Beyond the Lanes is a website devoted to using old bowling balls for art. Paul Livert is an artist who likes to add metal to old bowling balls. Giant Rosaries made of bowling balls. Bowling balls can be used to demonstrate scientific principles, as in this huge Newton’s Cradle. Nowata, Oklahoma boasts a bowling ball fence. Bowling balls also make useful cannon balls, as well as durable dog toys. (YouTube)
posted by Tube on Apr 4, 2008 - 14 comments

Papa Palmérino Sorgente, the Pope of Montréal [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Feb 28, 2008 - 8 comments

Take a back-road south of Palmyra, Tennessee, and you'll stumble across the remains of E. T. Wickham's concrete statues, worn by time and broken by vandals. Since being documented online by chroniclers of outsider art, they've found a new set of admirers. A 2001 photography exhibit showed off their former glory; family members now hope to preserve what's left. To learn something of their creator, read the personal tribute by Wickham's grandson.
posted by holgate on Dec 29, 2005 - 4 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

Florida Folk Art. 'Welcome to my online Outsider Art Gallery. I collect outsider art, also known as Folk Art or Visionary Art ... '
More folk art :- Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations, a Kansas City Public TV project about the art and oddities of roadside America; the Yard Dog Folk Art Gallery ('folk art of the South'), a nice site from Texas; the Garde Rail Gallery; Folky Art; Four Florida Folk Artists (via Interesting Ideas). Not quite folk art but an interesting idea nonetheless :- the Miniature Book Library, an ongoing mail art project (which invites participants).
posted by plep on Apr 7, 2003 - 6 comments