Dr. Evermor's Forevertron

Upon entering Dr. Evormor's Forevertron, one is instantly struck with a strong sense of awe for the sheer magnitude and complexity of the work. Never have I seen such barbaric and utilitarian objects turned into something so complex and playful. Some of the pieces are in-fact interactive allowing the viewer to actually play.

There were bird like structures with feathers that could be rung like church bells. Dragons with scales that actually play a scale of musical notes. The experience was overwhelming to say the least. One has to really be there and experience the work to gain all that it has to offer. Even then, one might find hidden things that another would not. There is no path or guide to experiencing these objects. One must find them on their own.

Listening to Dr. Evermor speak about his work and the metaphysical energy involved with it was quite exciting. He described the entire park as one gigantic cohesive piece. An elaborate space-time symphony where energy is transmitted and received through these objects. It was all really quite abstract. His thoughts were deep and complex, yet somehow still very understandable.

I'd really love to spend more time in this place, as these objects do in fact hold great amounts of raw energy. Energy that has been injected by the creator. This energy should be tapped into by anyone and everyone who can.

Gobbler Supperclub

This week's adventure took place in Johnsons Creek, WI. Our class met at the Gobbler Supper Club located just off Interstate 94. Fifty years ago this location was a prime spot for travelers to take a mid=trip pitstop on their drive between Madison and Milwaukee. The supper club was also the place for people to come eat, drink, and socialize. Today the luxurious purple chairs are empty. After the death of the original owner in 1979, the site saw a number of owners and their personal incarnations before finally closing in 2002. The building is currently for sale at around $2,000,000.

Architect Helmut Ajango met with us to answer some of our questions and to discuss some of the concepts and materials put into this elaborate design. He described to us his architectural process of allowing the materials to speak to him. If the steel support beams told him they wanted to bend in a certain way he would listen and construct them accordingly. The exterior is constructed of different rock and wood materials, including quartz, amethyst, and even petrified wood that is now on the endangered list.

The inside had a striking purple theme, with the interior architecture being designed with mostly circular shapes. The bar in the center was circular, and in its prime would rotate, customers and all. The purple shag carpeting that once covered the floors and even some of the walls has since been removed. The building has undergone many renovations since its inception. Although I was never around to see it, the loss of the shag carpet must be the most disappointing.

The current owner is set on turning the once supper club into a modern sports bar. He plans to cover the walls in HD televisions, catering to the popular and excessive need for sports and entertainment while eating and socializing. I guess it really isn't that excessive if you consider what the club used to be like. Rotating bars and amethyst stone siding isn't really my idea of a minimalistic design.

J. Shimon & J. Lindemann Interview

Just down the street from Rudy Rotter's Museum of Sculpture in Manitowac is the studio of renowned photographers, J. Shimon & J. Lindemann. While not exactly outsiders to the world of art, Julie and Johnie bring to each of their photographs a certain intuition worth mentioning.

Our class met in their studio where Julie showed us around and answered some of our questions. Due to time restraints, our class had to run before I could think of any questions worth asking. Upon leaving I asked Julie if I could send her over some questions for an interview. Below is the result.


http://www.shimonlindemann.com/

What was it like starting out in a small town in Wisconsin? I think it would be interesting to live and work in a big city, but personally I'd prefer to set up shop in the middle of nowhere.

We started our projects in Madison and Milwaukee mainly and felt like we had gotten a bit of a start working and showing by the time we bought our studio building in Manitowoc. We had friends and contacts when we came here and always made a point to do outreach. We were intensely focused and wanting to be photographers. The Internet did not exist as it does today in the beginning but we had a fax and FedEx and that helped.


I read that you both moved to New York but returned to Wisconsin after a year. What was this experience like, and why did you return?

We moved from New York to Milwaukee where we worked at the Milwaukee Art Museum and made editorial portraits for Milwaukee Magazine, Art Muscle and the Shepherd. We dug being around what was quirky and familiar and all the great cheap thrift stores and funky people. We ran out of money in New York when Julie's student loans came due and our rent increased from $400 a month to $1600. Johnie didn't care for being in the big city and that made us less determined to stay there.


