Tinselman

Towers to Nowhere

The tower is estimated to reach 12-15 stories high (click photo to enlarge).

I'm entranced by this wooden tower in Archanglesk, Russia. It seems to so directly express so much about its builder, Nikolai Sutyagin... a man obsessed with the vision to create. 

Dead Programmer's Cafe posted Nikolai's incredible story. Here's an excerpt:

"When Perestroyka came about Nikolai Sutyagin used his money to start a lumber and construction business which brought him a substantial fortune. Now he needed a suitable residence. At first he planned on building a huge two story wooden house. Wooden structures are limited by law to two stories for fire safety reasons. At first he built a refrigerator sized wooden mock up. He liked the scale, but didn't like the proportion of the roof. He decided to elongate it to achieve a more pleasing proportion. Then he started building working with his team like in the old times, but using the timber from his own company. When he was about done with the roof, he decided to build it up a little higher so that he could see the White Sea from the very top. Even though his building has two stories, the roof spans 11 more (some articles estimate the structure to have 12 stories, others - 13 and even 15).

  The government and his neighbors hated Sutyagin's masterpiece. Fire hazard   or not, it stands in the middle of a  rather poor village, yet it's higher than the tallest cement building in the city of Archangelsk itself. The city government ordered the structure to be torn down, but the order was never realized as far as I know. But Sutyagin was accused by one of his employees (who stole $30,000 from Sutyagin) of beating him up and imprisoning him in a shed. True or not, Sutyagin got 4 years of prison. He was let out in 2 years. While he was away his company was looted like Baghdad after the war. Now he and his wife and daughter live in the unfinished skyscraper that he built."

• Empty Pursuits
• Other Outsider Art posts

(via: street use)

 

Carefully Arranged Clutter

Stephen's Victorian era home has finally become a perfect reflection of his taste. Or maybe it reflects something deeper than that? He's carefully decorated every square inch with sculptures, paintings, trinkets and ghoulish art. The effect is both warm and museum-like. But also unsettling.

If you can't get to Seattle soon, you can at least tour every room in this complete virtual tour, by Bradford Bohonus.

(via: geisha asobi)

Love and Paint

Rising up out of the desert near Niland California is Leonard Knight's whimsical vision of paradise: waterfalls, flowers, streets of gold, fields of rich green grass and towering pines. It virtually blankets a small hill and still, he continues to build.

This world of his has an unquestionably surreal quality, not just because it's made out of adobe and paint, but also because almost everything is constructed out of bible verses and Christian catch-phrases. "God is love" is painted everywhere. And though this sugary coating is interesting, I personally find the darker bits more intriguing. For example, his sculpted "love" looks like it might hurt if we were to touch it. And one tunnel seems to be filled with tremendous neurons (does Knight unknowingly feel trapped inside his own brain?).

Of course, there is no correct interpretation for his world. One thing's for certain... almost everyone who meets him utterly enjoys him (and his free postcards). So if you're ever in Niland, stop by and say hi. At the very least, take a look at some of the photos below (you owe it to Knight).

(click photos to enlarge)

Reader comment (from boingboing): Bart says,

We've gone out to Salvation Mountain several times, each time showing more friends and family what Leonard has done. That entire southeast region of the Salton Sea has many interesting stops including Slab City (snowbirds and squatters community on a deserted military base), Bombay Beach (half underwater) and the numerous bird preserves (one dedicated by Sonny Bono). Quite an interesting place. I recently snapped a bunch of photos while out there.

• Salvation Mountain – Photos
• Mountain Man – Photos II
• Salvation Mountain – Photos III
• Interview with Knight – 1998
• Salvation Mountain – QTVR
• Previous outsider art posts

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a. Download marker for Google Earth.
b. Knight has so far used 100,000 gallons of paint.

How to Survive an Apocalypse

If art expresses a person's innermost soul, then this man must have felt tangled up inside himself.

Frank Van Zant's vision was sparked when he heard the prophecy of a medicine woman: "In the final days there shall rise up a place called Thunder Mountain." She also told him that only those who lived at Thunder Mountain would survive the coming apocalypse. Van Zant wasted no time; he changed his name to Chief Rolling Thunder Mountain, moved his family to the desert in Imlay, Nevada, and began to build his monument.

Curiously, it does not look much like a mountain. Nor thunder. It looks more like a web of veins (or maybe nerves) that almost seem to be strangling the little house within.

At age 69 Van Zant committed suicide because he had finally completed his masterpiece.

Note: The monument has been in disrepair for a long time now. In recent photographs, most of Van Zant's original paint has worn away.

Reader Comment: Karradine says,

I knew Thunder in 1970, and stayed with him for several weeks. He was a friend to Baha'is, and an intelligent - if eccentric! - man.

