The Tom Patterson Years: Cultural Adventures of a Fledgling Scribe

From the venue:

The Tom Patterson Years: Cultural Adventures of a Fledgling Scribe (Hiding Press/Jargon, 2021) chronicles some of Patterson’s experiences as a young writer and close observer during that era, with a cast of characters that includes Jimmy Carter, the B-52’s, Bruce Hampton, Saint EOM, the Sex Pistols, and the Reverend Howard Finster, not to mention most of the artists represented in our current exhibition. Patterson is scheduled to read from and sign copies of his new book on Saturday, March 19, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., with the (brief) reading to begin at about 4:30 p.m. Tom Patterson has pursued an autonomous path since the early 1970s as a writer, independent curator, former small-press publisher, and art magazine editor based in the American South. Patterson is the author of Howard Finster: Stranger from Another World, (Abbeville Press, 1989), St. EOM in The Land of Pasaquan (Jargon Society, 1987/University of Georgia Press, 2018) and Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 2001). Since the early 1980s his writings have appeared in art magazines including afterimage, American Ceramics, American Craft, Aperture, ARTnews, Art Papers, BOMB, Folk Art, New Art Examiner, Public Art Review, and Raw Vision, the London-based international journal of outsider art, of which he is a former U.S. editor. As a curator he has organized exhibitions for the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore), the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (Winston-Salem), Virginia Commonwealth University’s Anderson Gallery (Richmond), the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (Queens, NY), the Terra Museum of American Art (Chicago), the Gregg Museum of Art and Design (Raleigh), and the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle).