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Inukshuk

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:12:14 CDT

May the Inukshuk be your guide for a safe journey throughout life’s travels.
Let it always guide you home.

Regular Chinese Script (Traditional)

rén

Nhân

My personal translation for "Inukshuk" is, for me, symbolized by the Chinese language character for "human" and translates:

"We were here - in the same place where you are now standing".

- simply an irresistible drive to connect which we humans have

An inuksuk (plural inuksuit) (from the Inuktitut; alternatively inukshuk in English or inukhuk in Inuinnaqtun) is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. Inuksuit differ from some cairns in significance. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra.

The Inukshuk (pronounced IN-OOK-SHOOK) meaning "in the image of man", are magnificent lifelike figures of stone which were erected by the Inuit people and are unique to the Canadian Arctic. Standing along Canada's most northern shores, they endure as eternal symbols of leadership, encouraging the importance of friendship and reminding us of our dependence upon one another.

In the Baffin region of Canada's Arctic, the traditional meaning of an Inukshuk was to act as a compass or guide for a safe journey. The Inukshuk, like ancient trackers, helped guide people seeking their way through the wilderness. An Inukshuk on land with two arms and legs means there is a valley. At the end of this valley, you will be able to go in two directions. Today, this serves as a reminder that we always have a choice in the direction we choose to take in our lives.

Erected to make the way easier and safer for those who follow, an Inukshuk represents safety and nourishment, trust and reassurance. The Inukshuk guided people across the frozen tundra and gave them hope in barren places to handle hardships they encountered. These primitive, stone images showed the way ahead... pointing you in the direction you wanted to go. Had they been able to speak, I am certain they would have said... "Here is the road. It is safe. You can meet the demands that this path holds. You can reach your goals and attain your vision of where you want to be."

What is true about the Inukshuk is true about people.

Inukshuks in themselves are the product of cooperation. The hands and efforts of an entire group were required to build these massive stone sculptures. They are the result of a consensus of purpose, of focused action by a group united in its goal and labor. The inukshuk reminds us that as good as our individual efforts may be, together we can do even greater things.

Each individual stone in an inukshuk supports, and is supported by, the one above and the one below it. No one piece is any more or less important than another. Its strength lies in its unity. Its significance comes from its meaning as a whole.

Each individual, by themselves, is significant. As part of a team each of us supports, and is supported by, another. We are united by our common goals, and together we are part of a greater whole.

The stones which make up the Inukshuk are secured through balance. They are chosen for how well they fit together. The removal of even one stone would destroy the integrity of the whole. So, too, with a team. Each individual in a team is necessary for the realization of the team's purpose. The removal of even one person will result in the weakening of the structure. What holds the team together is the balance - the complementary nature of the individual skills.

The Inukshuk are a symbol of the human spirit. They recognize our ability to succeed with others, where alone we would fail. Remind us of our need to belong to something greater than ourselves. Prompt us to reconnect with our individual responsibility to invest our efforts today so we may all have a better tomorrow. Ask us to heed the knowledge of our inner knowingness, hear the voice of our intuition and move to the harmonious music in our heart and spirit. Inukshuk convey the importance of personal contribution and reinforce our ability to commit to common goals. They implore us to share the fruits of our learning, our wisdom with one another.

The Inukshuk is a reminder for all of us that our efforts towards the common good of our earth community are appreciated. It is an enduring symbol that invites us to speak with one another on a higher level, from our hearts and spirit, about what really matters in life.

This has become a personal symbol over the past year, and is something that I have places throughout my house. It is something I was first introduced to along the shores of Lake Champlain in Isle Lamott (pic above). When I started planning the move to my new place, it was what I chose as the heart of the new home. My flag, several Inuit sculptures, jewelry. It is something that I have come to feel connected to, and will one day make the trek to Nunavut, Canada to see the real McCoy. That will be a real treat and pilgrimage.

This symbol of human emotion and connectivity, originating in one of the least populated areas of the world, can teach us important lessons . . . and ask nothing in return. Inukshuks rise from the landscape, always in a human form, in a land where you see so few people. Solid guardians, keeping the vigil to direct the lonely traveller along the right path.

