Jake will be missed by many. He was a soft-spoken gental soul, despite his tragic and abusive childhood. Jake became famous for his paintings on plywood, which he would nail to the walls of his porch. He called this his gallery and said he put them on his porch, so the town children could come by and see his art.

His paintings were usually children playing with their pets, cats, dogs and animals from the farm. He had a unique vision using bold strokes and bright enamel paint. The McDuffe Museum will reconstruct the front porch of Jake’s home and display his art as he did for years.

One of his paintings of his home church rested against his casket, during his funeral service. Henry Drake, a longtime friend of Jake, said during the service “I was always glad to see J.T coming to see me. Sleep on my friend J.T. and save a seat for me.

- Ted Oliver

The first museum exhibition to look at the concept of abstraction in the work of self-taught artists

October 6, 2009 through September 6, 2010
American Folk Art Museum, 45 West 53 Street, New York 10019

The Kander Valley In The Bernese Oberland Das Kander-Thal im Berner Ober-land Adolf Wolfli (1864-1930) Bern, Switzerland 1926 Pencil and colored pencil on paper 18 1/2 x 24 3/8î Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard, Jr., 1998.10.64

The work of 20th-century self-taught artists is often assumed to be solely representational in subject matter with an emphasis on storytelling and memory. Other assumptions are that the artists work in isolation, that they live in rural areas, and they are not connected to community or culture. As the field of self-taught artists and their work matures and expands, however, scholarship is beginning to dispute these stereotypes. Approaching Abstraction on view from October 6, 2009 through September 6, 2010, is the first exhibition to look at the concept of abstraction in this field, exploring the non-representational in the work of 40 contemporary self-taught artists. Curator Brooke Davis Anderson has selected 60 paintings, drawings, sculpture, and mixed-media objects from the American Folk Art Museum’s permanent collection that illustrate the diversity of aesthetic choices made by artists with no formal art training, who display tendencies that range from highly expressionistic to fully abstract. “The exhibition gives us an opportunity to pair some artists in surprising and unexpected juxtapositions. Bessie Harvey and Carlo Zinelli are seen together as are Thornton Dial and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Clementine Hunter and Janet Sobel, and Judith Scott and Leroy Person, among others,” comments Ms. Anderson.

Judith Scott Untitled, c. 1990's Twine and multicolored yarn construction 8 x 36 x 25" Collection American Folk Art Museum, Gift of Creative Growth Art Center 2002.21.2 photo credit: Gavin Ashworth

For some of these artists the subject is subverted and forms are obliterated, as in the large-scale wrapped yarn sculpture of Judith Scott. Although her powerful sculptures evoke the body, they remain mysterious, her strategies for blocking out form rendering them abstract. The patterning that results from the layers of wrapping in Scott’s artworks is similar to the rivulets of paint drips in Janet Sobel’s oil paintings and the fractured contours in the drawings and paintings of Aloise Corbaz, Clementine Hunter and Riet van Halder. Scott’s process of a methodically repeating gesture evolves into a circular motif in Hiroyuki Doi’s and Chelo Amezcua’s highly organized drawings as well as in the rug crocheted of plastic bread wrappers by an unidentified maker and the button-encrusted sculpture by Mr. Imagination. Scottie Wilson’s cross-hatch drawings also exhibit intensive patterning. The emphasis on a repetitive motif rather than on a narrative element distances this group of artworks from representation.

For others, such as J.B. Murry, a personal language of codes and symbols is invoked by the squiggles, dashes, and splashes that he applied with brush and finger to cash register tapes, sheets of stationery, and drawing paper. Although figures may be detected within the abstract script, almost all Murry’s artwork approaches abstraction. Both Charles Benefiel and Martin Thompson have also developed codes and symbols, creating their artwork around their own private symbolic language. Hidden messages, either in the undecipherable script of Dwight Macintosh or the shamanistic amulets by the “Philadelphia Wireman,” suggest a self-referential means of personal communication. The flattened forms and geometric underpinnings in the drawings of Eddie Arning and James Castle are mute expressions achieved through the abstraction of forms. “The sublime charcoal and soot drawing by James Castle where a dark vertical band resembling a two by four bifurcates a figure’s head and torso underscores the concept of the show. This bold gesture breaks down the body parts into reductive slices of shape and shadow which cling to abstraction,” notes Ms. Anderson.

Gin House Thornton Dial Sr. (b. 1928) Bessemer, Alabama 1991 Watercolor and charcoal on paper 25 3/8 x 32 7/8î Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard, Jr., 1998.10.19

Thornton Dial and his peers explore distortion and expressionism within a narrative paradigm. While figures appear in Dial’s robust narratives, they become obscured beneath dense layers of vigorous brushstrokes that build up layers of pigment which then dominate the aesthetic experience. This approach of Dial’s to non-representation is also found in the drawings, paintings, and sculpture of other artists such as Nellie Mae Rowe, Louis Monza, Purvis Young, Miles Carpenter, Bessie Harvey, Mose Tolliver, Leonard Daley, and Carlo Zinelli where the central figures are distorted and subject matter is dissolved.

