I love Rockford Red Heel monkey socks, and I love sock monkeys. You can see dozens of sock monkeys below, starting with a group of my favorites. You can also read my thoughts on sock monkeys from 1998. (The picture at top of that page is the installation that graced my daughter’s bedroom window for her first few years.) Sock monkey favorites All the rest Check out the Sock Monkey Museum in Long Grove, Illinois, a must visit for any sock monkey enthusiast. Also, you can click over to Dee Lindner’s sockmonkeylady.com site for some sock monkey enthusiasm.
Continue readingCategory: Vernacular Art
The Fabulous World of Mr. C’s
Whether Mr. C’s Steak House in Omaha swarmed with kitsch or charm is all in your point of view. But take a look at the faces in its dioramas. Each is said to have represented a local notable. Yano and Mary Caniglia had a drive-in restaurant on 30th Street that they rebuilt and reopened as Mr. C’s in 1971. It was a classic local institution and one of those rare places where you could dine inside an art environment. It closed in 2007. You can read more about Mr. C’s, including its disappointing racial history, here: https://northomahahistory.com/2017/12/06/a-history-of-mr-cs-restaurant-in-north-omaha/
Continue readingRIP Jeff Elersic, artist
I never met Jeff Elersic, who died Dec. 14, 2024, at 70 years old, but I did manage to photograph his house/tirade in Geneva, Ohio, northeast of Cleveland. In common with a number of other art environments (W.C. Rice’s, Royal Robertson’s and Jesse Howard’s among others), Elersic’s expressed an uncomfortable degree of rage. To say his language was not measured is an understatement. But it was artfully written and arranged, and he was an excellent colorist. Have a look. Images are from 2016. You can view a short obituary here and read more about him at Spaces Archives.
Continue readingThe Red Hot Annex
Before I started photographing the gyros signs of Chicago — now collected as The Gyros Project — I had an idea to document signs at Chicago’s hot dog stands. I had become increasingly interested in roadside signs as examples of vernacular art, and hot dog stands have long been a ubiquitous part of Chicago’s street life. The red-and-yellow red hots signage that advertised and decorated so many of them literally set the local color for the city. I ultimately decided against hot dogs in favor of gyros, however, for two reasons. First, in those days (early 1990s) there were so
Continue readingRoadside Muskegon Marvels
No shortage of things to see to in this lakeside Michigan city. These photos mostly date to 2011. The Signs The Buildings
Continue readingRoadside Giants of Cross Plains
Back in the 1990s, the trio of roadside giants in the first image — pink elephant, towering Indian and modest knight — resided next to Loco Joe’s fireworks in Cross Plains, Tennessee, north of Nashville . Time took its toll, however. The knight disappeared and the other two figures weathered. They outlasted Loco Joe, however, as well as the adjacent antique mall. Today the elephant continues to decay in its original spot, glasses gone but still holding the martini glass complete with olive. The Indian moved across the road to Sad Sam’s fireworks and has been refurbished. You can read
Continue readingMansards Forever!
As Modernism lost its grip on the collective imagination in the second half of the 20th century, adding a mansard roof to a building must have seemed like an easy way to affix substance and class. Mansards proliferated, on buildings both residential and commercial. So why not achieve the same sort of upgrade by putting mansards atop signs, which were likely even more in need of classing up? I can’t speak for the whole country, but in the Chicago area our streets were once lined with this oddball expression of 1970s-era mansardism — signs with roofs. Back in 2003 I published a
Continue readingThe Poles of D Bill – Near Normal
When D Bill, a retired toolmaker for Caterpillar Tractor, began carving utility poles, it must have seemed natural to him to create detailed engineering drawings for each design. The carvings are whimsical and imaginative, the drawings, technical, detailed and to scale. D Bill, who preferred an initial to his full name Darwin, mostly sold his work at the annual Sugar Creek Arts Festival in the nicely named Normal, Illinois. But he also used it to decorate his spread in Danvers, a few miles west. The poles were scattered around his house and workshop and lined the long driveway up
Continue readingMartha Timm Memorial Rock Garden
The Martha Timm Rock Garden is fenced off in New Hampton, Iowa’s Mikkelson Park, making photography a challenge but visiting easy. You can just walk up any time and look. An information sign supplies what little information I can find about this modestly scaled art environment: “Martha Timm and her husband were retired to a home in New Hampton from a farm southeast of the city when she began the building of her rock garden. It includes rocks from every state of the union, collected by her and for her by relatives and friends in their travels. The shards of
Continue readingThe Hammond Rock Carvings
An out-of-the-way corner of Hammond, Indiana, hosts 12 straggling carvings on six limestone blocks that line the lakefront just south of Chicago’s Calumet Park, which itself boasts nearly 1,500 carvings. Access to the carvings, adjacent to Veteran’s Memorial Park, is through an archway that belonged to the NIPSCO power plant once located here. This map is both printable and interactive — each carving links to its image. Or scroll down for a gallery of all the carvings at Veterans Memorial Park. Hammond Carvings Gallery Find lakefront carvings by location.
Continue reading