For the past few years, I’ve been posting artwork every day on @folkartwork. Doing my best to make sure I show a wide range and diverse group of artists, I feel like I know everyone. Of the folk and outsider artists, I know them all. But let’s be honest, I don’t know anything, and I often stumble upon a new artist whom I haven’t heard of before and have just incredible backstories and lives.
Enter Calvin Black.
Born in 1903 in Tennesse, Calvin Black received little to no formal education. He grew up taking care of his brothers and sisters, eventually teaching himself how to read and write and making a living working for carnivals and circuses. Calvin’s artistic genius came alive after meeting his wife Ruby and moving to a ghost town in the Mojave Desert in 1953. Making a living selling rocks to tourists and creating nearly one hundred life-size dolls out of found wood (primarily collected after cars would crash into telephone poles) where an art environment like no other came alive.
Welcome to “Possum Trot.”
This buried treasure of a film was put together by filmmakers Allie Light and Irving Saraf, a handful of years after Calvin Black died in 1972. Following Ruby in and around “Possum Trot” as you meet Calvin’s cast of characters, you get to take in one talking doll after the next — oh, that one is riding a stationary bike that is powering a windmill — you also feel as if you’re breathing the sand and dust kicked up from tourists looking to get a front-row seat to the next show. Then, as you continue to wind in and out of these structures, you notice yet another tremendous homemade sign you can imagine and hear Calvin sternly but politely asking you to keep your voices down as the show begins.
Screenshots from “Possum Trot: The Life and Work of Calvin Black”
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