AVAM: American Visionary Art Museum - Perm Col Highlights

The American Visionary Art Museum is like no other museum in America.  Its collection takes the quaint notion of the untrained "primitive" artist and tosses in a range of issues around mental health and well-being.  It thrives on artists who are obsessive and compulsive in their pursuits either creatively or ideologically.   The art can be about a process or a product that promotes a profoundly held belief.  Sometimes it's about an experience, too.  A moment in time or an event that so dramatically scars the artist, they must spend the rest of their lives working out the meaning in search of respite.  You realize what might appear whimsical or kitschy holds, like an onion, many layers of representation.  This is a charming aspect of the art you experience at AVAM.  Most of it can be consumed at the level the viewer has capacity for and never leaves one feeling wanting.  

The first gallery, on the first floor, is dedicated to works from the permanent collection.  Most of these are "old friends" to me.  Let's start here.

 

In an alcove between the gallery's entrances a pair of sculptures and a pair of paintings by Jake "JT" McCord (1942- 2009).  McCord is a Black artist who grew up picking cotton and spent his life as a groundskeeper.  1984, he began painting after watching "some white ladies taking painting lessons at the Hawes Paint Store in Thomson, Georgia.  Today, the McDuffie Museum in Thomson curates and preserves his works for public viewing.

"USS LUSITANIA" by Wayne Kusy (1961 -      ).  This monumental sculpture is made entirely of flat-tipped toothpicks.  He first began building ships out of toothpicks in fifth grade.  Besides the Lusitania, Kusy have monumental models of the Queen Mary One and the Titanic.  When asked why, he replied, "It's a challenge.  There's a lot of people who like to climb mountains like Mount Everest...I choose to build models.  It's safer."

"Another Green World" by Johanna Burke (1972 -     ).  The exteriors are woven entirely of organic materials, bamboo, grasses, wheat, et. al.  These sculptures were created for display in Burgdorf Goodman's 2016 holiday windows.  Burke lives in Brooklyn and manages an artists collective dedicated to "natural elements, pattern and obsessive handicraft."

I confess, I failed to jot down notes on this bed.  Still, isn't it fun!?