#american odd

[driftlessarearev]

American Odd: Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Others Marvels of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence Welschler

American Odd: Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Others Marvels of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence Welschler

Via Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence Weschler Vintage Books (1995) “[A] small nondescript storefront operation located along the main commercial drag of downtown Culver City in the middle of West Los Angeles’s endless pseudo-urban sprawl: the Museum of Jurassic Technology, according to the fading…

View On WordPress

[driftlessarearev]

American Odd: Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic, by Robert Lanham

American Odd: Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic, by Robert Lanham

Via Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic by Robert Lanham Art by Jeff Bechtel PLUME/Penguin (2004) A longstanding concept beloved by American civilization has been the notion of personal freedom. Thomas Jefferson inscribed it in The Declaration of Independence, laying it out as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In the United States we have…

View On WordPress

[driftlessarearev]

American Odd: Mary Nohl

American Odd: Mary Nohl

Via Mary Nohl Inside & Outside: Biography of an Artist by Barbara Manger The Greater Milwaukee Foundation (2008) Mary Nohl (1914 – 2001) was a visionary artist who left a profound legacy on the Wisconsin landscape. Like Alex Jordan and Tom Every (aka Dr. Evermor) in the Driftless Area, Nohl’s eccentric paintings and sculptures exemplify her idiosyncratic individualism. When assessing an…

View On WordPress

[driftlessarearev]

American Odd: Pack of Lies, by Gilbert Sorrentino This week I conclude my essay series American Odd by looking at Gilbert Sorrentino's postmodern masterpiece Pack of Lies.

[driftlessarearev]

American Odd: Henry Darger: Selected Art and Writings, by Michael Bonesteel This week I continue my American Odd essay series with a look at Chicago-area artist and recluse Henry Darger.

[driftlessarearev]

American Odd: California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, by Jim Heimann

I continue my essay series, American Odd, with a look at the history of the American roadside attraction in Jim Heimann’s classic California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture.

Johnson’s Park & Mini-Golf, Milwaukee, WI

Gas station, Mauston, WI

From the Zippy the Pinhead comic strip … which I’ll be covering next!

View On WordPress

[driftlessarearev]

The Donna Kossy Interview

As part of American Odd, my new themed essay series over at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, I wrote an essay on the cult classic book Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief, by Donna Kossy. In this interview, Donna Kossy and I discuss Kooks, kooks, and the educational importance of strange belief systems.

What inspired you to write Kooks?

It started as just a few…

View On WordPress