Interesting Ideas: Folk and outsider art links

My retirement from outsider links

Things have changed since I started maintaining these links in 1994. At that point you could count the number of Web sites with any reference to outsider art on one hand. There was a FolkArt & Craft Exchange site (still there). The Electric Gallery Folk Art Wing (also still there) and a few other links. As this page demonstrates, in the years since I've personally logged more than 250 sites. Some of the links here are outdated, a reflection of my diminished attention. And lots of newer sites have never made it.

The original idea was just to create a central place for my own use where I could track outsider-related sites. As long as I was collecting links, I figured it might help a few folks to share them. For a while this page served as a pretty good clearinghouse for relevant destinations. Over time it also became a magnet for people looking to get Web exposure for their art, or for the art of friends and relatives.

That growing stream of requests to add links to my gallery (sic) gave me some sympathy for the gallery workers deluged with slides from folks who fancy themselves talented or, in this field, outsider (and sometimes both). The inquiries are occasionally on target, but more often they come from people who clearly haven't taken the time to get an idea of where they're sending them.

Although I have an interest in undiscovered and under appreciated art, not being a gallery, dealer or even a particularly aggressive collector, the payoff from this exercise is strictly intellectual. Given the time it takes, plus the emergence elsewhere of better places to go to find these kind of links, I'm retiring from the outsider link business.

I'll leave in place the sites you see here now (last updated in 2003). Eventually they may have some historical value. The links, however, have been disabled to avoid further rot.

Thanks for your interest.

Bill
February 2004

You can join a lively and thoughtful online discussion of topics relating to outsider art at Yahoo Groups. It's a listserv, which means you submit your email address to the mail server and you will get mail every day as folks post their comments to the list. You can lurk, like I've been doing, or you can add your thoughts simply by sending email back to the list.

Folk and outsider art online
On the Web, accumulations of personal snapshots, academic essays, extensive catalogs of folk art for sale and the usual range of miscellaneous images, links and commentaries are bringing new information and opportunities for appreciating work of importance. Even the sites that mostly cover familiar ground can offer unexpected windows into the field, unbound by an apparatus of art appreciation that might normally exclude these personal selections. The Web lets would-be publishers, exhibitors and artists evade the vagaries and the high expenses of print publishing and gallery shows.

Major institutions

Outsider Art Online: An obvious starting place is the Web site sponsored by Chicago's Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. Outsider Art Online includes electronic versions of articles from Intuit's newsletter, information about Intuit and its programs, a worldwide directory of galleries and museums and the most complete calendar of outsider-oriented museum and gallery shows to be found on the Internet.

Jane's Addictions is easily the best outsider and folk art resource on the Web. It features the most comprehensive listings of both individual artists and environments, with every link imaginable. If you have been a user of this page, you need to consider changing your loyalties. I'm definitely ready to retire from the directory business.

The art brut museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, has weighed in with the most important outsider site on the Web. The site is lavishly populated with images of works by some of the century's most greatest artists. The text is weighted toward French, but there are some English translations.

L'Aracine is one of the great collections of art brut. The site has a modest selection of images as well as text in French.

ABCD, another great art brut collection, has a more polished site, an English version, and lots of images.

The Prinzhorn Collection: Hans Prinzhorn's collection of art by the mentally ill, gathered early in this century, is one of the milestones in the history of outsider art.

Raw Vision is the world's leading outsider art magazine and shares stories and images from its most recent issues.

The Folk Art Society of America's attractive site offers selections from the Folk Art Messenger, as well as an events calendar and folk-art books for sale.

The Museum of American Folk Art in New York has joined the other big folk art groups with a Web site. They've got Folk Art magazine highlights and exhibition information, including a virtual reality view of a 19th Century decoy.

The site for Gugging, the Austrian residence/workshop for a number of important artists, has bibliographic and other useful information as well as short biographies of the artists and samples of their work.

Creative Growth is the pioneering Bay Area program for artists with disabilities. It has facilitated the work of Dwight Mackintosh and Judith Scott, among others.

The American Visionary Art Museum: Baltimore's museum devoted to outsider and visionary art currently has added a lot of substance to its site. The current show is "The End is Near," an exhibition of apocalyptic art. A visit is recommended.

