Jay Wehnert, Texas - MEET THE COLLECTOR Series Part Sixty One

In April 2021, I met Texas based collector Jay Wehnert for an interview over zoom, to feature as part sixty-one of my Meet the Collector series. Jay has been on my radar for many years through his own words on his Intuitive Eye website and through his Outsider Art in Texas: Lone Stars book that we talk about below. It’s a long one so grab your favourite drink and get stuck in!

Jay and Victoria Wehnert. Image credit: Jack Thompson

Jennifer: Well to start with, tell us a bit about you and your background?

Jay:  I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and lived there until moving to Houston, in 1991. So I've been a Texan for the last 30 years. I credit growing up in Baltimore with some of my nascent interests in outsider and self-taught art. Baltimore, of course, is the home of filmmaker John Waters, and I grew up with a Baltimore that John Waters depicts in his films, a Baltimore of eccentrics and misfits. I came to understand Baltimore as a place that embraces its unusual people, and offbeat perspectives. I didn't quite realize that it was going to inform my adult art interests. Particularly, I've looked back and understand that growing up in Baltimore imbued me with a kind of sensibility that set me up for when I was later exposed to outsider or self-taught art… that the unexpected art by unexpected makers would capture my interest. Other things in my background… I had a long professional career as a speech and language pathologist. I worked in several settings in Maryland, treating children with autism, and I developed a specialty in that. Then, my move to Houston was, in part, to take a position at a hospital here in the Texas Medical Center that specializes in traumatic brain injury and stroke rehabilitation. While I was there I was a pediatric specialist in brain injury, and other brain disorders. So also in my background is this interest in people and their functioning with brains that are different from the conventional ones.
On the therapy team that I often worked with, there would be an art therapist on board who was using art as part of a way of facilitating recovery or development as in the case of autism. And so that also fascinated me quite a bit as well.  Those interactions between language, cognition and brain function have interested me for a long time. So I think some of those early experiences led to my art interests in some subtle indirect ways, again that I wasn't completely aware of, but looking back in retrospect I can appreciate.

Jennifer: And so you don't have art in your background then?

Jay: No, very little. Another one of my very Baltimore perspectives that I talk about is that Baltimore prides itself in being such a genuine kind of place that has a strong apprehension about established conventional culture. We're about 45 minutes from Washington DC., and it wasn't until I was a young adult that I visited the museums in Washington, because Baltimoreans are suspicious of conventional culture and high culture types, or at least the Baltimore that I grew up in. So I didn't grow up with an interest or an attraction to institutions of art, in art history or in learning or being especially attracted to art. It was more subtle, such as my growing up seeing Baltimore row houses with their “painted window screens” done by self-taught itinerant painters in the 1940’s.

Paul Darmafall, aka The Baltimore Glassman

Jennifer: Was the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore there when you were there?

Jay: It was under construction before we left.  Its first exhibition “Tree of Life” was in 1995. All of my family is still back in Baltimore, so I'm able to get back and see them regularly and I always visit the museum when I'm there.

Jennifer: Super. And so, when would you say that your interests in outsider and folk art began? Was that when you started to see the art therapist at work or was it something in particular that triggered you onto it?

Jay: There are a couple of threads that I've become more aware of. My introduction to outsider and self-taught art occurred in the mid 80’s. And I think part of my introduction to that world was through my interest in music. That was a time when bands that I listened to, like Talking Heads and REM, were advancing the awareness of outsider artists through using their art on album covers, music videos, and that got my attention. The art that was being presented grabbed my attention, and the fact that artists that I admired like David Byrne and Michael Stipe and others were involved with that art, pricked my ears and my eyes to what was going on. And then I began to explore it just a little bit more deeply - who are these artists, what are they producing? I found that it was the art and the artists’ stories that really did attract me. And then what occurred simultaneously around that time in 1986, my wife Victoria, who's been my partner in collecting all of these years, and I met a Baltimore artist named Paul Darmafall. He’s known as the Baltimore Glassman and is a relatively unheralded outsider artist. He is a genuine art brut/outsider artist in many ways. He worked on a busy street corner in Baltimore, creating mosaic glass street signs that communicated his ideas about life and living. And Paul lived and worked about two miles from our home in Baltimore. So it was an opportunity, a very, very influential one to meet him. We began to visit with him and collect his work on an almost daily basis for five years before we moved to Houston in 1991. So that afforded me that opportunity right when my interests in outsider art were developing to actually meet and develop a relationship with Paul, and have that inform so much of my sensitivities to who these artists are, what went into his work, how it expressed very idiosyncratic but complete cosmologies and belief systems about how the world worked and how he operated within that world and then used a creative expression to communicate it.

