strange and beautiful

I saw this movie on OPB two nights ago all about Henry Darger (1892-1973), who I had never heard of. I'm not sure how I missed him because I realize now he's pretty famous, probably the most famous "outsider" artist ever, I think. There is a ton of info about him and several books about his amazing work. These images are all from a story he wrote called "The Realms of the Unreal" and it's 15,000 pages. He worked on it and other writings from the age of 19 until he was 81 and never showed it to anyone.

this story is about "the Vivian girls" and a big war about child slavery and it's all very creepy, sad, and beautiful. This work is all traced from advertisements that he would collage together. It's hard for me to explain it well, the movie does a great job of describing his technique and his very sad life.

these images don't show the work that well. they are amazing. and so, so, so, strange. there are a lot of naked girls and they all have boy parts. the movie indicates that he was confused about boy and girl parts in a child-like way. not a creepy adult man way. my favorite images I can't show here, the war imagery gets really violent.

these are what he used to keep his images in. mostly old phone books. he'd cut images out of newspapers and then save them. I am so excited to find this artist I knew nothing about.

** so I just posted this and was putting Sadie down to bed and realized that I didn't really write about why this artist moved me so much. I love his work, but I also can't stop thinking about the fact that he never showed his art to anyone. at all. ever. It was all for him. and I think about my creative life now, with weblogging being a huge part of it, and how my work has never been so public. now I can make something and minutes later post about it and get feedback from the world. I don't mean to say that is bad, quite the opposite,but. . .I'm not sure what I am saying. that maybe I think it's important to do something just for me? and never share it? could I even do that? it comes up for me now because, like so many of us creative bloggers, I want to show new things to you all, to get support, but also to make sure you visit again, because the feedback and the connection mean so much. but can they start to mean too much? am I  pushing too hard sometimes? I have no answers here, just something dancing around in my brain while I'm trying to relax.ha-ha.