The Grassroots Art Center in Lucas Kansas, besides being adjacent to the monumentally important Garden of Eden environment, boasts a collection featuring artists whose work is not widely accessible elsewhere. The Kansas Grassroots Art Association has been a leader in the preservation of environments.

The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art include oral histories with a wide variety of artists, dealers and collectors. Some are available at this site.

The Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe also has weighed in with a site that includes generous quantities of images from current shows and the permanent collection.

Galleries and dealers

American Artistry in Dallas has a stable that includes a lot of the old reliable Southern folk/outsider types (Jim Sudduth, Howard Finster, etc. but also a number of not-so-well-known but interesting artists, mostly from Texas. There are lots of pictures, though a one-page index to the artists would be a nice addition.

America Oh Yes! gallery has an extensive site with lots of inventory and a good deal of explanatory information.

American Pie offers a selection of self-taught, visionary and folk art.

The Ames Gallery in Berkeley, Calif., consistently has some of of the best folk and outsider art available, and this very usable site does it justice.

anonymo galleries features a bunch of entertaining and eccentric work on its site, which includes a mixture of trained and self-taught artists.

Louisville's The Anonymous Artist gallery aspires to bring attention to the work of unknown and forgotten artists. The works on the site should delight any thrift store art lover, with many of the pieces seeming to represent the efforts of folks who worked just a little too hard in conventional genres like landscapes and still lifes.

Barbara Archer's Atlanta gallery includes work by such stalwarts as Mose Tolliver and Jim Sudduth, but also artists not as widely exposed on the Web, including Dilmus Hall and J.B. Murray.

A substantial collection of work is available at Beverly Kaye Gallery.

Everything at the site of Brussels-based Art en Marge is in French. English speakers can still appreciate the images, however.

Art Haus Gallery offers videos on some of the self-taught artists whose work it features, including Jimmie Lee Sudduth, Purvis Young and Lonnie Holley.

Artisans Gallery: The people at this out-of-the-way Alabama gallery are doing an exemplary job selling folk art on the Web; you can do serious shopping there. A set of online catalogs include detailed descriptions of the material on offer, and lots of images. Most importantly, the stuff they're selling is good. They have a substantial inventory of tramp art, a selection of prison art, separate lists covering carvings, quilts, and signs, banners and cutouts, and a handful of pieces by well-known artists. Their prices are reasonable, and there is reference material and information on folk art resources on and off the Web.

At Home Gallery in Greensboro, N.C., has a good deal of southern folk art nicely organized.

The Art of Haiti by MedaliaArt has taken residence at http://www.medalia.net/

The Attic Gallery in Vicksburg includes Mississippi artist Earl Wayne Simmons on its roster.

Barrister's Gallery in New Orleans is a source of work by the very interesting Roy Ferdinand and Welmon Sharlehorn, among others,

The work at Black Sheep Gallery is definitely on the folky side, but this large and well-presented collection of material from Nova Scotia is worth a look if you're interested in folk art, especially wood carving.

Henry Boxer operates an imporant gallery in the UK, including work by a long list of major outsiders and others, including Scottie Wilson, Madge Gill, Edmund Monsiel and Malcolm McKesson, as well as George Grosz. His rich site get special points for including the work of Louis Wain, whose signature cat illustrations became more and more frenetic, and ultimately abstract, as Wain's mind failed him.

The text is German, but Galerie Susi Brunner is an art brut venue in Zurich, Switzerland.

The Robert Cargo Folk Art Gallery in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, features several southern artists, including Jimmie Sudduth and B.F. Perkins.

Carrie Art Collection in Haiti handles Voodoo flags and bottles and a great deal of other Haitian art.

Grey Carter Objects of Art is a nicely designed site that features a good sampling of work from Justin McCarthy and Sybil Gibson, among others.

The sophisticated Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York has a good many artists online, including Chris Hipkiss, whose elaborate drawings are some of the most interesting outsider work being done. You'll also find interesting work by Jon Serl, Anthony Joseph Salvatore and others.

Creative Heart Gallery's self-taughtart.com has some not-so-common-on-the-Web offerings (Bill Traylor, Bessie Harvey) along with better-than average work by some of the usual southern suspects.

Creativity Explored, one of a group of agencies in the Bay Area devoted to artistic effort by disabled adults, features a number of artists on its robust site.

