Dave Malys
Submitted on 2009/01/15 at 10:41pm

I especially like Lake Chautauqua Ice Fishing decoys from Western New York. I have several good and better examples that are for sale, as well as looking to acquire more good examples for my own collection, Let me know if you have interest either way.

Ron Swanson
4:30 pm January 14, 2009

I am a fly fisherman and I like and collect trophy fish carvings. Am completing a book about them titled FISH MODELS, PLAQUES & EFFIGIES. I’m happy to blog with anyone about them.

Jim Wierzba
January 20, 2009

I look forward to a forum on fish carvings and fish spearing decoys as I collect both.  My tastes vary and always interested in discussing with others. Jim

WATER BOY
The Art and Life of Reverend Albert Lee Wagner

Edited by Gene & Linda Kangas

INTRODUCTION Excerpt from BOOK
by Linda Kangas

The emancipation of slaves following the end of the Civil War did not guarantee that insidious racism and bigotry were over, far from it. Southern blacks especially continued to suffer unspeakable intrusions into their everyday lives. Slavery was illegal but segregation was not. Voting and openly speaking one’s mind were not possible. Fear dictated how one acted and how one expressed him or herself. Southern black folk artists were acutely aware of the suffocating burden of these limitations, yet they bravely struggled to find a voice. To protect themselves and their families from potentially deadly reprisals, critical messages were necessarily disguised within their visual creations. Openly expressing ideas might be dangerous. Social commentary could have serious consequences. "Thornton Dial hid his work in the tool shed, he buried it in the backyard, he tore it up and made something else out of it. He was not hiding and recycling merely to appease Clara Mae (his wife). He knew somehow that whatever he was making could bring far more danger than a tongue-lashing from the wife. As his work became less practical and more aesthetic, it began to reveal Dial’s emotions about his plight and how the civil unrest around him, and these feelings — too dangerous to let escape his ever-closed mouth — now seeped from his whirring mind into his hands and out through metal and cement." (From The Last Folk Hero by Dietz p19) The "civil" war was not over. The struggle was just beginning.

As Albert Lee Wagner grew up in poverty stricken rural Arkansas, he heard horrific stories of atrocities dealt upon his people. Racism, rape, whippings and even murder were remembered as commonplace events. Unfortunately, such nightmarish memories were inescapable and were thus burned deep into his psyche to emerge much later as ingredients in his visual vocabulary. Basic life just prior to, during and following the Depression was extremely challenging for poor black folk; in 1941, Wagner and his family emigrated from desperate dead-end circumstances in rural Arkansas in search of better jobs and a new life in Ohio. The North, he pleasantly found, not only offered much better pay and greater opportunities but also previously unknown freedoms. Albert Wagner unexpectedly discovered that he could boldly speak his mind on any subject without fear of receiving a beating or worse, getting hung from a tree. Life was dramatically different in the North. Life was good. Albert Wagner was free to express his experiences and memories in any liberated manner he preferred. Freedom gave him permission to be brutally candid and affectionately picturesque. Freedom opened the exciting door to uncensored artistic expression. Freedom differentiates him from his Southern folk artist peers. Inhibiting social censorship and cultural repression were left miles behind.

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