A café at the back of the show floor provided sustenance and libations for exhibitors and patrons throughout the run of the show.
Review & Onsite Photos by Madelia Hickman Ring
NEW YORK CITY — From February 29 through March 3, Manhattan’s Metropolitan Pavilion played host to more than 60 dealers from around the world in the Outsider Art Fair (OAF), which was celebrating its 32nd edition. Works that spanned all manner of media were on view and represented self-taught and naïve artists, or those working outside of conventional art traditions, from living and “emerging” artists to blue-chip Outsider Old Masters whose work helped establish the field now more than 50 years ago. Frieze Los Angeles, which also took place February 29-March 3, draws some of the same audience and some of the OAF exhibitors commented the overlap may have impacted sales at OAF.
Prior to the show, OAF owner Andrew Edlin remarked, “We’re getting so psyched about this edition — hard to believe its our 32nd year! With the 50-year milestone for Creative Growth, the Beat Poets, and the slew of never-seen-before art that OAF is famous for, we plan on delivering the magic our fans have come to expect. Mix into the brew the canonical names that our hardcore veteran dealers always show up with, and the result is a fair unlike any other.”
Antiques and The Arts Weekly spoke with Edlin a week after the show closed. “I feel great. This year, there was something very special about the vibe. It was kind of electric, kind of joyful. People who like this stuff are kindred spirits, liking things on the fringe, things coming out of workshops or weird Americana. It was great to have Jerry Saltz — who has always been a great supporter — come through and encourage people to visit the fair.”
OAF Curated Space: “Expanding the Canon: 50 Years of Creative Growth.”
When asked about whether the overlap with Frieze Los Angeles affected attendance, Edlin confirmed traffic to the 2024 OAF “was up a bit. It didn’t help (to overlap) but they let me know they’d changed their date, and it was too late to move our fair. That said, it’s even more impressive how well our fair did.”
The Outsider Art Fair featured two curated spaces. “Expanding the Canon: 50 Years of Creative Growth” and “Beat Art Work: Power of the Gaze. Curated by poet and performer, Anne Waldman, “Beat Art Work” explored the question of “who is looking at whom?” by featuring the work of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Joanne Kyger, Carolyn Cassady, Edie Parker, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Mohammed Mrabet and Ted Joans.
Towards the back of the show floor, “Expanding the Canon” celebrated the five decades of Creative Growth Art Center, which is one of the world’s oldest and largest independent art centers for people with disabilities. Curated by the center’s director emeritus Tom di Maria, the exhibit included works pulled from the center’s private collection and private NY collections.
God’s Love We Deliver is one of the shows partners and raises money — through a silent auction — to support their mission of improving the health and well-being of people living with illness. New York City.
God’s Love We Deliver is a charitable organization that prepares and delivers food to people too ill to shop or cook for themselves; they are also one of the partners of the Outsider Art Fair. To raise money for the organization, they hold a silent auction of artwork donated by other galleries who are participating at the show. The booth towards the front of the show featured works by George Widener, Junko Yamamoto, Daniel Gonçalves, Jay Bolotin, Le Miller, Michele Talibah, Sherry Dodge and Billy Meier, to name a few. A representative for the organization told us that in 2023 the fair raised $13,000; in 2024, more than $20,000 was raised in the silent auction.
God’s Love We Deliver president and chief executive officer, David Ludwigson, said “I am so grateful to partner with OAF and Andrew Edlin, the galleries and artists for another fabulous year. This year’s art really was the best yet, and taking our auction online was a nice enhancement. We were very pleased to meet so many new friends who stopped by our booth and bid in the silent auction in support of our life-affirming services. We’re already looking forward to next year.”
A handful of exhibitors were showing at the fair for the first time. One of them was Alex Lockwood who created Elephant Studio and Elephant Gallery in the Buchanan Arts District in North Nashville, Tenn., in 2016 and 2017, respectively. He had works by several artists in his small booth, including the ceramics of Ash Atterberry, Benji Anderson’s large-scale marker-on-paper compositions, Don Schull’s humorous whirligigs and Bret Douglas Hunter’s whimsical papercrete forms.
Alex Lockwood and Elephant Gallery were showing at the Outsider Art Fair for the first time. In his booth were the colorful papercrete chairs and tables by Brett Douglas Hunter, Benji Anderson’s colorful marker-on-paper compositions, and, along the back wall, several whirligigs by Middleton, Ill., engineer-turned-kinetic sculptor Don Shull. Nashville, Tenn.