The Dixie Folk Art gallery in Florida is stocked with an electic collection of work, from the the Highwaymen group to Mama Johnson.

Andrew Edlin Gallery includes work by Albert Hoffman, Malcah Zeldis and Henry Darger.

Paul Edelstein Gallery features works by both well-known masters (Clementine Hunter) and more obscure, but interesting talents (Belle Mathis).

The Electric Gallery Folk Art Wing: A collection of mostly international folk art, plus a ton of work by the visionary artist Robert Roberg .

Epstein/Powell's site includes a page on Justin McCarthy, one of my favorite artists.

First Street Gallery Art Center in Claremont, Calif., is a non-profit program that encourages art by people with disabilities.

FocalArt Gallery is a source of a lot of work that is not everywhere else on the Web. Roy Ferdinand and Ted Gordon are well-represented, and there are pieces by Wellmon Sharlhorne and Stephen Anderson, among many others.

Folk art museums and private collections, presented by the Folk Art and Craft Exchange.

Folk Art Net is a new online gallery with a modest inventory but definite potential.

The Folk Art Show, from the people behind Atlanta's Modern Primitive Gallery, is a well-presented site developed in conjunction with a big Internet auction scheduled on Ebay starting Aug. 15.

Folkyart.com is another source for work by a long list of self-taught mostly southern artists.

Galerie Jacques in Ann Arbor has a site well supplied with images of straight-ahead Eurostyle Art Brut.

Galerie St. Etienne is best known for bring Grandma Moses to the art world's attention. It's a high-end venue for work by important artists, self-taught and otherwise, including John Kane, George Grosz, Sue Coe and Henry Darger.

Garde Rail Gallery in Seattle sells art by a number of self-taught artists, well-known and less so, with the less so being especially interesting.

Nashville's Ghost Dog Gallery has mounted a colorful site.

The Gilley's Gallery site features works by Clementine Hunter, David Butler and Sam Doyle.

GoodArtGallery's roster includes Eileen Doman and Levent Isik.

Vermont's GRACE (Grass Roots Art and Community Effort) has a mission to "discover, develop and promote visual art produced primarily, but not exclusively, by elderly self taught artists in rural Vermont."

Graves Country Gallery in Lodi, Calif., handles work by a number of southern artists.

The site for Anton Haardt Gallery, the important dealer now based in New Orleans, gives easy access to material by southern artists such as Mose Tolliver and Jimmy Lee Sudduth, as well as artists not so commonly seen on the Web, such as Juanita Rogers and Roy Ferdinand Jr.

Carl Hammer, Chicago's leading dealer of outsider and folk art, has placed a broad selection of his high-quality inventory on the Web. The site includes great anonymous pieces as well as work by important artists such as Henry Darger, William Dawson and Lee Godie.

The English version of Atelier Galerie Herenplaats's Web site is non-functional, but the art is not too hard to find.

There's been a link here for a good long time to Gene Beecher's space in the Hustontown Gallery, but for some reason I neglected the broader site, which features several other interesting artists in addition to a group of anonymous works.

Some of the work at the IF Art Gallery from Ukraine bears careful viewing, maybe even purchasing if you have a high tolerance for exotic transactions.

Indigo Arts Gallery is a source for African haircut signs, Haitian art and other works from abroad.

Inside Out Productions is a gallery devoted to the work of artists with developmental disabilities.

K.S. Art maintains a distinctive roster of interesting artists, including one of my favorites, Roy Hamilton.

La Luz deJesus Gallery is mostly showing not-outsider art, but their specialty is the kind of eccentric and visionary work that likely appeal to fans of the same.

David Leonardis Gallery has a great deal of Howard Finster work for sale.

Lindsay Gallery in Columbus, OH, maintains an interesting roster of artists on its site, including William Hawkins, Eddie Arning, Lee Godie, William Dawson and Popeye Reed.

The Macondo gallery in Pittsburgh carries non-Western art, including a ton of Haitian art and bottle-cap art from Guatemala.

Main Street Gallery in Clayton, GA, shows the work of the underappreciated Chicago sculptor Derek Webster and the

entertaining Mama Johnson, along with a mix of other artists, some lesser known and some southern folk art stalwarts.

