Healing Machine: Curated by Hayley Barker and Scott Ogden
Healing Machine unites fourteen self-taught artists whose primary intentions for creating their works superseded any desire to make “art.” Their unbridled and passionate pursuits varied, but they all shared a fervent dedication to realizing their goals. For some, this was communion with Nature, extraterrestrials or spiritual realms; and for others it was attempting to heal themselves and the world through their inventions.
Unaware that he was an artist, Emery Blagdon devoted his entire life to constructing a machine capable of healing anyone within its presence, a project that inherently required his absolute certainty that this technology was possible. This same level of conviction infuses the transcriptions made by J.B. Murray, who firmly believed God was speaking through his hands, and the automatic drawings of Helen Butler Wells, a Spiritualist and medium who asserted that a spirit named Eswald guided her pencil across paper. In these situations where human ingenuity and creativity are forged in circumstances beyond the typical scope of art history and its adjoined market, entirely new forms of artistic expression emerge.
The unique narratives, life situations and visionary ideas that fuel the inceptions of self-taught artists directly reflect in their works, which is part of what makes their creations so deeply compelling and revered. This exhibition seeks to provide a snapshot of the deeply idiosyncratic personal visions and psyches of these artists, and the works presented manifest a symbolic healing machine that suggests anything is possible when you believe strongly enough.
