Month: October 2009

Check your Clementine to make sure it’s really by her. The AP just published an article that I sent to many folk art/visionary art friends this morning about some forgery claims. Pretty shocking that someone would try to fake her art. Here are some excerpts:

The old man’s sales pitch sounded plausible enough to art collector Don Fuson. The warning signs didn’t appear until after Fuson paid him $30,000 for what he thought were paintings by renowned folk artist Clementine Hunter.

By the time the FBI got involved, Fuson didn’t need the agents to tell him what he already suspected: The paintings appeared to be forgeries.

The FBI is investigating allegations that William Toye, 78, and his wife Beryl Ann, 68, have been selling forged paintings to unsuspecting art collectors and dealers since the 1970s. William Toye was arrested in the ’70s on a charge of forging Hunter’s work, but was never prosecuted.

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Some of the collectors and dealers who purchased paintings from the Toyes say the biggest victim would be Hunter, who died in 1988 at age 101.

The black folk artist taught herself to paint while living in Louisiana’s rural Natchitoches Parish. Her paintings – believed to number in the thousands – depict cotton picking, baptisms, funerals and other scenes of plantation life. Since her death, paintings that once fetched several hundred dollars now routinely sell for thousands.

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In court papers, an FBI agent said he interviewed Fuson and three other people who paid the Toyes nearly $100,000 for more than 40 paintings that appear to be Hunter forgeries. The FBI says the couple knew they were fakes.

The FBI’s probe has expanded beyond Louisiana. In January, an FBI agent took photographs of Hunter paintings at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. The paintings were a gift from a donor who had lived in the area. Lyndel King, the Weisman’s director, said FBI Special Agent Randolph Deaton IV informed the museum in March that five of its 38 Hunter paintings may be forgeries.

During an interview at their home this week, the Toyes denied creating or selling any forgeries.

“Once they leave our hands, we have no control over what happens to them,” Beryl Ann Toye said. “We had the real ones, and everyone else was faking them.”

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The couple also is suspected of using an intermediary, Robert Edwin Lucky Jr., to sell forged paintings, Deaton wrote in court documents. Lucky told the FBI he met the Toyes about 10 years ago and has sold up to 100 paintings he obtained from them.

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Fuson wasn’t an avid Hunter collector when William Toye visited his Baton Rouge store in November 2005. But he agreed to buy a few paintings after hearing Toye’s story: His wife started buying paintings from Hunter in the 1960s. Their collection survived Hurricane Katrina, but the couple wanted to sell them after moving from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

“The story read right to me. Nothing seemed wrong,” he recalled.

Fuson found it strange that Toye kept changing his telephone number, but that didn’t stop him from buying more paintings. It wasn’t until February 2006 that Fuson heard from other buyers that Toye was suspected of selling forgeries.

Fuson confronted the Toyes and asked for documentation that the paintings were authentic. He said Beryl Ann Toye then accused Fuson of forging the paintings.

The FBI took photos of paintings Fuson bought and showed them to an expert on Hunter’s work, who said they appeared to be forgeries.

Shannon Foley, a New Orleans art dealer, bought 19 paintings from the Toyes for $44,500. The expert consulted by the FBI said her paintings also appeared to be fake.

Happy Halloween tomorrow! These are a couple of videos from the Alabama Ghost Trail:

A couple of weeks ago, we took the boys to see the scarecrows at the Huntsville Botanical Garden. It had been a long time since I had been and was a little surprised that they charge admission ($10/adult), I guess since both the botanical gardens (BBG and Aldridge) we usually go to are free. But! The gardens were huge and wonderful and totally worth it.

Shug loved the section with the running train:

They have a bonsai display, an herb garden, nature trail, daylily garden, vegetable garden, fern glade…

…a lovely water feature:

…and all those scarecrows! This one, called ‘Toil and Trouble’ by Dot’s Greenhouse, won 1st place People’s Choice award:

This one was promoting the Alabama Chicken & Egg Festival:

The baby loved it too:

While we were there, they had a wedding going on! We didn’t even realize it until we were right there in the children’s garden. What a nice setting:

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The scarecrow that I put up each year – here he is last year:

got broken! Well, his head got broken. All I know is that he was okay and then the mailman came and then there were shards of terracotta everywhere. So.

