W.R. Rocky Ferris Autoscape Photorealism Art

Rocky Ferris Roxy Drive in

rocky ferris roxy drive-in 3

rocky Ferris roxy drive-in 2

This graphic interpretation of a quintessential shark fin and dual bullet tail light of a ’59 Cadillac captures the essence of this classic GM design. The refined lines of the Caddy are juxtaposed with a cozy couple in their Chevy at the Roxy Brown Lantern Drive-In. W.R. (Rocky) Ferris celebrates his early talent and passion in this screen printed image, number 25 or 58, printed in 1978, with applied water color, and white Conte’ crayon.

rocky ferris 59 corvette 1

rocky ferris 59 corvette 2

rocky ferris 59 corvette

This idyllic image is titled “59 Vette.” It is a W.R. Ferris screen printed image, number 28 of 70, with applied water color, and white Conte’ crayon. It depicts a scene common to many households, particularly during those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.” We washed and waxed the car by hand, of course, collectors still eschew any other methods. My fourth grade teacher had a ’59 Corvette just like this, a gift from her father upon her graduation from college. The details of the checkered flag are even noted in this nostalgic, photorealistic homage to the past and the car of your dreams.

rocky ferris 54 corvette

rocky ferris 54 corvette 2

rocky ferris 54 corvette 2

This image is titled “1954 Corvette.” It is a screen printed image, number 2 of 97, with applied water color, and white Conte’ crayon. It depicts a view from the buyer’s perspective of the steering wheel, dashboard, and surrounding cars on a car lot. The artist attends with passion, graphically, to the infinite details of the industrial design including the speedometer, the tachometer, oil pressure gauge, … A ‘ vette enthusiast will feel like they are in the driver’s seat.

rocky ferris kissimmee

rocky ferris kissimmee 1

rocky ferris kissimmee 2

Back in the day, fuel stations dispensed not only gasoline but service “with a smile.” Gasoline, including Texaco, at this service station was pumped, oil levels were checked, windshields were wiped, self-service was not even a concept in consideration. The artist who at the time spent winters in Marathon, Florida, illustrated this open bay garage located in Kissimmee. The perfect backdrop for a period film shoot. The details in both the classic vintage cars, as well as the scenic landscape are fine examples of photorealistic style. The image is not dated formally, however, if one looks closely, the artist uses the date of completion in the license plate: 31678. It is a W.R. (Rocky) Ferris screen printed image, from 1978, number 27 of 53, with applied water color, and white Conte’ crayon.

rocky ferris artist description

This and three other hand tinted prints by Walter Rockford Ferris, aka Rocky Ferris, were purchased in the summer of 1978 at the Ann Arbor, Michigan Arts Festival. They have been displayed in one residence or another in the family since that time. We disassembled this and the other pieces to clean, photograph, and replace the acid free backer, prior to listing in its original metal, period 70s frame.

“Walter is one of those unusual person who has combined all phases of his life to make them work for him and he expresses them within his work. He is an artist and always has been.
It was his childhood goal. His appreciation for quality, design, and presentation was introduced in his youth in New England. His preoccupation with autos began in his teens and was rekindled with his first antique auction ten years later. At 30, Walter changed his occupation from commercial artists to fine artist and started drawing what he loved… autoscapes.
It is the individuality of the most commonplace, especially during the 30s, 40s, 50s, that has inspired him to recreate this mood. He has exhibited in numerous national shows, lives in Florida in winter, Michigan in summer, and drives a Plymouth Woody.”

His work is in private, corporate, and public collections. He has received numerous commissions, and prestigious awards at art festivals.

His individual style has evolved over the years he describes as “many lives.” Living on a boat and creating miniatures for years, then back on land with a studio, he describes his work as “Tropical Surrealism.” He no longer paints simply photorealistic images, he makes “the normal seem abnormal and abnormal seem normal… surrealism.” A member and an instructor at the Key West Art Center, Key West, Florida, as of 2006. Discovered through numerous sites and links, he may be quoted as stating that “photorealistic images of which are not real or present and come from my mind are what make me feel truly creative.”

