Blackstock's Collections : The Drawings of an Artistic Savant

New York: Princeton Architectural Pres, 2006. First edition, first printing (full number line). Paperback. Near fine with faint edge-wear. Please refer to photos. A very nice copy.. Tall narrow quarto in black, orange and beige illus folding thick paper wraps; 142 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm. A paperback original. "Modern life is an ever-accelerating barrage of people, buildings, vehicles, creatures, and things. How much can a curious mind take in? And what can it do with all the data? Gregory L. Blackstock, a retired Seattle pot washer, draws order out of all the chaos with a pencil, a black marker, and some crayons." "Blackstock is autistic and an artistic savant. He creates visual lists of everything from wasps to hats to emergency vehicles to noisemakers. In the spirit of the Outsider Art of Henry Darger and Howard Finster, Blackstock makes art that is stirring in its profusion and detail and inspiring in its simple beauty. He has never received formal artistic training, yet his renderings clearly show subtle differences and similarities - enabling the viewer to see, for example, the distinctive features of a dolly varden, a Pacific Coast steelhead cutthroat, and fourteen other types of trout." "Each collection is captioned in Blackstock's unique hand with texts that reflect facts from his research as well as his passions and preferences. Blackstock's Collections contains over a hundred examples of his original taxonomy, offering a unique look inside the mind of a man making sense of life through art."--Jacket. / Contents: Our famous birds -- Fish & the like -- The dogs -- Insects & arachnids -- The plants -- The tools -- The noisemakers -- The vehicles -- Aviation collection -- Boating & seamanship -- Architectural collection -- The things to wear -- The last but not least. Table of Autistic artists -- Washington (State) -- Seattle -- Catalogs.  Savants (Savant syndrome) -- Washington (State) -- Seattle.  Idiots-savants -- Washington (État) -- Seattle.  Autistic artists.  Savants (Savant syndrome)  Zeichnung  Autismus  Autistes -- Et l'art -- Seattle.