American art historian
Maria Reidelbach
is a
local food
activist who engages in social practice, interdisciplinary art and writing. Her current work is focused on food and agriculture in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Current projects include
Stick to Local Farms
,
[1]
an interactive map featuring local farms,
The Yardavore
,
[2]
a column about eating locally foraged and cultivated food, and the
Stick to Local Farms Cookbook: Hudson Valley
.
[3]
Practice
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Since 2003, Reidelbach has focused on interactive art and writing that engages the public. Past projects include
Goofy Garden Golf
,
Homegrown Mini-Golf
, the world's largest garden gnome and
Valley of the Giants
,
[4]
a community plan.
As an artist, she cultivates an "interaction of art and life," bringing people together in
public art
projects, sometimes involving found objects and donations of materials, along with recycled items collected by
dumpster diving
through lower Manhattan.
Stick to Local Farms
comprises an annual map to over two dozen farms in the Rondout Valley for which Reidelbach has created art stickers; participants tour the farms and collect the stickers, having adventures and earning awards.
Previous work
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Reidelbach assisted sculptor Milo Mottola to create the Totally Kid Carousel, an award-winning public artwork and amusement ride at
Riverbank State Park
(at
145th Street
and
Riverside Drive
), facing the
Hudson River
. Displaying a menagerie of full-scale carousel figures designed in collaboration with neighborhood children, the carousel received the 1996 Award for Excellence in Design from the Art Commission of the City of New York.
In 1991, Reidelbach wrote the definitive history of
Mad
, the bestselling
Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine
(Little, Brown), ranked by
Library Journal
as "essential for pop culture collections."
In 1985, at New York's
Guggenheim Museum
, she organized an exhibition on the eccentric visionary painter Alfred Jensen. Garnering favorable reviews, her art exhibitions and gallery shows have often displayed unusual subjects (art revealing the subjectivity of science, editorial cartoons, architect-designed furniture, Victorian underwear).
Miniature golf
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Fascinated with mom-and-pop culture, Reidelbach co-authored
Miniature Golf
[5]
(Abbeville Press, 1987), the only book ever bound in artificial turf, and in 2004, she teamed with the artist
Ken Brown
to create Goofy Garden Golf, a decorative miniature golf course at Pier 2 (west of North Moore Street) in Manhattan's
Hudson River Park
. Goofy Garden Golf was planned as a tribute to Frieda Carter, who designed the first
miniature golf
course at
Lookout Mountain
,
Tennessee
, in 1928.
Her 2006 project, Homegrown Mini-Golf, was landscaped entirely in edible plant, annotated with information about their biology, history and edibility. As a "roadside lure", she created
Chomsky
, the world's tallest
garden gnome
(13 feet and six inches high), as acknowledged by
Guinness World Records
. The project was designed to celebrate local agriculture, and is sited on Kelder's Farm, a 200 year old fruit and vegetable farm. The popular giant gnome and roadside attraction has become a permanent part of the family's thriving agritourist business.
[6]
Completely Mad
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Her bestselling
Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine
(Little, Brown) was a 1991 selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club. For that comprehensive study, she interviewed many cartoonists, and
Bill Gaines
, publisher of
Mad
and
EC Comics
, gave her total access to his magazine's internal correspondence and filing cabinets. Speaking at the memorial service for Gaines in the
Time Warner
building on June 5, 1992, she described her research:
- I knew Bill for only four years, but in that time I came to know him well. When I began to write the history of
Mad
, I had every intention of maintaining a professional distance, but I hadn't counted on the steamroller that was Bill's personality. When my mother became ill soon after I'd begun to work and I had to return to my hometown to care for her, Bill called regularly to see how she was and to see how I was. And his calls lifted the spirits of everyone in the house. My reserve developed a crack. Then I was invited to join the
Mad
trip, this one to Germany and
Switzerland
. A research goldmine for me; all the
Mad
men would be in one place. They would be a captive audience. During the trip Bill mostly stayed in his room, sitting in his underwear reading mystery novels. It was pretty hard to be professional while chatting with the hulking half-clad man boisterously laughing.
[7]
Publishers Weekly
reviewed:
- Although basically celebratory and uncritical, art historian Reidelbach's detailed history of
Mad
mentions recent criticisms of sexist and homophobic material in the magazine as well as
Mad'
s (and the comics industry's) contested policies on the ownership of commissioned artwork. Most amusing are descriptions of Gaines ? who continues to run the profitable magazine as a 'benevolent dictatorship' ? and his idiosyncratic management theories.
See also
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References
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Sources
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External links
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- "The Usual Gang of Idiots"
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People
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