Rocaterrania is a country located in part of what's often known as the
North Country of New York State, bordering on Canada. At least, it's there in the mind of Renaldo Kuhler, its creator, who has been imagining -- and sometimes physically creating -- the nation's
politics,
fashion, and artifacts since he was a teenager on his family's ranch in Colorado just after World War II. The son of
Otto Kuhler, who designed the
Hiawatha passenger trains of the Milwaukee Road railway, Renaldo needed an escape from ranch life. He invented a nation of forward-looking Eastern European immigrants with a vibrant, distinctly un-American culture. He warns, though, "it is not a Utopia." He has drawn, painted, and been the nation's history. He created its
language, Rocaterranski, and alphabet from Yiddish and Spanish and German. Rocaterrania is a large-scale work of fiction but sometimes the way Kuhler speaks, it sounds like he believes it's really there. Kuhler now
lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and is known about town for his Rocaterranian garb.
[more inside]
posted by knile
on Jan 7, 2011 -
12 comments
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was born in Wisconsin on July 31, 1910. He lived in a small house in Milwaukee with his wife Marie, and he worked in a bakery. Between 1954 and 1963 he used his fingers, combs, quills and bakery tools to create hundreds of
explosively colorful semi-abstract landscapes that evoke
primordial soup biology,
Lovecraftian horror,
scifi weirdness and
hellish alien beauty ('Full-Screen View' and its zoomable interface increase the pleasure dramatically). The
12 galleries of paintings at his memorial site are all available for free hi-res download, you can hear him talking about drugs, brain chemistry and visions at the 'Listen' link, and there's currently an
exhibit honoring the centennial of his birth at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.
posted by mediareport
on Aug 25, 2010 -
24 comments
He lives somewhere in LA,
looks like Michael Jackson and
Barack Obama, loves
rap, chess,
nachos, movies and pizza, has some
comic books to sell, and
wants to meet white, Asian and Latina Ladies with big butts to give him money, be his sex slaves, or just help him with Things. Performance art project or genuine kook?
posted by acb
on Jul 16, 2009 -
44 comments
I first stumbled across
Leoncie in open-mouthed disbelief about two years ago. When her
website disappeared I imagined that we'd lost her forever, but last month she returned with her own
YouTube channel.
While our unfiltered, unmoderated internet has pushed a lot of "outsider art" into the mainstream, Leoncie has remained firmly stuck in obscurity; maybe these gobsmackingly low-rent videos will change that? Until today, I'd only been able to imagine the full glory of songs like
Radio Rapist, or the beguiling
Man! Let's Have Fun, or indeed the frankly exhausting
Invisible Girl. But
Sex Crazy Cop and
Killer In The Park, with their carnivalesque spin on the grim world of law enforcement, are probably my favourites. Astonishing.
posted by rhodri
on Mar 10, 2008 -
25 comments
Jail Finds is a flickr set of art found stuffed inside books by the account holder at the jail where they are a volunteer running the book cart.
posted by jonson
on Oct 29, 2007 -
9 comments
Louis Wain became one of the most famous British illustrators of the late Victorian and Edwardian era after trying to cheer up his wife Emily by drawing portraits of their pet cat,
Peter. In addition to publishing a popular
children's book about kittens, he was a
founder of the U.K's
National Cat Club who was instrumental in promoting the
Cat Fancy movement, which encouraged Britons of all classes to view cats as lovable pets instead of household pests. Unfortunately, after Wain's wife Emily died of breast cancer, Wain gradually went mad due to
psychosis and
late onset schizophrenia, ending up in London's notorious
Bethlehem Hospital (the etymological origin for the word
bedlam). While at Bedlam, Wain continued to draw, but his cat portraits transformed into pure
geometric abstraction and
psychedelic fractals, but some see harbingers of madness in cryptically titled works, such as
Early Indian Irish and
The Fire of the Mind Agitates the Atmosphere. For more insight on Wain, check out this
1896 interview and this
short film dramatizing the progression of Wain's schizophrenia through his art.
posted by jonp72
on Aug 12, 2007 -
25 comments
Outsider art is exposed for what it is: beguiling and incredibly enticing.
Henry Darger continues to capture new fans and his frighteningly gorgeous mindscapes continue to sell for thousands of dollars.
"I found myself hastening past great Dubuffets, and lingering in front of vast ugly works produced by people who, to be honest, didn’t know how to draw…" (first link NSFW)
posted by zenpop
on Jun 19, 2006 -
43 comments
The Great Stalacpipe Organ. This unique, one-of-a-kind
instrument was invented in 1954 by Mr. Leland W. Sprinkle of Springfield, Virginia, a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon. He began his monumental 3 year project by searching the
vast chambers of the caverns selecting stalactites to precisely match a musical scale. Electronic mallets were wired throughout the caverns and connected to a large four-manual console. When a key is depressed, a tone occurs as the rubber-tipped plunger strikes the stalactite tuned to
concert pitch. (scroll down for mp3).
posted by Astro Zombie
on Mar 22, 2006 -
24 comments
The Original Rhinestone Cowboy. "I was laying on my bedside just as lonesome as I could be. I was by myself and so lonesome the tears just come in my eyes. I was so lonesome I prayed and said: 'Lord, give me something to make me happy' Now, you won't believe this, but the Lord told me to make an outfit. I went downtown and bought me a suit and became Rhinestone, and I ain't had one moment of lonesomeness since."
posted by Sticherbeast
on Mar 10, 2006 -
3 comments
Making fun
[banner ad may be NSFW] of
Furries
sure is fun, isn't it? Pointing out
over
and
over
again some of the worst examples of what the the fandom has to offer seems to be an activity almost as old as the Internet. In the rush to
point and laugh
, though, it's easy to miss entirely
some
of the more
beautiful
and
amusing
examples
of what the culture's emphasis on art and imagination has wrought upon the world. And even if you aren't impressed by the
talent on
display, someone is --
Further Confusion, one of the largest Furry conventions in the world, has had for two years running an art show bringing in
over $60,000 each year, with portions of the convention's proceeds going to organizations such as the
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
, the
Coyote Point Museum
, and the
Oakland Zoo.
posted by wolftrouble
on Nov 26, 2004 -
74 comments
Two galleries of future-primitive/outsider art.
"...An innovative vision of art: simple, non-academic, emotional, on a human scale."
posted by moonbird
on Jan 10, 2004 -
3 comments
Southern Folk-Art, Outsider Art & Self-Taught Art • Ginger Young of Chapel Hill, NC who runs this eponymously named art studio, says: "Despite their lack of formal training, these artists have tapped into a powerful wellspring of creativity to render their worlds with passion, pathos, and immediacy." Truly
beautiful,
unfiltered,
vibrant stuff. How could you go wrong with artists named Tubby Brown, Minnie Adkins, Mose Tolliver and Woodie Long? On another note: is this school of thought/art, which comes in and out of vogue every few years, as pure as it seems, or is there an air of exploitation and corniness that comes with fetishizing The Other?
posted by dhoyt
on Oct 17, 2003 -
14 comments
