Julie Ann Grimm | The New Mexican 3/16/2008 – 3/17/
08
The term “outsider art” does not begin to describe what’s on display at Tiny Town. Even so, the roadside attraction just north of Madrid just isn’t what it used to be. Wind, weather, sun and the passing of time have turned the one-time sea of broken glass and artfully arranged bones into ramshackle, dilapidated outdoor display.
Now the mayor of Tiny Town is moving on.
Artist Tammy Jean Lange has been called a visionary and a “human firecracker” as well as a local icon in so-called outsider art, using roadkill, rusted objects and broken toys as her media. A discarded cigarette machine, rust-red iron cookstove, set of putt-put clubs and dozens of partially clothed dolls are among the current occupants.
“If it isn’t dead, broken or rusted, I just can’t use it,” Lange said during an interview at Tiny Town, where she stood in stockinged feet on the bare ground, sipping an icy beverage in the afternoon. “It’s ‘Better Bones and Gardens,’ Mother Nature’s natural art.”
Lange does not pay rent to use the 1 acre site, and over the last four years has done less and less to keep the place looking like the small wonder that it used to be, said longtime benefactor Bille Russell. Russell has for more than a decade allowed Lange to set up her found art on about an acre of her 112-acre Lodestar Ranch.
When Lange, 49, also known as Tatt2 Tammy, started using the area as her primary residence and drifted away from what Russell called “brilliant things,” Russell said she reluctantly took steps to change the situation.
“I think her art has a right to exist,” said Russell, who met Lange when a friend helped get her art into the Mineshaft Tavern gift shop. “So the initial deal was that Tiny Town could be there and she could work there, but she could not live there.”
Russell said she was worn down by neighboring landowners who called the project an eyesore and wanted it cleaned up. “It had its peaks, but in four years it’s taken quite a dive,” she said. “It became more like a dump instead of her working her art.” Although she’s requiring Lange to move out and dispose of piles of debris that have grown up outside the fence that marks the borders of Tiny Town, Russell said the artwork is welcome to stay and Lange is welcome to keep working on it. read more…