The American Visionary Art Museum is made up of seven galleries of original, self-taught artistry, born of intuition and self-styled imagination. The museum features work from the mentally ill, the disabled and the elderly. A variety of art: sculptures carved from roots, embroidered rags, tattoos and toothpicks. Compared to the Baltimore Museum of Art, this museum is much smaller. In the BMA the spacing is larger and contains many more galleries. The Visionary Art Museum is designed with numerous bright colors, pieces that children would enjoy, and even an elegant café on the third floor.
             A piece that caught my eye was a beautiful coat made by Myrllen in 1940. It was made from bedsheets embroidered with thread from rags. In her twenties, Myrllen was brought to a Tennessee hospital for the insane. Her behavior was disruptive and ruinous do to the fact that she had schizophrenia. She spent her time in seclusion. While being in the hospital for over 28 years, Myrllen was only visited once by a distant relative. Sewing needles were not allowed but they gave her one for a therapy experiment. The only available material that she could use was from laundry rags. In less than five years she had completed a coat, scarf and a dress. It was amazing to see such a wonderful coat hand made by one person with only one source of material.
             Mary Louise Proctor was an artist who had an incredible experience which made her start to paint. It was in January of 1994 when her aunt, uncle and grandmother died in a fire in their trailer. Twenty miles away, Mary woke her husband at 1 a.m. and told him that something was terribly wrong, that she had awakened with the vision of fierce light and smoke. In January of 1995, she had fallen into a depression, and decided to go on a 30 day fast. On the 30th day, a light appeared to her, and a voice told her to go to a nearby outbuilding and get a door, a brush and some blue paint. Then...