Welcome to the World of Mr. Imagination; essay by Martha Henry (original) (raw)

Editor's note: The following essay was reprinted in Resource Library on March 19, 2015 with the permission of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. If you have questions or comments regarding the text or images accompanying the text, please contact Intuit directly through either this phone number or web address:

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Welcome to the World of Mr. Imagination

by Martha Henry

"AS I CREATE MY ART, I FEEL THAT I'M IN MY SPECIAL WORLD, THE WORLD OF MR. IMAGINATION."

Welcome to the World of Mr. Imagination," a hand-painted sign above the entrance to the artist's studio, greeted visitors who were typically unprepared for the shock of their first encounter with the vast amounts of art inside Mr. Imagination's home. Whether with astonishment or claustrophobia, the visitor's senses were overpowered. Accustomed to making studio visits in clean white industrial lofts, my first experience inside his home was unforgettable and no different from other visitors'. I took a bus from New York City to Bethlehem, Penn., to meet the artist at the suggestion of his Chicago dealer, Carl Hammer. I entered a dimly lit living room overflowing with so much art I hesitated to venture further inside. Peering into the room, I beheld a treasure trove of Mr. Imagination's creations. The walls were lined with archaic-looking sandstone carvings and paint brush people, many bearing his likeness, along with a few paintings and signs warning, "NO PHOTOS". Mysterious faces stared blankly from shadow boxes covered in shiny bottle caps. Large metal fish and dragonflies were suspended from the ceiling above small wire dresses on the staircase. The room was packed with multi-headed totems ; a button-covered tree; painted plaster statues of city folk; an odd assortment of bottle cap bugs, turtles and fish; and even a bottle cap horse with Mr. Imagination's face. In the center stood a majestic throne upholstered in plush red velvet, its back made entirely of bottle caps shaped like a cobra-hooded falcon. Mr. Imagination met me at the stairs. There was no room to sit, because his dog, Pharaoh, and one of his many cats occupied any available seat. So we talked for a while on his front porch as a friendly parade of passersby hailed him. He answered in a soft-spoken voice, and his manner was playful and lightly flirtatious. Clearly he was an important personage in the neighborhood. I was grateful for our leisurely time outside. I needed to acclimate myself after the dizzy sensation in his
studio, until I was ready to immerse myself in the fantastic world of Mr. Imagination.

Mr. Imagination's world was a hive of non-stop creativity and a welcome meeting place for artists, collectors and friends who dropped in unannounced day and night. To the outsider it may have looked chaotic, but, on the contrary, the artist had organized work stations, storage and a few living areas. His living space was always threatened to be overtaken by his art and collections. Mr. Imagination said, "I guess my home is a place where I can work anywhere....So sometimes I can't even get to my stove.''[1] Nevertheless, it was a suitable arrangement for an artist who worked on many pieces simultaneously 24 hours a day. As he slept, many of his ideas and techniques came to him in dreams.

In addition to thousands of pieces of his own extraordinary artworks, his house stored his many personal collections of art, photography, toys, books and history. He wanted to preserve them alongside his own artworks in a museum. Imagine the surprise of opening a door and discovering you could not enter a room, because it was packed to the ceiling with dolls. Mr. Imagination said," I feel at peace here at home with all my art work and all the other art work by so many other artists -- both self-taught and those who went to school....And at home I feel the spirits of all artists, even those who are no longer on this earth. That's why when people walk into my house they feel great and full with these spirits."[2] Mr.Imagination described his home as "a huge time capsule."[3] The regal connotations and references to other cultures in his art gave it "the feeling of being both ancient and timeless."[4] To the artist the passage of time wasn't chronological either: Past and present were the same. He lived and created in a meditative space of no time. When he did mark time it was determined by personal tragedies that divided his life into "before" and "after".

