Something Familiar
May 16- June 15, 2024
Vahakn Arslanian, Pearl Blauvelt, John Byam, Garrol Gayden, Sybil Gibson, Paul Humphrey, Willie Jinks, Charley Kinney, Justin McCarthy, Alessandra Michelangelo, Ralph Middleton, Ike Morgan, Royal Robertson, Charles Simmons
Shelter is pleased to announce Something Familiar, a group exhibition of artists who create work through the lens of remembered imagery. Using idiosyncratic concepts, processes, and material, benign subject matters are seen in a new light, giving the impression of being modeled from memory rather than life.
Many of the artists in this exhibition explore their practice outside of academic or traditional art historical restraints. Often working without direct reference material, the subjects of each piece begin to take new shape, allowing us a deeper insight to someone than an entire biography possibly could. The subconscious comes to life before us and clues to the artist's psyche unwittingly fill the image.
Ike Morgan is well known for his portraits, often of the same recurring figures such as US presidents and the Mona Lisa – there is a repetition in the constructed image of these subjects yet each piece retains a wholly unique presentation. Sculptors Charles Simmons and John Byam both reflect their rural surroundings in the use of found regional materials such as wood and stone, yet each adds their own take on this process by reconsidering everyday objects.
Pearl Blauvelt, Garrol Gayden, and Sybil Gibson use a loose line that imbues their work with a hazy sense of remembrance, of what was once seen and felt. On the other hand, Vahakn Arslanian, Ralph Middleton, and Royal Robertson graphically create or recreate places, spaces, and people with bold color and line, giving the viewer a sort of glimpse through a window into the artist’s creative state; in the case of Arslanian, this window is often a real, tangible part of his work.
Not childlike or naïve, these artists’ forceful works ask us to reconsider and reassess everyday objects, inviting the viewer to look deeper into meaning while also highlighting the absurdity of that which we’ve previously looked past. While the imagery is immediate, we can easily find that there is something that holds us there. Something that stirs up a memory we locked away long ago, something that takes us back to a specific place and time; we find that we’re confronted with something familiar.
John Byam
Born 1929, Oneonta, NY; died 2013, Courtland, NY
Using combinations of wood, sawdust, glue, paint and ink, Byam has produced three-dimensional objects that, while recognizable, remain equivocal. Byam’s sculptural work follows in a long tradition of woodcarving in rural America, however, his use of sawdust mixed with a glue binder lends many of the objects a soft focus, giving them the appearance of emerging or slipping from view. This is also reflected in the artist’s choice of imagery that at times indicates a personal longing for travel and exploration beyond his daily life. Conversely, Byam’s works on paper, utilizing a variety of materials including pencil, crayon, and marker, often include portraits and written commentary, and speak clearly and directly about contemporary culture and its fascination with media and celebrity.
In 1929, John Byam was born in the “city of the hills,” Oneonta, NY. He lived and worked at the local trailer park owned by his parents until the 1940s when he subsequently worked for the D&H Railway. During the Korean War, he was stationed in Japan for two years, and then returned to Oneonta in 1952 continuing his duties as a trailer park attendant and taking a job as part-time gravedigger. In 2013, he died in a nearby assisted living facility. His first New York exhibition had opened only weeks before. The Daily Star wrote for his obituary, “He was an interesting and most unusual man. There are no immediate survivors.”
John Byam
Untitled (Camera), n.d.
Wood, glue, and sawdust
7 x 7 x 2½ in.
Image courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery
Ralph Middleton
Born 1950, New York; Died c. 2005
Little is known about Ralph Middleton’s early life other than the fact he was born in, and started to paint in, Harlem, New York. Middleton’s work began to gain recognition amongst folk and outsider collectors in the 1960s and 70s and at some point during those years, he moved to the west coast, making homes out of abandoned rail stations and underneath bridges.
