Folk Art
Working With Shapes
Pages 2-3
Pilgrims and Patriots
1.) What was the most important characteristic of early folk art?
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Almost all early folk art was created for a practical purpose.
Folk artists took pride in making these objects aesthetically pleasing.
They worked with materials they had on hand.
They are made by people who have had little or no art training and they did not sign
their work.
Today, many folk-art objects are considered valuable and are displayed in museums.
Folk art is distinguished by an unaffected charm that has won recognition and praise
from the art establishment.
2.) Who created quilts such as the one shown on pages 2-3, and where did they obtain their
materials?
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Most quilts were sewn by farm women who worked in groups to assemble them.
3.) Where did quilters obtain their materials?
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These women lived in a time when goods were scarce;
they saved fabric scraps and used them to make bedspreads.
They expressed their creativity by arranging multiple colors and patterns into complex
geometric designs.
4.) Why is this quilt called “Log Cabin Quilt, Barn Raising Variation”?
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The “logs” are rectangular pieces of cloth arranged in concentric squares.
Fabric pieces lighter in value make up half of each square.
The squares are joined to form a series of concentric diamonds which suggest a barn’s
peaked roof.
***All bold-faced questions appear in the student’s worksheets.
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Pages 4-5
Pilgrims and Patriots
5.) When did Horace Pippin’s interest in art begin?
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He did not begin to paint until he was wounded in WW1.
He taught himself by placing a brush in his partially paralyzed right hand and moved it
across the canvas with his left.
6.) Who is the woman in the light dress, setting in the foreground?
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She is the lady of the cotton plantation, dressed in typical Southern-belle regalia.
She sits demurely, with time on her hands, fan folded in her lap.
7.) Who are the two figures in the back?
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They are African-American tenant farmers whose work drove the Southern “cotton
economy” that supported the plantation lady’s lifestyle.
A tenant farmer works land owned by someone else and pays rent in cash or produce.
8.) How has Pippin emphasized the importance of cotton in the three figures’ lives?
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White cotton fields dominate the left side of the painting;
The puffy clouds echo the shapes of the cotton.
The woman in the center wears a fluffy white dress
The tenant farmer carries a basket of cotton
A pile of cotton rests on the porch’s woman spins cotton at her spinning wheel.
9.) What might the dark shape of the tenant farmer’s cabin symbolize?
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The dark cabin contrast with the fields of fluffy cotton and the Southern belle in the
white dress;
The darkness represents the hard lives and relative poverty of those who work the
plantation owner’s land.
10.) What type of imagery appeared in Minnie Evans’s work?
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Most of Evans’s imagery was drawn from the Bible and from the natural forms in the
botanical gardens where she worked.
She combined these images into fantastic, brightly colored “beings” with flowing wings
and tendrils.
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11.) What obstacles did this artist overcome?
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Evans was obsessive in creating her pictures with paints and colored pencils, despite her
poverty and lack of formal training.
12.) What kind of figure has Evans portrayed in her untitled work on page 5?
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The bilateral symmetry of this figure suggest an animal – part butterfly, reptile,
crustacean, human.
13.) When did Bill Traylor first begin to draw and paint; what kind of art did he create?
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He was born into slavery in 1854, worked the Alabama land for nearly 80 years.
It was not until 1939, when his wife died, that he began to draw simplified, stylized
versions of the people, animals, and everyday events he saw along the streets of
Montgomery.
14.) What is happening with “Man and Bird on House”?
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A man is trying to capture a chicken that has literally flown the coop and escaped to the
roof of his house.
15.) How has the artists created tension in this scene?
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The farmer threatens the bird with a stick, but the chicken lunges forward, poised to
attack with its sharp beak.
16.) What kinds of shapes has Traylor used?
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The house is made up of simple geometric shapes.
The chicken and man are made up of stylized organic shapes.
17.) What technique has the artist used to convey the rundown condition of the house?
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The bright-blue texture is rough, suggesting worn or missing shingles on a ramshackle
house.
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Pages 6-7
Western Symbols
18.) Who was Simon Rodia?
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Rodia was an Italian title setter who, in 1921, began creating a sculpture next to his
home in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
He worked for 33 years, eventually completing nine structures now known as the Watts
Towers.
