Just Folk will be exhibiting works by Bill Traylor at the nineteenth annual Outsider Art Fair (Bill Traylor, “Yellow Goat,” poster paint and graphite on cardboard, ca. 1939-42)
The Mart
7 West 34th St. off Fifth Ave.
February 11-13, $20 (includes catalog)
www.sanfordsmith.com
The nineteenth annual Outsider Art Fair gets under way tonight with an advance preview benefiting the Creative Growth Art Center, which “serves adult artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities,” and the Fountain Gallery, which “provides an environment for artists living and working with mental illness to pursue their personal visions and to challenge the stigma that surrounds mental illness.” The show, held at the Mart at 7 West 34th St., opens to the general public on Friday, featuring more than thirty galleries displaying works by outsider, visionary, and self-taught artists who paint, draw, and sculpt without specific training and education. Among the exhibitors are the Electric Pencil, Ricco/Maresca, Carl Hammer, Just Folk, Yukiko Koide Presents, Marcia Weber Art Objects, and Maxwell Projects. Special events include a Friday-night after-party ($50), a presentation by Dr. Thomas Röske of the Prinzhorn Collection on Saturday at 1:30 ($25), and a panel discussion on the role of artists with disabilities in outsider and contemporary art on Sunday at 2:00 ($25). Outsider Art Week continues at the American Folk Art Museum, with Anna Panszczyk delivering the Nathan Lerner Annual Lecture, “Reading Ephemera (and Fairies) in the Artworks of Henry Darger,” Friday at 4:30 (free with museum admission), followed Sunday at 10:00 by the Anne Hill Blanchard Symposium, “Uncommon Artists XIX: A Series of Cameo Talks,” with Laurel Gitlen speaking on Michael Patterson-Carver, Brett Littman on Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Kendall Messick on Gordon Brinckle, and Tom Whitehead on Clementine Hunter connoisseurship ($35), and a 1:00 screening of Kendall Messick’s 2003 film, THE PROJECTIONIST, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker (free with museum admission).