6ft tall

Allan & Penny Katz

By Appointment 25 Old Still Road Woodbridge, CT 06525 Tel.(203) 393-9356 folkkatz@optonline.net

OON REEK Antiques,L.L.C.

PO box +57,20 Main Street Bridgeport, NJ 0801+ Phone:(856) +67-5197 Fax:(856) 4-67-5+51 raccooncreek@msn.com

George R. Allen • Gordon L Wcko4

"birds of the Woods" i9tk C rolkart carving and paintings I:, Noah Weiss, berks County, Pennsylvania...9 4-" h.

Seated Nude in Garden 60"H x 42"W Oil on Canvas Chicago 1960

SYMMS SOSSONG

407 W. Brown St. Birmingham MI T. 248.540.9288 email: hillgallery@earthlink.net

\dor Untitled Hiue Man, f3ed Dog,

DIRECTORS

LETTER

GERARD C. WERTKIN

fessional staff as a remarkable team to address the museum's challenges t its meeting on March 10,2004,the museum's board elected and realize its dreams.In welcoming Dr. Akosua Barthwell Evans and as Fink D. Laurence and Evans Barthwell Dr. Akosua Laurence D.Fink,I should also like to express my deepest appreciation trustees. I am delighted to welcome them both to board servto the entire board oftrustees. ice and am grateful to them for their commitment to the •• museum and its mission. openings in my memory exhibition joyous most the of One Fleming ofJPMorgan director managing a is Evans Dr. Barthwell occurred in February for "Tools of Her Ministry:The Art of Sister Asset Management,where she heads the endowment and foundation group.In this capacity she provides investment management services to Gertrude Morgan"and "Talking Quilts." New Orleans jazz animated the museum's Cullman/Danziger Family Atrium,while happy and a broad cross-section of not-for-profit organizations,including educaengaged participants—wearing Mardi Gras beads—crowded each floor a as years twenty than more With museums. and institutions tional banker,lawyer, and management consultant,she brings impressive skills ofthe museum building.The shows have garnered rave reviews. Writing in the New York Times,for example,Ken Johnson called "Talking and experience to the American Folk Art Museum.

Quilts" a "breathtaking panorama of American history" Michael KimColumbia from degree Ph.D. a of holder the is Dr. Barthwell Evans melman,the Times'chief art critic, praising Morgan's work,observed University and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School,among other academic and professional distinctions. She serves on the boards of several that"you don't have to be religious to appreciate the inborn excellence, both formal and literary; you only have to accept that painting, when it educational institutions and is the founder and past chairperson ofThe from the heart and is so clearly genuine,can lift the soul." comes at established was that committee permanent a Friends ofEducation, the Museum of Modern Art to promote broader involvement by African Americans in that museum,as well as greater appreciation for the contributions of African American artists. Dr. Barthwell Evans has established scholarship funds at Yale Law School,Wayne State University, and Bennett College.

Laurence Fink is chairman and chief executive officer ofBlackRock Inc., which he founded in 1998,having served in the same capacity in BlacIcRock's predecessor companies beginning in 1988. Previously he was a member ofthe management committee and a managing director ofFirst Boston Trustee Laurence D. Fink Tnistees Akosua Barthwell Evans and Selig D. Sacks with Stacy C. Hollander Corporation. BlacicRock is a major provider the museum's senior curator Hollander, C. Stacy to due are Kudos ofasset and risk management services; it manages an impressive roster curator of"Talking Quilts"; as served who exhibitions, of director and an of holder The of mutual funds and other investment vehicles.

Morgan exhibition; Gertrude the of curator guest Fagaly, A. William execuof board the of member a is Fink UCLA, from degree M.B.A. and Brooke Davis Anderson,director and curator ofthe museum's tives ofthe New York Stock Exchange.The experience developed over Contemporary Center,who worked very closely with Fagaly.I invite the course of his distinguished career in business and philanthropy will chalyou to visit the museum and experience for yourselfthe power and the faces it as immensely assist the American Folk Art Museum beauty oftheir brilliant installations. century. twenty-first the lenges of I am especially pleased that"Tools of Her Ministry" is accompanied Fink has been especially committed to New York University, which fine catalog by William A.Fagaly that is a delight to read, even as a by vicehe serves as a trustee, and its School of Medicine. He has been scholarly study of Gertrude Morgan's work.In a review in Folk a is it and Center Medical Sinai-NYU chairman ofthe board of Mount Art Messenger, Ann Oppenhimer, president ofthe Folk Art Society of Health System and co-chairman ofthe board of NYU Hospitals Center.The pediatric intensive care unit at NYU bears his name and that of America,predicts that the book will be recognized as "an awardwinning masterpiece that will set a standard for art books for years to his wife, Lori Weider Fink.The Finks are also dedicated collectors of come." With illuminating essays by Jason Berry and Helen M.ShanAmerican folk art. non and 113 full-color and black-and-white photographs,the book As director ofthe museum,it is especially gratifying to me that the belongs in your library. It may be ordered by sending a check for $43 board oftrustees continues to grow in strength and diversity. The lead($35 plus $8 for postage and handling) to the American Folk Art ership of the museum's gifted trustees has been a key element in the Museum,45 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019,or by calling growth and development ofthe institution over the last decade,with veteran board members and newcomers working together with the pro- Beverly McCarthy at 212/265-1040.*

A

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

13

ELLIOTT & GRACE SNYDER ANTIQUES P.O. Box 598 South Egremont, MA 01258 Tel: 413.528.3581 Fax: 413.528.3586

AN EXCEPTIONAL APPLIQUÉD AND EMBROIDERED 19TH CENTURY CRAZY QUILT 71 x 72 inches

www.antiquesandfineart.com/egsnyder email: zorvis@bcn.net

Stoneware face vessel, or "in Edgefield, South Carolina, circa Discussed /pictured in The AfroAmerican Tradition in Decorative Art

by John Michael Vlach, page 90, fig. 87.

Measures 5 3/8" high.

Specializing in folk art & material culture ofthe Southern backcountry.

By Appointment. Asheville, North Carolina (828) 251-1904 www.charltonbradsher.com

AMERICAN PRIMITIVE GALLERY

Carved and painted wood hinged head, ht 7 in.

594 BROADWAY #205 NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 966 1530 MON-SAT 11-6

REPRESENTING THE SELF TAUGHT ART OF

Oil and enamel on panel, 2001.

TERRY TURRELL

Willeto May I - July 29 '04

Cat's Cradle Antiques • P.O. Box 51442 • Provo, UT 84605-1442 • C8013374-1832 Online Catalog • www.catscradlegallery.corn Image by Hawk Inson Photography

Recently discovered Baltimore album quilt.

A note attached says it was "Made by Grandmother Chamberlain" about 1850.

Antique Quilts • Decorative Arts Fine Design Jewelry

By Appointment • (301) 948-4187 www.stellarubin.com

STELLA RUBIN 12300 Glen Rd Potomac, MD 20854

American Folk Art

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

18 SPRING SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

HORSE AND RIDER WEATHERVANE Mid-19th century copper and zinc weathervane depicting a jockey in a full gallop racing position. Exceptional detail and patina with traces of original gilding. Wonderful verde gris patination over entire piece. Maker unknown. Provenance: Pimlico Park outside of Baltimore, Maryland, placed around 1860. Dimensions: Length 33", Height 16". Detail of the weathervane is pictured below.

EXHIBITING: Antiques at the Center April 16-17, Philadelphia, PA Brandywine River Museum Antiques Show May 28-31, Chadds Ford, PA Two Rivers Antiques Show June 4-6, Rumson, NJ Midweek in Manchester Aug 11-12, Bedford, NH

\,\.. Thurston Nichols

American

Antiques LLC

522 Twin Ponds Road Breinigsville, PA 18031

phone: 610.395.5154 fax: 610.395.3679 www.antiques101.com

MINIATURES

BY VANESSA DAVIS CHEST OVER DRAWERS / artist unidentified / New England / 1825-1840 / paint on wood / 40 421 / 4 181 / 4"/ American Folk Art Museum, gift of Jean Lipman in honor of Cyril Irwin Nelson, 1994.5.1

RHINESTONE COWBOY Loy Allen Bowfin (1909-1995)ofMcComb,Miss.,was aging and feeling lonely when he was inspired by Glen Campbell's 1975 hit song to change his persona to that ofthe "Rhinestone Cowboy." Bowfin began performing dressed up as the Rhinestone Cowboy at the town square—singing, playing the harmonica, and telling stories to gathering children. He was embraced as an eccentric yet beloved entertainer, and was no longer lonely. Bowfin embellished a complete wardrobe, his Cadillac, and,over the course offive years, his entire home with glitter, collage, and rhinestones.The Holy Jewel Home,as it was called, was also covered in tinfoil, Christmas tree ornaments, and painted polka dots. After Bowfin died,Texas artist and collector Katy Emde bought the house right before it was scheduled to be razed,and eventually she transferred each glittery piece to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (920/458-6144; www.jmkac.org)in Sheboygan,Wis."The Rhinestone Cowboy: Holy Jewel Home"is now on view in its entirety. Visitors can see Bowlin's porch,living room,bedroom,bathroom, and hall, as well as his sequin-studded and hand-painted wardrobe and furniture.

by Allen Bowlin, the "Rhinestone Cowboy,. in his Holy Jewel Home, McComb, Mississippi

20 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

DELAWARE RIVER HISTORY The Mercer Museum (215/345-0210; www. mercermuseum.org) in Doylestown,Pa., is hosting "Ducks, Decoys, and the Delaware: A Regional Hunting Tradition" until Jan. 2,2005.The exhibition focuses on the regional tradition offolk carving as it contributed to the natural and sociological history of the area.

Decoys and other artifacts on view illuminate the lives of hunters, carvers, boatbuilders, and others who were intimately linked to the river.

Besides typical firearms, mounted wildfowl specimens, carving tools, rare hunting images, and decoys by noted Delaware River carvers, an original, well-preserved example of a 1930s duck-hunting boat is included in the show.

AMERICAN FANCY A lavish and kaleidoscopic period ofdecorative arts is the subject ofan exciting new traveling exhibition opening at the Milwaukee Art Museum (414/224-3200; www.mam.org)."American Fancy: Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840" will be on view until June 20.

Now considered folk art,"Fancy" objects were the mainstream in 19th-century home fashion.The trend spanned many art forms,and examples offurniture,textiles, costume, ceramics,glass, metals, paintings, and prints will be on view, including more than 20 objects on loan from the American Folk Art Museum.Another highlight is a two-story replica ofa Fancy store, filled with Fancy goods from the period.

The show also explores the historical context ofthe Fancy style, its philosophical origins,and its historical influences.

FOLK ART SOCIETY OF AMERICA CONFERENCE The 17th-Annual Conference of the Folk Art Society of America will be held October 7-11 in Oakland in conjunction with Creative Growth Art Center, which serves physically, mentally, and developmentally disabled adult artists. A special symposium,"Margins and Mainstream: Disability Art Today," has been organized by Robert Atkins, author, art critic, and historian, and Tom di Maria,director of Creative Growth. A special workshop for professionals in the field of the art of the disabled will be held on October 10.Tours of private and public art collections, a benefit folk art auction, gourmet meals featuring California cuisine, and a trip to the Napa Valley wine country are among the special events. Arrangements have been made to meet the artists at Creative Growth, Creativity Explored, and NIAD (National Institute of Art of the Disabled). For information on registration or accommodations, call the Folk Art Society's office at 800/527-3655, e-mail fasa@folkart.org, or visit www.folkart.org.

It was called the "City of Peace," a spiritual name suggestive of the Shakers' communal way of life, sheltered from the outside world.

This lifestyle led to the Shaker preference for simplicity. See it in the clean lines and spacious, spare rooms oftheir buildings. See it in their inventive tools and practical furniture. And see it all brought to life today—at Hancock Shaker Village in the Berkshires.

• 20 historic buildings housing a premier Shaker collection • Farm animals • Hands-on activities • Craft demonstrations

Alive, and full of surprise.

HANCOCK

SHAKER VILLAGE A NATIONAL HISTORIC SURPRISE

Kids admitted FREE!

Route 20, Pittsfield, MA

www.hancockshakervillage.org

800-817-1137

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WINSLOW HOMER MASTERWORKS FROM THE ADIRONDACKS JUNE 21 TO SEPTEMBER 6 COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK

American Fine Art I American Folk Art North American Indian Art

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SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

Z1

MINIATURES

THE

AMES GALLERY SHAKER RESTORATION The North Family Shaker Site in New Lebanon, N.Y., was once part of the spiritual and physical center of the Shaker Society and,at its height in 1860, covered some 6,000 acres with more than 100 major buildings. With the relocation of Mount Lebanon's last Shakers in 1947, the village slowly fell into decay, and today only 10 buildings survive, some in a perilous state.

Listed on the 2004 World Monuments Watch,the World Monuments Fund is supporting stabilization efforts, and the site is now on its way to being saved."Restoring the North Family Shaker Site," an exhibition of photographs, drawings, and models ofthe restoration, is on view at the World Monuments Fund Gallery(646/424-9594, www.wmforg)in New York City from June 10 until Sept. 20.

20P/05103 Steel Articulated Doll, c. 1890-1900. metal. 27 x 9 inches

Works by contemporary, visionary, self-taught and outsider artists including A.G. Rizzoli, Jon Serl, Barry Simons, Donald Walker, and others.

Early handmade Americana including carved canes, tramp art, tintypes, quilts and whimseys.

2661 Cedar Street. Berkeley, CA 94708 phone 510/845-4949

www.amesgallery.com

THE NUT LADY The life and work of a woman consumed with nuts is the subject of a new show,"The Nut Museum: Visionary Art of Elizabeth Tashjian," running at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum (860/443-2545; www.lymanallyn.org)in New London, Conn., until June 6.This is the first major retrospective ofTashjian's nut-themed paintings, drawings,and sculptures, ranging from the 1930s to the present.Tashjian (b. 1912), a visual artist as well as a performance artist, became famous both for opening the Nut Museum in her home in Old Lyme,Conn.,in 1972,and her subsequent media and talk show appearances,in which she sang songs extolling the beauty and importance of nuts.Tashjian's artistic vision revolves around the humanitarian ideals that can be learned through observing and appreciating nuts and all of their various anthropomorphic qualities.

The show will feature a re-creation of the main gallery ofthe Nut Museum (which closed in 2002), with all ofits original furnishings, art, and displays.

Extensive programming surrounds this exhibition; please call the museum for details.

Elizabeth Tashjian holding a coconut in the Nut Museum, Old Lyme, Conn., c. 1985

U SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

FLORIDA PICTORIAL / guiltmaker unidentified / Tampa, Florida / c.1930 / appliquéd and embroidered cotton / 87/ 1 2x 72"/ The Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Allerton and The Christa C. Mayer Thurman Textile Endowments

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QUILTS IN CHICAGO Approximately 35 bedcovers from the 19th and 20th centuries make up "Exploring Quilts: Art, History, and Craftsmanship" at The Art Institute of Chicago (312/443-3600; vvww.artic.edu), on view until Sept. 12.The show highlights quilts new to the institute's collection, including several pieces from the extensive holdings of quilt expert Shelly Zegart.The Shelly Zegart Collection represents some of the best examples of American quilts made between 1820 and 1982,including Celebrity Ties(1980-1982)

by Grace C.Wagner, a crazy quilt made of neckties from well-known public figures such as Illinois governor Jim Thompson,Johnny Carson, and Kermit the Frog.The exhibition also includes three quilts from Gee's Bend,Ala., a small,isolated African American community renowned for its quiltmaking tradition. Recent purchases from the Dr. and Mrs. Fred Epstein Collection will be on view as well, including TheJohn L. Sullivan Quilt(1888), which depicts the rise and fall of the heavyweight boxing champion,and an embroidered album quilt that features, among other figures, the text of a Western Union telegram sent on Valentine's Day.

JAN WHITLOCK Textiles &Interiors...

••• •

302.655.1117 P.O. Box 583, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania 19317 5800 Kennett Pike, Centreville, DE 19807

www.janwhitlocktextiles.com

SPRING/SUMMER 2004 FOLK ART 23

MINI

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ES

HENRY FORD AT 21 / 2YEARS OLD / Howard Finster (1916-2001)/ Summerville, Georgia / 1980 / enamel on Masonite / 351 / 2x 43%"/ collection of the Arient Family

SLIPWARE ON DISPLAY Slip, a simple mixture of clay and water,is essential in ceramics, acting as glue. For centuries, however, potters have used it in a decorative way as well, slip being a very versatile method of adding color and texture to a piece. An exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum (414/224-3200; www.mam.org), on view until June 6,explores many of the ways in which artists have dripped, trailed, inlaid, marbled, scraped, and combed slip onto pots to create diverse visual effects.The works in the show are organized to demonstrate the universality of slip decoration, comparing similar techniques on pots made in different places at the same times. Pottery from many countries will be featured, including pieces from China, Korea, Germany,and Italy, though emphasis is placed on British and American ceramics from the 17th century to the present.

CREAMWARE PITCHER WITH COMBED SLIP DECORATION AND APPLIQUES (detail)/ maker unidentified / England / c. 1780/ creamware / 6% x 3/ 1 2 "/ collection of Jonathan Rickard

24 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

SAMPLER SYMPOSIUM Vassar College,in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.,is holding "'Thanks Be To My Friends': A Sampler Symposium"June 25-27.The event complements an exhibition ofthe same name,on view at Vassar's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center from June 5 to July 18.The show features samplers from North America, England,and Western Europe ranging in date from the 1690s to the 1830s and selected from Vassar's extensive collection, which serves as an important reference for the study ofboth embroidery and of women's educational history.The accompanying symposium includes a field trip to the Glebe House in Dutchess County,gallery tours, and lectures and discussions about various sampler collections, individual works,and textile conservation. For more information about this symposium or to download a registration form, call 845/437-5907 or visit www.vassatedu/summer.

MIND STORM The Richard E.Peeler Art Center (765/658-6556) at DePauw University in Greencastle,Ind.,is hosting an exhibition ofoutsider art through June 14."Mind Storm: Contemporary American Folk Art from the Arient Family Collection"features works amassed over three decades byJim and Beth Arient. Pieces from the collection on display include those by such notable self-taught artists as William Dawson,Sam Doyle,Howard Finster, Lee Godie,Jesse Howard,James Harold Jennings, S.L.Jones, Carl McKenzie, Elijah Pierce, and Derek Webster.The relationship between artist and collector is another theme ofthis show,with photographs, personal letters and correspondence,and video interviews to complement the artworks on display.

FEMALE ARTISTS AT INTUIT "Sistuhs: Four African American Self-Taught Artists," at Intuit:The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art(312/243-9088; www.art.org)in Chicago until June 26,brings together the work of Minnie Evans, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Bessie Harvey.Though they were inspired independently and had vigorously personal styles, all four ofthese women were born in the South and experienced poverty and hardship.Their artistic visions helped them transcend their challenging circumstances. Also on view,through June 4:"Laura Craig McNellis:Inside Out,1970-2003."

UNTITLED (CHURCH LADY IN PANTS SUIT)/ Nellie Mae Rowe / Vinings, Georgia / 1980 / crayon and felt-tip ink on paper / 24 x 18"/ private collection

Fli ht or Fanc ?

A Texas based visionary artist who created an outstanding body of work depicting flying machines.

Organized by the San Antonio Museum of Art

March 5 - May 28, 2001

iskivAv.. ;muffin,

THE MENELLO 900 E. Princeton Street • Orlando, Florida 32803 407.246.4278 • Fax: 407.246.4329 www.mennellomuseum.com MUSEUM HOURS: Tuesday — Saturday 10 a.m. — 4 p.m.

Sunday noon — 4 p.m. • Closed major holidays

The Menne& Museum ofAmerican Folk Art is owned and operated by the City ofOrlando.

Ginger Young Gallery Southern Self-Taught Art www.GingerYoung.com By appointment: 5802 Brisbane Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 Phone/Fax 919.932.6003 Email ginger@GingerYoung.com

"Texas Spring Landscape" by Tom Tarrer acrylic and enamel on art paper, 14" x 22"

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

25

Agr'r

SUBSCRIBE to the world's only international magazine of Outsider Art and Contemporary Folk Art www.rawvision.00111 info@rawvision.com 163 Amsterdam Ave, #203 New York, NY 10023-500 tel: 212 714 8381

ANTON HAARDT GALLERY CONTEMPORARY FOLK ART FROM THE DEEP SOUTH

I,hc.Foik Alt qr.Niose

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Available only at

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By Anton ilf. ardt form Attl h!.

K,14,�

LINDSAY GALLERY 986 North High St. Columbus OH 43201

614-291-1973

linthaygallery.com

BILL MILLER June 2004 Bill Miller takes "recycled art" to a new level, creating painterly reliefs with vintage linoleum flooring Polish Hill #2

x 9"

OIL Ike mikesiorts

.z.a.4111110111111i 9"x 9"

Strange Fruit study

ALSO AVAILABLE: PHILADELPHIA :Ashley Gallery 718 N 3rd St. 2nd Fl. 215-888-4813 NEW ORLEANS :Peligro Gallery 305 Decatur New Orleans 504-581-1706 PITTSBURGH : Gallerie Chiz 5831 Ellsworth Ave. 412-441-6005 billmillerart.com SAN DIEGO :Sharp Gallery 3807 Ray St. 619-260-1815

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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CONVERSATION

William A. Fagaly is the guest curator of "Tools of Her Ministry: The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan," which opened at the American Folk Art Museum on Feb. 25 and will remain on view through Sept. 26.

He serves as the Francoise Billion Richardson Curator of African Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), where he has held various curatorial positions for 37 years. Bill and I sat down for a conversation on Feb. 20, during the installation of "Tools of Her Ministry." We worked together closely on the exhibition catalog, and while in the manuscript phase, Bill had a difficult time convincing me that Sister Morgan's Everlasting Gospel Mission was surrounded by four-leaf clovers. To prove my suspicions unfounded, he presented me with an actual four-leaf clover from her yard.

—Tanya Heinrich

UNTITLED Emery Blagdon North Platte, Nebraska c.1956-1984 Paint on wood 7/ 1 4.12, /2" Collection of William A. Fagaly

28 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

A IS FOR ALPHA AND IN OMEGA TO Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980) New Orleans n.d.