He disappeared from the neighborhood in 1954, the Watts Towers are still standing.
19.) How did Rodia construct the towers, and what materials did he use?
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He “improvised” the towers, building the framework from wire and concrete.
He added glass, pottery, shells, and tile to create mosaics.
The tallest tower is nearly 100 feet high.
20.) What might motivate someone to create something like the Watts Towers?
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He explained, “I had in mind to do something big.”
A project such as this represents one man’s quest to be remembered by creating a huge
monument.
21.) Who was Martin Ramirez and how was his artistic talent discovered?
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Ramirez was a Mexican laborer eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
A psychology professor visiting a California psychiatric hospital was impressed by the
collages Ramirez had been drawing on scraps of paper and arranged an exhibition.
22.) What is unusual about Ramirez’s use of shapes in the work on page 7?
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Artists usually use curving organic shapes to depict natural forms, and geometric forms
made up of straight lines and sharp angles to depict man-made objects. Ramirez uses
organic forms for the cars, road, and tunnel; straight lines and angles for the trees,
fields, and river.
23.) Why is Kay Miller not considered a “folk artist” in the strictest sense?
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Unlike most folk artists, Miller has had formal art training.
24.) What folk-art elements can you find in “The Seer” on page 6?
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Like much folk art, Miller’s painting incorporates bright colors and simplified, stylized
shapes.
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25.) What symbol of her Native American heritage has Miller included in this work?
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The feather alludes to Miller’s Comanche ancestry.
The juxtaposition of this symbol of stability with the swirling, unstable eye may refer to
the artist’s feelings about living in a “two-part” culture.”
Pages 8-9
“Hoosick Falls in Winter” by Grandma Moses
26.) Who was Grandma Moses, and when did she begin to paint?
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Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses was born in 1860.
Her lifetime included the American Civil war, two world wars, and the Great Depression.
Moses lived and worked on farms during most of her life
She began painting when she was 77.
27.) How did Moses become a famous artist?
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She was “discovered” in 1939 when an art collector saw her paintings in a drugstore
window.
Moses lived to be 100, created about 2,000 paintings, and had many exhibitions in the
U.S. and Europe.
28.) How has Moses arranged the composition in “Hoosick Falls, N.Y. in Winter”/
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As in all of Moses’s work, the composition is “cumulative,” without linear perspective.
The viewer “reads” the scene as the eye travels across the scene accumulating details.
Pages 10-11
Folk Art Updated
29.) What symbol from Native American folklore has Harry Fonseca included in the work on
page 10?
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The dancing animal is a coyote, which appears as a trickster in Native American folktales
and in many of Fonseca’s paintings.
30.) What folk-art elements has Fonseca incorporated into this work?
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In addition to the stylized animal form which resembles a Native American pictogram,
Fonseca has used bright, flat primary color.
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31.) What does Beverly Buchanan’s “Cameron, South Carolina” have in common with Horace
Pippin’s “Cabin in the Cotton”?
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Both artists use dark, simplified shapes to depict the cabins of African-American
sharecroppers in the rural South.
32.) How does Buchanan’s use of color differ from Pippin’s?
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Pippin’s use of color is realistic: Buchanan’s conveys emotion.
The reds and purples in her work symbolize the vitality and warm relationships of the
people living in the cabins.
33.) What folk-art tradition does Miriam Schapiro refer to in The Poet?
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Schapiro uses quilt makers’ techniques, assembling fabric scraps to form the stylized
figure of a women in a flowered dress and apron.
34.) What shape frames the woman; why is this significant”
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A narrow “house” frames the woman, suggesting she is trapped – or at least limited in
her choices – by her homemaker role.
Pages 12-13
Artist of the Month:
Cynthia Bergeron: swirling shapes
35.) How is Cynthia Bergeron’s graphic work similar to Harry Fonseca’s on page 10? How
does it differ?
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The repeated shapes in both works are highly simplified and stylized. Both feature black
silhouettes and bright colors. Fonseca’s shapes are flat, while Cynthia’s computergenerated shapes swirl and seem to have a three-dimensional quality.
Pages 16
Critics corner/Patchwork Puzzles
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