art
Recycled Art
Grassroots artists combine car parts, concrete and aluminum foil to create Kansas art that is worth saving.
By James J. Reece Kansan staff writer
David Woods, aretired brick factory worker in Humboldt, crammed his house and yard with treasures he salvaged from cleaning garages—painted tires, light bulbs and bird cages. A backward running clock ticked away to his kitchen. An amphibula.
decorated with discarded plastic toys was suspended above the kitchen table.
Woods did not think of his new hobby as art, but he was lonely and liked the attention his collection was drawing from passersby.
"He led a normal life until his wife died and then he kind of went off on this tangent," said Ray Wilber, a founding member and president of the Lawrence-based Kansas Grassroots Art Association.
The association rescues and promotes the art of untrained artists like Woods, who died in 1974.
Woods was slowed down after suffering from a stroke, but he continued to create even after he became bedridden.
"I think he was killing time," said Wilber. "But I think he came to recognize the value of it because it brought people to look at it."
"He got older and they started bringing him 'Meals on Wheels,'" sad Wilber. "Any time he got multiples of anything, it became art."
His daily meals always were delivered in aluminum foil, which led to one of his later pieces—a brown painted bird cage filled with peach-sized balls of aluminum foil.
Debate about the years has led scholars to call creations such as Woods' naive, idiosyncratic, primitive or folk art. They often involve mixing cement, twisting wire, recycling discarded objects or balling scraps of aluminum foil.
"We started using the term grassroots because it seemed accurate." Wilber said. "We wanted to differentiate from folk art. Folk art usually had some tradition behind it. Grassroots or outside art ignores the established art world's standards or rules."
Gary Blasdel, one of its members, coined the term "grassroots art" in a 1965 article in Art in America magazine.
"The historians and collectors consider that article the beginning of interest in this kind of art," Wilbur said.
Richard Gillespie, associate professor of art at KU, said that grassroots artists did not think of themselves as gallery artists.
Gillespie organizes a one-day bus tour of Kansas grassroots art sites. The trip includes stops at the Garden of Eden in Lucas, which is 160 miles west of Lawrence.
"They attempt to do the best that they can do in the parameters of their work." he said.
The garden, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was completed in the late 1920s by S.P. Dinamoor, a turn of the century populist. The network of concrete trees decorated with lifelike concrete statues of bibical figures like Adam and Eve as well as animals, pioneers and Native Americans. The concrete garden surveys a log
cabin-style house and Dinsmoor's mausoleum, where visitors can see Dinsmoor through a window in his casket. More than 100 tons of concrete were used on the statues, house and vault.
The trip also includes a stop at Ray O. Smith's bison ranch in Longford, which is 100 west of Lawrence. This gives people a chance to eat a buffle burger and admire the 23-foot long, 60-ton concrete, rock and steel buffalo that Smith built.
The Kansas Grassroots Art Association houses its own collection in a museum in Vinnard, eight miles south of Lawrence. The museum is open the first Sunday of each month, beginning in April, or by appointment.
Daron Bennett / KANSAN
In addition to Woods' artwork, the museum houses the glass-studded concrete tombstones of Ed Root and the limestone carvings of Inez Marshall. Both Root and Marshall lived near Lucas.
"We always suspected there might be something in the water," said Wilber of the unusual art coming from Central Kansas.
Wilber said he first encountered art by Root on a dirt road while searching for the Garden of Eden in the summer of 1962. Root had died a few years earlier, but the glass covered tombstones Root had arranged around the entrance to his driveway caught Wilber's seve-
A quarter of a nile walk the driveway, Wilber met Root's two sons. About 10 years later, after the sons died, Wilber formed the group to save Root's work, which eventually became part of the display in Vinland.
"She said 'God told me to do this,' Wilber said. "She had this vision and carved a squirrel."
Inez Marshall, a mechanic, truck driver and traveling evangelist, started carving limestone while recovering from a broken back. Wilber said Marshall was a reason for his
Wilber said Marshall gave a reason for her work.
Top, Ray Wilber, president of the Kansas Grassroots Art Association, tests a one-wheeler cartin the grassroots art museum in Vinnai, eight miles south of Lawrence. Above, Wilber stands next to one of artist Ed Root's glass-studded sculptures in the museum. Below, the Garden of Eden in Lucas, 160 miles west of Lawrence.
Photo courtesy of Jon Blumb
People and places at the University of Kansas.
calendar
Lectures and Seminars
University Placement Center
Workshops:
Beginning A Job Search
3:30-4:20 p.m., today
Preparing For The Interview
3:30-4:20 p.m., Wednesday
Successful Interviewing
3:30-4:20 p.m., Thursday
Resumes and Letters
3:30-4:20 p.m., Monday
Workshops are at Room 149
Workshops are at Room 149 in the Burge Union
Department Of Health and Education Watkins Health Center Acquaintance Rape: What You Should Know 1:30 p.m., Wednesday and 11 a.m., Thursday
Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center
Women: Let's Talk About Sex
7-9 p.m. Tuesday at the Jayhawk Room in the
Kansas Union
Theatre and Film
1959 Pink Thunderbird
Two Plays: Laundry and Bourbon, and Lonestar 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, Crafton-Preyer Theatre
Tickets: Students $3.50, Senior Citizens $6,
General Public $7
Reading with Fred Neuman: Samuel Beckett's
Worstord Ho
4-6 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 209 Murphy Hall Staged Reading of Samuel Beckett's Worstward Ho, 2:30 p.m., Sunday and 8 p.m. Monday, Inge Theatre
World Of Dance Presentation
2:30 p.m., today, 240 Robinson
Sweet Honey In the Rock
8 p.m. Sunday, Plymouth Congregational
Church, 925 Vermont St.
Office Of Study Abroad
Spanish Study Abroad informational meeting
4 p.m., Thursday, 3132 Wescoe
French Study Abroad informational meeting
4 p.m., Monday, 4033 Wescoe
Brown Bag Lunch
Brown Bag Classroom
The Commission On The Status Of Women
Female Assertiveness in the Classroom
12:30 p.m. Thursday, at the Walnut Room in the Kansas Union