Born Gregory Warmack on March 30, 1948, in Maywood, Ill., a small African American community on Chicago's west side, he was the third of nine children and raised by his mother Margaret in a traditional Baptist home. She taught her children how to sing, and the family performed around Chicago as "The Warmack Singers." In the early 1960s the family relocated to Chicago's south side. Greg was sensitive and prone to seizures. He was bullied for carrying his Bible to school, so his mother withdrew him in the 9th grade. He was also artistic and credits his mother for encouraging him: "I knew I was an artist when I was real, real young. I don't really remember when I started drawing and making things, but it just seems like I was always doing it."[5]He painted religious subjects and signs, eventually receiving commissions from his church. By the time Greg was in his teens, he was on the street selling his handmade jewelry, carved wooden faces and painted rocks. After six years of working on his art, Warmack was ready to go "public." In spring 1978, he marched into a local newspaper office, with samples, to seek publicity for his jewelry. He was still living in his mother's overcrowded home, but he had already made a mini-museum of his art and collectibles. In the newspaper article that followed, Warmack announced his dream to sell enough jewelry to build an art center for black youths. He also had the prescient confidence to announce that "one day, the public and the nation will know about the work I'm doing."[6]Later that summer Warmack was robbed, shot in the stomach and left to die. While the surgeons operated, Warmack had an out-of-body experience in which he traveled through a tunnel of bright light. He would remain in a coma for six weeks. A myth arose that while Warmack was in the coma, he time-traveled to ancient Egyptian and African kingdoms and saw that he would become a world-famous artist. He acknowledged he had had a vision but that it was before the shooting. He glimpsed himself in a mirror dressed like an African king, prefiguring his artistic theme of self- deification. Furthermore, Warmack had always believed in his artistic gift. Like many survivors, his near death experience made him acutely aware of his mortality and propelled him into a fever of creativity and essentially reaffirmed that he had "special things to do."[7]

After a slow recovery Warmack started to make art again and to conduct children's workshops in a vacant lot. One day he saw a truck dumping industrial sandstone. Curious, he brought a few chunks back to his outdoor studio. Warmack was making cardboard houses and thought sprinkling sand on the roof would look more realistic. He noticed the stones forming shapes when he rubbed them together." I took a nail and carved my initials into one and realized that I was holding free art material in my hands...l knew I had found gold."[8] Obsessed with his new medium, he carved hundreds of sculptures evocative of an ancient past. While carving, "I would start seeing my own face and lots of other faces and images in the sandstone. It was like the images were there before I even started carving them, and it was up to me to remove the sand from around their faces. And this feeling would hit me that was like the feeling I had when I looked in the mirror and saw myself as a king, or when I was traveling back in the past in my coma. And it seemed like all these things I was seeing were connected to ancient civilizations. It's really hard to explain it, but it was as if all these images were coming out of the same place I had gone to when I was in a coma. I can't explain it in words. I can only explain it with my art."[9] Around 1980 Warmack began to call himself "Mr. Imagination" after someone told him he "had a wild imagination."[10] Friends referred to him as "Mr. I", and he appropriated the cosmic eye as his personal emblem with the catchy slogan, "The eye stands for Mr. Imagination.".

According to Warmack, "The eye represents the ability to see things within other things."[11] What's more the eye symbol neatly synchronized his developing personal mythos with Egyptian mythology. The eye of the falcon god Horus symbolized sacrifice, healing and protection. It was not a passive organ of sight but an agent of action. In fact, its hieroglyph means "to make or do" or "one who does.[12] It was the perfect symbol for an artist who was beginning to get "a better perspective of my place in the world." [13]

Mr. Imagination also began to invent his distinctive persona of a beneficent and visionary ruler, certainly a performance equal to the best of his creations. A decade later his concept would mature when he discovered new materials -- bottle caps fashioned into richly decorated thrones, staffs, clothing and jewelry, and paint brushes transformed into a kingdom of self-portraits and other characters. Dressed in full bottle cap regalia, Mr. Imagination entertained people and enjoyed the attention. One of his artistic goals was "to make people happy" and to heal them.[14] Sitting on Mr. Imagination's throne, wearing his hat and holding his staff, one felt like a king or queen, if only for a moment. Mr. Imagination's regal persona was "a means of delivering messages of self-empowerment, cultural pride, and the ability of art to transform lives."[15] Furthermore "his image of Egypt was subjective and metaphysical, and it played a significant role in the development of his sense of integrity and self-worth as an artist and an African American."[16]

