New Mexico Part 2: The Folk Art show and Santa Fe

none of the people in this photo are us

Let's just get right to the point: what did we eat that was good? Well, it was all great from Moi's phyllo wrapped fish served with salad on arrival night, to Pete's roadhouse and live band venue's Christmas chile plate with pork to the awesome awesome salad at the "Flying" something to the Grove sandwich. But the best was at Cafe Pasqual in Santa Fe. Moi and I ordered the carne asada and it was very tasty. The peppers especially were wonderful. There were 3 varieties and each had a distinct flavor with none of the heat taking over that flavor. But if there is one regret I have from this trip it is this: when I tasted the corn cake with veggies special that Boxer ordered? I should have called the waitress over, handed her my plate and ask her to box it up, and then ordered what Boxer had. Life is too short not to have done that. I am still thinking about what I missed. Because that was the best single bite in the entire 3-day trip. Way to pick it, Boxa!

This was the late lunch we had after going to the International Folk Art Show. I have to say, Santa Fe puts on a great event. I did not take any photos of the artists in their native dress, it seemed exploitative and I also didn't want to photograph the work just in case they were worried about design theft (like many artists are). I will just show you some of the things that I purchased. I didn't have much of a budget  because my big bang was spent on getting there. But here are a few, not all, of the things I bought:

Four desert plates from artist Abdullo Narzullaev from Uzbekistan

Assorted cheap and colorful papier mache toys from Mexico; one devil is of particular interest:

All the summiteers think that this fellow "looks like somebody". Like a character actor or maybe a guy in a band. Or maybe it is a "type". Whatever it is, we have all seen him before - in human form.

A hand painted Sacred Heart cross. I love it. Im going to buy more from this shop for gifts. I also gave V a Sacred Heart (with the flames coming off the top) as per Moi's suggestion. It was a great idea, he loved it and it is in our kitchen over the window - a place he selected. Much better than a t-shirt from the airport gift shop.

A scarf from India. That's about it - I did buy a ceramic bell shaped like a mouse and a few trinkets for the children in my life. We had planned to go to Jackalope a famous folk art emporium but I put the brakes on that - having exceeded my budget quite a bit.

We did not see that much of Santa Fe. I was expecting poshy poshy but it was more eclectic and earthy than that. The prices of things were very high though; I briefly admired a blouse until the price tag said 198. and I let go of that sucker like it was red hot. Moi and I agreed that the lacey western dresses were almost but "not quite" the right garment to wear with cowboy boots; they needed to be not so white and a tad less girly girl. I looked hard at a concha belt. But in the end, I walked away. Yes! I loved the town square, the zocalo of green with people laying out on blankets and having kettle corn and ice cream. We also visited a gallery that carried the work of Boxer's brother. It was wonderful to see his work in person as he is a very accomplished painter.

On the way back we drove through a little town where I believe Moi said they just gave away land to whoever would come and live there. Naturally it is an artist haven. Outside of that town is where Boxer and I took photographs of the fire (see previous post) and of our Lady Driver of Patience:

Moi, I want to thank you again for having us out. It was a wonderful weekend and you made it really special. Thank you for the wonderful gift bag, the meals, the deers and beers and your charming company. Loved the dogs, SB, that newport lighter, the art you had, hittin' golf balls for Maddie, seeing Ivan come through the dog door, the neighborhood dog-gauntlet walk, learning about how much I hate white flower based perfumes, laying in the hairy dog bed and, well, ALL of it. XO

Best. Treat. Ever.

V gave me an electric ice cream maker and boy have I given it a workout. I've made peach, vanilla, strawberry, cookies and cream and coffee ice cream. I've made frozen yogurt, various granitas and frozen drinks with it. But I hit upon the best frozen treat ever when I changed a recipe I thought was too heavy and I'd like to share it with you. Everybody that has tried this says it is the best ice-cream sandwich they have ever tasted - and because they are petite; about 3.5", they aren't too fattening.

