First There is a Mountain

[rug]

For twenty-five years, Leonard Knight poured mud over hay bales, tossed in the odd tire or windowpane, and painted the words God Is Love over and over on the adobe-like structure that resulted. His Salvation Mountain is essentially a massive pile of sculpted dirt in a weird part of the scorching Mojave. And yet it draws people.



By Jon Campbell
May 5, 2015

Leonard Knight spent the better part of the 1970s in Nebraska, living in a trailer by the Platte River and trying to build a hot-air balloon. This is remarkable because Leonard Knight had no idea how to build a hot-air balloon. The thing was 100 feet wide and powered by firewood. And stitched together, as it was, out of scraps, on a borrowed sewing machine, it never quite made it off the ground.

When it emerged from the snow one spring in the early 1980s, rotted beyond repair, Leonard drove west to the Mojave Desert, to a place a few hundred miles east of Los Angeles. He parked his truck on a stretch of bare earth, near a low hill in a lawless squatter’s community known as Slab City. And that’s where he stayed for the next twenty-five years.

Already in his sixties when he arrived, slight and spry, Leonard spent most nights in the open bed of his broken-down quarter-ton Chevy. When he needed money, he’d ride his bike into Niland, a small nearby desert community, looking for odd jobs. He spent the rest of his time building Salvation Mountain, an acre-wide amalgam of found objects and thousands of gallons of paint that would become his life’s work.

Over the years, Leonard’s mountain, the end product of a religious awakening he had in his thirties, would earn the attention of folk art historians and come to be regarded as one of the most important examples of “outsider art” in the United States. The mountain would have a starring role in Into The Wild, Sean Penn’s film adaptation of the book by Jon Krakauer, and become a pilgrimage site for church groups, and a roadside curiosity. By the early aughts, the mountain sometimes received hundreds of visitors a day, including busloads of senior citizens and European tourists, dumped, blinking, into the California sun. They came for all kinds of reasons. Some were attracted to Leonard’s religious zeal. Some came for the art. A good portion came simply to see the product of thousands of hours of labor by one old man. Mostly, they wore expressions of awe: the mountain is far bigger than they tend to expect, its construction far more intricate.



http://www.thebigroundtable.com/stories/first-there-is-a-mountain/

http://www.salvationmountain.org/

[pinto]

1. The Mojave draws lots of "individualists". I'd never heard of this one, though. Interesting.

(aside) What do you see in that single cloud formation? For me, a woman with a long nose holding a cat. I love clouds...

Thanks for the post. I'll check out the links.

[Goblinmonger]

2. Looks like the Lion King rock to me.

[pinto]

3. Googled the pic. Yeah, I see the resemblance. (nt)

[rug]

4. A fox drawn by Hanna-Barbera.

Here's the PBS link.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/offthemap/html/travelogue_artist_10.htm?true

[cbayer]

6. I see a dolphin coming out of the water to take a breath.

I'm not see the woman with the cat.

[rug]

7. Ah, I see that but it looks more like a trout getting hooked.

The difference between inlanders and mariners.

[cbayer]

10. I'd go with the trout.

That's a fish I never get.

[pinto]

8. Ah, at the top. I can see that.

Cloud formations are a great example of individual perceptions, imo.

[cbayer]

5. Damn! I had that on my list of places to go for about 5 years,

but I never made it.

Got within 1 ½ hours of it, but it was getting too late.

All he asks is that you bring him some paint.

I will leave that on my list and hopefully get there one day.

[rug]

9. If you do, post pictres!

Seems like Leonard was a decent man.

[cbayer]

11. Eccentric to the max, but that's how I like them.

I regret not having made it there, but there is time.

[struggle4progress]

12. ...

... Slab City, aka The Slabs, aka the abandoned Camp Dunlap Marine Training Facility which was used to train US troops during World War II. All that remains today are the cement foundations of the buildings, thus providing a convenient name for the area, Slab City ...

The entrance is marked by a small hill caked with eccentric acrylic paint, promising love and preaching faith, all in bright pink letters. This is known as Salvation Mountain. Meth has long been a choice drug in these parts.
http://www.theplaidzebra.com/the-last-free-place-in-america/


Somewhere on the edge of reality ... just east of the Salton Sea
?itok=at1vvqTM
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Lizard Tree Library


East Jesus, Slab City, 9/29/2013
?w=600

the Slab City Internet Cafe ... The anticipation, the clunky infrastructure, the act of engaging without really knowing what you’re doing, the excitement of the ride, the kick in the nuts, the nostalgia ... it’s all there

[rug]

13. The aerial photo certainly puts it in perspective.

[struggle4progress]

14. It's a long-term environmental problem

[rug]

15. Not that the Marine Base wasn't.

[okasha]

16. This is amazing.

For a similar story of "eccentricity" and outsider art, check out James Hampton's Throne of the Third Heaven, an installation work of about 180 separate pieces constructed of foil, light bulbs, discarded furniture and other found objects.

[link]http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=9897[/link]