Gardens of Revelation

by Beardsley, John

• ISBN13: 9780789207975
• ISBN10: 0789207974
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-01
• Publisher: Abbeville Pr

Summary

This lively international tour spans from the soaring spires of Watts towers in Los Angeles to the spirit-lifting Camel Yard and Owl House in New Bethesda, South Africa, to the junk-and-flower-filled labyrinths of Howard Finster's Paradise Garden near Summerville, Georgia. With incisive intelligence and beguilling prose, John Beardsley tells the story of about twenty-five "visionary environments" and the fiercely independent individuals who have created them in the course of the last century. Many of these handmade environments--usually the result of years of obsessive work--express profoundly personal and frequently unorthodox beliefs. These gardens are often a form of persuasion, places to make public the creators' heartfelt ideas about past or future, politics or religion, sexual fulfillment or healthful living. The forms they take are varied and extraordinary, from luminous bottle villages to garishly painted temple compounds, from mock castles to miniature cities, from sculpture gardens populated with biblical and historical figures to artificial grottoes