Acrylic and/or tempera and ballpoint ink on paper 20 x 30" Collection of Gary R. Davenport

FOLK ART

TH You are an Africanist; you are some recent acquisitions? WAF went to New Orleans to develop A Henry Darger—a Blengin—a an African collection for NOMA. Martin Ramirez drawing of a How did folk art enter your cowboy,and two Emery Blagdon world? WAF In the late 1960s, paintings. TH The Blagdon paintI met E. Lorenz Borenstein ings are vaguely reminiscent of because he was a dealer in presome of Alfred Jensen's work.

Columbian artifacts, of which WAF Absolutely. TH Do you have I have an interest, and Larry was a favorite artwork in "Tools of also showing works by Sister Her Ministry"? WAF The ones Gertrude Morgan. It was my first that just drive me crazy are her exposure to the work ofselfalphabet pieces,just rows oftext taught artists. Shortly thereafter, and ribbons ofcolor like confetti.

I received an announcement for a Again, Alfred Jensen comes to show at the Phyllis Kind Gallery mind.I think they're sublime, in Chicago, and I thought, whoa, the ultimate. TH You organized there's somebody else who's inter- "Louisiana Folk Painters" for the ested in this! So I wrote her a letAmerican Folk Art Museum in ter—in those days we wrote 1973.It included works by letters—and Phyllis called and Clementine Hunter and Bruce said,"I'm coming down."

Brice as well as 75 drawings and Through her,I met Herbert paintings by Sister Gertude MorWaide Hemphill Jr. and Julie and gan. WAF The museum was Michael Hall. We used to get located in the brownstone on together at Bert's in New York, West 53rd Street then,and the and it felt like some kind ofsubgallery space was only one floor, versive, clandestine club—a secret so the show was hung salon style. society of people who were interIt was very crowded—like paperested in this type ofthing. TH You ing the walls. TH You've been are an avid collector—the Conworking on the current exhibition temporary Arts Center in New for a long time. Has it been worth Orleans recently mounted your the wait? WAF Yes. Around 1990, personal collection in a show Robert Bishop, who was the called "What a Wonderful museum's director then, proposed World," after the Louis ArmI do the show but said we would strong song. Can you describe have to proceed without a catalog. your home environment in the I really wanted a catalog, so I told French ()garter? WAF It's pretty Bob not now, maybe someday. congested! I have a lot offolk art, Well,someday is finally here! Bob but I also collect African art, is looking down,and so is Bert, so Oceanic art, Indian art, preis Larry. TH And Sister Gertrude Columbian figures, ancient PerMorgan. WAF And Sister. Wallsian bronzes, baskets, pottery, sized blowup photographs loom rugs, and contemporary art, and large in the show, providing an it's all mixed together.There is a overwhelming sense of her prescommonality, a thread. Relationence. TH How do you think she ships can be made. Pieces of minwould have responded to seeing imal value are just as important as this installation of her work? WAF those objects for which I paid a She might have said,"God works lot of money.The installation rein mysterious ways!" She never created the interior of my house, saw the earlier show in New complete with mantelpiece and York; she'd decided she was too huge stacks of books. TH What busy to travel.*

AMERICAN FOLK ART EXTENSIVE SELECTION FROM OVER 90 ARTISTS

Sister Gertrude Morgan "New Jerusalem" 20"x15"

Including the following artists: Sam Doyle Clementine Hunter Mary T. Smith Raymond Coins David Butler Charles Hutson Rev. Johnny Swearingen Popeye Reed Sultan Rogers Mose Tolliver Jimmy Lee Sudduth Bessie Harvey J. P. Scott J. B. Murry Herbert Singleton Howard Finster Homer Green Charlie Lucas Rev. B. F. Perkins Chief P. L. Willey Milton Fletcher and more...

Justin McCarthy "S.I.Ferry" 24"x24"

Bill Traylor "Running Man" 7"x13"

PAUL & ALVINA HAVER.KAMP (by appointment in New Orleans) 504-866-3505 ahaverkamp@cox.net

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9 4 II' 40 PARADISE: I no we can Reign here [recto]/ Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980)/ New Orleans I n d. / acrylic. ',a . II and/or tempera and ballpoint ink on cardboard cut-out / 111/2 x 9 1/2" / collection of Robert A. Roth

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

29

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BY LEE KOGAN

he White House (c. 1855), painted by an unidentified artist and found in Pennsylvania, depicts a residential property on the banks ofa narrow river. The generalized scene may well describe a specific place, but that information remains obscure.The flat landscape is serene: well-tended lawns,tidy shrubs and floral plantings, a wide variety oftrees, a meandering path,a tethered rowboat,the orderly cluster of white houses across the river.

Two couples are seemingly engaged,both in conversation and by the pleasant surroundings, while a single woman rests, with head tilted downward,on a shaded bench.The white house, however,a well-proportioned three-story gabled structure, assumes a commanding presence, not only because ofits centrality on the canvas but also for its compelling luminosity It glows with light reflected by the unseen setting sun,and yet appears to be itself the source of the beautiful, suffused light ofthe water and the twilit sky In contrast,Justin McCarthy's Jim Thorp (1968),similarly situated on a meandering river, pulses with restless energy and the bloom ofspring.The aerial view ofJim Thorpe (formerly Mauch Chunk),on the west bank ofthe Lehigh River in Carbon County,Pennsylvania, as seen from Flagstaff Mountain in the western Poconos,offers a broad glimpse of the region; the towns of Upper Mauch Chunk and EastJim Thorpe,linked by a bridge, are seen in the background. McCarthy,in his vigorous, painterly fashion, takes liberties with the contours ofthe topography, distorting the geometry ofthe buildings and the lumpy surrounding hills. This

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30 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

THE WHITE HOUSE Artist unidentified Probably Pennsylvania c.1855 Oil on canvas 123 / 4 • 173 / 4" American Folk Art Museum, (lift of Robert Bishop and Cyril I. Nelson, 1992.10.14

scenic vista has been well documented, and McCarthy himself painted several versions of the locale. It is a dramatic landscape laden with personal connections for the artist. Justin McCarthy was raised in the nearby town of Weatherly,to which he returned after a five-year stay at an Allentown hospital, where he was committed after a nervous breakdown in early adulthood. He made his living peddling homegrown vegetables to the community,among other odd jobs; he also worked in area steel mills for a time.The scene,with its prominent buildings ofindustry docks, a barge, and train tracks (for the Lehigh Valley and Central Valley lines), celebrates the primary role the land once played in the livelihood ofso many of Pennsylvania's inhabitants: mining,steel mills, and the railroad.* Lee Kogan is director ofthe Folk ArtInstitute and curator ofspecial projectsfor the museum's Contemporary Center.

FOLK ART

JIM THORP Justin McCarthy (1892-1977) Weatherly, Pennsylvania 1968 Oil and tempera on board 23/ 3 4 x 23./4" American Folk Art Museum, gift of Elizabeth Ross Johnson,1985.35.31

TRACY GOODNOW ART s& ANTIQUES 576 SHEFFIELD PLAIN (ROUTE 7) PO Box 1340 SHEFFIELD MA 01257 / TEL 413.229.6045

Portrait Miniature of the Pierce Children Attributed to Mrs. Moses B. Russell of Boston (active 1835 - 1854) Watercolor on ivory, 5 1/8" x 4" (shown actual size)

TALKINQ

QUI! Ts

By Stacy C. Hollander

on view at the American Folk Art Museum through August 1, explores the visual texture of language as expressed in quilts from the nineteenth century to the present. As an early form of what might be termed female graffiti, quilts have historically provided a forum for women to voice opinions and exercise power. Today, women continue to "talk back" through the words they apply to their quilts. In each of these textiles, words play multiple roles and introduce concepts that elicit varying levels of response from the viewer. The words, as visual signifiers, provoke intuitive reactions. At the same time, they initiate the act of reading and the intellectual process of grappling with comprehension and meaning. Decisions of word choice, graphic strategy, and technique—embroidery, stenciling, pen and ink, piecing, or appliqué—transform surfaces into monumental assertions of self-identity, statements of belief and support, and blankets of protective prayer, realized through the arc of the artist's hand.

"Talking Quilts" is made possible in part by Fairfield Processing Corporation.

32 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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THE LOUD IS MY SHEPHEPDI SNALb NOT WANT•Hk_ MAKETH ME TO LIE DOW IV\ CRE E N VAS TURES-HE LE ADE TH ME HE SIDE THE STILL wATERS•HE RESTORE TN MYSOUL ImiE LE ADE TH ME IN THE PATHSOP RIGHTEOUSNESSFOR HIS log ANIE SAKE•YEA THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE vALLN OF THE SHADOW OF DEAT1-4•1 WILL FEAR NO EAVEL FOfl THOUART WITH ME•THY ROD AND THYSTAPPTHEY COMVOPTME.THOU PPE DARE ST ATARLE RE ROPE ME I 14 THE NE SE NCE OF MINE E NE AAIE S• THOuAtAnIkITE STMY HE AD WITH OILMYCUPP(ME TH OVE •SUQLE Y • COODNESS AND ME RCY SHALL FoLLoW LAIFE•AND 1 WIL ME ALL TNE DAYSOF N\Y 0lJ FoR EYE

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PSALM 23 QUILT Lena Moore (d. 1965) Canton, Mississippi c. 1930 Cotton 65 78" Collection of Janet M. Green

n intimate connection exists among various Southern visual expressions, particularly when they include texts.The affinity between Southern religious-text quilts and the work offolk artists such as Jesse Howard is not coincidental; it is strongly related to the larger tradition ofstark, raw,hand-lettered signboards seen on rural churches, buildings, and alongside roads throughout the South.In this unified vernacular landscape, the written word assumes powerful dimensions that are both creative and talismanic. Words offer guidance,exhortation, and allegory When applied to quilts, they reflect the maker's recognition ofthe vagaries of life, proffering a blanket of protection in sleep and the promise of salvation should a beloved soul not awake.

The entire text ofPsalm 23 thunders edge to edge across the Psalm 23 Quilt, the densely packed words creating staccato rhythms as they compress and expand. An

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occasional letter turns backward; here and there a word features an original spelling:The impact is timeless, like an ancient tablet. Treating the quilt like a large sheet ofpaper, Lena Moore has lined the top with yellow rules that separate the rows oftext and render the words more legible.

This concrete treatment—the words of the psalm are contained within the lines—sparks a process of association with traditions as diverse as handwritten Southern folk signboards and the centuries-old practice of "lining a hymn,"wherein a leader calls out a line oftext that is then sung back by the congregation.Just as the spirit of the congregation dictates the length of the notes that are sung,the words in this quilt flow with the spirit of its maker.

Powerful protection is encoded into the 'Angels Guard My Head" Quilt. The words at the top draw upon a rich literary tradition,from seventeenth-century writer Thomas Ady("Four angels to my bed,/ Four angels round my head,/ One to watch,and one to pray,/ And two to bear my soul away")to Isaac Watts's A Cradle Hymn("Hush! my dear,lie still and slumber,/ Holy angels guard thy bed!/ Heavenly blessings without number / Gently falling on my head").The perimeter ofthe quilt is further guarded by the words ofthe child's bedtime prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep," as well as additional religious sentiments in a variety of typographical styles.The glory train is stationed in the center, a potent metaphor derived from a translation of Ephesians 4:"Therefore it is said, When He ascended on high, He led a train ofvanquished foes."

The instruction to "Gather up the fragments let nothing be lost"(from John 6:12) appears in several quilts, with letters comprised ofsmall fabric scraps.The verse seems to have been particularly popular for this purpose, probably because the quiltmalcer herselfis enacting the directive by gathering up fragments offabric and creating something new and worthwhile from the pieces.The 'Gather Up the Fragments" Quilt is best read at a distance: Each cut-out letter is slightly different and is placed upon an individual block that,in some cases,is itself pieced from small bits ofcloth.

"ANGELS GUARD MY HEAD" QUILT Cluiltmaker unidentified United States 1894 Wool 79 • 65" Collection of Penny and Allan Katz

34 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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"GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS" QUILT Quiltmaker unidentified United States c. 1880 Cotton 773., 67" Collection of Laura Fisher, Antique Quilts and Americana, New York

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similar strong, cursive hand is used for the text written on two contemporary quilts. Each appropriates popular culture—past and present—to confront issues ofidentity. Both artists exploit the visual tension between shadow and substance to create reverberations of meaning.Personal references offer dues to the ways in which mass culture works to shape individual character and experience.

In Strong Words, Robin Schwalb invokes the opening lines ofShakespeare's Sonnet 53 to question her sense of self:"What is your substance, whereof are you made." Her processoriented work has been likened to a palimpsest, each layer revealing new personal terrain. She uses textual markings as brushstrokes that also provoke interpretation and provide context. Behind her bold,liquid calligraphy, Schwalb's subliminal text is stenciled onto separate blocks, taking on the aspect of a ransom note.

Appropriately,the barely visible yet disturbing letters spell out lines of dialogue from the television show Homicide:.I4fe on the Streets.

With Black Barbie, Kyra E.Hicks uses the visual distinction between the familiar eponymous Barbie font and her own hand to question her place in American culture:"Barbie America's Doll was never intended for me."

Hidcs's haunting refrain "Black Barbie has no name"is written in shadow text, underlining the second-class status ofthe dark-skinned Barbie doll, which rarely had its own identity.The repeated lines are placed next to an African American version ofthe classic Barbie doll that was introduced in 1959.

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BLACK BARBIE Kyra E. Hicks (b. 1965) Arlington, Virginia 1996 Cotton 76 47" Private collection

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he "marking" oftexblocks similar to alphabets stitched tiles—applying letters to into needlework samplers.The earliest cloth was an imporexample,dated 1807,derives directly tant basic skill taught to from this tradition and forms three young girls in early initials. By the time Maria Cadman America.This was done primarily to Hubbard made her Pieties Quilt in indicate ownership at a time when tex- 1848,the medium had become the tiles were rare and costly and activities message. Hubbard imparted the folsuch as washing linens might be comlowing advice:"If you cannot be a munal. Not surprisingly,the words that golden pippin don't turn crab apple." appear on the earliest quilts most freMore than 150 years later, this maxim quently induded the qthltmalcer's or continues to inspire a smile, because recipient's name or initials and somethe words were not spoken and times an important date,such as that quickly forgotten, but lovingly pieced ofa birth or marriage.The subtext of onto a quilt. even these simple markings, however, The religious sentiments and was also a declaration ofself:In a soci- homilies that appear on Pieties Quilt ety in which a woman held few legal come from a variety ofsources, rights, her name was nonetheless often including the Bible;"Courage"(1630) prominently displayed within the

by German poet Paul Gerhardt; the household over which she presided. hymn"Come,Ye Disconsolate" by A particularly interesting group of Thomas Moore;and "Little Things" quilts emerged in upstate New York (1845) by American poet Julia during the nineteenth century Paying Fletcher Carney.The lettering device homage to early counted-thread tradi- combined with the religious texts cretions, each letter in these quilts is ates an emotional link to the long hispieced from seven small,stacked tory offemale application in the

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38 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

needle arts, the preparation from childhood to assume adult responsibility for providing domestic textiles, and a woman's role as her family's moral and religious center.

The design ofthe visually emphatic Religious Text Quilt is composed entirely of pieced letters.

Upper- and lowercase letters around the perimeter define a border that encloses additional text in all uppercase.The letters are made from calico blocks that may be likened to pixels, forming an image that is indecipherable at close view:The words resolve only when one steps back.The text in the border reads like a benediction; the source for the primary text has not yet been determined.This may be an original sentiment,as every letter of the alphabet is used within the fourteen terse words oftext, making this virtually unique among text quilts.

Although the border indicates the quilt was made for Christmas 1874, the year 1876 appears in the quilting.

RELIGIOUS TEXT QUILT Cornelia Catharine Vosburgh (1810-1896) Red Hook, New York 1874-1876 Cotton 80 102" Private collection

PIETIES QUILT Maria Cadman Hubbard (possibly b.17691 Probably Austerlitz, Columbia County, New York 1848 Cotton • 81" American Folk Art Museum, gift of Cyril Irwin Nelson in loving memory of his parents, Cyril Arthur and Elise Macy Nelson, 1984.27.1

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he text blocks composing the Stormy Day Quilt document the quiltmaker's process in a self-referential fashion more usually associated with contemporary art. From"THE FIRST SQUAIR 1903"in the lower-left corner to"THE LAST SQUAIR APRIL THE 5"in the opposite corner,the quiltmaker engages the viewer in a lively dialogue.

Multicolored,balloonlike letters tumble outin informal, whimsical arrangements and function as a visual diary of the making ofthe quilt,including an ongoing commentary about the weather on each day a block was appliqued.This follows in a longstanding tradition among American diarists, who often started each entry with an observation regarding the weather.The quilt was made for Margaret Blosser's granddaughter and namesake and provides personal notes,an entire alphabet,political commemorations, and picture blocks.

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STORMY DAY QUILT Margaret Culp Blosser (possibly b. 1843) Possibly Hocking County, Ohio 1903-1904 Cotton 70 78" Collection of Julie Silber, The Quilt Complex, Albion, California

FREEDOM QUILT Jessie B."(elf& (1913-1986) Parrott, Georgia 1980 Pieced and appliquĂŠd cottons and synthetics 73 x 85" Private collection

he concept ofa freedom quilt can be traced at least as far back as the Civil War,when women were urged to "prick the slaveowner's conscience" by embroidering antislavery slogans and images onto their needlework. Although the existence ofUnderground Railroad quilts has not been documented,the beliefthat quilts were used to encode paths to freedom has persisted to the present day.This is one of several freedom quilts that Jessie Telfair made,initially as a response to losing her job after she attempted to register to vote. It evokes the civil rights era through the powerful invocation of one word,freedom,formed from bold block letters along a horizontal axis. Mimicking the stripes ofthe American flag, it is unclear whether the use ofred, white,and blue is ironic, patriotic, or both.*

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Stacy C. Hollander is senior curator and director ofexhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum and the curator ofthe exhibition 'Talking Quilts.'

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EL ver the breadth of the eighteenth century, the gently rolling, fertile landscape of southwestern New Jersey was dominated by prosperous Quaker plantations. Quakers arrived in New Jersey in the 1670s, and they established a colony rooted in religious tolerance half a decade before the founding of William Penn's more famous Quaker experiment in Pennsylvania. Quakers would dominate Delaware Valley business, society, and politics well into the eighteenth century. In New Jersey,this Quaker hegemony found physical expression in the form of large brick homesteads scattered across the agricultural landscape of what were then Burlington, Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland counties. Erected almost exclusively by Quakers, these buildings represented only a very small percentage ofthe housing stock ofsouthern New Jersey, but they made an architectural statement far disproportionate to their numbers. As a group, they were the largest, most expensive, and most impressive private buildings constructed in West Jersey, and they visually dominated the landscape of the colony.

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PATTERNED BRICKWORK ARCHITECTURE AND QUAKER NEEDLEWORK SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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The most prominent of these buildings shared one thing in common: decorated gable endwalls ornamented in glazed brick with dates, patterns, and, usually, the initials of their owners.The largest number and most elaborately decorated ofthese buildings is situated in southern New Jersey, but a few far-flung examples stand in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Approximately 125 of these buildings are known to have been constructed within the boundaries of the former Province of West Jersey.

Nearly all were built by Quakers.'

Reconciling the visual statement made by these houses with popular notions of Quaker thought and lifestyle is problematic. Simplicity, utility, and practicality were the guiding principles of Quaker material cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in dress, in furniture, and in architecture. These are the catchwords of the ill-defined Quaker tenet of "plainness." Grounded in the pursuit of personal humility, plainness was a cornerstone of the larger body of Quaker doctrine. Applied to design in the earthly world, however, the concept of plainness was rarely taken to an extreme or applied universally across the Society of Friends. In spite of the fact that the Quaker system of hierarchical meetings for worship and business ensured both a relative consistency of thought and the quick spread ofideas throughout the society, there were few guidelines dictating how this doctrine was to be applied, and there was no uniform practice. The extent of and manner in which Quakers expressed the tenet of plainness was largely a personal matter,and there was a large and noticeable difference in the form and degree to which finery and popular styles pervaded the lives of Friends in urban Philadelphia as opposed to the way in which they were (or were not) accepted by their more restrained counterparts in New Jersey and rural Pennsylvania.

In general, Friends did not abstain from the use of fine or expensive materials but rather from ostentatious or selfaggrandizing display.That Quakers would build substantial brick houses is not surprising, given both the inherent value and the utility that such a house represented. What is remarkable is that they chose to decorate the exteriors of their homes so pronouncedly.The significance of these displays has been convincingly linked to the importance Quakers placed on the role of the family within their religion. These prominent, grand houses, with their patterned endwalls, symbolically expressed the importance of "weighty" Quaker families within the physical landscape of the communities in which they lived.'

While many scholars have addressed the cultural significance of South Jersey's patterned brickwork homes, relatively few have addressed the designs themselves. Patterned brickwork architecture did exist in Europe. Previous attempts to identify architectural precedents have focused on Sweden and England, countries that each sponsored settlements in the Delaware Valley during the seventeenth century.' The Swedish planted a colony in the Delaware Valley in the early 1630s, almost half a century before the arrival of the first English Quakers in the late 1670s. The Swedes carved out small farms in the wilderness, and in the process they developed a basic knowledge of regional geography and a working relationship with the local Native American population.These faculties would eventually render them invaluable to the late-arriving English Quakers

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for whom they would serve as guides and interpreters. It is this early cross-cultural interactionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;between the Swedes and the Quakersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that has been cited by many who have sought to identify Swedish legacies in the Anglo-Colonial culture of the eighteenth-century Delaware Valley. Gambrel roofs, corner fireplaces, and style of log construction have all at one time or another been suggested as being Swedish contributions to the eighteenth-century Delaware Valley architectural vernacular. In each case, however, more convincing evidence points to English rather than Swedish precedents for these traditions.

It is true that elaborate examples ofpatterned brick construction can be found in ecclesiastical contexts in Swedish architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.'

However, nearly all of the buildings erected by the Swedes during their period of influence in the Delaware Valley were constructed oflog or timber.This may have had much

Abel and Mary Nicholson House, 1722, Elsinboro Township, Salem County, New Jersey, west elevation, 2003

to do with the fact that many of the Swedish colony's residents were ethnic Finns from Europe's northern forests who knew little of brick or masonry construction. That a few patterned brick buildings can be found as far afield as Maryland and Virginia provides additional support for those who would look elsewhere for the source ofthese traditions. These southern examples were constructed in areas with no colonial Swedish presence and are of an early enough date to render the possibility that they are the result of cultural dissemination from the Mid-Atlantic region highly unlikely.

