Artist Homer Tate made the thing. Even though "The Thing" was supposed to be a mystery and a secret, it is likely the most famous thing Homer Tate ever made. Homer made sideshow gaffes he sold to carnival and sideshow businesses. Shrunken heads and such created to lure rubes inside. Sales of his animal hide "human mysteries" were good. I am sure you have seen some on those "wacky true history" shows. He'd make a thing for 25 bucks.
The Thing is on Wikipedia!
I am afraid Homer's lesser known paper mache tableau "old west" tourist attraction things don't get seen as often. They filled his place. I don't know where they are.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress and photographer Russell Lee. Yes, the same Russell Lee who created some serious photos. Taken 1940. Complete photo set HERE at the Library of Congress website.
In 1956 Artnews referred to Regina Gilbert as "a sophisticated experimental primitive" and that "Her eye has combined Henri-Edmond Cross and van Gogh." Ten years later, the Palm Beach Daily called her "the only living American primitive painter" which seems even more of an exaggeration. As far back as 1951, Newton Galleries were representing Ms. Gilbert as "Brooklyn's most exuberant and imaginative primitive" in a press release. A year earlier, a New York magazine called Cue reviewed a Gilbert show as "...another of those primitive painters who periodically invade the art galleries, this time a "Grandma Moses" of Brooklyn. Her floral paintings, gay, decorative and flat are particularly effective." Another paper once called her a flower child!
Regina Gilbert was born in Austria in 1907. In the 1930's she immigrated to the United States and lived in New York city until the 1950s. Relocating to Palm Beach, Florida she continued to paint. Apparently an ardent self-promoter, the artist affixed numerous reviews and clippings of her work to the reverse of her paintings.
Pair of Flower Paintings by Regine Gilbert Oil on Board circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
Having pretty much given up the "term warfare" which surrounded "outsider art, vernacular art, self-taught art, eccentric art, art brut, amateur art, sunday painter art, institutionalized art, marginalized art, visionary art, folk art, naive art" and the like in favor of my all- inclusive term "goofy" I hear present a splendid exhibit of some of the goofiest.E.K. Lund was a part-time magician who lived to the age of 100. From the looks of these cards, that is about one plywood figure a year.Photo Postcards from Lund's Garden.See Also "Preacher, Artist, Magician, Centenarian" HEREDULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS HERE
The remaining portion of a "place your head here" box from Holy Land environment in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Original Photograph (detail) Jim Linderman 1994
Original 35mm Photo Between Atlanta and Athens, GA c. 1995 Collection Jim Linderman
