JOHN OLLMAN, PHILADELPHIA - MEET THE COLLECTOR SERIES PART SIXTY-EIGHT

For part sixty-eight of my Meet the Collector series, I interviewed Philadelphia based collector and art dealer John Ollman. I have known John for years through taking part in the Outsider Art Fair in New York, so it was a pleasure to this year spend 24 hours in Philadelphia with John. We visited his house, his Gallery and other wonderful places around the city. Read on to hear about John’s eighty years of stories… sit tight it’s a long one!

John and I in Philadelphia, infront of a William Hawkins painting

Jennifer: When did your interest in this field begin?

John: I got the spark in graduate school in 1968-69 at Indiana University, they were one of two universities in the United States that had a folklore department. The person I was seeing at that time was a sociologist and they were very involved with a bunch of the people in the folklore department. So, I started getting exposure to things that they were looking at, which were very different from the things I was looking at. Indiana University was also well known because it had a famous African scholar, Roy Sieber who has written many books on African art, particularly textiles. You had to take a lot of art history as a fine art major, so for every semester you had take art history, so I kind of got indoctrinated to looking at African material in a more serious way from Roy. And then I graduated, came back to Philadelphia, and got the job at the Gallery [Fleisher Ollman Gallery]. And I think the first real exposure to the work was through Janet Fleisher, who had been a longtime surrealist collector. In 1971 we had a one person show for Sister Gertrude Morgan, which was pretty bizarre, but she was actually kind of a celebrity here in that time period. There was a tiny book about her, so she was popular with a certain set in the art world, but not popular enough to sell her work. We had about fifty watercolour drawings, and we sold just one to me and one to a good friend of mine. Then Janet bought the whole show and just put it away – it was something she often did. Also, one of the first shows that we did together was an oceanic sculpture show, and I had a bet with her that I could sell more oceanic sculpture than her, which nobody was looking at 1971-72. I won the bet, and she turned the Gallery over to me.

It was originally called the Little Gallery, and it was a small space, but it was actually a tribute to Alfred Stieglitz, whose first gallery in New York was called the Little Gallery. But when I became the director in around 71/72, I never remember exactly what the date was, the first thing I insisted on was that we close the gallery, send back all of the work that we had on consignment, and to rename the gallery Janet Fleisher Gallery. She was initially very opposed to that as she was a very private person, but in the end, we did change the name. Janet was always out there in terms of looking and expanding her vision, and she travelled a lot. At the same time, we had a gallery in Paris called Gallerie Philadelphie. Due to her surrealist roots, she had a really fabulous collection of surrealist painters. I mean, from Picasso to to Man Ray, Cornell, Arp, Modigliani, etc. But in her travels, she met Herbert Wade Hemphill and we started working with 20th century “Folk artists”. We were also introduced to people like Jeffrey Wolf, and Michael Hall. We had exhibitions that included Howard Finster, and most of the other important artist of that time, including Elijah Pierce, S.L. Jones, Martin Ramirez, Joseph Yoakum, etc. There were only two serious galleries at the time that were dealing with this material, the other being Phyllis Kind. We usually had two or three shows a year of African, Oceanic, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. I hit it off with Karen Lennox who was running Phyllis Kind, and we started exchanging work for exhibitions including Yoakum, Ramirez and P.M Wentworth in the mid 1970's.

Joseph Yoakum on the stairway

Jennifer: So, did you go straight from your Masters to working at the Gallery?

John: Pretty much. I came back to Philadelphia and I got a job teaching sculpture at Philadelphia College of Art, which I loathed – it was like the worst decision I've ever made in my life. I thought, getting a Master's degree in sculpture that I would have teaching as a fallback position. But by the time I got through my Master’s degree, I seriously hated making sculpture! I’ve never made a piece of sculpture since, and I actually wrote my Master's thesis on topiary gardening… which I still do today.

My father saw an advertisement in the local newspaper for a part-time assistant at the Little Gallery, I applied, and I got the job. On my 25th anniversary of being at the Gallery, Janet handed me a present, which was my handwritten letter applying for the job – which was terrible, and I wouldn’t have hired me. So, my background is a Bachelor’s Degree in sculpture from Philadelphia College of Arts and a Masters from Indiana University with a minor in Art History.

Jennifer: So, the Gallery became the Janet Fleisher Gallery… what year did it then become the Fleisher Ollman Gallery?