One of the first booths one approached as one entered the fair is that of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Winter Works on Paper. Several individual or groups of works caught the eye, all by unknown photographers. The outside of David Winter’s booth was hung with a set of four Nineteenth Century colored photographs of African Americans. The group was from a larger collection of more than two dozen that Winter had discovered; he was selling the entire collection together. A pair of 1944 World War II snapshots were accompanied with text while a set of four photos of train engines, circa 1940, needed little explanation.
Founded in 1952, Philadelphia’s Fleisher/Ollman Gallery has been selling self-taught art for decades. It occupied a prime place on the show floor and brought work in several media by some of the most prominent and well-known artists in the Outsider canon. William Edmondson, Bill Traylor, Joseph Yoakum, Elijah Pierce and George Lopez were some of the artists whose work was on offer. The front corner of their booth introduced fairgoers to four works by Bill Traylor, alongside 10 colored pencil, watercolor and ink works by Joseph Yoakum.
New York City’s Hirschl & Adler Modern fronted their booth with Bill Traylor’s “Exciting Event/Blue and Red Form (Man Stealing Liquor),” circa 1939-42, that measured 14¼ by 13½ inches. Two additional works by Traylor were hung inside the booth. One entire wall was devoted to the two- and three-dimensional works of Jeanne Brousseau (b 1952), whose oeuvre depicts shape-shifting humans, grotesque beasts, benevolent animals and majestic beasts.
Hirschl & Adler Modern had a selection of works by Willard Watson (1921-1995), who is also known as “The Texas Kid.” These are from his “The Story of My Life” series and were executed in marker, graphite and watercolor on rag board paper, circa 1980-81. New York City.
“Our installation of Jeanne Brousseau’s work were enlivened by a display of her recent, inexpensive clay characters which proved popular but may have undermined the sales of her more expensive drawings,” said Tom Parker, director of Hirschl & Adler Modern. He noted demand was strong for Traylor’s works of the best quality and the gallery had considerable success there.
Parker continued: “The Outsider Fair remains one of the most enjoyable of the fairs we participate in. There’s an exuberance among the dealers and the audience that one doesn’t necessarily find elsewhere. That’s due to the vibrancy and excellence of the artwork and the fascinating stories of its creators; but, also, to the sense of surprise and discovery that pervades this event year in and year out. Overall, we were impressed by the large and enthusiastic crowd. But, we noticed a lack of contemporary collectors that often find their way to this market. That may have been due to the fair dates coinciding with Frieze Los Angeles, and their absence was notable.”
Ricco/Maresca Gallery is another gallery with a long history of championing the art of self-taught masters. Their multi-sided booth presented a large wall of circus poster maquettes that dated from around 1925 to 1940. On another side of the booth, eight graphite and colored pencil on newsprint works by Leopold Strobl were captioned “Official Selection of The Venice Biennale.” Rounding the booth’s far corner, one came upon works by Sister Gertrude Morgan, Martin Ramírez, Bill Traylor, C.T. McClusky, Renaldo Kuhler, Henry Darger and Joe Massey.
One side of Ricco/Maresca’s booth was devoted to a group of never-before-seen original paintings for classic circus paintings made between 1925 and 1940. The gallery recognized the American circus as an “outsider” counterculture. New York City.
New York City and Brooklyn-based Steven S. Powers always brings interesting and dynamic things to the show and this year was no exception. For a few decades, Powers has been keeping tabs on the work of Leroy Person, an African American sculptor and carver from North Carolina. Enjoying pride of place in his booth was a bench that had been deaccessioned recently and was making its first outing at the Outsider Art Fair. Other works by Person included a snake, a drawing of wrenches and some wire baskets. Another important work was the Woodbridge figures family, made circa 1900-20, that had provenance to Milt Simpson, who had published in Folk Erotica (1994).
Powers shared post-fair observations with Antiques and The Arts Weekly by email. “I did well selling each day of the four day event — almost all to new buyers. Though it’s a serious art fair, with top dealers and collectors from around the world, the atmosphere allows first time goers and new collectors an ease to ask questions and engage with the work in a way that is sometimes intimidating at other art fairs.”
