American Visionary Art Museum

The American Visionary Art Museum is in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Visionary art as defined for the purposes of the American Visionary Art Museum refers to art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself."

Above: Gregory Warmack

"Horse Dress," crocheted by an unknown schizophrenic woman who lived at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, and my favorite thing in this museum of favorite things. The notes on the wall said, "She actually wore this dress in defiance of the generic patient uniform."

Patty Kuzbida

 

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, a Polish holocaust survivor (she and her sister fled the Nazis, posing as Catholics, and the rest of her family died in Maidanek), made these quilts of her experiences all with applique and embroidery. The top one is when she visited Maidanek right after the war, finding "giant cabbages growing on human ashes." The lower one is the Nazis hanging from the trees.

These are by Mars Tokyo. They're tiny tiny dioramas (each one is about four inches tall.)

Teatro della seduta spiritica, Mars Tokyo

Teatro della vergine, Mars Tokyo

Vanessa German

Jim Doran (The container for the paper sculpture is a soap dish that's about four inches long.)

"Art is at its best when it forgets its very name." --Dubuffet