John: I was the Director until 1996. Janet started having some health issues and so, in discussions with the family, they did not want to take on the responsibility of the Gallery. So, in January 1997 I took over the Gallery.

Jennifer: And why is her name still part of the Gallery name – is that because she originally set it up?

John: it was a discussion with the family, and I wanted to honour Janet because she made this possible for me. She had the money and the wisdom or the foresight to understand that this was important material. Originally, we did not make money on our shows as people were not buying things, but she did buy up the work from the shows. At one point, Janet bought 1,500 Purvis Young works as his dealer was having some financial difficulties. We did that with the pre-Columbian collection, which was another 1500 pieces of pre–Columbian Peruvian material. So, she set up these opportunities which worked out for us later. If I was passionate about something, I could count on Janet to step forward and buy large collections of things, for example Bill Traylor works.

Jennifer: So, you took it over then in 1997, if Alex is the Director, what would you say your role is?

John: My role is like walking historian. I'm the person who knows where everything is. I have incredibly bad dyslexia, so early on, I committed everything to memory. So, somebody will say, oh, we are looking for such and such, and I go like, well I sold that piece to so and so like 40 years ago. And not only do I remember who I sold it to, I remember what they paid for it. And what it cost us to buy it.

Jennifer: Wow!

John: My staff are always amused that I have that kind of knowledge. I hope it continues.

Jennifer: I'm sure it will! So, when you took over the Gallery, did you change the direction of the kinds of things that were being showcased at that point?

John: Not really. We had started showing young contemporary artists in the mid to early 80s, and we still do that today. In the first few years, we did encyclopedic shows - it's kind of like run it up the flagpole and see if anybody likes this material – but I do not do that now. Phyllis Kind and us were the two serious galleries that were showing the material that now we see as masters, this meant we had a good relationship to Chicago and some of the artists there. I went there every year, and hung out with some of the Chicago Imagists too. That's a very important key point in understanding how all of this evolved in the United States. You have to look at two really significant people that sort of framed the direction that this material was taking, and that was Ray Yoshida who ran the painting department at the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Jim Nutt, who discovered Ramirez’ work.

Phyllis Kind’s Gallery was a little different because they were primarily dealing with a stable of trained artists… Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Ray Yoshida, Karl Wirsum, etc. I mean, you look at all of those people and you can see their connection to the work they're collecting, which is obvious to me. And as an artist and collector, I've always felt that what artists were collecting was really something you should be looking at. This is how I discovered Frank Jones… there was a painter here in Philadelphia, who was from Texas, and I went to his studio to look at his work. I didn't like his work, but he had a Frank Jones, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is really good.’ We started showing his work really early, today I still think he is an under-appreciated artist, but hopefully that is changing.

Mantelpiece has Philadelphia Wireman works. Above the mantelpiece the shield is a Lumi War Shield from New Guinea. The sculpture with the fibre is African Bobo Culture and large silver fish is by Sam Doyle. The pottery in the bookcase is Indigenous American Pueblo Cultures.

Jennifer: And Ray Yoshida has passed away hasn’t he, with his collection at the Kohler Art Center?

John: We sold several works for him before he died, including his large Jim Nutt painting to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Ray and I bonded over Morris Hirshfield a few years before he passed away. Ray didn't like art fairs, but I told him we were bringing a wonderful Hirshfield to Art Chicago and sent him a pass in case he wanted to come see it. He did show up and spent about an hour looking at the painting, "A Girl with a Basket of Flowers." I said to him, ‘do you like this painting as you have been looking at it for a while’. He said ‘yes, I absolutely love this painting. I based an entire body of work on this painting.’ And I was like, oh, interesting. I got invited to his house after this, and I said, ‘Gosh Ray, I've always understood that you were like a huge Yoakum collector, but I don't see any?’ He’s had this big trunk in his living room, and he opened the lid. And there were like, fifty of the most spectacular Yoakum’s you’ve ever seen. I mean, literally, I started crying. He didn't want them to be exposed to the light.

Jennifer: Oh my god.

John: Yeah. And they were pristine. When he died, he left it in his will that literally any museum in the United States could write a letter to his executors and get works by Yoakum. Many museums all over the United States got free artworks from this will. And the remaining works at the end went to the Kohler foundation. I mean they're all fabulous. There wasn't a single one that wasn't incredible.

