Albert Mertz (1910-1987), a one-time prize fighter and autoworker, lived with his family in a cinder block house in Lilley Township of Newago County, Michigan. Upon retirement, Mertz spent his days living off the land and creating signs often festooned with greetings, wacky sayings and comments. He used his off-beat creations to decorate his humble home and tempt passing tourists to visit his remote property.
Mertz’s manner and appearance has been affectionately described as resembling that of a leprechaun: engaging, friendly and often mischievous. These traits are also characteristic of the work he hung along the road and stored helter-skelter in his marvelous and highly personal environment. His unique painted constructions covered with backwoods philosophy often took cues from his visitors (“IYAMWHATIYAM”) and the children who begged their parents to be taken home (“IWANNAGOHOME”).
Albert “Kid” Mertz, Photo (c) David Kargl
Mertz’s text stands wholesomely apart from the angry rantings of Jesse Howard, the proselytizing of Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan, and the imaginary language of J.B. Murray. Amazingly, some of his work bears an uncanny resemblance to that of more acclaimed talents, particularly Picasso and Chicago’s own Jim Nutt.
Today his images and signs remain emblematic reminders of a not too distant past, one geographically out of the mainstream and fast disappearing along with much of rural American life. Co-curated by Intuit Board Members Susann Craig and Marjorie Freed, this exhibit is the most comprehensive to date of his body of work.
We know very little of C.T. McClusky’s biography except that he worked as a circus clown and spent some of his off seasons rooming at a boarding house in Oakland, California. It was there that he created a suitcase full of collages, populated with images cut from Life magazines and newspapers, that depicted daily life in a circus setting. Many of McClusky’s collages center around themes of travel, isolation and the circus as an extended family. He worked on shirt cardboard and in addition to photographic illustrations, used foil, crayon, string and cuttings from animal crackers boxes to bring his evocative images to life.
