Michigan
Ronald Mann is a self-taught Vietnam veteran artist. His wife Ricki was an amateur painter, and after returning from the war with un-diganosed PTSD, Ron started to make paintings using her leftover materials. In recent years Ron has created new layers of meaning in his work by photographing projections of slides of his paintings onto […]
Ronald Mann is a self-taught Vietnam veteran artist. His wife Ricki was an amateur painter, and after returning from the war with un-diganosed PTSD, Ron started to make paintings using her leftover materials. Ron had no background or training in art, and remains uninterested in art history or the contemporary artworld. A form of self-therapy, […]
Ronald Mann is a self-taught Vietnam veteran artist. His wife Ricki was an amateur painter, and after returning from the war with un-diganosed PTSD, Ron started to make paintings using her leftover materials. The fist slide, When Johnny Comes Home, shows physically and emotionally wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam – they beat their own drums […]
Ronald Mann is a self-taught Vietnam veteran artist. His wife Ricki was an amateur painter, and after returning from the war with un-diganosed PTSD, Ron started to make paintings using her leftover materials. The fist slide shows their only collaboration The Other Side. It was exhibited with the caption “Ricki trying to charge into the […]
“A child can paint better than that,” Ronald Mann’s ex-wife would say. “I do agree with you, but I’m just going to paint anyway. It [makes] no difference to me whether it’s childish or not.” Outside a tavern near Flint, Michigan about forty years earlier, he’d been caught-up in an altercation: “the judge told me, […]
Silvio Barile recalled hiding as a young boy from Allied bombing with his parents and siblings in the mountains around their south central Italian village of Ausonia. They “lost everything,” and in the mid-1950’s, came to America as WWII refugees. Hardly a prototypical ‘outsider’ artist, Barile went on to live the American Dream: he married, […]
His house was a short walk from the restaurant and he filled the approximately one acre wooded area between with concrete, stone, and found object sculptures, mostly from mythology and Italian history: art is a “guide for life,” and is “too important to sell.”
Ronald Mann was a self-taught Vietnam veteran artist. His wife was an amateur painter, and after returning from the war with un-diganosed PTSD, Ron started to make paintings using her leftover materials. He had no background or training in art, and remains uninterested in art history or the contemporary artworld. A form of self-therapy, every […]
Art environments are typically made by by artists working outside the mainstream of contemporary art. Exposed to the weather and free for public viewing, the environments have little or no connection to the monetized art-object-based realm of galleries and museums. Often the ‘artists’ don’t think of themselves as, or like to be called ‘artists’, their […]
Shot over several years, this video five minute video provides an introduction to self-taught Vietnam veteran artist Ronald Mann and his self-therapeutic artworks.
Often self-taught ‘artists’ don’t think of themselves as, or like to be called ‘artists’. They may not produce any ‘for sale’ art objects, their work may be too personal, or it may be intended to carry religious messages from God (for which they accept no personal credit). Many think of themselves as being too unskilled […]
Often self-taught ‘artists’ don’t think of themselves as, or like to be called ‘artists’. They may not produce any ‘for sale’ art objects, their work may be too personal, or it may be intended to carry religious messages from God (for which they accept no personal credit). Many think of themselves as being too unskilled […]
Art environments are typically made by by artists working outside the mainstream of contemporary art. Exposed to the weather and free for public viewing, the environments have little or no connection to the monetized art-object-based realm of galleries and museums. Often the ‘artists’ don’t think of themselves as, or like to be called ‘artists’, their […]
A gallery of hand-painted vernacular signage and murals mostly produced for commercial establishments. Typically, but not always, the work of professional sign painters and often humorous, these are one-of-a-kind works of street art.
James Phillips 50+ year collection of over 16,000 antlers. Amad Samaan’s grocery store display of SX-70 Polaroids of his customers. Johnnie Meier, as well as Tom and Mary Lou Desin’s collections of gas and oil memorabilia. Leon Parker’s as well as Mary Paulsen’s Coca-Cola collections, and Mary Paulsen’s small building full of 1960’s American pop […]
Buildings such as theaters, banks, fire stations, and storefronts repurposed to churches and mosques. Synagogues converted into Christian churches.
American vernacular architecture and hand-painted decorations.
A gallery of hand-painted vernacular signage and murals mostly produced for commercial establishments. Typically, but not always, the work of professional sign painters and often humorous, these are one-of-a-kind works of street art.