Works from the Collection of Michael Stipe at OAF

Maps & Legends:
Works from the Collection
of Michael Stipe
OAF New York 

December 1–5, 2021

MARCH is pleased to share Maps & Legends: Works from the Collection of Michael Stipe curated by Phillip March Jones. Featuring works by Howard Finster, R.A. Miller, Juanita Rogers, and Leroy Person, among others, the presentation will be on view from March 3–6, 2022 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W 18th Street, New York, NY. 

Michael Stipe introduced me to Howard Finster in 1996. I was fifteen years old.

More precisely, while driving across the Southern United States in a passenger van, two friends told me the story of a preacher turned artist who was building a garden filled with the “inventions of mankind” amid thousands of paintings of heaven, hell, aliens, and spaceships. They had first heard about Howard Finster from an R.E.M. music video filmed at the artist’s home…read more

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Installation ViewsIndividual WorksPress Release

“I have always been interested in people living on the fringes. In the South, they are not only tolerated but often honored and embraced.”

– Michael Stipe

A painting by Howard Finster titled Thank God for an Empty Cross, dated 1983.

Howard Finster
Thank God for an Empty Cross, 1983
Tractor enamel on panel with artist frame
24 x 36 inches

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A drawing by Howard Finster titled Album Sketch, dated 1983.

Howard Finster
Album Sketch, 1983
Ink and graphite on paper
7.25 x 4 inches

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A painting by Prophet Royal Robertson titled Untitled (Zion), c. 1980s.

Claudia Keep
Waves, 2021
Oil on cradled wood panel
16 x 20 inches

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A painting by Prophet Royal Robertson titled Untitled (City Ukias), dated c. 1970s-1980s.

Claudia Keep
Piece of Sky on Tompkins Avenue, 2020
Oil on masonite panel
10 1/2 x 9 inches

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“I don’t think of myself—and never have thought of myself—as a collector, but I have bought things over the years that I found inspiring and wanted to live with. That became, over the course of my long life, quite a collection. The idea of being able to share it with people is really thrilling for me.”

– Michael Stipe, ARTnews, 2022

An untitled drawing by Thornton Dial, dated c. 1990s.

Thornton Dial
Untitled, c. 1990s
Charcoal, graphite and watercolor on paper
22 x 30 inches

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An untitled and undated drawing by Dilmus Hall.

Dilmus Hall
Untitled, n.d.
Colored pencil, pencil, and pen on paper
8.5 x 11 inches

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An untitled and undated drawing by Dilmus Hall.

Dilmus Hall
Untitled, n.d.
Colored pencil, pencil, and pen on paper
13.75 x 17.25 inches

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An untitled drawing by Ted Gordon, dated 1980.

Ted Gordon
Untitled, 1980
Ink on card
8 x 5.5 inches

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An untitled and undated painting by James Billie Lemming.

James Billie Lemming
Untitled, n.d.
Housepaint on wood with Sun-Maid Raisin lid
13 x 30 x .5 inches

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An untitled and undated painting by Juanita Rogers.

Juanita Rogers
Untitled, n.d.
Paint and graphite on paper
11 x 17 inches

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An undated drawing by Juanita Rogers, titled Porky Chop-Chop.

Juanita Rogers
Porky Chop-Chop, n.d.
Graphite and paint on paper
8.75 x 11.75 inches
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An untitled and undated drawing by Bessie Harvey.

Bessie Harvey
Untitled, n.d.
Paint on wood with marble, shells and stones
14.5 x 6 x 3 inches

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“I think there’s an acceptance and understanding across the South that might surprise people. For people who take their own path and people who choose to live on the fringe or to follow certain urges, it seems like there’s an acceptance here that is unwritten and [different from] other issues and other concerns that are often associated with the South. There’s a tolerance within what we think of as a very intolerant place for people to be who they are and to allow for that, and that’s something that I don’t think has ever been really fully understood.”

– Michael Stipe, ARTnews, 2022

An untitled and undated painting by Eddie Owens Martin.

Eddie Owens Martin
Untitled, n.d.
Gouache, watercolor and ink on paper
8.5 x 11 inches

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An untitled and undated painting by Eddie Owens Martin.

Eddie Owens Martin
Untitled, n.d.
Gouache, watercolor and ink on paper
8.5 x 11 inches
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An untitled and undated drawing by Leroy Person.

Leroy Person
Untitled, n.d.
Oil pastel on paper
13.25 x 15 inches

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An untitled and undated drawing by Leroy Person.