Jennifer: I haven’t heard of him, so I’ll have to google him.

Jay: I write about him on Intuitive Eye - There's a short article about him, but he's someone well worth knowing about. So those things happened in the mid 1980;’s. That sensitized me to this world of art and creators, which was then a quick path to becoming completely immersed. The more and more I learned, the more I was introduced to more knowledgeable people than myself and the collecting took off.  It has been an important part of our lives for the last 35 years now.

Jennifer: Definitely. So I guess that's when you started collecting it and buying it. So how many pieces do you think are in your collection now? And from what I can see over zoom, it is on the walls in your home?

Jay: We fill our house with our art collection. I think of it as the art and objects related to the art. One of the other things that outsider art and self-taught art has brought to my interest are simply things made out of other things. The ever expansive creativity of people who use ‘make do’ materials to create objects such as tramp art and bottle cap objects and things made out of matchsticks. So counting them among our art collection too, it exceeds 500 pieces that are here amongst everything else that we live with in our house, pretty much floor to ceiling in our self-curated domestic environment. One of the things that we love about the art is that we get to live with it, and it is incorporated into our lives, our space and being with it on a day-to-day basis is enriching.

The Parlor Room. From the bottom up: Henry Darger, Martin Ramirez, Eddie Arning and David Butler

Jennifer: Do you ever get bored with any of the art and decide that you kind of either want to take it down, or you just completely dislike it and want to get rid of it?

Jay: We have not had that happen. However, in the last few years, the ways that it has begun to occur is that we've began to run out of room a bit. When we acquire a piece, we're always considering where its going to go, what pieces it will relate to that are going to be next to it, or in the same room with it - those kind of aesthetic qualities of hanging. And so sometimes a piece of art will displace something. And we'll usually find a way of making that other piece a gift to someone, or keep it back for another time. But that's pretty rare for us as we live with everything that we've acquired. It's kind of a life's repository of our art.

Jennifer: Nice. So in 2011, you set up Intuitive Eye, as you've mentioned already. Can you tell us more about Intuitive Eye and why you set it up and what the purpose of it is?

Jay: I had these parallel interests and activities in art and collecting during my professional career. And that began to include also doing things like championing the work of Paul Darmafall, which let me collaborate on a couple of exhibitions and shows of his work. A piece of Paul's was in the inaugural exhibition of the American Visionary Art Museum – the exhibition was called “Tree of Life”. Roger Manley curated that show and my wife Victoria spearheaded including that piece of work with Roger. So I was beginning to have interest in activities around the art world that involved more than studying the art and collecting. And along with some of those projects I was perhaps writing a short essay about an artist to accompany a show, and just getting to do more small things around my interests. Around 2011, I decided to repurpose myself from my professional career. I was at a point where I had been practicing for 35 years and was becoming increasingly interested in the world of art that that was so intriguing to me. I decided that I would see if I could cobble together a small arts endeavor that would involve efforts like collaborating with galleries and institutions on shows and exhibitions, representing or presenting collaborations with artists that interest me and also doing a little buying and selling of art that we might acquire but not use in the house. I hoped to become a resource for others interested in this field. And what flowed from that was developing a website for Intuitive Eye that would support my efforts. One of the good pieces of advice that I got was that an arts website has to have lots of ever changing content. My good friend Paul Kremer, who has gone on to a terrific career as a visual artist, was my website designer. He gave me that advice about content and suggested that I write about the art and the artists that I was going to be showing. So I took up a regular routine of writing a piece, every month or two, about art and artists that I was presenting on Intuitive Eye. It really helped me, over the course of several years, to develop my own thinking about the art and artists, and then be able to write about it. And so that became an important part of Intuitive Eye - I was using it as kind of outreach to my community and the Internet was allowing it to get out to a lot of people to develop an audience. Simply presenting art and ideas through that platform was really important for me, and continues to hold a lot of enjoyment and inspiration for me.

