When he purchased his contemporary Memphis home, collector John Jerit wasn’t sure it would suit his outsider art collection, but over the years it has proved to be the perfect pairing.
I could begin by saying John Jerit lives in the most unassuming house in downtown Memphis, overlooking the Mississippi River, but that would be wrong, very wrong. With three-story-tall patchwork stone walls, glass walkways, an abundance of little nooks and crannies, arts and crafts furniture from his early collecting days (including two Gustav Stickley rockers), and lots of art, including Elvis-themed art, of course, the house is far from unassuming.
Funky is a word that springs to mind. It perfectly suits Jerit’s larger-than-life personality, one that is at once captivating and charming. Unsure at first if this modern house would suit his eclectic collection, he recently said, “it turned out infinitely better than I expected and much better than the minimalist aesthetic I was faced with. Now it’s stacked and stacked, like the fluffiest bunch of pancakes.” Jerit jokingly calls himself a “folk-a-holic,” and it’s clear to see why—he just cannot stop searching for that next piece. His mission is to build a museum-quality collection of what he dubs “FOSA” (Folk, Outsider, Self-Taught, Art brut) art, but wanting it all to reside together harmoniously.
This includes big-name FOSA artists hanging alongside intriguing anonymous artworks within the more than one thousand pieces displayed across his home and office. Without art training and without consideration for the audience, the self-taught artists represented produced some of the most raw, untamed, fascinating works you
will ever encounter.
A psychology graduate of Louisiana State University, Jerit has always also had a passion for business. On leaving college, he worked for a fireworks company, was a partner in three restaurants in Memphis, and in 1990 set up American Paper Optics—the world’s leading manufacturer of 3-D and solar-eclipse glasses.
To date his company has sold more than three billion pairs, for everything from eclipses to holiday glasses, movie glasses to those that animate firework displays further. In his younger years, Jerit grew up around antiques, often attending local Chicago flea markets with his parents. He still has the first antique his father bought him for $3 at a flea market: a 1930s Kistler’s Radar Sandwiches stainless steel bun toaster. Walking around the house, you see other mini collections amassed across the years, including small tin toys, some with moveable parts, such as a wind-up dancer in a hula skirt, an alligator that chases and traps its prey, and a rabbit playing an accordion. Jerit says the toys are an essential part of his collection, quite simply because they make him smile and revive fond memories.
Gems like these and his tramp art collection (chip-carved decor often made from discarded cigar boxes and shipping crates) allow you to see a side of Jerit that is deeply rooted in family. His dad also gave him his first piece of tramp art, and to this day, he endeavors to add one exceptional tramp art work a year to his holdings. He’s really drawn to their simple yet meticulous craftsmanship: “You know that the person who made it put their heart, soul, and time into it. I never tire of looking at it.”
Jerit spotted his first purchases by a self-taught artist—Hungarian-born artist Ladis W. Sabo—at a local Memphis show in 2000. Intrigued by this retired tailor who painted from memory, depicting men in exquisitely colored suits, Jerit snapped up just two paintings due to their high price tag. But soon regretting not getting more, he tracked down the New York dealer and bought the other nineteen.
Other works acquired early on include seventy pieces out of the seven hundred from the collection of Herbert Waide Hemphill Jr. (1929–1998)—an influential American curator and collector of self-taught art—offered at the 2001 Slotin Folk Art Auction in Buford, Georgia. His stepmother had sent him the catalogue, telling him to “just give it a look,” but that was enough: he hopped on a plane and headed to Buford. The sale and the anticipation of its live events are what really started Jerit’s addiction. He attended Slotin auctions, with their infamous “BBQs and booze,” for more than twenty years (since the pandemic, it now operates online only).
Having collected “this art” for more than two decades, Jerit has finally finessed his taste, realized what in his opinion makes for A+ quality, and set himself a goal of collecting key works in two important books in this field, which he considers his bibles: the 1989 Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue Black Folk Art in America: 1930–1980 by Jane Livingston and John Beardsley and the Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists by Chuck and Jan Rosenak. But, as he says, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and not everyone will agree with his choices. He reads about works, dreams about them, and, when they become available, he is on the hunt. He now classes himself a “slow buyer,” wanting only gems—unless his ego takes over during a sale, when he and his competitive collector friends outbid one another until one must be the gracious “loser.”
