Jim Linderman blog about surface, wear, form and authenticity in self-taught art, outsider art, antique american folk art, antiques and photography.
Waterfalls of Tin Tintype Backdrops of Drops of Water
Tintype studio backdrops try to overpower the sitters in this little photo essay of staying dry while visiting the falls. These all appear in my book The Painted Backdrop but it is too expensive now. So if you are interested, buy the ebook instead.
The Painted Backdrop (EBOOK version) is HERE
Group of Tintype Photographs, circa 1870 - 1890 Collection Jim Linderman
Tramp Art Folk Art Relief Carved Religious Sculpture Dated 1904 collection Jim Linderman
A very good piece of Tramp Art, and one dated on the bottom 1904. It is uncommon to find dated tramp art, though through old cigar box labels and notes, it is often possible to estimate. This piece is for more complicated than most as it is covered with figural relief carvings AND has a little church scene carved on the inside! "This is the church, this is the steeple, open the door, see all the people." Nearly 20 inches tall.
Tramp Art Relief Carved Folk Art Sculpture 1904 Collection Jim Linderman
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Who's a Liar?
Unknown illustrator 1960 (A post today on the old time religion blog)
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White Lines on a Chalkboard The Work of Ella Marie White Protege of Harlen Tarbell
Ella Marie White used white chalk to communicate. That, and her own rhymed "patter" which she performed as she entertained her audience. The young Miss White started drawing in the style later abused by loud mouth nut job Glen Beck, but Ella had no particular agenda. She wished only to entertain and share her talent.
Before Miss White was nine years old, she hooked up with Harlan Tarbell, a more accomplished instructor of the skill. Tarbell became quite famous in the magic and illusion racket. In fact, Harry Houdini was asked to write a series of correspondence courses in magic, but he suggested the publisher use Tarbell instead. The tricks are still being done today.
The poems, or "patter" which she performed while drawing on a chalkboard, in perfect time along with her art, include "The Girl and the Scarecrow" and "The Girl and the Rose" which are shown here...enjoy, and imagine a more refined past.
"Love is blind" is a saying I've heard
But with that I don't quite agree
For a man in love sees more than he ought
He sees things that others can't see
No matter how homely his sweetheart may be
Or how pointed and long her nose
No matter what faults the others may see
To him she will look just like a rose
I've tried and tried to keep this crow
Away from my garden patch
She eats my lettuce and my kale
Her wits I cannot match
But at last I've found a man who can
Who'll guard it night and day
Though his brain is naught but straw and hay
He'll keep that crow away.
Unfortunately, Chalk Talkers performed for small gatherings and church groups for the most part, so I can find no trace of appearances or documentation other than that here, but it would have been a lovely show to see. Tarbell, however, is HERE.
Photo portrait and examples of performances by Ella Marie White come from chalk talk stunts by Harlan Tarbell 1926.
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Unknown Photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald Found FIFTY YEARS After the Assassination of JFK ?
Yep, Lee Harvey Oswald turns up FIFTY years later, right where "they" wanted me to find it…an antique mall in Muskegon, Michigan!
The 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination is coming up in November, and already the documentaries proving "one bullet" could do all the damage are being shilled. They are rolling out the head-sized watermelons, gelatin-filled pigskins and closing traffic in Dealey Plaza again. Unseemly? They did it, not me. I have more respect for a man elected president of my country than to squash his sit-in noggin for ratings. But I'll watch them. I always do. Unless Tosh.0 is on.
At this point, with so much publicly available information, that ANYONE would base their conclusion on the ballistics alone is so absurd, it would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. You know? Maybe John Wilkes Booth was a disgruntled loner too…no need to hang the dozen other conspirators, and let's see if his puny little pirate's derringer could do the job. While you are at it? Go dig up the bones of the woman who sat for Da Vinci's Mona Lisa too, that is if she WAS a woman. (They are…I think today.)
