Animals In American Folk Art

Description: The first book to celebrate animals in American folk art - animals in painting, sculpture, and utilitarian objects from the eighteenth century to the present. Here is the work of self-taught artists, men and women, many of them farmers familiar with the animals around them or dreaming of exotic animals in faraway places. Here are their anonymous creations - so beautiful, the pieces transcend their original function and are perceived as works of art. Among them: samplers and towels intricately embroidered with bison and wild horses...lifelike duck, owl and fish decoys embellished with studded nails and bits of mirror - one of the indigenous American crafts and a lost art...tavern signs bearing horses, lions, lambs...tavern signs bearing horses, lions, lambs...pincushions decorated with cats, dogs, and birds so breathtaking they were collected and displayed even in their own time...Here are portraits in oil of domestic animals and prized livestock...sculptures of birds and cats...a sourwood cane depicting a cougar...scrimshaw engraved with barnyard scenes by homesick sailors...And here, as well, are exciting, newfound pieces by such twentieth-century folk artists now recognized and known by name as E.A. McKillop, Bill Traylor, Mose Tolliver, Jimmie Lee Sudduth, David Butler, William Edmondson, Nellie Mae Row...and others equally brilliant. These are extraordinary works - some classic in design, some idiosyncratic and endearing. Above all, they possess the vitality, the movement, and the innocence synonymous with great folk art. They have been selected from private and public collections across the country."