Powers’ business partner, Joshua Lowenfels, fields his own booth and it was busy from the get-go. Interesting inclusions were a selection of porcelain and cloth “Glamour” dolls made by Georgia Russel and a number of ceramic “Fetish Barbies,” that were made by an unknown maker in the early to mid-1960s and came from the Marvill collection. The ones in Lowenfels’ booth had been exhibited at the Museum of Sex in 2017 and published in Ricco/Maresca’s 2002 publication, American Vernacular: New Discoveries in Folk, Self-Taught, and Outsider Sculpture.
Modern Plains ledger drawings with Donald Ellis Gallery, New York City.
Donald Ellis deals in both antique and contemporary Native American art and objects and he brought works by several Twentieth Century and contemporary First Nations artists, including Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (b 1957, Hul’q’umi’num Coast Salish and Okanagan), Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (b 1954, Haida) and Chief Henry Speck (1908-1971, U’dzistalis Kwakwaka’wakw). Memory aid drawings and Plains ledger drawings were in plentiful supply, as were pottery sherds from the Hohokam people of Southern Arizona.
An early sale was spotted in the booth of Koelsch Haus / Koelsch Gallery out of Houston, Texas. Carlos Hernandez’ “Public Figure,” a screen-print / monoprint that measured 39 by 50 inches, had been written up within the first hour the show was open.
In addition to Susan Spangenberg’s “Asylum Dolls” that were present in the 2023 edition, Fountain House Gallery featured colorful compositions by Roger Jones and Alyson Vega, Issa Ibrahim’s pop-culture-influenced collage-style works and the fabric sculptures of Angela Rogers. Romanian artist Vermillion, who had an artist residency on Governor’s Island, creates sculpture from cobalt blue glass bottles; the booth had a chandelier and table top she had made.
Rachel Weisman, director of Fountain House Gallery, told us the fair brought high energy and lots of familiar faces. While the gallery had a lower average cost of sale per item, they had a high volume of buyers and new collectors. Great conversations were initiated by the higher visibility of living artists at the show, the biggest pull of which is still its off-beat subject matter, uncanny style and fascinating or unconventional use of materials.
Two mixed-media fiber pieces by Yuka Nohda. Jennifer Lauren Gallery, Manchester, U.K.
The fair is a destination for several international galleries. Manchester, U.K., dealer Jennifer Gilbert of the Jennifer Lauren Gallery returned with mixed media fiber works by Yuka Nohda, the miniature folded leaf sculptures of Yoshihiro Watanabe, Pradeep Kumar’s carved toothpicks and the wood-fired ceramics of Shinichi Sawada. She forwarded observations on the fair by email.
“The fair was great and seemed as busy as last year. I made many sales and there was lots of interest in artists I took for the first time, including beautiful, detailed drawings by French artist Catherine Garrigue, who only started drawing in 2012 and was making her fair debut. I also showcased several Japanese artists who work out of a studio near Tokyo, but the one catching the most interest and that made it into the New York Times was Yuka Nohda, who I had at the front of my booth. There were lots of comparison to the wrapped sculptures of Judith Scott, but if you study them closely there are many differences and several of these found new loving homes. It was interesting to hear how different people interpreted the works, some seeing figures, faces in profile, busts, etc. I also took along some small leaf sculptures of animals that were a hit last year, and these drum up conversations on my booth — these are by a young Japanese artist called Yoshihiro Watanabe, whom I met in-person in his home last year.”
Ashley Saville modeled the talismanic jewelry of Lou Zeldis. Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, London.
The Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery was also from the United Kingdom and was showing jewelry made by Lou Zeldis (1944-2012), whose talismanic pieces combined natural shapes with industrial debris.
Another international gallery, Emilia Galatis Projects from South Fremantle, Australia; they enjoyed the international exposure the fair attracts. She presented works by Anya Judith Samson, Ngamaru Bidu, Isaac Cheryl and Amanda White, her artist in residence who was at the show. White (b 1978) is an aboriginal artist who is inspired by the spirit world.
Montreal gallery Galerie Hugues Charbonneau sold a 48-by-32-inch pen, pencil, ink and colored pencil on paper composition by Allie Gattor on the first day, as well as one of a couple of works by Shuvinai Ashoona.
The dates for the 2025 Outsider Art Fair have not yet been publicized. For more information, www.outsiderartfair.com.
