Ross Palmer Beecher

Abstract Red Blue Folk Art Americana Flag Can Tapestry Quilt Ross Palmer Beecher

c.1988

Eclectic, mixed media wall hanging textile tapestry by Marlene (Marlen) Richard featuring abstract embroidery atop free hanging locks of fabric over a black background embellished with gilt fabric accents. Hand made and hand embroidered. This had a paper artists label but it has since become detached. Overall image resembles a colorful pop art sunset over ocean waters. Hanging cords in various fabrics, colors and textures. Her work bears the influence of Sheila Hicks and bears similarities to Latin American, Colombian textile artists Olga de Amaral and Stella Bernal. Hand made, hand woven felt and wool spectacular textile wall hanging fabric sculpture by Miami woman artist Marlene Richard. It consists of long hanging pods...

Jacques Lerebourg hand made abstract metal sculpture in welded and polished metal with inclusion of a natural quartz or crystal mineral specimen. part of a distinguished group of Fre...

Jacques Duval-Brasseur (French, 1934-2021) French (20th C) Pair of Brass and Agate Specimen Stone Candlesticks. Measures 17 inches high x 9 inches wide x 6 inches deep, each candles...

May Wilson (1905–1986) was an American artist and figure in the 1960s New York City avant-garde art world. A pioneer of the feminist and mail art movement, she is best known for her Surrealist junk assemblages and her "Ridiculous Portrait" photo collages. Wilson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, into an underprivileged family. Her father died when she was young. She was reared by her Irish Catholic mother, who sewed piecework at home. Wilson left school after the ninth grade to become a stenographer/secretary to help support her family. When she turned 20, she married a young lawyer, William S. Wilson, Jr., and give birth to her first child. She continued to work until the birth of her second child, after which she devoted her energies primarily to mothering and homemaking. In 1942, the couple had prospered enough to move to Towson, Maryland, where she began to take correspondence courses in art and art history from several schools, including the University of Chicago. In 1948, after the marriage of their daughter, the couple moved to a gentleman's farm north of Towson, where she pursued painting and gave private art lessons to neighbors. She exhibited her paintings, scenes of everyday life painted in a flat, purposefully primitive manner in local galleries and restaurants. In 1952 and 1958, she won awards for work submitted to juried exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 1956, her son, the writer Williams S. Wilson, gave to Ray Johnson, the founder of the New York Correspondence School, his mother's address. This began a friendship and artistic collaboration between Johnson and Wilson, which would last the remainder of her life. Wilson became an integral part of Johnson's mail art circle and was initiated into the New York avant-garde through letters and small works that she exchanged with Robert Watts, George Brecht, Ad Reinhardt, Leonard Cohen, Arman, and many others. When her marriage dissolved, she moved to New York City in the spring of 1966, aged 61, taking up residence first in the Chelsea Hotel and then in a studio next door, where she threw legendary soirées and became known as the "Grandma Moses of the Underground". By the time she arrived, Wilson was already working with photomontage collage techniques. Encouraged by Johnson, who had sent her magazines through the mail, she scissored patterns into images of pin-up girls and muscle men until they resembled doilies or snowflakes, as Wilson called them. She decorated her hotel room and later her studio on West 23rd Street with these and other manipulated, found object images. Around this time, she also began her series of neo Dada "Ridiculous Portraits", for which she would ride the subway to Times Square, where she made exaggerated faces in photo booths. She then would cut and paste her photo-booth face onto postcards, along with Old Master reproductions, fashion shoots, and softcore Playboy magazine pornography. Long before artists such as Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura embarked on similar critical projects, Wilson's "Ridiculous Portraits" sent up the ubiquitous sexism and ageism that exists in popular and fine-art images of women. At the age of 70, she converted a nude photograph of herself into a stamp that she pasted on envelopes. Her collages and humorous self-portraits were made as gifts and mail-art items for her friends and were not widely known until after her death. Her work was contemporaneous with the Arte Povera artists Jannis Kounellis and ‎Michelangelo Pistoletto. She was also an innovator of junk art assemblages that incorporated real objects, such as high-heel shoes, bed sheets, sauce pans, toasters, liquor bottles, ice trays, and wrapped baby dolls. Her sculptures were inspired by Surrealist and Dada practices and are similar in spirit to Yayoi Kusama's contemporary accumulations. Wilson was the subject of a 1969 experimental documentary by Amalie R. Rothschild, "Woo Hoo? May Wilson". Since her death, May Wilson's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and retrospectives at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York; the Morris Museum, Morristown, N.J.; the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City; and The University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Selected Exhibitions 2010 "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968", University of the Arts, Philadelphia (traveling exhibition) 2008 "1968/2008: The Culture of Collage", Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, City 2008 "Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson", Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey 2008 "Woo Who? May Wilson", Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City 1995 [Retrospective], The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland 2001 "May Wilson: Ridiculous Portraits and Snowflakes", Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York, City 2001 "Inside Out: Outside In-The Correspondence of Ray Johnson and May Wilson", Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, California 1991 "May Wilson: The New York Years", Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York City 1973 "Sneakers", Kornblee Gallery, New York City 1973 "Small Works: Selections from the Richard Brown Baker Collection of Contemporary Art", RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island 1971 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1970 "Sculpture Annual 1970", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City 1965 The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland 1962 The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 1957 Bookshop Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland Public collections Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City) The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, Maryland) Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, New York) References William S. Wilson, "May Wilson: Constructing Woman (1905-1986)", in Ann Aptaker, ed., Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson, ed. Ann Aptaker, Morristown, N.J.: Morris Museum, Camhi, Leslie, "Late Bloomer", Village Voice, December 18, 2001 Giles, Gretchen, "Cosmic Litterers: Artists Ray Johnson and May Wilson: Taking the Cake", "Northern California Bohemian," June 14–20, 2001 McCarthy, Gerard, "May Wilson: Homespun Rebel", Art in America, vol. 96, no. 8, September 2008, pp. 142–47 Sachs, Sid and Kalliopi Minioudaki, Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968. Philadelphia: The University of the Arts, 2010, ISBN 978-0789210654 Wilson, William S. Art is a Jealous Lover: May Wilson: 1905-1986, andy warhol...

