Better Homes & Gardens Ox-Bow 2020 syllabus Subject to minor changes
Note on readings: PDFs of all readings will be provided on a flash drive and will be accessible in advance of the class if you want to read ahead. Additional supportive readings (not mandatory) will be provided. Stone will bring boxes of books to peruse, read, refer to.
Before traveling to Ox-Bow: Each student to select a photograph that you took (or take one) that addresses one of the following prompts:
This is where am I when I daydream or I LOVE THIS PLACE!
Ø Size the image to 72 dpi, 1024 pixels on the long side Ø Label the file with your name (first, last) Ø Email to Stone by WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24 Ø The images will be incorporated into the class orientation on Sunday, June 28
Sunday, June 28
8:00 p.m. first class meeting Ø Class introductions with students’ slides; class overview, slide lectures and class responses Ø Homes fully transformed into places of work, play, ceremony, and healing: Carol Hainstock (Ironton, WI), Malda Reda Larsen (Kewanee, IL), Mrs. Nies (Mineral Point, WI).
Readings for the day Gregg Blasdel, “Grassroots Art,” Art in America, September/October 1968 Jill Nokes, “Places Full of Memory and Meaning,” chapter 1, Yard Art and Handmade Places Extraordinary Expressions of Home, pp. 1 – 10
Monday, June 29 Performing the farm
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Ø Introduction to Walker Evans’ documentation of place, time, and the signed landscape. Free thought and Free Speech (and parts of speech): Jesse Howard’s Sorehead Hill
1 (Fulton, Missouri). Words without thoughts, never to heaven go. William Shakespeare, Hamlet Ø Frank Oebser’s Little Program (Menomonie, Wisconsin).
2:00 – 1 hour studio project, the Frank Oebser Challenge or Perform a Jesse Howard sign 3:00 – presentation of studio projects 4:00 – slide/lecture: Emery Blagdon’s Healing Machine (Stapleton, Nebraska); Evening optional: Screening of Possum Trot
Readings for the day Essays by Codrescu and Stone, Jesse Howard & Roger Brown: Now Read On Optional: Richard Rhodes, “Signs and Wonders,” A Inland Ground
Tuesday, June 30 Gardens of Heavenly and Earthly Delight
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Monumental personal garden landscapes and arbor sculpture: Harvey Fite’s Opus 40 (Saugerties, New York), Jack Ellsworth’s Ellsworth Rock Garden (Lake Kabetogama, Minnesota), Pearl Fryar’s topiary (Bishopville, South Carolina).
2:00 – 3:30 slide/lectures The Paul and Matilda Wegner Grotto (Cataract, Wisconsin), Nick Engelbert’s Grandview (Hollandale, Wisconsin), Hartman Rock Garden (Springfield, Ohio). Derek Jarman’s Garden (Dungeness, UK).
3:30 – 5:00 – screening, A Man Called Pearl and discussion
Readings for the day Stone & Zanzi, “Grotto Follies in the Heartland” Lisa Stone, “Granite Folly,” Landscape Architecture
Optional: Sacred Spaces and Other Places, Part I, “Grottos,” “Embellishing Home.” Sacred Spaces and Other Places, chapters 6 & 7
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Wednesday, July 1 Expressions of Survival, Artist-Built Terrains of Conscience
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Kea Tawana’s Ark (Newark, New Jersey), Dr. Charles Smith’s African American Heritage Museum and Black Veteran’s Archive (Aurora, Illinois and Hammond, Louisiana); Joe Minter’s African Village in America (Birmingham, Alabama),
2:00 – 4:00 Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project (Detroit, Michigan), Jim Bowsher's Temple of Tolerance (Wapakoneta, Ohio). 4:00 - Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village (Simi Valley, CA), slides and video
Readings for the day Holly Metz “Where I Am Going: Kea’s Ark, Newark, New Jersey” The Southern Quarterly 197- 215 Linda Hamalian, “Or Who would Build a Better Ark than Noah?” Black American Literature Forum, 97- 112
Optional: Grandma Prisbrey booklet (by Prisbrey)
Thursday, July 2 Fraternally yours: the architecture of mystery
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Ritual initiation history, symbols, and spaces; the panorama, the grand, spatial narrative. Ernest Hüpeden’s masterpiece, the Painted Forest, (Valton, Wisconsin). The preservation of the Painted Forest.