The consistency of color palette and materials in some of Middleton’s work suggests that someone, possibly a patron, arts program, or supporter, gifted Middleton some paints and board, which he fervently used to create wildly energetic paintings of everything from people he knew, to seemingly abstract scenes of color and line that, we may assume, reflected some of the energy within and surrounding the artist. Middleton deftly keeps each painting from feeling weighty with a subtle and effective use of white, both as negative space and peeking through brushstrokes, the latter of which show an artist confident in his hand. Painted on found items such as newspaper, no parking signs, and board, the artist signed each piece and often provided an exact date and location, perhaps in a way providing a record – tangible and visible – of each particular moment in his transient life.
Middleton resided in Los Angeles in the 1990s, where he attracted attention from musicians, artists, and collectors seeking out exciting creations by unknown and under- known artists. At the time he was living under a bridge, and these predominantly young and creative collectors would visit him, delivering materials or acquiring work. Despite his precarious living situation, Middleton was known as being self-educated, with a particular interest in philosophy, film, and the arts.
Ralph Middleton
Untitled, 1994
Acrylic on newspaper
22 x 13¾ in.
Ralph Middleton
Untitled, 1996
Acrylic on pasted LA Kings Posters
21 x 26 in.
Sybil Gibson
Born 1908, Dora, AL; Died 1995
Despite having no formal art education, Sybil Gibson was decisively an artist. She wrote and spoke extensively about her practice and was always guided by her intuition– “When I paint I do not see anything except that which is coming into being under my brush. I am creating. I am molding. I am shaping. I am growing… I am allowing the unknown to focus right there under my brush.” This process is self-evident in her paintings, which were forcefully executed yet remain delicate and almost ghostly in appearance.
Sybil Gibson’s early years were comfortable, both physically and financially, as she was born into an affluent family in Dora, Alabama. While in college, where she studied biology and education, she married Hugh Gibson. The couple eventually had a daughter; however, soon after the birth, and in connection with a fraught relationship with her husband, Gibson suffered an emotional breakdown and unexpectedly fled Alabama – and her family – to relocate to Florida. It was here that Sybil Gibson began painting on soaked and flattened brown paper bags around 1963. Her ethereal style and unique process attracted attention almost immediately, garnering her a solo exhibition at the Miami Museum of Modern Art in 1965. Gibson was scheduled to have a second solo exhibition at the same museum in 1971, yet she once again vanished right before the opening leaving her artwork strewn about her yard. Eventually, with the help of a private investigator, Sybil Gibson’s daughter was able to locate and reconnect with her mother before Gibson’s passing in 1995.
Sybil Gibson
Untitled, c. 1970s
Tempera on brown paper bag
16 x 12 in.
Garrol Gayden
Born 1960, Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn native Garrol Gayden’s work focuses on densely saturated drawings based on New York City’s seaside amusement park, Coney Island. He first began drawing when he was five years old – fixated by the television, he picked up a notepad and pencil and outlined Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Elmo and other favorite characters. Layering over the figures, he wrote down the letters and words he saw on the screen; from that day forward, he continued to draw, filling notebook after notebook. The use of text interwoven with figurative drawing remains his signature technique to this day.
When Gayden was seven years old, he visited Coney Island for the first time. A ride on the park’s Spook-a-Rama left a particularly lasting impression on him. In his artwork Gayden weaves scenes from his everyday life, cultural interests, and messages to himself inside his Coney Island landscape, bridging the gap between past, present, future, real and fantasy. As he muses on what he sees on a daily basis, his phrases become incorporated into his compositions; over time, colorful cross-hatchings and layers of text slowly abstract large portions of his drawings, partially swallowing the landscape and characters.
Garrol Gayden
Untitled (Restaurant), 2013
Marker on paper
8½ x 11 in.
Garrol Gayden
Untitled (Tone Death), 2013
Marker on paper
11 x 8½ in.
