American Folk Art

Ten years ago, when I was traveling in the Ozark Mountains, I bought a whirligig at a craft shop by the side of the road in Arkansas. It was the figure of a bluebird that paddled like a swimmer in the wind and rattled like the dickens in our garden until its wings gave out during its second or third blustery winter (no doubt to the relief of the neighbors).Now the bluebird is perched quietly on a rafter in the garage, and I'm looking for a suitable replacement. The possibilities, it turns out, are endless.

Home design has met with a bit of fowl play. And the culprit is pecking its way onto our welcome mats, into our living rooms, onto our tabletops and into our gardens. Animals and insects take turns as nature mascots in our homes. Over the years, we've embraced geese, butterflies, dragonflies and frogs. This year, roosters rule. "People find roosters very warm and friendly," says Sally Conley, assistant manager of the Kellogg Collections, a home furnishings store in Baltimore. Roosters have been gaining popularity in her shop for about a year.

Even the casual collector of folk art may be inspired to learn more on the subject. Richard Edson hands out a two-page bibliography to those who visit his Folk Art Gallery in Bolton Hill and recommends the library at Maryland Institute, College of Art as a prime research spot.Here are some other sources:* The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington is presenting a major exhibition of folk art in "Passionate Visions of the American South," which opened yesterday. The Corcoran is located at New York Avenue and 17th Street Northwest, Washington.

One of the seminal influences on contemporary art has been feminism, which has transformed the very definitions of the terms "art" and "artist" in the postmodern era. That influence, and the enormous changes it has wrought over the last 30 years, is everywhere evident in the art of Joyce J. Scott, the Baltimore-based fabric artist, sculptor, painter, jewelry maker and performance artist who is the subject of a landmark retrospective that opens today at...

The designs of Maryland painter Kristin Helberg enhance household objects from folding screens and fire boards to chests, small boxes and candlesticks. Partly because of the paintings' naive style and partly because of the historically correct finishes that Ms. Helberg used on the boxes and frames, the objects seem rediscovered, like treasures found in antique shops.The painting style relies heavily on the comforting themes of the Peaceable Kingdom, and the marbleized and grained finishes are known as vinegar paintings.

Anthony J. Accardo, 86, reputed boss of the Chicago crime syndicate and once Al Capone's bodyguard known as "Big Tuna," "The Enforcer" and "Joe Batters," died of heart disease May 27 in a Chicago hospital. He was once described at a U.S. Senate Rackets Committee hearing as the "godfather of Chicago organized crime." Despite a long arrest record on charges of murder, kidnapping, extortion, tax fraud, union racketeering and gambling, Mr. Accardo was never convicted of a felony, and he boasted that he had never spent a night in jail.

Herbert Waide Hemphill Jr.,69, who amassed a 3,000-piece American folk art collection, died Friday in New York. His residence was filled with paintings, shop signs, fish decoys, whirligigs, tramp art, tattoo designs and bottle-cap animals.The collection spanned the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Artists included Martin Ramirez, Howard K. Finster, Jon Serl, Bessie Harvey, Sister Gertrude Morgan and Joseph Yoakum.Mr. Hemphill for 10 years was first curator of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York after it opened in 1964.

George H. Meyer says he collects canes; in reality, he collects skinny sculpture. A bookish, earnest, Harvard-educated lawyer in Birmingham, Mich., Mr. Meyer, 64, is the sort of man who might be expected to collect elegant gold-handled Edwardian walking sticks or sporty Victorian gadget canes with a compass set in the handle.Mr. Meyer struts to a different beat. He is passionate about wild and expressive 19th and 20th century American folk art canes carved with snakes slithering up their wooden shafts and other predatory serpents stalking a bird, pouncing on a rat, or swallowing a pig.Some of his canes are carved with human forms and resemble elongated sculpture by Alberto Giacometti.

"The Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists," by Chuck and Jan Rosenak (Abbeville, $75), has people saying they don't know what folk art is anymore."Is it handmade weather vanes, professional traveling artists, young women's handiwork, mass-produced decoys, a slave quilt, or is it the expression of self-taught artists, urban and rural, who respond to the world as they see it?" asks Robert Bishop, director of the Museum of American Folk Art, who wrote the preface to the book.

Q: Where can I find information on and examples of "spirit art" created by artists who claim that spirits control their hands when painting?A: Among those who create such art is Skip Grisham, whose work is on exhibit at his studio, Loft 207, 600 S. Dearborn St., Chicago, Ill. 60605. Phone (312) 922-4267 for an appointment. Also write Carl Hammer at Carl Hammer Gallery, 200 W. Superior St., Chicago, Ill. 60610, phone (312) 266-8512, about works by Mr. Imagination and other spirit artists represented by the gallery.