Oswald, who just happened to study Russian while in the United States Marines, who just happened to drift to the Soviet Union during the cold war, who just happened to meet the relative of a big shot KGB dude, just happened to marry her, just happened to come back and contact the feds, just happened to be friends of mobsters in New Orleans, just happened to be on the route, (disgruntled, of course…disgruntled…and with the curtain rods to prove it) and then happened to be murdered by a Carlos Marcello associate. Who just happened to run a strip club in 1963 while running guns to Cuba. Oh…and just before he happened to be disgruntled, he took a picture of himself nearly falling down from the weight of all his weapons and the commie newspaper he happened to be holding. Which Life Magazine happened to receive just in time for their big assassination special in which they also happened to reverse the very two Zapruder film frames with the head shot. Maybe an intern did it.
Our own government belatedly admitted (once J. Edgar Hoover had croaked and the members dared) in 1979 that... "The Committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy. "
Then they also concluded to give up.
November 2013 isn't the date to pay attention to anyway. 2017 is. Because the National Archives a year ago decided to keep 1,171 spook documents secret until then. Umm…to wit:
“We recognize that the remaining records are of high public interest and historical value, and we appreciate your stated desire not to have to wait five more years to obtain access to these records. Given this public interest, we have been consulting with the CIA to see if it would be possible to review and release any of these remaining documents in time for the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination in 2013. Although the CIA shares NARA's interest in wanting to be responsive to your request, they have concluded there are substantial logistical requirements that must take place prior to the release of these remaining records and there is simply not sufficient time or resources to complete these tasks prior to 2017. Accordingly, we will not be able to accommodate your request."
Now I'm not too good at my own documents. I might leave the credit card bill sitting on the table a few days before paying the minimum. But it usually doesn't take me FIFTY YEARS to open my mail. Give those arthritic civil servants a couple black rubber stamps and let them at 'em.
At this point I don't even care. It is moot, and there is more than enough already released, for any to read, to show and know, that Kennedy and his brother were swimming in dangerous water, some of it apparently with the very same woman mobster Sam Giancana was dipping into as well.
I'm not going to read them anyway. It has been 50 years since the actual event gave me nightmares of a president not able to escape his limo. Nightmares I still have once in a while! I give up, like the Senate did 30 years ago. I give up, like the Warren commission did 50 years ago. Like the fellow who served on the Warren Commission and later wrote a book titled "Portrait of THE Assassin" once said, "our national nightmare is over."
The National Archives has ALREADY released a document which quotes mobster Carlos Marcello saying "YEAH, I HAD the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself!" It was published in an 848 page book five years ago and no one cared. Within a month of the assassination, the FBI questioned 14 Marcello associates. The FBI put a freakin' informant into Marcello's CELL in PRISON to learn it, and still no one cared.
We are seemingly waiting for a deathbed confession which happened years ago.
Roll out those cantaloupe heads. Let's see if physics can prove a pristine bullet can cause a dozen wounds again. This bullet passed through Kennedy’s neck and Governor Connally’s chest and wrist then buried itself into the Governor’s thigh. 15 layers of clothing, 7 layers of skin, 15 inches of tissue, struck a necktie knot, removed 4 inches of rib, and shattered a radius bone. The bullet was found on an abandoned gurney in the corridor at the Parkland Memorial Hospital, in Dallas, after the assassination. It caused all those wounds and fell out. Looking it it, maybe it ROLLED out and shined itself up a bit too.
Now let's hire someone with shooting creds, put him in a cherry picker six stories up and see if he can do it, AGAIN...for the folks watching TV.
Now take a computer and draw a line directly down through the guy's nose above and see if it matches the shadows in Oswald's mugshot. I don't care anymore. That it appears the automobiles in line all look a bit like the one Johnny Rosselli used to make payoffs means nothing to me now. "Here, kid...your dough and your caps. You aren't practicin' today?" In retrospect, I should have done this post the day Seinfeld told the truth using fat Newman as the grassy knoll.
