Folk Art and Inuit Carvings

This was the summer I fell in love with folk art. I don't mean just American folk art, but all folk art,  the folk art of other cultures as well. I can't stop looking at it online and searching for it at flea markets, etc.

I really love theorem paintings and I want to try to update that idea for some contemporary projects involving recycling old clothing that would otherwise go to waste. Old shirts can become new theorem paintings.

Here is a set of folk art carvings I felt very lucky to find. (Photos not mine.)

And I found these burl wood carvings out of Ashbery's home town of Sodus. These remind me of De Chirico so strongly! These two figures really play on my subconscious. Strong in wabi-sabi! They refuse to resolve into the beings we sense implicit in them. More than a little sci-fi. They also remind me of that art show where the Futurists displayed a (natural,unmodified) tree root figure as art. (Photos not mine.)

Here is a small lot of pyrography plaques by Bettie Vretenar. I love the gender-fluid George Washington. Pronouns: they, them. And the spaceman is dishy too. These look even better "in person." (Not my photo.)

And this guy has such an interesting and flexible sense of balance! This piece of early kinetic art can be balanced numerous ways. The artist was quite ingenious. (Not my photos.)

I've started very slowly collecting Inuit carvings. Here are two I didn't nab for my collection, but whose beauty stayed with me. 

This first one is Levi Tetpon, who is just an amazing sculptor and totally under-recognized. (Not my photos below).

And this otter is attributed to Charlie Kasudluaq (b. 1927). This one also broke my heart in several places.

 I'll close with this nonpareil folk art carving of a Southern Baptist snake-handler. This went for over five hundred dollars even with the condition issues. I agree. It's going to haunt my dreams for years. Hard not to see a direct connection to those carved women of Knossos wearing the serpent-skirts. And yet the artist who carved this in the nineteenth century probably never saw those images.

Serendipity

Antiques malls are my Gothic cathedrals, my Metropolitan Museum.

I go there to stare in awe at the relics of lost lives of those who might not have been saints or great sinners, but who, nonetheless, lived gorgeously.

I really need several hours (if not all day) when I get in a larger Church of Lost Whispers like that.

Yesterday, I visited one I hadn't revisited for some six months or more.

There was a new booth dedicated to old photographs. I fell into a swoon, then a trance. I had to look at all of the thousands of photographs, which were only a dollar apiece, even the larger ones.

After a while, I started doing vertical yoga, because I had been standing there so long that my skeleton started to suggest he and I might have different agendas for the day.

I found numerous unusual photographs for my own personal collection. I was so happy to find these lost moments.

Then I noticed some larger portraits of posh personages, children posing alone and with their families. It was instantly apparent that the photographer had exceptional skill. As I removed this set of photos from their display box, I saw the pencil signature at the bottom of the lovely portraits: Marcus Adams.

Adams photographed the Windsors and many other notables. His photograph of the young Elizabeth later appeared on a Canadian banknote.

I haven't yet identified the people in the photographs, but that's for another day, I suppose.

There were a number of interesting paintings by probably unknown artists, many of them in the naive style, and I usually make a purchase along those lines, but nothing quite made me jump yesterday. There was a pair of paintings on boards by an artist working in the seventies that I almost snagged, but there was some slight damage to each painting which turned me off the purchase. It's a shame, because they were both Matisse-inspired and colorful to the psychedelic max. But I didn't feel confident enough to color match and do the restorations myself.

When I go through more than a thousand photographs, I like to do "themes," where I create groupings of photos which seem to go together. Yesterday, I was able to assemble a nice set of early to mid-century photos of kittens and cats alongside a grouping of photos of soldiers (mostly WW II) with the rough theme "Disport Yourself."

I don't just look at the old photos. I invariably get fiction ideas as I drift through each vanished world. I found myself coming up with quite grim stories for some of the odder photos.

One small cabinet photo I bought simply because the woman looked more like an Edward Gorey drawing of a questionable governess than any other living human ever did to my eyes.