Florencio Morales (1949-1992), a Mexican immigrant and Los Angeles artist who fashioned elaborate assemblages in his front yard, was known as "el hombre de las banderas" ("the man of the flags") because he always flew American, Mexican, and California flags over his home.Illustrated with color photographs that show the brilliance of his art, this vibrant book explores and documents Morale's creative expression as he commemorated a profusion of Mexican and American holidays throughout the year. Over a period of twelve years until his death he created exhibits for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Valentine's day, Easter, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, the anniversary of the Treaty of Teoloyucan (August 13), and Mexican Independence Day. These displays served as settings for extravagant and spirited celebrations within the local community. Created from "found" materials and from bits and pieces gathered from scores of sources, Morales's assemblages intrigued and stimulated his audiences. His yard served as gathering places where strangers and friends could interact.In ritual, folk art, legends, beliefs, foodways, and music, his yard exhibits express the vitality of Mexican folklore adapted to a new setting, urban Los Angeles. By drawing upon dynamic symbols from his heritage and combining elements from American and Mexican culture, Morales communicated his dual identity.In acknowledging the artist's influences, motivations, and aesthetics, this fascinating book provides a rich understanding of the man and his art, as well as the interplay between the artist, his creations, and the community.

A self taught artist, at the age of 40 David Sheskin created the first of hundreds of unique and imaginative works of art he would produce over the next thirty years. Initially working in pen and ink, during the 1980s and 1990s most of his drawings were published in numerous magazines, as well as in the book Magician With a Pen: The Collected Drawings of David J. Sheskin (Wingspan Press, 2007). Now for the first time the artist's more recent work is presented in a single volume in this visually stunning book which represents a collection of paintings, sculpture, mixed media works, and digital illustrations created by David Sheskin during the past 20 years. It contains more than 500 imaginative and uplifting images that are characterized by the artist's dramatic use of color and form. The book is divided into 18 galleries - each gallery being characterized by a specific theme that captured David Sheskin's imagination at a particular point in time. Many of the images in the book have been published within the format of calendars (by Avalanche Publishing and Pomegranate Communications, as well as in calendars published in Europe), note cards, jigsaw puzzles, and children's games. All of David Sheskin's art is available within the format of giclee fine art prints, and can be accessed on his website The Art of David Sheskin (www.davidjsheskin.com)

Elisabeth Faulhaber was born in south west Germany in 1890. By the time she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Doesen near Leipzig in 1914, she had worked in a factory, been a chambermaid and a waitress, and had had a child out of wedlock. She was an inmate of the hospital for six years, dying of tuberculosis in 1921, at the age of 31.She wrote, she drew and - according to hospital notes - scribbled unstoppably on furniture, floor, walls. A handful of her drawings survive, and six small notebooks. These now form part of the Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg. The notebooks show Elisabeth Faulhaber to have been intelligent and questioning. She was also often muddled to an extreme. Her work is imbued with sensibility. The notebooks varied subject matter and range of graphic invention show a wonderful artistic talent.Sarah Jacobs rendition of the notebooks contains more than 550 drawings by Faulhaber but, although the rendition contains one page for every page of the notebooks, it is not a facsimile. Instead, black and white photographs of the drawings have been reversed, and then partly erased so that what is presented is both faithful to the original, and insistently the opposite. Freely translated extracts from the Faulhaber 's texts have also been included, together with a selection of the poems and songs which Faulhaber copied into her notebooks. These have been left in the original German. The rendition has been produced in association with Sammlung Prinzhorn, UniversitaetsKlinikum, Heidelberg.Sarah Jacobs is an artist living in London.

Origami Alfresco is a quirky and unusual portfolio of clear diagrams for 50 of David Mitchell's simple yet amazing origami designs, created from the contrast between the white and coloured sides of standard origami paper, and includes sections on Animals and People, Inanimate Objects, Double Images, The Sea and Landscapes. As you would expect from the author, many of these designs are much more than just static sketches. Some, like Freefall/Limbo, can be viewed in several completely different ways, while others, like Lovebird or Dogfish turn from one thing into another. There are action designs, like Shark Attack and Hull Down, optical illusions like Head to Head and Paradozocal Object, and even a Find the Lady puzzle as well. This book is both simple enough for complete beginners but also one that the origami aficionado will cherish and enjoy. This second edition has been completely revised and expanded. Half the designs are new to this second edition.

