A richly illustrated history of self-taught artists and how they changed American art
Artists without formal training, who learned from family, community, and personal journeys, have long been a presence in American art. But it wasn-t until the 1980s, with the help of trailblazing advocates, that the collective force of their creative vision and bold self-definition permanently changed the mainstream art world. In We Are Made of Stories, Leslie Umberger traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, they redefined who could be rightfully seen as an artist and revealed a much more diverse community of American makers.
Lavishly illustrated throughout, We Are Made of Stories features more than one hundred drawings, paintings, and sculptures, ranging from the narrative to the abstract, by forty-three artists-including James Castle, Thornton Dial, Willi
