"I love all paint. Old paint, new paint, pretty paint... if I get a pretty colour I like to keep it for the flowers."
Just outside of Slab City, a dried-up and disused army camp in southern California (where a bunch of geriatric gypsies loyally flock every winter), is Salvation Mountain. Rising from the scorched and stark desert like some divine, technicolor mirage is Leonard Knight's eccentric folk-art monument to Jesus Christ. Knight, a sunny old born-again Christian, has dedicated the past twenty years to doddering up and down his Gaudi-esque mountain structure, building it up out of 'real juicy' adobe and decorating it with the paint that people donate to him. He is a classic lone dreamer intent on promoting his vision, yet is self-effacing and reluctant to call himself an artist. Possibly better than his mountain, however, is the truck at the foot of it which someone donated to him and he painted with flowers and birds and verses and converted into his house. Knight has recently had a boat donated to him and is currently working on a Noah's Ark scene.
Leonard and The Mountain - a short documentary (listen out for his little hobo blues song at the end).
4 comments:
take me there
I think somebody may have seen 'In to the wild'. If not then somebody needs to see it. Perhaps one of my favourites. I have been itching to go there ever since. What a wonder...
I still need to see it - I bought a jigsaw (not for the sake of doing a jigsaw, but for the photo of the mountain) from a little curio shop and it sparked a whole new set of travel aspirations.
May I join you..?
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