Edwin Lawson (1911-1980)

Edwin Lawson, a professor of architecture who died in 1980, left behind a cache of drawings he created in the 1970s that revealed a fantasy world his wife was unaware of. The large-scale pencil and crayon drawings illustrate Lawson cross-dressed as a woman in historic fashions from the 1880s to the 1960s.

The works were likely personal fantasies versus actualized events. Lawson heavily worked the drawings and struggled to correct certain details that he dreamed about, like his made up eyes, lips, jewelry, and bosom.

In the 1960s and 70s drag culture was becoming less underground. In the alternative arts and fashion scenes, figures like Divine, music by Bowie and Bolan, and movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show brought gender-bending more into the zeitgeist.

However, that does not mean it was mainstream and culturally safe. Lawson probably felt inspired by the drag scene but still too uncomfortable to fully manifest his sexual identity at a time when it would likely threaten his relationships and his career.

In 2017, The Museum of Sex featured Lawson's work in Known/Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art, and currently Lawson is shown at The Smithsonian in, We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection.

Richard Nisbett (1753-1823)

This remarkable watercolor from 1822 is one of the earliest American asylum works extant and likely the earliest in private hands. Further, it is attributed to Richard Nisbett (1753-1823), a published author and poet of note, and a patient at Philadelphia Hospital's asylum ward.

The painting is inscribed on the lower left, "1822. Painted by a maniac confined in the cells of the Alms House—the design his own." It is initialed "J.P.H" for John Pennington Hopkinson (1801-1836). Dr. John P. Hopkinson was a Philadelphia physician, author, and professor and was the son of Congressman Joseph Hopkinson, and Francis Hopkinson's grandchild, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Richard Nisbett (1753-1823) is an obscure figure who, like many obscure figures, led a remarkable life. In 1773, he was a member of the West Indian plantocracy, engaged in a pamphlet war over slavery with Benjamin Rush. By 1800, he was a Quaker convert confined as a psychiatric patient in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital, where Rush was a physician. This stunning transition, from being a champion of the enslavement of others to being himself the subject of perpetual confinement, is recorded in a variety of disparate and discontinuous sources, including manuscripts and paintings that Nisbett himself produced while he was a patient. It’s possible that Nisbett created his watercolors, including this map of the world, to illustrate or accompany the epic poem, The Notioniad, that he also wrote while in confinement. (Never published, the original bound manuscript of The Notioniad is in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

Emile Branchard (1881-1938)

Branchard was born (1881) and raised on the streets of New York City and lived in a large rooming house that his mother ran on Washington Square South. At the age of thirty-seven, Emile Branchard, a former truck driver, longshoreman, and policeman, found himself with tuberculosis and was forced to retire. He set up a painting studio in the basement and created imagined landscapes. A border of the house who recognized Branchard's talent entered a few paintings, without his knowledge, to the Society of Independent Artists show of 1919. His works were accepted and influential gallerist, Stephen Bourgeois offered him a solo show later that same year (Bourgeois would then regularly exhibit his work until 1932).

Bourgeois remarked of Branchard's work at the Independent Show, "those two small paintings appeared as the best proof, that art is not a question of colouristic or formalistic ability or brush-acrobatics, but primarily a question of vision."

L.C. Spooner  (1863-1955)

Lee Cordova Spooner was a visionary inventor of self-propulsion and self-defense contraptions.

From the WLD Foundation’s website: Little is known about the life of this highly original artist. L.C. Spooner's work, created between 1911 and 1935, is comprised entirely of plans of machines or everyday-life objects based on the principle of self-propulsion (self-propelled motors, self-propelled trash cans, self-propelled scales, self-propelled finger-lifter, etc.)

Most of Spooner’s work is held in the William Louis Dreyfus-Foundation’s Collection and The Centre Pompidou by way of the ABCD / Art Brut Foundation.

James 'Son Ford' Thomas (b. 1926-1993)

“…Busts of George Washington… speak to the history of slavery and its residual oppressive policies, which Thomas faced throughout his lifetime. The cotton wigs that he created for each Washington bust reflect Thomas’s own history with cotton, which he picked with his grandfather to earn a living as a young man. As an adult, Thomas grew cotton as a sharecropper, requiring that he rent the land and buy overpriced supplies from its white owner, incurring tremendous debt that made earning a living impossible.” — Jonathan Berger & Jessica Iannuzzi Garcia

James 'Son Ford' Thomas (1926-1993)

“…Busts of George Washington… speak to the history of slavery and its residual oppressive policies, which Thomas faced throughout his lifetime. The cotton wigs that he created for each Washington bust reflect Thomas’s own history with cotton, which he picked with his grandfather to earn a living as a young man. As an adult, Thomas grew cotton as a sharecropper, requiring that he rent the land and buy overpriced supplies from its white owner, incurring tremendous debt that made earning a living impossible.” — Jonathan Berger & Jessica Iannuzzi Garcia
Exhibited: James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas: The Devil and His Blues at 80WSE Gallery, 2015

Published: James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas: The Devil and His Blues, 2015, p. 68.

Published: Art Forum, December, 2015.

Provenance: Ron & June Shelp Collection