Instead, the initial inspiration for the known examples of eighteenth-century patterned brick architecture in the Mid-Atlantic and South is more likely to have been drawn from English vernacular building practice. In Great Britain, the use of glazed brick to form ornamental patterns on exterior building walls seems to have been related to late Gothic and Tudor design traditions, and also to have been associated with northern Italian Renaissance influences imported to England by way of France and the Netherlands. For the most part, the ornamental use of glazed brick in this manner was out of style in the British Isles by the time the first brick houses were erected in the Delaware Valley. Examples of patterned brickwork in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century English contexts were comparatively rare and are not known to have been particularly numerous in the rural marginal areas that were the wellsprings of English Quakerism.

Regardless, New Jersey's Quakers seem to have adopted this passĂŠ building tradition as their own, and to have applied it with an unprecedented regularity across the landscape of southwestern New Jersey; however, the practice did not manifest itself exactly as it had in England. As a group, the New World examples are bolder in design, and while there are similarities and a few clear precedents in terms of motifs, New Jersey's Quaker masons clearly drew from a broader repertoire. The most likely sources for their patterns were the domestic textiles that they probably encountered on a daily basis.

Textiles play an important role in the material culture of every society. Their importance is such that textile traditions often spill over and influence other branches of the decorative arts. The transference of textile designs from fabric to brick would have been facilitated by the similarities between the two mediums.The problems addressed by a mason when he attempts to lay out a pattern of glazed headers on a brick wall closely (but not exactly) correlate to the issues faced by a needleworker stitching a pattern or image onto the grid formed by a fabric's warp and weft.

The primary difference between the two techniques was rooted in the fact that the bricklayer was slightly more restricted, working within a system defined by two basic unitsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the "dot" of the header and the "dash" of the stretcher. The technical requirement to incorporate the dash occasionally resulted in a slightly distorted interpretation of a pattern or design, but overall the similarities between patterned brickwork and needlework were greater than the differences, and thus it is only logical to suggest that there would have been some cross-fertilization.

Samplers were the most readily encountered type of "ornamental" needlework in Colonial and early Federal

households. Although eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sampler work runs the full gamut from complex, highly detailed, and very fine embroidery to the most basic crossstitch, many samplers were relatively simple in design and low in stitch and thread count.The designs and patterns of these everyday examples would have lent themselves more readily to brick than those of more elaborate embroidery, crewel, or other forms of "fancy needlework." If specific brickwork motifs were drawn directly from "fancy work" prototypes, they would inherently more closely resemble sampler motifs when simplified for interpretation in brick.

For the first three generations of Quaker settlement in the Delaware Valley, Quaker girls in New Jersey and Pennsylvania stitched samplers that were similar in nearly all respects to those produced by their Quaker counterparts in England and by the non-Quaker population in general.'

There were no uniquely identifiable characteristics that defined a Quaker sampler. Practical needlework and stitchcry were skills valued by Quaker families, but Quaker daughters continued to work samplers according to the mainstream styles and patterns popular at the time.

The absence of a definable Quaker style was undoubtedly linked to the fact that Quakerism was very much an adolescent religion during the first half of the eighteenth century. The Society of Friends had only been in existence for about fifty years when the century opened, and practice of the religion was illegal in Great Britain for most of that half century Although the English monarchy and government did not consistently persecute (bakers during this period, the "illicit" nature ofthe religion did slow the emergence ofa relatively uniform Quaker way oflife and the corresponding expression of that life in material culture.

Conditions would not become ripe for the genesis of an independent and uniquely Quaker tradition of sampler design until a forum for such development came into existence.That forum arrived with the establishment of Quaker schools. The Acicworth School was established in 1779 by the London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends as a (baker boarding school for the education of poor or orphaned Quaker children. Needlework was a component of the curriculum for Quaker girls boarded at the school, and the samplers produced by the young Qyakeresses at Acicworth display a distinctive set of motifs later common to most Quaker samplers. These included geometric "snowflakelike" designs, swans, squirrels, birds, and wreaths or sprigs of flowers frequently framed by distinctive octagonal borders but also standing alone,filling the negative space between octagons.'

Most Delaware Valley Quaker patterned brickwork homes were constructed in the years prior to the proliferation of samplers stitched in the Acicworth tradition. The earliest identified Delaware Valley examples stitched by Quakers are band samplers, the best known of which were stitched under the instruction of the Philadelphia schoolmistress/tutor Elizabeth Marsh or her daughter, Ann.' It is to these band samplers, and to some degree to the more ornate needlework of the time and place, that we must look for corollaries.

West Jersey samplers from this period tend to be simpler in design than their Philadelphia counterparts, but the interplay between Philadelphia and its hinterlands,

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45

of which colonial West Jersey was a part, needs to be considered before one can make blanket statements. For three quarters of a century, following the founding of William Penn's city, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends was held alternatively in Philadelphia and in Burlington, West Jersey's provincial capital.

Families from New Jersey, particularly wealthy Quaker families, were in regular contact with the city and frequented it regularly on business and for social reasons.

Philadelphia businessmen owned New Jersey properties, and some families moved back and forth between urban and country estates.

Rural brides often took the sons of city merchants as husbands, and the children of prominent New Jersey families were sent to the city for education. The Wistars, Cadwaladers, and Walns, for example, were all important Philadelphia (baker families with strong New Jersey connections. Samplers credited to the daughters of West Jersey parents may well have been worked in Philadelphia, and similarly some Philadelphia samplers could conceivably have been partially worked on visits to New Jersey. Because of the extensive interplay between the closely neighboring areas, the influence of Elizabeth and Ann Marsh extended to the east side of the Delaware River, and in the repertoire of mother and daughter were a number ofdesigns that have corollaries in patterned brick architecture.

The endwall pattern of one of the grandest of patterned brick homes,the Abel and Mary Nicholson House of 1722 (see p. 44),closely relates to the diamond-band motiffound on many of these early-eighteenth-century Delaware Valley band samplers. However, the diamond, or "diaper," pattern is one of the few West Jersey patterned brickwork motifs that has identifiable antecedents in English architecture.

The designs of a number of prestigious sixteenth-century English buildings, including, most notably, Hampton Court Palace, involve patterned brickwork diapering. As many of the earliest American examples ofpatterned brickwork houses display this motif, it may be that the diaper pattern represents the root of vernacular transference. Creative colonial masons may have been inspired by the precedent ofthe diaper pattern to incorporate other designs with less architectural tradition into their work.

Another common sampler/needlework motif with architectural parallels is the "flame" stitch, a pattern that also appears frequently on other period textiles, sometimes as a band in a sampler design or quite often as the dominant motif of pockets, wallets, and needlework book covers. In brick, the pattern becomes a zigzag. Probably the most famous South Jersey house to bear this pattern is the William and Sarah Hancock House of Hancock's Bridge in Salem County.The Hancock House derives much of its celebrity not from its boldly decorated western wall but rather from the events of the American Revolution, specifically those of March 21, 1778. Utilized as a barrack by a group ofcolonial militia guarding an adjacent bridge crossing, the house was attacked during the night by a British raiding party. Guards were quickly overwhelmed, and William Hancock, the (baker owner of the house, and a number of militia men were stabbed or bayoneted. William Hancock died a short time later. Stains on the attic floorboards said to be the result of the pooling blood of Han-

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cock and the revolutionaries have since captivated generations of Salem County schoolchildren.

The patterning of the gabled endwall of the Hancock House, like that of the Nicholson House, is strongly geometric in its composition. Because of the nature of glazed brick as a medium,repetitive geometric designs would have had an inherent advantage. It is perhaps because ofthis that so many of the designs chosen closely resemble the patterned stitching found on darning samplers of the same period. As the name would imply, darning samplers were stitched to practice and to demonstrate proficiency in darningâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the repair of holes and tears in fabric. Because darning involves the working of a pattern of stitches uniformly across the entirety of the surface of a given area of fabric, it is perhaps here that the similarities between the two mediums become most apparent, especially in the darning sampler of Susan Newbold Lawrie.

Although geometric designs may have been employed more often in patterned brickwork than floral or pictorial motifs, partially due to the ease of interpreting these designs, there is also some indication that it was a matter of visual preference. Evidence in support of a local Quaker affinity for geometric designs survives in the form of a pair of matching New Jersey birth commemorations. Both bear banner headings consisting of three inscribed half circles

William and Sarah Hancock House, 1734, Hancock's Bridge, Lower Alloway's Creek Township, Salem County, New Jersey, 2003

SUSANNA HANCOCK BIRTH COMMEMORATION Artist unidentified Elsinboro Township, Salem County, New Jersey Ink and watercolor on paper 14 . 13" New Jersey State Archives, Trenton, New Jersey Although there is some discrepancy with the dates, Susanna (b. 1779) and her brother William (b.

1782), for whom a similar birth commemoration was made, seem to have been the grandchildren of one of the cousins of William Hancock of the Hancock House. They lived a few miles away from Hancock's Bridge, in Elsinboro Township.

SUSAN NEWBOLD LAWRIE DARNING SAMPLER Susan Newbold Lawrie (1796-?)

The Friends' Westtown School, Chester County, Pennsylvania 1810 Wool and silk on linen 71 / 2 x 61 / 4" Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington, New Jersey Susan N. Lawrie was born in Burlington County, New Jersey, in September 1796. She stitched this darning sampler while studying at a Quaker school in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Lawrie married Bartholomew Wistar, whose great aunt Margaret Wistar may have studied under Elizabeth Marsh.

filled in with geometric patterns reminiscent of those found an eye-catching device that spans the frill height of the first on the walls of patterned brick buildings. What makes these and second stories. The Swing House, of 1775, features a pen-and-ink birth records so relevant to the current discus- similar but more restrained design. Unlike the Dickinson sion is that both were executed for members ofthe extended House, the patterning on the Swing House is restricted Hancock family, one for a Susanna Hancock, born in 1779, to the gable and does not extend to the lower portions of the wall. and the other for a William Hancock,born in 1782.

The patterns displayed on the walls of these two houses Although most surviving examples date to the nineteenth rather than the eighteenth century, Delaware Valley may be extrapolations of floral, basket-and-flower, and Quaker quilts also show a strong preference for bold geo- footed-urn needlework motifs. Although these designs are metric block patternsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;typically with the blocks turned on much more commonly encountered on nineteenth-century end, closely paralleling the diamond patterns displayed on samplers from the Delaware Valley (and elsewhere), there are clear eighteenth-century precedents. These basic motifs the endwalls ofthe Nicholson House.

In addition to basic geometric patterns, the builders of had become commonplace for fancy needlework by the secWest Jersey's patterned brick houses did employ figural ond quarter of the eighteenth century, and simplified vermotifs. This category would include the John and Mary sions began to be stitched on samplers not long afterward.

Dickinson and Samuel and Sarah Swing Houses. The Sybil Tatum's sampler of 1788, for example (see p. 51), Dickinson House (see p. 48) is unquestionably the boldest includes both basket and floral-sprig devices related to example of colonial patterned brickwork artistry in the these fancywork motifs.

A sampler stitched by a thirteen-year-old Rachael Delaware Valley, and, consequently, it has been the most photographed. Lacking any fenestration on its tall western "Moris"(Morris)in 1826 (see p. 48),formerly in the collecgabled endwall, the building offered a palette of opportu- tion of the Burlington County Historical Society, displays nity for the colonial mason who laid up its walls. The at its bottom an abstract three-branched floral motif building grandly displays the initials of its original owners, flanked on either side by stylized baskets of flowers. The Jonathan and Mary Dickinson, and the date of its con- basic configuration of the central floral motif is strikingly struction, 1754.The majority of the endwall is taken up by similar to the design of the figured gable wall of the

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47

RACHAEL MORIS SAMPLER Rachael Morris (c. 1809-?)

Probably Burlington County, New Jersey 1824 Present location unknown

MGM 41.1k

John and Mary Dickinson House, 1754, Alloway Township, Salem County, New Jersey, 2003

Dickinson House from seven decades earlier. This visual nial brick mason had nearly finished his work—when the congruence is undoubtedly due to the simplified nature of brick walls had risen to the height of the roof eaves—the the abstracted pattern that appears on the Morris sampler. year and the initials of the couple for whom the house was The correlation between the pattern on the Swing House being constructed were incorporated into the most promiand the stitched floral-basket motif appearing on Rachael nent end gable.The initials were arranged in a very specific Morris's sampler is also noteworthy. Samplers stitched with fashion. The first initial of the family's surname was placed heavier yarn threads on fabrics of lower thread counts will in the very apex of the gable, at the highest point of the inherently resemble more closely the less-defined patterns wall. The initials of the given name of the husband and and designs that appear on southwestern New Jersey's wife were placed just below,forming an equilateral triangle. brick walls.

The husband's initial was always placed to the left of the The 1757 Samuel and Anne Bassett House (see p. 50) wife's. The year of construction usually was placed below displays a third needlework motif frequently employed the initials, just above the line of the cornice return. The on Delaware Valley samplers of the late eighteenth initials of the householders, in fact, became the primary and early nineteenth centuries: the crown or coronet.' ornamental device.

Crowns had begun to appear regularly on samplers by the The practice has a direct parallel in the Quaker textile mid-eighteenth century. Sybil Tatum's sampler includes a arts. This occurs in a group of samplers that display "the crown in its lower right-hand corner, and other crowns rule to mark napkins." This was a motif that demonstrated appear on untold numbers of nineteenth-century samplers. a technique for initialing table linens that involved stitching All three devices—the basket, the urn, and the crown— the surname initial above that of the given-name initials of appear on surviving Delaware Valley samplers dating to at the husband and wife. Beneath the initials, a number would least as early as the second half of the eighteenth century, be worked to identify each napkin in a set. Although furand they had become ubiquitous by the start of the nine- ther research may show that the origins of this practice can teenth century. be found in the domestic arts of the general population, The vast majority of patterned brickwork houses do not "the rule to mark napkins" as a device on samplers appears bear complex decorative schemes. Instead, when the colo- exclusively on those produced by the students of Quaker

48 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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The Dickinson House, measured drawing, west elevation, 1936, Works Progress Administration project 665-22-3-43, Historic American Buildings Survey N.J. 6-243, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Prints and Photographs Division

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schools in New York and usually by pupils of the Nine Partners' Boarding School of Dutchess County, the first successful coeducational Quaker boarding school in the United States.

The earliest known sampler to bear "the rule" was stitched in 1799 at the Nine Partners' Boarding School by Mary Collins(see p. 52),the ten-year-old daughter ofIsaac Collins, a well-known Quaker printer of New York City.'

Mary was not a New Yorker by birth; she had been born in Trenton, New Jersey, on the northern fringes of the patterned brick region, and her father had spent eight years of his life even closer to its center,in Burlington, New Jersey.

Isaac Collins established himself as the colony's premier master printer at Burlington but moved in 1778 to Trenton, where he published the city's first newspaper. Eighteen years later, in 1796, Collins again relocated his family, this

time to the rapidly growing metropolis that was New York City, and shortly thereafter enrolled his daughter, Mary,in the Nine Partners' Boarding School. In 1808,Isaac Collins again returned to Burlington, resettling his family in a large brick residence on Broad Street.

Drawing attention to Mary Collins's ties to West Jersey is not intended to suggest that some Quaker schoolteacher or student at the Nine Partners' Boarding School was inspired to create "the rule" after observing the initials on the wall of a New Jersey patterned brick home, but rather that the practice was known contemporaneously to Quaker residents of the Delaware Valley in both architectural and textile contexts.

Samplers and "fancy" needlework, in general, were possessions to be valued; they were either framed and proudly displayed on the wall or carefully stored away in a chest or

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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51

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trunk Napkins and other domestic linens received hard use and were less enduring. Relatively few examples of textiles marked with "the rule" survive. One partial set of Quaker bed linens with West Jersey associations has been identified.

Marked using "the rule," the linens—two linen sheets and a woolen blanket—were made for the Taylor family of Burlington County, New Jersey. Thomas and Charlotte Chapman Taylor were married in the 1780s and set up housekeeping in a brick residence located in the village today known as Georgetown, New Jersey. According to local accounts during the Taylors' time, the village was known as "Foolstown"in derisive honor ofa large brick shell ofa house that had been begun in 1765 but was never finished, due to the owner's inability to afford the construction of the fine country residence to which he aspired. The house sat fragmentary and empty for nearly two decades before it was acquired by Thomas Taylor, who finished out the building and thus redeemed the village's reputation with its highminded and socially critical(baker neighbors."

The upper gable walls ofthe home were already finished by the time Taylor acquired his house. In true West Jersey tradition, the western gable bears the date of the house's initial construction, 1765,in glazed brick surmounted by a diamond and framed within a triangular border. With the gable already completed at the time he purchased the prop-

52

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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erty, there was no place for Taylor to add his initials or those of his wife. Charlotte Taylor, however, or some other needleworlcing member of the household, was free to add them to the sheets and blanket that they acquired in 1792.

Unlike "the rule to mark napkins" as it is laid out on the Nine Partners' Boarding School samplers, the Taylor bed dressings omit the numbering intended to identify the individual components of the set. Instead, the stitcher substituted the year, correlating exactly with the practice as it was typically applied to brick. The date of the stitching of the Taylor linens-1792—predates that of the earliest known Nine Partners' Boarding School "rule" samplers by just seven years. Thomas Taylor may have missed his chance to add his initials to his Georgetown house,but in 1813,when he raised the brick walls ofa new Taylor house several miles away, in Chesterfield Township, it bore the initials TTc arranged in the very same manner in which they appear on his linens.

Almost all surviving brick houses constructed by Quakers in West Jersey during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries bear such initials. That so many Quaker homes were decorated in this manner is remarkable, given the professed beliefs of the Society of Friends with reference to personal vanity and self-adulation. After all, most early (bakers were buried in unmarked graves or with the

CUTWORK AND CROSS-STITCH LINEN OF THOMAS AND CHARLOTTE TAYLOR (detail) Probably Charlotte Taylor Georgetown, Burlington County, New Jersey 1792 Silk on linen 761 / 2 88" Private collection

plainest of tombstones, bearing only initials and the date of death to avoid personal or familial displays of aggrandizement. Yet the initials of Quaker husbands and wives were commonly displayed in billboard fashion on the sides of their own homes, and there is no indication that the motives behind this practice were ever questioned by those Friends in a position to comment on such matters.

The triangular method of arranging the initials of a husband and wife is not exclusive to Quaker architecture, however. Initials arranged in this fashion can occasionally be found on the date stones of a number of non-Quaker English and American residences, but the technique was applied much more often and with far more regularity within the membership of the Society of Friends than it was without.

Although not all Quaker patterned brick houses incorporate initials, none display the initials of a husband alone.

The fact that Quakers were more apt to apply "the rule" on their sheets and napkins and on the walls of their homes is indicative of the greater emphasis that Quakerism placed on the role of women in marriage,the family, and the Society of Friends. Since the days of its inception, the society has provided female members with a formal role in the affairs of Quakerism.The manner and extent to which this has been true has grown and changed over time. Since the formative days of Quakerism, the contributions of women as the guardians of the society's morals and protectors of the family had been recognized. Women were encouraged to take an active part in meetings for worship, accepted as ministers and elders, and given their own meetings for business that paralleled the men's. As the eighteenth century progressed, female contributions within the Society of Friends in the Delaware Valley gradually increased.

It is the popularly held conception that Quakers immigrated to the New World to escape religious persecution, and to some extent this is true. But they also, and perhaps more importantly, came to escape the economic and social forces that all too often tore British Quaker families apart."

Quaker sons were lost to the corrupting influences ofcities, and Quaker daughters were lost to non-Quaker spouses.

These defections didn't just tear at the hearts of Quaker parents,they also undermined the long-term promise ofthe Society of Friends. By and large Quaker families found the refuge they sought in the settlements on the Delaware River. But their respite was to prove unsettlingly brief.

By the start of the eighteenth century Quakers in the Delaware Valley had begun to feel the unwelcome pressure of non-Quaker immigration and challenges to their political dominance of the governments of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Faced with these problems, the Society of Friends responded dramatically by transforming a relatively open and outreaching group into a conservative, insular society' One of the prime components in this transformation was the increased involvement ofwomen in the official affairs of the society, particularly with regard to social and moral issues. Quaker women were given a greater role in defining both the basic tenets of the society and the "Rules ofDiscipline" by which Quakers lived. Perhaps the one area in which women were given the most authority was in the oversight and regulation of marriage. The use of"the rule" on Quaker gable endwalls expressed the combined role of

the father and the mother in the (baker family and of the man and the woman in the Society of Friends." It is this same partnership that is conveyed in thread by "the rule to mark napkins."

As a group, the houses make a strong statement within the cultural watershed of the Delaware Valley. They were intended as monuments to the role of Quakerism within the social, political, and economic landscape of southwestern New Jersey. Symbolically, the grand brick houses of West Jersey represented not only the prosperity of individual Quaker families but also the long-term success of Quakerism and,to Quakers,perhaps even a theological validation oftheir religion. On the most basic level, each of these great brick houses was the corporeal manifestation of the family for whom they were constructed.These were notjust buildings built of brick, wood,and stone but the homesteads and family seats of future generations. In Quaker parlance, members who convert to Quakerism from other religions are known as "convinced" Friends. Quakers born to Quaker parents are proudly known to be "birthright" Friends.Today, these patterned brickwork houses still communicate, as was originally intended, the "birthright" claim of the original Quaker families to South Jersey's cultural landscape.* Damon Tvaryanas is a historian who specializes in the architecture and materialculture ofthe Delaware Valley. He is a student at the American Folk Art Museum's Folk ArtInstitute and is working toward a certificate infolk artstudies.

Notes 1 Michael Joseph Chirappa,"'The First and Best Sort': Quakerism,Brick Artisanry, and the Vernacular Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century West New Jersey Pattern Brickwork Architecture"(Ph.D. dissertation,University ofPennsylvania, 1986),p.457.

2 Ibid., pp.320-322 and 371-394.

3 Alan Gowans,"The Mansions ofAlloway's Creek,"in Common Places, Readings in American VernacularArchitecture, ed. by Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach(Athens, Ga.: University ofGeorgia Press, 1986), p.373.

