Vernacular Art Archives - Page 7 of 14

This face could be right out of a carnival game. Regency Auto Sales, Western Avenue at 75th Street

September 1, 2020 Bill Swislow

A Western Avenue Automotive Art Environment

Here’s a look back at a spectacular automotive art environment that once graced Chicago’s greatest decorated street. Regency Auto Sales was a blast of color and excitement as you headed down Western Avenue toward Chicago’s southern boundary. Each of the carnival-like signs scattered around the car lot was a strong work of art in itself. Together they formed an ensemble as exciting and expressive as any art environment should be. Just north of Regency was Tom’s Auto Mart. It was not nearly as elaborate as Regency, but its use of Disney characters to sell used cars was charming, a nice

July 16, 2020 Bill Swislow

A Vintage Hardware Fantasia

You don’t have to be obsessed with nuts and bolts to appreciate the renderings in the 1920 Bethlehem Steel Co. Bolts, Nuts, Rivets catalog. They’re finely detailed and geometrically perfect, floating on their hand-drawn backgrounds. They don’t make catalogs like this any more.

May 28, 2020 Bill Swislow

Whirligig Gardens: Make The Wind Speak

Wind power today usually means alternative energy, but there are those who harness it as a source of personal expression: The whirligig makers. Vollis Simpson ran a machine shop, did heavy equipment repair and was involved in moving houses. In retirement, he started tinkering with odd parts he had lying around. And he started making whirligigs. Big ones. His original whirligig park, in an out-of-the-way field in out-of-the-way Lucama, North Carolina, was the world’s most spectacular concentration of these wind machines. Simpson died in 2013, but the whirligigs were preserved and relocated to a dedicated park in nearby Wilson, where they

May 10, 2020 Bill Swislow

More of the Art of the Muffler

Sculpted muffler figures represent one of the great roadside folk arts, but 2D representations of exhaust pipes and related auto parts are often just as imaginative. The ominous figure from the former E&T Mufflers in Chicago is the greatest example of art on a shop sign I’ve even seen in the wild. Here’s that one again, another image from the same location, and a bunch of other delightful renderings from the underside. Back to Muffler People: The Last American Folk Art.

April 18, 2020 Bill Swislow

Review: Walks to the Paradise Garden

Walks to the Paradise Garden: A Lowdown Southern Odyssey, by Jonathan Williams, photos by Roger Manley & Guy Mendes. Institute 193, Lexington Kentucky and New York, 352 pages, 100 color images and 80 black and white , 2019. ISBN: 978-1732848207. Hardcover, $45. It’s a shame this book wasn’t published as intended in the 1990s. Not only would its author have still been alive, but so would most of the artists he encountered on his travels across the back roads of the South. Inspired by William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, Jonathan Williams, poet, publisher and lover of the vernacular, undertook a series of

March 28, 2020 Bill Swislow

Muffler People: The Last American Folk Art

Calling muffler people “the last American folk art” may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. If you accept a fairly rigorous definition of folk art, much of what is called folk — whether art, music, or craft — isn’t. That is, it’s not made by artists working from within a communal creative context, artists whose roots are in local or regional traditions more than in mass culture or eccentric visions. To say that Bob Dylan was never an actual folk singer or Howard Finster a folk artist does not diminish their talent or even their authenticity

Front view of Alex Rico's art environment in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood

March 8, 2020 Bill Swislow

Art Environment Fit For A Queen

You’re not too likely to stumble upon this art environment in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. It’s on an out-of-the-way dead-end street. But it’s worth the hunt. Alex Rico turned his home into a literal castle to honor his late wife Gisela, who died at 34. “I told my kids I want to do something so I could remember your mom. Not in the cemetery. This is something I see every day,” Rico told the news site Block Club Chicago. You can read the full story and see pictures here and below. See more art environments here.

January 5, 2020 Bill Swislow

Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park: Two Visits

Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park, the fabulous art environment in Phillips, Wisconsin, circa 1997 and 2007. There is plenty to be said about Smith and his creations. For more information, visit its Spaces archive page or the Friends of Fred Smith site. Back to Wisconsin: The Roadside Genius State.

August 15, 2018 Bill Swislow

Outsider Art: Chicago We Own It

A look past Chicago’s outsider art canon to anonymous & lesser-known artists, the collectors who found their work, and Maxwell Street, where many learned how

Portraits from signs for Frank's West Side Auto Parts Chicago

April 24, 2018 Bill Swislow

Auto Parts Art Gallery, and Vicinity

Frank’s West Side Auto Parts, at Kedzie Avenue and 30th Street, is an art gallery unto itself. Plus, there are other great signs in its vicinity, including more auto parts art and other examples of vernacular creativity.