NEW YEAR'S AUCTION @ Sterling Sold

ANNUAL NEW YEARS DAY AUCTION-OVER 200 ITEMS SOLD BY CATALOGUE PLUS OVER 300 ITEMS UNCATALOGUED SOLD TO IN HOUSE BIDDERS

Date: Friday, January 1, 2010
Time:11:00 a.m.
Kimball M. Sterling presents The 20th Annual New Years Day Auction

Here is the link to the catalogue.

Outsider Art, Fine Antiques, Pedal Cars, Jewelry and Antique Watches, Toys, Large Advertising Tin and Dipper Collection, China and Glassware, Carpets, Furniture from Many Periods, Comic Books, and many Fine Estate Items. Coins Indian rugs, art, Cufflink collection, Toys and much more

This sale will also be carried live on the net at liveauctioneers.com. They will sell about 200 items by catalogue and over 300 items which are not catalogued for internet bidders

Two gallon cobalt jug attributed to Lewis Haun of Greene County Tennessee, Native American paintings by Edwin Deming, Combination Table Company display table, East Tennessee Railroad stock certificate, Collection of early pedal cars including Murray plane-Jolly Roger boat and many more, Large collection of peanut butter tins, Quarter hour 14kt gold repeater watch, Movado Calendar wrist watch, Navaho Rugs, Massive ice cream scoop collection, Outsider art including three works by Linville Barker, large Barker cat, Mary Proctor, Prison Art, Collection of Tennessee History and Appalachian books, Fine Persian carpets, Bakelite flatware, Fine paintings, Country store items, Fine jewelry, Gene Autry boys bicycle, Schwinn Phantom bicycle, Early tricycles and ride-on items, antique canes, gentleman’s cuffs link in gold and silver, fine dining china, coins, 5.00 gold piece, over 75 pieces of outsider art, Longines Military type d pocket watch, a collection of George Washington wax seals from a decendant of the former president and the Father of our country, rare jewelry store display case, group of hunting case pocket watches, nautical keel table, fine country and formal furniture, carved African-American Jacksonville pipe, early toys, Oils by Jack Savisky, early midwifery book, Bicycle inkwell, Tennessee Jackson Press, Early large framed religious crochet, braided rugs, string instruments, stamp collection, Mahogany highboy, French style bedroom suite, sterling flatware and serving pieces, large collection of comic books,William Cross Stone Collection, military items, large collection of interesting antique smalls, three pre 1900 Bowie knives, Custom high grade early French 16ga. double barrel, and more to list soon

Cash or check 10% BP

Preview 9:30 a.m.

ART: R.I.P. Jake McCord

Photo: Mike's Art Truck

Jake (JT) McCord passed away September 1 at the age of 64. Funeral services were held at Zion Baptist Church near Lincolnton, Georgia. A native of Lincoln County, where he picked cotton as a child, McCord moved to Thomson as a young man and worked for the city for over 40 years.

Jake will be missed by many. He was a soft-spoken gental soul, despite his tragic and abusive childhood. Jake became famous for his paintings on plywood, which he would nail to the walls of his porch. He called this his gallery and said he put them on his porch, so the town children could come by and see his art.

His paintings were usually children playing with their pets, cats, dogs and animals from the farm. He had a unique vision using bold strokes and bright enamel paint. The McDuffe Museum will reconstruct the front porch of Jake's home and display his art as he did for years.

One of his paintings of his home church rested against his casket, during his funeral service. Henry Drake, a longtime friend of Jake, said during the service "I was always glad to see J.T coming to see me. Sleep on my friend J.T. and save a seat for me."

(courtesy of Ted Oliver, Oliver’s Folk Art. REPOSTED FROM DETOUR ART TRAVELS)

A Wickham Anniversary

Today (7/13) marks the 40th Anniversary of the dedication of the Daniel Boone, Lester Solomon, Sitting Bull and Piomingo statue at The Wickham Stone Park in Palmyra, TN. This was the last statue to be formally dedicated.