Leroy Person
Untitled, n.d.
Oil pastel on paper
11 x 13.5 inches
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“It is undeniable that Michael’s interest in the work helped put it on the national stage.”

–Andy Nasisse

A painting by Jimmy Lee Sudduth titled Untitled (Toto), undated..

Jimmy Lee Sudduth
Untitled (Toto), n.d.
Clay and paint on wood
31 x 25.5 x 1.5 inches

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Press Release

Maps & Legends: Works from the Collection of Michael Stipe
Curated by Phillip March Jones
OAF New York

March 3–6, 2022

 

Maybe he’s caught in the legend
Maybe he’s caught in the mood
Maybe these maps and legends
Have been misunderstood

Michael Stipe introduced me to Howard Finster in 1996. I was fifteen years old.

More precisely, while driving across the Southern United States in a passenger van, two friends told me the story of a preacher turned artist who was building a garden filled with the “inventions of mankind” amid thousands of paintings of heaven, hell, aliens, and spaceships. They had first heard about Howard Finster from an R.E.M. music video filmed at the artist’s home. This somewhat hyperbolic game of telephone led me to Finster’s doorstep one year later and ultimately changed the course of my life. Artists, musicians, and writers are always sharing influences and making introductions to like-minded folks, but some have the power to do so on a different scale. Andy Nasisse, an artist and former U.G.A. professor, states it more plainly: “It is undeniable that Michael’s interest in the work helped put it on the national stage.”

In the early 1980s, Michael Stipe was an art student at the University of Georgia in Athens. His friend and professor, Art Rosenbaum, describes the local art and music scene of the time as “a kind of trading-off of vibes” and characterized by a general willingness among faculty and students to accept other aesthetics or ways of art-making. This was certainly true of Stipe who was quick to recognize and embrace the talents of his adopted home. Through introductions made by a community of friends and mentors including Rosenbaum and Nasisse, but also, Jim Herbert, Roger Manley, Tom Patterson, and Judy McWillie, Stipe met artists across the region, occasionally acquiring their works. In a recent phone call, he describes how these objects made their way into his life: “I bought things that I liked but never thought of myself as a collector. It was what was available. At first, I couldn’t afford art books, but I was able to travel and meet people. I remember J.B. Murray giving me some magic water in a bottle so that I could read scripture like he did. He told me that the best way home in the dark is the way you know. Back in art school, my friends and I would sometimes end long druggy nights by driving to sit and stare at R.A. Miller’s hill behind the house. It had three or four hundred whirligigs; it was unbelievable.” Rosenbaum also remembers a birthday party they attended together for Dilmus Hall, immortalized in one of the professor’s paintings, and Manley recalls taking Michael to see Clyde Jones, Vollis Simpson, and other artists in North Carolina. And has the pictures to prove it.

Stipe’s motivation to meet artists feels both curious and genuine: “I have always been interested in people living on the fringes. In the South, they are not only tolerated but often honored and embraced.” From the beginning, Stipe and R.E.M. translated their natural affinity
for these artists and their shared geography into album covers, music videos, and objects that used works and environments by Southern artists including Howard Finster, R.A. Miller, Juanita Rogers, and Leroy Person, among others. Radio Free Europe was filmed at Paradise Garden in 1983; one year later, Jim Herbert directed Left of Reckoning, an experimental long-format music video, at R.A. Miller’s Whirligig Farm in Rabbittown, Georgia; Juanita Roger’s drawings were printed on the back of Life’s Rich Pageant, and so on. The cumulative effect of these projects was two-fold: the introduction of new artists to tens of thousands of people across the globe and an implicit transmission of the palpable appeal of a hidden South personified by artists and musicians who were both firmly grounded in the region but divorced from its problematic and stereotyped reputation.

Taking its title from an R.E.M. song dedicated to Howard Finster, Maps and Legends situates works from the collection of Michael Stipe within the larger context of the modern South and features paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Thornton Dial, ST. EOM, Dilmus Hall, Bessie Harvey, Howard Finster, R.A. Miller, Royal Robertson, Juanita Rogers, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, and other artists encountered by Stipe during his wanderings across the region.

 

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Selected Press

Artnet
March 3, 2022
In Pictures: See R.E.M. Frontman Michael Stipe’s Fantastical Art Brut Collection, on View at the Outsider Art Fair in New York
By Artnet News

ARTnews
March 2, 2022
Michael Stipe on his Collection Exhibition at the Outsider Art Fair
By Andy Battaglia

The New York Times
February 25, 2022
Michael Stipe, Another Outsider at the Fair
By Karen Rosenberg

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