Sleeping in his house was a real experience, utterly normal until the wind began to blow, for he had made his house from bottles collected from the roadside, and made the mistake of building part of one wall B0TTLE-MOUTH OUT!

The first time I awoke at 0230, with banshees wailing so loudly sleep was near impossible, I was loath to disturb him, and only mentioned it the next day, whereupon he explained it and told me it keeps evil spirits away (with a sly look on his face).

Quite a guy, Rolling Mountain Thunder!

Update: Welcome visitors from the boingboing link!

(click photos to enlarge)

• Thunder Mountain Photo Gallery
• Thunder Mountain Data/Photos
• Thunder Mountain Info

Curse of the Antler Arch

The extraordinary antler arch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. See it in person and it may be enough to give you some very strange dreams (take it from me).

• Photo of arch w/people, for scale
• QTVR of arch
• This woman is also about to have freaky dreams

43 Years of Cement and Stone

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Behold Facteur Ferdinand Cheval – that rarest breed of artistic genius. A man wholly devoted to his work. Passionately, almost shockingly, creative. Visionary in his artistic scope, his artistic ambition. And maybe just a little crazy.

At age 43, Cheval picked up a rock on the side of the road. He stared at it and and a great and magical idea occurred to him. He suddenly realized it was time to make his dream come true: Palais Ideal. No more waiting. No more excuses.

And so he began collecting more rocks. And more rocks. Of course he had plenty of time to do this on his (32 kilometer) daily route as a postman. And then, night would fall and his real work would begin. The palais. It took him 34 years, working alone, this insane-wonderful genius. His giant cement-sculpture-castle-thing was the great gift he left to us.

In case you can't tell, this is my personal favorite of all the so called "outsider art" environments.

• The Official Palais Ideal site

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d

e

a. The tower on the terrace
b. The three giants of the east facade
c. Top of stairs – west facade
d. Wall detail – east facade
e. Stairs – west facade

Das Junkerhaus

About a hundred years ago, Karl Junker died, leaving us Das Junkerhaus: an architectural wonder to which Junker devoted 23 years of his life. Inside and out, every inch of house is blanketed with carved wooden figures and ornamental reliefs, all strangely interwoven. Even chairs, beds and other furniture are constructed out of short, bone-like pieces of carved wood. Even a century later, the impact of the home is still awe-inspiring.

 

Discover more on Das Junkerhaus at:
• Junkerhaus Lemgo – Home of the Junkerhaus Museum

See Dick and Jane Build a House...

Nick says, "My parents always took us here on frequent cross-state road trips. Dick and Jane's Spot always brings a smile to my face when I think about it, and the 1000 or so weekly visitors probably enjoy it just as much."

The Wonderful World of Color

There are those who have a desire, or rather an overwhelming obsession, to see a thing... fulfilled. So it is with Danielle Jacqui and color. For her, painting on canvas is not enough – so instead she covers everything in sight in an overwhelming spectacle of color: walls, shutters, chairs, sinks, counter-tops, even her own clothes. You can get a glimpse into her exotically fashioned universe at documentdartistes.org.

See also:

• Danielle Jacqui

Garden of Eden, USA

Adam and Eve welcome you to the Garden of Eden, Lucas, Kanas, USA. Where cement snakes arch above you, where cement animals frolic around you, where cement demons tempt you with cement apples. And watching over all is the cement Eye of God. It took 22 years, 113 bags of concrete and immeasurable passion for Civil War veteran Samuel Perry Dinsmoor to build this fantastical garden (and house) – today, the Garden of Eden is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is host to more than 10,000 visitors a year.

If you're lucky enough to ever visit the garden, you'll receive a special suprise treat: a glimspe of its creator! One of the last things Dinsmoor built, before his death in 1932, was his own 40-foot-high limestone mausoleum. Inside he rests, embalmed forevermore in a glass coffin (Snow White style!). There you can see him, face to moldering face.

Additional Garden of Eden Links:

• Official Garden of Eden website
• Lucas Kansas Official Website (very cool)
• Garden of Eden

Keyser's Horned Tree

Wow! Take a look at the horned tree of Stephenville, Texas – simply too magnificent for words. Mr. H.B. Keyser must have really loved those prize buck horns (afterall, they were 7 1/2 foot spread). So he grafted them into this oak tree when it was younger. What a tree. What a tree.

Update: Welcome Boingboing visitors!

The 250 Hats of Moses

Moses had a vision. An infectious, glorious vision. Of hats. Paper hats. Carefully crafted out of paper bags, painstackingly twisted, tied and glued together. Moses is the kind of man who, like the Moses of old, blows with the wind. His home – a Chevy van. His studio – the project room of the local library. And is it any suprise that Moses considers himself, "the luckiest guy in the world?" Lucky, of course, because after ten long years, he has gifted the world with over 250 unparalleled paper hats.

