|
|
|
|
 View Images
USA
South
|
Atlanta, GA
Mr. Imagination - Gregory Warmack
1948-
Mixed media
|
|
Information:
When at the age of thirty-five, Gregory Warmack was attacked and shot on the South Side of Chicago, he nearly died from his wounds. Believing that he time-traveled during his recovery, this self-taught artist was reborn as a visionary and renamed himself Mr. Imagination.
Born in 1948, on the West Side of Chicago, Gregory Warmack has been making art since he was a small child and has always known that he would become an artist. The third of nine children born into a poor family, Warmack credits his mother with encouraging his artistic talents. He has always collected things from the street and by the time he was sixteen, his room was so full that he had to sleep under the kitchen table.
Mr. I, as Mr. Imagination is also known, lived in a rambling Clark Street apartment, really three apartments on two levels. There he has made a fantastic living environment out of discarded objects which he has collected and refashioned with his signature style. Sandstone sculptures and hammered bottle-cap thrones are the most numerous of Mr. Imagination's works, but he is also a painter, singer, jewelry and clothing designer, mask maker, and art collector. Most of the rear apartment is a shrine to Mr. Imagination's late brother, Junior. Having lost his keys while Mr. I was out of town, Junior was killed while trying to climb through a back window, which fell and broke his neck. Upon his return, Mr. Imagination found his brother dead.
In 1996, Mr. Imagination finished work on a concrete grotto built on Chicago's South Side, adjacent to a children's art center and decorated with found treasures.
After he lived in Chicago, he moved to Bethlehem, PA then experienced a devastating house fire. In August 2009, he relocated to Atlanta, GA.
Bulletproof Film
|
 |
Bibliography:
"Detour Art—Outsider, Folk Art, and Visionary Folk Art Environments Coast to Coast, Art and Photographs from the Collection of Kelly Ludwig" by Kelly Ludwig, Kansas City Star Books, 2007.
On DVD - Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations, "Next Stop New England", KCPT, Kansas City Public Television, 2003.
"Self-Made Worlds: Visionary Environments" by Roger Manley and Mark Sloan, Aperture, New York, 1997.
"Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art—A guide to American Artists, Locations and Resources" by Betty-Carol Sellen with Cynthia J. Johnson, McFarland & Company, 2000.
"Contemporary American Folk Art - A Collector's Guide" Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, 1996.
"Flying Free: Twentieth-Century Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Ellin and Baron Gordon" by Ellin Gordon, Barbara L. Luck and Tom Patterson, exhibit catalog for The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, 1997.
"Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum" by Tom Patterson, Watson-Guptill Publications/New York, 2001.
"American Self-Taught Art: An Illustrated Analysis of 20th Century Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies" by Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, 2003.
"Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations Coast to Coast Travel-o-Pedia" by Randy Mason, et. al., Kansas City Star Books, 2009. |
| |
