This book took shape with the premise that understanding the origins of someone’s art is crucial to experiencing that person’s imagery. The notion questions the modernists’ posit of seeing the artist as a conduit through which art and meaning mysteriously flow. Art does not speak for itself. I doubt that it exists beyond the sensibilities of the viewer. … This book offers a look at 62 self-taught artists who have made Florida their home. Their personalities and their art are as diverse as the Sunshine State. Preferring to risk failure rather than engage in exclusionary politics or cubbyholing, I assumed a pluralistic stance when selecting the artists. Time will tell which artists’ works maintains a connection to society. … These artists create in ways that are relevant to what it means to be alive. They are survivalists of the material world.
Gary Monroe, from the preface of Extraordinary Interpretations, Florida’s Self-Taught Artists (University Press Florida)
Who knew? Not as many people as soon will, once “Extraordinary Interpretations, Florida’s Self-Taught Artists” comes off the presses for its October debut. Once again, DeLand-based documentary photographer Gary Monroe (author of “Highwaymen: Florida’s African-American Landscape Painters, 2001”) has had some fun, poking around his home state in search of artists who came to their muse all on their own, with no formal training or intentions. For each of the 62 artists chosen by Monroe, he has snapped a portrait and a piece of their art work, and written a brief-but-evocative biography; the write-ups are far from being comprehensive and serve as more of a lyrical sketch.
The result is a scattershot blast of imagery and insight into some of Florida’s everyday, if eccentric people, who are artists in their own — and sometimes very strange — right: the elderly lady who lives for her church; the doctor’s wife with a chilling secret; the long-haired dude shilling his wares roadside; the old man who shoots his gun off in the night.
Some of the artists profiled are better known in their circles and beyond — such as Mary Proctor and Orlando’s Keith “Scramble” Campbell — and make a living selling their works. Most have created for years in obscurity, without any notion of compensation. Some of the artists are mentally ill or suffer maladies that necessitate caretaking. More than a half-dozen of them died during the final editing of the book, including Bryant Gowen of Sanford, whose gun works are featured on the following pages. But Monroe doesn’t really care about expressing those particulars or about getting into a scholarly discussion of “self-taught” vs. “outsider” theory. There is an intelligent introduction to the book that covers “Some Principles,” “Some Places” and “Some People,” just enough to bring the reader into this specialized realm of folk art, without yawns.
Considering Monroe’s intention to help understand the imagery that plays inside an individual’s mind and how it comes to life via artistic self-expression, the reader then has the double-loaded experience of glimpsing the imagery that plays in the head of Monroe himself as he captures the artists’ essence in his undeniably powerful portrait photographs — and this is where Monroe’s own special genius fortifies the objective.
Still, there is a sadness that sweeps through the 130 color photos; sadness for demons that haunt, for broken lives, for unspoken dreams. “Life is sad,” Monroe says with a resigned smile, before questioning, “Isn’t it?”
Indeed, and Monroe intuitively understands these “survivors of the material world” at the same time he compassionately trumpets their beautiful and unique self-expressions through his own art of choice.
Monroe will sign books from noon-3:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15 at the “Focus on Florida Folk” event at Mennello Museum of of American Folk Art; (407) 246-4278. His books are available through the University Press of Florida (www.upf.com)
The following highlights six artists from “Extraordinary Interpretations,” accompanied by excerpts from their biographies.
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Susanne Blankemeier |
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Aurelia Johnson |
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Melvin Thayer |
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Bryant Gowens |
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Alyne Harris |
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Ed Volonnino |
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(photos by Gary Monroe)
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2003.