Jennifer: You still do it to this day don’t you?

Jay: It's a little more sporadic, and often it's connected with a project that I'm working on. So it's less regular than it once was. One of the things that caused its slowdown was that I began the writing of my book. That consumed a couple of years of my writing energy.

Jay’s book - Outsider Art in Texas: Lone Stars

Jennifer: Definitely. The other thing on your website and you've kind of touched on this, is that you sell work through it. You said sometimes it's pieces that you buy just to look to sell on, or would you sometimes buy like a small body of work from an artist to sell on, and in that case, would you see yourself as an art dealer?

Jay: I don't think of myself as primarily an art dealer - as someone who buys and sells art. It's often a happenstance that brings me into contact with a piece of art, so art dealing is probably fourth or fifth down the list of the things that I do through Intuitive Eye. The art that I do sell also represents my interests, but it usually occurs more indirectly. If I'm following an auction for instance, and see a piece by an artist that I'm very interested in, and I know that I'm not going to bring that piece home for our home collection, I might get it with the idea that I can present it to my collector base, or have it available for a project or a show that I might do in the future.

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely. That makes sense. Since we have just mentioned your book, which is called ‘Outsider Art in Texas: Lone Stars’ from 2018, I guess, should we talk about that now and kind of sure how that came about? Why the focus on Texas, artists, and when it came out I know you did a series of events so can you tell us about those?

Jay: Well one of the things that came about through my writing on Intuitive Eye and presenting to the public was that I received an invitation from an arts organization here in Texas called the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art CASETA. Their interests were in early historical Texas artists. I was holding a series of Open House salons at our home, and one of the members of the group attended and got very interested in what I was doing. She invited me to present on any early Texas artists from my outsider art world at their annual symposium in 2016. I spoke about Charles Dellschau, Frank Jones and Forrest Bess. Attending that symposium was the Senior Editor for Texas A&M University Press Thom Lemmons. After my talk, Thom asked if I had ever considered writing a book. I said honestly, no. In the back of my mind I knew writers who had taken on book projects and how much work they are and how rigorous one has to be in writing a book compared to a blog on the internet and short form writing like I was doing. But having an invitation from a university press really made me consider it more seriously. And Thom Lemmons essentially said that ‘if you write it, we will work to publish it.’ And so after a lot of thought I decided that I could not, not do it, so I took it on. My writing for Intuitive Eye had afforded me the opportunity to develop my thinking about outsider and self-taught art, to study its history and develop my own thinking and to begin some writing about artists that I ended up writing more in depth about for the book. So there really was a synergy between the book project, and the work I had been doing up to that. It ended up being a very gratifying process and one that I enjoyed a great deal. So following that I launched a book tour. One of the things that I learned about authorship is that writers are sometimes responsible for developing some of the events around their book and so I had to organize that. I was pleased to do it because again it allowed me to light up relationships within the art world that I had developed as a collector and as a collaborator, and do activities and events around my book. One of the most gratifying for me, as a Houstonian, was that I was able to give a presentation at the Menil Collection here in Houston - an institution that has been important to my arts education. Their art lectures are held in their beautiful foyer of the museum. It was a complete thrill for me to be presenting on the other side of the podium. The other event that comes to mind is the invitation that I received from Intuit Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago to present as part of their Annual Gala Weekend. They invited me to come up and do a presentation about outsider art and place. Presenting within earshot of The Henry Darger Room, I had goosebumps for all the right reasons, not just nerves. A very lively and really satisfying part of writing the book was getting out and talking about it, and I found that helped me again develop some of my thinking about how it all came about because I was telling my story as well as the story of the artists work.

