Art Book Club: Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists hosted by Tara Tieso

VIRTUAL EVENT

Psst…. we’ve started an art book club at Wet Paint.

Wish you read more about art? Interested in talking about Creativity? Artists? Art movements? The artistic process? Art concepts?

Read the selection and come discuss. Haven’t read the book? Come anyway and discover!

Facilitated by your most excellent host, Tara Tieso; teaching artist and active member of the Twin Cities arts community

This month’s selection: Nonconformers: A New History of Self Taught Artists by Lisa Slominski (Pre-order available)

A global history of self-taught artists advocating for a nuanced understanding of modern and contemporary art often challenged by the establishment

When the art world has paid attention to makers from outside the cultural establishment, including so-called outsider and self-taught artists, it has generally been within limiting categories. Yet these artists, including many women, people with disabilities, and people of color, have had a transformative influence on the history of modern art. Responding to growing interest in these artists, this book offers a nuanced history of their work and how it has been understood from the early twentieth century to the present day.

Nonconformers includes work by well-known figures such as Henry Darger, Hilma af Klint, and Bill Traylor alongside many other artists who deserve widespread recognition. After reviewing how self-taught artists factored into key movements of twentieth-century art, the book shifts to highlighting the voices of contemporary practitioners through new interviews with artists William Scott, Mamadou Cissé, and George Widener. An international group of contributors addresses topics such as the development of the Black Folk Art movement in America and l’Art Brut in France, the creative process of self-taught artists working outside of traditional studios, and the themes of figuration, landscape, and abstraction. Global in scope and with chronological breadth, this alternative narrative is an essential introduction to the genre long known as “Outsider Art.”

About the artist:

Tara L Tieso is an abstract painter who lives and paints in the historic arts Lowertown neighborhood of Saint Paul, on the mighty Mississippi. She paints with encaustic, an ancient beeswax and resin medium fused to its substrate with a torch. Tara also works in pen and ink, and loves all water-soluble media.

As a teaching artist, she leads classes for those of all creative abilities; facilitates Wet Paint’s Book Club; Eagan Artist Connect; and Creative Circles from her lowertown loft studio. 

A certified coach – Tara loves working working with creatives of all types. She is Past President of nationally celebrated WARM, Women’s Art Resources Minnesota – where she worked to steward a rich 40-year feminist legacy of brilliant women artists. She currently serves on the Boards of the Lowertown Lofts Artists Cooperative, and the Show Non-Profit, bringing artists of all abilities together in creative community.  

A grateful recipient of the McKnight Foundation-funded Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Grant, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant; she is one of 30 ArtSage Minnesota Artists, and a winner of North Hennepin Community College Award of Excellence in Memory of Lance Kiland from the Minnesota State Fair Foundation. Her work hangs in private collections in the Twin Cities, greater Minnesota, and Philadelphia.