Outsider Art Museum of Chicago
[OK, now this is tricky: This is a reprint of a review by Coquine Wijsegger in Bummers and Gummers of Mark and Linette’s zine “Crime Wave,” $3, POB 675283, Marietta GA 30067. Got that?]
My favorite story of that particular issue [3] is Mark’s recounting of a road trip they made to Chicago. Besides that I share Mark’s interest in “outsider art” because, like Mark, I’m a selftaught artist, I also love impossible quests fulfilled. In this case the impossible quest was for the Chicago Museum of Self Taught Art.
After breakfast I began to call everyone that I could think of about this elusive Chicago Museum of SeIfTaught Art. I looked in the phone book and I couldn’t find it. I called information and there was no listing. I called other museums and not a soul at any one had even heard mention of it. I was beginning to believe my friends who were telling me I must have imagined it. It was after all over a year ago and only a 30second spot on CNN about the odd little museum which housed the “Toothpick Titanic” and other inspired works of insanity by the untrained.
Then Mark goes out sightseeing with his friends…
I found a copy of Chicago’s free paper and I opened it up. Wouldn’t you know it, there it was right in front of me, a notice for a show opening at the Chicago Center for SelfTaught Art Museum. [looking at the address I realized that it was actually inside of Marshall Fields, the big department store that’s always being discussed by Florida Evans on “Good Times.” Upon reaching Marshall Fields, fear set in again as I realized that no one at the department store had ever heard of the museum. In a panic, I started looking for clues as to where it could possible be. Finally, seeing a list of departments by the elevator, I find that it does in fact exist and that its way up on the 9th floor, between the Human Resources Department [sic1 and the discount linens. With a rush of adrenaline, we shot up the elevator. When we finally stopped and the doors slid open it was like I was entering a Daniel Pinkwater book. It was as though we had found this secret place that was beautiful, bright and all ours. In contrast to the lower floors, there was absolutely no one there. There were no guards and no people, only an empty desk with no one behind it. We had discovered a lost place, tucked away and forgotten. As for the works themselves, they were incredible. There was something frightening about it all at the same time, the fact that some of the pieces contained elements which were very familiar to me, things I see in my own paintings yet which I had never seen elsewhere. It was as though I was meant to find this place And see the ties which floated through our works. True there was no longer a “Toothpick Titanic”, but I had found some things far more miraculous.
