outsider art PAGES

Whimsical art enthusiasts celebrate 25 years of outsider art

BY FRANCESCA SAGALA

Those who are on the hunt for something different – for something of the whimsical variety – need look no further than the Outsiders Outside decided it was “time to reprint them – people love them.” “It’s the same color and same idea - just a smaller size,” she said. Kolias said she discovered the fair after Art Fair, which is held every Labor Day weekend at the barn-turned-art-gallery, Judith Racht Gallery, in Harbert.

It’s a type of artwork that owner Racht prefers above all other ones.

“It has to be kind of wacky, something off kilter about it - which I like,” she said. Off-kilter art wasn’t in short supply at this 25th annual fair, which took place Friday through Sunday, Sept. 3-5, in tents behind the gallery as well as inside of it.

This year, Racht said that there were 32 booths of artwork underneath the tents, with some of those booth containing dealers representing the artists.

No matter her unique they are from each other, one common thread runs through the pieces of art that were displayed at the fair: They were all created by artists who had no formal training.

“Nobody ever said (to the artists) you have to stay in the lines, and you have to make the sky blue and the stars yellow -they sort of march to the tune of their own drummer,” Racht said.

Having worked for John Wilson, founder of the first United States international art exposition in Navy Pier, Racht said she would often uncover items at auctions that she knew that someone “just made from their hearts.”

When she first started her gallery in Lakeside, visitors would often want to peek upstairs at the “funky” items in her children’s bedrooms – and wanted to buy it.

Once someone conceived a name for it: outsider art.

“They said, ‘You know, that outsider art that you do,’ and I said, ‘Oh - is that what you call?’”

Vasso Kolias was selling a digital reprint of her silk screens from the late 1960s and 1970s.

She was cleaning up her house and had sold most of her silk screens when she visiting the gallery during a recent art show for a friend.

Julie Schwarz of Blacksmith Photography in Sawyer was displaying her hand-altered Polaroid pictures.

“This is the new film for the old Polaroid cameras - what you see is what comes out of the camera, so each one is an original, and what I do with my collages is I take multiple pictures of an object like a clarinet or album cover and I

Art lovers unite underneath the tents

A screw and bolts creation by Matt Swenson, Inc

Vasso Kolias displays her digital reprints of her silk screens Matt Swenson of Michigan City stands by one of his unique paintings

Leslie Wellington displays her Terese Disney painting

Julie Schwarz stands in front of a display of her hand altered polaroid pictures

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 trim off that Polaroid border and I puzzle them together and create a one of a kind collage,” she said, adding her husband handmakes the rustic wood frames.

Schwarz said she also does limited edition prints of Polaroid pictures that she “smooshes around by hand before they dry,” which are available at The Local Color Gallery in Union Pier.

Dr. Jennifer N. Fish, who’s a professor and chairs the Women’s Studies Department at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, had brought narrative quilts depicting life during the coronavirus pandemic that were made by women in Cape Town, South Africa, in The Heartworks Stitching Club, “Women’s Lives in Lockdown: The Heartworks Stories Project.”

The approximately 20 women who are a part of the cooperative are all self-trained. The pandemic’s devastating effect in South Africa put a stop to the artwork being sold under the cooperative there.

Instead, Fish brought them to the United States.

“Originally I brought over 40 panels thinking that I could get friends and supporters to offer sustainable income under the pandemic and then the interest just grew so I’m here today to see how it’s work with a more public audience,” Fish said.

More information can be found at www.jennifernataliefish.com.

Judith Racht Gallery is located at 13689 Prairie Rd. in Harbert.

If your not content, your Life as a soul is on its way to being over. The solution you ask? Whatever the situation, tis pleasant. — Dino

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