If I had worked two months or so on a blanket to sell at this shop, it would certainly be disheartening to drop it off for my puny commission. Although it did literally take from 2 months to a year for a Navajo rug to be produced, or created rather...as that seems far more appropriate...the going "rate" around 1850 was fifty dollars. Today, a well-made rug may be worth $400 or more. Still, way too cheap. The examples here, if you can get past the visitors and their insulting big friends, look like nice ones to me.
Anonymous snapshot (Roadside "Native American" Sculptures at Trading Post) circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
SEE ALSO FREE PREVIEW AND ORDER In Situ: American Folk Art in Place by Jim Linderman Ebook or Paperback HERE at Blurb.com
One of the tenents of librarianship is privacy. It's why I love librarians...you can ask them ANYTHING and they won't spill the beans. Privacy, the right which we have almost given away for free (witness the growth of Facebook, where one is asked to indicate their "status" on a minute by minute basis for advertisers and anyone else, including divorce lawyers, to plunder). Trust me, all those status updates will come back and chew you a new one someday.
Librarians used to only very, very reluctantly give up circulation records to the feds, even Oswald's! But today folks willingly click "I am reading so and so" instead of keeping their knowledge quests private. For librarians, a noble profession with noble rules, intellectual freedom was paramount.
For decades the only bugaboo in the library privacy record was the checkout card. Anyone could see who else read the book, or at least carried it home. My mother, herself a junior high librarian in her day, used to say every book she checked out had my name on the card. He said modestly. Eh...there were no books about Marxism in the junior high anyway, I found those in high school. Today, I am trying hard to fill my kindle so I can justify buying the new one.
These lovely relics come to me from artist Mary Gibney, and they come with a good story. I received an email from Mary about my recent post of mug shots. It is always nice to receive notes with comments and such, but this one was different. It came from an artist who PAINTS mug shots! I can get behind that...how many cool ideas are left, after all? Mary Gibney found one, and she is doing a good job with it.
Ms. Gibney and I exchanged a few pleasantries, and that she had this collection of library checkout cards came up...so I finagled a few for the blog. They are lovely and odd, and I can't thank Mary enough for sharing. She also has an overdue notice for Victorian potboiler "The Magnificent Ambersons" which is surprising as the filmed version is so, so much better. At least the first three minutes of it. (Seriously!) Why anyone would struggle with the book when an Orson Welles masterpiece is available is beyond me.I have also cribbed a handful of Gibney's splendid mug shot work. She really deserves a post of her own here, and one day I hope to.
Gibney has a long exhibition history HERE and seems to be doing quite well selling her work. As you can see, the mugshots are done of both celebs and regular mugs, and she has also done a series of works based on the faces shot by Weegee. Gibney is a Minneapolis artist, cyclist, library worker (ah HA!) and collector of odd objects, scraps and castoffs. As becomes an artist, she has a statement.
"I rely on intuition, mixing up, shapely objects, found bits and ephemera, the arcane and the obsolete, mistakes and fortunate convergences. I am fascinated by mugshots, anonymous faces and abandoned photos which I use to make portraits of unknown people. Other inspirations are maps, children's encyclopedia illustrations, paint color chips, sideshow art and theatrical illusions, old toys and unnecessary objects, handwritten signs, ads from old Popular Mechanics and Ladies Home Journals and mid-20th century illustrations of the wonderful future."
Mary Gibney Website HERE
Vintage Library Circulation Cards collection Mary Gibney Paintings by Mary Gibney Private CollectionsJim Linderman books and Ebooks HERE
COPYRIGHT STEPHEN MILANOWSKI
COPYRIGHT STEPHEN MILANOWSKIWhile the site here may seem to be about photos, art and antiques, It is actually about stories. I'd like to consider myself a visual artist of sorts, one who uses things to tell stories.There may be no better combination of "thing and story" than this one, and it comes to me courtesy master photographer Stephen Milanowski, who fortunately got in touch after I posted a big head. I found MY big head in the rafters of an antique store in Spring Lake, Michigan, where it cried out to me for several years before I took him down, talked THEM down (in price) and took him home. I posted the big baby HERE.Imagine my surprise when I received a splendid present in the mail. A substantial and beautiful catalog from the Museum of Modern Art, their 2012 Appointment Calendar. Mr. Milanowski has a photo in the book, one which is in the MOMA permanent collection.Nice as the book is, the card enclosed is what surprised me! Same scale, same surface, same curious holes in the head...My big baby had a FATHER and he had his portrait taken by an artist.Mr. Milanowski (who has a splendid website HERE with some serious examples of his work over the years) later took the time to tell me the story. If you deal with the kind of material I love, the story is frequently as important as the object..and this is a good one.I'll let Stephen tell it in his own words."How the Hell indeed. Some time ago, I believe on a FB posting of yours...I happened to notice, purely by chance, a snapshot of you in a den-like room, presumably in your home--and this snapshot showed you in that room with some of your collection...and I suddenly notice partly seen, in the corner of your room...Mrs. Labelle's Papier Mache Head. The Head I Photographed. And, my question was...How the Hell did Jim get his hands on Mrs. Labelle's Head?"
"The short version: before my wife and I & children moved to Madison, we lived in East Grand Rapids (my home town) for many years. On our street in EGR there lived a goofy old lady who, when I was introduced to her--I realized that she was the girls gym teacher and drama teacher at my High School--Catholic Central. I was introduced to her on her front porch...and I could tell that her house was worth being nosy about...I could see rampant pink everywhere in the interior--just by looking through the porch windows. When I then told her that I was an alum of the HS where she long taught (though then she was long retired)--she immediately invited me in--and I could tell this house was going to be a photographer's paradise. Mrs. Labelle gave me a tour...even into her basement...and it was there that she kept at least these 3 great and ancient papier mache Mardi Gras- style heads that she had long ago made for some drama class at Catholic Central. I flipped when I saw them and immediately asked if I could borrow them for photography; she said yes...and there you are."
"Every year in our neighborhood she would put the heads out on her porch for Halloween night. I should have asked her right then and there if she would sell them to me...but I could tell that she was quite attached to them."
"What I assume happened next is this--we later moved to Madison, she eventually died...and someone either got them in an estate sale...or they ended up in an antique store. And somewhere along the line...the head presented itself to you. Fill me in on the rest of the story."
"By the way--the promo card I sent you is also a Head by Mrs. Labelle."
SM
Stephen Milanowski also has work in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, The High Museum of Art and the Polaroid Collection. His Facebook page is HEREThe Museum of Modern Art Store (which is the finest shop for gifts in Manhattan) is HEREMrs. Labelle's Big Head Collection Jim Linderman