Who cares? It's over. It's OVER, Johnny.t
Photo of questionable Dummy Oswald, or Oswald Dummy, or just some carefree teenager, dated on reverse 1955 (which it is) collection Jim Linderman
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Folk Art Nude Sculpture (Abandoned)
Large folk art carved nude woman circa 1940? Collection Jim Linderman
Serving Time with Father Time Prison Art and Clock Hands which Don't Move
Plenty of nothing, but plenty of time. Paraphrase of the Porgy and Bess song. If anyone had plenty of nothing and plenty of time, it would be someone serving it. Hence Prison Art. Akin to the branch of institutionalized outsider art (oxymoron) which existed before psychoactive drugs sapped some of the fevered creativity. Folks in small living quarters with nothing on their hands BUT time…and sometimes an object of art results.
I don't know if this giant fake grandfather clock (Father Time) constructed of hundreds of wooden matchsticks was made by a prisoner, but it does have a time motif. It even has a fake pendulum and weights which move, but the the hands do not. He's stuck. Time keeps dragging on. A lifer.
One way to tell if your wooden object is tramp art versus prison art? Did it require a KNIFE? Most hoosegows frown, as general policy, of giving the inmates knives.
Tramp Art or Prison Art Grandfather Clock of Matchsticks. No Date. Collection Jim Linderman
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DIRT Collection
Collectors and Collecting. Presenting my Dirt Collection.
I won't say this is the first time I have paid for dirt, as my garden needed soil to counteract the sand. I felt stupid buying dirt, as there is so much of it around...
But this is the first time I can honestly say I have owned a collection of dirt.
Seems like every state was swept up here, then specialty items started appearing. Dirt from Disneyland. Dirt from the highest point in so and so, the furthest point in somewhere else. Well over one hundred examples, each one numbered and labled with a hand-typed "cursive" red font from a typewriter. Each little plastic pill bottle scooped full and carried home.
We used to have our choice of two fonts, but they could have gone with the dymo labelmaker too.
Said to have been collected by a husband and wife team of traveling CLOWNS! The estate sale had their costumes and such too.
DIRT collection Jim Linderman No date (ancient...dirt is really old)
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The Wind Worn Whirligig The Part of a Wind Toy One Can Not Make or Fake Folk Art Whirligig Wear
Saw portion of a wooden whirligig, circa 1940-1950
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Jim Linderman Named FIRST COLUMNIST for Paraphilia Magazine
I am really pleased to have become the first columnist in the Art and Culture magazine PARAPHILIA. My first two columns are linked below. I'll be putting a banner on the side here soon!
FULL ARTICLE IS HERE
FULL ARTICLE IS HERE
FULL ARTICLE IS HERE
FULL ARTICLE IS HERE
Orvil Richards Snow Car Ready for Winter
Orvil Richards (who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Shemp Howard) hauls freight in his "snow car" which John Deere would be jealous of. Check out the skis in front. Orvil is ready for winter.
Anonymous photograph (On reverse "To Grandma Orvil Richardson's Snow Car" No Date)
Collection Jim Linderman
Folk Art Tramp Art Chewing Gum Wrapper Chain Collection Jim Linderman
Chewing Gun Chain.
The average price of a pack of gum is $1.58 according to the Wall Street Journal. Consequently, the gum market is flat. Not that you can use a gum wrapper to make a chain anymore. The manufacturers have eliminated your raw material!
The fellow below recommends using Starburst wrappers. Watch carefully and you will see he also recommends throwing away the gum. My chain here is ten feet long. Not bad, but record holder Gary Duschl, who seems like a nice guy, has one 74,216 feet long. For a professional competitor, Gary seems awful nice to share his technique.
This really doesn't fit the definition of Tramp Art, as not many fathers would like anyone calling their gum-chewing kid a tramp, but it is clearly related. A dying Folk Art? Yes.
Ten foot long Chewing Gum Wrapper circa 1960? Collection Jim Linderman
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