For forty years Rev. William Blackmon preached in the streets of Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, often without a home. In 1974 the Lord brought him to Milwaukee where he settled in the combination house/studio/church/shoe repair/car wash and wild greens shop above. Two original snapshots circa 1991 Collection Jim Linderman
Calendar Girl, Cheescake, Pin-up Girl, Centerfold, Glamour Girl. All names for more or less the same thing. Paper dolls in vibrant color good for a month. Now frowned upon...but frowned upon back then too, note the strategic banners. This is a group of four pages from a Salesman Sample for calendars, circa 1955, which were censored in bold manner, nothing subtle about it. It must have been frustrating for printers to keep getting hauled into court in every city the local mailman happened to peek into the bulk mail. As any man my age will attest, every single gas station had a similar calendar hanging in the grease shop. They always hung askew in the same place. It was an annual ritual for the boss to open one up in January and start a new year. It allowed a few minutes of supervisor/subordinate bonding before another year of oil changes began. It is odd that breasts are so often (even to this day) censored, especially as they are nearly always the first pleasant encounter of every mammal, including both sexes of the two-legged kind. The entire convoluted history of 20th century commercial titillation and censorship is a topic I hope to wrestle with in future posts, but for the time being I am content just to "hang these on the wall" so to speak.Four Lithograph printed Salesman Sample Calendar Pages c. 1955 Collection Jim Linderman
Burl. Some of the most beautiful and prized wood carvings produced for use have been made from burl wood. The jumbo redwood burl shown on this postcard is an extreme example and probably netted the 1970's hippies here a considerable sum. A profitable way to spend a summer. You've seen burl wood without knowing it...the funky, fungoid looking growths on elm and maple trunks, out west on redwood. When chopped and formed, those ugly growths make the hardest, tightest and most beautiful woodenware. Both Native American and colonial carvers made bowls, scoops and ladles of the dense and textured material. Folk art dealer and scholar Steven S. Powers, a bright young man with one of the best pair of eyes in the folk art world recently published a beautiful book "North American Burl Treen: Colonial & Native American" and available on his website. Make SURE to download his extraordinary catalog "Good Wood" on the same site, it has many exceptional examples of early American folk art.
The burl above is described as follows: " We believe this to be the world's largest burl, approximately 118 feet around, 30 feet high and weighing just less of 1 million pounds. It was uncovered in fall of 1977 at Big Lagoon in northern California on Louisiana Pacific property"
The card was distributed by Burlwood Industries Inc, a company still in business and making beautiful craft and sculptural objects. Burlwood Industries "world's largest burl" Advertising Post card 6" x 9" c. 1980 collection Jim Linderman
The late Chuckie Williams of Shreveport, Louisiana. Quite a painter, he stacked them for ten years in his mother's house until a fire forced dozens of his works out onto the front lawn. At the time I was studying Justin McCarthy, a self-taught painter from Pennsylvania. Mr. Williams work is quite similar, although both worked in relative isolation. Neither had any mysterious, innate, romantic "outsider" skill, they just worked very, very, hard and earned their style. Both painted the celebrities of their day, landscapes, religious scenes, animals, images from television and magazines...you name it. (Here Mr. Williams holds Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation style) Both worked text into their paintings. Both worked fast. Both sketched the image in pencil or pen and were so anxious to finish they seldom took the time to fill all the spaces. Both knew they were artists long before anyone else did, and it was persistence and hard work which produced the body of work, not a fevered mind, the hand of God, an affliction or a voice from anywhere.
Chuckie Williams, Shreveport LA, circa 1993 Original 35mm photo collection Jim Linderman
I just learned Lux Interior of the Cramps passed away. I am not a blogger who links to clips and sound bites. I hardly even discuss music in public anymore. Enough sappy mix tapes sent to indifferent girlfriends over the years finally taught me music is personal...as personal as religion and just as important. The Cramps meant more to me than I can ever describe. I wrote the above brief history in a now sadly obscure and sadly rare book titled "International Discography of the New Wave Volume II" published in NYC by Omnibus Press and One Ten Records in 1982. It was a massive labor of love by B. George, Martha DeFoe, Henry Beck, Nancy Breslow and a cast of a thousand punks who participated by sending in their homemade 45 records, flyers, blurbs...and love. Every damn one of the 736 pages was typed by hand, and if I recall correctly, the whole lot of 1000 copies was gone immediately. I was so damn proud to see my name associated with the band in print, no matter how insignificant it might appear today. I purchased my first Cramps record and saw them for the first time in 1978. I saw them every time I could. Everyone is special and everyone is unique, but if the phrase "one of a kind" is applicable to anyone with all the glory that expression should imply, it goes to Lux.
At risk of alienating, well...14% of the entire US population, I confess to being indifferent about tattoos. It is a beautiful art to be sure, a friend has the most spectacular collection of antique tattoo flash you could imagine, and I mean a world-class big time serious collection of ART in a big font art. My favorite body modification is the pair of perfect tooth-shaped dog bites I have on my right elbow, the dog who gave them to me is a four-legged miracle. I was thinking about ink because Valentine's day is approaching and I was wondering if the heart is the most popular image. I gave up trying to verify it, but I can tell you one website offers (for $19.95 that is) access to over 10,000 heart images from which you may pick your favorite. I once saw a woman with a thong string and pouch tattooed on her lower back and found it pretty striking. In January 2008, a survey conducted online by Harris Interactive estimated that 14% of all adults in the United States have a tattoo. The highest incidence of tattoos was found among the gay, lesbian and bisexual population (25%) and people living in the West (20%). Among age groups, 9% of those ages 18-24, 32% of those 25-29, 25% of those 30-39 and 12% of those 40-49 have tattoos, as do 8% of those 50-64. Men are just slightly more likely to have a tattoo than women (15% versus 13%"Hello Priscilla" linen Post Card c. 1950 collection Jim Linderman