Jennifer: That's amazing. So, while we're still on the subject of galleries, then one of my questions was that you've often helped support other galleries to come to fruition... what is your role within those like Adams and Ollman and JTT NYC? I know you mentioned Amy Adams was your Director for about eight years, but I’d like to hear more.

John: Well, it becomes this kind of personal relationship. I mean, a number of people have also gone on to be parts of other galleries that have worked here, like William Pym, who's in London, was the director at one stage before Amy. Amy and I were just really close. We shared a lot of same sense of what is right and what is fair. And she came to the Gallery from a non-profit space, where she was wanting to share skills, and I guess we were operating like a non-profit space at that time. We got by, but we were not making a lot of money. So, it's always been more about promoting the work that I believe in.

With Amy, she ended up moving to Portland, but she was adrift out there, and missing her art life. So, I just said just open a Gallery. And she did and we shared some of our inventory with her until she figured out exactly what she wanted to show. And even today, we share inventory on certain shows she curates. Then it was Amy who really introduced me to Jasmine Tsou at JTT NYC. Jasmine came to the 40th anniversary of me being at the Gallery show, which those are the shows I hated the most because I had to remember things I’d sold, so they could get them back into a show - it was a lot of work for me!

When William Pym started at the Gallery in around 2002, we had just moved into a new gallery. I suddenly realised, well they're a hell of a lot smarter, more in tune with what's happening in the contemporary art world than I am. He was a young graduate from Harvard, so I said, you should start curating shows for the gallery. So, he did one big group show a year, and then he did this big show at Harvard, which was a blockbuster that was in 2005 that compared major self-taught artists with major contemporary artists. I'd been curating every show here for like 35 years, and I didn't want to do that anymore… like there's a point where you have to put fresh eyes on it… so I did that.

Anyhow, Jasmine Tsou came to the 40th anniversary of my time with the gallery. Amy made me come up with a list of art that defined my 40 years at the gallery and then get the collectors to lend those works to the show!  It was a lot of work! She was working for a gallery at the time, and was also working in Carol Bove’s studio. And she came to the talk I gave where I spoke about it not being about the money, but that it is about the passion you have for the work. It was at that point Jasmine realised that this was what she wanted to do – open a gallery. She went back to New York and spoke to Matthew Higgs too. As she didn’t have a space, her first showing was at NADA and we gave her Philadelphia Wireman work to show and Bill Walton, and this launched her career as a gallerist.

Jennifer: And you still work closely with her right?

John: Yes, we still work closely together. I mean, she still shows Bill Walton’s work in New York, and she still like borrows other things for shows if she needs to. But, she's got her own programme now, and she's found her voice, and it's exciting! She’s helped to put Marlon Mullen from NIAD out there.

Jennifer: And can I ask why it is called Adams and Ollman if you don’t actually run any of it? Is it the same as what happened with you and Janet Fleisher?

John: Yes, she did that as a gesture to me, because I did that as a gesture to Janet. And we still share inventory with her when needed. Like she is doing a James Castle show next month, and all of that is from us. And her 10th anniversary show is coming up, with several pieces included from us again.

Left to right: Two Bill Traylor works, on top of the American Pie Safe is an African ricing tool, the drawing is by Jon Podorski (same time & institution as Ramirez), then a William O. Golding drawing, and below that is an African Senufu Drum

Jennifer: Great. So, back to my questions on you as a collector. Did you start collecting when you started the Gallery, or had you started before?

John: Well, as all true collectors know, they start collecting very, very early. I was a child when I started to collect rocks, and I still collect rocks. It is the cheapest thing that I collect, although the heaviest! Also, things like stamps and baseball cards, and junk, a lot of junk. I somewhat have been able to tame that obsession, but I still pick up crap that I probably shouldn't. I didn't really have the financial backing to collect when I was young, as I've come from a very sort of modest background. My parents were not particularly crazy about the fact that I went into art.

Jennifer: Ha, mine might be similar, but they knew I loved it!

John: They were like, ‘oh, you want to do that? Okay, pay for it yourself.’ Yeah, so that was always that relationship. We never really had a lot of money. I tried to think of the first serious gut-wrenching expense that I ever had, which is when you realise you're getting serious about something. I bought a Sister Gertrude Morgan work. I think that was one of the very first things. It was only $25, but that was in 1971 when I was barely making rent as it was! I forget what year it was maybe 1975, and I remember going into Phyllis Kind’s Gallery and seeing Ramirez for the first time and thinking I can't walk out of this Gallery without owning one of these. They were like $1,200 for like a basic Caballero right. And I bought it. Karen Lennox was the Director at the time, and she let me pay $100 a month for 12 months. But I did trade this work and got another down the line, which I’ve also sold when I needed to rebuild parts of my house. You’ll probably notice I don’t have one in my collection, and hopefully I’d add another at some point… if I find the right one.