4 Ibid.

5 Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery:Arnerican Samplers and PictorialNeedlework,1650-1850(New York Alfred A.Knopf 1993), p.288.

6 Ibid., pp.290-291.

7 Ibid., pp.332-336.

8 Gowans,op. cit., p.374.

9 Ring,op. cit., p. 306.

10 Heritage Studies,"Burlington County Inventory and Survey of Historic,Architectural, and Cultural Resources," Vol 1(Princeton, NJ.: Heritage Studies, 1977),pp.97-98.

11 Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family(New York Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 118.

12 Arthur J. Mekeel,"The Founding Years, 1681-1789," and Margaret Hope Bacon,"A Widening Path: Women in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Move Toward Equality,1681-1929,"in Friendr in the Delaware Valley:Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1681-1981,ed. byJohn M.Moore(Haverford,Pa.: Friends Historical Association,1981),pp.39-42 and 179-180.

13 Bernard L.Herman,"Eighteenth-Century Quaker Homes in the Delaware Valley," in QuakerAesthetics, Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption, ed. by Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne A.Verplanck(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,2002),p. 199.

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DAVID DORM

HALLELUJAH LADY Mary T. Smith (1904/1905-1995) Hazelhurst, Mississippi 1987 Paint on plywood 4 x 24" 1 23/ Collection of Dan and Kristi Cleary

ary T Smith's Hallelujah Lady shows the head and shoulders of a figure with upraised arms. The pose is known in both black and white churches of the South, where a form of religious faith known as evangelical Protestantism—also sometimes called evangelical Christianity—is predominant. Personal experience, the kind that results in being "born again," is central to this brand of Christianity, which professes the Bible as the voice of God and the authoritative guide to human life."Coming Home! Self-Taught Artists,the Bible, and the American South," which will open in Memphis on June 19, is the first comprehensive exhibition to explore the impact of this particular religion on contemporary folk artists of the South. It does not feature purely religious art, nor does it advocate a particular religious doctrine. Instead, "Coming Home!" explores and attempts to better understand how the Bible, seen most often through the lens of evangelical Protestants—both black and white—has influenced the subject matter, meaning, and function of artworks made by Southern self-taught artists.

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Unlike the religious art of earlier eras, the creations of unschooled artists working in the South are not normally commissioned by, nor intended for, an institutional patron.

Rather, these works are highly personal expressions made by artists who have in mind a variety of functions: decorative, critical, didactic, proselytistic, or contemplative. Many of these artists identify themselves as evangelical Christians and share common religious beliefs. However, evangelical Christianity touches the work of even those who do not espouse its teachings, and even those who believe themselves untouched by its influence do not always escape its impact.

The exhibition is organized into a narrative at harmony with evangelical Christianity's Bible-based beliefs, of which the most important is the advocacy of the Bible as the authoritative voice of God and the cornerstone of faith. A component of conservative Christians—those often described as fundamentalists—believe that the Bible's words should be taken literally, and accept its stories not as myth but as the real history of God's people.

From the story of Creation and the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden, these Christians deduce that humanity is inherently marred by sin.

From the New Testament story of Jesus, the Son of God, they proclaim that Jesus is the New Adam, whose death and resurrection minify the sin committed in the Garden. Fundamentalist Christians also understand the prophecies of the Bible to be promises that God will keep. These beliefs, elemental to evangelical Protestantism, inform the organization of"Coming Home!" into four sections: Southern Religious Life, The Garden of Eden, The New Adam, and The New Heaven and Earth.

Southern Religious Life Evangelical Protestantism has "deeply rooted itself in cultural practices and beliefs that extend far beyond institutional denominations.'I grew up with that,' William Faulkner reminisced about the pervasive influence of evangelicalism. 'I assimilated that, took that in without even knowing it. It's just there. It has nothing to do with how much I might believe or disbelieve—it's just there?"'

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From the central role of the preacher in everyday life to the church gatherings that punctuate the round of weekly events, religion strongly influences the creations of Southern untrained artists. William Edmondson's limestone Preacher, dressed in long-tail jacket and bow tie, asserts both the primacy of God's word by holding his Bible upright before him and, in his finery, the socially prominent role of the preacher in the black community. Assembling cast-off materials to create a larger than lifesize statue called Taking Up Serpents, Speaking in Tongues, Singing God's Praises,Jim Shores draws upon a religious tradition inspired by Mark 16:17-18 and most often associated with Appalachian Pentecostal holiness churches, whose members practice serpent handling. In Holy Church of God-in-Christ, Charlie A. Owens, a black Baptist, represents an ecstatic worship service with preacher, choir, band, and a congregation, mostly of jubilant women dressed in their Sunday best.(The Church of God in Christ that figures so prominently in the painting's title was founded in 1897 in Memphis and is now the

TENT REVIVAL Clementine Hunter (1886/1887-1988) Natchitoches, Louisiana 1950s Oil on paperboard 18 . 24" Collection of Jack and Ann W. Brittain and their children

largest Pentecostal denomination in the world.) However, the fact that Clementine Hunter, who was a Catholic, created Tent Revival, a painting from the 1950s that portrays an exhorting preacher, mourner's bench, and ecstatic worshipers participating in a rapturous evangelical service, offers an important reminder that the religious complexion of the South is not purely evangelical. Still other works, such as Herbert Singleton's The Biggest Baptist Is the Biggest Sinner, a painted carved relief that portrays a black preacher fondling a female parishioner, function as social commentary, critiquing the hypocrisy ofsome church leaders.

The Garden of Eden

According to the Bible, God created the first humans, Adam and Eve, and placed them in Paradise, the Garden of Eden. God gave the couple the commandment"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."Tempted by Satan in the form of a serpent, the pair disobeyed God, who banned them from the Garden

THOU SHALL NOT Lonnie Holley (b. 1950) Birmingham, Alabama 1993 Child's scooter, wood, wire, and paint 45 x 27 x 49" Collection of William Arnett

and sentenced them to a life of toil and to mortality. Many Christians believe that Adam and Eve's actions explain the sinfulness of all humankind, a teaching known as Original Sin. The imagery featured in this section of "Coming Home!" sets the stage for humanity's sinful act and subsequent expulsion from Paradise.

Hugo Sperger's Creation, a huge painting measuring four by six feet, presents the story of humanity's creation and disobedience in three registers beginning at the upper left and zigzagging to its conclusion at the lower right, where God banishes Adam and Eve from Paradise.

Sperger's non-naturalistic style and the comic-book format that he employs, which leads the viewer from one episode to the next, suggest that meaning is more important than appearance: What matters is not how the events in the Garden may have actually looked but what they mean.

Lonnie Holley's Thou Shall Not, which incorporates a child's scooter and a wooden cross marked with the words of the sculpture's title, is even more symbolic. Holley's work is a

good example of assemblage art, the technique of using found and altered objects to create an artwork.The presence of the piece in this section highlights the far-ranging consequences of Adam and Eve's willful disobedience of God's command. Most telling is Bernice Sims' theological insight featured in her painting Adam and Eve, which succinctly tells the story of humanity's fall from innocence and sums up its meaning for many Evangelicals. To the left appears the serpent in the Tree of Knowledge, in the center is the shame-faced and cowering couple, and to the right are three empty crosses, alluding to Jesus'future victory over death,the act that cancels out the couple's sin.

The New Adam

Saint Paul's comparison of Adam and Christ in his letter to the Corinthians (I Cor. 15:45) led to the designation of Christ as the Second or New Adam. Christians believe that because Jesus is the Son of God, his death on the cross serves as a perfect sacrifice to redeem humanity from Adam's sin.To emphasize Christ's role as savior, contemporary self-taught artists often

choose to represent the moment of his crucifixion, or they portray Jesus in highly symmetrical and formal images. This approach tends to focus viewer attention on the figure ofJesus, encouraging meditation on his role in God's plan for humankind.

Two works by the African American artist Sam Doyle, one an undated and untitled painting representing Christ's nativity, and the other I'll Go Down, a painted construction depicting his crucifixion, frame the story of Jesus' earthly life and emphasize his dual nature as God and man. These paintings serve as contemplative devices that affirm basic teachings of the Christian faith. In the depiction of Jesus' birth, the child is nestled in a manger between his kneeling mother and the standing figure of his father with a staff. The scene takes place within an outdoor setting of monumental grandeur, suffused with pastel colors and illuminated by a starry sky.

The largest and most brilliant star drenches the child in light, uniting heaven and earth, the divine and physical,in an event of cosmic significanceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the birth of God in human form. I'll Go Down, which is painted on louvers, carries a simple depiction of the Crucifixion. Christ is pictured on the cross, hanging limp and bloodied from his wounds, the slats of the louvers reinforcing the brokenness of his body.

Doyle's I'll Go Down also demonstrates an African American penchant for associating the figure of Christ with the Old Testament prophet Moses. Like the prophet of the black spiritual"Go Down,Moses," who rescues the Israelites from Egypt's pharaoh, Doyle's Jesus, by his nature a man and yet divine, "goes down" on the cross to rescue humanity from the tyranny of sin. Jimmy Lee Sudduth's Christ, in which Jesus is identified only by a cross-topped staff, also calls to mind,in the figure's dignified bearing, the long-suffering prophet. In fact, Moses and Jesus are often compared in African American religious and literary traditions. Both are perceived as their people's liberator, one saving them from Egypt's pharaoh and the other from Satan's grasp. The fused figure of Jesus/Moses is also found in such gospel hymns as "Jesus, I'll Never Forget":

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Jesus, I'll never forget when way down in Egypt's land, How you brought me out with a mighty outstretched hand, Broke the bonds of sin and set me free, Gave mejoy and peace and victory.'

Although "Coming Home!" does not emphasize how differing social and religious traditions envision the figure of Christ, it does suggest that the depiction most favored in contemporary Southern folk art is that of the Suffering Savior.The large-scale Cmcifixions by Jesse Aaron and Chester Cornett are good examples. Aaron fashioned his truncated figure ofJesus from a found piece of wood. Using a chain saw, Cornett made his Cruqfixion out of wood as well, incised and painted it, and used human hair for the beard. Although these artworks are dissimilar in conception and construction, both are composed of fundamentally stylized shapes and are intensely expressive. Aaron's piece is made from a single piece of wood, its odd shapes forming the figure's head and limbs, its sharp curves defining the torso, and its tattered surface suggesting Christ's wounds. There is no cross, yet the figure's stumplike arms seem pulled and strained, as if Christ's body sagged with weight.

The gaunt, planldike body of Chester Cornett's Jesus is incised with anatomical details, his arms outstretched, and his head suggestive of a grizzled and grinning skull.

The New Heaven and Earth The last section of the exhibition is composed of three partsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Prophecy, Day of Reckoning, and Coming Home!â&#x20AC;&#x201D;each dealing with the New Heaven and Earth prophesied in the Bible. Prophecy belief, which is rooted in the Old Testament books of Ezekiel and Daniel and the New Testament Book of Revelation, has a long tradition in Judeo-Christianity and flourishes in contemporary America.'

According to the Bible, the end of human time will culminate in a cosmic battle between Good and Evil.

Good will triumph, the world will be destroyed, and the kingdom of God will be established.

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The section devoted to Prophecy demonstrates that the enthusiasm for biblical prophecy found in contemporary folk art is grounded in American art and religious tradition. Interest in prophecy was common as far back as colonial times and was especially important to the Puritans. In the nineteenth century, one of its most influential supporters was William Miller, a lay Baptist preacher. Miller, whose end-time teachings attracted thousands of followers, preached that Christ's Second Coming would occur about 1843.

Although his theories proved wrong, Miller established Adventism, or the belief in Christ's imminent return to earth, as a major theme in American religion.

Likewise, the charts the Millerites used as visual tools to teach Bible prophecy established a tradition that continues today in contemporary folk and popular religious art.

The distinguishing feature of the Millerite Chart of 1843, which was actually made in 1842 and became the movement's standard chart, is the representation of a large Works relating to the Day of figure of a human being, which was Reckoning feature the major protagoinspired by the dream of King Neb- nists of the apocalyptic future, includuchadnezzar of Babylon as recorded ing Satan, Christ, the Whore of in Daniel 2. There, the Jewish youth Babylon, and Michael the Archangel.

Daniel interprets the figure as sym- In the deadly battle that ensues bolizing the four ages of human his- between these cosmic forces, the Bible tory. The Colossus became a fixture of prophesies that Christ will be victoriprophecy charts. Josephine Lawson, a ous. He then will rule from his milmissionary for the Advent Christian lennium kingdom, a thousand-year Church and a self-taught artist, cre- era of peace on earth. After a brief ated Prophecy Chart, Colossus ofDaniel interlude in which Satan is loosed 2 in 1917, after seeing such an image again, God will establish the New in The World's Great Empires, a well- Heaven and Earth, a kingdom of known prophecy book.' Other self- righteousness that will last forever. taught artists who have depicted the Joe Minter's The Last Trumpet, Colossus are Rev. Samuel Davis composed of cast-off metal objects Phillips, William Thomas Thompson, that include a cornet and car jack, feaand Myrtice West. Statues of the tures three angelic messengers who Colossus of Daniel 2 also appear at announce the end of time. In keeping the side of contemporary television with the visionary modes of Bible evangelists and in brochures used for prophecy, William Thomas Thompprophecy seminars today. son relies on figurative imagery yet

I'LL GO DOWN Sam Doyle (1906-1985) St. Helena Island, South Carolina C. 1979 Paint on wooden louvers 45./4 x 26 x 23/ 1 4" Collection of Robert A. Roth

employs a highly expressive style. He uses violent brushstrokes of dripping color to depict such actors as the Antichrist, Satan, and the Whore of Babylon. His Faithful and True (Christ of the Second Coming) and Myrtice West's Christ Returns As Church Gets Ready;King ofKings and Lord ofLords are inspired by Rev. 11:1-16,in which John sees heaven open and Christ riding at the head of an army on a bold white horse. Calling to mind the equestrian portraits of Roman emperors and statues of Civil War generals, these paintings evoke a mood of

PROPHECY CHART, COLOSSUS OF DANIEL 2 Josephine Lawson (1866-1963) Pasadena, California

impending triumph. Xmeah ShaEla'Re'El's painting Babylon Is Fallen, likewise, celebrates the demise of Evil and the coming of the one thousand years of Christ's reign on earth. This biblical theme of millennialism, with its promise ofsocial justice, has always appealed to the disenfranchised and is well known in Southern art and literature.'

Contemporary self-taught artists have also imagined the kingdom where God will reign forever, which is the subject of the exhibition's final part. To visualize this realm, some

.

RIPMMIM111111.111111111111 chapter Daniel 2nl1 0NOYLolv

1917 Oil, tempera, and ink on cotton muslin 2 • 20" / 421 Jenks Memorial Collection of Adventual Materials, Aurora University Library, Aurora, Illinois

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And in the diws of these

kings shall the God of heaven set u kingdom,which shall never b destroyed, Daniel a:41.

select rather distinctive images, which demonstrate, nonetheless, the artists' grounding in the culture of the South.

Roger Rice, for example, pictures the roller-coaster ride of a roofless train filled with repentant sinners traveling to heaven in Gospel Train. A schooled artist, Rice is often grouped with selftaught artists because his work, like theirs, has been perceived as being "outside" the cultural mainstream.

(Rice is serving a life sentence in Mississippi's Parchman Prison.) Yet Rice's choice of subject matter—a gospel train en route to heaven—has a long history in American art and culture, including the South, where gospel songs urge sinners to catch the glory train to heaven. More idiosyncratic is Minnie Evans's A Dream Nov 1962.

Although its meaning remains elusive, this charming image, depicting a wreath framed by four angels and upheld by two blue-eyed lions, looks much like a Buddhist mandala and creates an effective symbol of the eternal. Recalling a vision of a beautiful light and a wreath, Evans said, "I didn't see the wreath, but I saw the shadow of the wreath, and behind the shadow of this wreath is where God spoke to me."' Many Southern selftaught artists, including Evans, have often expressed belief in having direct access to the Holy Spirit.'

Despite such distinctive symbols, the Bible's choice of a verdant landscape or a holy city are the most common metaphors that Southern self-taught artists choose to represent God's kingdom. Linda Anderson's Peaceable Kingdom presents an idyllic scene of a mountainous view in which the morning sun dawns upon an unexpected sight: Three children stand among a placid gathering of wild and domestic beasts, inspired by the Old Testament prophecy ofIsaiah (11:6), which describes Paradise as a realm where the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the goat, and the calf and the young lion live in peace, a favorite subject of early American folk artist Edward Hicks, a Quaker. Rev. Howard Finster's There Is a House of Gold, made of enamel and glitter on Masonite, pictures an elegant and monumental vision of heaven and incorporates the text from John 14:2: "In my Father's house are many mansions." Rev. Benjamin "B.F." Perlcins's

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or LUISE ROSS GALLERY, NEW

YORK

A DREAM NOV 1962 Minnie Evans (1892-1987) Wilmington, North Carolina 1980 Mixed media on cardboard 16 x 20" Collection of Carl and Marian Mullis

DAVID HORAN, COURTESY

Homeplace demonstrates how difficult it is to separate religion from social life and politics in the South. Rendered in brilliant colors of red, white, and blue, this painting was inspired by Perkins's own home (now destroyed), whose yard featured a curved driveway,carports, and an upstairs porch as well as a yard of religious monuments that Perkins built, induding Calvary's three crosses and Christ's sepulcher. A student of biblical prophecy and an intensely patriotic man, Perkins created his home as an earthly reflection of a celestial one. Homeplace offers the vision of a perfect realm—blending the New Testament and the patriotic Southern landscape, Christ and country—to all those pilgrims coming home. For the early Pilgrims who came to the New World, hoping to establish in the untouched paradise of America God's holy kingdom, Reverend Perldns's Homeplace might not seem too distant from their conception ofParadise.

The interpretive approach of the exhibition "joins three major developments in the recent history of art and cultural studies: A recognition of a religious impulse in modern and contemporary art; the expansion of the subject matter ofart history to include

YRTICE WEST. WITH PERMISSION FROM ROLLIN RIGGS

CHRIST RETURNS AS CHURCH GETS READY; KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS (REVELATIONS SERIES, NO. 11) Myrtice West (b.1923) Centre, Alabama 1980s Oil on canvas / 4" 501 / 2 341 Collection of Tamara and Rollin Riggs

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the nonacademic artistic traditions and contemporary practices of America's many cultural groups; and new scholarship that applies the methodology of material cultural studies to an exploration of how images ftmction in American religious experience."'

These approaches to the study of art are predicated upon the idea that artistic creation is grounded in the experience of its makers and closely bound to the world in which they live and the values that they esteem. The work of self-taught artists like those featured in "Coming Home!" demonstrates the validity of this concept as well as the rich culture and religious heritage ofthe American South. * Carol Crown, curator ofthe exhibition 'Coming Home!, is associateprofessor ofart history at the University ofMemphis. She is also the editor of Wonders to Behold!

The Visionary Art of Myrtice West (Memphis:Mustang Publishing, 1999).

Notes 1 Paul Harvey,"The Bible and the Evangelical South,"in Coming Home!SI: TaughtArtists, the Bible, and the American South, ed. by Carol Crown (Art Museum ofthe University ofMemphis in association with University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming,2004). Faullcner's quote can be found in Frederick L.Gwynn and Joseph L. Blomer,eds.,Faulkner in the University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia, 1957-1958 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993), p. 193.

2 For more on the African American tradition of associating Moses with Jesus,see Stephen Prothero,American Jesus:How the Son ofGod Became a NationalIcon(New York Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,2003).

The hymn is cited on p.211.

3 See,for example,Paul Boyer, When Time ShallBe No More:Prophecy Beliefin Modern American Culture(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).

4 Mrs. Levi C.McKinstry, The World's Great Empires:A Course ofEight Lectures (Boston: L.C.McKinstry,1883).

5 See Charles Reagan Wilson,"A Larger View: Self-Taught Art,the Bible, and Southern Creativity," in Crown,op. cit.

6 Charles M.Lovell and Erwin Hester, eds.,Minnie Evans:Artist(Greenville, N.C.: Wellington B. Gray Gallery, East Carolina University, 1993), p.28.

7 Wilson,in Crown,op. cit.

8 Leslie Luebbers,Introduction,in Crown,op. cit.

Coming Home!

Self-Taught Artists, the Bible, 1010 and the American South Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Tennessee June 19-November 13, 2004 901/678-2224; www.amum.org Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee February-March 2005 The Gallery at the American Bible Society, New York May-July 2005 HOMEPLACE Rev. Benjamin "B.F." Perkins (1904-1993) Bankston, Alabama C.1985 Paint on canvas 4" / 48% x 361 Collection of Carl and Marian Mullis

The exhibition includes works by Jesse Aaron, Sarah Albritton, LeRoy Almon, Linda Anderson, William Blayney, Hawkins Bolden, Edward Butler, Ned Cartledge, Raymond Coins, Ronald and Jessie Cooper, Chester Cornett,Thornton Dial Sr., Carl Dixon, Sam Doyle, William Edmondson, Minnie Evans,Josephus Farmer, Rev. Howard Finster, Lorraine Gendron, Alyne Harris, William Hawkins, Lonnie Holley, Clementine Hunter,J.L. Hunter,Jas Johns, Rev. Anderson Johnson, Eddie Lee Kendrick, Rev. George Kornegay, C.M. and Grace Kelly Laster,Tim Lewis,Joe Light, Annie Lucas, Charlie Lucas,Joe Minter, Sister Gertrude Morgan,John "J.B." Murray, Charlie A. Owens, Rev. Benjamin "BE"Perkins, Rev. Samuel David Phillips, Elijah Pierce, Mary Proctor, Ernest"Popeyeâ&#x20AC;? Reed, Roger Rice, Robert Roberg, Nellie Mae Rowe, Lorenzo Scott, Cherry and Xmeah ShaEla'Re'El,Jim Shores, Herbert Singleton, Bernice Sims, Mary T. Smith, Hugo Sperger, Larry Stinson,Jimmie Lee Sudduth, Rev.Johnnie Swearingen, William Thomas Thompson,Mose Tolliver, Edgar Tolson, Felix Virgous, Fred Webster,Yvonne Wells, Myrtice West,"Artist Chuckie" Williams, and Purvis Young.