In early 1982, Mr. Imagination found a studio on Union and 58th Street, but, before he could move in, his old studio was destroyed by fire. What was left of his artwork was either burnt, wet or stolen by neighbors. He salvaged what he could and moved into his new studio. "I had a red carpet on the dining room floor in the new place and surrounding that I made an altar. I collected lots of bricks and laid them down to make a long aisle and then I laid all my work on that red carpet. I had lots of sandstone l1eads. All these pieces were set up in the dining room at my new apartment, and I had a sign just inside the door that said 'Welcome to the World of Mr. Imagination'."[17] Mr. Imagination resumed his efforts to gain artistic recognition. Advised by a friend, he contacted Carl Hammer, a local art dealer. Hammer was moved by his work, especially the fire damaged sandstone carvings. He bought a few pieces and, more important, offered to give him a show. Mr. Imagination's work first appeared at the Carl Hammer Gallery in October 1983. Hammer and his staff continued to support Mr. l's career as he experimented with new materials and matured as an artist; over the next 20 years the Carl Hammer Gallery exhibited Mr. l's work in more than a dozen solo and group shows and also supported his early public art projects. The association with Hammer's gallery led to his inclusion in museum exhibitions tl1at advanced his national reputation. By the mid-1990s, the artist's calendar was steadily booked with exhibitions, workshops and lectures. Despite his success, Mr. Imagination never stopped selling on the street or from his studio.

Visiting artist fees and sales from both the art world and the street earned Mr. Imagination enough money to move to a five-room apartment overlooking the el train on Clark and Roscoe in 1985. He liked the old building because it had history, and he liked the hip, stimulating neighborhood. Moreover, it had a huge basement where he could carve sandstone and store his collections. In the back of the apartment he made a salon for relaxation, a shrine and a museum of other artists. Mr. Imagination worked and slept in the front room because he used his bedroom as a supply room. As Mr. Imagination honed his art, something fortuitous happened. Lisa Stone, then director of Carl Hammer Gallery, was moving in 1988, and she gave the artist her brother's collection of bottle caps. "The first thing I did with the bottle caps Lisa gave me was to make a coat out of them for a Halloween party," he recalled. "Then I made a bottle cap hat and a bottle cap mask and a bottle cap staff, and I wore them all to this party, and there were prizes for the best costume. And you know what? I won the first prize for my bottle cap costume."[18] Discovering new ways to work this abundantly free material, bottle cap furniture and sculpture quickly followed and became very elaborate as he added more and more caps. Tile repetition relaxed him while the steady rhythm of pounding nails became his meditation. About a year later, Mr. Imagination discovered another material, used paint brushes. He saw a vision of a face on one of the brushes, so he took plaster of Paris, paint and made a face on it. As with sandstone and bottle caps, he became obsessed and began his "Paint Brush People" series. The brushes formed tile hair and the handles were the bodies. The faces were either self-portraits wearing bejeweled crowns or local characters. The brush shapes suggested urban hair styles from the street or from African barbershop signs collected by the artist.

At the end of 1992, Mr. Imagination began another series of "Totem Poles", which were "multiple variations on tile regal-looking self-portrait image seen in his paint brush and sandstone pieces stacked on top of each other."[19] Tiles were constructed of cardboard shipping cylinders ranging from three to nine feet high to which he applied plaster and attached bottle caps and other found objects. The supply of materials was as endless and varied as the artist's gift of invention.

The nineties were a period of intense artistic activity for Mr. I. Aside from a full exhibition and lecture schedule; he began an important public art career that continued throughout his life. Again, Lisa Stone played a significant role. As an art historian she was researching religious grotto architecture of artist-builders in the upper Midwest, and she invited Mr. Imagination to join a class field trip. He was "electrified and excited" by his visit to Dickeyville, Wis., and other environments and inspired to build his own grottos. [20] The opportunity came in 1995 m when Jerry Adelmann, of the conservation group Openlands Project, commissioned him to build a grotto next to the Elliott Donnelly Youth Center on Michigan Avenue and 39th Street. Mr. Imagination built a 12-foot circular-shaped concrete dome with four openings guarded by angels and Egyptian figures. Its inner walls were covered with shells, fossils, stones and children's handprints. A time capsule, containing letters from children to the children of the future, was buried beneath the cement floor. People felt peaceful when entering tile grotto, so Mr. Imagination titled the work "Meditation."

