BENNINGTON, VT.- Inward Adorings of the Mind: Grassroots Art from the Bennington Museum and Blasdel/Koch Collections brings together an eclectic selection of more than 150 objects--ranging from textiles, ceramics and weathervanes to drawings, paintings and sculpture--created by individuals with little or no formal training in art and working outside the framework of the traditional art market. On view from July 3 through November 1, this exhibition draws on Bennington Museum's renowned collections of folk art, including the world's largest public collection of paintings by revered 20th-century folk artist "Grandma" Moses and 19th-century Bennington Pottery, featuring bold cobalt decorations, and the Blasdel/Koch collection of outsider art, including works by Jesse Howard, Mose Tolliver, Inez Nathaniel Walker, Joseph Yoakum, and others.

Bennington Museum’s “Folk Art” Collection
Bennington Museum has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century and has collected regional history and cultural artifacts from its start. Things such as quilts, weathervanes, and paintings by itinerant painters were originally added to its collection as historical objects. This was at the height of the colonial revival and prior to the widespread embrace of folk art for their artistic qualities, which began in the 1920s and 1930s. Today the museum recognizes aesthetic expression in significant cultural/historic artifacts while at the same time embraces opportunities to broaden its collection of work by modern and contemporary grassroots artists from our region, including Gayleen Aiken, Larry Bissonnette, Paul Humphrey, Stephen C. Warren (creator of the Memory Tower), and Jessica Park. These works provide a broader context for understanding the work of artists like Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, who has come to be seen by many as the quintessential 20th-century American self-taught artist. The museum’s growing collection of work by self-taught artists acknowledges the increasing significance of work by these artists in the larger “art world.”

From the Blasdel/Koch Collection
From the Blasdel/Koch collection works by outsider artists such as Mose Tolliver, Nathaniel Inez Walker, Joseph Yoakum, Jesse Howard and others are brought to the exhibition. Gregg Blasdel played a pivotal role in bringing the work of self-taught artists creating “grassroots art” to the public’s attention during the 1960s. Important to this effort was an article/photographic essay “The Grass-Roots Artist,” by Blasdel, published in Art in America in 1968. “As a budding artist himself, Blasdel found inspiration in the work of self-taught makers who created sophisticated, all-encompassing environmental installations beyond the bounds of any “art world” context,” states Jamie Franklin, curator at the Bennington Museum. Blasdel began documenting and collecting works by grassroots artists when studying art at the University of Kansas where he received a BFA, and during his time at Cornell University where he did graduate work. He continues to collect and document works today. He was joined in the 1990s by Jennifer Koch, also an artist, in seeking objects they describe as “other,” falling outside preconceived categories, and challenging the general understanding of art. Now living in Burlington, VT, their collection reflects the growing awareness of and importance given to contemporary grassroots artists by the larger art world during the second half of the twentieth century and into the 21st-century.
This exhibition is organized thematically, with objects from the two collections intermixed in the galleries to emphasize the continuities and the disparities among the work of diverse, often anonymous, self-taught artists across both centuries and many cultural backgrounds.

The four thematic sections in the exhibition are: History, Memories and Memorials; Signs and Symbols/Text and Image; Faces: Fact and Fiction; and Everyday Beauty/Whimsy and Utility. To be expected, there is much overlap of artists’ work between these categories and in some cases a particular artist or object can find its way into multiple themes. Further, the span of centuries covered by this exhibition sets the stage in each thematic section for interesting comparisons. For example, an artist such as Gayleen Aiken is represented in History, Memories and Memorials with her painting Sunset over Our Old Big House. An interest in public history, personal memories and a penchant for commemoration have been key ingredients in the work many grassroots artists from the 18th-century through the present day, so there is no surprise that this painting stands side-by-side with more historic pieces such as Memory Tower created by Stephen C. Warren, 1894 or Jedidiah Dewey’s Gravestone created by Frederick Manning in 1778.

For centuries grassroots artists have been combining symbols and words, sometimes in bold, graphic imagery to bring home their point which is perfectly exemplified by Jesse Howard's painted signs, such as The Rainbow Cloud, c. 1965. Howard, who was featured in Blasdel's 1968 Apoliticrt in America article, made a reputation for himself with cranky, often confrontational hand-lettered signs that he posted in great quantity along the perimeter of his property in Fulton, Missouri, espousing his highly personal and religious beliefs. Found in Signs, Symbols/Text and Images, a selection of Howard's signs are exhibited alongside other contemporary works by the artists such as Gayleen Aiken, as well as historical objects such as the Sampler by Caroline S. Love, Bennington, VT, 1835 in which the title of the exhibition is found (“Inward Adorings of the Mind”).

Aiken’s work appears again in Faces: Fact and Fiction where her fictional My Raimbilli Hill “Cousins” is on view along with other works by contemporary self-taught artists such as Paul Humphrey’s “Sleeping Beauties.” When paired with historic portraits by itinerant artists like Erastus Salisbury Field and Joseph Whiting Stock, one can see that the supposed documentary evidence of historical portraits, in fact portray as much or as little reality as the artist, or sitter, wants. Therefore, the apparent elegance of itinerant portraits can be as much fiction as those of the more contemporary works.

Everyday Beauty: Whimsy and Utility combines utilitarian objects such as furniture, pottery, and textiles often with highly decorated surfaces, with more whimsical, purely decorative images and objects such as exuberant floral paintings and bottle constructions (your traditional “ship-in-a-bottle” with a twist). The decorative impulse that is at the core of much traditional folk art, as seen in Billy McGue’s Crime, a uniquely decorated stoneware pot made by the Norton Pottery in Bennington, c. 1875, continues to play a role in the work of many modern and contemporary self-taught artists. This is exemplified in this section by a selection of southern made face jugs from the Blasdel/Koch Collection, including examples made by members of the Braown, Hewell and Meader families during the last 50 years. The question then becomes “How far apart is functionality from fancy, if at all.”

When looking at the exhibition in its entirety, Franklin remarks, “The curatorial goal is to install the works into vignettes that emphasize evocative relationships amongst the objects, across time and space, both geographic and cultural, helping viewer's to see and think about these works in new and innovative ways.”