To build an Inukshuk you must find the perfect balance for each rock. No one rock is more important than another, and each creation is unique. Inukshuks found in natural settings are created from rock gathered in the immediate area, and reflect the characteristics of the surrounding land forms.

Inukshuee have been used in the Arctic for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The landscape of the Arctic is very much like the surface of the moon, barren, no trees and no landmarks for miles and miles. The Inuit used the inukshuk as a marker so they could tell where there homes, hunting and fishing areas were.

These massive rock figures were 7-12 feet high so they could be seen from great distances. Many Inuit who may have lost their way were thankful to see these manlike figures, with arms stretched wide as if to welcome them home.

Inuksuit at the Foxe Peninsula (Baffin Island)

Interesting Links:

The Ancestral Inuksuk Ingilgaat Inuksuit by Peter Imiq - inuksuk (sg.), inuksuit (pl.); inunnguaq (sg.), inunnguat (pl.)

Places of Power - essay and photographs of inuksuit

Vancouver 2010 - Olympic Games Emblem

CBC News - Vancouver Olympic emblem comes under fire

Canadian Heritage Minute video about the inukshuk

Alma - Psychic or Psychotic?

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:09:40 CDT

June 2007 - Volume 3, No. 3

Touched by God: Divine art or mental illness?

Film Review: The Alma Drawings (Canada, 2005)
Director: Jeremiah L. Munce

by Ramon Kubicek, BA, Dip.Art, Dip.Film, Cert.Ed, MA, Instructor, Langara College and Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, Vancouver, British Columbia; and
Harry Karlinsky, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Director of CME and Professional Development, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia (Harry.Karlinsky@vch.ca)

Alma Rumball was born in Huntsville, Ontario in 1902. Raised as a devout Christian, she lived a quiet and unremarkable life in rural Canada until she was about 50 and spent the next 25 years of her life obsessively and single-mindedly creating thousands of intricate line drawings and paintings.

Adding to this bizarre tale, Alma denied conscious knowledge of her artwork and denied authorship—and even stranger yet, she received critical acclaim for her talents.

The story of Alma and the mystery behind her art have now been explored in a documentary by director Jeremiah Munce.

Munce utilizes images of her work, family interviews, dramatic reenactments, but most helpfully, a single recovered audio interview in which Alma speaks about her strange gift.

Alma matter-of-factly attributes the onset of her drawings to a vision she experienced of Christ with a panther at his side. She explains she was instructed to draw and "she retreated like a sage to a cave to honour her task."

And draw she did—producing thousands of what she viewed as "automatic drawings." Alma simply watched her hands move.

It was an unfortunate stroke that ended her prodigious output.

Psychic or psychotic?
For many, the real question arising from Alma’s life and art seems to be whether Alma was—as one newspaper headline of an early review of her works rather indelicately described—“psychic or psychotic."

It is clear the director of The Alma Drawings is sympathetically aligned to the ‘psychic’ perspective. Great emphasis is placed on the presence of representations within Alma’s work that were beyond her personal experience—such as detailed and accurate depictions of Tibetan Buddhist symbols prestigiously identified by such individuals as Kalu Rinpoche, the spiritual advisor to the Dalai Lama.

The film explicitly implies Alma had somehow spiritually and mysteriously accessed Carl Jung’s conceptual world of the collective unconscious.

However, it is hard to ignore brief references in the documentary by family members to Alma as distracted and disconnected, as well as their acknowledged awareness of Alma’s descriptions of people in the corner of the ceiling who provided guidance.

Too emotionally unstable to sustain a brief attempt at teaching, she was sheltered by her extended family for virtually the rest of her reclusive life—for many years living alone in a small lakeside cabin.

The viewer also learns Alma was not completely inexperienced as an artist. While she may have had no formal artistic training, she is reported to always have drawn as a child and, at one point, drew a series of precise and repetitive religious drawings.

The proficiency of her later drawings also becomes less mysterious when considered in the context of Alma’s early work experience.
She was employed at a Toronto pottery factory where her job involved decorating vases in endless repetitive patterns prescient of her subsequent art.

Are there other explanations?

The documentary mentions Alma’s work has been recognized as an example of ‘psychic automatism’.

Even after a century of seeing various efforts described that way, the exact nature of psychic automatism remains unclear.

