Guest Curator Archive

Far off the beaten path, in Holsworthy, County Devon, there is a peaceful space that captures the whimsical spirit of the English countryside. I went on my visit to the Gnome Reserve with scant expectations as the website about it offered few pictures and the place was far far away from where I was staying in Derbyshire. The Reserve was a wonderful surprise. What I found was a place that encompassed folk artistry, tourism and spirituality and was a space rife with repeat visitors who came for purposes of nostalgia and memory and participation in an imagined world. The Gnome Reserve was created initially by Anne Atkin, who is also an artist as well as proprietor of the Reserve, keeper of the Gnome Museum and shop at the Reserve and creator of pixies and gnome paintings. She established the Reserve on a 4 acre site that overflows with wildflowers and birds in the summertime. Visitors may come from the end of March through October and after paying about $5.00 are invited to put a gnome hat on and explore. Most people I saw chose hats that matched their outfits. Visitors are then allowed to wander freely along pathways, around a pond, through arbors and flowers and trees. Sprinkled throughout the reserve are more than 2000 gnomes. They may be solitary but most likely are featured in group scenes. They play chess, feast together, fish, attend festivals and generally enjoy the good life.

Philip Griebel started a garden gnome manufactory in the lovely village of Grafenroda, Germany in 1874. The small factory still exists and now also houses a museum. I visited Philip’s great grandson, Reinhard who still makes the gnomes the same way they were made in the past – he uses terra cotta as the material, puts it into handmade molds and then cuts the pieces with a knife. Sponges and water are used to smooth the edges and the terra cotta is air dried. They cost quite a bit more than the mass manufactured ones made in Poland and China. But, what personality they have!

I purchased this fellow at Target. I couldn’t resist him as he is one of the few non-white gnomes I’ve seen. It seems likely that the famous 1976 Dutch book Gnomes, by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet has become so iconic that gnome manufacturers only view them as looking rather white. On the other hand, there may be concern that creating gnomes of various ethnicities may be viewed as non-traditional or perhaps patronizing. In any case, as a non-human, fantasy creature, I’m fairly certain gnomes can evolve into whatever we want or need them to be. I’m hoping that gnomes become more diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity. After all, they do reflect us or at least our tastes, our fears, our senses of humor. The reflection may as well be more or less accurate – zombie gnomes excluded of course.

“Nils Holgersson Riding on the Back of Mårten,” from Nirusu no Fushigi na Tabi [The Wonderful Adventures of Nils] (1980-81). http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_info.asp?ItemID=416247

“The Adventurers Set Forth in Search of the Blue Bird of Happiness,” from Maeterlinck no Aoi Tori: Tyltyl Mytyl no Bōken Ryokō [Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird: Tyltyl and Mytyl’s Adventurous Journey], Opening Animation (1980). http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_info.asp?ItemID=329543

“Pippi Carries Her Horse into Villa Villekulla,” a photographic slide of a test cell for Nagakutsushita no Pippi, Sekai ichi tsuyoi onna no ko [Pippi Longstocking, Strongest Girl In The World] (1971). http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_info.asp?ItemID=333929

“The Princess Meets the Tinder-box Soldier,” from Andersen Monogatari: [The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen], Episode 17 (1971). http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_info.asp?ItemID=376328

Yow Tuan, Altar Cloth, 1990, ink and magic marker on cloth 19” by 15¼” (unframed)

Anonymous, Madonna and Child Painted Tablet, 2004, wood, acrylic paint, shellac 17” by 13¾”

Anonymous, Embroidered Cloth, c. 1940, cloth, thread, paper holy card 28” by 20” (unframed)

Anonymous, Home Shrine, c. 1939, wood, plastic beads, nails, plaster statue 15” by 10” by 8”

Purchased at a flea market in Brown County, Indiana in 1993. Probably made early-mid 20th Century in Indiana or Kentucky. Unknown wood, bark strips, paint. 34.25” x 17.75” x 14”

