Living with the itinerant genre of tramp art.

b y l e s da ly

58 E l P a l a c i o

EET JAMES HOLMES, “Compulsive Artistic

Humorist.” That wouldn’t all be on his business

card, of course. But if he had a full-disclosure card,

it could legitimately say, at least, “Sculptor, artist,

woodworker, cabinet-maker.” Maybe “art on impulse.” Maybe

“collector of the curious.” And on the other side, a view into his

whimsical mind: a full-sized pie, the kind Mother used to make,

except Holmes crafted his in detail from sheet-lead, patterned

in the crust, scalloped at the edge, with a servable slice. A

feather sticks out of the crust, for no known reason. When asked

about it, he responds, “How would I know? It made sense to me.”

Holmes laughs a lot. At himself, at his work, and at the world

around him. Born 67 years ago and bred deep in the heart of

Kansas, he speaks with an earthy native flavor, well fertilized

by years of laughing, talking, and telling stories with acceptable

exaggeration. He is customarily clad in denim, with legiti-

mately scuffed boots and one of his many weathered cowboy

hats. He resembles both Mark Twain and Will Rogers.

That pie? He made a sweet, wooden, screened portable

pie carrier as a Christmas gift for his wife one year. Then he

thought, “I’ve got a pie carrier, got to make a pie.” He’s now

baked about twenty in different shapes, materials, and flavors,

among them wood, metal, linoleum, and other secret ingredi-

ents. “Why not?” he laughs. “I like pies. Everybody likes pies.”

To Holmes, that’s enough.

Holmes is a committed, joyful collector of mostly twentieth-

century art pieces, from the twenties and the thirties, the

quirkier the better. “I like weird stuff—weird and different,” he

proudly admits. He and his wife, Susan, a talented graphic artist

and musician with apparently infinite good humor, live south

of Santa Fe “beyond the state prison, behind the feed store,

down about a mile.” Their house is comfortably alive with more

than a hundred pieces of popular art they have discovered—

sometimes just curious stuff, most often odd, overlooked, and

undervalued by others. They take “aimless” driving trips to

prowl flea markets, garage sales, and barn declutterings.

He can’t resist recalling a flea market in Wichita where he

came across an imposing tramp art picture frame: gold-hued

wood finely made in that carefully notched and layered style.

It simply presented a cheap magazine picture of the Mona Lisa,

but it was the hand-carved frame that captured him.

“When I told the woman I might like to buy it,” he mirthfully

remembers, “she said, ‘Yes, of course. It is a lovely picture.’”

He paid her $50. Mona Lisa, in her frame, still lives with the

Holmeses, and still smiles about it, too.

Almost countless in their collection are tramp art picture

frames and little wooden boxes frequently somewhat pyra-

midal, often with tiny drawers and hidden compartments.

His mother, a school librarian, gave him his first tramp

art box when he was twenty. As with much tramp art, she

couldn’t quite say what it was or where it originated. Neither

could he—a sewing box, maybe—but he liked it. He keeps

it still, near his workbench. To fill out the picture of his

original-minded family, he remarks his father was “a civil

rights lawyer before the term became well-enough known in

Wichita to be disliked.” He cherishes a letter to his grandfather

p h oto g r a p h s b y k at e r u s s e l l

E l P a l a c i o 59

Above: Holmes often uses materials such as sugar pine, walnut, sheet lead, copper, and linoleum in the design and construction of his sculptural works (Jim Crow,

2017, hangs in the hallway) and everyday household furnishings, as evidenced in this attic scuttle cover and a floor cabinet (which also displays two small

paintings by Holmes's brother John). An early-twentieth-century notched wooden double-heart tramp art frame hangs on the wall above the cabinet.

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH

60 E l P a l a c i o

from legendary Emporia, Kansas editor William Allen White,

vowing to fight the Ku Klux Klan.

The discovery of that letter among the family papers inspired

Holmes to produce a fierce, notched, symbolic sculpture of a

large, burned wooden cross bearing tiny figures of a hated

hooded Klansman, a charred church, a black crow hanging

from a noose. It is displayed prominently in his home.