The terminology is derived from Freud, whose influence on the poet Andre Breton and his artist friends helped create the surrealist movement—which was so strong in the early 1920s that salons were held to explore the influence of trance on artistic production.
Spiritual art Artists Andre Masson and Max Ernst believed the relaxed state simply allowed serendipitous discoveries in free-form drawing to be made, especially since the hand seemed to be free of a limiting censor.

Other artists, like Austin Osman Spare and Aubrey Beardsley, tried to connect psychic automatism to a kind of spiritual medium-ship, whereby the artist was able to invoke magical forces—perhaps even ’beings’ that could communicate through the artist’s hand by means of what believers saw as potent symbols.

Belief in “magical art"—art composed under the tutelage of spiritual beings—is stronger in traditional cultures.

Such authorities as Ananda Coomaraswamy and Ajit Mukherjee have written seminal works on the spiritual art of India and Tibet—where not only the representational figures, but also the patterns in paintings and drawings are often believed to have both sacred and ceremonial significance. Creating such work is often seen as a meditative act placing the artist in touch with divine realms.

In the West, we have little experience with such traditions of spiritual art—other than the example of William Blake who was regarded skeptically by many of his contemporaries.

Although there are many artists who create work under the influence of spiritual beliefs, they do so in isolation.

It is not insignificant that Alma Rumball’s work is praised by Chilean artist Carmen Cereceda—a spiritual follower of Kirpal Singh—rather than in the skeptical, secular context of mainstream art.

Such testimony increases the mystery of Alma Rumball, but there are omissions of detail that make it difficult to fully assess her situation.

We do not learn enough of Alma’s past, nor of her family.

We are not given an indication of how unusual it is to have untrained artists suddenly emerging in middle-age to produce “inspired" art.

As a result, Alma Rumball is sympathetically portrayed as a curiosity rather than as a significant example of an “inspired" artist, or as someone whose unexpected calling could help us achieve contemporary understanding of what inspiration in art might mean when so many deny the relevance of the concept.

Regardless of the true impetus for Alma’s artwork, it is clear Alma’s mid-life transition may have been different were she alive today and
living in a large urban centre.

There are strong suggestions Alma was experiencing a chronic psychotic disorder associated with marked social withdrawal.

Today, it is hard to imagine that Alma would not be offered (and that’s being polite) an antipsychotic medication.

If medicated, would Alma still have been driven to produce such interesting artwork, or—perhaps more importantly—to have been so apparently meaningfully occupied and satisfied in her later years?

For psychiatrists viewing this film, perhaps that’s the greater mystery and more challenging question.

The Alma Drawings was screened at the Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival in 2006—an always thought-provoking event presented by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s (CAMH) Workman Theatre in Toronto. The official movie web site is www.thealmadrawings.com.

© Copyright 2007. Canadian Psychiatry Aujourd'hui. All rights reserved.

The Alma Drawings

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:09:20 CDT

“My hand still goes like the wind.”
– Alma Rumball

"Picturing the invisible"

VIEW TRAILER

Award-winning documentary explores the mysterious life and work of reclusive Huntsville, Ont. artist Alma Rumball
Release Date: February 6, 2006

Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper for his wealthy patron, Duke Lodovico Sforza. Pablo Picasso was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to create his famed depiction of the bombing of Guernica.
But why on earth did Alma Rumball, a quiet, reclusive woman from Huntsville, Ont., produce hundreds upon hundreds of vividly detailed, otherworldly drawings full of inexplicable mystical imagery?
Even she never understood. According to Alma, when she was almost 50 years old Christ appeared to her one day in a vision and commanded her to draw. She denied authorship of the pictures, insisting that her hand did all the drawing independently, without her conscious guidance. Whoever was driving, it wasn't her. “It was all so strange, and yet I kept on doing it,” she once said. “I had no idea what was coming next.”
Was Alma connected in some way to the spiritual world? Or caught in the grip of madness? That's the question filmmaker Jeremiah Munce, tries to unravel in his award-winning documentary The Alma Drawings.

The hour-long film, a haunting investigation into the abiding mystery of Alma's life and art, makes its Canadian television premiere on VisionTV, airing on Wednesday, March 1 at 10 p.m. ET. The broadcast repeats on Thursday, March 2 at 11 p.m. ET.

