Chart of Eturnity

My friend Ted Degener and I had been on a road trip for two weeks when we heard that Howard Finster had passed away early on Monday, October 22, at a medical center in Rome, Georgia, near his home in Summerville. We’d been visiting self-taught visionary artists throughout the South–Ted adding to his photo archive of artists’ portraits while I conducted interviews to learn about the creative process these artists share despite their isolation from each other. The answers to my questions are invariably the same: Q. Why do you make art? A. God told me to draw, to paint, to build…

Howard Finster was such an artist. Known as the "Man of Visions," this Baptist preacher from Alabama experienced a vision in 1976, in which an angel told him to make "sacred art," and so he did. Finster dedicated the rest of his life to creating thousands of colorful paintings combining messages from the New Testament with American popular culture, and a three-acre mixed-media environment known as Paradise Gardens. He even painted album covers for rock bands: REM’s "Reckoning" (1984), and the Talking Heads’ "Little Creatures" (1985). Like many, "Little Creatures" was my first exposure to his work–I saw it in the window of a record store in Florence, Italy where I was studying art history for the summer, and it’s still the best painting I recall seeing there. He’d been such a huge inspiration to me and to Ted, so on the Wednesday after his death we drove from our temporary headquarters in Athens, Georgia up to Summerville to attend his funeral.

The funeral wasn’t anything like the media circus we’d expected. On arriving at the Erwin-Petitt Funeral Home Chapel in Summerville just before the start of the 2:00 pm service, we were ushered into the viewing room. We were surprised to find that Finster would be buried in a standard coffin, not the one he’d been decorating for this day, as it had been deemed unfit due to the hornets’ nest it housed. We spotted a few journalists from Atlanta and TV crews from Fox, PBS, and National Geographic, all of whom lurked respectfully in the background. The rest of the crowd, about 200 in all, included several generations of Finsters, and a number of friends. As the afternoon progressed, we met many of his long-time supporters from the art world–folk and fine–such as Lynne Spriggs, curator of Folk Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, his primary biographer Tom Patterson, author Robert Peacock, and a number of artists he’d inspired, including Peter Loose, from Athens, Grace and CM Luster from Kentucky, and of course his grandson Allen Wilson, among many others.

Vision of Brutonia

The service itself was led by local Reverend Billy Mitchell, who delivered a tribute to Finster’s life of service and his unstoppable spirit, in a powerful sermon that was surprisingly accessible to Baptists and non-Baptists alike. The printed program offered a simple record of the event, complete with a copy of the twenty-third psalm. At the sermon’s close, we filed out past Finster’s casket, a final chance to say goodbye and thank-you.

Next was the half-hour, low-speed procession to the Silver Hill Baptist Church cemetery, where he was to be buried. On this perfect autumn day (if a little cloudy), the view on the drive was spectacular, with shafts of late-afternoon sunlight illuminating the reds and golds of the trees covering the mountain slopes on either side of the highway. For miles, all oncoming cars and trucks came to a full stop and turned on their lights to honor the procession, a testament to the immense respect Finster commanded in his hometown.

The drive gave me time to wonder just what it was about this man that simultaneously impressed locals, rock stars, New York City artists (and critics), and so many others. How had he managed to cross cultural boundaries so definitively? Why had he influenced so many different artists? After all, REM and Talking Heads are hardly Christian bands. What was the connection?

Of course, clues to Finster’s universal appeal are everywhere evident in his work–he always communicated his Christian Revivalist message through a wonderfully vivid, pop-cultural idiom in which Jesus and Elvis coexist quite comfortably. But there are other, subtler clues to be found, especially in the work of the artists he inspired. Anyone who went to see REM concerts in the mid-eighties will remember Michael Stipe’s self-styled, glossalalia-howling, shaman-preacher persona, and anyone who remembers the big-suited David Byrne wildly sermonizing in the video for "Once in a Lifetime," has caught a fleeting glimpse of Finster’s influence. It wasn’t necessarily his evangelical message itself, but rather his extraordinary visionary zeal that lit the fuse in others. An artist’s artist, Finster offered a dramatic example of a life dedicated exclusively and courageously to a creative calling. He provided a model to which other artists could look and find the courage to believe in their own creative visions. It is no coincidence that both REM and Talking Heads were charting brand new musical territory at the time they invited him to paint their album covers. Those collaborations were nothing less than ordinations from the deacon of D.I.Y.

Satin Cast Out of Heaven

Of course, his influence wasn’t limited to the world of music, but extended to include visual artists ranging from the Athens, Georgia-based ceramicist Andy Nassisse to Keith Haring. Many artists visited Paradise Gardens, finding validation from their elder colleague who’d beat the odds by beginning a prolific career so late in his life, without the benefit of formal training. By his example, he taught a lesson that can’t be found in the standard art school curriculum: believe in yourself. He had a saying: "Wake up and do something." Howard Finster woke people up.

Once at the church, we gathered under a tabernacle-tent, where the Reverend Wright spoke some final words. The cemetery itself is quite sparse, Finster being one of the few honored with a resting place on this green hill beneath the modest church where he once preached. After he was lowered into the earth, we visited the church to view the large, brightly colored mural he’d painted behind the pulpit. Walking back to our cars, we observed that his grave had been covered with what seemed like hundreds of bouquets of flowers.

After the funeral, Ted and I revisited Paradise Gardens, now in a sad state of disrepair, its elements appearing to be slowly swallowed up by their natural surroundings. Huge chunks of it are now conspicuously missing, having been sold off in the name of preservation. The looming, wedding cake-shaped "Garden Chapel," still dominates the Gardens, but the massive tangle of old bicycles and car parts known as "Hubcap Mountain" is now completely rusted over, nearly swallowed up by vines. Most of the original paintings that once adorned the Gardens have also been sold off, their existence marked by the barely discernable silhouettes of angels and Elvii. At sunset, we walked through the long, narrow hallway of the structure Finster called the "World’s Folk Art Gallery," his tribute to other artists who had visited and contributed their own work to the Gardens. Although falling apart now, this gallery still provides a valuable record of the art world Finster created for himself. At the end of the gallery’s long hallway stands a mirror, above which appear the words "You Are Here," a quiet example of the powerful wake-up call to creativity that was his gift to us.

Two days later, Ted and I stopped by the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore to see the new exhibition "The Art of War and Peace: Toward an End To Hatred," guest-curated by Michael Bonesteel (planned well in advance of 9/11). This blockbuster show of visionary art includes a number of Finster’s paintings and sculptures, many of which are presented against a backdrop of mirrors inside the museum’s mini replica of the artist’s "Garden Chapel," a curatorial maneuver which cleverly inscribes each viewer within the artist’s clarion call to spiritual and creative consciousness. Here we found paintings expressing Finster’s vision of Heaven, a perfect city in the clouds in which he promises: "no separation," "no graveyards," "no terists" and "no war." For now, we’ll just have to take his word on that.

What is the Soul of Man?

Jenifer Borum lives in New York City. She contributes regularly to Folk Art, Raw Vision, and Artforum. She teaches at the American Folk Art Museum, and recently co-curated ABCD: A Collection of Art Brut with Brooke D. Anderson for the Museum's Contemporary Center. She is a PhD candidate in Art History at CUNY's Graduate Center.