Dull Tool Dim Bulb: Laura Levine Prolific Photographer Proprietor Artist and Renaissance Woman

Laura Levine Prolific Photographer Proprietor Artist and Renaissance Woman

Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash, NY, 1981 © Laura Levine - All Rights Reserved

I was all set to profile my friend Laura Levine a few months ago, but the Museum of Modern Art selected her work for the Looking at Music 3.0 exhibition currently on view (running though June 2011) and she became impossible!

Not really. But the Museum does start off their video for the show with her image of Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash!

I love Laura Levine but mostly I admire her. Laura brings back the tradition of the "renaissance man" but she's a woman. A renaissance man is "one whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas" and it is hard to find a better example today. As you can see above, Laura is a photographer of great, great talent and skill. These are extraordinary photographs by any standard, but that they are all of musicians I personally admire is a bonus. She let me pick them. I was a kid in a rock star store.

Laura has more. She was Chief Photographer for the New York Rocker, a tabloid which was largely responsible for me packing my bags and moving to the city decades ago. They were lucky to have her as the photos above testify.

Despite the work above (and in some limited cases, available for purchase from the artist) photography is hardly Laura's only skill.

You have likely seen her paintings as well. As this post is an excuse for me to show the photos, I'm not posting any paintings here, but Laura, self-taught, works in a most appealing naive style and has created some of the most endearing portraits of musicians you will ever see. Her portfolio is a trip through American music history, and I can't think of an artist who has done as much except R. Crumb. Just take a few minutes to browse HERE.

A published author. Not just published, but with a blurb from GEORGE JONES. I don't have to say any more. Among her books are Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music, and Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll. Her first picture book was Wig!, a collaboration with the B-52's. I expect many more.

Shall I go on? Okay...Documentary filmmaker who has been screened at Sundance. Need more?

Laura also handles Homer and Langley's Mystery Spot. I know it sounds like a place you read billboards for two hundred miles then stop to pee at, but it is in fact one of the greatest junk stores in the world. Vintage fashions, books, records, what-nots and what-have-yous. Take a look at the folks who have shopped there. Somehow, Laura even finds time to take THEIR pictures. I'm only telling you about the shop because since I moved, it is too far for me to drive to. They even have porch parties you wouldn't believe.

Gawd...I HATE Laura Levine. But I also love her like a sister.

The artist Laura Levine owns all rights to the photographs above, and she deserves them. She also didn't have to share them here, so respect her artistic contributions and don't crib them. It would be an insult to me, the artist and you! However, Laura does from time to time sell limited editions of the work and you can see the catalog HERE. Homer and Langley's Mystery Spot is HERE. The Artist's official website (which dances and moves) is HERE.

Above Photographs courtesy of the photographer© Laura Levine - All Rights Reserved

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

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Laura Levine Prolific Photographer Proprietor Artist and Renaissance Woman

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