Monday, May 20, 2013

News boy


Cabinet card from Brookings, South Dakota showing a young man wearing a costume of shredded newspaper. His cap says News Boy. Brookings, the state's fourth largest city, is home to South Dakota State University.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Deco milk bottle door handles


From a dairy business. Brass with the initials LP. Found in Flemington, N.J., 10.25 inches tall.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Linda Hall's trophy room


Artist Linda Hall, who teaches at Florida State University, creates other-worldly animals using old quilts and other materials. Her work will be on display in Atlanta beginning May 17 at the Barbara Archer Gallery group show "4 X 4: Benjamin Jones / Lydia Walls / Linda Hall / Joseph Kurhajec." In the short film Beasts by Hand, Hall talks about her "containers for the spirit," which take taxidermy to another level.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Eve


Carved and painted plaque made for the circus?

Friday, May 10, 2013

Surprise Attack Near Harper's Ferry


An 8-foot-wide painting at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Ga., done around 1868 by George Mooney, who served in the Georgia infantry during the Civil War. Surprise Attack Near Harper's Ferry shows Confederate bathers in the Potomac River scrambling as Union soldiers fire on them. One of those bathers was the 20-something Mooney.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Luster Willis death painting


Luster Willis (1913-1990) lived in Mississippi and was one of the artists in the famous show "Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980," held at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. The book from that exhibition includes a full-page color image similar to this painting called "Mummie of the Stone Age," done in the 1970s. The "Black Folk Art in America" book, by Jane Livingston and John Beardsley, says Willis "is an innately sophisticated draftsman whose command of his technical medium separates him decisively from many of the more blunt and direct styles associated with 'folk' art. Willis's major works are subtle and diverse in both their subject  and execution as any painting by the most accomplished schooled artists." Willis is quoted in the book as saying, "I used to like to draw a lot of caskets and put imaginary figures in them. I think death is interesting because it's something that, sooner or later, we will all have to meet."