Jo Farb Hernández Will Release New Book on Self-Taught Built Environments This April

Jo Farb Hernández is Director Emerita of the Art Gallery and Professor Emerita in the Department of Art and Art History at San José State University. She is also Director and Chief Curator Emerita of SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments), a nonprofit archives documenting art environments and self-taught arts. Hernández has been a member of the American Folklore Society for over twenty years, and her book Forms of Tradition in Contemporary Spain (University Press of Mississippi and San José State University, 2005) won the Chicago Folklore Prize in 2006.

Hernández’s latest work, Architectural Fantasies: Artist-Built Environments, will be published by Tra Publishing on April 14, 2026, during U.S. Architecture Week. This beautifully photographed and illustrated edition documents over 60 self-taught art environments across more than 30 states, where artists operate idiosyncratically, independent of recognized movements or conventions.

“The sites themselves challenge and expand our social, cultural, and aesthetic norms. They help to open a wider appreciation of the remarkable breadth of human creativity in all its exuberance, and in all its spirited and alternative forms.”

Jo Farb Hernández

Architectural Fantasies offers a counter-narrative to spotlight landmarks created by self-taught builders that generally remain outside the architectural canon. These structures challenge the modern understanding of architecture and are seldom featured in traditional design books. Each one embraces fantasy, improvisation, and personal expression to defy convention and unveil the extraordinary.