A William Edmondson angel with cape sold at Sotheby’s last month for $98,500. The self-taught artist from Tennessee was mentioned in the auction catalogue notes: Edmondson was the first African American self-taught artist given a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1937. A New Yorker reviewer acknowledged the “surprising amount of weight and power” of the work but went on to write, “The figures are not decorative enough to be attractive to many, nor have they really enough emotional or intellectual content to be of lasting interest, and it is likely that after the show closes, on December 1st they and Mr. Edmondson will soon be forgotten.” More than seventy years later, that reviewer was proved wrong. The museum establishment has recognized Edmondson as one of the most important self-taught artists of the twentieth century.”
I’ll be in Nashville later this month and will post more pics of some of his other work.
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This Walker Evans photograph of a country store around Moundville sold at Sotheby’s at $8750 this month, within the estimate.
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The B’ham News reported that, “Grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts are down 25 percent in the round of awards announced Sept. 16 in Guntersville.”
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Fallingwater is 75 years old and has undergone serious structural repairs over time. The AIA put together a nice site celebrating the structure, and FLW. A copper urn designed by FLW sold for $772k at auction this week.
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Love, love, love, love this by Chipotle, with Willie Nelson singing.
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The photo at the top of this NYT article about how delicious chicken skin is…
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Doyle New York will be auctioning the Arthur Rothstein photograph collection on October 13, which includes many of his photographs from Gee’s Bend, like this one:
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Why the Oyster has the Pearl, a children’s book that my friend Bethanne Hill illustrated, has just been released by Pelican.
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The National Storytelling Festival is this weekend in Jonesborough, Tennessee. I was contacted by someone there who asked if they could use one of my pics of a bottle tree, if they couldn’t secure one of Kathryn Tucker Windham with one for a printed memorial to her (I agreed, of course). Thankfully, I think Dilcy found a pic of her mom with a bottle tree, so that’s what they were able to run. Tada! They’re also going to have a bottle tree there at the festival for people to leave their memories of her. Very, very nice.
Sirius is going to air audio from the festival on their channel 145 from Oct 21-23.
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East Tennessee State University is offering a Master of Arts in Storytelling.
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A million thanks to my friend Larry Harris for this link to SPOT’s 1991 journal on art environments.