One Man By Himself

ncredible, sensitive and empathetic portraits of one of American Outsider Art's self made myths, Jon Serl. The narrative reveals the humanity of the sitter as well as his uncompromising personality which leaves us spiritually richer, if uncomfortably aware of our mortality.

One achievement of Sam Messer's portraits is this: That we turn from them, look out our windows, and understand that we're seeing people, some of whom believe they've visited intergalactic electronics factories at the center of the moon, people who wear tinfoil hats to shield their brains from demonic messages, people who eat only raw unshucked corn or worship potatoes that resemble Elvis Presley or make pilgrimages to see tortillias that bear the face of Jesus Christ-and that in seeing them we get willing to understand that somebody like that is who we originally and truly are. Each of us, but overlaid by the lash marks of a conventional education Denis Johnson (from the introduction)