Lawrence Barrett Holdridge, founder of a hydraulic equipment company and collector of decorative arts, died of heart failure Tuesday at his historic home near Owings Mills. He was 88.A self-taught engineer, he established Holdridge Engineering in 1941. Its specialties included measuring devices and gauges. He retired in 1991 after selling the business to Hydratech Inc.Mr. Holdridge was known for his urbanity and wit, as well as his interest in the arts, music and antique collecting.Mr. Holdridge and his wife of 38 years, the former Barbara Cohen, a publisher and co-founder of Caedmon Records, lived in historic Stemmer House since 1973.

Herbert Waide Hemphill Jr.,69, who amassed a 3,000-piece American folk art collection, died Friday in New York. His residence was filled with paintings, shop signs, fish decoys, whirligigs, tramp art, tattoo designs and bottle-cap animals.The collection spanned the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Artists included Martin Ramirez, Howard K. Finster, Jon Serl, Bessie Harvey, Sister Gertrude Morgan and Joseph Yoakum.Mr. Hemphill for 10 years was first curator of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York after it opened in 1964.

Ten years ago, when I was traveling in the Ozark Mountains, I bought a whirligig at a craft shop by the side of the road in Arkansas. It was the figure of a bluebird that paddled like a swimmer in the wind and rattled like the dickens in our garden until its wings gave out during its second or third blustery winter (no doubt to the relief of the neighbors).Now the bluebird is perched quietly on a rafter in the garage, and I'm looking for a suitable replacement. The possibilities, it turns out, are endless.

Even the casual collector of folk art may be inspired to learn more on the subject. Richard Edson hands out a two-page bibliography to those who visit his Folk Art Gallery in Bolton Hill and recommends the library at Maryland Institute, College of Art as a prime research spot.Here are some other sources:* The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington is presenting a major exhibition of folk art in "Passionate Visions of the American South," which opened yesterday. The Corcoran is located at New York Avenue and 17th Street Northwest, Washington.

Folks in New York will be all wrapped up in quilts this week. Quilt collectors, dealers, makers, historians, museum curators and curious observers will gather at Pier 92 on Manhattan's West Side for the Museum of American Folk Art's Great American Quilt Festival Wednesday through Sunday. Lectures and workshops will cover quilt history, connoisseurship and conservation techniques, and also provide hands-on sewing opportunities. Exhibitions will examine the rich cultural heritage of African-American quilts and star pattern quilts by Lakota Indians.

Outsider Art itself may be in, but the name for it has one foot out the door.The New Orleans Museum of Art, for example, uses the label "works by self-taught artists" instead of "outsider art" for the exhibit it is organizing of over 250 paintings and sculptures by almost 80 Southern artists from 1940 to the present.Although some of the artists are admittedly eccentric, many are in the mainstream of rural America, explains Dannal Perry, a curatorial assistant involved in planning the show, which opens in New Orleans on Oct. 23 before touring the country.

Lawrence Barrett Holdridge, founder of a hydraulic equipment company and collector of decorative arts, died of heart failure Tuesday at his historic home near Owings Mills. He was 88.A self-taught engineer, he established Holdridge Engineering in 1941. Its specialties included measuring devices and gauges. He retired in 1991 after selling the business to Hydratech Inc.Mr. Holdridge was known for his urbanity and wit, as well as his interest in the arts, music and antique collecting.Mr. Holdridge and his wife of 38 years, the former Barbara Cohen, a publisher and co-founder of Caedmon Records, lived in historic Stemmer House since 1973.

American folk art is enjoying a great wave of popularity, with major museum exhibitions, articles on folk art collectors in shelter magazines and folk art imitators everywhere."

George H. Meyer says he collects canes; in reality, he collects skinny sculpture. A bookish, earnest, Harvard-educated lawyer in Birmingham, Mich., Mr. Meyer, 64, is the sort of man who might be expected to collect elegant gold-handled Edwardian walking sticks or sporty Victorian gadget canes with a compass set in the handle.Mr. Meyer struts to a different beat. He is passionate about wild and expressive 19th and 20th century American folk art canes carved with snakes slithering up their wooden shafts and other predatory serpents stalking a bird, pouncing on a rat, or swallowing a pig.Some of his canes are carved with human forms and resemble elongated sculpture by Alberto Giacometti.

Anthony J. Accardo, 86, reputed boss of the Chicago crime syndicate and once Al Capone's bodyguard known as "Big Tuna," "The Enforcer" and "Joe Batters," died of heart disease May 27 in a Chicago hospital. He was once described at a U.S. Senate Rackets Committee hearing as the "godfather of Chicago organized crime." Despite a long arrest record on charges of murder, kidnapping, extortion, tax fraud, union racketeering and gambling, Mr. Accardo was never convicted of a felony, and he boasted that he had never spent a night in jail.