DOES IT LOOK EXPENSIVE by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with cut glass, asphaltum and fired porcelain paint. It measures 24 x 36" and is fr...

MEDUSA by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with cut diamonds, blue machinist ink and fired porcelain paint. It measures 36 x 48", and framed in aluminum it measures 37 x 49”. It features some of the artist’s notable motifs – a monstrous brick wall with crenelated and flaming towers, inlaid with sparkles of diamond and glass, sword-like flames. New for the artist are the twisting, turning bodies of which there are at least eight. The deep blue background of machinist ink coating the copper provides a momentous, mythological night sky. For over 40 years, outsider artist Rocky Dobey has been producing intaglio prints, etched metal plaques, engraved copper sheets and site-specific public sculptures. Working anonymously for the first two decades, his work has drawn attention to social and political issues like prison and justice reform, neighborhood gentrification, globalization, indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation and homelessness. With striking imagery of demonic towers toppled in flames, horrific machines and cryptic symbols of oppression, Rocky's work soon became a recognized and sought-after stamp of organized resistance. Several of his prints are held in collections, particularly the “Carnival Against Capitalism” poster he produced for the 2001 Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Rocky’s poster...

CHECKMATE by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with black ink, acrylic paint, and asphaltum. It is framed in aluminum and measures 108 x 48”. It features some of the artist’s notable motifs – the number 13-1/2 (refers to 12 jurors, 1 judge, half a chance), a monstrous tower of brick with crenelated towers, inlaid with eyes, hooked daggers and barred windows, clouds with lightening bolts, tongues of flame drifting down... Though the swirl of black cloud near the top of the tower also rewards our attention – the engraving here suggesting floral as well as cosmic patterns, biological patterns. Checkmate also contains more subtle mark-making and ritualized ornamentation, such as the wheat sheafs across the expanse of copper, names of people are inscribed in the borders of the tower, vertical hash marks counting off months or years in bundles of five. For over 40 years, outsider artist Rocky Dobey has been producing intaglio prints, etched metal plaques, engraved copper sheets and site-specific public sculptures. Working anonymously for the first two decades, his work has drawn attention to social and political issues like prison and justice reform, neighborhood gentrification, globalization, indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation and homelessness. With striking imagery of demonic towers toppled in flames, horrific machines and cryptic symbols of oppression, Rocky's work soon became a recognized and sought-after stamp of organized resistance. Several of his prints are held in collections, particularly the “Carnival Against Capitalism” poster he produced for the 2001 Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Rocky’s poster...

TRAILER PRISON by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with black ink. It measures 60x36” and slightly less than .25" thick. It features some of the artist’s repeating motifs – the number 13-1/2 appears here as 12 + 1 + 1/2 in the trailer windows. The number refers to 12 jurors, 1 judge, half a chance. Rocky says all his structures are prisons, and this trailer with tentacles is no exception. Trailer Prison is a signature example of the artist's work – the inscribed details are both compelling and powerful, while swirls and spikes evoke both prison architecture and monstrous intent. For over 40 years, outsider artist Rocky Dobey has been producing intaglio prints, etched metal plaques, engraved copper sheets and site-specific public sculptures. Working anonymously for the first two decades, his work has drawn attention to social and political issues like prison and justice reform, neighborhood gentrification, globalization, indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation and homelessness. With striking imagery of demonic towers toppled in flames, horrific machines and cryptic symbols of oppression, Rocky's work soon became a recognized and sought-after stamp of organized resistance. Several of his prints are held in collections, particularly the “Carnival Against Capitalism” poster he produced for the 2001 Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Rocky’s poster...