Paradise Garden (Georgia)

Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia, was the home and workplace of Baptist minister and folk artist Howard Finster and is now a public park dedicated to his life and art.

Paradise Garden, located at 200 North Lewis Street, is open to the public. It encompasses two and half acres densely filled with buildings, constructions, sculptures, and thousands of objects. Finster's former studio, a yellow, plank-sided bungalow, is now a visitors' center. From it, a path leads to a multi-layered, multi-sided building, the World Folk Art Chapel.

In 1961 Finster purchased four acres of land in Summerville, Georgia and a few years later retired from his pastoral duties and devoted his time to working this land. It was always a work-in-progress, originally called Plant Farm Museum, but later known as Paradise Garden. Much of the land was swampy, which Finster drained himself. He laid out his collections of found objects which he had spent years accumulating. He built numerous sculptures, one made from castoff bicycle parts and another from old hubcaps. He built a structure lined inside and out with pieces of mirrors. As an extension of his preaching duties, he erected signs covered with Biblical verses or simple exhortations, such as "Yo Jesus."

In 1976, at the age of sixty-one, Finster began a new chapter of his life. While repairing a bicycle in his workshop at Paradise Garden, Finster had another vision. A smear of white paint on his finger tip looked to him like a human face and he heard a voice command that he "paint sacred art." This he did with boundless energy until his death.

These objects, largely based in the Bible, American history, and popular culture, filled Paradise Garden. Mostly painted on rough wood, they combined flat, two-dimensional images with dense writing. Roberta Smith, a critic for the New York Times, described Finster's work as "apocalyptic text-image paintings, which he seemed to produce at assembly-line rates. Their lush, extravagantly crowded surfaces form later-day illuminated manuscripts and cover subjects that included heaven and hell, tales from the Bible and American history and popular culture." Finster's interests were seemingly endless. He painted Jesus, Elvis, winged angels, George Washington, self-portraits, Marylyn Monroe wearing an American flag dress, demons, Coca-Cola bottles, Mona Lisa, Mickey Mouse, policemen, cowboys, Old Testament prophets, and other subjects in a torrent. Stylistically, they were all of a piece: singular, simple, and bold.

...
Wikipedia