It all starts, as many great things do, with a flea market.

Hiding amid a large collection of LPs. 8-tracks and 45s was a crate full of drawings. They depicted imaginary album covers, meticulously drawn by hand, completely realized with titles and track listings, and inside these hand-drawn album covers were imaginary records - drawn on cardboard, grooves and all. The artist had created the whole imaginary package - but why? And when?

The only identifying marks on these artworks were a musician’s never-used-in-public stage name, Mingering Mike, and a general area of origin. They told a complex story of a prolific musician with a diverse recording history - only he didn’t actually exist. Using Batman-like detective skills, and some personal correspondences that happened to be slipped in with the records, the man who found this unusual collection of drawings eventually tracked down the original artist, whose reply was simply, “You found my babies?”

The drawings were returned to Mingering Mike, though the collection remained incomplete, as Mike has recovered only about 25% of what he’d created as a teenager - dreaming of being a soul musician in the late 60s, drawing album covers, and even recording a few acapella performances on a reel-to-reel tape recorder with friends and relatives. Mike had his album covers (as well as a large collection of actual albums) taken from him after a management change at a storage space where he was keeping them, and the whole lot went to auction. Presumably, they were split up after this point, and three quarters of Mike’s collection remains out there, untraceable. So, what I’m saying to you collectors is to keep an eye out - there are probably some original Mingering Mike artworks out there still.

No monetary value has been assigned to these ‘records’, despite Mike’s cult following, because every known Mingering Mike record has been returned to the original artist, whose reaction to their discovery speaks volumes about their personal value. I’d like to think that anyone who discovers a Mingering Mike album and knows what it is would give Mike his record back without seeking personal gain, glad in their own role in the Mingering Mike legacy.

Of course, Mike has chosen to remain largely anonymous, much in the tradition of Leon Redbone, Jandek and The Residents. What we do know is that he’s not interested in allowing his minor stardom to endanger his employment, he values his privacy, and most current images of him put him behind sunglasses or some other disguising element. Contact can be made through Dori Hadar, the discoverer of these artworks, and the author of ‘Mingering Mike : The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar‘, which tells this story in full.

Last month saw the release of Mike’s first full-length album, 40 years after the aspirations began. At the moment, it’s only been released as a download on eMusic (to which I belong, fortunately), and it’s composed entirely of the reel-to-reel recordings that he did back in the 60s, unedited and raw. There’s no instrumentation involved - just tapping and voices, and even with the occasional car horn in the background or bump into the microphone. The ten-minute ode to Coffee Cake, and the exceptionally melodic ‘But All I Can Do Is Cry’ (which he wrote when he was drafted into Vietnam) - it all expresses a completely do-it-yourself attitude towards music and recording, and a natural aptitude for the music that he loved.

Mike completists should note that a hand-numbered 45 with Mike’s artwork and a recording of ‘There’s Nothing Wrong With You Baby’ (which is also included in the eMusic album) has been released and can be found at Mike’s new website for a scant $9.50. The rest of the collection is out there, somewhere, waiting to be discovered.

Around seven years ago, my family gave me the gift of art. Unlike most twenty-somethings, I wanted real art on my walls - something actually produced by the hands of a human, not a print. At the time I owned a variety of works, some genuinely old and valuable, but others of the ’starving artist travelling sale’ genre. The art from my parents was mostly of the latter, but one was a bit different. Unframed, sloppily painted on a piece of Masonite, was a winter scene. The story goes that my great-uncle bought it directly from the artist some years before while travelling, and gifted it to my parents some time later. I’d never seen the painting before, which showed my parent’s take on the painting, but I accepted it and planned on getting it framed. Because it was an odd size, large but poorly proportioned, I risked spending lots at a professional framer, so it was put in storage.

Some years later I was browsing a junk store in Wisconsin, when I found something strikingly familiar: two sloppy unframed paintings on Masonite, quite obviously by the same artist. I wasn’t 100-percent sure, but the price was right, so I took them home with me.

According to the family rule, three of anything constitutes a collection. Not wanting to seem an ignorant collector, I decided to find out something about the painter. Two of the paintings were signed “Pletan,” and thanks to Google I found out where my art came from.

ExpressoTILT! has what appears to be the only article on the internet pertaining to the artist, but thankfully it’s quite complete. Burnette G Pletan was, according to the article, the “Fastest Painter In The World,” producing thousands and thousands of works of art in his lifetime. Here, I managed to own three of them, and given the scale of his portfolio, it’s quite surprising not to find more about him online. Burnette took up painting as a career simply because he knew he could do it. Without official training or artistic background, his works could be called folk or outsider art.

“Outsider Art” is a term generically used to describe untrained artists creating works based on their own creativity, and in earlier times was attributed to art created by the mentally ill. Today, it’s mostly used as a hipster term to describe anything on the fringes of the artistic community by untrained artists, but it still bears the stigma, based on the term ‘outsider’, of being excluded from the genuine art community. It also often crosses the lines of ‘folk art,’ a style generally culturally-driven and created by untrained small-scale artisans. Pletan, for example, could fall into either category: his art depicts rural scenes, much like a lot of folk art, but his expressive, ultra-fast style of painting and unique media puts his work more towards ‘outsider art’.

The biggest advantage to an art collector is the price: outsider art is generally cheap to come by. Challenging Pletan’s claims of high art volume, Steve Keene considers himself America’s most prolific artist, producing hundreds of paintings in a sitting. On his website, for $12, anyone can purchase one of his works (provided they don’t care what the painting’s subject matter is). While Keene is moving towards the center of the art world, leaving the fringes via exhibitions and media exposure, many “street artists” in large cities sell their art for enough to get by. eBay’s outsider art category is full of artistic hopefuls, many of which appear to be painted deliberately outsidery by trained artists, but as with any eBay shopping excursion careful examination will yield a modern treasure.

Because ‘outsider art’ is primarily a description of the artist rather than the style of art, the variety to choose from is quite large. Due to the lack of refined training much does appear ’sloppy’, but much of modern art today, such as Pollack, emphasises the emotion of the work over realism. The lack of training also reduces the use of artistic metaphors, which makes outsider art much more appealing to the general public.

As a collectible, the volume and price of outsider art available allows most anybody to start and maintain a sizeable and varied collection. As with any collections, the cardinal rule applies: collect what you enjoy. Because of its uniqueness, outsider art begs to be displayed, so be sure you’re willing to look at the work on a daily basis. Since outsider art is rarely found in mainstream outlets, much of the fun is in finding it by frequenting ‘art in the park’ sales, flea markets, or street vendors. As with mainstream art, there’s no guarante that any particular artist will become more valuable than the others, but for the price there’s minimal risk in overspending. A Pletan painting recently sold on eBay for just under $100, and an independent seller is asking for over $2,000 for a particularly nice Pletan painting. While Steve Keene’s paintings aren’t particularly rare, the attention his work is geting will no doubt increase the value of his works as time goes on. Consider also Grandma Moses, who, in her seventies, took up painting because arthritis interfered with her needlework, and over time her works because quite valuable, earning her awards and accolades. Beyond these examples are a wide variety of artists,drawing on nothing more than their own imagination to create beautiful and interesting works of art - far more accessible than the works exhibited in galleries, but in my opinion, definitely better than the prints and posters hanging in most homes. Jump into the unknown, and find some outsider art; at the very least, knowing where the painting came from is worth the price.