You start with this classic custard recipe. (The recipes that require cooking are the best- without the custard base, the ice cream doesn't hold that creamy easily scooped out consistency after freezing)

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups whipping cream
• 2 cups half-and-half cream
• 2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cook the first five ingredients over medium heat stirring constantly. It needs to reach about 160˚ and then chilled in a bath of ice and water. The consistency should coat a spoon. Now add the vanilla, and put it in the fridge overnight or for a few hours.

I made ice cream with this recipe and thought it was too sweet and too heavy. So I took half of it and added an equal part of half and half. Next I added a few drops of coconut extract. With half the sugar and half the fat, the ice cream was still tasty and creamy but not too sweet and full of flavor. I tried to use coco loco coconut milk but it was WAY too oily and sweet. Extract works better.

Put the mixture into the ice cream maker and when it gets to where it has nice peaks and shapes you are ready to make ice cream sandwiches. Don't let it hard freeze or it won't spread right.

Get some Famous Chocolate Wafers. They are on the baking isle. 

Take one and get a spoonful of the ice cream and plop it in the center. Don't let it get too big because when you put the other cookie on top, you want to press lightly so the ice cream spreads out to the edges. As you make them, put them in the freezer on a plate uncovered. 

When building the sandwiches, if too much ice cream eeeks out of the side just take a spoon and run it around the edges and it looks really tidy. 

When they are nice and solid - like 10 minutes - individually wrap each sandwich in either parchment paper affixed with a sticker or wrap them in plastic bags. If you leave them on a plate, the cookie will stick. You know how the cake part of an ice cream sandwich gets kind of soft? Well, being with the ice cream makes these cookies soft so they need to be packaged. 

That little hint of coconut gives it a tropical vibe and enhances the chocolate. It's just a pretty and easy treat that has impressed everyone that has tried it.

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Haiku Monday players may recall that Moi won the chicken haiku challenge. The prize was a custom made folk art piece based on the winning haiku. I finally did the painting. Here is the winning haiku again:

Faithful feathered friend—

chopped, plucked, garlic-stuffed. Sunday's

sacrificial lamb.

I chose to focus on Moi's observation of chicken as the defacto sunday dinner. And I was thinking about all the ways she indicated it could be, er, processed. Then I started thinking about the charts that show cuts of meat and thought about the ways a chicken was used. So I ended up with a kind of silly butcher's chart for a chicken. Moi - I hope you like it. Its not pretty, but I hope its at least funny. If you don't like it, you can always use it as firewood. Oh and congratulations on yet another haiku win.

Your Dad Called

He said he wants a Beer Bull for Father's Day.

Painted on 100% scavenged beach house.

Several colors; one bad attitude.

New for the 2011 Blue Ridge Farmer's Market

Haiku Monday / Cliche

China shops tremble

Grasp the horns, order now!

Bull Art. No B.S.

Saturday Mornings at the Farmer's Market

Friday nights have become busy nights for me. Gone are the afternoons at the Blue Ridge Brewery hanging out with friends. Now, I spend Friday evenings in the ditches looking for wildflowers, making chicken paintings on plywood, and prepping my vegetables for sale. The combination of wildflowers and garden flowers is a pleasing mix; many people have commented on the inclusion of blackberry vines...they add a country charm as well as texture and striking color in black and bright red. I think the bouquets speak to the goodness of home and simple pleasures. This is not a mix you can pick up wrapped in cellophane at the grocery.


I am proud to announce that Chef Danny at Harvest on Main bought my cherry tomatoes for the restaurant.


Susan parks next to me and specializes in heirloom tomatoes and potted herbs. Last weekend she gave me a green zebra heirloom that i am saving the seeds to plant next year. I have some black prince, cherokee purples and pineapple tomatoes that will be ready for this weeks market. But i could never top Susan's variety - and they are in such beautiful shape too.