How did you deal with competition starting out? Is it just a matter of waiting for the leading photographer to keel over and then take their place?

We just did what we did and tried to show our pictures to whoever would look at them. Some people liked how we approached projects and others didn't at all. We found an audience.


What kind of education did you guys receive on art and photography? Was it instrumental in your success as working artists?


Johnie has a degree in sculpture and painting and Julie in journalism. We were in school at a time that teachers didn't teach. It was very hands off, not like today. Same for grad school. In fact this experience informs how we teach. We are very rigorous and demanding of our students! Not laid back like our professors. We learned a lot by talking to older photographers, meeting artists and going to museums, galleries and reading magazines. We still do all of this and feel completely unsuccessful and woefully inadequate. But sometimes we have fun and meet amazing people and that sometimes seems more important than so-called success. Not sure on any of this today!


What kind of commissions do you guys receive? Which ones are consistently paying the bills?

We are full-time professors at Lawrence University in Appleton teaching photography and digital processes. 10-15 years ago we were shooting for the New York Times, Fortune, People and others. We also worked for local industry shooting products for packaging. That was lucrative and enabled us to build up our personal work and upgrade our cameras. We always taught, shot for magazines, did some product work and pursued our own projects and wrote grants to fund them. Juggling it all was exciting and sometimes jarring.


What is it like having your work published and recognized in galleries and museums? How did you get started with this?

It's a long road. We wanted to make photographs all the time so about 25 years ago we started showing our pictures around to gallery owners and curators. Then we just kept doing it.



Why shoot film in such a digital age? How do you feel about digital photographs?

Film has a specific appearance and it works for what we're trying to do. We like the connection to the continuum and the history of the medium. Julie shoots snapshots with a Canon G10 and uploads them to flickr and Johnie makes rock music videos that he posts on YouTube in addition to the platinum-palladium prints that we make and exhibit. Artists should use whatever medium suits a specific project and enables communication with whatever audience they have in mind.


Besides going digital, has the photography market changed since you started? Where do you see it going in the future?

There's much less call for original photographs for commercial purposes. Photos are used and reused rather than commissioned for specific purposes. Working with light sensitive materials or analog processes will become totally an artist's domain. Young artists might consider taking advantage of online communities by doing blogs or sharing their work in some way. The problem is cutting through the clutter. There are so many images out there that some photographers, like Joachim Schimd http://schmid.wordpress.com have given up making images and spend their energy curating images from flickr to make new thematic projects.

Is there any advice you would give to an aspiring photographer who is about to graduate?

This is a hard one because we're in an exciting and maybe scary time of change. We are thinking about it a lot too. Hopefully if you are determined, focused and engaged, something will reveal itself. Judging from our friends who have had some success, we can only say that it takes time and a lot of dedicated work before it starts making sense.

Rudy Rotter's Museum of Sculpture

"Rudy passed away November 4, 2001, at the age of 88. He was born April 23, 1913, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received degrees from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and Marquette University (Milwaukee), served in the Army Dental Corps during World War II, and operated a thriving dental practice in Manitowoc until retiring at the age of 74. It wasn't until age 43 that he began making and exhibiting his art. From his earliest experiments with plaster in the mid-1950's to his more recent drawings, made just months before his death, he produced an estimated 17,000 works of art. Many remain housed in his Museum of Sculpture in downtown Manitowoc. The joy expressed when describing his creative process, and the imaginative energy of his artworks have been an inspiration to all who met him."

http://www.rudyrotter.com/pages/aboutrudy.htm

Rudy Rotter's Museum of Sculpture is no longer open to the general public. The three story warehouse which houses the artwork has been deemed structurally unsound. Rudy's wife was kind enough to allow our class access to these works, but with instruction to proceed with caution.

Upon entering the museum, one would think they had just walked into an old antique shop. Long wooden tables were stretched from wall to wall, each covered with hundreds upon thousands of works, large and small. There was truly an overload of objects set before us, one really had to look closely to see each objects beauty.

