Jo Farb Hernández, Director Emerita of SPACES and the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at San José State University, is an internationally-recognised scholar in this field, and an award-winning author, curator, and photographer. Her work has illuminated — and preserved via documentation — the creative lives of individuals who, working outside of the commercial spheres, may have otherwise gone unnoticed, and bodies of work that often cease to exist after the artist is no longer alive to care for it. In a field wherein each artist’s work is ongoing, organic, and accumulative but also impacted by real world elements, this kind of long-term study is critical — and too rarely done. Hernández has been dedicated to the field of self-taught artists and vernacular art environment builders for five decades and is one of very few scholars to dedicate their careers to this under-recognised community of makers. She was among the early pioneers in the United States, and has become a singular force in her work on the self-taught artists of Spain. In conjunction with her first volume on this subject (Singular Spaces. From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments, Raw Vision 2013), Singular Spaces II provides an encyclopaedic treatment of the field.
"""It is an extraordinary achievement to follow up that first book with two more on the same large scale featuring another largely unknown 99 visionary environments around the Spanish mainland and islands."" - Raw Vision ""Snapshots presents Jo Farb Hernández on 'Singular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments'."" - Fulbrighter ""Personal and Professional: Jo Farb Hernández’s Singular Spaces II, From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments. Jo Farb Hernández is an emerita faculty member (Art and Art History) from San José State University - read her interview in the newsletter."" - CSU-ERFSA ""...in the latest volume of 'Singular Spaces', a huge inventory that catalogs 144 environments and authors with a common denominator: the taste for artistic expressions that travel on the periphery of classical patterns…"" [Google translate from Spanish] - La Rioja ""Jo Farb Hernández, a Californian art historian and curator, has spent 23 years trying to get recognition for a group of self-taught builders. Call them “outsider architects.”"" - The New York Times ""An exhaustive and innovative study of artistic environments created by self-taught artists from all over Spain, documented by San José State University academic Jo Farb Hernández, director emeritus of the world's most important archive on these monumental places."" - Nova Ciencia ""‘Singular Spaces II’: a talk with Jo Farb Hernández."" - Hyper Media Magazine"