International Outsider Exhibition of Modern Art
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In 1999, I started a website to exhibit artwork online for outsider artists to show their work. At that time, there were very few online galleries accepting submissions and even way fewer showing unknown outsiders. I asked for an original from each artist instead of charging a fee cause who the hell was I to ask for money. Artists would use a form on the site with name, medium and city and either email images or point me to an online album or such. If I liked the art or thought visitors to the site would, I emailed back and accepted their submission with a reminder to them to send an original.
Within six months or so Google started serving my website as the number 1 or 2 result for outsider art searches and began to show the artists too. Artists began to submit regularly and over the next 20 years, the site averaged 2 to 3 hundred submissions per year and I exhibited about 10% of those, some years more or less. I only emailed back on ones that I wanted to show so it wasn't all that much work and it was a simple process for me cause I either liked the work or not. Sometimes, I would let the submission sit for a few days to make sure I knew what I thought. Every single exhibited artist sent me at least one original work of art. Art arrived here from all over the world. I had always wanted to collect and show this outsider art and self-taught works and this idea worked better than I ever imagined.
Art came packed in boxes, wrapped in cardboard, rolled in tubes, stretched, framed, raw canvas, paper bound in books, painted wood and sculptures. All manner, size and shape are included in the collection...from pencil drawings on post-it note paper to nine-foot-wide paint on canvas. Some artists sent one piece and never were heard from again while others sent multiple works and some became good friends. In 2019, we stopped accepting submissions.
The website name changed a couple times early on…. from wadautink.com to innercityartist.com…but mostly from 2002 on the name was outsiderart.info. Now ioemacollection.com shows some of the collection.
I kept much of the emails from artists I accepted and after a while started to keep some of the packaging they used, like labels or cardboard fronts to the boxes or tubes used and I'm glad I did. Some of the artists submitted, answered an acceptance email, sent the work and I never heard another peep. Some sent 2 works in one package or maybe another work a year or two later out of the blue with a note "Merry Christmas" or "Just for you, Happy Spring." Quite few artists sent multiple artworks here and established a mini collection within the collection of their work. Welsh, Hoffee, Oxier, Judges, Murison, Sales, Plastorm, Keck, Thompson, Kox, Heslet, Brady, Fujino, Garance, Bennett, Attali, Pyper, Vuittonet, Smithline, Waugh, Dushan, Shaffer, Steiner and Swinton (and I missed some) sent multiple works here over the years.
The smallest work came from Mitsi Brown barely 1.5 inch square and the largest painting a 9 foot wide Hoffee/Welsh collaboration. The largest work is an Attali drawing bound in to a book that when put together flows 36 feet. Many of the works arrived unstretched canvas rolled in a tube. Some paintings on standard store bought stretched canvas, some on raw canvas stretched by the artist, paint on wood panels or scrap wood or even cabinet fronts and shelving arrived through all the standard delivery services. During different stretches of time, the overseas works outnumbered USA works with art getting here from Australia, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Israel, Spain, Poland, Japan, Netherlands, China, Canada, Czech Republic, Maldives, Russia, Denmark, Germany, Serbia and Peru. A painting from Poland took the longest, 90 days! Works on paper, sculpture, eggwashed linen, heavy oil/acrylic/spray, pencil, pen, woodblock print, collage, papercut...almost every visual medium except video made its way in to the collection.
I hope you enjoy taking a look at the artworks. Please contact the artist for buying.