The folk art section at Main Street Gallery (Starkville, Miss.) includes works by Jim Sudduth, R.A. Miller and Earl Wayne Simmons.

The Matter of Perception site features a great deal of work from a 1998 show of work by artists with disability.

Mayor's Office Folk Art Gallery is an outlet for work by three Alabama artists, Buddy Snipes, John Henry Toney and Butch Anthony.

Canada's Minivan Gallery includes the interesting spaceship art of Lee King.

Modern Primitive Gallery in Atlanta is usually worth a visit in person or online.

Mark F. Moran Antiques: The inventory here includes a good deal of interesting folk art.

The Outsider Gallery, a project of Susan Eshelman's Art Vision International.

The OutsidersArt Gallery in Cornwall Bridge, Conn., maintains a lengthy roster of artists, some well-known and some not.

Aron Packer handles some of the most interesting work to be had from an art dealer in Chicago.

Passion Works Studio in Athens, Ohio "provides artistic and collaborative opportunities for people with developmental disabilities."

Pottery Plus handles work from a number of southern potters and painters.

PrisonZone: Website for Prison Graphics sells works from several inmate artists.

Ricco/Maresca Gallery, one of the the country's leading dealers in outsider material, has a very strong web site with lots of content.

Rosehips Folk Art Gallery: This Cleveland, Ga., gallery has a roster of work by both well-established southern folk artists, including Mose Tolliver, Howard Finster and Lanier Meaders, and by recent interesting discoveries like Mary Proctor and Cornbread.

Luise Ross Gallery in New York shows a number of artists whose work is not spread all over the Internet, including Leroy Person, Albert Hoffman, Louis Monza and Minnie Evans. This site includes samples of their work as well as exhibition histories.

San Angel Folk Art specializes in art from Mexico and Latin America, though they also have a good selection of work by Hubert Walters.

Sardine is a nicely design Swiss gallery that featured a mix of outsider, folk and other art as well as some relevant texts..

Judy Saslow is one of Chicago premier collectors of outsider art; her gallery is especially strong in European material.

Select Southern Pottery is a source for face jugs and other folk ceramics.

Selftaughtart.com, from Atlanta Folk Fest promoter Steve Slotin, is back. The site promises gallery and auction selection, once it's fully populated, and looks to be a major player in the field.

Bruce Shelton specializes in interesting work at a fair price. Now you can reach him via Shelton Gallery Online.

The Jeanine Taylor Folk Art Gallery in Winter Park, Fla., features southern artists include Ruby Williams, Sybil Gibson and Mary Proctor.

Sholl Antiques of Norwood, NY, has created the first tramp art site I'm aware of. But most importantly, they've stocked with it some fabulous work.

Among the artists featured by Signature Studio XI are Harold Crowell and Brooks Yeomans.

The Splendid Peasant has a fine online display of traditional folk art, though I wish they would post prices.

Kimball Sterling: A Tennessee-based auctioneer, he does periodic sales of folk and outsider art. His site includes a schedule of upcoming events. Sterling is now conducting monthly auctions as well.

There are lot of institutional art programs and they're not automatically interesting.Street Life Gallery in Seattle has some interesting material on display.

TAG Art Gallery features an eclectic selection of artists, ranging from the art brut canon (Madge Gill) to contemporary apocalyptic master Norbert Kox.

Jeanine Taylor Folk Art Gallery in Winter Park, FL, is showing work by a number of stalwarts, including Ruby Williams, Jim Sudduth, Ab the Flagman and Mary Proctor.

Tom and Paula van Deest, who hail from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, come up with some of the best folk/outsider art and related antiques to be found in the Midwest. A visit to their Web site is highly recommended.

Tamara Hendershot, owner of the excellent Miami Beach gallery Vanity Novelty Garden, is associated with a site devoted to her work in progress on Florida outsider artists, which she is writing with Jeffrey Knapp. There are several interesting and not widely known artists featured here with photos and biographies.

The Very Special Arts Gallery, Albuquerque.

Visionaryart.com has inventory from a number of artists and interesting photo-and-text reports from several folk art fairs.

There's lots of lovely stuff at Wares for Art, which is dedicated to "paintings, works on paper, sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, glass, books, cards, toys, clocks and objects that all comprise the FOLK ART OF THE 21st CENTURY - the Self Taught Art of down to Earth, (and sometimes elsewhere) real people."