2:00 – 4:00 The home landscape as historical, spatial narrative: S.P. Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden (Lucas, Kansas), Davis Memorial, Woolridge Monuments. Kansas Grassroots Art Association and preservation of art environments. Response Project assigned/described. 4:00 – 5:00 Reading Hour
Readings for the day (to read after class) Lisa Stone, Ernest Hüpeden’s Atlas S.P. Dinsmoor, Cabin Home David Rhodes, Individuals in Community
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Friday, July 3 The vernacular to the spectacular
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Introduction to the genre of grassroots art environments in the United States. Beneath the Ice: the range of original expressions within the specific vernacular architectural form of ice fishing (and sturgeon fishing) shanties in the Upper Midwest. Jim Schneider “homeboat” (Sheboygan, Wisconsin). Cano Esposito’s tower (Antonito, New Mexico)
2:00 – 3:00 Clarence Schmidt, My Mirrored Hope (Woodstock, New York).
3:00 – 5:00 – Good Garden Lookin’ Saugatuck and Douglas
Readings for the day Blasdel + Lipke, “Clarence Schmidt: Toward Journey’s End,” Naives + Visionaries Jim Schneider articles
Saturday, July 4 "I Build the Tower"
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: The opera incarnate: Sam Rodia’s Towers at Watts, Los Angeles (slides, opera, film). Saving & Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments: Seymour Rosen and SPACES. Post- Rodia creative activities and preservation of the Watts Towers.
2:00 – 3:30 Good Garden Lookin’ presentations
3:30 – 5:00 - Reading / project time
Readings: peruse/read from Stone’s library
Sunday, July 5 Preparing Spaces for the Lord
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: James Hampton’s mystical “Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Milennium (sic) General Assembly” (Washington, DC). Spreading the word, vernacular expressions of evangelism and devotion: H.H. Mayes’ crosses for earth and the planets (American South); the bathtub shrine, Salvatore Verdirome’s Sanctuary of Love (Norwich, Connecticut),
4 2:00 – 3:30 Prophet Isaiah Robertson (Niagara Falls, New York); Reverend Harmon D. Dennis’s Margaret’s Grocery (Vicksburg, Mississippi).
4:00 - 5:00 Reading / project time
Readings for the day Introduction by Charles Reagan Wilson and “Salesmen of Salvation,” v – xxi, Joe York, With Signs Following Photographs From The Southern Religious Roadside. University Press of Mississippi, 2007. (canvas and Flaxman, reserve)
Bruce West, The True Gospel Preached Here, excellent book, replete with photos, on Margaret’s Grocery, spend some time with this book. Sills, Vaughan and Als, Hilton. Places for the Spirit Traditional African American Gardens, spend some time with this book. Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, “James Hampton’s Throne,” Naives and Visionaries Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, “Trials by Tinfoil"
Monday, July 6 10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Environments as expressions of loneliness and/or loss: Joseph Furey (Brooklyn, New York); Loy Bowlin’s Beautiful Holy Jewel Home (McComb, Mississippi); Paul Hefti, La Crosse, Wisconsin; Maud Lewis, Nova Scotia; Sanford Darling, Santa Barbara.
2:00 – 3:00 Reading / project time
3:00 – 5:00 From failure to salvation: Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain (Niland, California). St. Eom’s Pasaquan, Buena Vista, Georgia. [Maybe: Single artist museums in Houston: The Orange Show Foundation for Visionary Art and John Milkovish’s Beer Can House, creation and preservation.]
Readings for the day We’ll read together from Tom Patterson, Eom’s Pasaquan Provided: Leslie Umberger, “Loy Bowlin The Road to My Horizon,” Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds, pp. 225-244
Tuesday, July 7 Radiating Influences: the Midwestern Catholic Devotional Grotto
10:00 – 12:00 slide/lectures: Three major devotional Catholic grottos and their influence on builders in the Midwest: The Grotto of the Redemption (West Bend, Iowa), The Dickeyville Grotto
5 (Dickeyville, Wisconsin), The Rudolph Grotto (Rudolph, Wisconsin). Regional responses: Jacob Baker, Madeline Buol Grotto, Schultz Houses, Zimmerman Garage.