The main problem with Rudy's work is that there is simply so much. No museum has room for it all. A selection process which would deem one object valuable, and the other not, would seem kind of ridiculous. Each piece represents a thought process by the artist, both conscious and subconscious. To select individual pieces, one would be judging value based on materials and labor alone. It's kind of like saying apple pie is better than just an apple, solely because of the materials and labor involved. While this may translate to pricing values in the grocery market, what place does it have when speaking about art and its values?

With over 14,000 works of art in the museum to chose from, do we select only the intricate and decadent pieces of work, or do we keep some of the apples for their simplistic perfection?

Kohler Restoration Facility

After leaving the James Teller site, our class met at the Kohler Foundation Restoration facility in Sheboygan, WI. Here there were shelves full of archived work. The workers unpacked some of the artwork to show us how it was stored and labeled. They also described some of the processes and difficulties of restoring artwork that wasn't created with sustainability in mind.

James Tellen Site

"Beginning in 1942 and continuing until his death in 1957, James Tellen (1880–1957) created over 30 historic, religious, and mythic figures within the woods surrounding his family's summer cottage in the Black River area of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Tellen was first inspired to make a sculptural environment after a stay in a local hospital, where he became inspired by its marble statues and intriguing naturalistic grottos."

https://www.jmkac.org/JamesTellen

Art of the North Woods

The art of Northern Wisconsin resonates vernacular in its purest sense. There are a myriad of local shops that are packed with representations of wildlife and mystical forest creatures. On a recent camping trip to Minocqua, WI I drove through some of these towns and villages and experienced their native tongue.

The first and second images are of the Paul Bunyan Cook Shanty in Minocqua. It was styled after the cook shanties that were common in the early days of logging camps. We ate from metal plates, and drank from metal cups. The servers brought endless plates of breakfast food to our tables. We dined on flapjacks, eggs, and assorted meat until we could dine no more. A lumberjack can't chop down trees on a bowl of cold cereal.



In the restaurants gift shop were cabinets filled with locally crafted items and trinkets. Living in Wisconsin my entire life, I've almost become numb to this kind of stuff. It would seem that every other home I've been in around here has at least one deer head or fish mounted on the wall. Seeing it here in a massive spotlit display case gave the work new context. Somebody makes this stuff, and then sells it to the shops. What began as a simple tributary reproduction of the artists environment, has now become a tourist attraction. These works have become just as necessary to the North woods as the pine trees.



This is a photograph of Rhinelander's local hero and menace to lumberjacks of the North Woods. The infamous Hodag has become the trademark of the entire city. Schools named their athletic teams "The Hodags," and every other shop in town is called Hodag Auto or Hodag Laundry. The creature which began as a prank in the late 1800's was instrumental in situating Rhinelander as the Industrial leader in Northern Wisconsin. Tourists came from far and wide to see the infamous Hodag, and returned home to tell others of the areas natural beauty.

Below is an image of the original object and photograph created by Eugene Shepard, a notorious prankster in the area. Its hairy body is made of wood and ox hide, and the horns from a bull. The claws were made from bent steel rods.



A very interesting history of the creature and the events around it can be found here: http://www.hodagpress.com/about.htm

Mike "Ringo" White

Bob Watt

This is the home of Bob Watt, an 86 year old Milwaukee based artist and writer who creates more than he knows what to do with. Upon entering his home one has to first find the narrow pathway through the mounds upon mounds of paintings and sculptures. It was hard to imagine that someone could actually live and work in such a place.

Bob Watt began painting in the late 60's when his sister, an artist, asked him to create an abstract painting of sorts. Bob said that after this piece, "the rest just kind of happened by accident." He claims that his artwork is 99% luck and 1% planning.

In 1993, Bobs luck took a turn for the worst. While out one day, his home caught fire and 900 of his paintings went up in smoke. The fire department said that it was the biggest house fire they had ever seen. This didn't deter Watt's will to create, he saw the event as an opportunity for a new start.

Upon meeting Bob I was struck by his quirky charm and equally delightful attire. His shirt was covered in what looked like homemade decorations and pins, and the pockets were filled with pens and trinkets. He started things off by changing his television station from the weather channel to a pornographic film. He said that there was nothing better to ease the mind than the playboy channel. Despite what he may do in his free time, I think he may have turned on the film just to rouse the crowd. He was most likely laughing inside every time one of the students turned to look at the television instead of listening to him speak openly about art.