The Tin Man is an old marine vet that makes these guys....i bought the one on the right. He's pretty big, his chest is one of those mini Heineken kegs. He only charges $8 for these things!


The corn is coming in now. When i see it, i get a tiny vibe of fall coming. and lately, though its hot, i see little signs of the change. Growing a garden has tuned me into the slight shifts in light and color.


Everybody's tomatoes are coming in. Its time for canning. I don't know how to do it, but there is a community cannery and i heard they have people from the technical school there to help greenhorns like myself with the process. I only planted 2 rows of beans and ate them all. So i just have tomatoes and squash and cucumbers to preserve. I dont know why i grew the cucumbers. i dont even like them. Actually, i dont love the summer foods. I like the spring foods much more.


Nice presentation of beans!


These are spaghetti squashes. When you cut them open, the fleshy part inside is stringy - like spaghetti.


The blueberry girl. I wish my bushes had produced more but i did the wrong thing to them in spring by giving them lime. Wrong! They like acidic soil. I have a few, but i mostly just eat them as i work in the garden. There isnt enough to do anything with them.


Every week i buy artisan bread from the Queen ladies. Their breads are delicious. And for you foodies, you really need to check out Hannah Queen's beautiful food blog Honey and Jam. At only 19 years old, Hannah is a gifted photographer and her blog just sings with beauty. There are a lot of recipes on her site too, so check her out and tell her chickory sent you.


This guy won a bunch of first place ribbons at the Georgia State Fair for his salsas, jams and pickles. He always sells out on Saturdays.




Back home on saturday afternoon i spent some time just hanging out on the porch with V and the dogs where it is nice and cool. V made me a table for my art studio while i was at the farmers market and it was a very nice surprise. I will post pictures of the studio soon - I have moved in but i still dont have any siding.


Today I am working on weeding (after 6 pm, that is) and on my new "product" for this saturday, which i will post maybe tomorrow. I found a way to use all the triangle pieces the builders left after building my stairs. Can you guess what they are going to be? First right answer gets one as a prize.

Folk Fest 2009

  a favorite at Alcove Arts by Sergio Mora

Betty and I went on our annual pilgrimage to the Slotin Folk Fest looking for affordable new pieces to add to our respective collections. Very quickly we realized that things had shifted slightly; many of the dealers and artists from last year were not present. It is a curious situation. The mission statement on the Slotin website states that this festival is to promote the art of mostly rural, untrained, self-taught artists who dont have access to traditional art venues. With a booth fee of 900 dollars its a bit difficult for those authentic artists to exhibit. And the hall was chock full of MFA's and, looks like, anybody who can pay the freight to get in the show. 

I saw a lot of what i call "style memes" there: God help the artist that gets out a unique vision because next year there will be copy artists. You can just see that whatever sold well has been examined and then art is made to fit the market. Then there are sellers in there that mystify as to how they could have been included as folk art.

Back to the art school people: this post is not a dig on them. while i would like to see more self-representing self taught artists at this show (most primitives are represented by dealers and their work is very expensive), i am delighted with the trained artists' work.  Many of them are finding their way back to a pure expression. William Skrips said it best when he detailed how he had worked to undo all the training and instruction that he had received from Art in America style giants at his NYC art school.


I think he has been successful. His assemblages are simultaneously raw and polished and infused with some hint of classical art; in some of the pieces i could feel my mind traveling to a pieta or crucifixion stone or odd-wheeled contraptions you might find in a Bosch painting.

             the raggedy fabric, the nails, the bondage wraps and anxiety grimace on this piece are perfection.

