A few physical reminders of fan's love for the Grateful Dead. On the Internet Archive, there are some 600 examples of decorated envelopes sent to the office for tickets. Worth a look and a smile!
See them all HERE
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Two aspiring illustrators apply their craft outdoors. Enjoy the Summer!
Original Real Photo Postcard inscribed on the reverse with date 1912 and
Original Snapshot inscribed on reverse with date 1953.
Collection Jim Linderman
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Cowboy Artist Las Vegas Kim aka J. Edgar Kimsey Postcards from the American West.
Las Vegas Kim was a real cowboy artist active in the 1930s. J. Edgar Kimsey was also the postmaster of the small town of Texon, Texas. He was more specifically a cowboy postcard artist of sorts…and that is one with a ribald, romping nature too. The West was his place and time. As reflected in his work, he was a bull rider too. The cards themselves are beautiful little relics of Texas past with an unusual primitive printing technique. The cards appear to have been tinted by hand, but aren't. It is also nice to know Mr. Kimsey had a risqué side. Several of the postcards here were shared by the Fire House Museum of Crowell, Texas online years ago. There are a few mentions of Mr. Kimsey online. One is in the book Texon: Legacy of an Oil Town. and I remember a longer, more complete post online years ago. However, ANY search with "kim" in it is going to give you a passel of Kim from Las Vegas you probably aren't searching for.
Group of Las Vegas Kim postcards, c. 1935 - 1939. Collection Jim Linderman and from the collection of the Fire House Museum of Crowell website. I would love to find them all...any out there? These are now 80 years old or more. Any help?
Folk Art Drawing Nerves of the Telephone System c. 1955 by High School Artist Jackie Davis Watercolor paint on writing paper from her "Health Emotions" scrapbook.
Collection Dull Tool Dim Bulb
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While this early, drawn by hand "comic" strip (or graphic novel if you like) is nearly 100 years old, the young woman who drew it had little to base her format on. Dating to 1918 or so, there seems to have been only some 20 major published newspaper strips at the time being told in panels. The Katzenjammer Kids, which appeared in 1897, is credited as the first strip with a story told in panels. Mutt and Jeff came along ten years later. The third major strip of the era, Krazy Kat, appeared in 1913. The character had been part of "The Dingbat Family" a few years before it appeared as a spin-off.
The other characteristic defining a comic strip is the use of "balloons" to carry conversations. This has that as well.
Substantial strips of the early 20th century are far better known today than when they first appeared. Research and compilations have documented them to an audience far larger than those who saw the original work on a regular basis.
The artist here is a young woman named Elizabeth Stohn of Newburgh, New York. This work was found with several sketchbooks filled with single drawings as well as an 88 page graphic novel drawn in 1921. She had progressed, and some of the work from that book are shown below.
It appears her maturation was due to a correspondence school of art. in 1924 she received somewhat persnickety feedback from the Associated Art Studios in New York City. Specifically from Mort Burger, who was director of the school of cartooning then located in the Flatiron Building. Mr. Burger was a cartoonist himself, though maybe not much of one. Comic historian Allan Holtz writes "Mort was a producer of small panel cartoons which peppered the daily papers of New York and other cities in the 1900s and 1910s. These mini-cartoons fell out of favor in the mid-teens and Burger turned to other cartooning pursuits like this school." Well…I always wondered why artists taught art instead of making art. Mort did both, but seems to have been slightly more successful teaching. He tried performing on stage as well. As also found by Allan Holtz, Mort was killed in an automobile accident just 6 months after the artist here received his letter of criticism! It is not known how many working cartoonists the school turned out. One can find numerous examples of the advertisements he placed in magazines, but little about any successful graduates.
Ms. Stohn seems to have seen her share of misery by an early age…and in fact "comic" strip is a misnomer. Her strip works are lurid. The earliest comic strips were often far from funny. As David Kunzle writes "the early (pre-19th-century) strip was seldom comic either in form or in content, and many contemporary strips are in no sense primarily humorous. The terms comics and comic strip became established about 1900 in the United States, when all strips were indeed comic." Still, if anything characterizes her strip work, it is perils of a young woman. This and the larger book work are filled with abuse and violence. One hopes it was not autobiographical. But she was ahead of her time.
There is a Hedwig Stohn from Newburgh, NY listed as being born in 1880. Father of Elizabeth? Husband? There is an Elizabeth Stohn born nearby in 1910, which would make the artist a child while doing the works shown here, and only 14 at the time of enrolling in the Associated Art Studios. Possible but unlikely? She passed in 1988, and could be our artist, if a precocious one. In an earlier post on Dull Tool Dim Bulb a drawing by the artist was shown requesting further information. As yet, no response. Should additional information be forthcoming, it would be nice to see the entire 88 page graphic novel "From Poverty to Luxary" (sic) published!
Works by Elizabeth Stohn 1918 - 1924 Collection Jim Linderman
(You may also be interested in the BOOK Eccentric Folk Art Drawings by the Author.
available from Blurb.
Justin McCarthy Art Drawing of Wilt Chamberlain 1960 Collection Jim Linderman
See Also HERE
A group of primitive still life art lessons 1917
Anatomy lessons are necessary for a realistic artist, but all artists cheat. Now that the documentary Tim's Vermeer is streaming, you can see one example. In this pair of 19th Century drawings, an enterprising young artist has come upon a brilliant shortcut. Anatomy lessons traced for the outline of his figures on the other side of the paper.
One thing art scholars (and I suspect, the curators at the Met) don't really like to discuss is how the images of our great masters appeared on the canvas. Maybe we should only look at the surface. Who wants to wander through a "projection" wing, a "tracing" wing and a "painted over a shallow emulsion of a photograph" wing. All common.
This kid just figured it out sooner than most.
Pair of untitled portraits (Soldier and Indian) traced from anatomy lessons. Circa 1880? Collection Jim Linderman
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