Emvergeoning

This is the third in a series of posts on publicly accessible outsider art installations in San Antonio, Texas. The first two covered the work of Samuel Mirelez and Rev. Seymour Perkins.

I’ve only just started writing this post, and already I recognize it to be a failure. I’m writing on Ed Clark’s Christmas House [], but I’ve never met Ed Clark, never been inside the house, never seen it in its full lit-up Christmas glory. All I know about the project is what my friend Leigh Anne told me: Ed Clark turned his house into a permanent Christmas-themed installation in honor of his late wife, who loved Christmas. That sound you hear is the shattering of any remaining pretense to journalistic credibility here on Emvergeoning.

So my plan to is show you some good photos of the outside of the house, shot, of course, by Justin Parr, and talk a bit about why I started this little series of posts in the first place.

Amid all the chatter about the art market, whether the bubble will burst or whether diamond-encrusted skulls are here to stay, it can be refreshing to look at people working outside of this art world ecosystem. It’s not that these outsiders aren’t ego-driven, or don’t want to be paid for their work, or are somehow more “pure” than a Creative Capital-trained art entrepreneur. But what we see in the work of Samuel Mirelez, or Rev. Seymour Perkins, or Ed Clark is a gesture mediated by the materials and needs of their own private lives. It is no coincidence that these artists turn their homes into installations, or that their works begin simply as gestures of love. While many artists try to universalize their work, to escape the personal, we see these outsiders revel in their own eccentricities to the point where the work becomes an homage to the very fact of being human. So through this work we can see more directly the original motivations, tools, and creative solutions of the artist. You can see the initial, unobscured impulse to create as well as the edifice which is built on top of it.

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