1790 Connecticut reprint, originally printed in South Carolina. Paper and thread. 6” x 3.75”.

I bought this piece for ten dollars at a yard sale in Atwater Village, CA in 2016. The couple who sold this to me told me they had bought it in a raffle (or auction…I can’t remember which) for a substantially higher price at a festival in Telluride Colorado. I don’t know the year. All I know is that Johnny Cash’s pensive songwriting face is enshrined inside the sound hole, and the lyrics to his “I Still Miss Someone” (co-written by Johnny Cash and his nephew Roy Cash JR) are reprinted across the body. While this piece is not signed, the artist explains the imagery in a note pasted on the back which reads, “THEY HAVE $$$ BUT THEY DON’T HAVE CASH – The song written is “I Still Miss Someone from Mr. Johnny Cash. I feel the sheriff badges sum up his time on top, the dog bones sum up his low down ways, and the dice, a roll of what kind of man he was that day. The title is a line from a Darrell Scott song.”

I bought this from a man selling his homemade dreamcatchers out of the trunk of his car on the perimeter of the Colorscape Chenango art fair in upstate NY. He said he couldn’t afford the booth fee, so he was going rogue. If the cops saw him, he could slam his trunk shut and speed away. I bought two of them. He told me he used all items from upstate NY, including the grapevine, the feathers that he found near his home, and the Herkimer diamond quartz. I remember then asking him for a card but he said he didn’t want to be identified so he wouldn’t get fined!

I worked for a long while in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, on the River. FoLAR (Friends of the LA River) organized a May cleanup event, and I loved the River deeply — I walked my dogs along it, though at the time any access was illegal. I organized the local September cleanup event on my own. We always had a good crowd. All, technically, illegals. We found many things odd, some rather disgusting, but we all filled our bags and the city cooperated by carting them off, though, again, it was not a sanctioned activity. While I was down at the edge of the River, watching the crawdads hoist their claws at my dogs, I’d always come across bones, mostly raccoon and ‘possum, by my reckoning. I gathered up many, cleaned them using the ant method (leave them outside and the ants will strip the nasty stuff away). I have loved bolo ties for many years. A new shop opened on the Boulevard, Memphis George. She did jewelry, all original designs, so I gave her a jawbone fragment from a ‘possum and asked her to turn it into a bolo. It took longer than expected, cost more than expected, but it’s a one of a kind work of art. I only wear it on exceptional occasions. [Notice the eyes etched into the inside of each bolo tip claw (inset)]

This combination of Old World Evil Eye blue beads and a modern Goddess spirituality figure (with raised arms, breasts and ​a spiral on the belly) shows both the adaptation of an old form to a new belief system, and the borrowing (and/or appropriation?) of old folk magical practices by the modern Pagan or New Age spirituality movements.

When I was in China in June of 2009, on a CIEE tour “Ethnic Minorities of Southwest China,” our tour guide brought us to his research site, a village of the Tungpu people, who are trying to gain official recognition as a minority nationality (minzu). They performed for us what the government calls dixi, or “local opera,” but what the Tungpu people call “dancing the gods.” These masks are worn by performers on the forehead; under them, they wear a rolled towel, and a black face veil, so the mask sits on the upper part of the head, and the performer can see through the face veil. The performers were traditionally male, but when I saw them, there were a few women also performing. I bought this mask, which, although it was not used in the performance I saw, is a type of mask used in such performances.

Worn by European dancers instead of a g-string. It is held on by tape and hurts like hell to take off if you have any pubic hair.

About 3″ x 4″ Used in the French act

Three rings worn on stage in many acts. The large stones are green African amythyst, purple amythyst, and bright orange topaz.

It really needs a model to do it justice but I couldn’t get a size 8 model. I wore it to gogo dance when I returned to the US and didn’t know what to do with myself.

Carved angel by Sabanita Lopez Ortiz, Cordova, New Mexico. Purchased by collector 2014.

Assemblage: St. Joseph the Carpenter by Chris Radus, from a series entitled “Working Class Saints.” Niche is an upended aged wooden tool carrier representing a carpenter’s workshop, with worktable, coffee cup, basket for shavings, and sign “Joe + Son Woodworks . Saint is an embellished GI Joe wearing jeans, leather work-apron and hair-protecting bandanna. Halo is a radial-saw blade. Gift to the collector, 2014.