Kentucky Folk Artist Jim Lewis Mermaid Carved Sculptures

jim lewis mermaid sculpture

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jim lewis mermaid sculpture

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One of an extended family of well known, and collected folk art carvers from rural Kentucky, Jim Lewis joined his brothers and cousins, including Junior Lewis and Tim Lewis. The work of Minnie Adkins, and the late Garland Adkins, highly regarded regional folk artists, inspired Jim Lewis to begin carving. He had worked as a heavy equipment operator before working exclusively on his art, working in basswood, as well as maple for his canes. We attended events including the sorghum festival and the annual “Day in the Country.” We purchased several of Jim Lewis’s canes and other sculptural work, including this early mermaid. Collectors of this genre of work recognize the importance of seminal work such as this mermaid. Early work, we feel is most inspired, most original. These pieces are signed and dated 1993 and 1994. His more recent work is sold at regional galleries. His work has been displayed ” nationally and internationally” including the Museum of American Folk Art and is sometimes available at the gallery at the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, Kentucky.

Vintage Carved Wood Mexican Religious Folk Art Cross Crucifix

Mexican Religious Folk Art Cross Crucifix

Mexican Religious Folk Art Cross Crucifix

Our collection contains dozens of old vintage Mexican masks and other ethnographic art mostly from Guerrero, Mexico. Many of the masks and other ethnographic artifacts were purchased at the Ohio Ethnographic gallery in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1988, curiously; known for the selectivity of the work they showed and offered. This vintage wood crucifix has the original lime based paint and nails, some paint has worn away with age. It has a hairline crack in the green decorative piece, as depicted. Otherwise, it is a beautiful old example of the carving style of this geographical area of Mexico. Cheaper, more recent work from Guerrero, and Oaxaca, and Michoaca may be available elsewhere however, the tourist industry is resulting in production methods and stylization diminishing both the overall quality including character and value.

Measurements: 24″ x 15″ x 8″

Antique Handmade Cross Assemblage from Ecuador

cross

cross close up

We purchased this beautiful cross at an antique dealer’s booth in Cincinnati in the middle 80s. It appears to be an old wooden cross that was repurposed for a handmade crucifix assemblage. The dealer purchased it while in Ecuador years before our purchase. The assemblage is quite unique. The original cross and base are very old, wooden. There appears to be a previous coating of a silvery metallic guilding. Much, but not all of this is worn away revealing much of the wood. Someone, prior to the dealer’s purchase, applied a paper image of Christ on the cross to the front of the cross. This is the condition it was in at the time of its discovery at the antique mall in Cincinnati. There is an old nail driven through the bottom of the base which adjoins the cross. The assemblage and its lovely patina make this an especially interesting cultural and historical relic.

Measurements: 9″ x 4.5″ x 3″ (Base 2.75″ x 3″)

Vintage Virgin of Guadalupe Handmade Assembled Religious Artifact from Ecuador

Virgin of Guadalupe

We purchased this beautiful artifact at an antique dealer’s booth in Cincinnati in the middle 80s. It is a handmade assemblage the dealer purchased while in Ecuador years before its sale. As an assemblage, each element carries special meaning and spirit. The back comprised of wood contains some tiny holes inhabited, long ago, by some burrowing insect. There is also a bent nail from which it was probably originally hung on a wall; from which a raffia-like cord is strung, perhaps for a later use? The base is the means by which we have displayed it for, now, decades. The front of the wood is wrapped with a very old piece of paper on which it is printed “PULIVITIN” ? The Virgin, behind glass, is a printed piece on which the maker has applied several reflective cutout shapes.The frame is painted the same color as the VIrgin’s robe. There is an old nail which juts out from base as an anchoring device. It exudes such adoration, it conveys significant cultural and historical interest.

