(photo courtesy of James Taylor and Shocked and Amazed!)
James Taylor is an American writer and publisher. He co-founded Dolphin-Moon Press in 1973, one of Baltimore's oldest small press publishing houses.
James Taylor is an American writer and publisher. He co-founded Dolphin-Moon Press in 1973, one of Baltimore's oldest small press publishing houses.
Taylor is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Taylor was literary chairman to the Baltimore mayor's advisory committee on art and culture and was a member of the Maryland governor's panel choosing the state's poet laureate.
In 1999, he co-founded, with Dick Horne, the American Dime Museum in Baltimore, a museum that was part Victorian recreation and part homage to circus, carnival and dime museum culture. Taylor dissolved his partnership with Horne in 2003 and began work on re-establishing his own museum attractions in Washington, D.C., inside of the Palace of Wonders, which opened in 2006.
Taylor has served as historical consultant to television productions in his capacity as variety arts historian.
He has three books of poetry and fiction to date: Tigerwolves, Tricks of Vision, and Artifacture (featuring illustrations by half a dozen artists). His Shocked and Amazed! - On & Off the Midway, published through Dolphin-Moon since 1995, is the world's only journal devoted to novelty and variety exhibition and life in the sideshow; in 2002, Lyons/Globe Pequot Press published a “Best Of” Shocked and Amazed!
He has worked for the state government of Maryland since 1975.[ citation needed ]
For 25 years, beginning in 1984, he was an associate professor of English at the Dundalk, Maryland, campus of the Community College of Baltimore County.
In North America, a sideshow is an extra, secondary production associated with a circus, carnival, fair, or other such attraction.
Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. An immortalized cell line reproduces indefinitely under specific conditions, and the HeLa cell line continues to be a source of invaluable medical data to the present day.
John Samuel Waters Jr. is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). He wrote and directed the comedy film Hairspray (1988), which became an international success and was later adapted into a hit Broadway musical and a 2007 musical film. He has written and directed other films, including Polyester (1981), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), and Cecil B. Demented (2000). His films contain elements of post-modern comedy and surrealism. Waters often worked with actor and drag queen Divine and his regular cast of the Dreamlanders.
Joseph Erlanger was an American physiologist who is best known for his contributions to the field of neuroscience. Together with Herbert Spencer Gasser, he identified several varieties of nerve fiber and established the relationship between action potential velocity and fiber diameter. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for these achievements.
The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a private art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, it was regarded as one of the oldest art colleges in the United States.
A midway at a fair is the location where carnival games, amusement rides, entertainment, dime stores, themed events, exhibitions and trade shows, pleasure gardens, water parks and food booths cluster. The midway is located between the entrance and the big top of a circus; thus, a carnival is essentially a travelling midway.
Hans K. Schuler was a German-born American sculptor and monument maker. He was the first American sculptor ever to win the Salon Gold Medal. His works are in several important museum collections, and he also created many public monuments, mostly for locations in Baltimore, Maryland and in the Washington, D.C. area. For over a quarter of a century he served as president of the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Fred G. Johnson was a prolific sideshow banner artist whose career spanned 65 years. His banner paintings were displayed at the Chicago World's Fair of 1933, called A Century of Progress, and by circuses such as Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey, and Clyde Beatty. He has been called the "Picasso" of circus art.
Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949), collectively known as the Cone sisters, were active as American art collectors, world travelers, and socialites during the first part of the 20th century. Claribel trained as a physician and Etta as a pianist. Their social circle included Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. They gathered one of the best known private collections of modern art in the United States at their Baltimore apartments, and the collection now makes up a wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Their collection was estimated to be worth almost a billion US dollars in 2002.
The city of Baltimore, Maryland, has been a predominantly working-class town through much of its history with several surrounding affluent suburbs and, being found in a Mid-Atlantic state but south of the Mason-Dixon line, can lay claim to a blend of Northern and Southern American traditions.
Fred Wilson is an American artist and describes himself as of "African, Native American, European and Amerindian" descent. He received a BFA from Purchase College, State University of New York. Wilson challenges colonial assumptions on history, culture, and race – encouraging viewers to consider the social and historical narratives that represent the western canon. Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 1999 and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2003. Wilson represented the United States at the Biennial Cairo in 1992 and the Venice Biennale in 2003. In May 2008, it was announced that Wilson would become a Whitney Museum trustee replacing Chuck Close.
John Robert Fox was an American professional sword swallower and sleight of hand expert.
Howard Street is a major north–south street through the central part of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. About 2+1⁄2 miles (4 km) long, the street begins at the north end of I-395 near Oriole Park at Camden Yards and ends near Johns Hopkins University, where it splits. To the right, it becomes Art Museum Drive, the one-block home of the Baltimore Museum of Art. To the left, it becomes San Martin Drive, which winds road along the western perimeter of the Johns Hopkins University campus and ends at University Parkway. Howard Street is named in honor of former Maryland governor John Eager Howard. Two other streets in Baltimore, John and Eager Streets, are also named after him.
The American Dime Museum (ADM) was co-founded in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, by artist and antique dealer Richard Horne and James Taylor, writer and publisher of the sideshow journal Shocked and Amazed! Opening November 1, 1999, the museum recreated, in spirit, the dime museums which saw their heyday in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. The museum closed officially in late 2006, but a revived incarnation, Pexcho's American Dime Museum, is open in Augusta, Georgia.
A freak show is an exhibition of biological rarities, referred to in popular culture as "freaks of nature". Typical features would be physically unusual humans, such as those uncommonly large or small, those with intersex variations, those with extraordinary diseases and conditions, and others with performances expected to be shocking to viewers. Heavily tattooed or pierced people have sometimes been seen in freak shows, as have attention-getting physical performers such as fire-eating and sword-swallowing acts.
In 1995, the opening year of its publication, James Taylor's Shocked and Amazed! On & Off the Midway became the first journal to chronicle the history of sideshows, novelty and variety exhibition or “the show business” as it was called in the heyday of the dime museums. Focusing on circus and carnival sideshows and 19th Century dime museum entertainment, the journal also follows the history and characters of vaudeville and burlesque, wax museums and world's fairs, carnivals, circus spectacles, roadside attractions and everything in between. The journal features interviews with the business’ “golden age” performers as well as modern talent and has included original works by the likes of Teller (magician), John Strausbaugh and Frank DeFord and unique reprinted material available previously to only a few show business historians.
Dai Andrews, is an American performance and visual artist, motivational speaker, director, producer, martial artist, and multiple Guinness World Record holder. He is also the proprietor of Dream Machine Arts and Unforgettable Entertainment, both entertainment agencies based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
William Rush Dunton Jr was a founder and early president of the American Occupational Therapy Association. He is also recognized for his collection of, and scholarship about, American quilts.
David Brewster is an American painter active in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States.
Tattooed ladies were working class women who acquired tattoos and performed in circuses, sideshows, and dime show museums as means for earning a substantial living. At the height of their popularity during the turn of the 20th century, tattooed ladies transgressed Victorian gender norms by showcasing their bodies in scantily clad clothing and earned a salary considerably larger than their male counterparts. Tattooed ladies often used captivity narratives as a means for excusing their appearance, and to tantalize the audience. The popularity of tattooed ladies waned with the onset of television.