Exhibition Catalog Coming Home!Self- Taught Artists, the Bible, and the American South Edited by Carol Crown; with a foreword by Lee Kogan and contributions by Erika Doss, Hal Fulmer, Norman Girardot, Paul Harvey, Babatunde Lawal, Leslie Luebbers, Cheryl Rivers, and Charles Reagan Wilson; published by the Art Museum of the University of Memphis,Tennessee, in association with the University Press of Mississippi; 304 pages, 142 color illustrations; $65 hardcover; $30 paperback Available August 2004 from the American Folk Art Museum Book and Gift Shop,212/265-1040, ext. 124. Members receive a 10 percent discount.

"Coming Home!"isfunded in part by the NationalEndowmentfor the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, Humanities Tennessee, and First Tennessee "Bravo!"

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Alexander Bogardy, C.

Alelander

BOGARDY SINGULAR PURSUITS By Margaret Parsons and Marsha Orgeron lexander Bogardy(1901-1992) spent most of his life in a small apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;his final address before moving to a city home,where he died in 1992. His visionary, religious oil paintings and copious portfolios, filled with intricate pencil drawings about hairstyling and makeup,were made within a block of the U.S. Capitol and the Library of Congress and date principally from the early 1960s through the late 1970s.

Those two decades of prolific painting for Alex Bogardy correspond to a rather brief cycle in a long life that embraced a variety of vocations. A quick check of Bogardy's remarkable range offers a kind of profile of his personality and milieu. In the 1920s he was a music student at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore; in the 1930s, a prizefighter who entered the ring more than eighty times as The Baltimore Kid; in the 1940s he studied mechanical engineering at George Washington University and got a job at the Washington Navy Yard; and in the 1950s, when he developed arthritis and was advised to retire and work with his hands, he studied hairdressing and hair coloring at the Clairol Institute. After taking several courses in cosmetology, Bogardy became consumed with the idea that he could help ordinary people improve their hair color and style, as well as their general facial appearance. This inspired him to invent an unusual hair curler he called the Bogy Clip (a design he claimed to have protected with a patent), and compose a manual entitled The Hair andIts SocialImportance, which he published himselfin 1962. His interest in painting was sparked by an extension course in oil painting that he took at Catholic University in Washington. Presumably to supplement his pension,Bogardy also did custodial work throughout the 1960s and 1970s at several Washington hotels. By the late 1970s, after his painting career had ended, Bogardy took up flamenco and the castanets and, until he became infirm, turned his life over to performing

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THE SCHOOL OF COSMETOLOGY Alexander Bogardy Washington, D.C. c. 1966 Oil on artist board 24 x 18" Private collection

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JESUS FIRST READING THE SCRIPTURES c. 1970 Oil on artist board 18 24" Private collection

with castanets in amateur variety showsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or for anyone ences to his dose relationship with his mother (who lived who would watch him. into her nineties and for whom Bogardy cared when she At every stage of this remarkable career trajectory, Alex became infirm), the artist seldom talked about his childBogardy collected clippings about himself, gathered mostly hood or young adulthood. There was one exception, howfrom neighborhood newspapers. These were displayed ever: He was proud of his career as a featherweight prominently and symmetrically on the walls of his apart- prizefighter. Exactly why this fearsomely aggressive sport ment, along with his framed certificates and photographs; would have appealed to a diminutive, delicate young man or, they were assembled into scrapbooks and tabletop was never clear. Nor was it clear how his parents arrangements. His entire life was documented in this way. felt about his boxing. But he gave his mother, at The authors' research during the summer and fall of 2001 least, a great deal of the credit for encouraging turned up approximately one hundred extant paintings and him to study violin at the Peabody Conservacolored-pencil drawingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sketches Bogardy had apparently tory. Although he never played professionally, rendered for a handbook on female beauty and the proper Bogardy held his musical training to be one of application of cosmetics. This manual, if he had been able the seminal influences of his life. There are freto publish it, would most likely have served as a companion quent references to music, especially the violin, volume to The Hair and Its Social Importance. There is in his paintings. ample evidence, however,that Bogardy created other paintWhen Alex Bogardy moved with his mother ings beyond those the authors were able to locate, espe- from Baltimore to Washington in the late dally portraits and religious paintings presented to friends 1930s, presumably after the death of his father, and private individuals within his neighborhood network. Capitol Hill was still a sleepy neighborhood of The whereabouts of these pieces, however, is undocu- drugstores and lunch counters. While he was a mented, as the artist never sold any of his work. bit of a loner, he was well liked and played a visWhile there is conflicting evidence concerning the pre- ible role in the society there. He would run small errands cise year in which Alexander Bogardy was born, most of for his neighbors, bring them food ifthey were ill, and pick the data supports a birth date of April 20, 1901, in up their newspapers and mail if they were away. At holiBudapest, Hungary. In his fourth or fifth year, young Alex days such as Halloween or Christmas, he often made disimmigrated to the United States with his parents and two plays on a small table outside his basement apartment siblings, Angela and Theodore.The family settled in Balti- window with neat (and invariably symmetrically aligned) more. Although in later life Bogardy made frequent refer- arrangements of knickknacks and candies for passersby to

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HAIR CURLER (Bogy Clip) c. 1963 Pencil and colored pencil on paper 12 > 9"(each) Private collection

THE SEARCH c. 1969 Oil on artist board 18 . 24" Private collection

take. He made much out of the fact that he was Hungarian and frequented Hungarian restaurants and lunch counters in Washington with friends.(He would speak Hungarian with the waiters, and, although he had little money, he left generous tips.)

The artist referred to his small Capitol Hill apartment as The Gallery. It was a showplace of curious arrangements. Nearly every inch ofwall space and every surface was decorated with his paintings, certificates, devotional ornaments and "holy cards"(of the sort that devout Catholics might purchase in church gift shops), ornate costume jewelry bottles, plates, shells, and bric-a-brac he would have purchased for relatively little cash at a Salvation Army store, a church rummage sale, or a local yard sale. He gave away many of these items to his acquaintances, but he always replenished the collection with new finds. Many of the religious cards and objects he acquired were adorned with small plastic pearls or gold and silver medals, which inspired Bogardy's own work—many of his canvases are opulent assemblages studded with fake glass gemstones and small threedimensional objects.

Much of Bogardy's appeal had to do with his warm greeting and,if you happened to be a female acquaintance, the inevitable kiss on the hand,full of Old World panache.

A dominant feature of his apartment was the "beauty station," a hair dresser's sink and counter with chair and large

round mirror—standard beauty parlor furniture of the time. This station is where Bogardy administered shampoos, haircuts, perms, and makeovers—the application of pancake, eye shadow, and lipstick. Bestowing "beauty" was virtually a religious ritual for him. Nearly every woman who befriended Alex Bogardy received some form ofcomplimentary beautification at this station.

•

Alexander Bogardy once remarked,"All my work is done for God." Religion was at the center of his life. Indeed, it became a wellspring for most of his compositions. His rich canvases have the appearance of votive objects—images of devotion, prayer, or thanksgiving designed to encourage spiritual thoughts in the beholder. His subjects include the Virgin Mary, Christ, angels, saints, and other figures identified with the church. He offered his paintings to several Catholic parishes; while there is no evidence that his paintings were ever accepted for display, Bogardy did provide hand-lettered marquees for two Capitol Hill churches, St. Peter's and St. Joseph's.(When the painted signs were replaced with conventional manufactured metal signs,Bogardy took their decision to modernize personally and felt he had been unfairly used by the clergy) It would be a misreading of Alex Bogardy's oeuvre, however, to suppose that all of this religious painting focused on iconographic depictions of Jesus or Mary or stories from the Bible. He interjected a lot of personal

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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65

information into his art. For example, each figure in The Prayer Group corresponds to an actual participant in a prayer group that met each Sunday evening at St. Peter's.

Bogardy himself, wearing a brown suit and seated with his back to the viewer, was part of this assembly. One of his female friends (whose hair and nails he often did, presumably for no charge) translated the text of each tiny prayer into Gregg shorthand for the painting.

The Christ figure in the paintings is often a child, particularly a student engaged in learning. The Search and Jesus First Reading the Scriptures, as well as four paintings not illustrated—Jesus As a Little Jewish Boy, The Graduation, The Holy Family Reading the Scriptures, and The First Steps ofJesus—all reflect an intense interest in youthful acquisition of knowledge. Biblical tales provide the basis for many of these subjects, but, beyond that, Bogardy placed a high moral value on educational achievement— hence the many certificates and "diplomas" he scattered about his own apartment.

Bogardy attended Mass every day. For much ofthe time that he lived on Capitol Hill, going to Mass meant taking a long ride on a city bus to one of Washington's grander Catholic churches. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the Brookland neighborhood and the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in downtown Washington were two of his favorite places. Although he also regularly attended church in his own neighborhood, Bogardy appeared to derive gratification from the long bus trek. (Washington's subway system did not open until the late 1970s.) These two majestic churches are celebrated for their dramatic and variegated mosaics, depicting Bible stories, the Virgin, Christ, and the saints. The lower-crypt church ofthe National Shrine is a likely source for his painting The Shrine (not illustrated), while the ornate, multihued marble nave of St. Matthew's (built in 1895) seems to have inspired decorative schemes for a number of his works. Another Washington church that Alex Bogardy admired—he sought occasions to take guests there—was the Franciscan Monastery. Sited in a serene residential corner of the Brookland neighborhood, the 1899 monastery is within walking distance of the more modern Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The monastery's decorative scheme is distinctively Victorian, with colorful marble configurations similar to those of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. Its delicate interior decoration, bays, and arcades appear to have been another source of inspiration for the artist.

Surrounding the Franciscan Monastery is a portico and a cloistered garden with grottos and shrines at intervals along a shaded pathway. In the spring, when trees and flowers are beginning to bloom,this garden is quite breathtaking. One of the grottos, the Grotto of Gethsemane, appears to be the basis for Bogardy's painting The Garden of

66 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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Gethsemane. Interestingly, however, the church depicted in the background is the Church of St. Constantine and Helen, a Greek Orthodox parish in northwest Washington.This church had earlier presented an award to Bogardy for his Reflections on the Holy Eucharist(Last Supper).

The many round arches and arcades of these churches he so regularly attended seem to have suggested pictorial solutions to Bogardy. He often painted arches and bays into his compositions, creating frames within frames that permitted him to show several panoramas at one time.

Observe,for example, the round arches in Jesus First Reading the Scriptures. The main narrative of this painting is young Jesus reading at a table. But the window—through which we see a lush garden—is a simple arch, a proscenium that allows another drama to unfold. Seated at Mass in a church such as St. Matthew's, an activity Bogardy engaged in each day, the viewer looks through round arches along the side ofthe nave filled with beautiful narratives based on the scriptures.

Bogardy's painting style shares characteristics with both early-Christian (or Byzantine) and Pre-Raphaelite art. In early-Christian iconography, the figures are flat, frontal, rigid, and frequently floating above the ground. Bogardy's figures have many of the same attributes, particularly his iconic figures.

Moreover, his saints and angels have large eyes and large hands, analogous to early-Christian representation. His backgrounds lack one-point perspective, and many are painted a solid color (the blue of the painting Guardian Angel is a color found in the mosaics of St. Matthew's and the National Shrine).

This use of shallow, pre-Renaissance perspective yielded a number of beautiful, tapestry-like works.

There is also a relationship, though less pronounced, to Pre-Raphaelite art—a late-Victorian style simulated in the decorative mosaics of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. The medievalized aesthetic and the luminous colors of Guardian Angel,for example,evoke this connection.

Rigid symmetry is another attribute of Bogardy's painting. Whether established through architecture, line, color, inscription, balanced arrangement, or all of the above, works such as The School of Cosmetology and The Prayer Group demonstrate his ingenious methods of achieving equilibrium.

Although he rarely returned to Baltimore after leaving that city in the 1930s, Alexander Bogardy was buried next to his parents in a Baltimore cemetery His life was full of singular pursuits of multiple passions, and he had the keen ability to merge some of his wildly divergent interests into works of art that celebrate his devotion to both body and spirit.* Margaret Parsons is headfilm curator at the National Gallery ofArt, Washington, D.C. Marsha Orgeron, Ph.D., is assistantprofessor of film studies at North Carolina State University, Raleigh.

THE HAIR AND ITS SOCIAL IMPORTANCE (detail) 1964 Ink and pencil on paper book cover 9 x 6" Private collection

REFLECTIONS ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST (Last Supper) c. 1970 Oil on artist board 24 36" Private collection

THE PRAYER GROUP c. 1965 Oil on artist board 24 i 36" Private collection

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67

The Americus Group of the American Folk Art Museum brings together folk art enthusiasts under the age of 45 for a variety of engaging educational and social activities. This dynamic group of young art patrons receives unparalleled access to the Museum's resources and gains insight to the vibrant world of traditional and contemporary folk art.

AMERICUS MEMBERS ENJOY EXCLUSIVE BENEFITS, INCLUDING: » » » »

Curatorial tours of special exhibitions Studio visits with local artists Tours of private collections Discounted admission to the Gala opening nights of the American Antiques Show and the Outsider Art Fair » Unlimited free admission to the Museum for one person » Two free guest passes to the Museum » Invitations for two to Member's exhibition previews » A free Museum gift »10% discount at the Museum's Shop

» Special Members-only sales at the Museum shop and partner institution stores » Advance notice and discounts on lectures, Folk Art Explorers' tours, and special events » Annual subscription to Folk Art magazine » Access to the Museum's library » Publication discounts through the Folk Art Collectors' Library JOIN NOW! To learn more about the Americus Group, please contact Radhika Natarajan at 212. 977. 7170, ext. 318, or rnatarajan@folkartmuseum.org.

ABOVE: NINE FIGURES CLIMBING TREES / Eddie Arning (1898-1993) / Austin, Texas / 1972 / oil pastel and pencil on paper / 22 x 32" / American Folk Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Sackton, 1985.1.10

.SO Exhibitors

August 20• 21• 22 770 932-1000 • email: folkfestaellsouthiet www.slothifolkartcom

A Dayin the

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Formerly held in lsonville, Kentucky's only folk art show is now held at the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead. This annual event features the work of more than 40 folk artists from Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, and other states all under one,large tent.

Purchase carvings in wood and stone, primitive paintings, canes, painted furniture, art from found objects, and much more, directly from the artists.

For more information call the Kentucky Folk Art Center at 606.783.2204.

KFAC is open: Monday - Saturday 9 am.- 5 p.m • Sunday 1 - 5 p.m.

Admission: $3 Monday - Saturday • FREE Sunday 102W. First Street • Morehead, KY 40351 • 606.783.2204 www.kyfolkart.org

PRIVATE EVENTS AT THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM Corporate members, Folk Art Circle Patrons, and not-for-profit organizations have the unique opportunity to host private events in the Museum's stunning building in midtown Manhattan. ' Cocktail receptions up to 350 guests ; Seated dinners up to 120 guests Auditorium with state-of-theart AV system for meetings and conferences For more information or to arrange a site visit, please contact Katie Hush at 212. 977. 7170 or e-mail khush@folkartmuseum.org AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM 45 West 53rd Street New York City Tel. 212. 977. 7170 www.folkartmuseum.org

70 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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Produced by Marilyn Gould AIL To benefit Wilton Kiwanis Club and Wilton Only 50 miles from New York City • Merritt Parkway: Exit 39B from the west. Exit 41 from the east • 1-95: Exit 15, north 8 miles • Metro North railroad to Cannondale Station • 1-84. Rt. 7, south 12 miles

MUSEUM

REPRODUCTIONS

PROGRAM Discover the American Folk Art Museum's "new" America Collection" of finely crafted wood and upholstered furniture by Henredon. Available exclusively at Bloomingdale's.

BY ALICE J. HOFFMAN

FOLK ART

Representing more than 300years ofAmerican design, from the late 1600s to thepresent, the American Folk Art Museum CollectionM brings within reach ofthe public the very best ofthepast to be enjoyedfor generations to come.

COLLECTION

* Henredon The Spirit of series of decorative gift wrap and America! The American Folk coordinating products for the Art Museum's"new" America American Folk Art Museum.

Collection" offurniture by Textiles from the museum's colHenredon had its debut on lection, all by unidentified makMarch 16 at Bloomingdale's flag- ers, were the inspiration for three ship store in New York City.Triof the new designs: Bars Quilt cia Foley, designer and author, features the exquisite work of an created the new America CollecAmish qatmaker,the Bird of tion" for the museum,drawing Paradise Quilt Top, a folk art icon, inspiration from the museum's is admired today for the elaborate permanent collection, its furniture and sophisticated designs that archives, and the pure and funcappear in each of the quilt blocks; tional design elements of the and Crewel Bedcover, a richly Federal period, an era in which embellished embroidered bedcov"American"first became synonyer, retains a central medallion formous with originality and mat containing a basket offlownational pride. Foley and the ers. Completing the inspiration museum,in collaboration with for the series is a canvas by Bloomingdale's Home Design William Hawkins and an elaboStudio,chose 27 pieces from the rately designed geometric fraktur collection for the initial launch. from 1820 by Heinrich Seller.

Designed as individual pieces to NeilHouse with Chimney by complement a modern or tradiHawkins,a 20th-century selftional setting,each piece honors taught artist who began painting America and the wealth ofcrafts- when he was 87 years old,feamanship that originated in this tures a joyously bold palette of country. Distinguishing elements red, yellow, and green against of the collection include detailed black and white. Gift wraps are carving, reeding, and inlays; available as 20 x 30" flat sheets, square-tapered and turned legs; with coordinating tote bags, riband subtle finishes ofrich bons, and gift cards. All five mahogany,rubbed black,disdesigns are available nationwide tressed cream, and painted putty. and in the museum's Book and While the America Collection' Gift Shop. Contact MANIis steeped in history,it represents G'Raps for a store near you. a new chapter in luxurious,livable home furnishings. Adapted for News from Museum today's lifestyle, the new America Licensees Collection" is destined to be Share our legacy; look for new cherished by generations to come. products from our family of licensees, featuring unique * MANI-G'Raps The Folk designs inspired by objects from Artistry of Wrap! MANI-G'Raps the museum's collection. added five new designs to its

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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 American Folk Art Museum Collection', please contact us at 212/977-7170.

Family of Licensees Andover Fabrics(212/760-0300) printed fabric by the yard and prepackaged fabric craft kits. Chronicle Books(800/722-6657) notecards.* Crossroads Accessories,Inc. (800/648-6010) quilted fabric totes, handbags,travel cases, and cosmetic bags.* Denyse Schmidt Quilts(800/621-9017)limited-edition quilt collection, decorative pillows, and eye pillows.* Fotofolio(212/226-0923) art postcard books and boxed note cards.* FUNQuilts(708/445-1817)limited-edition quilt collection.* Galison (212/354-8840) portfolio and boxed note cards and jigsaw puzzle.* Henredon (800/444-3682) wood and upholstered furniture. LEAVES Pure Teas(877/5328378)loose tea in decorative tins.* MANI-G'Raps(800/510-7277) decorative gift wrap and coordinating accessories* Mary Myers Studio(757/481-1760) wooden nutcrackers, tree ornaments, and table toppers.* On The Wall Productions,Inc. (800/788-4044) Magic Cubes.* Organic Lands(607/544-1090) organic deli items.

Ozone Design,Inc.(212/563-2990) socks.'PDK Worldwide Enterprises,Inc. (508/676-2155) bedcovers, quilts, and coordinated pillows. Pfaltzgraff(800/9992811) By Request â&#x20AC;˘ The America Collection dinnerware. Takashimaya Company, Ltd.(212/350-0550) home furnishings and decorative accessories (available only in Japan). Wild Apple Graphics, Ltd.(800/756-8359)fine art reproduction prints and posters.* Workman Publishing Co.,Inc.(800/722-7202) Page-A-DayÂŽ Gallery Calendar 2004.* *Available in the American Folk Art Museum Book and Gift Shop.

Pfaltzgraff's 'America" Returns Plaltzgraff is proud to re-introduce its popular, limited edition America collection of dinnerware and accessories. Designed in collaboration with the American Folk Art Museum, America was first introduced in 1983. Its colors and decorations were inspired by the "Bird of Paradise Quilt Top," a nineteenth century bedcover masterpiece in the Museum's permanent collection.

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FOLK ART

COLLECTION

BOOKS

OF

INTEREST

he following recent titles are great gift-giving ideas. All titles are available at the American Folk Art Museum's Book and Gift Shop at 45 West 53rd Street, New York City.To order, please call 212/265-1040. Museum members receive a 10 percent discount.

T

Crit

American Anthem:Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum, Stacy C. Hollander, Brooke Davis Anderson,and Gerard C.Werticin, American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N.Abrams,Inc., 2001,432 pages, $65

American Folk Art

Critters IA to AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEITh ASSOCIATION WITH BIL CHARITABL1 TRUST; HARDCOVER, 80 PAGES; 62 FULL-COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS; $12.95 CRITTERS A TO Z is a very unusual alphabet book! Written for children ages 5 years and up,it showcases a delightful collection of the earth's creatures as only folk artists could have interpreted them. With its engaging and interactive text, you'P learn about the armadillo and the zebra and everything in betweenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as well as the artists who made them.

CRITTERS A TO Z is available from the American Folk Art Museum's Book and Gift Shop at 45 West 53rd Street.

Museum members receive a 10 percent discount. For mail orders, please call 212. 265. 1040, ext. 124.