•  •  •Tramp art, for the not yet initiated, is kind of a curiosity in the

art world. The name may have a restless, open-road Ameri-

cana flavor. But in fact, the style migrated from Europe in the

nineteenth century and was seldom made by tramps or hobos

or itinerants. Rather, the vast majority of so-called tramp art

pieces were turned out closer to home by men often after a

day working in factories or shops or on farms, or keeping busy

between jobs. Most of it is made from wood tossed away after

some other life, and is undated and unsigned.

When tramp art is found in attics or private homes, its

true genealogy is, at best, speculative, depending largely on

family lore. “Sometimes family lore is wrong,” remarks Laura

M. Addison, curator of North American and European Folk

Art at Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art, “but still

it’s family lore.” People, she adds bemusedly, “respond to a

story of tramp art, no matter how untrue and romanticized

it might be.”

Addison sums up the scope of the genre and the exhibition

in the associated book No Idle Hands: The Myths and Meanings of

Tramp Art (Museum of New Mexico Press). “The

objects made were boxes, frames, clock cases,

wall pockets and a variety of other household

objects—including crosses and other objects

of devotion, patriotic expressions, architectural

models, whimsies, and an occasional thermom-

eter, bank, satchel, or piece of furniture.” Some

people think it is overwrought, too busy and

gaudy, she admits. “The people who like it love

the woodwork and all the small compartments,

even though they may have no function.” Or,

perhaps, because.

With a refreshing whimsy of her own, she

conceived of and produced a large exhibition

about tramp art, an art form she calls “tongue-

in-cheek sculpture, with an enigmatic func-

tion. Or no function.” Fittingly, whimsy is also

a term used to describe little pieces, sometimes

complex, with no real purpose in life but to be

charming and puzzling.

Holmes could be the poster man for No Idle

Hands; his hands are unafflicted by idleness,

and the man attached to them is both impulsive

and compulsive about producing something

whenever the mood strikes him. He is seem-

ingly never more than a thought away from

turning out another pie of the day or some

equally peculiar object, perhaps impossible for

a conventional mind to imagine, but easy later

to admire for its ingenuity. A description for an

exhibition of Holmes’ work at the Phil Space

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH

E l P a l a c i o 61

Gallery a while ago said his pieces “are beautiful and elegant

in their construction and interplay of surfaces while being

humorous, serious, and incisive at the same time.” That spans

a lot. But to illustrate, consider the garfish.

A dedicated sculptor, Holmes fashioned a smooth, detailed,

two-foot long garfish out of a piece of white pine. A dedicated

fly fisherman, he carefully gutted it. A dedicated humorist, he

stuffed it with a compartmentalized wooden case neatly fitted

to house a three-piece pool cue he invented with a swiveling

tip “for shooting around corners.” Since the garfish is a bottom

feeder of no great renown, Holmes explains, “I thought calling

it a pool garfish was more accurate for me than calling it a pool

shark.” He used the cue only once. “They let me win.”

The line between fine art and folk art, of which tramp art

is a part, is quite clearly drawn. In sum, fine art is a trained

Opposite: James Holmes in his workshop/studio. Top: A framed pair of lithographs by H. C. Westermann hangs above Holmes’ garfish pool cue case (left), a small,

wooden tramp art sewing box sits atop a chrome dinette table (center), and a large, free-standing "jukebox” sculpture (right), made by Holmes's brother John, is promi-

nently displayed. Above right: A late-nineteenth–early-twentieth-century gold-painted wooden keepsake box is one of many tramp art treasures in Holmes’s collection.

62 E l P a l a c i o

discipline. Folk art generally emerges from the traditions and

culture of a community. Holmes is formally trained with a fine

arts degree from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree

in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He takes it seriously, with deserved pride.