The Alma Drawings won the award for Best Direction of a Short-Mid Length Documentary at the 2005 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival.

Born in 1902, Alma Kate Rumball was raised a devout Christian. In adulthood, she grew increasingly reclusive, seldom venturing beyond her small lakeside cabin. Few photographs of her survive. Though Alma had always possessed a certain artistic talent, she had no formal training and never pursued a career in art. So no one was more surprised than she when her remarkable drawings began to pour forth.
Munce tells Alma's story through images of her artwork, conversations with those who knew her, recreations (featuring Claire Dorsey as Alma) and a single surviving tape-recorded interview in which Alma speaks matter-of-factly about her mysterious gift. “I feel there is a spiritual power up there directing it,” she can be heard to say.
French surrealist André Breton once coined the term “psychic automatism” to describe this kind of phenomenon. The more contemporary interpretation would be that Alma suffered from schizophrenia. But even if it's true, this doesn't explain where, exactly, the extraordinary images in her drawings came from.
Why do some pictures appear to contain symbols from Tibetan Buddhist tradition – something of which Alma knew nothing? Why did she fashion a strange work depicting the fall of Atlantis? And what were the dangerous spiritual secrets she sometimes claimed to have been told?
Alma Rumball died in 1980 – and the answers died with her.

The Alma Drawings was produced by Firewatch Films Inc. in association with VisionTV. The film was directed and edited by Jeremiah Munce. Jo Riding was the Executive Producer. Alberta Nokes was Executive Producer for VisionTV.

Ethnology

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:43:30 CDT

Ethnology (from the Greek ethnos, meaning "people") is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyses the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the racial or national divisions of humanity.[1] Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct contact with the culture, ethnology takes the research that ethnographers have compiled and then compares and contrasts different cultures.
Among its goals are the reconstruction of human history, and the formulation of cultural invariants, such as the alleged incest taboo and culture change, and the formulation of generalizations about "human nature", a concept which has been criticized since the 19th century by various philosophers (Hegel, Marx, structuralism, etc.).
In some parts of the world (like the USA and Great Britain) it is also referred to as cultural or social anthropology, however ethnology is not only a single part of cultural anthropology. Ethnology has been considered as a scientific discipline since the late 18th century but can be generally applied to any comparative study of human groups.
The 15th century "discovery of America" had an important role in the new Occidental interest toward the Other, often qualified as "savages", which was either seen as a brutal barbarian or as a "noble savage". Thus, civilization was opposed in a dualist manner to barbary, a classic opposition constitutive of the even more commonly-shared ethnocentrism. The progress of ethnology, for example with Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology, led to the criticism of conceptions of a linear progress, or the pseudo-opposition between "societies with histories" and "societies without histories", judged too dependent on a limited view of history as constituted by accumulative growth.
Lévi-Strauss often referred to Montaigne's essay on anthropophagy as an early example of "ethnology". Lévi-Strauss aimed, through a structural method, at discovering universal invariants in human society, which he thought was the prohibition of the incest. However, the claims of such cultural universalism have been criticized by various 19th and 20th century social thinkers, among the more important include: Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Althusser and Deleuze.

Contents:

1 List of scholars of ethnology

2 References

3 See also 4 Websites relating to ethnology See also:

Interesting Links:

http://www.ethnologue.com/ describes the languages and ethnic groups found worldwide, grouped by host nation-state.
http://www.movinganthropology.org - The Moving Anthropology Student Network/Moving Anthropology Social Network connects young anthropologists and anthropology students from European and other countries
Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History - Over 160,000 objects from Pacific, North American, African, Asian ethnographic collections with images and detailed description, linked to the original catalogue pages, field notebooks, and photographs are available online.

Petroglyph - rock carving

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:43:06 CDT

Petroglyphs are images created by removing part of a rock surfaces by incising, pecking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs are found world-wide, and are often (but not always) associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek words petros meaning "stone" and glyphein meaning "to carve" (it was originally coined in French as pétroglyphe).
The term petroglyph should not be confused with pictograph, which is an image drawn or painted on a rock face. Both types of image belong to the wider and more general category of rock art. Petroforms, or patterns and shapes made by many large rocks and boulders over the ground, are also quite different. Inukshuks are also unique, and found mainly in the arctic.

