White Trash Art

Things you can't un-see

Ghosts and Coke Fiends

Here is an interview about Ghosttraveller.com with the talented writer and fellow paranormal enthusiast Mike Kleen

My Amy Winehouse with impetigo painting got some internet props by being crowned a daily deviation on Deviant Art

 

 

Independence Day Interview: David Turpin

Artists Gary Farrelly and Peggy Clydesdale interview critically acclaimed Irish artist/songwriter/performer David Turpin from the churning chlorinated brew of American independence that is the Fraternal Order of the Eagles swimming pool in Dallas, Texas on July 4th, 2010.

Clydesdale Which came first, the poetry, the music or the art. And which is the dominant form?

Turpin I can’t really remember, but I think the art-form I was interested in first was probably filmmaking. I was drawn into pop music because it’s a rangy beast that also includes literature, visual art, photography, typography, and graphics. Whatever I’m doing, I like to believe that my work is dominated not by form, but by the mode of the Turpinesque.

Farrelly It is obvious that global cultural conquest is your raison d’etre. Which form will you achieve this by?

Turpin I’ve always been described as a performance artist or a conceptual artist, despite the fact that conceptual art is probably the only art form in which I have never practiced. So I expect I will achieve global conquest for a misnomer. That’s all right, though. I don’t mind what people call my work, as long as they feast on it until their bellies burst. Many is the luscious buffet that must endure the tag of “All You Can Eat”.

Farrelly When do you expect this process to be complete?

Turpin The process is an ongoing one. There will always be savages somewhere in the world who do not grasp the concept of the Turpinesque, and my life’s work is to enlighten them – forcefully.

 
Farrelly What are the key projects you are investing your energies in over the coming 12 months?

Turpin My plans are secret at the moment, but be assured that my dance card is full.

Farrelly Can you give me 7 key words you think best describe your aesthetic.

Turpin Turptacular. Turpnotic. Turpifying. Turpmantic. Turpincholy.

Clydesdale Olfactory sense can elicit the most vivid memories. In your experience what is the most disturbing memory that evidences itself upon a certain smell?

Turpin Well, sexual assault certainly has a musk all its own, but in the interests of maintaining the proper Sunday Colour Supplement tone, I’ll choose something from further back. Certain tobacco smells remind me of my piano teacher, who was a very brilliant man, but also a very frightening one. He smoked like an industrial chimney, and when he shouted it always burst out of him in a puff of smoke, as if he literally was a dragon. He sat behind me, so all I ever saw was the little pieces of ash that drifted down onto the keys. Maybe that’s why there’s so much incineration in my music.

Clydesdale Loss and struggle are characteristic themes of American country and western music. Your output also deals with these basic human tribulations. What would the chorus of a David Turpin country and western song (produced for the masses on this side of the Atlantic) sound like?

Turpin It will be saccharine and string-led. Kris Kristofferson will play guitar, and we’ll use his face as a skiffle board. It will have harmonies by the Parton-Harris-Ronstadt Trio, and the refrain will include the lines “I dug up those chalky bones, Theo / To dance in line like the corn we grow...”

Farrelly Do you believe in God?

Turpin Not necessarily as a benevolent force.

Farrelly Do you believe in love?

Turpin [Declines to answer]

Clydesdale In a recent correspondence you stipulated that "everything is better with a horse in it" can you please make known your favorite culinary dish improved by the inclusion of a horse. *Horseradish does not count?

Turpin I imagine the speared corpse of an enemy – dragged Hector-and-Achilles-style across the ground by a horse – would taste pretty nice.

Farrelly Your recent album Haunted was well received by the critical establishment. Are you satisfied by the wholeheartedness of their adoration of Turpin?

Turpin I wouldn’t recognize adoration if it walked up to me and punched me in the face. It’s not even on my radar.

Farrelly Where will David Turpin be in 5 years? (at least one scenario please).

Turpin On July 4, 2015, I will be the sole resident in a luxury hotel at the centre of a wood north of Bear Mountain in upstate New York. I will be in the Vermillion room, possibly reclining with my hybrid wolves, watching through the picture window as the people of the township tie themselves to fireworks and, in my honor, blast off into the night sky.

(July 4, 2010)

White Trash Road Trip, day 1

Day One: Welcome to Cornland

Started off the day with a flat tire, but it was all ok after that. GPS led me into Atlanta, IL - which has a giant fiberglass man from Cicero holding a massive wiener.

Totally enjoying my new(ish) convertible, but suffered a wicked sunburn by dusk

Rolled into Cornland, which is planning the big town garage sale

In Missouri, couldn't pass up the Mermac Caverns, and the creepy Jesse James statue out front

Caves are dark

Til someone installs a cheesy light show 

and a snack bar with fabulously bad portrait art

Finally, I went to some godforsaken Oklahoma back road to search for the Joplin Spook Light

 

New Obsessive Issue 007

New Obsessive 3/10: Iremonger Pictoral Edition:
Herrings and tar buckets!
Turpinian Eugenics!
Pyongyang: always a bridesmaid...!
Pugilist Vagrant Bandicoots!
Enola Gay Cocktails!
Satchmo!
Bestiality is Funny!
and more! in a fully illustrated edition...

American Heroes and Madmen: The Salt King of Southern Illinois

One of the most shameful historical slave sites in Illinois is in a tiny village named "Equality".

In 1842, a wealthy salt mine owner named John Hart Crenshaw, along with his brother Abraham, built this Greek revival style mansion from the vast amounts of wealth they had accumulated operating two lucrative salt mines in southern Illinois. The Crenshaws were influential and ridiculously wealthy. At one point John Crenshaw's income equaled one seventh of the revenue of the entire state of Illinois. 3 A young state representative named Abraham Lincoln actually attended a gala at the home, dancing a waltz in the second floor ballroom, likely with kidnapped slaves stuffed into concentration camp style bunks in the third floor above him. In a town called Equality. Now that is some fucking irony.

The house in the 1960's, courtesy of this site

Part of the reason for the massive wealth was due to the fact the "Salt King of Southern Illinois" was allowed to use slave labor. Prior to emancipation, there was a law in place allowing businessmen to "import" slaves from slave states into free states like Illinois and use them for especially miserable tasks (like working in salt mines). Soon, this Illinois entrepreneur found that he could increase his profits by kidnapping free black men and women and selling them back into slavery in the south. The house is the last standing vestige of a once thriving "reverse underground railroad" system.

By many accounts Crenshaw also had a side hobby of siring the most virile and strong men with fertile women slaves to produce more slaves to sell. A man named "Uncle" Bob Wilson, who was known to have been one of the primary "breeders", was quoted by staff at Elgin State Hospital in 1941 (after he had been picked up in Chicago wandering 'ill and confused' ) as saying he had been forced to father over 200 children as a stud slave in the Hickory Hill house as well as others in the south. 2  He died at the Elgin facility in 1948 at age 112, and was Illinois' oldest living veteran at the time of his death.5, 6

Crenshaw kept his slaves in the third floor attic, shackled in tiny blood stained stalls ("The attic of this house has twelve small rooms, ranging in size from nine feet square to six feet by two and one-half feet. Some of the rooms contain shelves, which may have been used as bunks" 1). The open stalls were used for "breeding" as well as living quarters. The room itself was likely stifling, with only two windows and dozens of people crammed together.  I don't know if you've ever been in an attic room in the summer in Illinois, but I can tell you from my parent's farmhouse and their third story attic, it gets miserably hot and chokingly muggy. The room was rumored to have secret passages that lead to the main house and the river, to expedite his illicit dealings at night. He took to beating the slaves, sometimes to death.

Brought to trial in 1842, he wasn't convicted on the first count of illegally trading slaves. However, within a short amount of time he was on trial again, and in a tiny nugget of instant karma, a slave whacked his leg off with an axe. The slaves rioted and burned down his mill. He died years later and was buried alongside his wife.

