We have been fortunate to be able to grow our collection of works by outsider artists over the past year. We feel particularly lucky two have acquired two pieces from the magnificent outsider artist, Carl Richard “Dingbat” Smith.
“Bat,” as his friends (one of whom is PFF artist, Thaddeus Mosley) called him, lived and worked in Pittsburgh, PA. Little is known about him today, though his intricate relief work using only nails of different sizes and colors to create fluid, improvised (!) compositions deserves much wider recognition.
Bat passed away in the late 1980s, but to his friends, “Bat was never born and never died. Bat is.”
Our friend, consultant, and fellow collector, Lewis Tanner Moore, kindly shared a brief write up by Audra Mellix about Bat, which you can read here.
