Securing the Shadow: The Folk Art Museum Chronicles Death in Early America
The Shadow of Death in America: Securing the Shadow Over the past several years, a surprising niche interest in the arts has turned mainstream in America: death and the end of life. A topic once shielded by the taboo of privacy, this most intimate of experiences has become the subject of thriving discussion. The New […]
Person and Place: Forging Connections with the Alabama Contemporaries of Ronald Lockett
Throughout the year, the work of Bessemer, Alabama born artist Ronald Lockett has been touring the country. The exhibition, Fever Within, is the first major retrospective of Lockett’s work. Lockett used the discarded tin scraps and steel that littered his post-industrial environment and transformed them into monumental works of beauty. His works express both his […]
Brut Force’s 6 for 16: Top Stories of Self-Taught and Outsider Art 2016
For many people, 2016 was a year of tumultuous and often disappointing surprises. Self-taught and outsider art often found itself as a contrarian to this trend. 2016 brought some major spotlights, notable developments, and significant losses. Below are our picks for top 6 self-taught and outsider art stories of 2016. 1) A Record Setting Christie’s […]
Mapping the Senses: The Tapestry of Jessie Dunahoo
In the back corner of Latitude Arts, a shared creative space deep in a Lexington, Kentucky industrial complex, Jessie Dunahoo is hard at work. Dunahoo is eighty-four. He sports a sturdy flannel, Liberty denim overalls, and a sewing needle balanced between his lips. For the past few years, three days a week and six hours […]
Reviving Pasaquan: Freshly Restored, an Otherworldly Retreat in the Southern Backwoods
Saint EOM was a self-proclaimed psychic who told fortunes for a living. But when it came to the future of Pasaquan, his flamboyantly sculpted, rainbow-hued compound in rural Georgia, his predictions depended on his mood. On some occasions he confidently declared the place would one day become a spiritual center, attracting followers of the new […]
The Inscape in Escape Routes: Five Works by Hiroyuki Doi
Hiroyuki Doi’s work is an exercise in meditation as much as it is a topography exorcising grief. Each work is an exaltation of depth: meditative and obsessive while occupying a manic space that swells toward a calm. The five Doi works in the group exhibition, “Escape Routes,” currently on view at the John Michael Kohler […]
An Exploration of Outsider Art at Prison Folk with Intuit Center
Time. This word was by far the most intently discussed, illuminated, and expanded upon throughout Prison Folk a panel discussion accompanying “Post Black Folk Art in America: 1930-1980-2016,” the current exhibition (through January 8, 2017) at Chicago’s Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, curated by artist and former director of the South Side […]
Art and Basketball: The Wood Carvings of Lavon Williams
LaVon WIlliams was not the first in his family to become a woodcarver. His half-brother, David Wright, first exposed Williams to the craft by carving some of the toys that Williams would play with as a child, including one a Williams’ favorite toys— a replica of the Apollo. Wright was in turn inspired by their […]
Art, History, and Artifact at The Slotin Folk Art Auction
November 12-13 marks the second installment of the bi-annual Slotin Folk Art Auction hosted in Buford, GA. For 23 years The Slotin festivals and auctions have been keystone avenues for bringing awareness of outsider art to the public. The annual Slotin Folk Fest that’s been held since the fair’s inception was discontinued this year due […]
A Human Experience: Outsider Art Fair Paris 2016
Why do we create? The answers are as varied as humans themselves. An active police officer journaling his cases. A recluse documenting his hallucinogenic visions. A blind man building magnificent sculptures in his backyard to scare away the birds from his plants. At the Outsider Art Fair in Paris, the common unifier is, undeniably, an […]
Take Me to the Moon: Alma Thomas
Alma Thomas was the first African-American woman to be featured in the White House art collection; the first African-American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the first person to graduate from Howard University with a degree in Fine Art. As an artist who achieved unprecedented success in the […]
Connection to Art through the Creation Process for Three Self-Taught Artists
Three self-taught contemporary artists on the relationship that they have with their work and connection to art Artistic practice and the relationship that artists foster with their work is canonically seeded with the markings of ritual, catharsis, spirituality and catharsis. For many artists, the connection that’s developed in the process makes it difficult for them […]