Way Out There, organized by the High Museum of Art’s renowned photography and folk and self-taught art departments, celebrates the union of contemporary American photography, literature, and self-taught artists. Exploring the exchange between self-taught and avant-garde artists, this show uses photographs to reveal the brilliant vitality of self-taught artists through images of their homes and yards, presented with unique artworks that have been preserved from those places.
Way Out There is inspired by the book Walks to the Paradise Garden, written by Jonathan Williams, that features more than 100 of the South’s many backroads artists whom Williams visited during extensive road trips in the 1980s and 1990s with photographers Guy Mendes and Roger Manley.
Way Out There will consist of sculptures, paintings and drawings by self-taught artists in the High’s collection, along with rarely seen photographs by Mendes and Manley. Additional artists to be represented include Eddie Owens Martin, Sam Doyle, J.B. Murray, Edgar Tolson, Georgia Blizzard, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Howard Finster, and Thornton Dial.
