THIS IS THE PLACE FOR DISCOVERIES AND DISCUSSIONS OF THE MOST INVENTIVE ART FORMS – ALL KINDS OF ART THAT IS FAR-OUT, FANTASTIC, FREE-SPIRITED, FUN, FUNKY, PHENOMENAL AND GOOD FOR THE SOUL. (MAMA CALLED IT SUI GENERIS)
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FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE (1844-1900), THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHER WHO TOOK DEEP DIVES INTO THE INNERMOST CHAMBERS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT, REFERRED TO AUTUMN AS “THE SEASON OF THE SOUL.” WE’LL TAKE IT FOR ITS VIBRANT COLORS AND ITS REMINDERS OF NATURE’S ETERNAL CYCLE OF DECLINE AND REJUVENATION. WE’RE HOOKED ON THE GLOW OF AUTUMN LIGHT, AND LIKE THE SKY-WATCHING ARTIST KEN GRIMES (SEE ARTICLE, BELOW), WE’RE TAKING TIME TO LOOK TO THE STARS. (PHOTO BY BILL WESTMORELAND)

Editor’s Letter
What the heck is brutjournal?
by Edward M. Gómez
Outer Space
A new exhibition and a new book focus on the work of the artist Ken Grimes, who has long been fascinated by the possibility of aliens communicating with Earth.
Hiroshima, Japan
Nobumasa Kushino, a leading researcher and promoter of contemporary Japanese art brut, introduces the exquisite drawings of Gataro, a shopping-center janitor who is a self-taught draftsman.
Florida
The Bosnian-born artist Amer Kobaslija is a contemporary history painter who lately has turned his keen observer’s eye on the tropical madhouse that has become his adopted home.
CONFUSION & DELUSION IN PROFUSION. CONCLUSION?
brutjournal’s editor in chief, Edward M. Gómez, found himself in a funk — who isn’t feeling the weight of a world gone seriously loco? — and then in Steven Hirsch’s studio, where the artist’s recent paintings, with their acid-bold colors and gut-punch gusto, sent his spirit soaring. “Something about Steven’s art really captures the daunting Zeitgeist in a satisfying, whacky way,” Gómez says. An art-filled thought piece for this autumn of our discontent. Free-access article.
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JOHN WATERS: TAKING OUT THE TRASH
Sarah Fensom, brutjournal’s USA West Coast bureau chief, takes in an L.A. exhibition examining the career of John Waters, cinema’s king of bad taste, which “traces his beginnings as a plucky outsider in 1960s-70s Baltimore, who borrowed money from his parents to make films with his misfit friends,” to his period of Hollywood hits produced with big-name stars.
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KEN GRIMES AND THE STARS: WHO’S OUT THERE?
Based on his own in-depth research about the possibility that extraterrestrial life forms might have tried to communicate with Earth, the artist Ken Grimes has made powerful paintings using a stark palette of black and white. See our report about a new book focusing on Grimes’s work and his new exhibition at Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York.
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FRANCES SMOKOWSKI: BIG-TIME BIOMORPHIC
Frances Smokowski has brought an intense sense of focus and an explorer’s spirit to each phase of her multifaceted career, which has included study and work in the art-therapy field and the making of richly detailed, figurative paintings. Here, we check in on one of the artist’s other passions — her sensuous, biomorphic, abstract drawings. Coming soon.
THE ROMANCE OF RUBBISH: THE ART OF GATARO
The self-taught artit who goes by the name “Gataro” works as a janitor in a shopping center in Hiroshima, in southwestern Japan. For years, he has made vivid drawings of dust balls, brooms, and his immediate surroundings using only found materials. Nobumasa Kushino, a leading researcher and promoter of Japanese art brut, introduces Gataro’s art. Coming soon.
PUBLIC ART BY DARRYL WESTLY: FIRST-CLASS GLASS
Born in Chicago and trained at Cooper Union in New York, the artist Darryl Westly is known as a painter, but his newest work, featuring painted glass, is a public-art project that was recently unveiled at the Long Island Railroad line’s Westbury Station. Here, Westly tells us about his experience working with an all-new set of materials. Coming soon.