Jennifer: Did you get free reign to pick the artists that you put into that book?

Jay: Yeah, I did. I've been here living in Texas, almost 30 years. I'd been introduced to the breadth and depth of the Texas artists so I could have filled two or three volumes. I chose 11 artists for the ways in which they individually represented or embodied the qualities of the outsider artist in their own lives and their work, as I was trying to convey it.

Charles Dellschau

Abstracts in the Den (L-R): Charlie Stagg, Dan Miller and Philadephia Wireman

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely. Is there any particular style of work in this field that you're drawn to? So, are you particularly fond of works on paper, or is it sculpture, or is it like the whole mix together?

Jay: I think for me it's the mix. One of the qualities, I think, of outsider or self-taught art is that it's not bound by a medium or a style, that it can be almost anything. I find increasingly that I'm not limited by specific qualities of style or form. But, as I thought about this question, one of the things that I've become aware of is how our collecting has changed over the years. I've become increasingly interested in art and artists that have a visionary experience, as part of their creative work and lives. And so artists, for whom abstraction may be part of that visionary experience, are increasingly interesting to me. An artist like Eugene von Bruenchenhein comes to mind as an example of that. And then as we were talking about earlier, I've become increasingly interested in artists whose lives have different developomental qualities such as the neurodivergent or neuroatypical, whose work then also often has a level of abstraction and non-representation to it, artists like Judith Scott and Dan Miller. One artist in particular interest is Karen May, who creates at NIAD Art Center. She is an artist who I like a great deal and I have collected. This led to my curating an exhibition for NIAD. My early connections with collectors and galleries focused on Southern artists like Howard Finster, Mary T Smith and Jim Sudduth. Our early collecting involved driving trips through the south to visit artists and collect. All those works still live with us., sharing space with the new.

Jennifer: Yeah, it's so nice to hear that people used to go around visiting these artists when I've talked to some other collectors too who used to jump in their car as well and go around and visit them. It's so nice that you got to meet a lot of them firsthand.

Jay: Those were such rich and formative experiences for me to have. Definitely remarkable experiences and remarkable people.

Jennifer: Definitely, Is there one trip that sticks out in your mind?

Jay: Wow, let me think. Each had experiences that were pretty remarkable. I remember we were going to Alabama to visit Jim Sudduth. And I had seen one of Jim's Statue of Liberty paintings, and had at the time a small collection of Statue of Liberty souvenir buildings. Before visiting Jim, I had this fantasy that he would have a Statue of Liberty painting that I might be able to get. And so we had a day long visit with Jim where he told stories, we sang songs and played guitar and harmonica and went out to lunch. When it came time to leave, Jim encouraged us to go around the house and pick out paintings that we might want. I didn't see a Statue of Liberty, so I asked him about it and he said “oh there's one behind that door over there”. So I pulled open the door and behind it was a half finished Statue of Liberty. He said “bring it on over here and we'll finish it”. So he laid the Statue of Liberty on my lap, it's a six foot long painting, and for another two hours we talked, while Jim finished painting with his cans of mud, talking the whole time about many things. We took the painting away, wet with mud. And I thought, what a incredible experience this was and that it would never be repeated.

Jennifer: Do you still have that work?

Jay: Oh yes.

Jennifer: That’s very personal and no one else will have that story, so that's really a nice moment. And so would you say, within your collection, you have a favourite piece or a favourite artist?

Jay: A couple. I always go back to those early beginnings with Paul Darmafall, The Baltimore Glassman, and his works on the streets of Baltimore. He contributed so much to my beginning interests and experience with outsider art and outsider artists. So the work of Paul's that we have in the house and live with, one piece in particular of a large winged angel, is important in many ways, and on many levels. So many other pieces compete for our favourites. We used to have these conversations where we would imagine what would we run into the house and grab if the house was on fire? And we've decided we would probably burn alive in the process of trying to get them out! There are things that are very dear to us, both because of the experiences around their collecting like with Jim Sudduth, and then also pieces that we know are special within our collecting world. So, for instance, the Eugene von Bruenchenhein that we've been able to acquire is a very special and important piece for us - largely because of everything that it represents of his amazing creative life. The idea being that one of the things that these artists do so well is being  able to convey their life through their art, so clearly and with such energy and power, like Eugene did.  

