GUEST: My friend Dane and I were at a vintage shop in Raleigh in August of last year, and looking through some of the artwork there, and as she was thumbing through, I saw this piece. And I am an art teacher, and my colleague had done a lesson on Minnie Evans every year with her students. So I recognized the style right away, it's very distinct. But I thought, surely this can't be a Minnie Evans just sitting here in this bin in this shop. So I thought well, we're going to take a chance that it is. (chuckles) And, uh, we took it up to purchase.
APPRAISER: Let's talk a little bit about Minnie Evans and who she was.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: An African American artist that lived near Wilmington, North Carolina.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: One day, she decided that she should paint these things. She seemed...
GUEST: She sort of had visions, I think she described it.
APPRAISER: Yeah, well, yeah. And there's no doubt that this is one of her works. Anytime an artist starts going up in value, you're going to see fakes.
GUEST: Sure, yeah.
APPRAISER: But I've probably seen, I don't know, 50 of these. And in my mind, it's absolutely right. It is some kind of artist paper that probably was on a pad. She had a very distinctive way of workin’ with crayons and, and also graphite. If you look at the work that's out there, a lot of 'em would have, like, a face in the center, and then
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: some of the larger ones maybe have, like, four more faces.
GUEST: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And then she would fill in with those abstracts of fruit and flowers, and no two are alike. And to me, the cool thing about this is this is an eye dazzler, because when you look at it,
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: you - you see different things every time you look at it.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And to me, that's what good folk art is. Great folk art draws you in from across the room. And this is fairly early. It's signed lower right
there, 1959. She started doing this a long time before that, but her most productive period must have been in the '60s. She lived to the mid-'80s. I've seen bigger ones. I've seen ones not as colorful. (laughs) If you went to a nice gallery, and if this were archivally framed, which might add several hundred dollars to the cost of it, they'd probably ask $8,000 to $10,000 for it.
GUEST: Oh, wow, that is...
APPRAISER: And...
GUEST: ...a good investment. (both laugh) That... I... I... that is surprising to me. I didn't realize it was worth that much.
APPRAISER: What did you pay?
GUEST: $39.
APPRAISER: (laughs) $39. In the last ten or 15 years, her work has at least doubled, and I don't see it going down anytime soon.
