Three of my photographs on antique ledger paper from 1920. 2023
These will be in my senior project show at MCAD.
Ledger art began by Plains Native Americans around the time most of the bison were killed. Native Americans acquired the paper by trading with colonizers. Howling Wolf is from the Cheyenne tribe and recorded historical battles through ledger paper. The last two images are Howling Wolf’s (slightly cropped) drawings made sometime in the 1870s
Huge thanks to @miles.mullen for getting the ball rolling with this project and helping with the editing!
(The scans don’t represent the actual colors of the prints)
Photographer: Ramon Muxter, an obscure Minneapolis “legend” who mainly made work in the late 60s to the early 80s throughout seedy bars in Minneapolis as well as bars throughout NYC (See slide 5 of Ralph Gibson and 10 of William Burroughs). Ray had his work exhibited all across the world (albeit a handful of times) his first exhibition was at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He went to Minneapolis college of Art and Design for a semester, 66’-67’. Ray essayed people at the edges of life, frequenting bars and strip clubs. His main bodies of work were Self-Portraits, Nudes, and his “Barscapes.” Near the end of his life he was placed in public housing and stayed there until his untimely death. He is buried in the Lakewood Cemetery in South Minneapolis.
I couldn’t find any color pictures of the man but I had read he had fire red hair and a big droopy red mustache.
After reading his retrospective/biography photobook of him by Christian A. Peterson, I feel like he was very troubled like many of these “extremely eccentric artists” that we all “love”. From the people i’ve asked in person, they say he was a womanizer and someone who’d you definitely wouldn’t want to be near at the end of bar time. Despite that I enjoy some of his works, as they are a bit of ahead of their time and obviously fit in the outsider art space. Especially his barscapes and selfies