After the slave house was opened up for tours in 1926, it soon became the infamous home to sightings of apparitions and the sounds of moaning and chains rattling. One turn of the century paranormalist named Hickman Whittington spent the night there and died the next day from a sudden unexplained illness. Others, including some Vietnam vets who thought they had the gonads to stay all night, tried and failed in the quest to stay all night in the "haunted" attic. Finally, in the 1970's a local TV station put a TV personality up for the night in the slave quarters, part of a Halloween publicity stunt. He succeeded, a sort of prequel to the Geraldo Rivera's opening of the Capone Vaults (another Illinois media event) in that the spirits were apparently camera shy and they ended up with a pretty boring show. The longtime owners and caretakers closed off the house to overnight guests after a knocked over lantern nearly burned the old wooden building down. It was finally closed to the public in 1996 when the owners retired.

One-legged and sour, Kidnapper John Hart Crenshaw sits with his super-hot old lady and his crutch

A number of John Hart Crenshaw's descendents deny any wrongdoing on the part of their long-dead relative, accusing historians and folklorists alike of a "cruel conspiracy" to "besmirch" their "good" name, citing a paucity of hard proof pointing to Crenshaw's illicit activity. On one internet post regarding the house, former owner George Sisk was accused by an anonymous ranter of "making the whole thing up" and adding the whipping posts and shackles as props to try and add a horror element to attract tourists. This is an unlikely scenario.

The Old Slave House is located near the junction of Highway 45 and Highway 13 in Southern Illinois. It is 14 miles east of Harrisburg. If you're heading east on 13, when you get to the junction of Route 1, you turn right onto Route 1 and head south for a little over a mile and it will be on your right, up on a small hill.
Update: The State of Illinois has purchased the mansion with plans to open it as a state historic site, and appropriated $150,000 for it's renovation in 2006 4. However as of Feb 2010, spending cuts and ongoing state financial woes have kept it from opening as of yet.

American Heroes and Madmen #10: Russell Burrows

*this article and more are from my freshly updated Illinois oddities page

In 1982 retired Army Ranger and prison guard Russell Burrows claimed to have, while hunting along the Little Wabash River, stumbled upon a cave that held priceless artifacts from ancient man, including large amounts of gold and burial chambers akin to the Egyptian Pharaohs. Any artifacts that were shown to the scientific community were initially dismissed as "obvious fakes", and the text on the inscribed tablets were said by experts to be a gibberish combination of various dead languages. Burrows' story itself is fishy on many levels. He claims after being humiliated and badgered by critics he grew weary of the hubbub and simply dynamited the entrance to the cave in 1989.

Ten years later Ancient American Magazine founder Wayne May says that he convinced Burrows to show him his cave, and claims that Burrows in fact led him to a cave entrance that had been dynamited. In attempts to circumvent the damage and go inside, May said the cave had since flooded and filled with debris to the point of uselessness while afoot. Soooooo, May raised money and collected various experts to open the cave. This took 3 1/2 years, and when he returned to do so, he was told by Burrows:   1. that this was not the original cave, that the REAL cave was 40 miles away (take that, dirty scientist!!)    2. Burrows didn't even own the land on which this (equally nifty American Indian artifact filled) cave is   3. This new cave was to be referred to as "Tombs of the Embarras" (insert laugh track here), not "Burrows' Cave"   4. that Burrows' Cave (not the Tomb of the Embarrassed, er Embarras) is in the process of being excavated by a super-smart, super-secret team of  archaeologists who wish to remain anonymous. Mmmm - K.

Amazingly, May found evidence to support the original descriptions/maps of Burrows' Cave with ground penetrating radar. Read about it here. There is little to be found online on what the findings were on subsequent expeditions by May. Whatever was found since was apparently not Earth-shattering.

Theories surrounding possible explanations of a real burial chamber as described by Burrows are mind-bending and too numerous to list without devoting weeks of research. That's what google is for, my friend. Go for it. Lets just say there are folks who are really, REEAALLY into this story (either backing up Burrow or lustfully discrediting him), including the Mormons.

Burrows' cave is still causing controversy: in 2009 a History Channel program entitled The Holy Grail In America featured the story and artifacts.  Burrows has been described as having a penchant for wearing military uniforms of various eras as his everyday clothing. He sounds like a total fucking hoot, regardless of what the archaeology scholars think. I want to have him come into my bar so I can pour him a drink and listen to his bullshit for hours.

You can buy his autographed book for $23 here:  Russ Burrows, 117 Chestnut Street, Windsor, Colorado 80550.