Jennifer: Well as you know, they’ll be a lot more expensive now John, ha-ha!

John: Yes, so that was a really major expense and I realised at that point… yes, I am a collector. They were pieces that I felt I could not live without. And then Janet at one point, instead of a raise she gave me an allowance to buy art, and that helped buy a lot of the art that I have now. So, when the Bill Traylor’s came into the gallery in 1981, we had a Bill Traylor show. Nobody knew who he was at that point, although the Cocorran show was being planned, but we didn't really know that. We bought a box of fifty from Karen, and when I opened the cardboard box, the first one I was like, that’s mine. It was $175. And I still have that at my house now.

Things were easy to buy. I love Wireman, so, I bought several when we first started showing them when they were very cheap. I've acquired a few others as the years have gone by. I think if you've been doing it as long as I have, you kind of see things that you go, I know this is going to be fantastic. I remember I represented the Darger estate in 1981/82, but I’ve never wanted to own one. I'm not an encyclopedic collector. I only collect things that I really want to live with. And that's why my collection is so eccentric in a way. It does get harder to get excited about things as you get older, but the most recent purchases in my collection are the two Dorothy Foster pieces in the kitchen area. It takes a lot now to make me commit to anything that's going to make me have to rehang my house.

Jennifer: I can see that. So, in your house it's quite sparse hanging in comparison to some collectors that I have interviewed – is there a reason you like it this way?

John: I like to be able to see one thing at a time, and the stairways is the only place there are a little more. In those places it is sometimes work that doesn’t fit anywhere else and some that I have just picked up for random reasons. I'm also interested in the dialogue of work in my house, so I like things to have relationships with each other, and I’ve seen Randall Morris speak about this… I feel the same way as him. I think about colours and shapes and how they relate to the thing that's behind them and I don't want things to be obscured. I want people to come in my house and just look at each individual piece. I know I don’t have great lighting, but I am happy to take things off the wall for people to look at them more closely, and pieces are better in daylight too.

Jennifer: Ha, yes, the dim lighting! And then upstairs, you've got a lot of these pots, which Sheldon Bonovitz had many of too – what are those?

John: Those are from the pre–Columbian Peruvian collection that we bought early on at the Gallery, when I was working for Janet. We had a massive encyclopedic collection of Peruvian pottery, starting from the Cavin culture, which was 600 BCE up to the Incas, which is 12 to 1400 AD. So, there were like nine major cultures, and we had representations of every culture, in depth. Most of what I have is Nazca culture. That's sort of the middle period around 400 to 800 AD.

Jennifer. Wow, old. And, how do you see that sitting with the other works that you've got in your house, or do you see them as quite separate?

John: Oh, no, I don't see anything as separate, I think everything has relationships.

Left to right: Frank Jones, P.M Wentworth and William Hawkins. African Sculptures on the mantelpiece, and 2 iron works by Samuel Yellin, and on the stack of books is an Alan Constable sculpture

Jennifer: Understood. So, do you have a favourite artist or piece that you own?

John: I don't. I mean, it changes from day to day, or week to week.

Jennifer: But if your house was about to burn down and you had to grab something?

John: Oh, I would grab the P.M. Wentworth because it's the hardest thing to replace. I'm very practical that way. I mean, there are things I know I would regret not having them. But I know I can replace them. Like, I love James Castle a lot, but I know I can find comparable pieces with the insurance money. I would be sad to lose the Hawkins painting as I fought really hard to get that painting. And there's only a handful of other ones that I would feel comfortable with. Well, I could take three things because I could handle it, so I’d take the two Traylor works I have too.

Jennifer: And would you say that you're drawn to anything, like it seems when I saw your house it was quite a mix of things together?

John: I don't box myself in. I try to think that I'm open to almost anything. Like I don't buy expensive furniture, but I do love furniture that is unique. So, I buy tramp art and I buy spool furniture and weird things like that. So, I like funky decorative arts where you can really feel and see the hand of the maker.

