American Guides: American Folk Arts

 

When I was young and gas was 25 cents a gallon and

 pick-ups got 10 mpg we just drove and drove.

I always packed a WPA guide from the library.

Written during the 1930s by underemployed writers,

these books captured a view of America

and a backroads route plan.

You'd learn a little history, a lot of geography and you could follow their tours.

Because we were reading them 50 years after they

were published we were sometimes disappointed to

find the item of local interest no longer standing.

Lucy the elephant building in New Jersey

Although one often came upon a wonder and the tours did get you off the interstate.

So I enjoyed Scott Borchert's recent book about the guide books

following him into many of his own detours.

Like this summary of the rise of interest in folk arts and the Colonial Revival through the twenties and thirties. But that interest was changing, too, 

"morphing into a more capacious fascination with the everyday stuff of American life and the idea of a distinctive American culture. It's permutations were visible in the collection and study of folk materials...."

Quilt dated 1822 by George E. Rhone

Attitudes that gave rise to another W.P.A. project The

Index of American Design, which hired artists to paint

watercolors of quilts in the late 1930s.

The Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art has many of the paintings

on line and they add to the database.

https://www.nga.gov/global-site-search-page.html?searchterm=quilt

Baltimore album by Lillian Causey

We take an interest in the art of the folk so for granted. I found it fascinating to consider the origins and changes over the generations.