Trying to save Paradise

Nonprofit seeks funds for folk icon Finster's home

PENNVILLE, Ga. - Most brides would sneer at holding their wedding in an overgrown garden dotted with yellow caution tape.

For Amanda Avery, this vine-covered plot of weeds and ramshackle buildings that was once the folk art headquarters of Howard Finster was the perfect locale for her gothic-themed nuptials.

It's been at least seven years since a bride and groom said "I do" at the tucked-away spot in northwest Georgia, but the nonprofit that owns the garden is hoping Avery's wedding will be the first of many events that draw attention to a fading piece of folk art history.

A bicycle repairman and preacher who turned to art to spread the word of God, Finster started building the garden in 1961 and filled it with quirky mosaics, sculptures, and buildings.

The nonprofit Paradise Gardens Park and Museum Inc. hopes to raise nearly $1 million to restore the crumbling four-acre plot - once featured in a 1983 R.E.M video - to its odd grandeur. But the group so far has raised only about $25,000 in the three years since it bought the garden from Finster's daughter.

The nonprofit has shored up the tier wedding cake-like World's Folk Art Church and put on a new roof with money raised by auctioning off art from the garden, said chairman Tommy Littleton. He's brought in a volunteer to run an art gallery and guide tours of the garden. And he's bought two goats - Lady and Loretta - to help keep the weeds and kudzu in check.

Next spring Littleton hopes to revive FinsterFest, a folk art festival that Finster held every year in the garden to help promote hundreds of unknown artists.

Eventually, Littleton would like to turn one of the houses in the garden into a bed and breakfast.

But in today's economic climate, it's hard to find anyone willing to donate to what many consider a lost cause.

The garden's sculptures are broken and overgrown with vines. Weeds crowd around the folk art church where Finster held hundreds of weddings and other events. And Finster's iconic primitive paintings on the sides of the property's 14 buildings are faded, completely erased in some places.

The messy garden didn't scare Avery away.

The 23-year-old from Gaylesville, Ala., admires Finster's strange artwork and felt a connection to the site, where the preacher-turned-artist officiated at Avery's great-grandmother's wedding in 1965.

"It's kind of like a fairy land," said Avery, dressed in a black velvet cloak and sporting a black mohawk, as she waited recently for her wedding to begin. "It makes me feel like a little kid again. It makes me happy."

She and her groom, Kristopher, said their vows in the yard outside the folk art church and then wandered around the garden, taking newlywed photographs among the decaying buildings and sculptures.

Finster began creating what he called "sacred art" in 1976 after a vision appeared to him in a dollop of paint on one of his fingertips. His art, which featured everything from ants to Elvis, gained national fame after members of R.E.M., befriended Finster.

The artist painted the covers of albums for R.E.M., Talking Heads, and other bands in the 1980s, and soon his primitive paintings and sculptures became famous, drawing thousands every year to his home near the Alabama-Georgia border.

His art spilled from the basement of his home into his backyard, where he carefully placed mosaic Bible verses into the sidewalk and turned objects like bicycles, car motor parts, and dolls into sculptures. Some of the objects in the garden look like the contents of a child's toy box or a recycling bin were dumped into piles of wet concrete, drying into a misshapen heap.

A shack is made out of bottles embedded in concrete. Trash cans are painted with messages about transforming trash into treasure. One wall is a scrapbook of family photos and clippings from newspapers, all preserved behind glass.

"He was the most important folk artist in America," said Ann Oppenhimer, president of the Richmond, Va.-based Folk Art Society, who was friends with Finster. "He had a lot of charisma."

Finster eventually produced 48,000 pieces, including quirky wooden statues and sculptures made from other people's trash. And he awed architects with his complex folk art church, which seemed impossible for a man with no formal engineering training.

He spent much of his life savings on the works and keeping his art business going.

"It's a money pit and always was for my Dad," said Finster's daughter, Beverly, who owned the garden for a few years before selling it to the nonprofit. "That was my playground."

Just a stone's throw from the garden is the Howard Finster Vision House, a museum in the rickety home where the artist began his art movement in the basement.

Museum owner David Leonardis has been vocal about his disappointment at the disheveled garden, which he tried to buy but lost in a bidding war with Littleton's nonprofit board.

Leonardis, a Chicago gallery owner and longtime friend of Finster's, hopes to make the museum into a bed-and-breakfast-style artist retreat with a garden where couples can marry.