I feel there are multiple kinds of works that you could have that represent certain artists, like Yoakum and James Castle. So, with Castle, you have his books and construction works, set drawings and figures, and I think it is good to have one really good example of each of those things. I think a collection should represented artists in this way. Whereas there are other artists where I think one painting does the trick, like that Hawkins painting I have, said everything you need to know about the way he worked. Also, with someone like Howard Finster, I have a horseshoe shaped work, and I love it. It's not a grandiose vista painting, but it's got so much in it that speaks to who Howard Finster was. And when you turn it over and you see the message that he's written about the person on the horseshoe frame, and how they should have been credited for their work in making it, that is important. Those are the reasons that I select something.

Jennifer: Yes, I love that piece and the message on it too. Is there an artist that you wished you’d added to your collection? I know you mentioned earlier about a Ramirez since you had sold yours.

John: I've always regretted not buying an Edmonson, as they were always a little bit above my comfort zone. I came really close as I had one that I was thinking about buying with my stipend from the Gallery years back. But what happens the minute you make a decision like that, is somebody comes in and buys it and it's like I can't not sell it. I mean, there are pieces that I've owned where people find out that I have them and they call me to get it. A classic example of that would be the Marlon Mullen that I bought from Amy and Jasmine at the Outsider art Fair some years back. They did a whole booth of his work and it was fabulous. They didn’t want me to buy a work, as they were trying to introduce new clients to the work. So, I said if there's anything that you don't sell at the end of the fair, can I get a chance to buy it? And they agreed. At the end of the fair, the one unsold piece was the one I wanted the most! It was an Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Mullen. I got it home and framed and it looked fantastic in my home. But, a really important collector called me and he said I hear you bought that painting and I said I did. He said I would really like to buy it, so I sold it to him for what I paid for it, on the condition that Amy and Jasmine would sell me another picture instead. And I like the new one more, as that painting has a much deeper connection to Philadelphia than the Warhol painting, as it is the cover of the Paul Strand book, from a show he had at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And, I have now promised that work to the to the museum.

Jennifer: Great story. So, is there one exhibition that you think has been the most important over the years.

John: I’ve thought about this and I think there have been two or three. There is of course the black folk art show at the Corcorran Gallery.

Jennifer: Of course, many people say that.

John: I mean, I was there at that opening. It's hard to put it into context for young people like you, but back then it was groundbreaking. I mean, you don't use that term very often. But that was one of the most radical shows that had been put up. I mean, no one was interested in that material except for a handful of us. And it was the first sort of serious museum acknowledgement, in that kind of way. It was radical on so many different levels. And a lot of the artists were there. That show got written up so many times, and I think it was covered in the New York Times twice, as it travelled to different locations.  And while that show happened, we had the opportunity to buy three Edmonson works. Those were the first that we had in the gallery, and that set me on that trajectory to do the Edmondson show that we did later. So that show was really important. I think the Parallel Visions show at LACMA was really great, which was an extension of the Abstract Spiritualism painting show that preceded it by the same curator. Then, the other show that I think is probably the most impactful for me personally, and really set the standard for the kinds of shows we do in our gallery was Magicians de la Terre. It was a crazy show that took over the entire city of Paris, and the Pompidou was the centre of it. It was literally years in the making & it was 100 artists, fifty academically trained & fifty from non-western cultures.

Jennifer: Oh yes, you showed me the book.

John: Yes. So, it was the self-taught or non-academically trained artists, and the non-western academically trained artists. But that show was panned. I mean, people hated that show, but now it's the show that so many curators go back to and say this was the first global show that put all the world artists on the same stage, right. They were equals. It was the first to seriously address equality in artmaking. One thing does not trump another, they just have different things that inform them. And I think that message was really important, even though the critics hated it.

African Bobo dance mask, Eddie Arning drawing, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Howard Finster (horseshoe piece), Oceanic Washkuk House Post. And sitting on bookshelf are African Sculptures, Magdalena Suarez Frimkiss, Flamingo Vase, and 3 Tony Fitzpatrick drawings

Jennifer: Great, I will have to look it up more. And then on the same idea, you've mentioned some people already, but are there any other people you haven't mentioned that you think have been important for this field?

