Dull Tool Dim Bulb

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

Saw Man Vintage Whirligig Folk Art Sculpture

Vintage Whirligig Folk Art Sculpture Collection Jim Linderman

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

Spikehorn the Bear Man of Michigan

John "Spikehorn" Meyers. See also HERE

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.

I'M WITH DUMMY Vent Figures and Blockheads by JIM LINDERMAN | Make Your Own Book

Large Antique Folk Art Whirligig Collection Jim Linderman

Large Antique Folk Art Whirligig Sculpture (Fragment) Collection Jim Linderman

A Good Man

A Good Man Carved Folk Art Hinged Box with Surprise.
No Date Collection Jim Linderman

Soon on Dull Tool Dim Bulb.. A photo archive of ???

Original promotional photograph collection Jim Linderman

Happy Mother's Day from Anonymous

Untitled and Anonymous circa 1920 Pencil on Manila Collection Jim Linderman

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

Baby Centaur and his Friends Sketchbook circa 1910

Baby Centaur and his friends found in a circa 1910 Sketchbook
Collection Jim Linderman

Make Do Wall Hanging Candle Box with two inscised relief carved Nudes Erotic Folk Art

Antique Folk Art Wall Hanging Candle Box with inscised relief carved Nudes
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

Unknown Jazz Band circa 1930 Any Help out There?

Large 8 x 10 photo I found recently. Early Jazz Band. Can anyone ID for me?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The image illustrates an educational article; its inclusion in the article adds significantly to understanding the text because it is a historical sample of the art covered in the critical commentary, and shows use of an innovative style. Therefore the image substantially improves the educational value of the article.
2. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic, which directly concerns a visual artist, and is indicative of the style for which hethe artists are renowned.
3. Images are of lower resolution than the original. The image is not used here for profit.

4. It is not in any way replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted image pertinent to the work referenced in the article

The copyright for some images are most likely owned by either the publisher, the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced them originally.

Any other uses of this image may be copyright infringement.

Although most of the images here are original photography and objects owned by the author and in the author's personal collection, we cannot absolutely guarantee the exact copyright status of the items or offer written assurance that every or any aspect of this work is completely cleared for all usages. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

Any Trademarks used in this item listing are used for strictly descriptive purposes only. No association or endorsement is implied or inferred. No character or trademark ownership is given or implied.

If you are the owner of any aspect of an item which you believe to be copyrighted, please contact us immediately at j.winkel4@gmail.com