American Vernacular: New Discoveries in Folk, Self-Taught, and Outsider Sculpture. by Frank Maresca; Roger Ricco, Margit Rowell; Joseph Jacobs; Lyle Rexer - 2002.

Boston: Bulfinch Press / Little, Brown & Company, 2002. First Edition, First Printing 1/4 cloth AS NEW in AS NEW DJ 4to (10 x 11-1/4); 303 pp including Index of artists. Hardbound Book is FINE -- Unread, Unmarked (other than remainder mark on bottom page block) in shrinkwrap and AS NEW in AS NEW glossy pictorial unclipped dust jacket. Gift quality. (h) 450 color photos of art for art's sake -- early and backwoods and small town Americana that the formal art establishment overlooked until recently -- religious carvings and carnival figures, birdbaths, angels, bathing beauties, military figurines and funerary memorial sculptures, dolls of all sorts -- in short, exceptional soulful lovingly made pieces of art that had always been dismissed as kitsch or commercial or primitive. These were made by the true American artists, not imitating European styles but the sensibilities of their own communities, rarely educated other than at home -- whittlers, carvers, metal cutters, stone carvers, wood carvers -- in all a monumental and magnificent collection of artists' works hunted down and found. Like jazz and blues and rock and roll -- indigenous unique American culture. Book is AS NEW and gift quality. Weights nearly 5 pounds. B6