Decorative bottle-tree created by artist Chris Radus, inspired by traditional Southern yard-art.

Repurposed water bottle created as memorial tribute to immigrants lost in the desert crossing to the border. From a series produced by the aid group Los Samaritanos. Items attached to the bottle include found objects from the trail and others, including an earring, Mexican currency, a plastic calaveras, milagros, statements of protest, a painted image of OL of Guadalupe. Surmounted by a small glow-in-the-dark plastic figure of the of the Blessed Mother. Gift from artist Juanito Jiménez, New Mexico, 2014.

Painting by Terry Gaskins, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. 2016.

Beaded and sequined portrait of the Vodou divinity Ezili Danto envisioned as the Black Madonna ofCzęstochowa, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, ca. 2011.

Votive-inspired painting by David Mecalco, Mexico City, Mexico, ca. 2013.

Northern Mexico-Paper-2007

Berlin-1994

Vampire incidents seem to have been almost commonplace among some New England communities. Popular authors wrote about it. A town council in Rhode Island voted to allow a man to exhume his daughter’s corpse. Half the population of a Vermont town turned out to witness an exhumation and heart-burning. To these very public renditions of the consumption ritual, we can add a newspaper notice inviting “all interested” to a family’s exhumation. Under the heading, “Bodies to be Exhumed,” the Montrose Democrat twice published the following paid announcement: “The subscriber being the only survivor of a large family of brothers and sisters, all of whom have died of that dread disease, consumption, and whose children are following them by the same disease, had consented that the bodies of some of the first who died may be exhumed to satisfy the belief entertained that it will arrest the further progress of the disease, which is destroying the remaining survivors. The exhumation will take place on Saturday, April 29th, at 10 o’clock A. M., at the burying ground on David Whitney’s land, in Lenox township, this county. This notice is given that all interested may be present. WM. B.. TOURJE Harford, April 10, 1871” William Tourje was sixty-four years of age when the notice was published. Although this event took place in northeastern Pennsylvania, the federal census of 1850 shows that William and his brother, Jonathan, were born in Rhode Island. Between 1817 and 1819, the family relocated from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania. Five weeks after the exhumation, the same newspaper published a letter, submitted by an anonymous “spectator,” describing the ritual in detail. He wrote that “probably a hundred” people attended, including two physicians. On opening the third grave, “behold! a vine was found!! the flesh was all decayed, but everything else remained as when placed in the ground, as near as could be expected; the silk dress and a bosom pin, in which the deceased was buried remaining entire. The vine found, was taken out,” and inspected by the physicians. The spectator’s concluding remarks highlight the desperate situation that led many families to the consumption ritual: “Further investigations were made, but I understand that there is some talk of taking up the wife of Mr. Snyder, the last one buried.—There is in all, of the family, 13 in number, children and grand-children, buried in this year, and one buried in the burying ground at the Baptist church near Elder Tower’s, and all but one at least, have died of consumption, the youngest being a grand-child only three years of age, and only one of eight children now living.”

These vampire incidents (or folk medical practices, or consumption rituals) did not go unnoticed by the literati. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) recorded in his journal, dated 26 September 1859, the following entry: “I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of the members having died of consumption, just burned the lungs, heart and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it.” Thoreau probably was referring to a case from Winhall, Vermont. The text, which appeared in at least ten newspapers, dated from the 20th to the 29th of September 1859, closely matches Thoreau’s: “A Mrs. Prescott Lawrence, of Winhall, Vt., died a few days since of consumption, and as a member of the family had previously died of the same disease, the family went through the superstitious farce of burning the lungs, heart and liver of the deceased to prevent any more from dying of the same disease.” Thoreau’s interest in this event surely was more than just morbid curiosity. At the time of this entry, he knew he had consumption, which caused his death three years later.

McCuin is a native Nevadan and premiere Western engraver/jeweler.