78 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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American Fancy:Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840, Sumpter T. Priddy III, Chipstone Foundation,2004,250 pages,$75 American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian GO'to the American Folk Art Museum, Stacy C. Hollander, American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams,Inc., 2001,572 pages,$75 American Sey-TaughtArt: An Illustrated Analysis of20thCentury Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies, Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, McFarland,2003,322 pages, $45 American Vernacular:New Discoveries in Folk, Self-Taught, and Outsider Sculpture, Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, Bulfmch Press, 2002,304 pages,$75 The Art ofAdolf Wolfli: St. Adolf-Giant-Creation, Daniel Baumann and Ellca Spoerri, with Edward M.Gomez,American Folk Art Museum in association with Princeton University Press,2003, 112 pages, $29.95

The Art ofthe Game:A Collection ofVintage Game Boards, Tim Chambers,Shaver and Chambers,2001,218 pages,$125 Art ofthe Needle: One Hundred Masterpiece Quiltsfrom the Shelburne Museum, Henry Joyce, Shelburne Museum,2003,140 pages,$24.95 Baseballfor Everyone:Storiesfrom the Great Game,Janet Wyman Coleman with Elizabeth V.Warren, American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams,Inc.,2003,48 pages, $16.95 Black Threads:An African American Quilting Sourcebook, Kyra Hicks, McFarland,2003,24 pages,$38.50 Coverlets and the Spirit ofAmerica, Joseph Shein and Melinda Zongor, Schiffer Publishing,2002, 224 pages,$69.95 Critters A to Z, Barbara Lovenheim,ed., American Folk Art Museum in association with BIL Charitable Trust,2003,80 pages, $12.95 Darger:The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum,Brooke Davis Anderson,American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001, 128 pages, $29.95

Henry Darger:In the Realms ofthe Unreal,John McGregor,Delano Greenidge Editions,2001,680 pages, $85 Home Sweet Home:The House in American Folk Art, Deborah Harding and Laura Fisher, Rizzoli, 2001, 160 pages,$50 James Castle:Art and Existence, Chris Schnoor,J. Crist Gallery, 2004,52 pages, $15 Jonathan Lerman:Drawings by an Artist with Autism, Lyle Rexer, George Braziller, 2002,127 pages, $22.95 The Kingdoms ofEdward Hicks, Carolyn J. Weekley, Harry N. Abrams,Inc., 1999,254 pages, $39.95 Painted Saws:Jacob Kass, Lee Kogan, American Folk Art Museum,2002,56 pages, $14.95 The Perfect Game:America Looks at Baseball, Elizabeth V Warren, American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams,Inc., 2003,150 pages, $29.95 Phaidon Atlas ofContemporary World Architecture, Phaidon Press, Inc., 2004,842 pages,$160 Raw Vision Outsider Art Sourcebook, John Maizels, Raw Vision, Ltd.,228 pages, 2002,$29.95 Samplers:How to Compare and Value, Stephen Huber and Carol Huber, Miller's-Mitchell Beazley, 2002,176 pages, $27.50

Sins and Needles:A Story of Spiritual Mending, Ray Materson and Melanie Materson, Algonquin Books,2002,212 pages, $20.95 Symphonic Poem:The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Columbus Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams,Inc., 2002,200 pages, $45 Tools ofHer Ministry: The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan, William A. Fagaly, American Folk Art Museum in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 2004,120 pages, $35 Uncommon Legacies:Native American Artfrom the Peabody Essex Museum,John R. Grimes, Christian F. Feest, and Mary Lou Curran, American Federation of Arts in association with University of Washington Press,2002,272 pages, $60 Vernacular Visionaries:International Outsider Art, Annie Carlano, Museum ofInternational Folk Art, Santa Fe,in association with Yale University Press, 2003, 156 pages, $45

Tools of Her Ministry The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan Exhibition catalog

By William A. Fagaly

Wonders to Behold: The Visionary Art ofMyrtice West, Carol Crown, Mustang Publishing, 1999,143 pages, $55

Foreword by Gerard C. Wertkin Essays by Jason Berry and Helen M. Shannon

Work Life, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien,The Monacelli Press, 2000,270 pages,$60 You Are Here:Personal Geographics and Other Maps ofthe Imagination, Katharine Harmon,Princeton Architectural Press,2004,192 pages, $19.95

Includes chronology and checklist of the exhibition Published by the American Folk Art Museum in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 2004, hardcover, 120 pages, 90 full-color illustrations, $35 Available at the American Folk Art Museum Book and Gift Shop, 45 West 53rd Street, New York City.

Museum members receive a 10 percent discount.

For mail orders, please call 212. 265.1040, ext.124.

The Schlumpers:Art Without Borders, Gunther Gercken and Christoph Eissing-Christopherson, eds., Springer Wien New York, 2001,219 pages,$44

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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79

MUSEUM

Have you remembered the American Folk Art Museum in your will?

INFORMATION

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

On view at the American Folk Art Museum 45 West 53rd Street New York City 212/265-1040 "Talking Quilts" Floor 2 Through Aug. 1 "Tools of Her Ministry: The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan" Floors 3 and 4 Through Sept. 26 "A Collection Sampler: Recent Gifts to the Museum" Floor 5 Through Oct. 3

Traveling Exhibitions "Painted Saws:Jacob Kass" William D. Cannon Art Gallery, Carlsbad Library, Carlsbad, Calif.

760/602-2021 Through June 27 Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, N.C. 336/725-1904 July 16-Sept. 26 "Tools of Her Ministry: The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan" New Orleans Museum of Art 504/488-2631 Nov. 13,2004-Jan. 16,2005 Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago 312/243-9088 Feb. 11-May 28,2005

HOURS AND ADMISSIONS

p9

AMERICAN ELEPHANT WEATHERVANE / artist unidentified / probably Bridgeport, Connecticut / late 19th century / paint on pine with iron /19% x 481 / 4 x 1" / American Folk Art Museum, promised gift of Ralph Esmerian, P1.2001.335

hrough a bequest, you can provide enduring support for the American Folk Art Museum.The museum's Clarion Society recognizes individuals who have remembered the museum in their wills and through other planned gifts. Members of the Clarion Society will be listed annually in Folk Art magazine and invited to exclusive events throughout the year.

If you have made a bequest to the American Folk Art Museum or would like to do so, please contact Radhika Natarajan at 212. 977. 7170,ext. 318,or email rnatarajan@folkartmuseum.org.

80 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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0 MUSEUM

American Folk Art Museum 45 West 53rd Street New York, NY 10019 212/265-1040 wvvw.folkartmuseum.org

MUSEUM HOURS Wednesdayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Sunday 10:30Am-5:30pm Friday 10:30Am-7:30pm Monday and Tuesday Closed SHOP HOURS Daily Friday

10:00Am-6:00pm 10:00Am-8:00pm

ADMISSION Adults Students Seniors Children under 12 Members

$9 $7 $7 Free Free

Friday evening 5:30-7:30Pm

Free to all

Group tours available, call for information 212/265-1040 Public Transportation Subway E or V to Fifth Avenue/53rd Street F to 47-50th Street,

Rockefeller Center Bus Ml,M2,M3,M4, M5,M6,or M7

Ricco/ Maresca Gallery New York, NY

Keny Galleries, Columbus, OH The Ames Gallery Berkeley, CA

Lindsay Gallery Columbus, OH

Webb Gallery Waxahachie, TX

Galerie St. Etienne New York, NY

The Intuit Show Odd Fellows Antiques Mt. Vernon, ME

J. Crist Boise, ID

Angela Usrey, Chattanooga, TN CavinMorris Gallery New York, NY

of folk and outsider art

American Primitive Gallery New York, NY Ann Nathan Gallery Chicago, IL

The Pardee Collection Iowa City, IA

K.S. Art New York, NY

A sale featuring top dealers from across the country

October 1 - 3, 2004 847 W. Jackson Boulevard Chicago, Illinois Show hours Saturday, October 2, 11 am - 6 pm Sunday, October 3, noon - 5 pm Benefit preview Friday, October 1,6 pm - 10 pm Panel discussion and continental breakfast at Intuit on Sunday, October 3, 10 am

Bill Traylor, Black Bull, c. 1939-43, 11.25" x 17.25", Courtesy Carl Hammer Gallery

Yard Dog Austin, TX

Russell Bowman Art Advisory Chicago, IL

Maggie Roche Chicago, IL

Marion Harris New York, NY

Phyllis Kind Gallery New York, NY

Hypoint Antiques Barrington, IL

Rising Fawn Folk Art Lookout Mountain, TN

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art 312-243-9088 intuit@art.org www.art.org

Carl Hammer Gallery Chicago, IL

MUSEUM

NEWS

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TSUI!

TEVILISL7:elE

BY VANESSA DAVIS

E "TALKING GUILTS" AND "TOOLS OF HER MINISTRY" OPENING RECEPTION he American Folk Art Museum hosted its own lively Mardi Gras celebration on Feb.24 with the opening reception for the exhibitions "Talking Quilts" and "Tools of Her Ministry:The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan."Members, trustees, staff; and museum friends adorned themselves with metallic Mardi Gras beads,sampled chocolate coins and various refreshments, and enjoyed the rousing soundings oftwo traditional New Orleans jazz bands, the 66th Street Stompers and Stanley King and the Washboard Kings.The music was generously sponsored by Sandra Jaffe, cofounder ofPreservation Hall in New Orleans.

"Talking Quilts," organized by Stacy C.Hollander,the museum's senior curator and director of exhibitions, will be on view through Aug. 1. On hand to walk through the exhibition with Hollander and Director Gerard C. Wertkin were quiltmaker Robin Schwalb,who has two quilts in the installation,lenders Janet M. Green,Laura Fisher, and Penny and Allan Katz,and several members ofJessie Telfair's(1913-1986) family, who traveled long distances to see her Freedom quilt.

Both Schwalb and quiltmaker Kyra Hicks gave special talks about their bodies ofwork,on Feb.21 and March 5,respectively, as part ofthe exhibition programming."Talking Quilts" is made possible in part by Fairfield Processing Corporation. For more on the exhibition, see Stacy Hollander's essay beginning on page 32 and related programming on pages 90-91.

"Tools ofHer Ministry"is the first retrospective ofSister

T

82 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

Gertrude Morgan's work and will be on view through Sept.26.

Guest curator William A.Fagaly and Brooke Davis Anderson, director and curator ofthe museum's Contemporary Center, were present to greet lenders and old friends ofthe artist's. Guests included Fagaly's colleague E.John Bullard, director ofthe New Orleans Museum ofArt;lenders Claudia de Monte,Ed McGowin, Henry Meltzer, and Rosemary Kent,who wrote about Sister Morgan in the first issue ofAndy Warhol's Interview magazine in 1974; George Wein,founder of the New Orleans Jazz Fest, and his wife,Joyce; Natatia Griffith, president ofThe New York Coalition of100 Black Women;artists Tony Oursler,Ellen Gallagher,and Keith Sonnier,Dan Cameron, chief curator at the New Museum

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Trustee Selig D. Sacks and William A. Fagaly at the lenders dinner

Trustee Joyce B. Cowin and Janet M. Green

William A. Fagaly and Gerard C. Wertkin

Gerard C. Wertkin and Natatia Griffith

E. John Bullard and Lowery Stokes Sims

Gavin Ashworth, museum photographer, and Janey Fire, photo services director

FOLK ART PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT FLYNN

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ing Sister Gertrude Morgan,"the Dr.Joseph M.Winston Annual Memorial Lecture,featuring panelists Susann Craig,Lee Friedlander, Sandra Jaffe, Rod McKuen,and moderator Brooke Davis Anderson,will be held on May 7. See pages 90-91 for more programming."Tools of Her Ministry:The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan"is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts,The Horace W.Goldsmith Foundation,The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York State Council on the Arts,The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Robert A.Roth and Cleo F. Wilson,and the LEF Foundation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 120-page catalog; see page 79 for details. Also available at the Penny and Allan Katz museum's Book and Gift Shop is a reissue of Sister Gertrude Morgan's 1971 recording Let's Make a ofContemporary Art, New York; Record,for $15.95; museum memand Lowery Stokes Sims,director ofthe Studio Museum in Harlem. bers receive a 10 percent discount on all shop merchandise.

The exhibition will travel to the A special dinner for lenders to New Orleans Museum ofArt both exhibitions was held after the (Nov. 13,2004-Jan. 16,2005)and opening reception at the wonderful Intuit:The Center for Intuitive home of Trustee Selig D.Sacks (Feb. Chicago Art, Outsider and and his wife, Angela. Both exhibi11—May 28,2005). For more on tions were lauded by critics at the Sister Morgan,see "Conversation" New York Times. Ken Johnson on page 28. wrote that the best examples in Related programming "Talking Quilts" reveal an "invenincluded the Annual Nathan Lerner Lecture on Feb.26, which tive play with the visual aspects of letters, words,and sentences that featured a curatorial overview by also has a distinctly modem Bill Fagaly;"Revelation in the appeal." Michael ICimmelman,in Headquarters of Sin," a sympohis review of"Tools of Her Minsium on March 20 with Carol called the exhibition "etheistry," catalog exhibition and Crown real" and described Morgan's works contributors Jason Berry and Helen M.Shannon;an exhibition as having"an uncanny grace.... It would be heaven if works like hers tour on April 14 led by Brooke Davis Anderson, who highlighted were eternally before our eyes.The world not being heaven,this is Morgan's decorative objects; and your opportunity to see them.The a performance of traditional New has come,as Sister Morgan day Washboard the by jazz Orleans might say."

Kings on April 16."Remember-

Robin Schwalb

Henry Meitner and Rosemary Kent

Ellen Gallagher

George Wein, Claudia de Monte, Ed McGowin, and Joyce Wein

Don Groscost, museum art installer, with daughter Katya

Juliana Drieyer, Contemporary Center intern SPRING/SUMMER 2004 FOLK ART 83

MUSEUM

NEWS

Oar'aliins- a ( Ye'eaac 9/914e- a/lop

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I Teen docents Natasha Alexander and Joshua â&#x20AC;˘ Rodriguez leading an exhibition tour for their classmates from Urban Academy

Two RIVERS ANTICUS SHOW & GARDEN TOUR June 12-13, 2004 Rumson Country Day School 35 Bellevue Avenue, Rumson, NJ Featuring six rarely viewed gardens and over 25 nationally recognizedftne antiques dealers.

TEEN DOCENTS n Jan. 12,two participants in the American Folk Art Museum's teen docent program led a tour of"The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball" for their fellow students from Urban Academy,a public high school in Manhattan. Students Natasha Alexander and Joshua Rodriguez explained guest curator Elizabeth V.Warren's concept behind"The Perfect Game"and shared their knowledge ofsuch

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pieces as Ray Materson's needlework 1963 NewYorkYankees:Nine Portraits and Charles M.Conlon's photograph Ed Walsh's Spitler.

Following the tour, Natasha and Joshua answered many questions and engaged in lively dialogue with their fellow students. For more information on the teen docent program,contact Rebecca Hayes, manager ofschool and docent programs, at 212/2651040,ext. 119.

HOLIDAY PARTY ANTIQUES SHOW Saturday, June 12 10:00am - 6:00pm Sunday, June 13 I I:30am - 5:00pm

GARDEN TOUR Saturday, June 12 9:00am - 4:00pm Sunday, June 13 I 1:30am - 3:30pm

Proceeds beneftt The Jacqueline M. Wentz Comprehensive Breast Center at Monmouth Medical Center An affiliate ofthe Saint Bamabas Health Care System Tickets: $25 Antiques Show & Garden Tour in advance $35 Antiques Show & Garden Tour at the door $10 Antiques Show only For advance tickets, please call Monmouth Medical Center Foundation at

732-923-6886 â&#x20AC;˘ www.mhcf.org

84 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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n Dec.4,2003, more than 200 museum members joined the museum's staff for the first annual Members' Holiday Party. Guests mingled and ate delicious home-baked holiday cookies and listened to the music of the Ebony Hillbillies, a banjo and fiddle duo. Stacy C. Hollander, senior curator,led an enlightening tour of the exhibition"A Collection Sampler: Recent Gifts to the Museum."

Rebecca Hayes, manager of school and docent programs,led children on a special tour of"The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball." Children also had the opportunity to participate in a

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scavenger hunt based on Critters A to Z,an alphabet book illustrated with images from the museum's collection and published in association with the BIL Charitable Trust. A balloon artist created animal-shaped balloons,and Madeleine Gill,family programs coordinator,facilitated a "critters" magnet-making workshop. A free door-prize drawing and a special 20 percent discount in the museum shop rounded out the evening.

The membership department wishes to thank the museum's members,friends, and stafffor helping to make this party a great success.

CRAIG FARROW Cabinetmaker

HAVANA NIGHTS wenty-four museum members from across the United States joined the museum's Folk Art Explorers for"An Insider's View: The Art and Architecture ofCuba," a tour that took place Nov.8-15,2003.The group took a chartered flight from New York directly to Havana,where they spent four days visiting folk artists, museums,and galleries and listening

SUZANNAM KELLNER

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to Cuban music.The next two days were spent in the town of Cienfuegos, with more visits to folk artists and galleries. A high point ofthe trip was an excursion to the folk art environment in the garden of Hector Gallo,who creates faces using found objects. For details on upcoming tours, please contact the membership department at 212/977-7170.

THE CLARION SOCIETY he American Folk Art Museum is pleased to announce the formation of the Clarion Society, to recognize individuals who have remembered the museum in their wills and through other planned gifts.

The first annual reception for the Clarion Society, hosted by Ralph Esmerian,chairman of the board oftrustees, is being planned for

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the fall. Members ofthe Clarion Society will be listed in the winter issue ofFolk Art magazine and will be invited to exclusive events throughout the year. If you have made a bequest to the museum or would like to do so, please contact Cathy Michelsen, director of development,at 212/977-7170, ext. 316.

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

Please call 203-266-0276

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

85

MUSEUM

NEWS

OUTSIDER ART FAIR BENEFIT PREVIEW or the 12th consecutive year, the Outsider Art Fair, at the Puck Building in Manhattan, was the place to be to see exciting outsider and visionary art. The American Folk Art Museum kicked things offon Thursday,Jan. 22, with its annual opening night benefit preview.

The Outsider Art Fair is a threeday event,organized by Sanford L.Smith and Associates, that showcases contemporary selftaught artists' work.The wares of 33 galleriesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from Canada,England,France, Germany,Haiti, Holland,and throughout the United Statesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;attracted thousands ofvisitors.

The benefit preview came together beautifully through the efforts of Katie Hush,the museum's special events manager, with the help ofbenefit chairs Ling and Thomas Isenberg, Laura and Richard Parsons, Angela and Selig Sacks,and Alexis Shein and George Contos.

The contributing vice chairs were Gayle Perkins Atkins and Charles N.Atkins, Didi and David Barrett, Edward V. Blanchard Jr., Betsey and Sam Farber, Audrey B. Heckler,and Kate Stettner and Carl Lobel Benefit guests milled around the show while enjoying scrumptious hors d'oeuvres provided by The Catering Company.The music ofMecca Bodega,with Paul Mueller on dulcimer and Marc Mueller playing found objects; the Ebony Hillbillies; and Sean Grissom's Cajun cello were the perfect accompaniment to the evening's lively and eclectic atmosphere.

The entire show offered inspiring things to see for both the veteran collector and newcomers to the field. Works by

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86 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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self-taught artists ofrenown were on view,such as a large drawing

by Martin Ramirez at the Phyllis Kind Gallery booth and a rare silk-screened catalog of Bill Traylor's 1940 one-man show at the New South Art Center in Montgomery,Ala., which was on display at the Judy A.Saslow Gallery booth. Unusual discoveries included cartoon sketchbooks

by Frank Johnson at the Carl Hammer Gallery booth and a kinetic coconut sculpture by Edward Nagrodski at the American Primitive Gallery booth.

The museum's educational programs and benefit events associated with the fair truly made it feel like a convention ofsorts.

"Conversing with Contemporary Folk Art," a series ofguided tours, highlighted the contemporary works on view at the museum.On Wednesday,Jan. 21, the Epstein/Powell Gallery in SoHo hosted an informal conversation and cocktail reception for the museum's Americus Group.

Approximately 45 attendees were treated to an engaging dialogue as gallery owners Gene Epstein and Kay Powell discussed the works of Rex Clawson,Victor Joseph Gatto,Justin McCarthy,and Lamont Alfred "Old Ironsides" Pry with Brooke Davis Anderson, director and curator ofthe museum's Contemporary Center.

On Friday,Jan.23,the membership department led the annual Folk Art Explorers'day trip "Inside Outsider Art in New York," a tour that featured two Manhattan private collections.

On Sunday,Jan. 25,Trustee Edward V. Blanchard Jr. graciously hosted a brunch in his home as a benefit fund-raiser for the museum's Contemporary Center. A highlight ofthe morn-

ing was a tour through the extensive Blanchard-Hill collection led by art historian Roger Cardinal.

One ofthe most anticipated events ofthe Outsider Art Fair weekend was the Anne Hill Blanchard Symposium,"Uncommon Artists XII: A Series ofCameo Talks." Organized by Lee Kogan and presented by the museum's Folk Art Institute and the Contemporary Center on Saturday, Jan. 23,the panel included Roger Cardinal,who discussed the work of"modern cave artist" Cristina Sefalosha; William A.Fagaly, who gave an overview ofthe life and art of Sister Gertrude Morgan; Dr.Pamela Sachant,who analyzed aspects of Eddie Arning's oeuvre; and Dr.Pamela Rogers, who presented works by artists with autism.

The museum thanks all of the artists, galleries, contributors, coordinators, and the many guests who attended the Outsider Art Fair and its related programs this year. Each new fair brings fascinating new discoveries!

THE AMERICAN ANTIQUES SHOW he American Antiques Show,a four-day benefit organized by the American Folk Art Museum,was held Jan. 15-18 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City A group of45 exhibitors created a dazzling display ofAmerican objects ranging from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Look for a full report on The American Antiques Show and the gala opening night preview in the fall 2004 issue ofFolk Art.

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Phyllis Hollis and Charles N. Atkins

Dan Nadel with Frank Johnson books at the Carl Hammer Gallery booth

Leo and Dorothea Rabkin looking at Emery Blagdon's work at the Cavin-Morris Gallery booth Michael Wasserman examining Ray Materson's embroideries at the American Primitive Gallery booth

Roger Cardinal and t Trustee Edward V. Blanchard Jr. at the benefit brunch

1111 Sini von Reis ind Craig Knobles Lael and Eugenie Johnson with Lael's birthday portrait at the Phyllis Kind Gallery booth

Randall Morris, Brooke Davis Anderson, Jose Bedia, and !do Hernandez Bedia

Diane Smith, Angela Sacks, and Brooke Gadasi

Uncommon Artists panelists, from left: Roger Cardinal, Lee Kogan, Pamela Sachant, Pamela Rogers, William A. Fagaly, and Gerard C. Wertkin

George Contos, Alexis Shein, and Trustee Kristina Johnson

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT FLYNN

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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87

MUSEUM

NEWS

OBITUARY

Baseball window display by Steve Gerberich, June 2003

ARBIE WILLIAMS (1916-2003) rbie Williams, who learned to sew when she was 8 years old and to piece quilts at the age of 10 under the tutelage of her mother, died on Nov. 8,2003. Born in Paducah, Texas,Williams married twice and raised nine children. She worked as a maid, a cook, a WINDOW DRESSING cocktail waitress, a nurse's aide, a xhibitions aren't the only the work of Gerberich or Norseamstress, and a farmer. She draw at the American Folk man,please call the museum moved to California in 1945; Art Museumâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the creative shop at 212/265-1040,ext. 124. when her children were grown, displays in windows ofthe Book she took up quilting again, with and Gift Shop have long the desire to create a quilt for Liza Jane Norman's window display. November 2003 attracted the interest of each member of her family. passersby. Recent winWilliams's adventurous and dows have been adorned improvisational style led her to with eye-catching instaljoke to quilt scholar Eli Leon, lations by artist Steve her advocate and friend,"I'm Gerberich and designer going to be up to something real Liza Jane Norman. Gerdangerous when I get through bench's two baseballwith this." themed,kinetic sculptural Williams's work has been displays featured a catcher included in the exhibitions catching balls and mon"Who'd a Thought It: Improvisakeys swinging from bats, tion in African American Quiltwhile his holiday window making"(San Francisco Craft depicted a whimsical and Folk Art Museum,1987), candy-cane factory Norand "Tree of Life"(American man's imaginative presenVisionary Art Museum,Baltitations of her colorful more, 1996),among several othmufflers, hats, and miters. In 1994,the University of tens presented a fleecy California, Santa Cruz, mounted fantasy during the bitterly 2 a one-person show of her work. cold winter season. For :1 That same year she participated more information about i in the Smithsonian Institution's

A

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"Festival of American Folklife" (1994); one of Williams's quilts was illustrated on the festival poster.

