Lovely views from Chicago’s vast South Side repository of commercial creativity.
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Authentic Heaven: The Vernacular Art of Urban Spirituality
How the Other Half Worships, by Camilo Jose Vergara, Rutgers University Press, 286 pages, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8135-3682-8 How The Other Half Worships celebrates one of the great engines of true vernacular expression – religion. The subject is inner-city churches, with an emphasis on the storefront variety. Camilo Jose Vergara has spent years visiting and photographing urban churches and their people, fascinated by their architecture and decoration, by what people do in them and by what they do for people. The book is built around his photographs, but it also gives the church folk a direct voice. The generous quotations from
Continue readingRe-engineered Gyros Project
I’ve rebuilt the Gyros Project to make the pages more consistent and present some more interesting groupings. It’s still 246 of the best gyros pictures anywhere.
Continue readingBizarre Bazaars
Weird, Wacky and Just Plain Embarrassing Business Names From the Grog N Groc Hall of Fame Order the book here
Continue readingDevon Avenue Exotica
Devon Avenue is another Chicago street where creativity explodes from storefronts.
Continue readingThe Gyros Project 2007 Calendar
Fast food is not the usual subject of creative vision, but the gyros signs of Chicago are masterpieces of prosaic art. This calendar features photos from The Gyros Project. You can order a copy here.
Continue readingThe Last Folk Hero: Collector Bill Arnett’s art world martyrdom
A review of the recent book about Bill Arnett, one of the most important collectors and advocates of self-taught art from the South. Meanwhile, the sad news arrived that Mose Tolliver, one of the best-known southern black artists of the last century, died Monday.
Continue readingNew Signs From Around the Loop
Economically marginal businesses haven’t been pushed entirely out from the area around Chicago’s Loop. That’s good news for interesting signage.
Continue readingNew Signs
Check out a bunch of great new signs from coast to coast.
Continue readingBusiness Name Saga
This comment from the business name page deserves featuring since it is an instance of the all-important “things” concept. Tracy Says: July 19th, 2006 at 11:04 am We have “Taste Good” Chinese Restaurant here, and there’s this place that was called “Ying’s” and then he added more and called it “Ying’s Wings”. That wasn’t enough, though, it became “Ying’s Wings and Things”. That was before he built the bar area. The name now? “Ying’s Wings, Things and Bar”.Here’s their website: http://www.yingswingsthings.com/
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