The Lost Drawings Of An Artist Who Spent His Life In A Lunatic Asylum

(via Fast Co. Design)  James Edward Deeds Jr. was destined to be a completely unknown artist.Declared insane in 1936 at the age of 28, Deeds spent his life in a Missouri mental hospital known as State Lunatic Asylum No. 3, where he drew prolifically. When he died, his art ended up in a family member’s attic, forgotten. Eventually, movers threw it out with the garbage in the 1970s. A neighborhood kid noticed a book of drawings and pulled it out of the trash. He secreted the book away for 40 years until he decided to sell the drawings—setting in motion a years-long process of identifying the artist with the help of a private investigator.