Karen May

Jennifer: Definitely. And I guess when you buy the work, it seems like you bought a lot direct from the artists, but do you buy from auctions or from galleries or anything?

Jay: Yes, increasingly so. One of the drawbacks, at least from collecting and buying from the artists directly, is that you're only able to buy the most contemporary things that they've made, especially during the 80’s when those trips to visit artists were so popular among collectors. Often the artists had what they had produced that month or even that year if we were lucky. So older, vintage, or simply different work was only available through the galleries who had been collecting the artists’ work for longer periods of time. And as our collecting abilities have changed in terms of our home economics and as our eyes have become broader and more discerning at the same time, we have increasingly bought from dealers and galleries and auctions. And they continue to be the valued sources for the few pieces that we still acquire in the course of a year or two, as opposed to having carloads of works.

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely. And I guess on that subject as well, are there any exhibitions in this field that you think have been particularly important for people to learn more about this field?

Jay: Yes. The first was the exhibition of the Bert Hemphill Collection at the National Museum of American Art in DC - The Made with Passion exhibition. I think it was in 1990. It was an opportunity to see that full array of objects and art that he collected. It represented a world of creativity that many people had not been exposed to, were aware of, or valued a great deal. So that exhibition was very important for me and the catalogue that followed from that is exceptional. Another exhibition that has some important connection with my interest in Texas art was an exhibition that Lynne Adele organized, called Spirited Journeys: Self-Taught Texas Artists of the 20th Century. That exhibition presented a wide range of Texas artists in 1997. It has a very fine catalogue that accompanied it as well. It introduced and reinforced for me what a fertile ground Texas was for art and artists and propelled my interest forward into Texas artists.

Jennifer: A lot of people have said that Bert was quite influential in the knowledge that they have now and how they now collect things and how they kind of came across this field. Would you say that there's anyone else that you think has been particularly important for making more people aware of this field?

Jay: Yeah. And I always go back historically and then kind of move forward, it seems especially since our collecting has spanned on going four decades. But some of the early thinking and writing about outsider art was so influential for me - so when I started exploring Jean Dubuffet and reading Roger Cardinal’s outsider art book, those earlier thinkers who were doing the intellectual work were of interest to me. In the present day, the people who are engaged with the art, both commercially and intellectually, are the people who I find most rewarding. So someone like Randall Morris, who is a rigorous and disciplined thinker about the art that he shows and presents with his wife Shari. I find him influential. They are good examples, particularly Randall who writes too.

Also essential has been our now dear friend, Richard Gasperi who was one of the founding exhibitors at The Outsider Art Fair and has been instrumental as a mentor and model for sensitive collecting and creating a domestic space for art.

Jennifer: Definitely. Yeah I like Randall. And would you say there are any artists that you're still looking to add to your collection? Do you have your eye on someone, or have you for many years and you think, one day, I'll have an artwork by them?

Jay: Yes. It's been interesting thinking about your questions and experiencing my responses to them of kind of going back and forth in history. We have a fantasy of owning an Adolf Wolfli. And, by extension, a small work by Jean Dubuffet. I would love to live with and have in our collection works by the intellectual pioneer of the field, as well as his one of his inspirations. But you know, they may be beyond our capabilities forever.

Jennifer: Well, yes they’re fairly pricey.

Jay: Into the present, we touched upon Eugene von Bruenchenhein - we have a small fantasy of acquiring one of his works from the 1950’s when they were larger and more fantastical, well developed visionary paintings. But they're quite rare, and most are where they should be, in public collections.

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein. Image credit: Andrew Edlin Gallery

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely. So I guess if we come to the term outsider art, I like to ask everyone that I'm talking to how they feel about that term, whether they themselves use it or whether they use something else, and whether you think the field should be using something else?