Like many other veterans of the Vietnam conflict, Michael Cousino, a disabled former Marine from Gouverneur, New York, continues to struggle with bad memories and daily life adjustments. Unlike many other veterans, he has found an outlet for his frustrations and grief. He creates miniature replicas of his Vietnam experiences. In these astonishingly detailed dioramas, he recalls scenes of battle and related episodes that reflect his life of some thirty years ago. His dioramas are on a 1:35 scale, replete with intricacies that grip his painful past. He began this work in 1983, as he says, "to keep from going bonkers when I couldn't find a job." Having completed more than two hundred dioramas, no two alike and none ever for sale, Cousino has represented firefights, POW camps, torture pits, and ambushes. This unique art serves both Cousino and an appreciative audience. For him it is both therapeutic and didactic. For those who see his dioramas, there is aesthetic understanding and interaction. In sharing and interacting, Cousino has made his art an essential part of folk expression. This book features his unusual art in 36 pages of color photographs by Martha Cooper.

Ticket to the Unknown considers the schizophrenic texts of Alo se Corbaz, an Art Brut artist better known for her drawing than her writing. Both a translation of texts and a commentary on dilemmas of reading and translation in artist's writing, this book explore the limits of the sayable and the visible as well as the corporeality of text itself. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jina Valentine has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, including Steve Turner Gallery, Jack the Pelican Presents, The Drawing Center, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. She received the Joan Mitchell MFA Fellowship and has participated in residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Women's Studio Workshop, Sculpture Space, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She received her BA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Stanford University. She is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia. She currently lives and works in Paris. Ticket to the Unknown is published by Future Plan and Program, a provisional publishing project featuring newly-commissioned literary works by visual artists.

Created in 1993 with the hypnotic assistance of my 5 year old son Liaizon. All glyphs were generated with an archaic bitmap font editor. Text printed in Glitch Millenium designed by mIEKAL. This project follows the Semioptics font project which has has yet to be completed. "mIEKAL aND is busy recreating a past both futuristic and ancient."

Every winter a handful of Cajun Louisiana folk artists assembles unlikely mixtures of material to shape masks for their Cajun Mardi Gras celebrations. They use window screens, chicken feathers, yarn, hair, Magic Markers, and hot glue as they create fanciful, even bizarre masks that will be worn just one day in the year. Such creations transform their wearers into wild revelers who move through the countryside singing, dancing, and begging for money and food. As they generate merriment, they climb trees, chase chickens, and create a general and playful havoc. Cajun Mardi Gras celebrants are unlike their counterparts in New Orleans, where masked revelers ride through the streets on floats or parade serenely through ballrooms. The masked country Cajuns engage in rousing, physically energetic performances as they cavort through the countryside. Out of necessity their captivating masks combine the ingredients of durability, shock value, and allure with age-old folk patterns and innovations from contemporary culture. Here is a study of the Cajun Mardi Gras tradition and its manifestation in the work of six of the most creative and popular folk artists in two rural communities. Potic Rider and the Moreau and LeBlue families represent the male maskmaking traditions of Basile, Louisiana. Suson Launey, Renee Fruge, and Jackie Miller portray the female role in festivities held in the rural region of Tee Mamou. As the communities celebrate, their masks become an intrinsic component of the annual rites. This book introduces the artists, the performances, and processes of creating the fantastical masks. Carl Lindahl, co-editor of Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana (University Press of Mississippi), is a professor of English at the University of Houston. Carolyn Ware is Coordinator of the Pine Hills Culture Program at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg

Santer a, also called Lucumi or Orisha Worship by its practitioners, originated in Nigeria among the Yoruba people. It took shape in Cuba during and after the slave trade and reached North America through Afro-Caribbean immigration. As the fastest growing African-based religion in the United States, Santer a has stimulated many publications, but none prior to this book noted the special significance of its art and artists.

In "Santer a Garments and Altars," for the first time, two distinguished folklorists and practitioners of the faith focus upon the artistry of garments and altars that are intrinsic to the worship. Detailed here is information about their design and creation, the artists who make them, and the importance of aesthetics as text in the religious celebration.