Her quilts were also a major segment ofthe video produced in conjunction with traveling exhibition "Recycled Reseen: Folk Art ofthe Global Scrap Heap," organized by the Museum ofInternational Folk Art, Santa Fe. A selection of Williams's quilts were also on display as part of President Clinton's inauguration, to which she was invited. As a senior citizen, she guided a group ofwomen at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif,who made quilts for children with AIDS. One ofher quilts is in the permanent collection ofthe Oakland Museum of California.

Arbie Williams is survived by four sons,Hobert Johnson, Raymond,Leslie, and Warren;four daughters, Geneva Peterson, Juanita Parker,Imergine Williams-Wash,and Lillie B. Hayden;33 grandchildren;45 great-grandchildren; and five great-great-grandchildren. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Lee Kogan

LIBRARY DATABASE GRANT n January,the museum's Shirley K. Schlafer Library was awarded a grant of$5,175 from the Metropolitan New York Library Council(METRO)to pay for the conversion ofthe card catalog to electronic format. Records for the library's holdings of more than 10,000 volumes will be made available in an Internet-accessible database by the end ofthe year.The

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collections form one ofthe largest single repositories of materials on American folk art and international self-taught artists.The library also houses many rare exhibition catalogs,19th-century craftwork manuals,and European publications on art brut not widely held by United States libraries.

METRO is one ofnine New York State Reference and Research

Library Resources Councils,representing libraries from local schools, universities, museums,and public libraries, as well as other organizations and businesses. In addition to the Retrospective Conversion Grants,a competitive annual program funded by the state ofNew York,these regional systems promote and facilitate resourcesharing and new technological

initiatives among their members.

Current important programs include subsidized access to major bibliographic and full-text databases,interlibrary loans,reciprocal access,and professional development and training. For more information on the Shirley K. Schlafer Library,contact James Mitchell,librarian, at 212/2651040,ext. 110.

INVEST IN ANTIQUES... PERIOD. BARN STAR PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS

IN AUGUST

IN JUNE

TWO GREAT SHOWS,ONE CONVENIENT LOCATION!

WEEK MID MANCHESTER ANTIQUES

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aturdag, JunR 5 'Rain or(5hin Over 150 D,zolsir6 early-Buging: 86m - Wa m, 25 Gpfzral f1dmi68ion: " 10m - 5pm,($8 fl &writ for Thit GIOD pousg MUB1ZUM nnd Goir Jogkll Garda)

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Wednesday, August 11 9a.m. - 7p.m.

AND

Thursday, August 12 11a.m. - 5p.m.

Admission $10.00 (reentry with hand stamp)

Featuring 111 outstanding dealers exhibiting 18th, 19th & early 20th c. authentic antiques in room settings.

• On-site shipper • Outdoor barbecue

Purchase our 2-Show Ticket for $30 at Mid-Week and save $5 off Early-Buying at The Bedford Pickers Market on Friday, Aug. 13

IN SEPTEMBER

The Antiques In A iledford Pickers Cow Pasture Market...

Russell Carrell's Original

Saturday, Septemb Early buying, 8am - 10am, $20

ado Nor

me rain or shine to join o r 100 relive a traditio arted ealers the a witury ago almost highly resp talk. Russell arrell.

Located at the original Carrell t 92 Canaan Road(Rte Home

jzi QyalityjzIntiques Show Friday,August 13 111 antiques specialists from across the country offerfresh-to-the-market quality antiques in room-settings.

Early Buying: 9am -11am,$25 General Admission:llam -4pm, $8 end your week with a Greauintique!

w benefits Visiting Nurs

ociation

LOCATED AT THE WAYFARER INN 121 South River Road, Bedford, NH - Next to MACY'S (603) 622-3766

FOR INFORMATION CALL (845) 876-0616 www.barnstar.com

PUBLIC

PROGRAMS

tdi

CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN FOLK ARTIST

MENDELSON JOE

represented by

Karen Robinson Gallery 5 Duncan Street East GALLERY HOURS Huntsville, Ontario, Canada NH 1v9 Open Wednesday 705-7E7-1664 through Sunday from: info@karenrobinsongallery.com June to October — 12 noon to 6 pm www.karenrobinsongallery.com November to May — by appointment

Introducing

GREGORY BLACKSTOCK

Unless otherwise specified, all programs are held at the American Folk Art Museum,45 West 53rd Street, New York City For more information about programs taking place in July and August, please call the education department at 212/265-1040,ext. 102,or pick up the museum's Public Programs brochure.

DR. JOSEPH M. WINSTON ANNUAL MEMORIAL LECTURE Panel Discussion: Remembering Sister Gertrude Morgan Friday, May 7 6:30 PM $15 general admission $10 members,seniors, and students Susann Craig,folk art collector; Lee Friedlander, photographer; Sandra Jaffe, co-founder of Preservation Hall, New Orleans; Rod McKuen,songwriter and poet Moderator: Brooke Davis Anderson, director and curator,The Contemporary Center, American Folk Art Museum FAMILY PROGRAMS Folk Art Fun for Families (for ages 5 and up) Sundays 2:00-4:00 PM $10 per family $8 per member family Tickets include museum admission. Reservations are required.

Please call the education department for details.

May 2 Little Quilt Cards May 16 Paper QuiltTalk June 6 Shout-Out Megaphones June 20 Tell It to the Whole World

GARDE RAIL GALLERY SEATTLE, WA TEL. 206.721.0107 WWW.GARDE-RAIL.COM

90 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

The Baskets 12 x 27 inches graphite, ink, crayon on paper

FOLK ART

GALLERY TOURS Take a Break for Folk Art Thursdays 12:00-1:00 PM May 6 and June 3 A Walk with Sister Gertrude Morgan Brooke Davis Anderson,director and curator,The Contemporary Center, American Folk Art Museum May 13 and June 10 Talking AboutTalking Quilts Stacy C. Hollander, senior curator and director ofexhibitions, American Folk Art Museum May 20 and June 17 Perusing the Permanent Collection Lee Kogan, director of the Folk Art Institute and curator ofspecial projects,The Contemporary Center, American Folk Art Museum QUILTS ON SCREEN Friday, May 21 and June 25 2:00 PM Screenings of a variety ofvideos about quilt artists and techniques.

Please call the education department for details.

THERE'S AN AL SEEING EYE WATCHNG YOU Sister Gertrude Morgan New Orleans n.d.

Acrylic and/or tempera, pencil, and pen and ink on paper 6% x 11" Collection of the Jaffe Family

DROP-IN EXHIBITION TOURS

CAMP PROGRAMS

Wednesdays through Fridays, 12:00 and 2:00 Pm Tours are facilitated by experienced and knowledgeable fellows of the Folk Art Institute as well as docents. Please call the education department for more information,or check times upon visiting the museum.

Summer camp programs at the American Folk Art Museum will explore the themes of the museum's children's book Critters A to Z and "Megaphones,Messages, and Art," based on the exhibitions "Talking Quilts" and "Tools of Her Ministry:The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan," as well as the museum's permanent collection. Day camp programs are offered in July and August.

All programs are appropriate for K-12 students. Interactive tours and workshops with reservations begin at 10:45 AM,Wednesday through Friday. Please call 212/265-1040,ext. 119,for more details.

SCHOOL AND ADULT GROUP TOURS

For information about booking school and other group tours, please call the education department.The museum is fully accessible and offers tours for groups with special needs. Additional lead time may be necessary to arrange these tours.

The American Folk Art Museum gratefidly acknowledges the support ofthe followingfundersfor its exhibitions andprograms:"Tools ofHer Ministry: The Art ofSister Gertrude Morgan"is madepossible in part by the National Endowmentfor the Arts, The Horace W Goldsmith Foundation, The Andy WarholFoundationfor the VisualArts, the New York State Council on the Arts, TheJudith Rothschild Foundation, RobertA. Roth and Cleo F Wilson, and the LEFFoundation. "Talking Quilts"is madepossible in part by Fairfield Processing Corporation. Publicprograms are made possible in part

by Consolidated Edison Company and the New York City Department of CulturalAft:airs.

HUBER ALEXANDRA new works on-line and at the gallery BEVERLY KAYE 15 LORRAINE DRIVE WOODBRIDGE, CT

203.387.5700 artbrut.com by appointment

www.maryshelleyfolkart.com

SPRING/SUMMER 2004

FOLK ART

91

TRUSTEES/DONORS

AMERICAN

FOLK

ART

MUSEUM

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Executive Committee Ralph 0.Esmerian Chairman ofthe Board L.John Wilkerson President Frances Sirota Martinson, Esq. Executive Vice President and Chairman,Executive Committee Lucy C.Danziger Executive Vice President Joan M.Johnson Vice President Barry D.Briskin Treasurer Jacqueline Fowler Secretary Joyce B. Cowin

Samuel Farber Robert L. Hirschhorn Laura Parsons Members Didi Barrett Akosua Barthwell Evans Edward V. Blanchard Jr. Paul W.Coon Barbara Cate

David L Davies Laurence D.Fink Susan Gutfreund ICristina Johnson,Esq. Taryn Gottlieb Leavitt Nancy Mead George H.Meyer,Esq. Cyril I. Nelson J. Randall Plummer Margaret Z. Robson

Selig D.Sacks, Esq. Bonnie Strauss Nathaniel J. Sutton Richard H.Walker, Esq. Thistees Emeriti Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Cordelia Hamilton George F. Shaskan Jr.

CAPITAL CAMPAIGN DONORS The American Folk Art Museum announced a $34.5 million campaign to construct and endow its new home on West 53rd Street.

As of June 30, 2003,the following donors have contributed $33,800,000: Marjorie W.Abel James 8c Gail Addiss Dr.& Mrs. Karl P. Adler Akonda-Owsley Foundation Judith Alexander George R.Allen & Gordon L.Wyckoff,Raccoon Creek Antiques American Capital Access The American Folk Art Society Barbara Anderson Ingrid & Richard Anderson Marna Anderson Marie T. Annoual Aarne Anton Barbara Ardizone Marion Armstrong R.R. Atkins Foundation Lois S.8c Gad Avigad Joan 8c Darwin Bahm Marcia Bain Lori Ann Baker, Baker 8c Co. Designs Ltd. Marianne E. Balazs Bankers Trust Company Barn Star Productions,Inc. Dish &David Barrett Jimi Barton, Rhinebeck Antiques Fair Joyce &Ron Bassin/Bird In Hand Denny Beach Patricia Beatty Mary F. Beck Judy 8c Barry Bell in honor of Alice 8c Ron Hoffman Philip 8c Leah Bell Laurine Hawkins Ben-Dov Mrs. Arthur M.Berger Julie M.Bemson Big Apple Wrecking &Construction Corporation Mrs. George P. Bissell Jr. Diana H.Bittel Edward V. Blanchard Jr. &M.Anne Hill Lenore & Stephen Blank Bloomberg L.P. The Badman Foundation Booth Ferris Foundation Robert,Katharine 8c Courtney Booth Catherine &Chris Botta Marilyn W.Bottjer Ronald Bourgeault, Northeast Auctions Edith S.&Barry D. Brislcin, Shirley K. Schlafer Foundation Susan Brodish Florence Brody Sheila 8c Auron Brog R. Scott Bromley The Brown Foundation,Inc. Curtis F. Brown,Hayden Goldberg Mr.&Mrs.Edward James Brown Gail Brown Marc Brown &Laurene Krasny Brown J. Bruce Antiques

92 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

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Fred &Theresa Buchanan in memory of Sybil Gibson Charles &Deborah Burgess Jim Burk Antique Shows The Burnett Group Joyce A.Burns Marcy L Burns,American Indian Arts Paul &Dana Caan Lewis P. Cabot Elinor B. Cahn Mr.&Mrs.Donald Campbell Bliss & Brigitte Camochan John W.Castello in memory ofAdele Earnest Caterpillar Foundation Donald N.Cavanaugh 8c Edward G.Blue Edward Lee Cave Virginia G.Cave Shari Cavin & Randall Morris Peter P. Cecere Sharon S. Cheeseman Christie's Richard &Teresa Ciccotelli Barbara L. Claster Lori Cohen Alexis 8c George Contos Judy Angelo Cowen Foundation Mrs. Daniel Cowin In memory of Daniel Cowin Jeanne D.Creps Mr.&Mrs.Edgar M.Cullman Elissa F.&Edgar M.Cullman Jr. Joe &Joan Cullman Susan R. Cullman Catherine G. Curran Kendra &Allan Daniel David 8c Sheena Danziger Lucy 8c Mike Danziger Peggy 8c Richard M.Danziger David L Davies Joseph Del Valle Vincent 8c Stephanie DiCicco H.Richard Dietrich Jr. Mr.8c Mrs. Charles M.Diker Patricia McFadden Dombal Colette &Jim Donovan Kathleen M.Doyle, Doyle New York Deborah & Arnold Dunn Ray & Susan Egan Gloria Einbender Sharon &Ted Eisenstat Elitzer Family Fund in honor of Anne Hill & Monty Blanchard David &Doris Walton Epner Joyce &Klaus Eppler Ralph 0.Esmerian Susan H.Evans In memory of Heila D. Everard Sam &Betsey Farber Nancy Farmer 8c Everette James Mike &Doris Feinsilber Bequest of Eva &Morris Feld Elizabeth C. Feldmann M.Finkel 8c Daughter Fireman's Fund Insurance Company Deborah Fishbein Alexander & Enid Fisher Laura Fisher, Antique Quilts &Americana

Jacqueline Fowler Beverly Frank Gretchen Freeman &Alan Silverman Mrs. Albert D.Freiberg Susan 0.Friedman Alvin E.Friedman-Kien,M.D. Furthermore,the publication program ofthe J.M. Kaplan Fund Galerie St. Etienne,Inc. Gallery ofGraphic Arts,Ltd. Rebecca 8c Michael Gamzon Judy &Jules Garel Rich &Pat Garthoeffner Garth's Auctions,Inc. Sidney & Sandra Gecker Nancy Gerber Morad Ghadamian Sima Ghadamian Merle &Barry Ginsburg James & Nancy Glazer Mr.&Mrs.Merle H.Glick Carla T. Goers Edith H.Goldberg Russ & Karen Goldberger Mrs.Toni L Goldfarb Tracy Goodnow Art &Antiques Ellin & Baron Gordon Howard Graff Jonathan Green Nancy M.&Ben S. Greenberg Greene & Mays American Antiques Marion E.Greene Blanche Greenstein &Thomas Woodard William 8c Shirley E. Greenwald Peg &Judd Gregory Audrey Elkinson Griff Bonnie Grossman,The Ames Gallery Pat Guthman Alan & Elaine Haid Robert& Linda Hall Cordelia Hamilton Ken &Debra Hamlett Nancy B. Hanson Jeanne 8c Herbert Hansel Deborah Harding Marion Harris &Jerry Rosenfeld Harvey Art &Antiques Audrey Heckler Donald Heller, Heller/VVasham Nina Hellman Jeffrey Henkel Mr.& Mrs. George Henry Mr.8c Mrs.Samuel Herrup Ann Hickerson &Martha Hicicerson Antonio Hidalgo The High Five Foundation Frederick D. Hill Pamela &Timothy Hill Kit Hinrichs Robert & Marjorie Hirschhorn & Carolyn Hirschhorn Schenker, The Hirschhorn Foundation Historical Society of Early American Decoration Arlene &Leonard Hochman Mr.& Mrs.Joseph C.Hoopes Jr. Carter G.Houck Sr. Evelyn Houlroyd

Ellen E.Howe Mr.&Mrs.Philip Howlett Allen &Barry Huffman Peter D.Hynson Antiques Paul Ingersoll In the Beginning Fabrics Thomas Isenberg In memory of Laura N.Israel Thomas &Barbara Israel Martin & IGtty Jacobs,The Splendid Peasant Johnson &Johnson Joan &Victor Johnson ICristina Johnson, Esq. Louise & George Kaminow Julie &Sandy Palley and Samuel & Rebecca Kardon Foundation Allan & Penny Katz Edwin U. Keates, M.D. Steven 8c Helen Kellogg Jolie Keiser & Michael Make Richard ICemble & George Korn, Forager House Collection Mrs. David J. Kend Leigh Keno Amy Keys Phyllis Kind Joe K. ICindig III Jacqueline &Jonathan King Susan &Robert E. Klein Nancy Knudsen Nancy Kollisch &Jeffrey Pressman Greg K. Kramer David 8c Barbara !Crashes Dr. Robert &Arlene Kreisler Sherry &Mark Kronenfeld Robert A.Landau Bruno & Lindsey LaRocca Michelle 8c Lawrence Lasser William 8c Karen Lauder Jerry 8c Susan Lauren Wendy &Mel Lavitt Mark 8cTaryn Leavitt The Edith and Herbert Lehman Foundation,Inc. In memory of HenryJ.8c Erna D.Lek John A. Levin 8c Co.,Inc. Morris Levinson Foundation,Inc. Bertram Levinston, M.D. Levy Charitable Trust Judy Lewis The Liman Foundation Lipman Family Foundation The 2000 Lipman Fellows Bruce Lisman In memory ofZeke Liverant Nancy MacKay Nancy &Erwin Maddrey Anne & Vincent Mai Maine Antique Digest The Jane Marcher Foundation Paul Martinson, Frances Martinson 8c Howard Graffin memory of Burt Martinson Mr.8c Mrs. Christopher Mayer Mrs. Myron Mayer In honor of Nancy Mayer Kerry McCarthy Milly McGehee

DONORS

Nancy and Dana Mead Mary 0.Mecagni Robert& Meryl Meltzer Charles W.Merrels Evelyn S. Meyer George H.Meyer Jim 8c Enid Michelman Mrs. EJ. Milano Mr.& Mrs.Samuel C. Miller Judith &James Milne Jean Mitchell Sandra Moers JP Morgan Chase &Co.,Inc. Keith &Lauren Morgan Alden &Jane Munson Lucia Cirino Murphy Drew Neisser Cyril Irwin Nelson New York City Department ofCultural Affairs New York State Margaret&David Nichols Thurston Nichols Mr.&Mrs.Frank N. Norris Jr. Susan Nova Sally W.O'Day Odd Fellows Antiques Bequest of Mattie Lou O'Kelley Olde Hope Antiques Cheryl Oppenheim &John Waters The Overbrook Foundation Patsy Palmer &Talbot D'Alemberte Virginia Parks Patemostro Investments Eloise Paula Rolando & Karin Perez Jan Petry Philip Morris Companies Inc. Elizabeth A.Pile Harriet Marple Plehn Trust Carolirm Pother &William Woody,Darwin Frank &Barbara Pollack Lucile &Maurice Pollak Fund Ronald &Debra Pook,Pook &Pook Inc. Wayne Pratt, Inc. Fran Puccinelli Jackie Radwin Teresa Ranellone Christopher T. Rebell° Antiques Ricco/Maresca Gallery Julia & Leroy Richie Jeanne Riger Marguerite Riordan John & Margaret Robson Foundation Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund Le Rowell Miss Virginia Carolyn Rudd F. Russack Antiques &Books,Inc. Selig D.Sacks Judith Sagan Mary Sams-Ballyhack Antiques Jack &Mary-Lou Savitt Peter L. Schaffer Carol Peden Schaff Shirley K.Schlafer Memorial Fund In memory of Esther &Sam Schwartz Marilyn &Joseph Schwartz The Schwarz Gallery, Philadelphia Phyllis & Al Selnick Jean S.&Frederic A.Shari The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation In honor ofGeorge Shaskan The George and Myra Shaskan Foundation,Inc. Roz 8c Steve Shaw Arthur 8c Suzanne Shawe Harvey S. Shipley Miller & J. Randall Plummer Elle Shushan Jo Sibley John Sideli Eleanor R. Siegal Francisco F. Sierra Elizabeth Silverman

Skinner,Inc., Auctioneers and Appraisers of Antiques and Fine Art Sanford L Smith &Patricia Lynch Smith Sarah Barr Snook Elliott 8c Grace Snyder Mr.& Mrs. Peter J. Solomon Sotheby's Maxine Spiegel Nancy T.8c Gary].Stass Frederick Stacker Stella Show Mgmt Co. Su-Ellyn Stern Tamar Stone 8c Robert Eckstein Ellen Stone-Belic Rachel &Donald Strauber Bonnie &Tom Strauss The R.David Sudarsky Charitable Foundation Nathaniel]. Sutton Leslie Sweedler John & Catherine Sweeney William Swislow Talcashimaya Co.,Ltd. Connie Tavel Richard 8c Maureen Taylor David Teiger Nancy Thomas Tiffany &Co. Jeffrey Tillou Antiques Peter Tillou Pamela P.Tisza Jean L.8c Raymond S.Troubh Fund Tucker Station Antiques Karen Ulfers John 8c Kathleen Ullmann Lee &Cynthia Vance Jacob 8c Ray Van Gelder Bob & Ellie Vermillion Joan & Clifford Vemick Joseph & Meryle Viener Robert E. Voellde I.H.& Birgitta X.L.von Zelowitz David &Jane Walentas Jennifer Walker Clifford A.Wallach Irene N.Walsh Don Walters 8c Mary Benisek Warburg Pincus The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Elizabeth &Irwin Warren Nani S.Warren Martha Watterson Weeden Brothers: Bill, Alan,Jack 8c Don Mr.&Mrs.Alan N.Weeden Weil, Gotshal& Manges LLP Frederick S. Weiser David M.Weiss Jay& Meryl Weiss Ed Weissman Julia Weissman Mr.8c Mrs. Peter Wells Ben Wertkin David Wheatcroft Harry Wicks Donald K.Wilkerson,M.D. John 8c Barbara Wilkerson The Jamison Williams Foundation Nelson M.Williams John Wilmerding Charles &Phyllis Wilson Robert N.Wilson &Anne Wright Wilson Dr.Joseph M.&Janet H.Winston Susan Yecies J. Evelyn Yoder Valerie Young Shelly Zegart Antique Quilts Makah Zeldis Bernadette Mary Zemenick Steven J. Zick Jon &Becky Zoler 27 anonymous donors

AMERICA'S OLDEST MAKERS OF COLONIAL AND EARLY AMERICAN LIGHTING FIXTURES

AUTHENTIC DESIGNS www.authentic-designs.com West Rupert, Vermont 05776 (802) 394-7713 • 800-844-9416 Catalogue $3.00

ERSIb t ANTIQUES SHOW August 1O,11&12 Tues., 5-8 • Wed., 12-6 • Thurs., 12-4 Admission $10

ER NH MANCHEST Executive Court Banquet Center next to the Best Western Executive Inn 13500 South Willow Street

A cornerstone of "Antiques Week in New Hampshire", this show is a favorite source of outstanding examples of painted and high country furniture, fine formal furniture and choice decorative accessories.