I met Karl Mullen last year and loved the work. I wasnt disappointed this year. He remains a favorite at this show, representing the best of the primitive totem people drawings. The drawings are on large paper -like 40 x 60 - and are drawn with a combination of powdered pigments and wax crayons. But what he does to the paper really makes the surface sing; he coats the pieces in walnut oil which makes them appear and feel like heavy animal skins. A true outsider artist from ireland his resume reads like a traveling jack-of-all-trades just like a folk artist of old might have been. His subjects are musicians and kings and circuses and figures from another time that you know from intuition or memory rather than actual experience.

 Mullen's frenetic line work somehow portrays a 

figure with a look of slightly melancholic introspection

I found Randy Tobias early and picked out a new piece. I love Randy's work; his take on classic southern religious vernacular is my favorite of the clay work. Randy is a real outsider artist: he doesnt even have a website for me to link to. or a dealer. he can still be found at the "Turn n Burn" clay weekend where potters come out to a certain highway in north georgia to sell their wares by the roadside.


Angels, devils, snake-handlers, parsons, empty-souled demons and hybrid face jugs in amazing glaze combinations are shelved like a police line up.

Some of the figures remind me of characters in popular culture, for instance this angel with a red glaze stigmata is a dead ringer for Yoda.


some of the "preachers" reminded me of the weirdo preacher in Poltergeist II who is actually Satan in a terrible transparent pale corpse suit; you could sense there was more to what you saw on the surface. In the end, i chose this piece to keep the one i bought last year company:



there was so much to see and my notes were poor. i cannot tell you who made this lobster girl; she was quite small and secured inside an abalone shell. there was a table of these small sculptures that i liked and i regret now i did not buy this.

Betty liked this wire dress. It was one of many dresses at the show: dresses of wood and bottle caps, dresses of tin and wood, dresses of plaster - many dresses by many artists all without any flesh to fill them out.

The guys from minivan (They call themselves minivan because they travel around the country to show selling work - out of the minivan) were back and they had, once again, one of the strongest exhibits in the show. The always seem to have their pulse squarely on the collective zeitgeist with edgy works made with and on unconventional materials - perhaps the kind of salvage all of us will employ someday in the post land of plenty america. In the image above you can see what i mean: people in struggles; fights; parachuting "out"; surviving; falling.

Casey McGlynn is my favorite of the minivan artists. This little red pig is a good example: he has written "the living piggy bank" on the painting which is so absolutely correct in an age where money is precariously teetering on the verge of having no value at all. His work is very personal and narrative with messages scrawled into available spaces around the figures. His interest in playing the guitar is evident in the portraits of players and he continues with a vocabulary of animals interacting with people. The surfaces of his paintings are richly layered and messy but still surprisingly clear.



Anthony Pack continues to delight: i bought a piece last year: a paprika man that flies over my kitchen like one of those indonesian spirit protectors. Anthony is out of Kansas City and did his time at Hallmark before finding his way to this:




Each figure is infused with amazing personality and life and his craftsmanship is King. He is the best of the kitchen gadget junk sculptors - and there were quite a few at this show.

I liked Steven Chandlers drawings on plywood. He calls them Georgia Red Mud paintings. They are very much in the style of early southern primitive artists only more linear.



*note: steven chandler visited this blog and left a comment about his video on the show. . its an interesting look at folk fest from an artists POV with some undeniable damning evidence of another artist's goat painting that was copied (exactly-like a stencil) from Stevens original work; which addresses the issue of the increased copy cat situation at the show. if you are interested in art and commerce and what is "folk", check it out.

Overall, this show remains one of my favorites of the year. I subscribed to Art in America in a two for one deal when i ordered it for a friend as a gift; and rarely saw work within those pages that i actually wanted to read about, much less liked. I could say the same thing about some of the shows at the name brand galleries in town. At this show its fun to see the favorites but theres always that chance of finding something really good at an affordable price and the possibility of seeing an artist emerge fresh before a dealer gets a hold of them. I wish that somehow the pricing could be dropped on the booth spaces and that the dealers could be kept out. With an honest jury, the show could be restored to its earlier manifestation: that of a tent revival of outsider art.

