Free Tumbling Blocks by Earlene Fowler

choice if we wanted this exhibit to garner media interest outside of our own county, something that Abe Adam Finch’s celebrity could accomplish. Newspaper articles in Los Angeles and San Francisco newspapers brought tourists, which brought potential buyers of their art. After I pointed that out, there wasn’t too much of a protest. We all understood the economic need for celebrity endorsement.
    Though there were rumors that the reclusive artist might show up to the opening, they were just that, rumors. To be honest, no one except his niece would know if he showed up, since there wasn’t a clear picture of him to be found. One of the few interviews I’d found of him, apparently one done through the mail, stated that he preferred to let his work speak for itself.
    “Pretentious snob,” I’d overheard one of the co-op artists say to a colleague at the downtown gift shop recently. Both women were putting in their requisite volunteer hours manning the cash register. I’d been taking inventory of the quilted items so I could let the quilters know if we needed more table runners or coasters.
    “Now, Lilah,” the other artist said, mildly protesting. “Maybe he’s agoraphobic.”
    Lilah, a painter who favored bold, abstract birds in her paintings, snorted. Her work hadn’t been accepted for the exhibit. “I daresay he keeps himself scarce just to triple the price of his paintings.”
    The other artist laughed and shook her head.
    A part of me sympathized with Lilah. It was true that often the odd personality or unique background of an artist gave that person’s art an aura of significance that it sometimes didn’t deserve. As with all the arts, sometimes it wasn’t the most talented artist who succeeded, but it was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and having someone with influence single out your work. Even worse, sometimes it was just a matter of being born in the right family.
    According to his official biography, Abe Adam Finch’s work had been discovered ten years ago by a famous San Francisco collector, Lionel Bachman, on a trip with friends to Las Vegas. The story went that he’d seen one of Abe’s paintings for sale in the back of a funky souvenir shop downtown. It was of a walnut tree with tiny faces painted into the hundreds of walnuts hanging on the branches. The name of the painting was Family Nut Tree . He bought it for twenty-five dollars, took it back to San Francisco and hung it in his living room. Six months later, a spread in Architectural Digest showing the collector’s living room made Abe Adam Finch the outsider artist to collect. Mr. Bachman died last year, and that same painting was auctioned off for twenty-eight thousand dollars.
    I walked through the exhibit amazed at the complexity of many of the pieces, the attention to detail that is often very apparent in outsider art as well as the messages that many were unafraid to present. Unlike a lot of highly educated, marketing-savvy fine artists, the majority of outsider artists never expected to make a living with their art, often didn’t even think about selling it unless they needed the money for food or rent. Many, I’d read and been told by the collectors I’d met, were so happy someone liked what they did that they often tried to give it away. Having an exhibit like this was the epitome of what I’d hoped this museum would be: a combination of art and history, a place where artists and those who appreciated their art could meet on equal ground, where it didn’t matter where they went to school or who their parents were. There was only the fact that something compelled them to make art, to communicate with paint and clay and fabric and words to represent what was wonderful and terrible about this one particular speck of time we lived in.
    These thoughts were part of a talk I was scheduled to give on this very topic of outsider art and how it was similar to oral history. My talk would take place at the