Justin McCarthy, Mary T. Smith, and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein also exploit the possibilities of paint in their artworks. Using a house-paint brush, an artist’s paintbrush, a feather or a fingertip, these artists imply figure, cityscape or outer world-scape while reveling in the sheer pleasure of paint. Similarly, artists as disparate as Adolf Wolfli, Joseph Yoakum and Domenico Zindato embrace pen, pencil and paper to depict their otherwordly mindscapes.

Approaching Abstraction is another in a series of museum exhibitions that aims to widen the discourse around self-taught artists and their work and to deepen our understanding about vernacular artists. Past projects with a similar goal have been Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger (April 15-September 21, 2008) and Obsessive Drawing (September 14, 2005-March 19, 2006).

Museum exhibitions are supported in part by the Leir Charitable Foundations in memory of Henry J. & Erna D. Leir, the Gerard C. Wertkin Exhibition Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Also on view at the American Folk Art Museum are the exhibitions Thomas Chambers (1808-1869) American Marine and Landscape Painter (September 29, 2009-March 7, 2010), Up Close: Henry Darger and the Coloring Book (October 6, 2009-September 13, 2010) and Perspectives: Setting the Scene in American Folk Art (ongoing).

About the Museum

The American Folk Art Museum, founded in 1961, is the foremost institution devoted to the collection, exhibition, study, and preservation of folk art. Through the presentation of innovative exhibitions, educational programs, and scholarly publications, the museum explores the nation’s diverse cultural heritage and related global expressions. It is home to one of the world’s preeminent collections of folk art dating from the 19th century to the present, including paintings, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, and furniture, and the work of contemporary self-taught artists from the U.S. and abroad.

Visitor Information

• American Folk Art Museum, 45 West 53 Street, New York 10019
• Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:30 am – 5:30 pm; Friday until 7:30 pm; Closed Monday
• Admission $9; Students and Seniors $7; children 12 and under are free.
• Free admission on Friday from 5:30 – 7:30 pm.
• There is a Museum Shop and Café
• For further information: www.folkartmuseum.org or call 212/265-1040
• For press information and jpegs please contact: Susan Flamm, 212/265-1040 ext. 113 sflamm@folkartmuseum.org

KELLY LUDWIG, graphic designer, has more than 400 pieces of ‘outsider art.’ Ludwig wrote the book ‘Detour Art.’

Art and the people who create it speak to Kelly Ludwig in a big way.

Ludwig, Kansas City, Mo., a graphic designer by trade, began collecting art and artists’ stories as she drove around the country with roadies Mike Murphy, Randy Mason and Don the Camera Guy in Kansas City Public Television’s “Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations.”

“I have a thing for road trips,” she said. “They kind of ignited the bug in me.”

Besides designing scores of books for the Kansas City Star, two for Rare Visions and one of her own, and launching a Web site with her book’s namesake, “Detour Art,” Ludwig has amassed more than 400 pieces of what she calls “outsider art.”

The pieces she collects were created by people outside mainstream art who have no formal training. The art, for many, is known as folk art.

“I had to find these artists,” Ludwig said. “I had to see these artists.”

Ludwig’s treasures – such as a 5-foot, welded sculpture of a tin man, two-headed alligator coffee table or model of a church with aluminum siding – spill onto her porch, into her back yard and cover every nook and cranny of her house.

She embraces outsider artists who use ordinary or recycled materials they have on hand, like house paint, wood or welding tools.

“They take something they learned and apply it to art,” she said. “They are very thrifty.”

Ludwig admires the artists and their stories as much as she does their art.

“It is a beautiful world, this kind of art,” she said. “It’s vibrant, exciting and colorful. I love meeting the people.”

Whimsical tin figures, colorful paintings and mixed media dot her living and dining room walls. Fantasy creatures in brightly painted hues, animals sculpted from wood, household items or recycled materials wait to be noticed.

A colorful wooden Noah’s Ark with more than 70 pairs of tiny animals lay on the fireplace next to a Hobbit-looking creature laden with bottle caps. Painted beaded shoes, a guitar studded with flattened bottle caps and a painted bird on roller skates flank her dining room table.

“These are like great travel souvenirs,” Ludwig said.

Circumstances drive many people to outsider art, she said. They might be prisoners or in a mental institution, have experienced a tragic loss like a fire, or become disabled or retired only to find they want something more meaningful.

“They have something to say visually,” Ludwig said. “They express their relief in their artwork.”