"In the last grouping of statues that Wickham created, the selection of personalities at first seems odd. Daniel Boone and Sitting Bull are familiar characters from American frontier days, but Piomingo and Lester Solomon are more obscure to today’s audience. The lack of an elevated platform for these figures may be a reflection of Wickham’s age and reduced agility. Why did Wickham include these figures together in a grouping? Pioneering spirit, love of land, and involvement with the development and settlement of Tennessee might have been part of Wickham’s reasoning." (source)

AUCTION: JOE ADAMS OUTSIDER & FOLK-ART COLLECTION

Outsider art auctioneer Kimball Sterling is hosting the auction of The Joe Adams Collection of Outsider and Folk-Art tomorrow (5/30) at 11AM est:

My friend Joe 'The Spam' Adams has collected folk-art for about as long as I have been selling art. I met Joe about 19 years ago and when he attended the Howard Smith Collection auction. That was the first major collection offered to the public. Many pieces in this auction are from Joe's private collection. It was exciting getting into his storage and seeing items that have been off the market for many years from various collections that we have sold. He bought the best Willey Masseys from the Smith Collection, art from the Gitter-Yellen Collection, the Oh Appalachia Collection, Warren and Sylvia Lowe Collection, the James Smith Pearce Collection and many more. This will be an in-house and live internet auction. Both phone and absentee bids will also be accepted. Click here for a sneak peak preview of items.

Make your plans now to attend this auction of a lifetime collection of one of the pioneers of the folk-art field. This will be a great event for the art community.

The entire sale catalogue will be on our website about two weeks before the auction. The collection has been moved from Hilton Head S.C. to our gallery here in Johnson City. There will be over 600 pieces of art in the catalogue auction by both major and emerging artists. After the catalogue sale we will auction other art from the collection to in-house bidders. There will be many surprises in the after catalogue auction.

Visit Sterling's site For info on terms, shipping, previews, etc., or email:
elizabethsterling@earthlink.net or kimballsterling@earthlink.net

• Folk art aficionado and storyteller Joe Adams talks about his famous "Chicken Room" and his love for yard bird.

SCENE: ST EOM's Pasaquan OPEN this Saturday, May 2

photo Bombsite

St EOM's Pasaquan re-opened for the 2009 season on April 4 and will be open to visitors the first Saturday of each month thru November. Next up is this Saturday, May 2.

"I built this place to have somethin' to identify with, cause there's nothin' that I see in this society that I identify with or desire to emulate.

Here I can be in my own world with my temples and designs and the spirit of God. I don't have nothin' against other people and their beliefs. I'm not askin' anybody to do my way or be my way.

Although, when I'm dead and gone, they'll follow like night follows day."

St. EOM to his biographer, Tom Patterson, 1985

Eddie Owens Martin was born at the stroke of midnight July 4, 1908. His father was a Southwest Georgia dirt farmer, an uneducated sharecropper whose only apparent interest in his son was as a farm laborer who could toil without payment in producing the annual cotton crop. Eddie, however, was "different" from the other five children in the family. Secretly assisted by his mother, he learned to read. He soon contemplated an existence far beyond that of the backbreaking day labor in the fields of Marion County. At fourteen, following an incident during which his father cruelly killed a puppy that Eddie had received as a gift from a neighboring black family, he left home. After wandering around Georgia and Florida for several months as an itinerant fruit picker, young Eddie drifted north. He eventually found New York City, where he stayed until the mid-1950s.

At a time in the late 1930s, during an extended and fever-ridden illness, Martin experienced the first of a series of phenomenal visions that would prompt and continue to drive his artistic efforts for the rest of his life. In the initial vision, he was confronted by a trio of extraordinarily tall personages who identified themselves as people of the future -- special envoys from a vaporous land called Pasaquan, a place where the past, the present, the future, and everything else all come together." He had been chosen by them, he later reported, to delineate an understanding of the peace and beauty that the future might hold for mankind, if mankind would take heed. On that day, Eddie Owens Martin of Marion County, Georgia, became St. EOM -- the one and only Pasaquoyan of the Twentieth Century.

The empowered visitors in his vision offered him extensive instructions on how to ritually prepare for the proper conduct of his personal daily existence. They revealed how he was to communicate with and receive cosmic instruction from the energies of the universe, and how to follow a course that would enable him to artfully render the futuristic world of Pasaquan in paint and pen, metal and concrete. The most compelling instruction that he received from them was this: To "return to Georgia and do something." That is precisely what he did -- for over thirty years.

The result is St. EOM's PASAQUAN. (excerpted)

Pasaquan is located in Buena Vista (bit east of Columbus, GA) and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Eddie Owens Martin died at Pasaquan in 1986 but his legacy and visionary environment lives on. You can support this project by visiting, voluteering, joining the Pasaquan Preservation Society and/or buying a copy of "the book."