But that’s really okay, I’ve been wanting to paint him a new face anyway. For now, we’re using a happy terracotta pumpkin that Suzanne got me a couple of years ago:

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There’s a list of botanical gardens in every state here.

I have been so excited about the Alabama Folk School – especially the set of classes they’re doing November 11-14:

I contacted the Folk School and they gave me their permission to use these photos from their previous sessions – clogging:

Scene from a hike (they give time in the schedule to relax on the porch rockers at camp or hike or whatever you like…)

This is Pradat Hall:

Woodcarving:

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Last month, we drove up to Albertville to Wenker’s Vineyard – they don’t sell wine although they do sell supplies for it – but they have a farm where you can pick your own muscadines.

It’s a large place…rows and rows and rows of fruit.

They give you a bucket and you pick just as many as you like. Just getting started:

Shug *loved* picking the muscadines! Oh, he had the biggest time.

So, what’s a girl to do with a bucketful of muscadines? Make muscadine jelly, of course:

In the last month, that jelly has graced our plates on cathead biscuits, been a sauce for duck and roasted chicken, and later this week will serve as a glaze on a cheesecake I’m making for Av. There are a ton of recipes I haven’t tried yet at the vineyard’s website here.

About a month ago, we took Highway 11 through Attalla to Gadsden, and then up to Guntersville. At the big intersection of downtown Attalla was this roadside preacher. Sometimes when you see these, the people are just shouting or have megaphones, but this gentleman brought a microphone and speakers. Um, he was loud.

In downtown B’ham there’s a man that stands on the corner of 20th Street and 5th Avenue North (I had to ask Av this because I grew up in a small town where you only knew where things were by their vicinity to other things (i.e. across the street from the Pig), never ‘such-and-such street’. But anyway…), and he has a yellow sign that says “Trust Jesus”. He doesn’t do loud preaching, he mostly chats with other people on the street and waves to people that honk. He’s there just about every day at lunch.

*Lots* to write about – I’ll be back on Tuesday!!

Mayonnaise rolls are terrific. Some people call these ‘mayonnaise biscuits’ and the idea is that they only have three ingredients and take no time to make…plus the whole house smells like fresh-baked bread.

This year I made two Halloween wreaths. This one was made from a twig wreath form plus some spanish moss, embroidered ribbon, and florist hooks. I hung some Spanish moss on the form. I had a local embroidery shop put “Boo Y’all!” on some super-wide, wired ribbon. Florist hooks were used to pin the ribbon to the wreath form.

This other wreath was a take-off on the Valentine wreath from earlier this year. Just a flat wreath form plus images of old romantic Halloween cards from a postcard book at Amazon put on with hot glue:

Last December, I posted about an exhibit at Space One Eleven in B’ham by Spencer Shoults called ‘Cupcakes!’. They’re back in front now (SOE is great about having fantastic work in their windows – I think that’s one of their missions):

This is by Guido Maus – the artist statement reads in part, “In his works, Maus confronts the abusive power of opinionated forces which bombard each of us from without and within. The structured influences of an organized societal existence wage war alongside the individual quest for truth and decency.”:

This is by Jim Neel:

Lonnie Holley, “Profiles of African Women”:

Walt Creel, “Deer”, made up of bullet holes through painted aluminum. His artist statement is entitled ‘Deweaponizing the Gun’ and reads in part, “when I decided I wanted to make art using a gun, I was not sure what direction I would have to take. I knew I did not want to use it simply as an accent to work I was doing, but as the focus. My main goal was to take the destructive power away from the gun. To manipulate the gun into a tool of creation and use it in a way that removed it from its original purpose. To deweaponize it.”

Beginning November 6, the gallery will open an exhibit called The Compassion Project.