Artists on display at Weathervane Folk Art include compulsive calendarist Z.B. Armstrong and Ralf Griffin.

Webb Gallery in Waxahachie is a leading center for Texas outsider and folk art.

Marcia Weber has a fine gallery for southern folk art and a strong site. She has substantial biographies and multiple images for a number of artists.

Work by a number of self-taught artists, including Mr. Imagination and Mary Proctor, is available at Who-Ha Da-Da

Yard Dog Folk Art Gallery: An exceptionally polished site out of Austin, Texas, this also has a number of interesting works for sale by both name-brand folk artists and lesser-known creators, including Reginald Mitchell and Cyril Billiot.

Ginger Young has joined the group of well-established outsider-art dealers who have migrated to the Web. Her site includes an extensive, now illustrated, inventory of work, and pictures and biographical capsules of a substantial roster of artists.

The Web site of quilt expert Shelly Zegart includes numerous beautiful quilts, nicely photographed and for sale. Plus she still has a couple of pieces of Clarence and Grace Woolsey bottlecap art available.

Lois Zetter appeared on Jeopardy for five days in the 1960s, her Web site says, but more to the point is the selection of work presented very elegantly at the Zetter Collection site. It reflects a good eye for interesting material.

Germany's Zimmer Gallery focuses on European naive art.

Environments

Hill of Crosses is a great folk-religious site in Lithuania.

Everything's in French, but Les B�tisseurs De L'imaginaire features environments such as Le Palais Ideal Du Facteur Cheval alongside the work of Antonio Guadi, among others.

Dave Nance's photography includes images of Fred Smith's Concrete Park and roadside memorials.

Narrow Larry's site illustrates more than a dozen great environments, along with Larry's own scale model of the Watts Towers.

Casa da Flor is a fabulous environment in Brazil. This site has a modest selection of photography as well as background information.

My images of Howard Finster's incomparable Paradise Garden.

E.T. Wickham's monumental group of statues in north central Tennessee lie in ruins, but you can glimpse them in their heyday in the site maintained by his grandson, Joe Schibig. I've got more recent images of the ruins.

Important new E.T. Wickham photos have made it to the Web: powerful photos from the recent Clarksville, TN, show, Show setup shots, plus details of the scale model of the site and a selection of Clark Thomas' photos from the catalog, and some that weren't in it (caution: large files).

If you didn't get enough on my pages, you can view more images from the highly photogenic Margaret's Grocery.

If you're interested in building your own environment, visit The Joy of Shards to learn techniques of pique assiete.

The Palais Ideal of the Facteur Cheval, one of the world's great environments, is the subject of at least four locations on the Web. Kristin Fiore's site has great pictures, including many views that rarely turn up in the book and magazine spreads. She also links to the official site and to an essay. And there is more here, in French.

A variety of Wisconsin environments and other points of interest are featured at NewLowW's Home.

The history of the Garden of Eden hasn't been posted yet, but this site devoted to the great Lucas, KS, environment includes a handful of photos and visitor's information.

Thoughts on S.P. Dinsmoor's historic Garden of Eden environment in Lucas, Kansas.

Grandview -- Where art and life take wing is devoted to Nick Engelbert's Wisconsin environment.

View photos from the Owl House environment in South Africa.

Charles Smith's African/american Heritage Museum & Black Veterans Archives is one of the Chicago area's most important environments.

View Axel Erlandson's Tree Circus environment or learn how to do it yourself at Arborsmith Studios.

The Rainbow House of Vancouver, Wash., is a fabulous-looking environment, new to me, that bears repeated visits.

The Nek Chand Foundation now has a site featuring its newsletter and a link to an online tour of Nek Chand's rock garden in India, undoubtedly the most spectacular contemporary outsider environment.

The recent history of Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, Calif., has been troubled. One hopes this new Web site, which includes a swell interface to photos of the environment as well as lots of information, is a favorable sign.

Tori Orr discusses environments in A Cultural Anthropology (with footnotes).

The detailed site devoted to Vollis Simpson's windmill masterpieces is a case study in how the Web and its multimedia tools, including virtual reality and audio, can be used to document an environment. The Folk Art Messenger also has posted an interview with Simpson.