Pearl Blauvelt
Born 1893, Pennsylvania; Died 1987
A self-taught American artist of Dutch ancestry, Pearl Blauvelt’s entire body of work — a remarkable cache of drawings in graphite and colored pencil on ruled notebook paper — was discovered years after her death in a wooden box in her abandoned former home in northeastern Pennsylvania. Now regarded as an emblematic outsider artist, Blauvelt’s images of people strolling along country lanes, horse-drawn carriages, railways tracks, banknotes, houses, furniture, and women’s undergarments, which she often labeled with precision and care, serve as the imaginative recollections of a woman who lived a humble life on the margins of mainstream society.
The artist’s determination to accurately capture the proportions, shapes, and surface textures of her varied subjects with only the drawing materials available in her limited surroundings evokes a somewhat child-like approach. At the same time Blauvelt’s pictures are also marked by unexpected sophistication as she exaggerates the details of certain subjects or accentuates the sculptural qualities of others. In creating her neatly organized compositions, she often assigns biblical references to mundane events, and refers to images of products reproduced in mid-century mail-order catalogs.
Blauvelt’s Dutch ancestors settled in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City, and helped found the First Dutch Reformed Church in that region in the late 1600s. At some point in the early decades of the 20th century, the artist moved with her father to a house in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania that was heated by a coal stove and had a pump in the kitchen that supplied water from a well in the backyard. This is where she spent most of her adult life. In the 1970s, she was moved to a mental facility outside of Scranton where she continued to draw until her death in 1987.
Pearl Blauvelt
Untitled (Stars, Moon), c. 1940s
Graphite and colored pencil on notebook paper
11 x 8½ in.
Image courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery
Pearl Blauvelt
Untitled (Lafayette in Troy, New York), c. 1940s
Graphite and colored pencil on notebook paper
8½ x 11 in.
Image courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery
Ike Morgan
Born 1958, Rockdale, TX
Ike E. Morgan, (b. 1958) is from Rockdale, TX and currently works and lives in TX. Morgan typically focuses on portraiture with a common subject being George Washington, which he has included in his bodies of work since the age of 17 when he was working from the Austin State Hospital. Morgan would remain in the care of the hospital until the age of 41. The artist typically bases a series of work on the materials available to him at the time, always recognizable due to the artist’s hand and unique mark making.
Morgan now resides in a nursing home and continues to pursue his craft with assistance from Webb Gallery in Texas. He continues to paint daily and draw inspiration from historic portraits and occasionally pop culture figures remembered from his youth.
Ike Morgan
Untitled (Washington on White)
Acrylic on sack paper
36 x 24 in.
Willie Jinks
Born 1921, Locust Grove, GA; Died 2012
Willie Jinks was a self-taught Black artist from Atlanta, GA. Jinks was born into a sharecropper family in Locust Grove, Georgia, and was one of 13 children. He eventually moved to Atlanta as a young man, where he began working for the department of sanitation. Later in life, and while on the job, Jinks began salvaging and collecting junk found on the job to make into art.
In the artist's own words, “People throws this stuff out. I get in my van and go collect it, and bring it back to the Hobby Shop”. His “Hobby Shop” was a small shed in the backyard that eventually overflowed to encompass his home and yard. During his prolific life, Willie Jinks created many whirligigs for his front yard and also made a large number of paintings depicting his memories of life growing up in rural Georgia, animals, fantastical creatures and recreations of funny stories he'd heard, which were executed on found doors, sheet metal, plywood, windows, paper and chipboard. Jink's fascination with animals, nature, and mechanical things is visible throughout all of his artwork, and he is most famous for his “Hoperman” (“Hobbyman”) character, who shows up in much of his work and the cryptic writing on most of his pieces and was most likely a reference to himself, "The Hobby Man".
Willie Jinks
Untitled ("Hoper Man" with house), 1990
Paint on found wood
28¼ x 28¼ in.
Image courtesy SHRINE
Willie Jinks
Untitled (Jone Baby I Get Honey), 1980
Paint on wood
29½ x 24 in.
