Oh Yeah I Can Dance on a Purple Cloud

This weekend, Chattanooga hosted the Who Fest, an outdoors folk art festival. I'm always a bit skeptical of folk artists, because I feel like a lot of them mass produce 'cute' art and at times I feel like if you have seen one piece you have seen them all. Especially after going to Howard Finster's Paradise Garden, I feel like people copy his style and lack uniqueness. I like/appreciate folk art, I like the nitty-grittiness of it, I like it's rawness, I like folk art at its truest form. I can't say that I'm an expert on folk art, however my skepticism for folk art is based on the fact that some artists lack the primitiveness and they try to darn hard to impress us.

ANYWAYS! All that to say, I was pleasantly surprised, to run into Danny Hoskinson, known as The Bucketman. Very original, very wacky. You gotta check out his stuff. He makes everything from buckets, he melts, molds then paints them into this crazy objects. I liked his art because it was one-of a kind, out-there-art. I wouldn't necessarily want to own any of his art work, because I think they are ugly, but I gotta give it to him for his wild creativity. Vincent on the other hand loved some of his pieces and wanted to purchase them. Thank God we didn't have money.We also ran into Mary Polk, a.k.a. Missionary Mary. Carrie Galpin and Marry Ferris had one of her pieces at their old house so it was fun running into Missionary Mary. You can check out her story on-line.

The other artists weren't much to comment about, there were some other artists that grabbed my attention, but when it came to 'folk art', these two people stood out the most. If you have time, check em' out.