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS: Sister Louisa

A stream of consciousness e-mail conversation with artist Grant Henry and his “altar” ego Sister Louisa: my gallery Sister Louisa's Art Gallery in the Church of The Living Room And Ping Pong Emporium is in my home in a loft in downtown atlanta...i live in a work/live loft spacewhich caters to the art community by offering moderate income housing to artists,as opposed to single mothers raising litters of kids. it is what it is.

i bleed sister Louisa because that's what i do to process my former relationshipto societal institutions such as religion, politics, family, and community.

i love playing with the symbols of what we all are taught to believe, without necessarily attaching myself to any of those beliefs.

i love the south. i love when one's faith is more sophisticated than the believer herself.i love injecting humor into serious, forbidden places.

foremost: i believe that god's love for me IS GREATERthan anything i can do, or say, to fuck that up!to diminish that sense of unconditionality.

i never apologize for my art. it's a balance.

i'm an artist who doesn't paint (i use found paintings/boards/windows), and a writer who doesn't write (i use as few words as possible), and i don't pursue a gallery because i'm the ultimate anti-artist, i don't do my art to sell my art (however quickly it DOES fly off my walls), i do it to process my feelings, process world events, (i'm working on the VIRGIN SARAH PALIN, and jesus peering across the water saying: I CAN SEE RUSSIA FROM HERE!)

i can't be so intentional as to be part of a DIY MOVEMENT, i just do it myself. i'm not a joiner.

i put SISTER LOUISA pieces on my website, i put SISTER LOUISA pieces on my facebook and myspace pages, i donate SISTER LOUISA art about 20 times a year to anyone who needs it, and i participate in shows if i'm asked.

we have monthly creative writing seminars in my space...going with the flow gets me where i'm going. i'm fortunate to have a local writer who writes about me, grant henry, and about my art, sister louisa, in newspapers, magazines, and books to have gotten some exposure for SISTER LOUISA.

people crave content, yearn for the truth, and want to say things they aren't "supposed to say", so sister louisa provides the levity and courage to face people's shit.

as far as galleries go? Hmmmmmmm…i've never pursued a gallery, i am fortunate to have a huge in home gallery, in the center of atlanta, in a space that give me ample exposure.

i price my pieces based on biblical numbers, not profit.

$33 for a small piece. $66.6 for a little bigger piece.$133.00 for an even bigger piece. $166.60........$266.60........not for religious reasons, but for giggles.

laura dern (actress) has pieces. tammy faye bakker (fabulous religious nutcase) has(had) a piece. ben harper (musician) has a piece. kate pierson (b52's) has several pieces. fred schneider (b52's) has several pieces. david arquette (actor) has a grant trucker hat. anne kristoff (blogger to the arts) needs one.

i've done several art cars and also an art house.......put an ad on the wall of the coffee shop with the art car on it stating: CRACK CAR FOR SALE: $80,000.00 (INCLUDES CRACK HOUSE)

my space has a last supper table complete with a jesus chair and 12 disciple chairs,church pews, a pulpit, revival lights, and real church chandeliers, and, of course,the ping pong table:

SISTER LOUISA'S ART GALLERY IN THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING ROOM AND PING PONG EMPORIUM...

Come On In, Precious....

Sister Louisa will be serving up some Spiritual Sangria:
December 6th & 7th, 2008 at
The 13th Annual Telephone Factory Art Show

828 Ralph McGill Boulevard NE, Loft 202
Atlanta, Georgia 30306

SCENE/ART: Outsider Art Auction (online 11/22)

My friend Jim once told me about a bear of a man living in the mountains of Tennessee who holds public auctions of outsider art. When pressed to regale me with one of his tall tales though, Jim merely points out that “Kimball Sterling is a big, big man with big, big thoughts and even bigger shoes. I saw him clog dance once...you do NOT want to be in the way.”

Sterling has gathered together all of the Southern Outsider “bigwigs” plus some of the "Wildest" art in one location that you will ever find for the auction he is holding in person and online tomorrow (11/22) @ 11AM (EST). The lot includes works by Mose Tolliver, Howard Finster, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, R.A. Miller, Purvis Young, Charlie Lucas, and many others, as well as a very large collection of Southern unknown vintage folk art boxes, lamps, rugs, quilts and more.

Kimball Sterling is considered one of the top three cane auctioneers in the world. Sterling, Inc. came up in the fields of antique cars, jukeboxes and memorabilia, and is now considered the premier auction house in America for Outsider, Folk and Appalachian art.

Unrelated but incidentally, the keepers of Finster’s flame held a grand opening of the Paradise Gardens Gallery on November 8 and are currently looking for volunteers and donations to help save World's Folk Art Chapel.