Street Artists Featured in Exhibit on Folk Art at UWM

Prophet Blackmon was a local artist who would sell his work on the street. He established a series of storefront churches and enterprise centers throughout the inner city. These places offered religious services and served as a site to recycle goods, among other things. Blackmon produced hand-lettered signs made out of found materials to advertise these centers.

One of his pieces, called Second Chronicles, served as the headlining artwork in the UWM Art Gallery’s new exhibit on folk art. As with Blackmon (real name: William Joshua Blackmon), the folk art featured at the exhibit was made by people not academically taught and with no formal training but who created inventive and utilitarian pieces, like signs, or used found objects to create art.

The UWM Art Gallery exhibit, “Extraordinary and Ordinary: Folk Art from the UWM Art Collection” opened Nov. 6.  The opening reception had gallery talks by both the curator Katherine Murrell, and guest speaker Jeff Jara.

All of the pieces, including Blackmon’s, were chosen from the UWM Art Collection.  They were all in storage, and the process consisted of Murrell working through the inventory and finding an interesting piece, and then putting them together.

“The purpose and fun part of curating is putting pieces together and figuring out what they say collectively,” says Murrell.

The gallery is often used as a showcase for graduate students in the Museum Studies Certificate, where a student puts together an exhibit in place of a thesis.  Because they didn’t have any grad students at this time, Murrell, UWM alum and lecturer in the Art History Department, was approached to put on an exhibit.  The theme of this exhibit was folk art.

“In this exhibition, the folk art moniker is used as an umbrella for work by artists that are self-taught and people working from a more visionary aspect,” says Murrell.

The gallery serves as a teaching tool for a variety of studies.  Besides Art History, German classes, Drawing classes, and Psychology classes have been held in the gallery, according to Kate Negri, the Academic Department Associate, who was snapping pictures for the Art History site during the event.

Much of the work on display has religious connotation or depicts biblical events, a big source of inspiration for folk art.

Blackmon’s work seemed to strike a chord with a few of the exhibit goers, who had personal experiences with Blackmon.

Jeff Jara, a Professor of folk art in the Art History Department, reminisced on his experience with the artist during his presentation.  Jara remembered seeing Blackmon selling his work outside the library for hundreds of dollars, and asked if he thought his work was worth the asking prices.  To which Blackmon replied, “Most certainly.”  Jara then said how he wished he had picked a piece or two up when he had the chance, seeing his work in prized galleries now.

Many members of the audience were Art History students, but had a range of experiences that got them to this point.

Mary Beth, an Art History undergrad, worked in television production of a Packers coach before coming to UWM to get an Art history degree.

Marianna Cecere, another Art History student, was a former journalist, working for a video game magazine in Italy for a number of years before coming to Milwaukee.

Phillip “Philo” Kassner grew up going to art museums and admiring the work of greats.

“I like this [exhibit] because it’s work by people with no formal training.  It’s simplistic, but still good,” says Kassner.  He then compared it to an exhibit he once went to that consisted of gag store dog poop fastened to tennis rackets.

“That’s not art, anyone can do that.  Looking at the stuff here, you can see that people made an effort to create something,” says Kassner.

The exhibit will be showing at the Art History Gallery located in Mitchell Hall room 170 until Dec. 18.