1990s Outsider and Self Taught Art

Vintage Retro Nostalgia Coke Cooler designed in 1992 by Paul Flum Ideas Inc. and painted with acrylic and permanent marker by folk artist Howard Finster...

A whimsical wood figure of a nude woman by the noted NJ artist Fred Schumm. It is signed and dated on the bottom Schumm 95. The base has been re-painted and has some losses to the corners. A brief statement by the artist from 2007 follows; Fred Schumm does not view life through rose-colored glasses. He doesn't have to. Schumm, Rowan University's artist-in-residence, is a former U.S. Marine who lived through some of the most horrific battles of World War II. He served at Peleliu two months of carnage on a tiny Pacific atoll where 12,000 perished - and then four long months on the bloodied isle of Okinawa. Since then, Schumm, 82, has mostly tried to see life's beauty. It's sort of like how sunlight, warm but ordinary to the naked eye, is refracted into myriad, impossibly beautiful combinations of color when viewed through a kaleidoscope. And, like sunlight, he finds art everywhere. "Inspiration is all around but mostly I'm inspired by the ancients," Schumm said recently. "I love Prehistoric African carvings, the works of ancient Greeks, Japanese and Chinese. I especially love Eskimo work." The celebrated sculptor loves Eskimo work so much he once hitchhiked from his home state of Colorado to Alaska just to see native carvings. "I wanted to see the TOTEM poles," he said. "The Alaskan Indians were fantastic artists." Schumm, artist-in-residence since 2003, works with various hardwoods, stone, even metals. A studio in which he works at Westby Hall has pieces in various stages of completion, from an eight-foot-tall, stainless steel sculpture he calls "Aviary" to a solid, six-foot log of black locust...