That said, trading is big in the world of self-taught collectors—many have acquired important pieces they thought impossible because of their high prices. Jerit and good collector friend Josh Feldstein, whom he met early on, are forever trading; it’s not uncommon for them to trade pieces back again when they are missed four or five years later. It sometimes seems to me that the collectors in this field are often one big happy family that travels across the world to convene at the Outsider Art Fair in New York every March. “We know each other,” Jerit says, “we help each other, we approve and disapprove, we whine and complain, and we welcome new young people who we want to educate and teach.”
For Jerit, one of the jewels in his collection is a large (around 4 by 5 feet) wooden diptych by Elijah Pierce entitled Bible Stories. While likely impossible due to its weight, he insists he could rescue it from his house if it were burning down. Pierce was a barber and self-taught carver in Columbus, Ohio, who was visited by numerous collectors in his intimate barber shop over the years. Rather than the individual small works we often see by Pierce, this one comprises nineteen different scenes, including a self-portrait with his mother, mostly placed on rippled mint-green wallpaper and pieced together across two wooden panels.
Jerit first saw Bible Stories in a book about Pierce; it took him five years and much digging to finally acquire it through Keny Galleries in Columbus. Another premier work in the collection is the double-sided The Storm is About to Begin by Henry Darger (1892–1973). Featuring the Vivian Girls, the iconic child heroines of many of Darger’s works, it is not as disturbing as other Darger images, and the colors have held well and not faded. Darger was a janitor who created works behind closed doors in his Chicago apartment, including a 15,145-page manuscript book about the Vivian Girls titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, now held in the archives of the American Folk Art Museum in New York.
A huge drawing by Martín Ramírez (1895–1963), who spent the last fifteen years of his life in a mental hospital, hangs floor to ceiling on the tallest inside wall of the house. Jerit wanted it because it features all the motifs Ramírez is known for: a horse and rider (caballero), a stag, a tunnel, and so on. Other favorites include early pieces by Howard Finster, each one numbered by the artist; large carved wooden animals by Felipe Archuleta that greet you on entering the house; a whole “Traylor park” of pieces by Bill Traylor; and three early 1970s works of Goodbread Alley by Purvis Young (1943–2010).
There are also limestone sculptures by William Edmonson, who was given a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1937, as rare then as now for a self-taught artist.
Few of the works in the collection are by living artists, but they include a wood-fired ceramic creature by Japanese artist Shinichi Sawada (1982–), and a piece by American artist George Widener (1962–), whose brain calculates complex mathematical sequences and number puzzles that he often inscribes on old napkins stuck together.
Jerit continues to add to and refine his collection, his eyes always drawn by these artists’ “unbridled passion to create. When I look at this art, I feel like I am looking at the soul of the artist transferred onto paper, canvas, or wood in a fashion that is so personal that it speaks to me.” His commitment to the field has recently grown outside his collection, with a generous donation to Chicago’s Intuit Art Museum, newly reopened after a two-year renovation and expansion into what is now known as the John Jerit Center.
Alongside his desire for his own museum in the future, Jerit continues to research artists and update his website (thefolkaholic.com) with an eventual book in mind—keeping one eye on auctions, fairs, and exhibitions and the other, with his company, focusing on the upcoming 2026 and 2027 European total solar eclipses. Jerit’s collection is one that inspires, not only through the world-class objects he has amassed, but also through his stories about the works—and how he perceives everything sitting together in complete harmony . . . the $3 next to the $300, next to the $300,000.
JENNIFER LAUREN GILBERT is a UK-based gallerist and curator whose Jennifer Lauren Gallery champions and advocates for disabled, neurodivergent, and self-taught artists around the world ( jenniferlaurengallery.com).
