BUFORD, Ga. – Slotin Folk Art will hold its next Self-Taught Art Masterpieces sale on Saturday, April 23 and Sunday, April 24. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.

Steve Slotin has a catchphrase to describe the disparate items in Slotin Folk Art Auction’s twice-a-year Self-Taught Masterpiece Sales: “The Strange, The Unusual, The Vanishing America.” It’s a way to try to lasso the wide and wild variety of items that the auctions feature. But as time goes by, the list of folky things that find their way into the sales just gets longer. Maybe the broad slogan isn’t broad enough.

Self-taught art has always been at the center of Slotin Folk Art sales, but the art styles represented among the 769 lots in its Spring Self-Taught Art Masterpiece Sale boast an impressively wide range: anonymous, circus, flash tattoo, patriotic, Inuit, antique quilts, contemporary quilts, samplers, photography, folk pottery, hand-lettered signs, trade signs, folk sculpture, Indian totems, early weathervanes, carved carousel figures, vernacular furniture, Haitian flags, Oaxacan figures and Huichol Indian yarn paintings, to name a few.

Suffice it to say that there are always new lanes being added to the Slotin Folk Art expressway.

“It’s all getting into one big gumbo of collecting,” Slotin said with obvious approval. And why shouldn’t the auctioneer like the gumbo? Last November’s Fall Self-Taught Art Masterpiece Sale rang up sales of $4.5 million, a sum that ranks among Slotin’s highest grosses in nearly three decades of auctioneering.

Folk art has been having a moment, so it’s possible that Slotin Folk Art will top that total in April.

There are other reasons, too: By being America’s longest and lead auctioneers representing the folk art niche, Steve and his wife and co-owner Amy are able to attract the best consignments. When blue-chip pieces become available, Steve jumps into a vehicle sized to fit the bounty and off he goes, no matter the distance.

As a result, the two-day spring sale offers quality and quantity.

Two pieces Slotin expects to perform exceptionally well are landscapes by Chicago artist Joseph Yoakum: Sao Lourenco Mtn. Range Near Reo de Janeire Brazil, created in 1964, and Mt. Alpha of Brooks Range Near Wiseman, Alaska U.S.A., dating to 1970. Both drawings are executed in pastel, ink and colored pencil on paper, and each is estimated at $10,000-$20,000.

Steve Slotin figures interest will be high for Yoakum – who began drawing his memories at age 71 – in the wake of a recent Museum of Modern Art exhibition of his work, titled What I Saw.

Similarly, a heightened response met work by Nellie Mae Rowe in last November’s Self-Taught Art Masterpiece Sale while the first major exhibition of the Vinings, Georgia folk artist in more than 20 years, at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, was generating national media coverage. One of five works in that sale by Rowe, Dog on Roof With Birds, established an auction record for the artist at $30,000.

In the spring 2022 catalog, Slotin presents two pages of works by Rowe immediately before the Yoakums, clearly hoping to create some synergy. Orange Rooster, an undated work rendered in paint, crayon, colored pencil and marker on paper commands the highest estimate of the six Rowe drawings at $15,000-$20,000.

It can’t hurt that the touring exhibit Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe is reaching new folk art fans in a different part of the country, currently at the Springfield Museum of Art in Springfield, Ohio.

Indeed, there has been gradually building collector interest in 20th-century African American female artists from the South, not just for the long-established Clementine Hunter of Louisiana, who is represented by eight lots in the spring sale, but also Minnie Evans of North Carolina, who has two paintings in the lineup, and Sister Gertrude Morgan of Alabama and Louisiana and Mary T. Smith of Mississippi, who contribute four paintings each.

“If you’re a serious self-taught art collector,” Steve Slotin said, “the Black female artists of the South have got to be represented in your collection so that it’s well-rounded.”

Works by the Rev. Howard Finster, the rural Northwest Georgia self-taught artist whose creations are showcased in the High Museum’s permanent collection and who is a Slotin bidder favorite, appear many times in the sale lineup. The prize among his 24 lots appears to be Our Little Church, a 1978 painting in a trademark artist-made wood-burned frame. In addition to a dominant cross filled with a Finster hand-lettered message, there is a rendering of Violet Hill Church, where, Finster said, he was saved at age 13. It’s estimated at $10,000-$20,000.

Following Slotin’s third Southern Folk & Art Pottery Extravaganza sale in February, the 41 lots of folk pottery that will be offered on April 23, day one of the auction, should have pottery collectors in the hunt. Pots likely to be targeted include a monumental six-to-eight-gallon face jug by B.B. Craig and Lanier Meaders’ jack o’ lantern devil face jug. Each is estimated at $3,000-$5,000.

[av_button label=’Click to view the auction catalogs and sign up to bid’ icon_select=’no’ icon=’ue800′ font=’entypo-fontello’ link=’manually,https://www.liveauctioneers.com/auctioneer/355/slotin-folk-art/’ link_target=’_blank’ size=’small’ position=’center’ label_display=” title_attr=” color_options=” color=’theme-color’ custom_bg=’#444444′ custom_font=’#ffffff’ btn_color_bg=’theme-color’ btn_custom_bg=’#444444′ btn_color_bg_hover=’theme-color-highlight’ btn_custom_bg_hover=’#444444′ btn_color_font=’theme-color’ btn_custom_font=’#ffffff’ id=” custom_class=” av_uid=’av-pb0gq7′ admin_preview_bg=”]

View top auction results on LiveAuctioneers here: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/pages/recent-auction-sales/