Measurements: 9.5″ x 4.5″ x 1″ (Base 2.5″ deep)

Vintage Carved and Painted Figures of a Man and Woman

Carved Couple

carved women

carved man

We discovered this wonderful pair of figures at the Heartland Antique Show in Richmond, Indiana in the middle 1990s. They had been brought to this nationally recognized show by a antique dealer from Iowa. She did not know the figures provenance but said she believed them to be from the late 30s to early 40s. They are delicate and beautifully carved with great skill exhibited in technique. The attire is well articulated, the man holds a hat behind his back. The hat must have been broken at some stage as it had been carefully glued together at the time of our purchase. The woman’s shoes have some loss of the black paint. She is also missing what we believe must have been a basket which rested upon her left hip. There is a small peg which juts from her hip, some absence of paint makes it apparent something had been applied and then painted. Her flaxen hair and some of her facial features have been sculpted from a composite material. Perhaps glue and sawdust? Both the male and female figure stand on their original stained bases, each approximately 4″ x 4.5″ x .5″ tall. The figures each stand approximately 10″ tall on their bases. Scribed in pencil on the bottom of the male figure’s base is “Seale,” nothing further was discovered about their origin.

Carved Heart 3 Dimensional Pictogram Art Card

carved i love you heart carved i love you heart carved i love you heart carved i love you heart

Can’t find the right words? Can’t quite say it? Want to remind someone just how much you love them any time, any day? They will love this “eye heart U” I love you 3 dimensional pictogram! A lasting reminder! Place it on their desk, on their pillow, or in the kitchen when the time calls for a reminder of your true feelings.

We hand carved each, one of a kind piece, out of poplar wood, front and back, then stained a passionate red. One, of a limited series, it will define your sentiments without saying a word.

Visit our Etsy store to get yours!

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment t-shirtRobert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment t-shirt

This t-shirt represents a “catalytic incident” which over twenty years ago still bears import within the art world if not our culture. The first time we experienced an exhibit devoted solely to the work of the late artist, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was in 1978 in Washington, at the Harry Lund Gallery. The Lund Gallery specialized exclusively in photography and was located around the block from the J. Edgar Hoover Building which houses the F.B.I. That night’s show and the cast of characters, including Mapplethorpe himself, produced irony related to personal freedom and civil liberties but was not fully apparent until years later. Living in Cincinnati, in October 1990, we viewed the controversial exhibit titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment. The exhibit had begun its tour over a year prior amid controversy including cancellation of the exhibition at The Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington. The show was canceled however the shows images were projected on to the building in protest.

Seven of the artist’s images being shown at the 1990 show at the Contemporary Art Center became the subject of a trial in which, then Director of the facility, Dennis Barrie, was on trial for pandering what were being deemed obscene materials. The trial pitted liberal and conservative values in the city where we, among many, demonstrated on the steps of the county courthouse; where the six month long case proceedings were later dismissed. The Perfect Moment symbolized the beginning of a war of cultures still occurring years later particularly as it relates to public funding for the arts.

This XL t-shirt reads “FREEDOM FOR THE CREATIVE MIND” and documents the evening of June 30, 1989 where “protestors gather outside the Corcoran Gallery of Art to protest its cancellation of the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. THE PROTEST CONTINUES… ”

The shirt printed by International Graphics Screen Printing was purchased at The Corcoran. The back of the tag reads: A percentage of the proceeds made through the sale of this shirt will go to benifit (spelling error) A.I.D.S research. The protest that occurred at The Corcoran Gallery of Art was organized by Bill Wooby and the Coalition of Washington Artists.” The shirt has never been worn, the tags are still on it. It has a hole approximately 1.25″ along the back side of the left arm, a sewing flaw during the manufacturing process (which could be repaired.) The shirt is clean, bright white, no yellowing, the screen print is still clear… as is the message.