May 28, 2023

In Summerville, Georgia, about 45 miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, we met the ghost of a man, touched by God, in his private paradise, where the detritus of mass-production and religion have become calcified and cracked, sinking into the ground. Bottle caps, hub caps, bicycle wheels, cars, pews, shacks, paintings. So many paintings and portraits, inscribed with parables, aphorisms, scriptures, and scraps. Mementoes from followers, fans, fellow artists. We had traveled to Paradise Garden, the lifework – absolutely a Gesamtkunstwerk – of the Rev. Howard Finster (1916-2001), decades in the making, bursting with the frantic visions of this character who was obsessed with his God-given mission. As I wandered the grounds in wonder, reading, absorbing the visual/textual explosion, I began to crack its hermeneutical code…

create a world
share a message
repeat, repeat, repeat
form a pattern
to order the world that you have created
and it will have meaning
and you will find peace.