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Derring-Do

Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens in Fort Wayne, Indiana, today!

Don't miss our traveling exhibition Contemporary Folk Art at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art through November, 3, 2002.

Whether you see the show personally or virtually, you can view dozens of magical works by self-taught artists, including this painting by Albina Felski.

This Circus is an exciting place. The bleachers are packed with wide-eyed spectators. Their attention is divided among eleven trapeze artists performing death-defying feats and an eight-ring circus populated by two clowns, a couple of prancing zebras, an equestrienne wearing a Native American war bonnet, a gaily dressed woman cavorting with elephants, and three animal-tamers performing with lions, leopards, and bears.

The circus—an entertainment form whose populist nature parallels that of vernacular art itself—has been a source of inspiration for a number of twentieth-century artists, perhaps most notably Alexander Calder, the American engineer-turned-sculptor known for his colorful mobiles. Felski's painting is the two-dimensional equivalent of Calder's whimsical work of the same name. A transplanted Canadian, Felski was a forty-four-year-old worker in an electronics factory when she took up painting.

Source: Tom Patterson. Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2001).

Pictured: Albina Felski, 1916 Canada–1996 USA, The Circus, 1971, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.