Mr. Imagination mastered working with concrete as quickly as he had other mediums. He said, "In my dreams I was given lessons on how to create the grotto," though he also consulted with a builder and worked with concrete artist Phil Schuster.[21] Mr. Imagination incorporated familiar grotto construction such as an "artificial mountain form with interior cave-like space."[22] He embellished with stones, glass, shells and objects donated by the community. Embedding personal mementos "forged countless personal links between the grotto and community, imbuing the grotto with a fundamentally collective spirit and infusing its surfaces with a precious quality because it was indigenous" -- was an enormously appealing concept.[23] Furthermore, the artist's process was as "organic, flowing, natural, evolving with unique unpredictability" as the organic growth of grotto architecture.[24] Mr. Imagination recognized a sacred endeavor in the artist-builders' work, which dovetailed with his own practice.

Many commissions for public art works followed "Meditation Grotto." Using techniques he developed from his exposure to traditional grotto architecture, Mr. Imagination expanded his grotto work to include memory walls, arches, benches, urns, facades and installations. These were commissioned by universities, cities, corporations and private individuals including: House of Blues (Chicago, Orlando, Las Vegas and Houston), Lehigh University, Winston-Salem University, Chicago Children's Museum, Disney World, Hannibal Square and Banana Factory, among others.

The new century opened another chapter in Mr. Imagination's life when he was invited to visit Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania, by Norman Girardot, Professor of Religious Studies. The university commissioned him to build "Millennial Folk Arch" and gave him an exhibition followed by other shows and public art commissions in the area. Realizing that he could support himself, and enjoying life as a member of a community of artists and students, in 2002 he traded Chicago for peaceful small town life in Bethlehem. He was tired of paying high rent for a cramped dilapidated Chicago apartment. He was afraid of crime and still affected by the accidental death, in his home, of his troubled artist brother William five years earlier. So in Bethlehem he rented a cheaper three-story corner row house with a yard, where he could garden and work outside. The Lehigh Valley was a thriving art community because of its proximity to New York and other Northeast cities. Mr. Imagination's career flourished with retrospectives and his first solo show in a New York gallery.

The change of scene imparted a sense of freedom reflected in the titles of Mr. Imagination's new work. He created a series of "Flying Fish" from a gift of antique roofing tin via a technique given to him in a dream in which he said he was shown "how to work with the tin, cut and bend it, and how to stitch the tin with wire. It's like sewing."[25] The rusting metal "seemed to come straight from the recent industrial past of his new home in Bethlehem."[26]

With plaster and found wood he began an animated series of African American statues "bristling with energy and urban attitude.''[27] An important series originated when Diane LaBelle, then director of GoggleWorks, visited while he was making a dress from wire mesh for a statue of a little girl. In an interview with Girardot, he recalled that, "Diane saw it before I got a chance to put the plaster on and she said she liked it. She said, 'Why don't you leave it that way?' And I did, and you said it was like a minimalist sculpture. I've done a lot of them now, big and small, and right now I'm doing a ball gown."[28] He called them "Dancing Dresses", mounting some on springy metal rods. Mr. Imagination described them as "empty" works, but Girardot observed, ''There's a body present which is as real and tangible as either plaster or flesh."[29] He also stitched together wire mesh sunglasses, shoes, guitars and a prototype for an unrealized series of "Invisible Men". His garden inspired a group of cheeky insects and reptiles, and he developed a series of nail and plaster "Fetish Heads". Reflecting on the change in his art, Mr. Imagination said, "I think what made the work change is that life is all about change. Earlier I was doing pieces that were kind of stiff, but now they have more movement. My figures are more alive."[30]

Life abruptly changed in January 2008 when a fire destroyed Mr. Imagination's Bethlehem home, art, collections, and killed his beloved dog and cats. In shock he removed the charred and frozen bodies of his pets and salvaged his burnt art and supplies. Losing his life's work was devastating. Having already endured more than his fair share of traumas, he was provoked to ask, "Why do people who have a very special gift go through so much?"[31] He moved into another house in Bethlehem but remained in a deep depression unable to work for a year. Then Chicago collectors Phil and Gerri Wicklander sent him some old printer's wood type and commissioned him to do a life-sized self-portrait, which he titled "The Printer (After the Fire)". He made emotional paintings and other statues about the fire, and began a new art environment, but he never felt comfortable in Bethlehem again.

