A retired Baptist preacher in rural Georgia was gluing together bicycle parts, broken mirrors, and bottle caps in the swampy bushes of his backyard because, as he told the local paper, when a face appeared in a smear of paint on his finger and told him to "paint sacred art." Decades later, that backyard is listed as a National Register of Historic Places site, that rock stars once compared to a pilgrimage. According to a 2015 Smithsonian magazine feature, Howard Finster’s compound, known as Paradise Garden, remains on the four acres he bought in 1961 at the end of a narrow street in the unincorporated town of Pennville, Georgia. It's the kind of story that sounds like the setup to an indie film, and it's a reminder of how much American folk creativity happens far from the art world.
A preacher who just couldn't stop building