Jay: It's a term that I'm very comfortable with.  I used it in the title of my book, where I spent a good part of the introduction laying the groundwork for my own thinking about what that term means, and has meant. I love this idea of moving back historically and into the present at the same time. I go back to the ideas and the writings of Dubuffet about art brut and the ideas from Roger Cardinal’s book on outsider art, and that Roger’s term “outsider art” was meant to be synonymous with art brut. Dubuffet’s ideas about art brut and the essential isolation and solitude of artists is the core concept for me. That the artist is far removed from the influences of the institutional art world and the conventions of art history and the canon of art – these are essential and quite clear qualities to me about this art. And so, for me, using the term outsider art involves being disciplined and rigorous about my own thinking about the terms I'm using, what they mean and what I mean by them. I think what happens as outsider art has become more popular, is that the term becomes popularized and meaning becomes muddied. I'm not saying anything derogatory about anyone who uses the term differently, but I think it's necessary for me to be clear and rigorous and disciplined about my own thinking and the terms I use, and I think others should strive to be as well. I don't think the overuse of the term should inhibit those of us who use it. One should just be making the effort to develop and articulate your own ideas.

Jennifer: Yeah and like you said, you've written in the introduction to your book the meaning that you have of the term outsider art, when you're relating it back to Dubuffet’s original terms, which is exactly what I do as well, but it has definitely, in the UK, become very muddied to kind encapsulate anyone that might not have been to art school or succeeded at art school.

Jay: Yes, and then I think it's more imperative for them to come up with good words and ideas to convey the qualities of the art that they're engaged with then.

Jennifer: So what did you think of the term outliers.

Jay: I think other terms often capture important aspects of the outsider experience. If the artist lies outside of the establishment and conventional expectations, they are, indeed, an outlier to the conventional world. It is an apt term, but not one that I think should take over. I think there are lots of other good words that describe outsider art. I like many that get put forth as alternatives - vernacular is another term that I like. For me, it conveys an aspect of what “outsider” was meant to express.

Jennifer: There's lots thrown around!

Jay: Yeah, and I appreciate anyone who makes the effort to share their thinking and the grounding of what they are expressing.

Jim Sudduth

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely. So coming up to the present day, what are you working on at the moment, if anything?

Jay: I'm just finishing up a writing project for the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. They have a film series and are presenting the new Bill Traylor documentary Chasing Ghosts.

Jennifer: Oh I watched that the other day.

Jay: They've asked me to write an essay and a promotional piece for them, for when they present the documentary next month. So I've enjoyed doing that and again, it has been an opportunity to present a little bit of my thinking, as well as a descriptive and promotional piece for the museum, so I enjoyed that collaborative project. And I'm working on a small exhibition series here in Houston that I hope will happen at the end of this year once things start to open up more and we can have exhibitions in a public space - with the expectation that some people can come and we can all feel safe. It will revolve around Texas artists who have been institutionalized or incarcerated - those being two words describing maybe the same phenomenon in their histories. Artists like Frank Jones, Henry Ray Clark, Ike Morgan, and an artist I’m working with who hasn't had too much exposure. His name is Lester Davis. I am interested in that idea where the isolation of the artists is to some degree imposed by society through institutionalization or incarceration.

Jennifer: Will they be like little solo exhibitions?

Jay: I think so, and then maybe at the end, a group show. One of the ways that I've modeled Intuitive Eye is that I've always collaborated with others who have bricks and mortar spaces. But I now have a space next door to my house where I will be able to have pop up events.  

Jennifer: Great. Which leads me on to my final question, is there anything else that you'd like to share?

Jay: We've covered a lot of ground! The scope of topics that you touched upon in your questions and the things that we got into tangentially in our conversation have been thought provoking, just great. I really enjoyed this a lot. Thanks Jennifer.

Jennifer: Me too, thanks so much.

View from the Kitchen (Clockwise from top left): Mary T. Smith, Jim Sudduth, Ezekiel Gibbs, Uncle jack Day and Jim Roche