Contents:

Interesting links:

Rock Art

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:42:45 CDT

RockArt

Rock art is a term in archaeology for any man-made markings made on natural stone. They can be divided into:

Petroglyphs - carvings into stone surfaces
Pictographs - rock and cave paintings

In addition, petroforms and inukshuks are rock art made by aligning or piling natural stones. The stones themselves are used as large markings on the ground. Contents:

1 Terminology

2 Location

3 Creation

4 Groupings: Motifs and panels

5 Shamanism Motif

6 See also

7 Notes

8 References

9 External links

Cave Painting

Cave or Rock Paintings are paintings on cave or rock walls and ceilings, usually dating to prehistoric times. The earliest known rock paintings are dated to the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 years ago, while the earliest European cave paintings date to 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the cave paintings is not known, and may never be. The evidence suggests that they weren't merely decorations of living areas, since the caves in which they've been found don't have signs of ongoing habitation. Also, they are often in areas of caves that aren't easily accessed. Some theories hold that they may have been a way of transmitting information, while other theories ascribe them a religious or ceremonial purpose. Contents:

1 Europe

Petrosomatoglyph

A petrosomatoglyph is an image of parts of a human or animal body incised in rock. Many were created by Celtic peoples, such as the Picts, Scots, Irish, Cornish, Cumbrians, Bretons and Welsh. These representations date from the Early Middle Ages; others of uncertain purpose date back to megalithic times. They were an important form of symbolism, used in religious and secular ceremonies, such as the crowning of kings. Some are regarded as artefacts linked to saints and folklore heroes, such as King Arthur. The word comes from the Greek petros ("stone"), soma ("body"), and glyphein ("to carve"). Feet are the most common; however, knees, elbows, hands, head and fingers are also found.
The term "petrosomatoglyph" should not be confused with "petroglyph", which covers all incised representations of living or non-living things, or with "pictograph", which is an image drawn or painted on a rock face, and both of which contribute to the wider and more general category of rock art. Petroforms, or patterns and shapes such as labyrinths and mazes made by many large rocks and boulders in rows over the ground, are also quite different.Stylised representations of parts of the body are often open to dispute and are therefore on the fringes of acceptability as identifiable petrosomatoglyphs. Natural objects, such as rock crystals and rock formations which look like petrosomatoglyphs; whole animals, plants, etc. are collectively called 'mimeoliths'. Contents:

1 Natural versus man-made petrosomatoglyphs

2 Animal petrosomatoglyphs

3 Mythical and Folkloric beings

4 Religious Figures

5 Human petrosomatoglyphs

6 Recent and modern petrosomatoglyphs

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

Outsider Art

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:41:14 CDT

The term Outsider Art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for Art Brut (which literally translates as "Raw Art" or "Rough Art"), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane asylum inmates.
While Dubuffet's term is quite specific, the English term "Outsider Art" is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or Naïve art makers who were never institutionalized. Typically, those labeled as Outsider Artists have little or no contact with the institutions of the mainstream art world; in many cases, their work is "discovered" only after their deaths. Much Outsider Art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.
Outsider Art has emerged as a successful art marketing category (an annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1992); thus the term is sometimes misapplied as a catch-all marketing label for art created by people outside the "art world" mainstream, regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work.

...see Media in category "Outsider art"

Contents:

1 Art of the insane

2 Jean Dubuffet and Art Brut

3 The cultural context of the outsider art category

4 Vocabulary

5 Notable Outsider artists

6 In popular culture

7 See also

8 External links

9 Selected bibliography
Art of the insane
Interest in the art of insane asylum inmates had begun to grow in the 1920s. In 1921 Dr. Walter Morgenthaler published his book Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) on Adolf Wölfli, a psychotic mental patient in his care. Wölfli had spontaneously taken up drawing, and this activity seemed to calm him. His most outstanding work is an illustrated epic of 45 volumes in which he narrates his own imaginary life story. With 25,000 pages, 1,600 illustrations, and 1,500 collages, it is a monumental work. He also produced a large number of smaller works, some of which were sold or given as gifts. His work is on display at the Adolf Wölfli Foundation in the Museum of Fine Art, Berne. A defining moment was the publication of Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the mentally ill) in 1922, by Dr Hans Prinzhorn.