From the dusty workshops of village potters to the pristine assembly lines of modern factories; from the makers of pottery to the producers of porcelain in selected areas of Mexico and Denmark, the authors observed, interviewed, and photographed ceramic artists at their work. The result is a story of persistence, inspiration, collaboration and intrigue, success and failure, along with individual eccentricities in the process of making ceramic art for an international market. The story is not only that of the potter's wheel, but of the wheel of time over which the lowly village potter evolves as professional artist who eventually, in some instances, rejects making corporate porcelain in favor of returning to clay and kiln. The Mexican communities are near Guadalajara. The Danish settings include the towns of Naestved, Sorring, the island of Bornholm and, in Copenhagen, the porcelain giants Royal Copenhagen and Bing and Grondahl contrasting large scale corporations with small pottery factories. Researched in the 1970s, the abandoned manuscript, recently rediscovered, appears here as written then with current material added to inform and update the historical ethnography, providing a rare opportunity to follow up on people and predictions, after thirty years, to identify change, decay and fulfillment.

For almost a decade Peter Quezada, a prolific self-taught artist, painted murals and lettering on buildings and retaining walls in neighborhoods northeast of downtown Los Angeles. He refers to his work as a "graffiti deterrent" or a "substitute for graffiti," and he targets sites that are favorites of taggers and gang graffiti writers. Often he enlists their assistance and designs his murals to appeal to these youths as well as to discourage them from participating in antisocial behavior.

Highlighting the interplay of contemporary life, mass-media images that confront the public, and the use of physical space in the city landscape, "Chicano Graffiti and Murals" shows how such art as Quezada's has become the signature of modern urban culture.

A collection of drawings and paper cuttings by Jad Fair.

This is a beginner book for learning the basics of Swedish Folk Art, a beautiful painted art that was done in Sweden in the 1700, 1800's and early 1900s. There are several different styles which are described in this book and there are patterns of each with complete instructions. There are several pages with illustrated strokes to show the novice painter how to approach and decorate wooden pieces with this ethnic art form. Diane Edwards has done much research into Scandinavian folk art and she has simplified the approach to this art form using acrylics and easily available brushes for today's artist. This book is a great introduction to the beautiful Swedish art form that can be applied to any present day decor. Included are easily usable patterns and instructions in exactly how to apply them to wood, walls, paper and canvas. There are many books available to study this art form but this is one of the few that can be used to learn how to paint it from the basics on to the more complex designs and patterns. Diane has also written a second book on Swedish Folk Art, "Swedish Folk Art, Floral and Kurbits Designs" that is also available. There are colored photos of all the designs in this book with black and white drawings of the designs. There are colored pages with basic strokes and the patterns broken down into the basics that make all of them up. There is also an extensive Bibliography of all the Swedish and Scandinavian books that make up the history of these beautiful art forms. Also, there are extensive listings of the supplies that are easily available to any artist who would like to learn how to do this type of folk art painting. There is also a conversion chart for DecoArt Acrylics and JoSonja Acrylic Gouache which can be obtained in your local craft store or online arts and crafts retailer. She has also written a Norwegian Folk Art book for Young People showing very basic painting techniques for children or adults who want very basic information on Folk Art Painting.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Hambone is an artist whose expressive style of painting scenes from the Old South can best be described as "folk art," a genre that is without pretension and representative of a way of life that is rapidly fading away. For many it has an evocative quality, bringing back a flood of memories. He has become recognized as one of Americas foremost artist, lauded at exhibitions and in the press for his straightforward portrayal of the African-American way of life in the old south.Collectors worldwide have come to appreciate his unique and expressive style, making him a one of a kind artist who tells us of a era that is fading from history.

Charles A. A. Dellschau was born on June 4, 1830, in Brandenburg, Prussia, and immigrated to the United States in 1853, first settling in Texas. The historical record falls silent until 1860, when he is again shown living in Texas, where he marries Antonia Hilt the following year. The so-called "lost years" of the secretive Dellschau's life became a matter of controversy when his voluminous, illustrated notebooks surfaced nearly a half-century after his death in 1923 at age 93. Dellschau literally spent the last 20 years of his life closeted away in an attic apartment, creating a fantastical body of art that continues to fascinate. Indeed, today Dellschau is recognized as one of America's leading visionary artists, ranked alongside such world luminaries as Henry Darger and Adolf W l i. A single page of one of his notebooks now fetches thousands of dollars - and there are thousands of such pages, frenetic productivity being a hallmark of visionary artists. But Dellschau's work - consisting of ink and watercolor illustrations of fanciful flying machines to which he frequently pasted newspaper clippings, or "press blooms" as he called them - appears to tell a coherent story of the Sonora (California) Aero Club. Using an anti-gravity gas purportedly invented by one of its members, The Club allegedly turned out a series of experimental aircraft some 50 years before the Wright Brothers first took wing. A mere flight of artistic fancy? Or did Dellschau actually spend his lost years documenting wildly improbable inventions? Were the Aero Club's airships also responsible for many UFO sightings in America? "The Secrets of Dellschau: The Sonora Aero Club & The Airships of The 1800s, a True Story" is the first book-length account of Dellschau's life and work.