In 2010, Ludwig will take a portion of her collection on the road as a traveling exhibit starting in Lake Charles, La.

She plans 10 shows over three years in museums throughout the United States with Smith Kramer: Museum Traveling Exhibits.

She held her first local exhibit, “Rare Visions – Detour Art,” this spring at Belger Art Center, 2100 Walnut St.

“I thought there was a craving for that kind of show,” he said. “It was a great turnout.”

Mo Dickens, gallery assistant, said Ludwig has a special quality for collecting folk art.

“She’s got a passion for it,” he said. “She is knowledgeable about the art and the artists.”

Dickens said many visitors may know a relative who creates their own brand of folk art.

“It’s not intimidating,” he said. “They can relate to it.”

Ludwig is launching project this fall that she said sums up everything she loves – design, data base, travel, folk art, off-beat attractions.

“It’s my life in a nutshell, without Lola, my dog,” she said.

With Propaganda 3 and KCPT, she will introduce an iPhone application called “Best Road Trip Ever,” with 4,000 quirky sites including hotels, museums, cemeteries and diners around the country.

“She’s been instrumental in egging us on,” Mason, a KCPT executive producer, said. “She has enthusiasm and genuine interest in these subjects.”

Ludwig said childhood summers at Lake of the Ozarks, immersed in local culture, awakened her to outsider art. That, and her mother, who Ludwig claims is the original folk artist with her contact paper crafts and plastic geraniums that attracted humming birds.

“She would just sit there and laugh at those humming birds,” Ludwig said.

A life filled with design, art, travel and people qualify her as one of the luckiest people on the planet, Ludwig said.

“My passion, job, vocation hobby – it’s all rolled in one,” she said. “I do what I love and I love what I do.”

By Linda Friedel | Photos by Edmee Rodriguez/Sun Photo
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 00:00

© 2009 NPG Newspapers – Wednesday Sun. All rights reserved.

GOD’S ARCHITECTS trailer from Zack Godshall on Vimeo.

Deep Fried Kudzu (all things good and southern) blogger, Ginger Brook just brought this documentary to my attention…Featuring the art environments of 5 amazing artists, Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain, Shelby Ravellette’s Lacey Michele Castle, Kenny Hill’s Garden of Salvation, Rev. H.D. Dennis’ Margaret’s Grocery and Floyd Banks, Jr. castle.

To learn more about it, please visit the website.

(excerpts from the God’s Architects web site

Synopsis:

God’s Architects is a documentary that tells the stories of five divinely inspired artist-architects and their enigmatic creations.The film details how and why these oft-marginalized creators, with neither funding nor blueprints, construct their self-made environments.

Backstory:

In the spring of 2005, Emilie Taylor, then a graduate student at the Tulane School of Architecture, received a travel grant to research and document self-taught and visionary builders around the south. After visiting and documenting a number of builders, most of whom professed some degree of divine inspiration, Emilie shared her findings with filmmaker Zachary Godshall. Immediately attracted by Taylor’s stories, drawings, and photographs, Godshall decided to visit the builders himself.

And so in November 2005, Godshall set out from south Louisiana with a camera, tripod, and microphone to interview and document the work of Floyd Banks Jr., a divinely inspired castle builder living in the east Tennessee hill country.

Three years later, Godshall completed a feature-length film that both examines and celebrates the work of Banks along with four other solitary builders who have constructed similar monuments. Beyond the builders and their work, the film functions as a personal essay that explores the nature of inspiration and one’s dedication to a creative project, no matter how absurd or mysterious the circumstances may seem.

This Friday, November 6th would have been Kathy’s birthday. She passed last year after a battle with cancer. I was fortunate to have known Kathy, and her art was a big crowd favorite at the Rare Visions/Detour Art show at the Belger. Eclectics Gallery in Brookside is having an opening in honor of Kathy, her art and her spirit.

Who: Kathy Ruth Neal and Friends

What: A retrospective look at some truly entertaining works of art!

When: Friday November 6th, 5 to 8 p.m.

Where: Eclectics Gallery at 7015 Oak, KCMO, 816-361-6643

Why: Because we have been so inspired by Kathy Ruth and know that you will be too!

Kathy Ruth was a wood carver and described her work as “vignettes of American life: events of the day, at the movies, the circus, or politics.” Although Neal has recently passed away, her work carries exciting life that continues to inspire us. Eclectics Gallery was enhanced through having this talented artist show at our shop for many years, and now we would like to invite you to a look back at some of the brilliant movie-themed carvings that Kathy Ruth brought to life. Help us remember Kathy Ruth Neal’s wonderful sense of humor and creative spirit displayed through her extraordinary art. We celebrate this productive artistic life and ask you to come, see, and be dazzled!