Jean Dubuffet and Art Brut French artist Jean Dubuffet was particularly struck by Bildnerei der Geisteskranken and began his own collection of such art, which he called Art Brut or Raw Art. In 1948 he formed the Compagnie de l'Art Brut along with other artists including André Breton. The collection he established became known as the Collection de l'Art Brut. It contains thousands of works and is now permanently housed in Lausanne, Switzerland. Dubuffet characterized Art Brut as:"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade." - Jean Dubuffet. Place à l'incivisme (Make way for Incivism). Art and Text no.27 (Dec. 1987 - Feb 1988). p.36 Dubuffet argued that 'culture', that is mainstream culture, managed to assimilate every new development in art, and by doing so took away whatever power it might have had. The result was to asphyxiate genuine expression. Art Brut was his solution to this problem - only Art Brut was immune to the influences of culture, immune to being absorbed and assimilated, because the artists themselves were not willing or able to be assimilated. The cultural context of the outsider art category The interest in "outsider" practices among twentieth century artists and critics can be seen as part of a larger emphasis on the rejection of established values within the modernist art milieu. The early part of the 20th Century gave rise to cubism and the Dada, Constructivist and Futurist movements in art, all of which involved a dramatic movement away from cultural forms of the past. Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, for example, abandoned "painterly" technique to allow chance operations a role in determining the form of his works, or simply to re-contextualize existing "readymade" objects as art. Mid-century artists, including Pablo Picasso, looked "outside" the traditions of high culture for inspiration, drawing from the artifacts of "primitive" societies, the unschooled artwork of children, and vulgar advertising graphics. Dubuffet's championing of the art of the insane and others at the margins of society is yet another example of avant-garde art challenging established cultural values. Vocabulary A number of terms are used to describe art that is loosely understood as "outside" of official culture. Definitions of these terms vary, and there are areas of overlap between them. The editors of Raw Vision, a leading journal in the field, suggest that "Whatever views we have about the value of controversy itself, it is important to sustain creative discussion by way of an agreed vocabulary". Consequently they lament the use of Outsider Artist to refer to almost any untrained artist. "It is not enough to be untrained, clumsy or naïve. Outsider Art is virtually synonymous with Art Brut in both spirit and meaning, to that rarity of art produced by those who do not know its name."

Art Brut: Raw art, 'raw' in that it has not been through the 'cooking' process: the art world of art schools, galleries, museums. Originally art by psychotic individuals who existed almost completely outside culture and society. Strictly speaking it refers only to the Collection de l'Art Brut.
Neuve Invention: Used to describe artists who, although marginal, have some interaction with mainstream culture. They may be doing art part-time for instance. The expression was coined by Dubuffet too; strictly speaking it refers only to a special part of the Collection de l'Art Brut.
Folk art: Folk art originally suggested crafts and decorative skills associated with peasant communities in Europe - though presumably it could equally apply to any indigenous culture. It has broadened to include any product of practical craftsmanship and decorative skill - everything from chain-saw animals to hub-cap buildings. A key distinction between folk and outsider art is that folk art typically embodies traditional forms and social values, where outsider art stands in some marginal relationship to society's mainstream.
Marginal Art/Art Singulier: Essentially the same as Neue Invention; refers to artists on the margins of the art world.
Visionary art/Intuitive art: Raw Vision Magazine's preferred general terms for Outsider Art. It describes them as deliberate umbrella terms. However Visionary Art unlike other definitions here can often refer to the subject matter of the works, which includes images of a spiritual or religious nature. Intuitive art is probably the most general term available. The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is dedicated to the collection and display of such artwork.
Naïve Art: Another grey area. Untrained artists who aspire to "normal" artistic status, i.e. they have a much more conscious interaction with the mainstream art world than do Outsider Artists.
Visionary environments: Buildings and sculpture parks built by visionary artists - range from decorated houses, to large areas incorporating a large number of individual sculptures with a tightly associated theme. Examples include Watts Towers by Simon Rodia, and The Palais Ideal by Ferdinand Cheval.
Irrealism: Nelson Goodman
Art extraordinary: Defined by Joyce Laing as "visionary imagery inspired directly from the unconscious", Art Extraordinary is a term used to describe the art she has discovered while working as an art therapist with prisoners and the mentally ill around Scotland. Laing chose to move away from the term "Outsider Art" because she felt that referring to these people as "Outsiders" is not only politically incorrect, but that the term "Outsider Art" itself is left too open for interpretation.