12:00 – 1:00 Reading / project time
2:00 – 5:00 History lessons, the spatial narrative Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park (Phillips, Wisconsin). Gardens in this historical sphere: Herman Rusch’s Prairie Moon Museum (Cochrane, Wisconsin), Little Bit ‘O Heaven (Davenport, Iowa), House on the Rock (Dodgeville, Wisconsin), James Tellen’s Woodland Sculpture Garden (Black River, Wisconsin), Mollie Jensen’s Art Exhibit (River Falls, Wisconsin).
Readings for the day Stone & Zanzi, “Grotto Follies in the Heartland” Sacred Spaces and Other Places, Part I, “Grottos,” “Embellishing Home.” Sacred Spaces and Other Places, chapters 6 & 7
Wednesday, July 8 Other main streams
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Mary Nohl’s Beach Drive home and garden (Fox Point, Wisconsin). Noah Purifoy's Desert Sculpture Garden (Joshua Tree, California). Noah Purifoy’s constructed world (Joshua Tree, California). The present and future of homes, studios, and gardens of lifelong artists. What do museums have to do with it? Considering the playing fields between museums and art environments from Naives + Visionaries (1974) to LACMA (2015); Roger Brown’s Aldo Piacenza exhibition, 1971 Hyde Park Art Center; The Road Less Traveled (2017) to Outliers and American Vanguard Art (2018-19).
2:00 – 5:00 project time. Books on Purifoy and Nohl will be available to peruse, read.
Thursday, July 9
10:00 – 1:00 slide/lectures: Classically informed original inventions: Fred Francis’ Woodland Palace (Kewanee, Illinois); Karl Junker’s Junkerhaus (Lemgo, Germany); Other palaces in progress: Cano Castle in Colorado; Ferdinand Cheval’s Palais Idéal (Hauterives, France).
2:00 – 3:30 - Shannon Stratton Roads Scholarship presentation 3:30 – 5:00 – project time
Reading Jurgen Scheffler, “On Solid Ground”, The Outsider John MacGregor, “Junker House The Architecture of Madness”, Raw Vision.
6 Hartmut Kraft, “Karl Junker Was Schizophrenic. What Else Is There to Say
Friday, July 10
10:00 – 1:00 – Project presentations / discussion
2:00 – 5:00 - Project presentations / discussion
Response Project Begin with a question or conceptual framework; some examples are below, or create your own. Ø Make something book-like (knowing that a “book” can take any form” that includes visuals and writing Ø Craft a performance Ø Create a keynote or powerpoint
Examples: questions / conceptual frameworks Home: How does the fact that some artists completely transform their homes––to reflect emotional, psychological, deeply spiritual, or metaphysical conditions–– differ from artists creating immersive environments, temporarily in public spaces, galleries, or museums? Explore the concept and reality of home and of living in ones work as an ongoing, lived in creative commitment.
Life specific: Many of the artists we examine create works that are life--size in scale (taking over homes, gardens, landscapes), reflecting a lifetime of lived experiences. Examine the ramifications of works that are life--specific, rather than “site--specific” works created for mainframe art audiences. What aspect of your life, so far, might compel you to create something that takes place?
Larger than life: Sam Rodia created what’s considered to be one of the most extraordinary works of the 20th century, on many levels: scale––created by one man, originality, engineering, historical context, and sheer, formal, breathtaking beauty. What does it mean to create for 30+ years and leave the creation behind? What does it mean to walk away from Nuestra Pueblo?
Audience: The artists we discuss created works for a various types of audiences; some created works for themselves to experience only, and some wanted to reach families, passersby, or much larger audiences. None of the works were created specifically for the narrowly focused audience of the mainframe art world as we know it. Explore the dimensions and ramifications of creating extensive environments for specific audiences––other than the dominant art world audience–– in which the artists are their own critics.
7 Typologies: This class explored various typologies of artist-built environments including religious grottos, spiritual, devotional and mystical sites, gardens, ephemeral yard shows, architectural inventions, expressions of loneliness and survival, artist-built sites of conscience, homes fully transformed, and artist’s museums. You may wish to explore the contemporary relevance of any of these typologies in the 21st century.
Examine, unpack artists’ positions or actions Ø Clarence Schmidt: “It’s not what it’s made of, it’s what it signifies” Ø David Ireland: “You can’t make art by making art” Ø Fred Smith, “It’s gotta be in ya to do it” Ø Jesse Howard and the blue/red/red/blue form of writing
What did you learn from this class? What did the material tell you? Did it change your point of view, and if so, how? There’s no prescribed format, media, or length. Most importantly, it should be a personal response to the course material.
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