Creator Record
Metadata
Artist |
Black, Calvin |
Category |
env builder |
Biography |
Calvin Black (1903-1972) and Ruby Black (1915-1980) Calvin Black was born in Tennessee, and his wife Ruby was from Georgia. The couple met in 1933, while Calvin was traveling with the circus and carnivals, and they married shortly thereafter. In 1953, Calvin purchased land in Yermo, California, sight unseen from a magazine advertisement. For the next twenty years, the Blacks built their home and the roadside attraction they named "Possum Trot and Fantasy Doll Show". Possum Trot included, but was not limited to, windmills, stagecoaches, trains, small-scale carousels, and approximately eighty large-scale dolls that mostly were located in the Birdcage Theater. Black carved the figures from telephone poles, which stand between three and four feet; Ruby made their costumes from scavenged clothing. Calvin wrote songs, dialogue, and music for their "Fantasy Doll Show," which featured select dolls with an audio element amplifying prerecorded voices from battery operated tape players. In 1977, filmmakers Allie Light and Irving Saraf made a short documentary, Possum Trot: The Life and Work of Calvin Black. However, by the time of Ruby's death in 1980, there wasn't enough interest to maintain the site. It was soon afterward dismantled, broken up, and sold to private collectors. Elements of the environment are now in the collection of numerous institutions including the Milwaukee Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Newark Museum. Kohler Foundation, Inc., acquired a selection of dolls, signs, and ephemera from the site, gifting five objects to the collection of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in 2010. Additionally, in 2017 Kohler Foundation and SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments) Archives gifted the Arts Center a doll and sign. The same year select objects from the Arts Center's collection of the Blacks's works were a part of The Road Less Traveled series in the exhibition In Celebration of Ourselves + SPACES Archives. |