In popular culture
In The Simpsons episode 222 Mom and Pop Art, Homer Simpson is named an Outsider Artist after the result of his failed attempt at building a Barbecue Pit is seen as sculpture.

See also

External links

The Outsider Art French Portal, Paris, FRANCE

Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland

Intuit The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago

American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore

The Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg

Cunningham Dax Collection,Parkville, Australia

Collection of Art Brut, Vienna, Austria

Raw Vision Outsider Art Journal

Demirel Collection, Outsider Art World

Adolf Wölfli Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Switzerland

Museum im Lagerhaus, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Art Cafe: Outsider and Emerging arts

Outsider Art Exhibition Art From Outside the Art World

Outsider... deconstructing art from the outside Epistemology of marginal art as an expressive visual practice

On Outsider Art and the Margins of the Mainstream Examination of the definition and application of the term

The Scottish Collection of Art Extraordinary, Pittenweem, Scotland

Naive Art

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:25:05 CDT

Naïve art is characterized by a childlike simplicity. (See also, outsider art, with which it bears many similarities.) It is a gross oversimplification to assume that Naïve art is created by people with little or no formal art training.
The term naïve art presumes the existence (by contrast) of an academy and of a generally accepted educated manner of art creation, most often painting. In practice, however, there are schools of naïve artists. Over time it has become an acceptable style.
The characteristics of naïve art are an awkward relationship to the formal qualities of painting; for example, difficulties with drawing and perspective that result in a charmingly awkward and often refreshing vision; strong use of pattern, unrefined colour, and simplicity rather than subtlety are all supposed markers of naïve art. It has become such a popular and recognisable style that many examples could be called pseudo-naïve.
Primitive art is another term often applied to the art of those without formal training. This is distinguished from the self-conscious movement primitivism. Another term related to, but not completely synonymous with, naïve art, is folk art.
Whereas naïve art, ideally, describes the work of an artist who did not receive a formal education in an art school or academy, see Henri Rousseau, Alfred Wallis; 'pseudo naïve' or 'faux naïve' art describes the work of an artist working in a more imitative or self-conscious mode and whose work can be seen as more imitative than original.

Contents:

1 Naïve artists

2 Museums/Galleries

3 Other links
See also:

Primitivism

Neo-primitivism

Folk Art - an Ancient Mandala

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:24:20 CDT

...see Media in category "Folk art"

Folk art describes a wide range of objects that reflect the craft traditions and traditional social values of various social groups. Folk art is generally produced by people who have little or no academic artistic training, nor a desire to emulate "fine art", and use established techniques and styles of a particular region or culture. Along with painting, sculpture, and other decorative art forms, some also consider utilitarian objects such as tools and costume as folk art.
Antique folk art is distinguished from traditional art in that while it is collected today based mostly on its artistic merit; it was never intended as a category to be art for art’s sake. Examples include: weathervanes, old store signs and carved figures, itinerant portraits, carousel horses, fire buckets, painted game boards, cast iron doorstops and many other similar lines of highly collectible "whimsical" antiques.
Characteristically folk art is not influenced by movements in academic or fine art circles, and for the most part, folk art excludes works executed by professional artists and sold as "high art" or "fine art" to the society's art patrons.
The turn of the 21st century saw an increase in work by self-taught folk artists, possibly because of the growing number of retired people with time to spend on new ventures.
This 'grassroots art' movement is most visible in the states of Kansas and Wisconsin. The movement has been popularized on public television by the show Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations produced by KCPT in Kansas City, Missouri.[citation needed]
Other terms that overlap with folk art are naïve art, popular art, outsider art, traditional art and even working class art. As you would expect, all these terms have different connotations; but they are all at times used interchangeably with the term folk art, for which a satisfactory definition has proven hard to come by.