Judging from his subject matter, it is accurate to say that Bob holds a strong love for the female anatomy. He claimed that not many people truly appreciated the female form, and that he was one of the few that did. Most of the artwork that Bob produces shows evidence of inspiration from the female form.

While most of the rooms were filled with canvases depicting modified Picasso paintings, in the kitchen lie a stack of over 500 hand bound magazines. These booklets were composed of landscape images with nude photographs of women taken by Bob himself xeroxed on top. It was these booklets that I found most intriguing. Just like his self proclaimed attempts to better Picasso's paintings, Bob has taken these images of landscapes and beautified them with the female figure. His unconventional way of compositing the images together leads me to believe that this idea came from Bob alone, and had little to do with outside inspiration or modern photopshopping techniques. It is something that he may have truly stumbled upon by accident.

Sources:
Miracles of the Spirit

A Photographers Intuition

Photograph of a photograph. My Grandmother taking pictures on the beach, photographed by my Grandfather.

My grandparents were dairy farmers in Waukesha County for over 50 years. I didn't find out until much later that the both of them spent their free time together taking photographs, and even had a hidden darkroom in their old farmhouse. I spent every Christmas and Thanksgiving over there for over 13 years and had no clue it was even there. I knew that my Grandmother dabbled with photography, but had no idea to what extent, or that my grandfather who never spoke much about anything except the cattle and the farm had taken interest in it as well.

When my Grandfather past away last October, I inherited some 13 film cameras and assorted lenses they had collected over the years. And that is nothing compared to the amount of slides and negatives that my uncle took home. It would take years to archive all of their photos, but it is something that I feel is necessary to justify the years spent capturing these memories.

Question for the class

How do you feel about photographers with no background in art? Is it possible to consider them intuitive? Should we value what someone else sees as beautiful? Or does the fact that most photographers may have been exposed to what a photograph should look like, ruin any chance of self expression or creativity?

Rosemarie Koczy

Rosemarie's haunting images are the result of surviving through two concentration camps during WWII. She was born to Jewish parents Martha Wusthoff and Karl Koczy in 1939, and in 1942 the family was deported to a camp in Traunstein, Germany. At such a young age it is no wonder that the faces of these victims would go on to haunt her.

We worked in the fields every day. I saw the killings, the shavings, the bleachings, the torture and hunger, the cold, typhus, tuberculosis. Death was all around.

Her images often depict twisted bodies surrounded by intense marks of noise and line. The particles of ink resonate her ability to seemingly channel the spirits of the dead, while also materializing her need to wrap the bodies in some sort of burial shroud. Before she began drawing and painting in 1970 she had studied tapestry weaving at Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Rosemarie insisted that her work always be accompanied with the following statement.

I weave you a shroud.
Ich webe euch ein Leichentuch.
Je vous tisse un linceau.

In 1985, Jean Dubuffet selected her work to represent the inaugural exhibition of the Neuve Invention portion of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the time of her death in 2007 she had completed over 12,000 ink drawings of holocaust victims. In response to the acknowledgment and inclusion of her work as outsider art, she stated

"I don’t pretend to be an artist. I work every day like a labourer on that collective memory. I am just someone who renders justice."

Sources:
Anthony Petullo Collection
New York Times

The Anthony Petullo Collection

Today my Vernacular and Self-Taught Art class had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Petullo in his studio. To my surprise his office is conveniently located only 2 blocks from the school. It has come to my attention that Wisconsin -- Milwaukee in particular -- contains some of the largest collections of Outsider Art around.

Tony was very welcoming and did not hesitate to pull out pieces from storage at will. At one point I was holding two pieces of work in my hand that were probably worth more then my existence. The class spent most of their time researching an artist from his gallery and then presenting it to the class with additional information from Tony himself. He also shared with the class what it was like to be a collector and an author. Tony's new book, "Art Without Category" explores various British and Irish self-taught artists from his collection, and can be purchased from his website.