The site is in French, but La maison sculpt�e de Jacques Lucas in Brittany looks pretty impressive.

The sprawling Nada Farm Museum of Archetypes has lots of material from Northern California artist Bob Comings. He's not self-taught, but his environment nonetheless seems compelling and his work interesting.

The Heidelberg Project is a decorative extravaganza in the heart of Detroit that turns houses into works of art.

There's now an official St. Eom Web site, and besides nice photos and text, it includes directions to this monumental environment.

Grottos Of The American Midwest from Susan Niles includes visits to the The Dickeyville Grotto and other important Wisconsin environments. This site has been recently updated and is worth a repeat visit.

Holy Land USA in Connecticut is in a state of decay, but you can still see it at Blowtorch.com.

The Coral Castle, Florida's great monument to frustrated domesticity, has a multilingual place on the Web. There also are some relevant materials from Judith Paulson.

They're not exactly environments, but Ed Greenberg has photographed Masonic lodges all over the country and Matt Hucke has a really nice tour of Chicago cemeteries .

Fred Smith's Wisconsin Concrete Park: Images and information on the Midwest treasure. I've also got Fred Smith pictures.

The Orange Show: One of the country's most important environments has its own Web site, which includes information on art-car activities.

Roadside Architecture: The Minnesota Historical Society's site includes an amazing catalog of the state's eccentric roadside architecture. Compiled by David W. Nystuen from 1968 to 1995, "Minnesota's Larger Than Life and Other Strange Wonders" has more than 300 entries divided into categories such as "Fish," "Strange" and "Smaller Than Real Life." Though addresses aren't given, town names are, so it's a useful resource. Photo documentation is spotty, but it's a monumental effort, so to speak.

Roadside Art Online: My images from a bunch of environments, and other roadside art.

Museum sites

The site for last year's Southern Spirit show at the Tallahasee Museum of Art includes images and short biographics for a number of important artists, including Dilmus Hall and Sam Doyle.

The Halle saint Pierre in Paris has devoted several pages to its Art Outsider & Folk Art des collections de Chicago show.

Humanitarian Centre - Outsider Art Museum is a new outsider art museum in Russia.

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI, often shows work of interest to users of this page, though it is not terribly well-represented on their site.

Wisconsin's Kohler Foundation has established itself as the leading protector of art environments, from Fred Smiths' Concrete Park in the north to Kenny Hill's sculpture extravaganza in Louisiana. Kohler's site includes background, directions and photo galleries for a number of the country's most important sites.

The Lynch Collection of Outsider Art: A large new site at North Carolina Wesleyan College features advanced Web design and images of pieces by a dozen artists, who also receive brief profiles.

The Mennello Museum of American Folk Art in Orlando mostly features the work of Earl Cunningham.

Museum of Bad Art: Thrift-store art at its finest, a good case for not limiting one's appreciation to the strictly serious.

This URL will take you to the first page of the folk art section of the National Museum of American Art's online collection. Right now it numbers 372 pieces.

San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum

Folk art at theShelburne Museum.

De Stadshof: An English version is coming soon for the Web site of this Dutch museum of outsider and naive art..

Media

Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations is a wonderful Kansas City Public Television show devoted to art and oddities of the roadside. The show has documented dozens of self-taught artists, environments and eccentric sites, centering on the Midwest but slowly extending to other regions. The Web site includes an episode guide, details on selected places and people, plus an order form for six seasons worth of video tapes. Rare Visions is a fascinating, intelligently executed show and deserves support. A book also is coming out and can be previewed here.

Artesian Arts is associated with the Scottish magazine devoted to visionary, intuitive and grassroots artists.

About.com has a very rich section devoted to folk, outsider and related work -- lots of links as well as original articles.

Mary E. Lyons writes books on folk artists geared to young readers. The self-taught artists she has covered include Horace Pippin, Harriet Powers, Thomas Day, Bill Traylor, Minnie Evans and Philip Simmons.

artnet.com has an account of this year's Puck Building outsider art fair.

You can read Robert Hughes' opinions on Henry Darger at the Time Magazine site.

Read Arthur Danto, the Nation's art critic, on outsider art. Or check out the Dallas Observer's profile of Texas dealers Bruce and Julie Webb.