John: Well, I did mention Ray Yoshida and Jim Nutt, and I think that from my own personal journey, those would be the two most important people. I would say that Jim was the first person that I really respected that talked about America's artists as being equals. They were artists, and that was not or has ever been a popular position to take. But it's my position too, and we've battled people about this. There's a question that you have on this list that I will expand into, around the terminology for the field, but, at best, it is depressing. I always get the feeling that the artworld feels like these artists somehow are all the same thing. And they belong in a box, right? I just hate that. Years and years ago, we made the decision not to do encyclopedic shows anymore, and only to do one person exhibitions of artists. Their biography might be that they want to Yale or their biography might be that they grew up on a farm in Idaho, but if you really are serious about art, then somebody who's made a lifetime out of making art is an artist. They're artists, and I've been fighting for a long time about this. I understand why terminology is attached to it, so that art historians and critics and all these people can write about it, and put it in their context, but I feel that they're just being lazy, and that they don't like go out and find out what made these artists make this work. And finding out how this is art. This work should be treated with some respect and dignity, like the same way you would treat any Western trained artist, right? You couldn't get away saying things about Richter. The way that people talk about this work is just disrespectful. And I choose not to participate in those conversations even though we do the Outsider Art Fair, under much duress. I stopped doing it for over ten years as I got so mad about this labelling, but all it meant was that clients who bought from us stopped and went to other people instead. It was like cut off your nose to spite your face. People were pissed off, but we were trying to be respectful of the artists. That’s why I like museums that are incorporating this material into their programmes and collections, as opposed to ghettoizing the material. I mean, you wouldn't do that with any other form of art… it's just condescending. They don’t belong in the ‘other’. Anyways, that is my rant.

Jennifer: No, that is very interesting to hear, and to hear how people reacted too. So, as an example, if you do a James Castle show, do you feel anywhere in that biography that you need to mention anything more personal about him?

John: I think we need to state that he was a profoundly deaf artist, and how that informs the process, but this just made him be outside of a certain kind of culture. I'll never forget the time I got slapped down by his niece when I was giving a lecture about James Castle at one of the exhibitions of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I liked to pair up Castle with totally random things that he probably would never have seen, like an Indian Parflesh bags that looked like some of his constructions. I know that they were made in the area where he was, but unlikely he saw them. Then there was this group of drawings that Castle had done that looked like early cubist works by Picasso. So, I'm giving this lecture about Castle and his niece was there, and I was mentioning that his works looked exactly like that period by Picasso, but that Castle never would have been exposed to those works. His niece raises her hand and says “John. I just want to correct something here because my mother, she had this big book on Pablo Picasso that he liked to look at.” This just shows, we don't know what his influences were or how he learned, but he learnt art by looking at art, right? This showed my lack of knowledge about Castle and his influences.

Jennifer: Wow. So, in America, I believe the outsider art term is used less than terms like folk art, is that right in your opinion?

John: Well, there's been so many terms, which is why we started just to say art. Very few people accept that or go along with it, but I'm just gonna keep doing it. You won't see anything coming out of our gallery that says outsider art. Folk Art has a very specific descriptor… it is talking about quilt making, basketmaking and things that are traditions that are learned practices within communities. That's folk art, and this is not that. Then there have been other titles. They tried to sell ‘transmitters’ for a while… I think that was one that came from your side of the pond, and there’s visionary, and then Lynne Cooke did Outliers. I struggle with these, that’s why I say why can’t you just use artist - it's so much easier, and so much easier to spell. Otherwise, it is just, it's patronising. And it's just another way in which people feel they can control culture. They still don't truly accept this work in the same way that they accept somebody who went to undergraduate school and got their MFA at Yale. Like Traylor, he was part of a community, and all the southern black artists are part of a community – read Robert Ferris Thompson. It's not that hard to learn about this sort of art. There are people like Castle who was physically isolated due to his deafness, and in some ways geographically isolated because of where he lived, but on the other hand, he was exposed to lots of visual cues. And who's to say that his understanding of art is better or worse than somebody who went to Yale, right.

Jennifer: Yes! So, in your house, I saw a little Philadelphia Wireman painting, which I've never come across before, only the sculptures. I think you said there were only twelve of them in existence, is that right? And can you tell me about them?