the tree of life

"a new world is coming down from on high"

As i worked on my garden i would get tired and want to cut corners. i would say to myself -many times during the day- "don't get lazy". If i did, i knew it would show later and it would be as disappointing as a weak painting.

i began to realize that the garden is a project that would extend far beyond this spring and would transcend soil sky and water. The garden will in some ways reflect my character and that this solitary work is a kind of spiritual journey. When i built the bean teepees from fallen limbs of poplar i saw my garden structure take on a familiar vibe: that of the southern folk art yard. The rawness and "make-do" imperfection of it pleased me. As i mined rocks out of the soil i stacked them to be used later as edging decorations. I thought about the scarecrow i would make, and how i might use mirrored garlands to discourage creatures from foraging in the garden plot. what kind of whirly gig could i make? what junk do i have laying around that i can use to build some structure into this flat patch of dirt? In this regard i reflected often on the Reverend Howard Finster, maker of sacred art.

Most people know Finster from his painting on the cover of the Talking Head's "Little Creatures" album. In this image you see some typical Finster elements: man (in this case, David Byrne) holding up the world, churches, living clouds, UFO's, cheetahs and snakes and figures in prayerful poses.

I started going up to his fantastical 4 acre Pennville Georgia yard known as "paradise garden" when i was in college. we made pilgrimages to see Finster where he would hold court with his many visitors. The house would have giant portraits of such icons as Elvis, George Washington, Hank Williams, St. John, the Devil, and Jesus hanging on the outside; all would be on the same level -both pop icon and meta-physical figures -for the reverend would say that they could deliver the word of God with equal measure. that there were many roads to the source and that they all lead to the same place.

The garden was the most amazing repurposing of junk i have ever seen: paths made of tools and toys embedded into concrete which might lead to a reflecting pool, a mirrored grotto or a tower of broken bicycles. Inside the mirrored grotto you were asked to reflect on your sins and repent as you studied your face fractured in the reflective shards.

Sheds were covered in scripture and old hubcaps; cut outs of angels and devils reminded one that Jesus was returning -and soon. Of course, soon on God's time is very different than our notion of soon; in other words, possibly not imminent. Old junk cars were decorated with faces of the famous, more scripture and statements of Finsters personal theology. Classic southern bottle trees dotted the landscape which were overshadowed by giant painted coke bottles. You'd look in a bush and see dismembered doll heads, now angels with some kind of junk fabric dress. You can see a lot of photos from Paradise Garden here .

In a way, Finster was kind of like Van Gogh in that he had a notion of being a preacher first. His grandfather had been one, and i recall seeing a photograph of Finster baptizing people in a river in Mentone Alabama. Looking at this flyer he made for a tent revival he was already promising the addition of visual aids :


But the story goes that while he was painting a bike he had repaired, he looked at one of his thumbprints in white paint, and that image told him to "make sacred art". and so he did. he never questioned his worthiness to do so, or even how to begin. in fact, how he did begin was to pull out a dollar bill and paint a portrait of George Washington.

one of the coolest Finster creations was the "World Folk Art Church" which is a white frame church in the round with an interior spiral ramp upward. I was blown away by the thousands of tin pieces that hung from the eaves that turned in the wind flashing light making the church appear to be alive and moving. what a brilliant technique to convey just that: a place where the Word was alive.

Soon the art dealers and museums made him into an icon and things went down hill. he had become the cash cow for an entire family and to fill orders a kind of assembly line was created where shaped figures were cranked out to meet the ever growing collector demand. After his death, family members sold off much of the garden and the better paintings and allowed the High Museum in Atlanta to dismantle parts of Paradise Garden for a gallery space where it appears lifeless and garish out of its intended context.

I thought often of paradise garden and what Reverend Howard Finster had said about "the new world coming down" as i raked and smoothed and dug and planted. The whole world has shifted somehow. Wherever i was going before, im not going there anymore.