Creekside Art Gallery Blog

What is happening?  Is the NYC market strong or suffering?   Are there crowds at the auctions and shows and gallery openings?  There are a lot of us who didn’t make it to New York City this month.  Some are watching the auction sales via the internet, others are getting some word-of-mouth feedback from those of you who are there. 

Christie’s and Sotheby’s, Doyle, Outsider Art Fair, Winter Antique Show, Antiques at the Armory, TAAS American Antiques Show, and the many galleries are a mecca every January.  What has been happening?

ONE BAD CAT - The Reverend Albert Wagner Story, the award winning film documentary by Thomas G. Miller and Tesseract Films of California premiered early in 2008.    It won Best Documentary at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the Roxanne T. Mueller Audience Choice Award for Best Film at the Cleveland International Film Festival. One Bad Cat toured U.S. film festivals from coast to coast for the past year.

Ovation TV, the cable network devoted to the arts, featuring programming on visual arts, theater, opera, music and dance, purchased ONE BAD CAT  and will  premiere the film on cable television Sunday February 1st and Thursday February 5th, 2009.

Two paintings by the Reverend Albert Wagner are included in the upcoming exhibition and catalog entitled Each In Their Own Voice:   African-American Artists in Cleveland 1970-2005.  

"Last Days with Albert" and "Moses and the Ten Commandments"  are two superb works by Wagner chosen to represent him along with the works of 23 other prominent African-American artists active in Cleveland during that time period.  This exhibition is a sequel to the previous Yet Still We Rise: African American Art in Cleveland 1920-1970.  

The exhibition will be held at the prestigious Cleveland State University Art Gallery, 2307 Chester Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio January 23-March 7, 2009.   Gallery information  216-687-2103.

Before he passed on, Albert Wagner donated his seminal painting "Flee from Egypt"  to the Permanent Collection of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.  "Flee from Egypt" was painted early in Reverend Albert’s career; and it remains his largest and most recognized canvas.  His portrait of Moses, with arms raised and outstretched, is the dominating central figure in Flee’s composition, populated with thousands of individuals who believe they are traveling to the Promised Land as they perilously cross the Red Sea that Moses has just parted. 

Albert’s daughter, Reverend Bonita Wagner Johnson, shares the story of Albert’s first brush strokes on the canvas of Flee.  He chose a large brush and dipped into his rich blue paint stroking broadly across the huge canvas.  Following that initial moment and before their eyes that first brush stroke turned from blue to red.

A major Gus Wilson retrospective exhibition of his diverse carvings is in the  preliminary planning stages. The exhibit is being organized by Gene Kangas and John Dinan in conjunction with a Maine museum. The exact place and time is yet to be determined. Your participation is welcomed. Please email either Kangas or Dinan digital photos of Gus Wilson’s decoys as well as his bird and animal carvings in your collection. The organizers are especially interested in learning of previously unpublished and undocumented examples as a first step in surveying the range of images created by Gus Wilson during his lengthy career. Contact Gene Kangas at Kangas@CreeksideArtGallery.com or John Dinan at captdinan@yahoo.com.

"F for FAKE" is a film hosted by Orson Wells (Ovation Cable programing January 2009) on the career of the infamous  El Mir, the peerless counterfeiter of great artists’ paintings.  In the film, El Mir questioned the "expertise of the experts" since time after time no "expert" could tell the authentic from the  El Mir.

FACT:  One of the early forgers of artistic works was, Michelangelo himself.  Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni^[1] (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer. (Wikipedia) 

THE PROBLEM WITH FAKES: Collectors and museum personnel have mutual interests in identifying fakes and misrepresentations.  Have any of you had experiences that you would like to share with others in an exchange of information of these topics? How do fakes affect authentic artifacts? Do fakes influence the monetary value of an entire field? How can fakes be detected? These problems are not recent. They have been going on for hundreds of years in all aspects of life – from currency to designer goods to antiques.

For example, when a significant number of fake Oscar Peterson fish decoys entered the collecting community quite a number of years ago, collector confidence in the veracity of all vintage fish decoys was shaken. Prices plummeted. Various people lost significant amounts of money. Criminal fraud was perpetrated. As a result, it has taken years for the field to begin recovering. How can real Oscar Peterson fish decoys be differentiated from fakes? 

How can fakes or misrepresentations be identified?

In your experience, how dangerous are fakes?

FOLK ART.  For the vast majority of time that humans have been on Earth, they have left evidence of their amazing creativity.  The rich arts and crafts of early humans continue to tell us much about their evolving lives. Prehistoric cave paintings and stone monuments, bone carved implements and children’s toys are some of this creativity still in evidence today.  Early tools invented by man over 2,000 years ago include fish and duck hunting decoys.  The usage of these sometimes artistic hunting devices has been handed down through the generations.