Image courtesy SHRINE
Charles Simmons
Born 1939; Died 2020, Mount Airy, NC
Self-taught artist Charles Simmons resided in North Carolina throughout his life. One of eleven children, Simmons left school after ninth grade and worked with his family to grow crop tobacco; he was later employed by the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company for 35 years.
Simmons’ early creative endeavors began in the 1970s with wood sculptures that were typically in the form of dolls given as gifts. After retirement, he became a dedicated artist, painting and carving a large number of works, many of which relate to his life experience and surroundings.
Asked about his inspirations, Simmons simply replied, “I carve whatever comes into my mind.”
A friend and neighbor of artist Raymond Coins, the two men often worked alongside each other; as Simmons’ motor functions declined with age he adopted Coins’ preferred medium of stone for his sculptural work.
Charles Simmons
Untitled (Heads), 1998
Carved North Carolina river stone with base
12 x 18 x 6 in.
Charles Simmons
Untitled (Coca-Cola)
Carved North Carolina river stone with steel base
10 x 6½ x 4½ in.
Vahakn Arslanian
Born 1975, Antwerp, Belgium
Born in Antwerp in 1975 but raised in New York City, Vahakn Arslanian began painting and working with glass at an early age. Deaf from birth and fascinated by the chaotic beauty of shattered glass, Vahakn found in his art both a route for his imaginative vision and a means of exploring the equilibrium between destruction and creation. His work frequently employs glass—sometimes broken, sometimes intact—as well as found or acquired objects like antique window sashes and hardware, massive airliner cockpit windows, lightbulbs, and even jet-engine fans. The images he places in and on the spaces thus created depict his vision of beauty and absurdity: a bird with a subway car for beak, a candle with too many flames, a flock of tiny Boeing jets converging on the vortex at the center of a shattered window.
Vahakn's work has been shown at multiple solo exhibitions in London, Antwerp, Geneva, St. Barthélemy, and his native New York City, as well as numerous group exhibitions, including the St. Moritz Art Masters. His collaboration with Julian Schnabel, "The Ones You Didn't Write-The Maybach Car," was displayed on the Grand Canal during the Venice Biennale. Vahakn divides his time between his studios in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and Petite Saline, St. Barth.
Vahakn Arslanian
First Day of 757, 2017
Nail polish on paper in airplane light lens
7½ x 7½ in.
Image courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery
Paul Humphrey
Born 1931, Vermont; Died 1999
Humphrey was born in and remained in Vermont for the entirety of his life, yet it wasn't until later in life that he began to create art.
Humphrey's story isn't unusual in 20th century America; he worked as a house painter and taxi driver, yet was no longer able to work after his health deteriorated in 1990. After suffering a stroke two years later, he spent the remainder of his life in a wheelchair. At 57, he started to create art.
Unquestionably, Humphrey threw himself into his artmaking after leaving the workforce - hundreds of his "Sleeping Beauty" drawings were created in the last years of his life. These works, predominantly of women with their eyes closed, were thought to be an homage to his daughter, or so he told the people around him. After his death, it was discovered that Humphrey had no family - and no children - adding an element of mystery and discovery to his oeuvre.
Besides a dedication to his subjects, Humphrey developed his own process of creation that both obscures and humanizes the figures therein. Sourcing images from magazines, Humphrey would photocopy new elements onto existing pieces, using tape and drawing materials to close each figure's eyes or to add a decorative element like a necklace or pillow. Reusing works over and over lends ghostly traces of older pieces, such as names and the artist's signature - P.H. - that reappear in multiple places on many works. Finally, pencil and marker were used to individualize and finalize each unique piece.
Paul Humphrey
Clockwise: Sylvia Asleep, Petra Asleep, Stacey Jean Asleep, Jeanne Asleep, 1987-1999
Crayon, ink, and colored pencil on photocopied paper
11 x 8 1/2 in
Alessandra Michelangelo
Born 1961; Died 2009, Livorno, IT
Alessandra Michelangelo lived and worked in Livorno, Italy. For the majority of her adult life, Michelangelo lived in psychiatric facilities. She became ill when she was 20 and appeared to have schizophrenia; her symptoms emerged after the death of her older sister. During the last five years of her life she moved back home with her mother.