The publisher Gates of Heck includes stuff from Joe Coleman and some extracts from genuinely disturbing artist Malcolm McKesson's novel Matriarchy: Freedom in Bondage as well as material on Paul the Glass Man.

Maine Antiques Digest online.

Artists

Erminio Aili, a very impressive Australian artist, has probably the most elaborate single-artist Web site. There are many pages of images, plus an extended monograph.

Gene Beecher: The self-taught Florida painter has a strong set of pages devoted to his work.

Sid Boyum, another Wisconsin artist, is the subject of a movie as well as a good deal of neighborhood activity, according to this Web site.

, which has other interesting things to view, or go to Khyal Braun's new site.

Norbert Kox has launched a Web site, Apocalypsehouse.com, to match his stunning, bizarrely conceived, meticulously crafted apocalyptic religious canvasses.

Spot Daniel only has one page at this address, but he's shown amidst lots of his paintings.

John MacGregor's magnum opus on Henry Darger Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal, is now available in a Japanese edition. This site samples all the color plates in the book. Another Henry Darger page has text and images associated with the show that toured a few years ago. Matthew Michael built a Darger reference site when he didn't find anything comparable on the Web. Its links page includes pointers to a page of images and a reminiscence by Nathan Lerner at the University Of Iowa, where the recent touring Darger show originated. It's also worth checking out Sara Ayers' Darger page. Finally, you can read Robert Hughes' opinions on Darger at the Time Magazine site.

Pictures by Pedro Martin De Clet can be found at absolutearts.com.

Eileen Doman made a splash a few years ago with her paintings from snapshots. This page features both recent and older works.

It was inevitable that Howard Finster would get an official Web site to go with his 800 number. Finster.com includes pictures of Paradise Garden as well as a selection of Howard's current work for sale. You can read an extensive academic exploration of Howard's life and work from the University of Virginia.

Lots of work by Reginald K. Gee is available at art-search.net.

There is a massive collection of Sybil Gibson paintings at www.sybilgibson.com

There is not much actual work by Lee Godie, the great Chicago outsider, at The Blank Institute of Technology. But you can find a handful of photos and some anecdotes at this site maintained by her daughter, Bonnie Blank.

Work by the self-taught Anne Grgich has won a following with its complicated outsider look.

Chris Hipkiss's immensely detailed and imaginative pencil and ink drawings are among the most amazing current productions in the outsider/self-taught world. His Web site previews several strong examples, thought you really need to see them live to fully appreciate them.

Eva Johnson is a 102-year-old self-taught Indiana painter of still lifes and landscapes that possess a certain charm.

Norbert Kox has launched a Web site, Apocalypsehouse.com, to match his stunning, bizarrely conceived, meticulously crafted apocalyptic religious canvasses.

Rick Ladd is a trained artist, but his impressive bottle-cap constructions owe a lot to anonymous tramp and bottle-cap art, and his work was included in Intuit's bottle-cap show in 1994.

There's some exhibit history and one example of Raymond Materson's amazing miniature tapestries at art in context. Materson began weaving from unthreaded socks while he was in prison.

The original crochet work at Nancy's Nanlets is really good stuff.

I don't usually love memory art, but there is pecular quality to Glenn Earl Newman's drawings at The Last Strawberry Patch.

Liz Parkinson's page can be a little slow-loading, but her intricate drawings are worth waiting for.

The themes in Jim Popso's folk art have an industrial edge that makes it well worth a look.

The ReTech itself is a bit of a work of art. It features a whole lot of furniture made from recycled materials, and a whole lot of other stuff as well.

A bout of dengue fever led Dan Rhema to start making art.

Explore the work of the late Wisconsin dentist and prolific artistRudy Rotter.

Ody Saban's site is mostly in French, but it includes numerous well-executed scans of her striking work, and a couple of articles in English.

Self-taught artist Matt Sesow has paintings, drawings and film clips post on his Web site.

Bob Shamey's carved toothpicks take whimsies to a new, and very small, level.

If you like Ionel Talpazan's visionary drawings of UFOs, you'll want to visit his new site.

If you appreciated the work of William Thomas Thompson featured recently in Raw Vision, you can see a ton of it at www.thompson-art.com

Lots about Louis Wain, who specialized in drawing cats and whose illustrated became increasingly bizarre as his mind failed. The Henry Boxer gallery has examples for sale. Another page has some more images, as does this one.