“I’m not a folk artist or a tramp artist,” he points out. “I’m a

trained artist, a sculptor, a cabinetmaker. I use that training

in my work. When I make art, it’s because I have an idea and

an image I want to convey. I love wood. But I like to work in

different styles with various and sundry materials, sort of a

gourmand, not a gourmet,” he says, waving at piles of scrap

wood, sheet lead, an array of linoleum shards around his work-

shop. He likes linoleum because it is colorful and has always

been cheap, making it well suited for low-cost creativity.

Above: A selection of Holmes’s recent work includes Im-Peachment Pie (far left), which features a bas-relief of peach pits. Holmes was inspired to make pies

after having made a portable pie carrier as a Christmas gift for his wife. Opposite: An overflow of eclectic materials lies at the ready by the front door of the studio.

“I have the definitive collection of old

linoleum in the world,” he enthuses,

as if there might be a competitor. “I

just made that up, but I’m sticking

to it.”

One of the unexpected high spots

of No Idle Hands is Holmes’ tramp

art iron, a smile-provoking little

creation of notched layers of bril-

liant yellow shellacked pine, with

a walnut handle and an aluminum

base plate. “I don’t like ironing, I just

like irons,” he says.

“You start doing something like

that, and the next thing you know,

you’ve spent six hours at it,” he says.

“It’s absolutely a compulsive art. You

don’t have a manual to work from.

It’s all between the ears. There are

no rules.”

And with no rules there are happy

accidents. Holmes calls them part of

the creative process. “You do some-

thing, and you think, ‘That’s kind of

weird.’ Then all of a sudden, you look

at it again, and you take a left turn.

Or a right turn.”

He goes on, excitedly, his thoughts

notching into the creative experience. “I’ve never seen a

drawing for a piece, or a set of plans. This is definitely pre-

computer work. I’ve also never seen a piece of abstract tramp

art,” he adds.

Three items from the Holmes home collection are on loan to

the exhibition. One, of course, is Mona Lisa and her tramp art

frame. Another is a large wall piece with at least seven obvious

and several secret drawers. Concealed compartments are often

a characteristic of tramp art. Think runaway, purposeless

creativity. Think also they are probably a great place to lose

your keys.

He concedes that with all that detail, mistakes are made;

there’s too much “notch-notch-notch” not to make some. “Elmer’s

glue is how the world is held together. That and duct tape.”

E l P a l a c i o 63

He says he spent years trying to find a Santa Fe gallery that

would be interested enough to show his idiosyncratic work,

with no success. “Then, finally, one agreed. We sold eighteen

out of twenty-four pieces,” he says, with dry satisfaction.

•  •  •Holmes’ artistic role models are H.C. Westermann and Marcel

Duchamp. Westermann, it turns out, is a deceased, lesser-

known American post-war artist. For a retrospective Wester-

mann show in New York a year ago, Verve Gallery wrote, “he

stands alone as an eccentric art world maverick.” Better-known

French-American Duchamp stands alone by his urinal.

For his tramp-style fine art, Holmes works pretty much the

way earlier whittlers and notchers did. He relies on a carver’s

knife, an inexpensive razor saw like the ones model makers

use, occasionally a chisel. A while ago, after decades of wood-

working this way, he moved to his version of “advanced tech-

nology” (though he doesn’t yet use e-mail). He built a small

wooden trough about two feet long to hold the pieces of soft

wood as he notched them. He can carry it under his arm, like

tramp artists might have done, had they thought of it. “Tradi-

tion is, you hold the wood in your hand for notching. Tradition

cut my fingers a lot.”

Holmes doesn’t often deal in human figures. But, there in

his workshop, with that whitening hair pursuing his white

mustache and light beard, quietly contemplating through his

glasses a chunk of old wood, little knife in hand, preparing to

create, carve, notch, and shape it into something affectionately

memorable, James Holmes’ charming creative muse comes

inevitably into view. Geppetto. ■

Les Daly has reported for such publications as Smithsonian and the Atlantic,

and frequently on a variety of interesting people and subjects for El Palacio.

You can read Laura M. Addison’s recent El Palacio article on the

exhibition No Idle Hands at bit.ly/tramp_art.

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH