Cowboy Artist Las Vegas Kim aka J. Edgar Kimsey Postcards from the American West

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?

Hand Drawn Postcards Home A Soldier writes and Draws from the Front Franz Ruoff 1918

Hand Drawn Postcards Home  A Soldier writes and Draws from the Front by Franz Ruoff 1918  Collection Jim Linderman
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Do You Miss Genuine Kodachrome Yet? Postcard Retail Rack Topper

COLLECTION JIM LINDERMAN

Do you miss kodachrome?  I do…and I am starting to miss postcards too.  This is a "rack-topper" or the card put in the top slot of a retail, revolving postcard rack.  A good price, but then a tweet is free, or virtually so…but you can't pin a tweet in front of you to admire or use the image for reminder, inspiration or show.

L.L. Cook from Milwaukee was a major player in the field of printed five cent pictures.  The first (and second!) L was for Lloyd.  They printed them until 2007

Genuine Kodachrome Reproductions L. L. Cook Company "Rack Topper" postcard No Date
Collection Jim Linderman
 
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Sumo and Samurai versus the Sultan of Swat Vintage Sumo Postcards

These 100 year-old postcards depict Sumo when it was a bit more muscle and a bit less mass, but in a sport where the goal is not to be moved, either certainly works.

In Japan, the skill is still admired with reverence and tradition we can not even imagine. We love our sports players too, but certainly none of ours go back to 1684, the year Samurai seem to have completed their many centuries long metamorphosis to Sumo. Our biggest and earliest sports heroes only go back to the similarly built (but hardly fit) Babe Ruth, and there are still some of us alive to have actually SEEN the Bambino. (Not to disparage the Swat Sultan...at least he only cheated on his diet and his wife, and his only performance enhancing drug was hot dogs and beer.)

One other big difference between ancient tradition in the East and the mere 100 year old sports in the West? While winning a tournament certainly has financial reward, just look up the average salary of a Sumo wrestler.

Collection of Sumo Wrestler Postcards, circa 1910 Collection Jim Linderman

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Elmer Anderson Mike Kelley Inappropriate Appropriation, The Thing , Genuine Genius Scott Warmuth and Ghostly Afterimage

There is nothing better than a slow-burning low-art mystery, and Elmer Anderson just continues to prove it. My third post on Elmer in as many years, this one prompted by a remarkable find by the brilliant Scott Warmuth. An actual ad (!) taken out by Elmer's distributor, in of all places Billboard Magazine! Maybe they thought musicians were the perfect consumers for his wacky and incomprehensible drawings. You know...the reefer.

NOW having done three posts on the artist Elmer, I should be recognized as the world's foremost Elmer Anderson scholar, though I know absolutely NOTHING about him. As such, I'll take any opportunity to exhibit Elmer. Or as I pointed out HERE, "Genuine" Elmer. Certainly one of the most infamous, if unknown, artists of Waterloo, Iowa.

I have also since learned noted contemporary artist Mike Kelley used an Elmer Anderson image, "The Thing" shown above, as the source for his painting "Ghostly Afterimage" in 1998. Now that may be appropriation, but it certainly is not appropriate. "The Thing" can stand on it's own, it being a dramatic and profound anti-alcohol piece with a sufferer choking a whiskey snake.

Here is what falutin' art magazine Frieze had to say about Kelley's piece based on "The Thing".

"Ghostly Afterimage, for example, a brutish self portrait in oils by the fictional ‘Elmer’, accompanied by a psycho-babble commentary claiming that ‘Elmer’s shaky paint is typical of those who suffer from the type of violent delirium characterised by the sweats, trembling, anxiety and frightening hallucinations’"

Brutish? FICTIONAL? Humpf. May I suggest another word starting with BR? Brilliant!



Sure enough as seen here, lower right, Kelley's painting is a perfect reversed image of Elmer's brilliant work, but appears to be painted on (the then) trendy plywood backing contemporary artists were using in the late 90s. The IRONY. Well, Elmer didn't work in irony, and I doubt he ever knew his image was shown as "kunst" in Germany. If you dig around enough, you will find the brochure, which is a German art catalog, but you'll have to use Google translate to see if the "critic" liked it!
Jim Linderman is a collector of Elmer Anderson Postcards, and author of THE HORRIBLE HANDMADE POSTCARDS OF ANONYMOUS printed by Blurb. Anonymous would have liked Elmer.



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Check Your Hose Day! A Good Hose is a Household Necessity (Hose Humor collection Jim Linderman)

Yes, once again it is "Hose Inspection Day" so let's get to it. A good hose is a household necessity. I check mine even more frequently than necessary just to be sure.

Pair of Harley R. Lugibihl "Look Over Your Garden Hose" advertising cards circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

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Real Photo Postcard Tinted by Hand (Little Red Apples)

Cyko Real Photo Postcard circa 1910 Collection Jim Linderman

Postcard Generic Stops Along the Road (Deja Vu Road Trip)

Ever get the feeling you've driven down that road before?

"Generic" Postcards "GOOD FOR ANY PART OF THE COUNTRY" Colourpicture Publishers Postcard catalog 1946 Collection Jim Linderman

Mr. Teeter Finds a Drift Card. Giant Fish DNA Asian Carp, Mistakes in the Great Lakes and Exaggeration Postcards

I have nothing against my friends in Chicago except for a huge, disgusting invasive species known as the Asian Carp. Able to jump large boats in a single bound. In fact, during fishing contests, they often do just that, literally giving themselves up by plopping their gross girth right into the hull. That isn't all they do...bigger eaters than Joey Chestnut at Coney Island after a fast (look him up) they deplete any water they occupy of the good fish...leaving you forced to make a decision. Do I stop eating fish? Or do I adapt and start rolling that ugly water dinosaur into corn meal.

Seriously, man...pictures of those giant goldfish look like exaggeration postcards from the 1950s. They'll grow to four feet on our delicious sport fish!

So far, as near as I can tell, an electric barrier (a bug-zapper for fish!) has been installed to keep the river monsters away...but some carp DNA has slipped through...Ewwww! Around here there are signs on lawns reading "NO MISTAKE IN THE LAKE" and though they refer to the fat, scaly Mylopharyngoden, they always make me think of something I did in the lake as a kid.

Michigan is attempting to force some Illinois rivers and canals to zip it up. Some of them appear to be trying to sneak through near Calumet (a city once known for sin, drugs and strippers)

So anyway, speaking of postcards, here is a nice one. A note sent to Mr. Roy Teeter way back in 1958. Mr. Teeter found a message in a bottle! Apparently walking near the shoreline, he found what is known as a "drift card" released by the Great Lakes Fishery Investigations several years earlier. He was rewarded with this note acknowledging his fine fishy find!

President Obama has appointed a "fish czar" to monitor the situation. I hope they keep an eye on things, or the fake fish postcards of the past will have to show BIGGER fake fish.

"Drift card note" to Roy Teeter, 1958 collection Jim Linderman
Salesman Sample "Freak Fish" postcard circa 1950 collection Jim Linderman

Zallah Knows...But No One Knows Zallah! Psychic claptrap from a Medium Skilled Medium

When I read a non-fiction book about times in the early 1970s, as I have just done, (A true tale of rural Texas when kids were just starting to learn about popping pills) I am astounded at how much credence was given to psychics at the time. I am especially surprised as I thought they had done been debunked decades earlier.

I mean, how stupid... ehh. I give-up. I even have folks around here who believe Glenn Beck.
I give up.

So here is Zallah. An Uri Geller in Drag. A schmatta wearing female fraud. Years ago I learned the way these con-men in skirts make their living is by limping along on the dollar or two stolen from grieving widows, troubled husbands, lonely wives...all while waiting for the one BIG score which usually meant the "go to your bank and draw out your available funds" gambit. (A cop told me this...He said they usually go three or four months in between real scores, and when they hit, the daughter or son takes over the business while they go to Florida and bask a while)

Zallah here appears to have slipped town with her ill-gotten gains. Certainly she is on her way to greener pastures of plenty. There is nothing on the web about this criminal. If I could conjure up some dirt, you would certainly get it. One thing I know...when they took Zallah's fingerprints, be Zallah man or woman...they also got Zallah's real name. Unfortunately, I do not have it.

Zallah! The Woman with the Penetrating Eyes! Tradecard, circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

Postcards Made from DEER Banned by the Post Office

Today's post introduces a good website and also recovers the somewhat disturbing era of postcards made out of DEER HIDE. In the postcard trade, they are now known as "leather" postcards in deference to Bambi. These are not particularly "good" leather postcards, just disturbing. As with everything, I'm drawn to the most curious and somewhat pathetic examples. There ARE some spectacular pieces around and they seem to be one of the more active areas of postcardology. Remember that woodburning kit you father finally trusted you with back in 6th Grade? These are sorta like that. Primarily desired not for their artistic skills, but for their scarcity. They were made for only about five years, from 1900-1905 or so, as the Post Office banned them (!) A shame, as the cards, or rather little squares of deerskin (let's be honest) had pre-punched holes so you could use them in craft projects. See above, a splendid example of a make-do satchel or pillow made from a small herd of them. Ingenious. It looks like a Native American bag, with the sinew-like lacing and fringe...I guess it could be. Plenty of tribes were still active in 1900, and they were certainly familiar with animal skin. Maybe they made a few.

Anyway, I learned about my leather "cards" from Postcardcollector.org which is a fun and worthy site. They encourage folks to show off, so the site is full of goofy examples, and their seems to be a good dialog going on. I just joined. I suggest you all do too. HERE

Leather handmade postcard bag, circa 1910 From Postcardcollector.org

Group of Primitive Leather Postcards, circa 1905 Collection Jim Linderman

A Little Birdy Told Me To INSULT Your Ass.

I have trouble imagining the bitter rancorous old goat who came up this idea. "Prize Sap" indeed. At least they weren't mailed.

Set of Insult Postcards, 1945 Privately Printed in Chicago Collection Jim Linderman

Stanley Smolak and the Legs Inn RPPC

Not only is Stanley Smolak's creation, the Legs Inn still operating after 80 years, it is thriving! Live bands and the greatest Polish food outside of Poland. You HAVE to read the menu HERE. Only in America? Nah...only in MICHIGAN!

Three real photo post cards, c. 1950? Collection Jim Linderman

The Philosophical Underpinnings of Mail Art (and some advice from my mother)

Receiving a hand-decorated piece of mail from a loved one is always a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, it is a practice falling by the wayside along with everything else done by hand. You can "personalize" an email but must use freehand software...or all you are doing is selecting a pre-designed piece of digitized junk some programmer thought was cute. And you are probably downloading it from a company stealing your IP address. If it blinks, squeaks, dances or wiggles it is even worse.

Also annoying is when mail art becomes a "movement" with philosophical underpinnings like Dada, Fluxus, Merz, the Mail Art Network and such. I know there are all sorts of rational artistic justifications for the practice but it seems for the most part to be made up of people who are a little too impressed with their own cleverness. (And those who like to tease the post office, which along with the public library is one of the few true bargains left) Want a conceptual foundation from my mother? To get mail, you have to send mail. Not deep, but true.

Group of Handmade envelopes, postcards, etc. c. 1900-1940. Collection Jim Linderman