The talented Inez Nathaniel Walker has not received the attention she deserves. This site includes samples of her work and collects a number of Web references.

Here's a site featuring more than 20 drawings by Chicagoan Wesley Willis, along with information on his CDs.

The Word of God 77x7 posted strident, hand-written religious messages around Chicago several year ago on poster board and paper that he taped to windows and light poles. I've got some samples, and now you kind find more of the story at spinnwebe.

Purvis Young has gotten to be pretty ubiquitous, extending now to a web site, but his art warrants the attention and the site is pretty rich.

Individual pages

The Needlepoint Museum features both anonymous and original work.

Anthony Petullo's collection of self-taught and outsider art now has a Web site.

If you're at all interested in whimsy or puzzle bottles, you've got to go to Susan Jones' site, which exhaustively documents the genre. It's another example of the kind of site that makes the Web really valuable by providing information and images at a depth that would take a long time to reach print, if ever.

The PSB Gallery of Thrift Store Art (formerly Paul's Homepage of Doom and Destruction) now includes the best collection of thrift-store art on the Web and, possibly barring Jim Shaw's collection, off it as well.

The Internet's rich tapestry of resources devoted to really awful painting is growing. Vito Salvatore's Badart.com features a generous sampling of scans. There's also the Weird, Strange & Just Plain Bad Art page, and Lauren Wood's Wacky World of Bad Art.

A lot of the artists whose work is featured on this site would not approve at all of Peter Gilstrap's Jesus of the Week feature at the Phoenix NewTimes site. But the large collection of images of Christ is pretty amazing.

David Crotty has posted a general-purpose site on self-taught art that includes lots of images, information on a variety of artists and a number of book reviews. The site has attitude, and the attitude is usually on target.

Dr. Curve: Jim Roche spun off a site from the Florida State University show he curated, Unsigned, Unsung...Whereabouts Unknown. He's put up a set of images as well as the text of the interview with him that appeared in the show's catalog.

David's folk art collection.

Other places

Bold New Look's Prophets page features some great creative insights from D.C. eccentrics.

Artraw has a weird perspective on artistic movements, since it interprets art brut as one, but it it does feature some work by important artists, including Fleury Joseph Cr�pin and Augustin Lesage.

Found Slide Foundation features a great collection of anonymous found photography.

Spillway.com is a venue for, among other things, found photography. There's a lot of it, with commentary, from multiple contributors.

View work from the collection of the late Selden Rodman.

The Fortune Society is displaying a number of works by prison artists as part of an annual contest.

Kentuck is a large annual fair in Northpoint, Ala., that draws a number of self-taught southern artists as well as craftspeople, and is a very pleasant way to spend an October weekend.

It would be nice if there were some of the art online, but the Smithsonian has a number of pages dedicated to Chuck and Jan Rosenak, important collectors and writers on folk and outsider art. You can find information on the collection of papers and photos they donated to the museum, as well as portraits of artists taken by Chuck Rosenak.

Collector Barry Cohen is the subject of an interview at the National Endowment for the Arts Art Forms site.

It's just a snippet, but the pages from Steven Schomberg's notebook at Richard Hell's site are well worth a peek.

The Minds Wide Open art center in Kentucky features interesting work by artists with disabilities.

I'm don't think what the folks do at Treasure Island in Australia is outsider art, but creations like Pauline an Oxley Moron Voodoo Doll, along with some of the paintings for sale at their site, are close enough in spirit to warrant a visit. Sort of like the art brut annex.

Hospital Audiences Inc. features art by "mentally ill New Yorkers who have spent as much as 25 years in state mental institutions before returning to live in the community."

The ZiZo workshop is part of the Dentz Foundation, which "offers daytime occupation for mentally handicapped people in the province of Utrecht."

The House of Blues doesn't have much art on the Web yet, but it does have a gallery on America Online, go to keyword HOB.

Folklore: An Introduction: Academic materials on folklore, material culture and related issues, ranging from a definition of folk art to recountings of urban myths. (But it needs some images!)

Voices of Reason, The Lotos Leaves, Art Vision Int'l: An essay by Fergus Foley on "l'art brut... uncivilized freedom."