{"person":[{"sourceId":{"label":"Source ID","value":"645"},"lastName":{"label":"Last Name","value":"Yoakum"},"endDate":{"label":"Death Date","value":"1972"},"displayName":{"label":"Name","value":"Joseph E. Yoakum"},"objects":{"label":"Objects","value":[{"objectTitle":"Mt. Swan of Darling Mtn. Range Near Perth of Western Australia","objectNumber":"2025.7.1","objectID":"9266"},{"objectTitle":"Mt. Trinity of Clear Water","objectNumber":"1998.10.66","objectID":"2573"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled (Inscribed \u201cMt Demavend 18934 ft. near Mashad Iran\u201d)","objectNumber":"1998.10.65","objectID":"2572"},{"objectTitle":"Mt. Magazine Point in State near Town of Havana Arkansas","objectNumber":"1998.10.73","objectID":"2580"},{"objectTitle":"German Submarine in world war-2./Found near Tunis of Junisia Proviance of Africa","objectNumber":"2004.5.2","objectID":"3215"},{"objectTitle":"English Chanal from Southampton England to La Haurev or Havre France","objectNumber":"2025.14.37","objectID":"9276"}]},"geographyDied":{"label":"Died","value":["Ash Grove","Rock Island","Chicago"]},"biography":{"label":"Biography","value":"Joseph E. Yoakum\u2019s landscapes move fluidly between reality, imagination, and memory. He claimed to have based his undulating mountains, serpentine rivers, and raindrop-shaped trees on places he had seen in his nomadic life, yet they frequently appear like no place on Earth. Using ballpoint pen, pastel, colored pencils, and watercolor, he created a nuanced palette for these stylized pieces with rippling terrains that recall topographical maps. He was especially captivated by the curves of mountains, from Mount Magazine in Arkansas to Mount Damavand in Iran, and sometimes used carbon paper to make several versions of the same scenery. He also used traced magazine advertisements for portraits, often of celebrities, which, like his landscapes, he neatly titled and signed.Joseph Elmer Yoakum\u2019s life story is not easy to unravel. Multiple records list his birth year as 1890; others as 1891. Likewise, his place of birth shifts across narratives, as he claimed both African American and Indigenous heritage; probably born in Ash Grove, Missouri, where his parents lived around that time, he would say that he had been born on Navajo land in Arizona. As he told it, his wandering began when he ran away to join the circus, traveling the United States and Europe with various troupes. He returned to Ash Grove in 1908, got married, and started a family, later working in a Kansas coal mine. He was drafted into the army during World War I; after his service, he hit the road again, spending years roaming with circuses, as a laborer, and at sea. He eventually settled in Chicago. There, when he was in his early seventies, he started producing art in earnest, using a lifetime of seeing the world to inspire his work. His earliest pieces were small scale; over time, he expanded to larger and more colorful drawings.Most of Yoakum\u2019s known work was completed in the decade before he died in 1972, in Chicago\u2019s South Side. The display of some of his drawings in his window led to a small presentation of his art in a local cafe in 1967. It was covered by the <em>Chicago Daily News<\/em>, and he explained in the article that his artistic process was \u201ca spiritual unfoldment,\u201d borrowing the fitting phrase from Christian Science for his work on accessing memory and experience.Allison C. Meier, 2025Text written as part of \u201cRethinking Biography,\u201d an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)."},"geographyActive":{"label":"Active","value":["Ash Grove","Rock Island","Chicago"]},"geographyBorn":{"label":"Born","value":["Ash Grove","Rock Island","Chicago"]},"beginDate":{"label":"Birth Date","value":"1891"},"firstName":{"label":"First Name","value":"Joseph"},"primaryMedia":{"value":"https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/2802/full"},"names":{"label":"Names","value":["Joseph E. Yoakum","Joseph Elmer Yoakum"]},"displayDate":{"label":"Date","value":"(1891\u20131972)"},"altNums":{"label":"Alternative Numbers","value":["500001772","n88155074"]},"id":{"label":"Id","value":"150965"}}]}