Contents:

1 Noted folk artists

2 See also

3 References

4 External links
See also:

Alebrije

Chinese folk art

African Folk Art

Ex-voto

Latin American Retablos

Yakshagana

Pseudo naïve art

Madhubani painting

Warli painting

Outsider Art

Interesting links:

Museums, festivals and organizations in the U.S.

[http://www.folkartmarket.org Santa Fe International Folk Art Market}
The Folk Art Society of America
American Folk Art Museum New York museum specializing in American Folk Art
Museum of International Folk Art Santa Fe, New Mexico museum with a large collection of folk art from around the world.
The Who-Ha Da-DA Outsider Artists Fellowship
The Rochester Folk Art Guild The website for a residential craft community located in upstate New York, specializing in folk art.
Midwest Decoy Collectors Association The de facto international collectors group.

Indian folk art

Research resources

Folkvine: Florida's Art and Artists Online An interactive exploration of folk arts in Florida.
Folk Figures: A Survey of Norwegian and Norwegian-American Artifacts
Contemporary Folk Artists from the Southern United States An adjudicated listing of artists (basketmakers, potters, quilters, storytellers, blues and bluegrass artists) compiled by Southern Arts Federation
Artcyclopedia information.
Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations
Folk Art Canada Images, biographies and forums devoted to Canadian folk art.
Folk Arts Hungary Articles, handmade embroideries dedicated to the Hungarian folk art.
CBC Digital Archives – Handmade in Canada: The Art of Craft
Podcast by expert Bev Norwood

Happy Poetry

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:23:23 CDT

on writing

kids is like plants

Sad Poetry

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:23:05 CDT

~
you blew me off, you lose

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fear tears me up

My Poetry stuff

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:22:53 CDT

~
"Sing Me A Few"
...my painting animated

My ArtWork at-a-glance

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:22:37 CDT

My Archived Florals

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My Graphics

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Sketches of Faces

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My Abstracts

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Sketches, age 17

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Attack Drawings

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Illustrations for a Poem

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thumbnails of my sketches on Art.com
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links - WellWorthWatching

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:22:06 CDT

...with my Rosy "Seal of Approval"...

visit my sister "Wiki" site ::

My Music Stuff ~ RosiRed

visit my 3 empty singing memberships (?!) ::

...my YouTube channel

"Videocam101Flunky"

visit me on MySpace

MySpace/WhiteGardenia

...and my sister-site

RedRosi

Bottomline it...

my home site

amiCreative.org

"Stoopid" Humor

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:20:04 CDT

Top 16 Country Songs

I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
It's Hard To Kiss the Lips at Night That Chewed Your Ass Out All Day Long
If I Can't Be Number One in Your Life, Then Number Two on You
If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me
How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?
I Liked You Better Before I Got to Know You So Well
I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
I Wouldn't Take her to a Dog Fight 'Cause I'm Afraid She'd Win
I'll Marry You Tomorrow, But Let's Honeymoon Tonight
I'm So Miserable Without You, It's Like You're Still Here
If I Had Shot You When I First Wanted To, I'd be Out Of Prison by Now
My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend and I Sure Do Miss Him
She Got The Ring and I Got The Finger
You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly
Her Teeth Were Stained But Her Heart Was Pure
She's Looking Better After Every Beer

And the Number one song is...

I Ain't Never Gone To Bed With Ugly Women,
But I've Sure Woken Up With A Few

"Smarty-pants" Humor

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:19:28 CDT

"The Lords of Logistics"

"Snoopy Remembers His Dad"

Tickle-Your-Ribs Humor

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:19:17 CDT

"Sing Me A Few..."
~ my painting put to animation

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"Animal Finger-puppets"

ChalkDrawings, Julian Beever

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:19:02 CDT

Anne Geddes Photography

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:18:49 CDT

Anne Geddes Babies in B&W

A Celebration of Anne Geddes Work

Anne Geddes "Birthin"

African American Art History

bailanina — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:18:34 CDT

BlackAmerican History

AfricanAmerican Artists

Artist, Bernard Hoyes

Artist, Leroy Campbell

Artist, Justin Bau

Artist, Frank Morrison