My website detour art.com is dedicated to the sheer joy of outsider, folk, visionary, self-taught, vernacular art and environment discoveries found all along the back roads (and side streets) around the world. Here are some of the highlights from the travels.
Totem Pole Park – Ed Galloway Hwy 28A Foyil, OK 918-342-9149 Website Sculpture environment In the 1920s and 1930s, Ed taught industrial arts at a nearby state school. But by 1937, in his off-hours, using a lot of concrete and even more ingenuity, he built…
Boyer Museum – Paul Boyer 1930 — 1205 M Street Belleville, KS 785-527-5884 Website Mechanical sculptures Mechanical sculptor Paul Boyer was born in 1930, in Aurora, Kansas. He has no formal training in art or engineering, in fact he only has a 4th grade education,…
Art Field – Myron “M.T.” Liggett 1930 — 119 N Cherry Mullinville, KS 620-548-2597 Sculpture environment Built: 1989-present “I say what I want to say, and I piss a lot of people off.” M. T. Liggett was born into a sharecropping family in tiny Mullinville,…
Some of my favorites haunts in Austin are on South Congress. If you are at SXSW, just walk across the bridge … Yard Dog Gallery 1510 S. Congress Ave. Austin, TX 512-912-1613 website Outsider art gallery Yard Dog Gallery opened in 1995, with its roots…
Cathedral of Junk – Vince Hannemann 4422 Lareina Drive Austin, TX (512) 299-7413 Sculpture environment By appointment only At one point in the 1990s, Vince Hanneman was in charge of the city’s recycling program. And it worked out really well, because he could bring home…
Garden of Eden — S.P. Dinsmoor 305 E 2nd St Lucas, KS Folk art environment masterpiece, Concrete Built: 1905-1927 The Garden of Eden is the oldest complete self-taught artist environment in the United States, creating a folk art epicenter in this rural Kansas town. In…
Watts Towers – Sabatino (Simon, Sam) Rodia 1879–1965 1765 East 107th St Los Angeles, CA Mosaic environment Built: c. 1921-1954 “I had it in my mind to do something big and I did.” – Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk…
Garden of Salvation – Kenny Hill 5337 Bayouside Drive Chauvin, LA 985-594-2546 Concrete environment Restored/preserved – Open to the public Other than the fact that Kenny Hill was a bricklayer, little is known about his life. One day in 1990, on a rented piece of…
Dr. Charles Smith’s Folk Art Emporium 1940 — 800 E. Illinois Ave Hammond, LA 70403 Environment Built: 1986 – 2001 (Aurora, IL) , 2002 – Current (Hammond, LA) In 1986, in the yard of his small home on the east side of Aurora, Dr. Charles…
Isaiah Zagar Artists dates unknown 1020 South Street Philadelphia, PA Mosiac environment Jawdropping good stuff everywhere you turn is how I’d describe what Isaiah’s tile work. Because there’s so much of it and it’s so damned beautiful. He’s been doing mosaics on and inside buildings…