In the late 1980s, Steve Slotin was tooling around North Georgia when he stopped in a soda shop in Cleveland. There he spied, on the mantel, a face jug by folk potter Lanier Meaders that raised some questions. Like most vessels of its kind, it looked hauntingly mean to scare away children from the moonshine it was designed to hold.

“It was so ugly it was beautiful,” Slotin says, turning uncharacteristically quiet for a moment as he is transported back to that life-changing moment. He was told the potter lived nearby, so Slotin made a beeline to Meaders’ dusty shed, where he spent a few awestruck hours talking shop.

“I prided myself on knowing everything about the rural South,” says Slotin, who grew up in Atlanta, behind Lenox Square. “I knew where to get the best barbecue, where the best swimming holes were. When I looked at that jug, I saw the visual South. I thought, ‘How do I not know about this face jug? What do I not know about my own backyard? I want to know it all! To see it all!’”

With visions of unconventional beauty in his head, he went on a quest to meet other unsung creatives. “Drive just an hour outside Atlanta, and you’re in prime territory for self-taught art,” he says. “I bought a copy of ‘Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists’ and sought out the artists in it, just to get their autographs, if nothing else.”

Slotin was traveling around the Southeast anyway, selling CliffsNotes as his day job. Wherever he stopped, he would hit a wood-paneled diner and sniff out the local eccentric with a paintbrush, loom or potting wheel, and he was never disappointed. In fact, Slotin spent so much time focused on his scavenger hunt, that he was fired from selling study guides. No matter — more time to look at folk art and meet its fascinating, accessible creators, most of whom did not know how marvelous they were until Slotin showed up with wide eyes and an open wallet.

With his supportive bride Amy in tow, he spent his honeymoon on a shopping spree. At that time, the Southern backcountry was a little like Paris in the 1920s when a discriminating aesthete could grab a Picasso for a few francs — a Howard Finster angel spouting millennial prophecy along with other strange fruits of the imagination was easily within reach. The Outsider Art Fair was just starting in New York, and Slotin decided to organize his own Folk Fest in 1993. This event, held at the North Atlanta Trade Center, would be closer to the source.

“We were just hoping for a couple of galleries,” says Slotin, who was 27 at the time. “We ended up getting 60 galleries and almost 10,000 visitors — a huge success.”

"Runny" eyes on a Lanier Meaders face jug increases its value.
(Courtesy of Slotin Auction)

Credit: Handout

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Credit: Handout

A social scene was born. Not the stuff of snooty, sterile galleries, the community surrounding folk art — the catch-all term for self-taught, vernacular, outsider, visionary, tramp, art brut, memory painting, prison art and “mental institution” art — is characterized by chummy interpersonal relationships, an emphasis on artist biography (often harrowing) and a refreshing lack of pretense. The annual fest, by all accounts, was a rollicking gathering where most people knew each other and at least a couple of the fêted artists enthusiastically took advantage of the open bar.

The silent auction at the inaugural event eventually grew into Slotin Folk Art Auction, regarded as one of the largest marketplaces of its kind for folk art in the world.

Currently, Slotin is gearing up for the Spring Self-Taught Masterpiece Sale. Held April 22-23, it is one of two major auctions this year. With 700 lots of vibrant, eye-popping loot, including “mack-daddy pieces by Howard Finster and Jimmy Lee Sudduth,” it is expected to generate up to $2 million, says Slotin. Buyers likely will have their acquisitions shipped to at least 15 countries.

Slender, with a shiny pate and an air of hyperkinesis, Slotin has gone from earnest fanboy to party host to venerable broker.

“We’re celebrating 30 years in business,” he says, “and throughout that time, I have focused on the American South, those artists that were excluded from the art market, and typically those are African American self-taught artists. I have been touting the African American women from the South such as Clementine Hunter, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Nellie Mae Rowe and Minnie Evans, and we have really seen those ladies’ artworks catch fire.”

He also deals in Native and First Nations art, and, increasingly, art from Central and South America.

“We try to be inclusive as opposed to exclusive,” he says.

Chuck Rosenak, author of the encyclopedia that was Slotin’s guide and autograph book in the early days, says, “There was no secondary market for folk art until Steve Slotin came along. At that time, there were only one or two galleries that put such excessive prices on the work that it was almost impossible to collect. (Slotin) was 100% honest in the way he did it — it was more than just a sincerity of interest. He created a very orderly auction format for material that could seem unruly.”

Thornton Dial's "Woman and Tiger" will be among artworks auctioned later this month.
(Courtesy of Slotin Auction)

Credit: Handout

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Credit: Handout

Slotin works out of a low-slung building that used to be a supermarket, next to the train tracks in Buford. Amy produces the popular catalogs and handles other logistics.

“What I enjoy most about this is the joy and excitement that the customers have for this field, the enthusiasm that they share for what they find here,” she says. “It’s contagious.”

Slotin, too, has maintained his boyish glee. He points out the upcoming auction’s prized pieces and tells their backstories. One artist used only a mixture of spit and soot to paint with; another unraveled his prison socks to get embroidery thread. “Think of the creativity in that,” he says, shaking his head. Also up for sale: some Lanier Meaders face jugs. (Gravel teeth and “runny” eyes enhance their value.)

One Slotin regular is Dan Prince, author of “Passing in the Outsider Lane: Art from the Heart of 21 Self-Taught Artists.”

“With self-taught art, you’re seeing an urgent, direct representation of a person’s mind, not something that’s been jazzed up by a ‘school,’ not something they were taught they were supposed to say,” he says, noting that he collects art by people with paranoid schizophrenia. “The regular art world tries to manipulate you. The artists want to pass you through their dealers. You don’t find that in the world of folk art. The art originates organically from people with handy hands, much like the kind of music that originates on a front porch.”

Folk art is, generationally, in an odd moment. Most of the artists with the marquee names have died, and the collectors themselves are aging. “After a few years, I noticed that some of my collectors were getting older and needing to do stuff with their collections,” Slotin says. “The three D’s they talk about — divorce, deaccession and death — were happening, and people needed an outlet for their collections. That’s how the auctions came about.” He works with Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens to replenish these reserves with young artists.

“We hold a juried show, the winners of which then go to the Slotin Auction, where their names get in circulation,” says Tina Cox, executive director of Finster’s homeplace. “The money raised then comes back to us.”

The auction used to be live — and festive — but it moved online during the pandemic and stayed there. Still, some high-rolling collectors fly in early to see what they want when Slotin opens up the shop a week before the auction.

“I like to go to the auction house on Friday just to people-watch, to see the people who show up to browse,” Cox says.

Adds Prince, “Folk art is so hot right now, so much more expensive than it used to be. When I first started collecting, it was at a price level I could afford. I couldn’t do that today. Now, it’s like regular art.”


ART PREVIEW

Spring Self-Taught Art Masterpiece Sale. April 22-23. Online. 770-532-1115, www.slotinfolkart.com