Roadside Art Archives - Page 6 of 11

March 17, 2017 Bill Swislow

Review: California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture

California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture by Jim Heimann My rating: 5 of 5 stars 1980’s California Crazy was one of the early gospels for roadside art enthusiasts, documenting dozens of the state’s wonderful theme buildings of the early 20th century, from giant donuts to miniature sphinxes. Author Jim Heimann updated the book in 2001 with California Crazy and Beyond. The old version was presented as a logbook, and in some cases the images are larger. The new volume is redesigned as a more conventional picture book, with lots of additional pictures and a great deal more writing. Both

Miamis-Bottle-Cap-Inn-before-an-addition-on-the-right-side

March 11, 2017 Bill Swislow

Bottle Cap Valhalla: The Bottle Cap Inn

Unsealed: Bottle Cap Art | The Woolseys | The Patent Drawings | How To | The Race Question| The Blockbuster The Galleries: Masterworks | Troops | Signed | Flashers | Other Shapes | Mine | Bottle Cap Inn | Two Monuments Joe Wiser’s Bottle Cap Inn in Miami was featured in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, but more importantly it was a triumph of an obsessive personal vision. Fortunately, many interior views were preserved in a series of postcards and press photos. The bar was created in the 1930s by Joe Wiser, said to be a disabled World War I veteran. He choose to decorate with the most available ornamentation,

Buildings embedded in the sidewalk at Howard Finster's Paradise Garden, circa 1990

November 30, 2016 Bill Swislow

The Sidewalks of Paradise Garden

Among the most stunning features of Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia, are its sidewalks. Some bear representational images of buildings, others are abstract aggregations of potsherds. Some bear text messages, others are virtual encyclopedias of Finster’s tools. These mosaic ribbons threading through the garden are a potent representation of how his creativity found expression in every aspect of the environment around him.

Side-entrance-to-the-compound-St.-Eoms-Pasaquan-2016

November 22, 2016 Bill Swislow

Inside The Land of Pasaquan

Pasaquan, one of the world’s great art sites, lies tucked away in rural west central Georgia, near the little town of Buena Vista. Pasquan was the creation of Eddie Owens Martin, a local boy who went away to live the low life in New York City (by his own account), but came back and created a masterpiece. That Martin was a bit of a crackpot is hard to deny. A fortune-telling ex-street-hustler, he created a personal religion, enshrined himself as a saint and turned his family farm into a holy place. The strength of his vision is so great, though,

June 21, 2016 Bill Swislow

Some Milwaukee Signs

A brief swing through Milwaukee is enough to turn up some fine examples of roadside art.

January 27, 2016 Bill Swislow

Review: John Baeder’s Road Well Taken

“John Baeder’s Road Well Taken,” by Jay Williams, Vendome Press, 272 pages, 300 color and b&w illustrations, 2015. 978-0865653191. Hard cover $45 John Baeder is legendary among roadside architecture enthusiasts for Diners,” his book of photorealistic diner paintings that turned out to be one of the most culturally influential publications of the 1970s. Baeder, the subject of a new biography by art historian and curator Jay Williams, appreciated 20th century roadsides and the buildings that populated them before they became old, when they were just ugly rather than a source of popular nostalgia.Widespread fascination with highways like Route 66 and

Abstractions from extreme closeup of fast-food painted signs

January 16, 2016 Bill Swislow

An Appetite For Abstraction

Abstraction occurs all over. Can you guess where these abstract images are from? Click on the individual images below this group to find out.

Railroad bridges over the Calumet River, with the Chicago Skyway in the background.

January 9, 2016 Bill Swislow

Southeast Sider Art

Chicago’s Southeast Side easily looks like a wasteland to drivers taking the Chicago Skyway as the shortest, though most expensive, path to get from the city to Michigan. But of course there are glimpses of a more interesting reality. The most obvious are the dramatic railroad bridges you see as you cross the Calumet River near 95th Street. They are some of Chicago’s finest, and always the best part of a Skyway trip. But if you get off the expressway you can find great examples of the vernacular art that lines most of the Chicago area’s off-the-beaten-track commercial districts.

January 6, 2016 Bill Swislow

Short Review: Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto

Camilo Jose Vergara brings a fine photographic eye, a sociologist’s curiosity and expertise, and tremendous commitment to his explorations of cities, their decay and their resilience. This study of Harlem is most enlightening.

September 30, 2015 Bill Swislow

Tour the Lakefront Stone Carvings: Oct. 11

Chicago is home to the greatest collection of outdoor stone carvings in urban America. Generations of beach-going carvers whiling away the hours left their marks on huge limestone blocks installed during the Depression to improve and protect the city’s park-lined lakefront. Many of these anonymous carvings have been destroyed as part of more recent anti-erosion projects. But the stretch of shoreline between Bryn Mawr and Montrose Avenues still boasts dozens of these small wonders — animals, bathing beauties, presidents, deities, buildings and, of course, initials, names and eternal professions of love. It’s the best public art that no one sees. They’re