Jim Linderman blog about surface, wear, form and authenticity in self-taught art, outsider art, antique american folk art, antiques and photography.
Orange Crate Art Still On the Crate
I don't really understand fruit crate label collectors and suspect most of the shiny, pristine examples you see are fake. But then I'm no expert. This one, while hardly pristine, is real.
Found in Michigan 2014. Collection Jim Linderman
Additional Photographs of Blacaman for BLACAMAN AND GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ CHEAT DEATH by Jim Linderman
Additional Blacaman Photographs collection Jim Linderman
Read the Story BLACAMAN AND GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ CHEAT DEATH at the Paraphilia Magazine Site HERE
How to Make a Copy of a Tintype Photograph
How to copy a tintype? Nail it to a board and make another tintype
Tintype photograph circa 1870 collection Jim Linderman
Fruit Crate Jar Bottle Rim Toss Sewing Spool Folk Art Game
Fruit Crate Jar Bottle Rim Toss Sewing Spool Folk Art Game. Third in the Make-Do Game Series Depression era? Homemade Carnival Collection Jim Linderman
Brush Bristle Folk Art Target with Bow and Arrows
Brush Bristle Folk Art Target with Bow and Arrows. Not shown, the bow. There is no identification or company name, so this may be handmade. Safer than real arrows, and the bristle-tipped arrows stick fine! Make do created from a floor cleaner? Original paint with four "arrows" and a handmade 22" bow.
Collection Jim Linderman
Coming Soon, Again!
Just for the record, the book THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL is sold out, but it is being reprinted by a major publisher. Stay tuned, and thank you! Jim Linderman
Homemade Baseball Peg Game with Rolling Play Dice
Homemade Baseball Peg Game with Rolling Play Dice. No date, typewriter era!
Collection Jim Linderman
The Accidentals The Best Unsigned Band in America?
(Photo Anna Sink/Local Spins credit) |
One of the best unsigned bands in America is a duo of 18 year old women from Traverse City, Michigan. Home of the National Cherry Festival. That is a long way from wherever current pop "role models" Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber live, but the Mitten state grows as much talent as fruit, and it has since John Lee Hooker moved up to perform for Automobile workers after the big one.
Katie Larson and Savannah Buist are recent graduates of the first singer-songwriter major program at Interlochen Center for the Arts. It is one of the most acclaimed music schools in the world, yet the Accidentals are far from snooty. They have somehow managed to retain an authenticity and heartbreaking musical pathos I equate with the school of Harry Smith and Alan Lomax. I have every reason to believe The Accidentals will achieve the level of American greats. You would think me kidding if I named a few in the sphere I think of, but then I saw the 27-Grammy Award winning Alison Krauss perform at age 18 too, and as Levon Helm once said "lightning can strike twice" after all. I have seen the Accidentals perform and felt those sparks, and if dear Levon were still here I would tell him. I am not exaggerating. The Accidentals could have owned Levon's barn stage easily, and I know that too.
The Accidentals could already be considered successful, I suppose, with FIVE HUNDRED gigs already behind them. Between them they play a dozen instruments. They sing, at times, with a perfect dissonant aching (some of which you can see in their faces as they occur in the clips here) and they support each other like hired professionals. They met at age 15 in public school, maintained their 3.9 grade points and practiced. They both come from musical families. I have chosen to include two acoustic performances here, but in performance they can rock. Their live act is frequently electric. The stage patter and presence is polished but real. They switch instruments before the song they have finished sinks in. A 45 minute set passes like a train. They already have more good originals than most hit acts, and their tastefully eccentric list of covers, well... covers the gamut. They pack performing space with a multi-generational mix any act would beg for. Their song The Silence has talon hooks, a mature mastery of dynamics and is as good as anything I've heard in a decade. The studio version is HERE and you will find the lyrics HERE. It approaches standard. If you write songs, you know what standard means.
And they will grow.
I am not producer, critic or musician, but I have seen a good two dozen of the performers in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and many of them in venues smaller than the Accidentals regularly play. I have been fortunate enough to have made a few small contacts in the music world… if my post here reaches any of them I will have done what I can, and when one day one of them says to me "why didn't you tell me" I won't have to say I didn't try.
The Accidentals website is HERE. Their Music is HERE. They have a YouTube Channel. If they play near you, and they will, see them. Thank you to critic and writer John Sinkevics for alerting me to The Accidentals
Polaroid Pack Film Portraits of Wood and a free preview of I'm with Dummy by Jim Linderman
Anonymous Polaroid Pack Film Portraits, No Date circa 1970s Collection Jim Linderman
You may also be interested in the Book and Ebook "I'm With Dummy : Vent Figures and Blockheads" avalable from Blurb.com.
Times Square 42nd Street 1949 Original Vintage Snapshot
Hopefully, some of you know I have been working on a book project which will tell the true story of the art and cultural changes brought by the underground artists, writers, publishers and merchants who were active in the 1950s and early 1960s in New York City.
TIMES SQUARE SMUT is going really well, and I am now at the point of locating images I hope will be useful to the artist I will commission to do the cover. This snapshot shows ground zero of smut...and will be helpful. A mere block from the location of the bookstores I am more interested in...but the book will tell a far more decentralized story. From time to time I make excerpts available. Be an adult.
One of my favorite buildings is just visible back in the horizon. The old McGraw-Hill building which has blue/green terra-cotta ceramic tiles on the exterior, and I am pleased to see it has been landmarked. The dapper fellow walking to work unfazed by the activity around him? I am hoping to have him rendered either a pornographer, a censor or a patron.
Original anonymous snapshot 1949 collection Jim Linderman
Make Do Wall Hanging Candle Box with two inscised relief carved Nudes Erotic Folk Art
Folk Art Sculpture. Collection Jim Linderman
Eccentric Fashion Drawings Dull Tool Dim Bulb Annual "I'm Not at the Outsider Art Fair" Exhibition
Eccentric Fashion Drawings 1944 (all detail scans) Each 10 x 15 Collection Jim Linderman
I try to post a group of unusual artworks every year around Outsider Art Fair time. Fashion drawings, to my knowledge, haven't yet made an appearance at the Outsider Art Fair yet. These are nice ones.
Art and Photography Books and $5.99 Ebooks by the author are available for preview or purchase HERE
Gruesome Amputation Tableau of Tin Miniature Handmade Figures Walking with Mr. D.
This is a first. Completely made by hand, with an indecipherable signature and no indication of age (but they are old...not 17th century old, but old) a lurid gruesome scene. I think the figures, which are made of lead and tin (all painted by hand and all original) were at one time part of a larger installation or display. A museum of horrors which has closed down? Objects from the former Malcom Forbes toy museum on Fifth Avenue? (If you never saw Malcom Forbes toy collection, you haven't seen a toy collection.) A quite remarkable little nightmare with meticulous construction. I also have what could be called "Walking with Mr. D."
BOOKS AND EBOOKS BY THE AUTHOR HERE
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