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