Free Parking • Cafe • On-Site Shipper A FORBES & TURNER ANTIQUES SHOW (207) 767-3967 • www.forbesandturner.com

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DONORS

DONORS FOR EXHIBITIONS AND OPERATIONS The American Folk Art Museum appreciates the generous support of the following friends (January 1 to December 31, 2003): $50,000 and up Carnegie Corporation of New York Leir Charitable Trusts Major League Baseball Barbara &John Wilkerson $49,999-$20,000 Bear Stearns Edward V. Blanchard Jr. Bloomberg L.P. Estate of Louis W.Bowen Edith 8c Barry D.Briskin Dana 8c Paul Caan Cahill Gordon & Reindel Citigroup Global Markets Joyce B. Cowin Louise & Edgar M.Cullman Lucy 8c Mike Danziger David L.Davies &John Weeden Deutsche Bank Vivian 8c Strachan Donnelley Ralph 0.Esmerian Betsey &Samuel Farber Jacqueline Fowler Horace W.Goldsmith Foundation Susan &John H.Gutfreund Marjorie & Robert Hirschhom Joan &Victor L.Johnson Kristina Johnson,Esq. Barbara &David !Crashes Taryn &Mark Leavitt Frances Sirota Martinson Nancy &Dana G.Mead Kay 8c George H.Meyer National Endowment for the Arts New York Mets New York State Council on the Arts Laura 8c Richard Parsons J. Randall Plummer Julia & LeRoy Richie Margaret Z. Robson Angela & Selig Sacks Sheannan & Sterling Bonnie &Thomas W.Strauss Nathaniel J. Sutton Swisspealcs Festival Time Warner $19,999-$10,000 Allen tk,Overy Altria Group,Inc. Architectural Digat Didi &David Barrett Estate of Sylvia Josephs Berger Cleary Gottlieb Steen 8c Hamilton The Comcast Foundation Con Edison Credit Suisse First Boston LLC Debevoise &Plimpton Mildred &William L Gladstone Marion Greene Johnson &Johnson KPMG LLP Alma Lambert 8c Chauncey Parker Evelyn 8c Leonard A. Lauder LEF Foundation Lehman Brothers,Inc. JP Morgan Chase &Company,Inc. National Jewelry Institute Pfizer, Inc. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Dorothea &Leo Rablcin Amy & Richard Rubenstein SFX Sports Group Kate Stettner &Carl Lobel]

94 SPRING/SUMMER 2004

R. David Sudarksy Wachtell, Upton,Rosen & Katz Richard H.Walker, Esq. TD Waterhouse Weil, Gotshal, Manges LLP White &Case Tod WilliaMS & Billie Tsien The Windfall Foundation $9,999-$5,000 The American Folk Art Society Judy &John Angelo Bloomingdale's Bristol-Myers Squibb Company John R.8c Dorothy D.Caples Fund Marcy Carsey Jane Forbes Clark Dorothy 8c Lewis Cullman Ellie & Edgar Cullman Jr. Susan R.Cullman Peggy & Richard Danziger Susan & Raymond C.Egan Margot&John L.Ernst Lori 8c Laurence Fink Mark Goldman Myrna 8c Stephen Greenberg Audrey B. Heckler Historical Society of Early American Decoration Ling 8cThomas Isenberg Luise 8c Robert Kleinberg Jo Carole & Ronald S. Lauder Linda & Christopher Mayer Anne &J.Jefferson Miller Richard Miller Mr.& Mrs.Peter O'Malley The Overbrook Foundation Pat Parsons Pryor Cashman Sherman 8c Flynn LLP Pure Imaging Robert A. Roth Myra 8c George Shaskan Eleanor &John M.Sullivan Jr. Frank Tosto Ski von Reis Elizabeth &Irwin H.Warren $4,999-$2,000 Bob Alexander Ted Alfond Avenue of the Americas Association Jeremy L Banta Deborah Bergman Jose Solis Betancourt 8c Paul Sherrill Jessica 8c Nathan Biblicnvicz Virginia &William Birch Jill 8c Sheldon Bonovitz Katharine 8c Robert E. Booth Ronald Bourgeault Judy 8c Bernard Brislcin Margaret 8c Edward J. Brown Valerie &Jay Brown Marjorie B. Buckley Sharon Casdin John K.Castle Virginia G.Cave Christie's Churchill Family Kendra & Allen Daniel Deborah Davenport 8c Stewert Stender Jenny 8c Richard DeScherer Maureen D.Donovan The Echo Design Group Alfred C. Eckert The Charles Edlin Family Charitable Foundation Gloria Einbender Joseph H.Ellis M.Finkel&Daughter Evelyn Frank

FOLK ART

Marilyn Friedman &Thomas Block Merle &Barry Ginsburg Anne 8c Eric Gleacher William R. Grant Victoria Hagan Interiors Cordelia Hamilton Ann &James Harithas Inge Heckel Catherine 8c Richard Herbst Donald M.Herr Stephen Hessler &Mary Ellen Vehlow Stephen M.Hill Ruth Horwich Barbara &Thomas C.Israel Ned Jalbert Vera 8c Pepi Jelinek Jed Johnson &Associates Penny& Allan Katz Helen 8c Steven Kellogg Leigh Keno Phyllis Kind Morton H.ICinzler Dorothy C.ICrugman Susan &Jerry Lauren Betty &John Levin Deanne D.Levison Lifestyle Marketing Group Joyce & Edward Linde Lower Hudson Conference Richard Lukins Macy's East Chriss Mattsson Merrill Lynch 8c Co. M Group Virginia B. Michel Leslie Miller 8c Richard Worley David Muniz Cynthia &Donald B. Murphy New York City Department ofCultural Affairs David Nichols Anthony J. Petullo Jeffrey Pressman &Nancy Kollisch Richard Ravitch Christopher Reboil째 Ricco/Maresca Gallery The Grace Jones Richardson Trust Alyce & Roger Rose The Ida &William Rosenthal Foundation Lois &Richard Rosenthal Betty &Paul Schaffer Carol P. Schatt Donna 8c Marvin Schwartz Phyllis 8c Alfred Selnick Janet &Joseph D.Shein Mr.8c Mrs.Peter L Sheldon Linda &Raymond Simon Meg Smeal E. Newbold & Margaret Du Pont Smith Foundation Smith Richardson Foundation Grace & Elliott Snyder Karen &David Sobotka Peter J. Solomon Sotheby's Ellen &David Stein Judy 8c Michael Steinhardt Steptoe &Johnson Elizabeth A.Stem Su-Ellyn Stem Donald & Rachel Strauber David Teiger Dorothy C.Treisman Howard Tytel Claire Vanderbilt Fay Vincent Sue 8c.Edgar Wachenheim III Amy &John S. Weinberg Judith 8c Bennett Weinstock

Suzanne &Stephen Weiss Barbara & Gerard C.Wertkin Sandra Wilkie Janet Winston Nina &Tim Zagat Judy 8c Arthur Zankel $1,999-$1,000 Dana & Marshall Acuff Joseph H.Allerhand Peg Alston Linda Lee Alter Serena Altschul Jody &John Amhold Deborah &James Ash Molly F. Ashby 8c Gerald M.Lodge James Asselstine & Bette J. Davis Marie &John W.Baldante Rhoda & Martin Barr Anne H.Bass Jill 8c Mickey Baten Robin Bell Daniel Berman Violaine &John L.Bembach Helen Bing Constance Black Barbara &James A.Block Sam Blount Nonie Bourke &John Sullivan Nancy &James Braithwaite Alessandra Branca Murray Bring &Kay Delaney Brenda Brody Marc&Laurent ICrasny Brown Gale Meltzer Brudner Mr.&Mrs.John C.Burton Linda Cheverton-VVick Angela &James Clair Eric Cohler George Colettis J. Crist Gallery Joseph Cullman III Judy 8c Aaron Daniels Susan Danilow Katie Danziger Sheena &David Danziger Abbie Darer Gary Davenport Joseph Paul Davis Interior Design Diamond Baratta Design Valerie & Charles Diker Michael Donovan Drake Design Associates,Inc. Joan &T.J. Dermot Dunphy Charles P. Durkin Andrew Ellin Equity Resources,Inc. Laura Fisher Antique Quilts 8c Americana Paul R. Flack Forest Electric Corporation Frances Frawley Elinor Fredston James Friedlander & Eli7.1,...th Irwin M.Jane Gaillard Jill Gallagher Rebecca 8c Michael S. Gamzon Arlene & Edward Gardner Daniel 8c Lianna Gantt Bruce Geismar Kurt Gitter & Alice Yelen Susan 8c Arthur Goldstone Gomez Associates,Inc. Barbara L Gordon Ellin 8c.Baron J. Gordon Jonathan Green Anne &Ray Groves Laima &John C.Hood Ellen E.Howe Stephen &Carol Huber

Kelly &Weber Hudson Sally Humphrey David Hunt Paul Hurley Theodore Israel Christopher Jones &Debbie McAlister Jaclyn 8c Gerald Kaminsky Kitty Hawks,Inc. John B. Koegel Stephanie & Ron Kramer Mr.& Mrs. Abraham Krasnoff Robert A. Landau Lindsey &Bruno LaRocca Wendy & Stephen Lash Michelle &Lawrence Lasser Eugenia A.Leemans Dinah &Stephen Lefkowitz Stephen A.Levin Barbara S. Levinson Judy Lewis Julie &Carl M.Lindberg Phyllis &William Louis-Dreyfus Cynthia &Dan Lufkin Ralph Mancini Michael T. Martin Mrs.Myron L. Mayer Patricia & Samuel D. McCullough Meryl & Robert Meltzer Audrey &Danny Meyer Lisa &Buxton S. Midyette Robin Rapoport Milstein Richard Mishaan Juan Montoya Design Corp.

Natasi 8c Associates Cyril I. Nelson Ella 8c Michael Nierenberg Nancy & Morris Offit Olde Hope Antiques,Inc. Stephanie & Robert Olmsted Karen 8c Robert Osar David Owsley Kenneth R. Page Karin & Rolando Perez Mr.8c Mrs. Richard Perez Campion A.Platt Harold Pote & Linda E.Johnson Eugenie 8c Mortimer Propp Roberta &Jack Rabin Mr.& Mrs. Mark Rachesky Jackie Ra.dwin Catherine &FE Randolph Gregg Rechler Irene Reichert Paul J. Reiferson &Julie E.Spivack Marguerite 8c Arthur Riordan Dorothy &Jerome I. Rosenberg Judith & Richard Rosenberg Helene &Jim Rosenthal Alice Rosenwald Mr.&Mrs.Thomas Rosenwald Toni Ross Mr.& Mrs. Arthur Ross Amy & Howard J. Rubenstein Shelley 8c Donald Rubin Janet&Derald H.Ruttenberg Joan Safir Pete Schaffer Linda &Donald Schapiro Frank M.Schmidt Tess &Thomas F. Schutte Pat &Frederick R.Sekh Semlitz Glaser Foundation Harvey S. Shipley Miller Marjorie Shushan Jerome & Ruth A.Siegel Francisco F. Sierra Sills Huniford Associates Mary Ann 8c Arthur Siskind Skinner,Inc. Geri &J.Peter Skirlcanich

Matthew Patrick Smyth 8c Rachel Etz Stephanie 8c Richard L Solar Jennifer Allan Soros Nancy &William W.Stahl Mr.8c Mrs.Henry H.Stansbury Patricia A.& Robert C.Stempel H.Peter Stern Rose Tarlow Billie &Laurence Tisch Jean &Raymond Troubh Mr.&Mrs.Barry Tucker Kathleen &John Ullmann Jane 8c David Wakntas Eve Weinstein Giulia 8c Marc Weisman Caren 8c Roger J. Weiss Janis &William Wetsman Jan Whitlock Woodard &.Greenstein Michelle & Robert Wyles Malcah Zeldis Susan &Donald Zuckert Stuart Zweibel 8c Rene Purse $999-5500 Harvie 8c Charles Abney Nancy Abraham Kristen Accola 8c Gary Snyder Irwin Ackerman Ethel 8c Philip Adelman Charitable Foundation,Inc. Mary Lou &Ira Alpert Ingrid 8c Richard C. Anderson Mr.8c Mrs. Edward K.Asplundh Gayle & Charles Atkins Ray Azoulay Lucy &Joel I. Banker June 8c Frank Barsalona Dina Battitaglia Mr.&Mrs.Myron Bazar Serena & David Bechtel Judi 8c Barry Bell Lee & Paul Belsky Lawrence Benenson Mary &Andrew Benjamin Denise Benmosche Jeffrey 8c Dorian Bergen Ralph Bermudes Martha Bemardin Therese Bembach Wendy &Mark C. Biderman Claude &Alvan Bisnoff Mrs. George P. Bissell Karin Blake Interiors Adele 8c Leonard Block Kathryn 8c Frank Boccia Dena L.Bock Tina &Jeffrey Bolton Linda &James Brandi Patty & Steve Brink Alan Brout J. Brown Nancy 8c Richard Brownell Barbara Bundy Guy IC Bush Miriam Calm Jay E.Cantor Anne Canty Ann Carmel Gabrielle &Frank Casson Barbara &Tracy Cate Lee Cavanaugh William E.Channing Sharon S. Cheeseman Marjorie Chester China Mist Tea Company Leslie Cohen Stephen H.Cooper &Karen Gross Robert Couturier,Inc. Roth & Howard Cowen

Terry L Dale & Richard Barry Bruce DiSanto Mary A.Donovan John & Gail Duffy Deborah &Arnold Dunn Shirley Durst Linda Ebbler Nancy & Michael Elitzer Elsmere Foundation,Inc. Christopher T.Emmet Lois &Thomas M.Evans Judith & Anthony Evnin Robert 8c Bobbie Falk Laurence &Pauline Feldman Ron Feldman Helaine &Burton Fendelman Thomas K.Figge Deborah &Martin Fishbein Enid &Alexander Fisher Suzanne 8c David Francis Charlotte Frank Maxine 8c Stuart Frankel Foundation Barbara Freedman Margot 8c Norman Freedman Denise & Robby Froelich Gail Furman Richard Gachot Judy &Jules Gard Barbara Gimbel Edmund Glass Henry Goldstein &Linda Broessel Connie &Leonard Goodman Tracy Goodnow Art &Antiques Donald J. Gordon Robert Greenberg & Corvova Lee Peter Greenwald 8c Nancy Hoffman Nanette &Irvin GreifJr. Ellen 8c Lawrence Gross Sue & Ron Grudziecki Nancy &Tim Gmmbacher Margery Hadar David H.Haffenreffer Marion Harris &Jerry Rosenfeld Halley K. Harrisburg Carol &George Henry Anne &John A.Herrmann Jr. Sanford L. Herzfeld & Audrey I. Dursht Calynne &Lou Hill Arlene &Leonard Hochman Sandra &John C.Horvitz Elizabeth 8c Richard It Howe Bettysue &Jeffrey Hughes Michael Incantalupo Jill & Ken Iscol Paige &Todd M.Johnson Gay & Graham Jones Michele Jones Beth &David Kagan Isobel &Harvey Kahn Helen &Martin Katz Emily 8c Leslie Keno Mary Kettaneh John J. Kirby Jr. Marcy &Michael Klein Barbara S. Klinger Mrs. Bernard Kohn Phyllis Kossoff Betty 8c Arthur Kowaloff Carole Kurtz Sue-Ellen & Mark Laracy Nancy Lassalle Sean P. Leary Lone Cowen Levy Nadine 8c Peter Levy Robert A.Lewis Frances &James Lieu James Linderman Randall Lott &Nancy McCall Edward Lowe Industries

Josh Lowenfels Stephan Lowentheil Mary P. Mackenzie Nancy B. Maddrey Eric Maffei & Steven Trombetti Matthew Marks &Jack Bankowsky Esperanza G.Martinez Barbie &John A. Mayer Jr. Patricia McGirl James Meltzer Joan & Martin Messinger Pamela & Michael Miles Carol Millsom Jean Mitchell Marjorie Nezin Randy Nielsen Cinnie &Stephen O'Brien Judith K. Parties Paul V.Paternostro Joan Pearlman Betty Pecore Liz &Jeffrey Peek Janet Petry & Angie Mills Mr.8c Mrs. Anthony Picadio Marianne & Robert Polak Benita &Stephen Potters Wayne Pratt Antiques Peter 8c Elizabeth Puchner Deborah C.Quirk Lisa Revson Katie Ridder Design &Decoration

James Q Riordan Pam &Alfred W.Roberts Stuart Rosen Suz& Michael Rubel Nancy& Frank E. Russell Jeanne 8c Robert Savitt Robin Bell Schafer Paul Schatt Margaret Schmidt Sonia &Cull Schmitt William W.Schneck Sue Schuck Paola 8c Michael Schulhof Lisa & Michael Schultz Cipora &Philip C.Schwartz Dr. &Mrs.David C.Schwartz Betty-Carol Sellen Jean &Frederic Sharf Hardwick Simmons Susan &Joel Simon Bruce D.Simonds & Pamela Bisbee-Simonds Steven Simons &Cheryl Rivers Barbara &Arun Singh Arle Sldar-Weinstein Diane Smith Stephanie Smither Janella Smyth Heather &Lee Solomon The Splendid Peasant Stark Carpet

Margaret W.Steele Jane Supino Milton S.Teicher La Donna Thompson Helen Tucker Judith Tuner Mark Ulrich Utility Electric Co. Sue & George P. Viener Marigil M.Walsh Pat 8c Donald Weeden Brenda Weeks-Nerz Sue Ann &John L Weinberg David Wheatcroft Mr.8c Mrs.CA.VVimpfheimer Samantha Wolfe David &Elizabeth Wolfe Rosalie Wood Robert Young Diana Zanganas Susan &Louis Zinterhofer Marsha 8c Howard Zipser Rebecca H.&Jon N.Zoler Jan &Barry L Zubrow Barbara 8c Benjamin Zucker Linda Zukas

DISTINCTIVE PHOTOGRAPHY OF ARTWORK AND OBJECTS FOR COLLECTIONS, GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS

Matt Flynn PHOTOGRAPHY 212/627 2985 mattflynnphoto@aol.com

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95

EPSTE1N/POWELL 66 Grand St., New York, N.Y. 10013

By Appointment(212)226-7316 e-mail: artfolkseverizon.net

Jesse Aaron Rex Clawson Donovan Durham Antonio Esteves Victor Joseph Gatto (Estate) Lonnie Holley S.L. Jones Charlie Lucas

Justin McCarthy Old Ironsides Pry Popeye Reed Max Romain.

Bill Roseman Jack Savitsky Clarence Strineeld Mose Tolliver and other American outsiders

INDEX

TO

ADVERTISERS

Allan Katz Americana American Primitive Gallery The Ames Gallery Anne Bourassa Anton Haardt Gallery Authentic Designs Barn Star Productions Beverly Kaye Cat's Cradle Antiques Charlton Bradsher American Antiques Classic Rug Collection Craig Farrow Cabinetmaker David VVheatcroft Antiques Denyse Schmidt Quilts Elliot &Grace Snyder Antiques Epstein/Powell Fenimore Art Museum Fleisher/011man Gallery Folk Fest Forbes &Turner Garde Rail Gallery Ginger Young Gallery Hancock Shaker Village Hill Gallery Intuit:The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art J. Crist Gallery and Art Services

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9 16 22 71 27 93 89 91 17 15 73 85 2 74 14 96 21 12 69 93 90 25 21 11 81 3

Jackie Radwin Jan Whitlock Karen Robinson Gallery Kentucky Folk Art Center Lindsay Gallery Mary Michael Shelley Matt Flynn Photography MCG Antiques Productions The Mennello Museum of American Folk Art New Hampshire Antiques Show Northeast Auctions Paul &Alvina Haverkamp Pfaltzgraff Raccoon Creek Antiques Raw Vision Ricco/Maresca Gallery Sidney Gecker American Folk Art Stella Rubin Steve Miller American Folk Art Susan Slyman Thomas Schwenke Inc. Thurston Nichols American Antiques Tracy Goodnow Art &Antiques Trotta-Bono Two Rivers Antiques Show & Garden Tour Walters-Benisek Art&Antiques

back cover 23 90 70 27 91 95 75 25 72 inside back cover 29 77 10 26 inside front cover 18 18 1 74 5 19 31 4 84 6

Northeast Auctions A Leader in Folk Art

Ronald Bourgeault,Auctioneer 93 Pleasant Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801 Tel:(603) 433-8400 www.northeastauctions.com

AWL • II

JACKIE RADWIN

New England Tall Case Clock Beautifully proportioned and exuberantly grain painted with dry untouched surface. Circa 1830.

85" tall.

By appointment•8an Antonio, Texas •(210) 824-7711 Visit us at our website www.jackieradwin.com