In 1951, a young boy in rural Georgia was visited and abducted by group of alien visitors from an unknown dimension. That contact continued over several decades and resulted in the birth of more than sixty hybrid children... and one of the most remarkable stories in all of UFO lore. LOVE IN AN ALIEN PURGATORY is the startling pictorial account of David Huggins' hidden life, as revealed in his own vivd and sometimes disturbing paintings. With commentary and text by UFO investigator Farah Yurdozu, David's story takes the reader into a world between two dimensions: a purgatory of hope, sex, fear and, ultimately, love.

This omnibus volume offers a unique look at a fascinating and evocative strain of art that originated chiefly in the rural American South and in the black cultural centers as blacks migrated across the continent.

Pictorial quilts, sculpture and carvings, basketry, pottery, forged metal, musical instruments, and dwellings---these are among the forms that express this appealingly quaint yet powerful presence in American art and African folk heritage from which this wonderful art springs.

Celebrating its African folk roots and the individual artists whose lives are so closely intertwined with their art, this illuminating introduction collects writings by sixteen notable scholars of this rich and varied treasury of folk culture.

Contributors include Marie Jeanne Adams, Elizabeth Adler, Simon Bronner, John Burrison, Gerald L. Davis, Dena Epstein, David Evans, William R. Ferris, Roland L. Freeman, Christopher Lornell, Brenda McCallum, Clarence Mohr, John Scully, Ellen Slack, Robert F. Thompson, Mary Twining, John Vlach, and Maude Wahlman.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Bad Influence is a randomly issued print 'zine published by Ten Two Studios. Issues are created whenever time, participating artists, and interest allow. In this issue: artwork by Corinne Stubson, Carolyn Brady, Jen Worden, Scout Granier, and Diane Ferguson; an interview with artist Lynn Dewart; articles on stick figures, stick dolls, and ossuaries.

For you, it may look like a small unimportant detail, like your thumbnail. But for me, it is the whole vast world. Look at this jewel... here is the ant, here is the hyena, the jackal, the hoof of a horse, that of a gazelle, the sun, the moon, the stars, the good eye... this triangle, this is woman, and here are the eyebrows of the Malignant One, there, laughter... it is all of our lives in one piece of silver. (Translated from the French by Helene E. Hagan, from original Tuareg words of an artisan cited by J. Gabus, 1971) An extensive study of the symbolism of Tuareg jewelry has not yet been undertaken to date. It is this simple realization that brought the authors together in a decision to collect information on the topic, from past scholarly journals and books, contemporary articles and web sites, but also from Tuareg informants whose expert knowledge was sought. Though this book is small and does not aspire to be all encompassing, it is the first work totally dedicated to the presentation of the elaborate silver jewelry of Tuareg men and women of Northern Niger in the English language, and the only one we know that is solely dedicated to providing information concerning the function, meanings, and symbols of that jewelry. The book introduces the reader to the culture of the Tuaregs, a remarkable group of African nomads of the Sahara Desert, which has fascinated the Europeans who came into contact with them in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the last decade or so, as the Tuareg societies of Niger and Mali underwent major change, a number of American researchers began to document some of their ways. Research and publications in the English language are, however, laggingfar behind those in the French language. Fortunately, the primary author of this book, Helene Hagan, was originally educated in the French language, and as an Amazigh (Berber) herself, is very familiar with North African scholarship in the Amazigh culture. Thus, as a bilingual anthropologist of Berber ancestry, born and raised in Morocco, and an activist for Amazigh cultural, linguistic and human rights, she benefits from a fourfold source of valuable information: French scholarship, American contemporary accounts, the latest Amazigh research emanating out of North Africa, and Northern Niger Tuareg informants she knows. This unique set of circumstances gives the book an extra dimension of depth and insight.