Mojo Painting by Dr. Bob

Deep in the isolated Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica over Easter in 1998, I was staying at a scientific research station. The old-growth forest there is protected by the government, but the guards had gone home for the holiday. The sound of chainsaws came from different parts of the forest throughout the week and huge trucks hauled enormous trees out of the forest before the guards returned. A biologist told me that a family could live for a year for the price of one tree. One day I met a man selling a few wooden carvings, even this far off the beaten path of major tourism, he had found a market among visitors to the research station. I’m a bird nut and loved how easily I could spot gorgeous birds of all sizes in Costa Rica, including a couple of trogan species. This trogan came home with me. The artist penciled his name and the year on the bottom. I paid him $25, more than the $5 he was asking.

Unlike the dots on faux folk art that I see in too many shops and galleries, the dots on the carved wooden chicken on the right fit in with many other pieces of artwork I saw in Guatemalan markets in 1993. I don’t know why dots were prevalent, but they were. I bought so many pieces in the Antigua market I bought a handmade cloth duffle bag to carry them home. This chicken, carver unknown, has a crack at the neck so was cheap even by this market’s standards, $5. I also bought a dotted mask and a dotted leopard from different vendors. Antigua is famous for tourism, which has fueled the market for many crafts. The carvers are not making these chickens for their homes but for tourists’ homes.

These very different birds come from rural areas of Central America, where I bought each of them. The bird on the left is a species of trogan, large, colorful birds of the tropics, bought in Costa Rica. The chicken came from Guatemala.

On a clear, cold Monday morning in February 1982, I stood on the courthouse square in Scottsboro, Alabama, interviewing traders who regularly sold goods at First Monday Trade Day. Once a raucous, sprawling event where people traded hounds, guns, and farm equipment, the affair had evolved into a flea market attended by tourists, tv crews from near and far, farmers from surrounding states, and locals. Only the older traders still showed up on Mondays, the big crowds came on the weekend. A red pickup truck suddenly pulled up. My folklorist’s heartbeat sped when I saw that the truck bed was filled with split white oak baskets. A woman hopped out, and I hurried to talk with her. She was on her way home to Woodbury, Tennessee, after delivering baskets to the Cherokee Museum in North Carolina. She explained that their shop sold them, with the implication they were Cherokee made. I didn’t yet know that Cannon County, Tennessee, was a hotbed of basket makers, but this woman, alas I have lost her name and address, told me she was a 7th-generation basket maker. A graduate student, I could only afford two, $15 each. Months later a quarter-page ad in the New Yorker caught my eye. Three split white oak baskets hovered above the text, “Deep in the Cherokee National Forest of Tennessee, skilled craftsmen have kept alive an art and a tradition.” Price for my basket in the New York City-based Anne Rothschild Country Collection: $68. Never mind these baskets were made by a woman from Middle Tennessee. I mailed a photocopy of the ad to the basket maker to let her know she could charge more next time. Extensive fieldwork by folklorists in Cannon County has since put the region on the map and ensured that basket makers can earn a fair price and show their work in galleries near and far.

A dear friend who knew of my interest in the sweetgrass baskets of Low Country South Carolina, spied the basket on the left at a yard sale in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2002. She got the impression that a young couple were selling some of their wedding gifts. She bought this basket for $10. It’s a double loop fruit basket that would have easily cost the giver a couple of hundred dollars. The history of tourism and sweetgrass baskets is long and complicated. The research of folklorists has helped make this a revered tradition that can sustain basket makers economically, put their work in fine art museums, and enrich understanding of this nation’s complex race relations history through material culture.

On the left is a Gullah sweetgrass basket, the only African basket type made in the U.S., and on the right a split white oak basket, common among Anglo basket makers in many parts of the U.S. Both types were working baskets in the 18th and 19th century and have evolved into collectibles that have found their way into scholarly publications and museums. I came by both baskets through serendipity.

Novelty-Global-Popular Culture-Plastic/music box-5 1/4″ long

Collectible (Food)-USA-Popular Culture-Metal/paper/Spaghettios-4 1/2″ tall

Collectible (Food)-USA-Popular Culture-Metal/paper/Spaghettios-4 1/2″ tall

Novelty cheese grater-Global-Christian/popular culture-Paper/metal-

Novelty cheese grater-Global-Christian/popular culture-Paper/metal-