{"id":12347,"date":"2019-06-09T23:18:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T03:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=12347"},"modified":"2024-04-05T13:10:18","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T17:10:18","slug":"paradise-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/06\/09\/paradise-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Walks To The Paradise Garden\u2019: A Long Lost Story Of Pilgrimages To Folk Artists And Visionary Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWalks to the Paradise Garden: A Lowdown Southern Odyssey\u201d<\/a> by Jonathan Williams, Roger Manley and Guy Mendes \u201cprovides one last look at the artists and place-makers of the Southern United States just before the arrival of a new and interconnected world,\u201d editor Phillip March Jones writes in introduction.<\/p>\n

Williams, who died in 2008, authored his account around 1992\u2014augmented by photos and testimony by Manley and Mendes\u2014but the manuscript moldered for two decades on a shelf in Mendes\u2019s studio without a publisher. (Though bits and pieces did make it into the 1997 book \u201cSelf-Made Worlds: Visionary Folk Art Environments\u201d by Manley and Mark Sloan, with an intro from Williams.) Thank heavens that Institute 192 of New York City and Lexington, Kentucky, has finally brought it into print.<\/p>\n

\""Zebedee<\/a>
“Zebedee Armstrong,” Thomson, GA, 1987, by Roger Manley. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The \u201cwonder book, a guide for a certain kind of imagination\u201d\u2014in Williams\u2019s words\u2014arrives as a time capsule recording rollicking road trips into knobs and hollers from Virginia to Louisiana to the Ohio River to the Everglades between, roughly, 1984 and 1991. The three white fellows endeavored to track down rumors of visionary artists, yokels, crackpots, cantankerous eccentrics, religious prophets, broken-hearted dreamers, mystics and \u201cmagic people.\u201d Sometimes these are glimpses of artists who later became famous. Mostly the artists are poor, driven outsiders scrounging up supplies to give the world a piece of their mind.<\/p>\n

Williams describes them as people \u201cdefenseless and open to the hard, destructive nature of the venal American juggernaut.\u201d People \u201cdirectly involved in making paradise for themselves in the front yards, the back garden, the parlor, the sun porch, the basement. Making things for them has been a way to salvage a little dignity from often poor and difficult lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Royal<\/a>
“Royal Robertson’s Signage,” Baldwin, LA, 1986, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s a Louisiania \u201cmystic\u201d who covered his home with warnings of imminent Revelation and indictments of his ex\u2019s alleged infidelities: \u201cKeep out here crazy bastards whore mongers.\u201d A Kentucky farmer carves wood into horses and cowboys. Williams recounts the sad story of a woman who invented what became Cabbage Patch dolls and how she got ripped off. He tells how Vollis Simpson of Lucama, North Carolina, went from jury-rigging wind-powered washing machines while building landing strips for World War II bombers in the Mariana Islands to becoming a mechanic and repair man to eventually building a lake at a crossroads and decorating it with giant whirligigs.<\/p>\n

\""Churchill<\/a>
“Churchill Winston Hill,” Elizabethan, TN, 1987, by Roger Manley. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cChurchill Winston Hill told somebody that he wanted to do something to interest everybody and something nobody had done before,\u201d Williams recounts. The Tennessesse man\u2019s answer was a van customized to honor Elvis Presley\u2014including chrome, blue velvet, and renditions of Elvis\u2019s gold records on the exterior with buttons that triggered songs to play on a jukebox inside.<\/p>\n

Sister Gertrude Morgan, a New Orleans street preacher, founded a mission and became a painter of religious scenes. Annie Hooper filled her home at North Carolina\u2019s Outer Banks with figures recounting 300 Bible stories\u2014until you could barely walk through the place. In Atlanta, sculptor Eldreen Bailey says, \u201cI don\u2019t know why I was doin\u2019 \u2018em. I don\u2019t know what for. It just broke out of me.\u201d Lonnie Holley makes art of recycled sandstone and junk. Williams attests: \u201cHe\u2019s a man beset by being a black artist in a culture which has no place, or any respect, for such as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Harry<\/a>
“Harry Speller,” MemphisTN, 1988, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Williams writes as if you\u2019re a friend perched on a barstool next to him in some honkeytonk or riding shotgun with him in some jalopy as you bump down dusty summer country roads with windows down and music turned up and he\u2019s smiling and excited and hollering to be heard over the din. His manner is joyous, opinionated, rambling, gossipy, full of asides. Like when he concludes his account of the Elvis van artist: \u201cRoger Manley and I were then so ignorant of local wonders that we didn\u2019t have sense enough to visit The Ridgewood Restaurant, just a couple miles up the highway, for the world\u2019s most cosmic bar-b-que sa\u2019mich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019s down-home style can obscure the fact that he was a sophisticated, gay Black Mountain poet, someone who attended folk art conferences at the Library of Congress and co-founded Jargon Society Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo few of the places that Williams, Manley and Mendes visited still exist,\u201d write curators from Atlanta\u2019s High Museum, where a corresponding exhibition called \u201cWay Out There: Art of Southern Backroads\u201d appeared this spring. These folk art worlds succumbed to weather, overzealous\/thieving collectors, and \u201ccommunities that had no interest in preserving their properties after their deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\""Sam<\/a>
“Sam Doyle,” St. Helena Island, SC, 1986, by Roger Manley. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""James<\/a>
“James Harold Jennings,” Pinnacle, NC, 1984, by Roger Manley. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Joe<\/a>
“Joe Light,” MemphisTN, 1988, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Royal<\/a>
“Royal Robertson’s House,” Baldwin, LA, 1986, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Enoch<\/a>
“Enoch Wickman, Baby Jesus, and Joseph, Austin Peay State University,” Clarksville, TN, 1988, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Austin<\/a>
“Austin Coe, Adjusting Eve,” Russellville, KY, 1986, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Minnie<\/a>
“Minnie Lincks Black with her Whale Harmonica,” East Bernstadt, KY, 1984, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Annie<\/a>
“Annie Hooper,” Buxton,NC,1982, by Roger Manley. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Noah<\/a>
“Noah Kinney’s Grand Ole Opry Musicians,” Lewis County, KY, by Guy Mendes. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""J.B.<\/a>
“J.B. Murray,” Glascock County, GA, 1987, by Roger Manley. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Sam<\/a>
“Sam Doyle’s Yard,” St. Helena Island, SC, 1986, by Roger Manley. From “Walks To The Paradise Garden.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWalks to the Paradise Garden: A Lowdown Southern Odyssey\u201d by Jonathan Williams, Roger Manley and Guy Mendes \u201cprovides one last look at the artists and place-makers of the Southern United States just before the arrival of a new and interconnected world,\u201d editor Phillip March Jones writes in introduction. Williams, who died in 2008, authored his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107,1008,582],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12347"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24617,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347\/revisions\/24617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}