In spring 2009 Mr. Imagination bought a property in northwest Atlanta with the vision of turning it into his long cherished dream of an art center. He envisioned "it would be like a grotto and on the outside you could walk through a gazebo building where you could go in and meditate and where there would be lots of angels."[32] However, the house was in a low-lying area, frequently flooded and was uninhabitable. His friend Keith Sharp gave him an empty house nearby, and before long Mr. Imagination began working on a new environment. His neighborhood was surrounded by woods to which he responded by carving wooden canes, birds and schools of fish. Ready for a new start, he was certain that Atlanta's rising phoenix symbol of the Civil War was "a sign" that "Mr. I is about to rise."[33] He wanted the world to know he was not defeated by tragedy, and he was making art again.

Vital to his healing process was the "Burnt Work" series of sculptures that incorporated burnt art into new objects. He first showed these at Barbara Archer Gallery in 2011 and said, "I think it is important for everyone to see how the fire had transformed my work. It took me a long time, maybe over two years, to get used to seeing the burnt work. I feel that the burnt work is part of my past and a new beginning."[34] In their unrestored state, the burnt pieces shared affinities with West African Art. Stripped of their color and cheerful shiny surfaces, their newly somber appearance is as timeless as Mr. Imagination's original vision when he tapped into the spirits of his ancestors and the spirit worlds of all cultures.

Mr. Imagination devoted a lot of time to an ongoing project in his front yard: "The Garden of Peace". A concrete angel of the artist presided over a serene park of winding shell-lined paths around patches of flowering shrubs, giant cactus, upended roots and bottle trees. He created urns, a bench and bird bath from embellished concrete. In addition to utilizing his knowledge of grotto architecture, he drew upon Black Atlantic visual practices he had seen in the South to create his root sculptures and bottle trees. Like the grotto builders, who "intended to enhance their landscape with cultural treasures," Mr. Imagination's garden was such a gift.[35]

In 2011, Mr. Imagination was invited by the American Folk Art Museum to exhibit along with three other African American self-taught artists, Lonnie Holley, Charlie Lucas and Kevin Sampson, during the 54th Venice Biennale. This was an important opportunity to participate in a broader contemporary art dialogue on an international stage. His recycling practice was in synch with Eco-Art while his celebrity posing and community engagement were performative actions. Unexpectedly the exhibition was cancelled shortly before it was scheduled to open. It was another crushing blow, compounded by a car accident that injured his hip. Nevertheless, Mr. Imagination resolved to go to Venice with the other artists to create something. He packed wire mesh and made "Ghost Dress", which was shown in Venice and later Torino. Returning home, Mr. Imagination continued to work on his art and garden. With several museum shows planned and a commission to design a garden in a neighborhood park, it was a heart breaking loss when he succumbed at age 64 to a massive blood infection in an Atlanta hospice on May 30, 2012.

Mr. Imagination was a messenger who preached that the power of art could transform lives and transcend adversity. He believed everyone could be an artist by simply using their imagination. He lived by example, creating a world where art and artist were inseparable. The many self-likenesses in his art were more than an exploration and deification of self but an affirmation of a spiritual belief that we are one. "My art helps to recycle the past. It helps us to remember and imagine who we are and where we came from."·[36]

1. Norman Girardot. ·At Home Then and Now With Mr. lmagination In Elsewhere - The International Journal of Self-Tought and Outsider Art. (Rozelle. Australia: University of Sydney. Issue 1, August 2013). p. 15.

2 Ibid.

3 Cheryl Hamacia in Extreme Homes, HGTV. Filmed studio visit with Mr. Imagination in Chicago. circa 1993. hereafter referred to as Hamada. HGTV, circa 1993.

4 Richard A Webster. Mr. Imagination in Raw Vision (Watford, U of I(: #24, Fall 1998). p. 24.

5 Tom Patterson. Manifesting the World of Mr. Imagination in Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists (Chicago, IL Terra Museum of American Art. 1993). p. 37. Hereafter referred to as Patterson. Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists. 1993.

