Join us and writer Richard Goodman, as he gives a lecture on the art of self-taught artist James Edward Deeds. Enjoy live music by Josh Paxton, free art activities, great art, and more!

• 5 – 8pm: Art on the Spot
• 5:30 – 8:30pm: Music by Josh Paxton
• 6:30 pm: Lecture with Richard Goodman: “The Outsider Art of James Edward Deeds”

About Josh Paxton

At the age of five, Joshua Paxton received a little yellow toy piano that he banged on for years, playing along with TV jingles and music on the radio by ear.  At 11 his parents gave into his pleas for piano lessons and bought him his first piano. Though classically trained, by the end of high school he saw his future in jazz. As an undergraduate he attended the University of Miami and Bowling Green University, then went on to study under Ellis Marsalis at the University of New Orleans, earning a master’s degree in Jazz Piano. His diverse musical background ranges from avant-garde jazz to stints with major label rock bands. Currently, he is focusing on his unique approach to New Orleans Rhythm and Blues piano style.

About Richard Goodman

Richard Goodman wrote the introduction to The Electric Pencil: Drawings from Inside State Hospital No. 3, which was published this spring. He is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France, A New York Memoir, The Soul of Creative Writing and The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker’s Journey Through 9/11. He has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Harvard Review and many other publications. He is an assistant professor of creative nonfiction writing at the University of New Orleans.

About James Edward Deeds

James Edward Deeds (1908-1987) spent most of his adult life in a mental hospital—State Hospital No. 3, in western Missouri. Confined inside those walls, his imagination took flight. He drew. He produced a volume of haunting, unique drawings that, were it not for the scavenging eye of a fourteen year-old boy, would never have made their way into the world. This is the story of that journey and of the man who made the drawings who, until his identity was finally discovered, was known, simply, as The Electric Pencil.