Residential Art

As I walked down the streets of Milwaukee in search of some glorious item for my found object assignment, I began to look around with a heightened sense of awareness. The first thing I noticed were the unique homes here in the city. It's a subtle yet refreshing change coming from the monotonous maze like areas of earth toned suburban homes near my parents house in Waukesha.

Not only are the homes here unique in shape and color, but the decor as well. Some litter their front walkway with potted plants, while others strew about strange relics they've accumulated over the years.


I began to think deeply about the idea of home decoration as intuitive art. The simple act of self expression to separate oneself from the community. A marker or five that says, "this is my house, this is me." Why is it that some are called to separate themselves, while others feel the need to camouflage and hide amongst the masses? The above images depict two extreme cases found within the same area in Toronto.

Jimmy Lee Sudduth

Born on an Alabamba farm in 1910, Jimmy Lee Sudduth's first contact with mud was at an early age. He watched one day as a boy dripped syrup from his mouth, taking notice to the hardened clump of earth which remained the next day. He would go on to use this concoction of clay and sugar to create countless works of art.

Sudduth's earliest memories of creating were at the age of three. He recalled trekking through the forest and leaving marks on all of the trees. After his experience with the syrup, he began mixing different colored clays with sugary substances including syrup, honey, and even Cocacola. This sticky compound allowed him to finger paint the earthy mixture onto makeshift plywood canvases. The sugar not only kept the clay from falling off, but also dried and hardened it in place.

Jimmy's passion for nature manifests not only in his chosen materials but in the subject matter of his art as well. The farm hand loved to paint fish, birds, snakes and alligators. To increase his gamut of colors he would crush leaves, pine needles, and other foliage depending on the season. For red's he would mash up different kinds of berries, and for dark stains he would use coffee beans, and walnut shells. Sudduth claims he could identify 36 different shades of mud, and with the addition of natural additives his color palette was very large.

Despite his love for natural materials, Jimmy couldn't resist when neighbors started leaving buckets of latex paint on his front porch. By 1970 he was using latex paint almost exclusively in his work. Along with other assorted prefab materials such as egg coloring, carpenters chalk, and grease. The paint allowed him to create more and work faster, and that was a good enough reason for him.



In his later years he began drawing rural and city scapes, including homes, town events, and automobiles. Some of these paintings even depicted architectural landscapes of New York, which he may have seen after his work gained exposure and was put on exhibit.

Jimmy Lee Sudduth died in 2007, at the age of 97. The prolific artist outlived two wives and a son. Two years prior in 2005 the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts held a major exhibition of his paintings.

Once when Jimmy was asked why he used his fingers to paint, Jimmy replied, "Brushes wear out and my fingers don't. When I die, the brush dies too."

Sources:
Web:
Ginger Young Gallery
NY Times
Print

Outsider Art

What is it?

"Art Brut", or "Outsider art", consists of works produced by people who for various reasons have not been culturally indoctrinated or socially conditioned. They are all kinds of dwellers on the fringes of society. Working outside fine art "systems" (schools, galleries, museums and so on), these people have produced, from the depths of their own personalities and for themselves and no one else, works of outstanding originality in concept, subject and techniques. They are works which owe nothing to tradition or fashion.

- Michel Thevoz, Curator of the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne

The term "Outsider Art" was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as the English synonym for Jean Dubuffet's original French term "Art Brut," which loosely translates to "rough art" or "raw art." Both hold connotations of an unadulterated form of self expression. The artwork is generally produced by individuals who have had no training in disciplinary art forms, live outside of a cultured society, and exhibit a relentless drive to create.

Interest arose in this form of art when several psychiatrists began documenting their mental patients work in the early 19th Century. Interest soared particularly in French artist Jean Dubuffet, who with several others, collected the work and created the Compagnie de l'Art Brut in 1948.

Today the term "Outsider Art" has grown to encompass much more than just the works of mental patients, extending to all individuals living outside of modern society, who were born with a divine calling to create. Relying on only their intuition and ingenuity to create these works of pure expression.

Sources:

WEB
Raw Vision
Anthony Petullo Collection
PRINT
Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives, Colin Rhodes