More recently institutions were established which began teaching the fundamentals of ART. Always questioning "what is art?"  As a result, academics also began distinguishing between Fine Art with a capital "A"  and the  more recently defined Folk Art.  In simplistic terms, Folk Art refers to the creative efforts of people lacking formal art education.  And more recently further distinctions or classifications have been argued that suggest sub-dividing Folk Art into numerous segregated categories such as "grass roots," "outsider," "art brut," and "intuitive" art.  At any rate, the Folk Arts in its many forms and considerations generates loads of casual conversations as well as serious dialog.

Creekside Art Gallery has specialized for decades in both Fine Art work, as Gene is a practicing artist and retired art professor, and Folk Art in our collecting, research, and writing.  Gene Kangas’ public sculptures, functional woodturning and wood sculpture, and his various Digital Print Series are highlighted at CreeksideArtGallery.com.   Our love of the FOLK ARTS run through the entire site CreeksideArtGallery.com. 

We started collecting wood molds over fifteen years ago when we first saw them at the Bouckville Antiques Fair in mid New York State, and later at Brimfield and in New York City.  We have never stopped.  There are images that appeal to most every person, some fit right into existing types of collections, many are holiday oriented, and some very special ones are knock-out sculptures that transcend the everyday appeal of the  takaan. AND, they are very affordable.

Following the purchase of an early Augustus "Gus" Wilson old squaw from the November 7-8, 2007 Guyette & Schmidt decoy auction in Easton, Maryland, we thought it would be an interesting exercise to examine the historical provenance of this rare decoy. This decision was influenced by the fact that we were aware of several prior ownerships not listed or identified in the auction catalog. Curiously, only one previous owner was mentioned, although additional data was readily available.

Usually the consignor provides the pertinent information that establishes the provenance to an auction house. According to Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia, provenance is defined as "the origin or source from which something comes, and it can and should include the history of subsequent owners (also known in some fields as chain of custody). The term is also used in the sense of place and time of creation, production or discovery.

"The provenance of works of fine art, antiques and antiquities often assumes great importance. Documented evidence of provenance for an object can help establish that it is original, has not been altered and is not a forgery, reproduction, or stolen or looted art. The quality of provenance of an important artwork can make a considerable difference to its market value; this is affected by the degree of certainty of the provenance and the collective status of past owners as knowledgeable collectors. Provenance of a work of art may be recorded in various forms depending on context or the amount of information that is known, from a single name to a scholarly notation several thousand words long." More »

 When people first began to paint and sculpt, they portrayed those things around them that had very special significance. Tens of thousands of years ago they enlivened the hidden walls of their protective caves with impressions of magical four-footed animals. Once dark galleries in the earth were transformed into places of wonderment, which continue to intrigue us today. Now visitors go to experience the total environments, to think about the people who created them, and to time travel. Mental images link us with others like ourselves, who also required the same daily essentials of food, drink, and sleep. Like us, they dreamed, loved, laughed, and wept. Like the animals, they also migrated. And, when afforded the leisure opportunity to collect their thoughts, some chose to record personal experiences, inventing methods for that purpose. They made art and enriched lives. More »

1800 Years of Paper Mache History

An insatiable European appetite and search for new and innovative art and decoration enthusiastically embraced the adoption of paper mache as an expressive material. Hardened paper became an inexpensive substitute for wood; and, it was just as easily polychromed and gilded. In the 17^th century, strong markets for paper mache products existed in both England and France. During that period, English artisans experimented with paper mache to produce various types of furniture as well as dimensional embellishments for application to architecture. By 1750, English paper-ware factories were busy keeping up with the demand. George Jackson is recognized as one of the first Englishmen (circa 1756) to carve boxwood molds to manufacture paper mache forms; his were concave or carved in reverse to receive wet pulp. About that time "japanning" became popular. It was a highly decorative painting technique which also helped strengthen and preserve paper objets d’art. Then Germany in the 18^th century and Russia in the first half of the 19^th century became active manufacturers and consumers of a wide assortment of paper mache items. One example of the high level of acceptance and respect for quality paper mache is illustrated by the English firm of Jennens and Bettridge’s gift of a set of elaborately decorated trays to Queen Victoria as a wedding present in 1840. Queen Mary was an active collector of paper mache objects, later donating them to several museums. Her Majesty the Queen of Spain was another Jennens and Bettridge client as were English Kings George IV and William IV. The Great English Exhibition of 1851 featured a tremendous diversity of fanciful paper mache items including an entire suite of furniture. Such works often reflected existing interests in Far Eastern decorative arts. More »