Michelangelo was a resident at the Basaglia Psychiatric Center in Italy, named after Franco Basaglia, who was responsible for radically reforming the psychiatric movement in Italy. She became a member of the Blu Cammello Studio, a workshop and social cooperative that provides opportunities for individuals monitored by the Department of Mental Health to participate in activities dedicated to the development of their creative potential.
Despite dealing with challenging symptoms and being one of the most remote patients at Blu Cammello, Michelangelo began to obsessively create, often drawing with both hands simultaneously to complete her work. With uninhibited, intuitive confidence, she produced a unique and cohesive body of work that offers viewers a veiled glimpse into her private inner landscape. Fairies, caves, animals, and abstract linear exploration take shape amid an energy at times seemingly frantic, at others, serene.
Alessandra Michelangelo
Il Rinoceronte, n.d.
Colored pencil on paper
7¾ x 5¼ in.
Royal Robertson
Born 1936, St. Mary Parish, LA; Died 1997
Royal Robertson covered every inch of his Baldwin, Louisiana home and yard with hand-made signs and apocalyptic paintings. Visitors of this self-proclaimed prophet were greeted with large, weather-beaten signs warning “NO DIVORCE WHORE'S ALLOWED” (sic) and “ALL CRAZY PERSONS KEEP OFF LOT” before entering his home.
Once inside, shrines to his both beloved and despised ex-wife, Adell, came into focus amid poster board renderings of future cities, space autos, couples engaged in sex, and detailed calendars chronicling his daily woes. Referencing sources as disparate as the Bible, science fiction magazines, pornography, and cheap tabloid newspapers, his work manages to graphically illustrate the daily concerns that occupied his mind, both real and imagined.
Royal Robertson
Untitled (The Holy Village), c. 1980s
Mixed media on poster board, double-sided
22 x 28 in
Justin McCarthy
Born 1891, Pennsylvania; Died 1977
Justin McCarthy grew up in a wealthy family in Weatherly, Pennsylvania. After his younger brother died of pneumonia in 1907, the family sought consolation by visiting Europe and its museums. McCarthy’s father, a newspaper executive and investor, died in 1908, possibly committing suicide due to the death of his son and his financial losses in the Panic of 1907. McCarthy’s mother raised him and sent him to the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He failed his second-year exams and left school. McCarthy suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a Pennsylvania state psychiatric hospital in 1915. Toward the end of the five years that he remained in the hospital, McCarthy began drawing. When he was released, he returned to live with his mother in the family’s large home. He helped manage a local baseball team; worked variously at a warehouse, a cement company, and as a chocolate mixer; and peddled liniment and produce that he grew. He worked at Bethlehem Steel during World War II and later as an aide at the hospital in which he was formerly a patient. When he was dismissed, he took up peddling again.
McCarthy started making ink line drawings and paintings around 1920 and continued through the 1970s. His expressionistic paintings evince his fascination with cinema and Hollywood stars. He also painted sports figures, scenes from the Bible, landscapes, and still lifes in watercolor, acrylic, and oil. He peddled his own works, nailing them to fences or laying them on lawns, and his prices were high for an unknown artist. Artists and collectors Dorothy and Sterling Strauser first collected and promoted McCarthy’s work after seeing it in an art show in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1962.
After his mother died in 1940, McCarthy lived alone in the family home until his death. During his lifetime, McCarthy’s work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of American Folk Art in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
-Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught and Outsider Art
Justin McCarthy
Untitled, c. 1920
Graphite on paper
5¾ x 4 in.
Justin McCarthy
Untitled/Collage, 1922
Graphite on paper, double-sided
5¼ x 4 in.
Justin McCarthy
Bunny, 1920
Crayon on paper affixed to construction paper
6¾ x 9 in.