John: I think there were twelve yes. So, you know the story of the Philadelphia Wireman… the works are found in the trash by an artist who had connections to our Gallery. And so, in 1983/84, he brought them in and I immediately just fell in love with them. I mean, in part because I had been showing African art and I was actually teaching African art at the time, well African, Oceanic, pre-Columbian, Native American, and 20th century self-taught art. So, I immediately saw a relationship with this work, to the type of work that's made in West Africa. So, we bought what we thought was the entire collection, but it turned out it wasn't… it was a little more than half of the collection. And so, the guy who discovered this art, his name was Robert Leach, he brought in around 650 pieces, and a bunch of paperwork. I don't even remember seeing the paintings at the time, as we were focused on the objects and how we were going to deal with those. For the first show, we put together groups of fifty and we gave them to different galleries. So, Cavin Morris had one lot, and some went to Sweden. And we didn't get any of that work back as it all sold, so it was crazy. We had to kind of rethink it. Then, we were going through he boxes of stuff that had all the loose sculptures in it, because we were just taking out ones and putting them on the little stands that they're on. And there was this envelope in the box, and in there were these twelve drawings. Now, if you really look at Wireman, and look at the number of them that I have over the years, a number of them that have wire wrapped around a drawing. The drawings are inside of it and they're just another form of wrapping right. So, to me, the drawings feel like the wrapping. I think the closest thing that they relate to are J.B. Murray works. They have a certain power to them.

Spool furniture and tramp art

Jennifer: So, one of my questions was now that you're in your 80s, what keeps you working and wanting to share your passion and knowledge?

John: I looked at that question and I wrote one thing - I wrote glutton for punishment, I think I qualified it though. The thing is I still am passionate about the material. I’m also more passionate now about getting people to treat the work as they would treat any other artwork. In that role, it still feels that there is work to be done. Like at the Outsider Art Fair, some people still call it outsider, and we can’t even get them to call it self-taught. I thought it would be easier to change wording, but no it’s hard, so I feel passionate to continue trying to make the change there.  The other thing is, I enjoy seeing the changes that are happening, and that there are young dealers like yourself carrying the banner in a new way. I particularly like that I may have helped to sow seeds that are now growing on their own. They don't seem to have the same kinds of restrictions that we always felt we had. They are showing self-taught just as art in contemporary spaces, and that to me, is something I'm very excited about and I want to keep fostering if possible. That's what keeps me going, and also retirement is not a word in my dictionary.

Jennifer: I guess as long as you're still able to, you'll keep going right?

John: Yes, I will do it until I can't move anymore.

Jennifer: Ha-ha. Finally, is there another fascinating story about an artist you’d like to share with my readers? You always share such great stories!

John: Well, another favourite story of mine is from 1983. We are talking about 40 years ago, so we were doing things that were significantly ‘more risky’ then with this art, when no one else was showing it. So, I was on the board of an institution here in Philadelphia called the Philadelphia Art Alliance. I thought it was a perfect opportunity to do shows in an almost museum like setting. I decided to do a Howard Finster show, and part of it involved me going to see Howard. I had always had this thing when I’ve been dealing, I didn't like being the point of contact person to the artist. Because what I saw happen, is that if I went to the person selling their work, and said, ‘Oh, I really like x ‘or ‘I really like y ‘, then that is the art they would then focus on only, and not whatever they had been doing before.

Jennifer: Right.

John: Yeah, so it was a big deal for me to go to Howard's house, but I also wanted to see Paradise Garden. I went in the middle of winter, which was shocking, because everyone had taken photographs of Paradise Garden with all the flowers blooming, but in the winter, it was stark, with lots of junk. I picked up some paintings for the show I was planning and planned for Howard to come to Philadelphia to attend the opening and give a concert, as he was also a musician. I got this very hip band to play with him, as the lead singer was one of the first people that I sold Howard’s work to. There were 300 paintings and sculptures in the exhibition, and I produced the first catalogue on Howard for that show. There was like 300 objects in the show, and this funny concert - it was delightful.

At the time I was friendly with Terry Gross, who has a radio show on NPR called "All Things Considered." She decided she wanted to interview Howard. I suggested to her it would be good for us to chat about Howard before the interview, since what the art world saw in his work wasn't always what Howard was trying to say. Well, our chat didn't happen and in the course of the interview something she said set him off, and he started talking about "the infidels and how the Jews had killed Christ." I was shocked, and thought I'm going to be the person responsible for Terry getting fired from National Public Radio. When I saw her later, she said the station didn't receive any complaints!

Jennifer: Well, there we go… that concludes our interview. Thanks John.

Marlon Mullen, the newer work John ended up with - see story above