"Some people consider it 'joke art," remarked Morley, adding that folk art, or outsider art, is a "whole other school of art." But, the hefty price tag is no joke.

"Old Man Block" was Solvang's blacksmith, whose interest in painting wasn't sparked until he was 70 years old. It remained his passion for the next 20 years until his death in 1969, just shy of his 90th birthday.

His subjects ranged from patrons of the local pool hall to fictional characters, as he liberally copied photos and paintings from books and magazines, as do many beginning artists.

The subject matter or even the finished product wasn't what was important, for him; the joy was in the process, and he'd often stay up painting till the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps figuring his paintings would eventually be thrown away, he didn't bother with canvases or quality paper. Block painted on cardboard &emdash;often using both sides of the sheets.

Every wall of his small home, nestled in an alley in the middle of Solvang, was filled with his outpouring. Since the paintings aren't on archivally sound materials, they aren't expected to endure through the ages.

"They're only going to last a couple hundred years," Morley noted. And yet there are many fans and collectors of this "primitive art" who travel great distances and pay top dollar for the art, and since his death, Block's works have found permanent homes in galleries and museums nationwide.

But most of his fans are right here, where it is a matter of pride to own an original Block. Morley came by his collection through Marshall Thomas, a former gallery owner still living in Solvang.

"Marshall came to me and said 'If someone doesn't do something with these paintings they're going to be thrown in the garbage'" Morley recalled.

Thomas said when he first met Block, who used one bedroom of his small house as a studio, "All of the walls were just covered with the pictures, three deep."

And there was the odor, mixed with the smoke from Block's ever-present cigar. "The place just reeked of varnish and turpentine," Thomas said.

Throughout their 10-year-acquaintance they shared conversation and many a glass of champagne, another of Block's passions.

Thomas finds Block's range of subjects impressive, reflecting the village smitty's myriad interests and his love of literature, history and mythology. "He did a whole series of Stanley and Livingston in Africa," for example, and many classics, including Dante's Inferno, Thomas reported.

They weren't all serious, though, as evidenced by a painting that Thomas named: "I dubbed the picture 'The Cross-eyed Poodle on the Toilet Seat with Seven Characters from Shakespeare.'" He sold one painting before Block's death for $75, but the old man was busy playing cards with neighbor ladies and wouldn't take time out to accept the check, telling Thomas to "come back tomorrow."

Blunt and taciturn, Block was something of a recluse, but his paintings of local characters reveal he was paying more attention to his community than people realized.

Kris Klibo, a retired Buellton blacksmith, was Block's nephew by marriage, who worked with the old man off and on over the years, and recalls his gentleness and kindness. "People thought he was gruff," said Klibo.

"He didn't do much talking in the blacksmith shop, or he wouldn't get any work done." Klibo's own collection of Block's paintings are stacked in a closet, but he enjoys taking them out and sharing them with a visitor. "His perspective wasn't always the best," he notes.

He figures the better paintings were likely copies. If the better-quality ones, such as Rip Van Winkle, were done later, there's no way to tell. Block didn't sign or date his paintings until Klibo suggested doing so. Some show dates, but that was just to indicate the period of time Block was representing.

Klibo credits Thomas for his uncle's fame. Once the art dealer began marketing the paintings, Block's fame spread like fire from the blacksmith's foundry.

Thomas ended up with about seven crates of the work, about 500 pieces, following Block's death when his heirs were ready to incinerate them. He eventually told Morley he was concerned about properly storing the paintings.

"So I picked up the torch," said Morley. Not to burn the paintings, but to keep the flame of the folk artist's works aglow.