Strange and wonderful
Subtitle: American Folk Art from the Volkersz Collection
By: Missoula Art Museum; Fine Arts Center Colorado Springs
Contributors: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; Glueckert, Steve, author; Patterson, Tom, 1952- author
Publisher: Colorado Springs Fine Art Center
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Colorado Springs, CO
Language: eng
Number of pages: 61
ISBN-13: 9780916537166
Subjects: Folk art; Exhibitions; Collectors and collecting; Art collections
Other titles: American folk art from the Volkersz Collection
Description: Willem Volkersz first saw slides of Simon Rodia's folk art icon, Watts Towers, while he was an art student in Seattle, Washington. Watts Towers in Los Angeles is a group of structures as high as 99 feet made from scrap metal and concrete, with pottery shards and broken bottle fragments set into wet cement made by an Italian immigrant with a vision. Volkersz quickly developed an interest in equally exciting folk art environments and made pilgrimage to several of these sites, including Samuel P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden, Jesse Howard's Signs and Wonders and Hans Jorgensen's house decorated with farm tools. It was on a 1977 trip to Howard Finster's Paradise Garden that he and his wife, Diane, made a commitment to collecting and documenting the work by artists variously called contemporary folk artists, outsider artists, grassroots artists, or self-taught artists. Their collection now includes hundreds of pieces by American self-taught artists. The exhibition at the Fine Arts Center will have three areas of focus. First, it will represent a general survey of work in the collection with pieces by artists Howard Finster, Eddie O. Martin (aka St. EOM), Nellie Mae Rowe, and more. The exhibition will also include in-depth looks at the work of three artists featured prominently in the collection - Alva Gene Dexhimer, Robert E. Smith, and Mark Negus. - from Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center web page
Notes: "Published on the occasion of the exhibition Strange and Wonderful: American Folk Art from the Volkersz Collection at the Missoula Art Museum, September 22-December 22, 2013 and the Colorado Spring Fine Arts Center, February 8-May 18, 2014" - title page verso

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Introduction / by Willem Volkersz; title: Notes on the collection / by Stephen Glueckert; title: An eye for the extraordinary: reflections on a classic collection of Contemporary American Folk Art / by Tom Patterson; title: Plates; title: Exhibition checklist