Meanwhile, the rest of us must be satisfied with paper hats of the conventional variety.

(via: Paper Forest)

My Perfect Burial With a Fish

I now know how I will be burried. How else... inside a fish! Oh, it's just too wonderful for words!

Evidently, this isn't that unusual in Ghana, where those who can afford it are often interred in human-sized cigarettes, coke cans, chickens, airplanes, bibles, cel phones, onions and basically anything else you can think of (even a human uterus). This is so totally my way of dying!

Extremo the Clown

Greetings from Extremo the Clown (and his extremo car)! My family and I first encountered Extremo a few years back, while stuck next to him in traffic in downtown Portland, Oregon. I rolled down my window to ask him about his exceptional car. That's when he attached his red nose onto his face and began acting like a clown on acid. Or a weird blend of a clown and a liittle nervous, yipey dog. He was not exactly entertaining.... but those 10 minutes (or so) were certainly memorable.

I've since read that, when he first tried on a clown nose, he had a kind of epiphany. I guess it was almost as if a voice spoke and told him, "you are a clown; go out into the world and be thee therefore a clown." From that point on he felt – he knew – he had a vision for what he was meant to do, and he did it. Today, whenever he gets behind the wheel of his car, the Extremo-man in him "just comes alive... he actually takes over."

Of course, the great thing about Portland is that its population tends to value the eccentric; it's difficult to imagine Portland without Extremo.

More Extremo links:
• ArtCar Fest
• Extremo given gag order

Chandigarh Rock Gardens

"My own effort is the explore the aesthetic dimension. The natural environment, trees, water, soil, birds, rocks, are the major participants in my work."

- Nek Chand

Forty years ago, Nek Chand's words were not being recorded because no one cared what great things a minor transport official from Chandigarh, India might have to say. So instead, he spent his time clearing bits of the Indian jungle to contruct something beautiful and memorable. A Rock Garden. The fact that he was building his creation on restricted land shouldn't have done anyone any harm... as long as no one found out about it. Just to make sure, he did all his work at night, by the dim light of burning tires.

Of course, when someone eventually did find out about Chand's work, there was a lot of general confusion and hubub. Should they demolish Chand's garden? Should Chand be fined? What to do?

But this story has a happy ending... in an unexpected move, the authorities not only decided to allow Chand to continue his work, but they also began paying him a salary and eventually paid for him to hire a staff of fifty. Today, an endless sprawl of Chand's familiar cement beings lie over a twenty-five acre spread. Over 5000 people a day now visit what has come to be known as the The Rock Gardens of Chandigarh, and many acknowledged to be one of the modern wonders of the world.

 

Palace of Depression

Here you are, at George Daynor's copyrighted Palace of Depression. It's no ordinary palace because Daynor was no ordinary guy. He was one of those rare fellows who could actually play music on a wagon wheel. He was a guy who could win a million Cuban pesos one day and have it stolen by the Cuban government the next... without blinking an eye. George Daynor was the kind of uncommon genius who, with no mathematical training, was able to calculate that the closest point through the center of the earth to China was at the center of his own Vineland Palace. And probably most astonishing of all, he was a man who cavorted with angels; in fact it was an angel that led him to settle in New Jersey.

Cavorting with angels? Isn't that like... supernatural brain-powers. I wonder if that's why he eventually offered his brain to the Smithsonian Institute (for research). We can only guess...

Yes, this was a man who held his own against theives and lived through earthquakes. This was a man whose palm prints were preserved by scientific hand analysts. This is a man who wrote, "My place in posterity is assured... my monument, already erected, will stand 100 years or more."

Alas, Daynor's bold statement was only partially true. His monument didn't stand, but his legend and his story has. And today, his Palace of Depression is being rebuilt by Vinelanders who miss the fantastic Dr. Seussian castle.

 

Dining on the Tongue of Hell

You are looking at just one of the many stone monsters from the fantastical Sacred Grove of Bomarzo. Built by an Italian nobleman (around the 16th century), in memory of his wife, the garden is populated by a weird blend of stone creatures and every type of god you can imagine. A practical playground of gods! The highlight? Enter the mouth of a giant orc head – a Danté-esque virtual mouth of hell – and have lunch on the orc's picnic-table-shaped tongue!

Cement Creature People

Nathan Ed Galloway was bored after he retired. In response, he built an abundance of odd, friendly creatures in the form of cement totem poles.

After his death in 1962, the bright colors on his totems began to wear away. Thankfully, in 1989, the Kansas Grassroots Arts Association began restoration back to the totems' original splendor.