6 Wilma Randle. "Young Man in Search of a Dream" in Chicago Independent Bulletin (Chicago: June 8. 1978), p. 5.

7 Patterson. Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists. 1993. p. 49.

8 Richard A. Webster. "Welcome to the World or Mr. Imagination in Chicago Social (Chicago. December 1996). p. 48. Hereafter referred 10 as Webster. Welcome to the World of Mr. Imagination. 1996.

9 Patterson. Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists. 1993. p.41.

10 Patterson. Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists. 1993. p.42.

11 Diane LaBelle. The Eye Stands for Mr. Imagination. (Bethlehem, Penn., Banana Factory, 2000). Hereafter referred to as LaBelle. The Eye Stands for Mr. Imagination, 2000.

12 Edward P. Butler. "Wadjet" in Goddesses and Gods of the Ancient Egyptians: A Theological Encyclopedia.

13 Diane LaBelle. The Eye Stands for Mr. Imagination. (Bethlehem, Penn., Banana Factory, 2000).

14 Patterson. Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists. 1993. p.43.

15 Hipolito Rafael Chacon. Egypt and Self-Mythification in the Art of Mr. Imagination (Folk Art, Summer 1998). p. 40. Hereafter referred to as Chacon, Egypt and Self-Mythification in the Art of Mr. Imagination, 1998.

16 Chacon, Egypt and Self-Mythification in the Art of Mr. Imagination, 1998.

17 Patterson. Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists. 1993. p.44.

18 Patterson. Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists. 1993. p.45.

19 Ibid. P. 47.

20 Lisa Stone, in conversation with the author, Chicago, July 2014.

21 Webster. Welcome to the World of Mr. Imagination. 1996. p. 49.

22 Lisa Stone. "In Imitation or Nature: The Midwestern Grotto Environment in Sacred Spaces and Other Places. 1991, p. 27.

23 Lisa Stone. "Father Mathias H. Wernerus and the Dickeyville Grotto." From in Sacred Spaces and Other Places. 1991. p. 37-38.

24 Carl Hammer. Mr. Imagination, A Wall for Humanity's Hands and Spirit (Chicago, Carl Hammer Gallery. 1999). p. 2.

25 Norman Girardot. Art/Life/Spirit At Home with Mr. Imagination (Reading, Penn: Goggle Works Center for the Arts, 2007) p. 5, hereafter referred to as Girardot, Art/Life/Spirit At Home with Mr. Imagination, 2007.

26 Gregory LaBelle-Heller. Art/Life/Spirit At Home with Mr. Imagination (Reading, Penn: Goggle Works Center for the Arts, 2007) p. 10

27 Norman Girardot. "Mr. Imagination Moves On," Envision, September 2004, hereafter referred to as Girardot, Envision, 2004.

28 Giradot, Art/Life/Spirit at Home with Mr. Imagination, 2007, p. 5.

29 Giradot, Envision, 2004.

30 Giradot, Art/Life/Spirit at Home with Mr. Imagination, 2007, p. 5.

31 Ramona Austin "Fire and Redemption" in Raw Vision (Waterford, UK: Fall/Autumn 2012), p. 23, hereafter referred to as Austin, Raw Vision, 2012.

32 Giradot, Art/Life/Spirit at Home with Mr. Imagination, 2007, p. 5.

33 Eileen Drennen. "Mr. Imagination is 'about to rise'" in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta: Feb 27, 2011), p. E3

34 Austin, Raw Vision, 2012, p. 23.

35 Lisa Stone. "Father Philip J. Wagner, Edmund Rybicki and The Rudolph Grotto" in Sacred Spaces and Other Places, 1991, p. 54

36 Giradot, Art/Life/Spirit at Home with Mr. Imagination, 2007, p. 4.

About the author

Martha Henry is President, Martha Henry, Inc. Fine Art, New York, New York.

About the exhibition

Welcome to the World of Mr. Imagination is on display from January 9 to April 25, 2015 at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. The exhibit is curated by Martha Henry.

Resource Library editor's note:

The above essay was reprinted in _Resource Library_on March 19, 2015 with permission of Intuit, which was granted to TFAO on March 19, 2015.

Resource Library wishes to extend appreciation to Debra Kerr, Executive Director, and Amelia Zimet, Archivist, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, for their help concerning permission for publishing the above essay. Photographs are courtesy of Intuit.

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