Howard Finster's Paradise Garden
A Baptist preacher's scrap-built "Memorial to God" in the Georgia foothills, rescued by its county and kept open by a nonprofit.
Photo: brooke / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Illustrative image.
Paradise Garden is Howard Finster's still-open art environment in Summerville, Georgia, built from found materials by a Baptist preacher turned self-taught artist and now run by a nonprofit foundation.
Howard Finster and the making of Paradise Garden
Born in 1916 in Valley Head, Alabama, Howard Finster moved to Chattooga County as a young man. He spent about four decades as a Baptist preacher, while also working trades such as carpentry and bicycle and lawnmower repair. Finster began building Paradise Garden, a 2.5-acre site, in the early 1960s on swampy land behind his house. According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the garden gathers individual monuments to human inventors into an all-encompassing "Memorial to God."
In 1976, Finster said, God charged him to illustrate his religious visions: "A warm feeling came over me to paint sacred art." He went on to create 46,991 individually numbered pieces of art, many of them crowded with hand-lettered scripture and sermons. He died in 2001.
What the garden is made of
Paradise Garden is an immense assemblage of scrap, found objects and sacred imagery. Its walkways and constructions are made from cast-off pieces of technology, much of it gathered from Finster's television and bicycle repair businesses. Disused materials come together to create a space where repurposed objects meet religious text at every turn.
The site has more than 20 structures. The best known is the World's Folk Art Church, a small church next to the garden that Finster acquired in 1982 and transformed into one of his signature works.
Fame, rescue and visiting
Finster's fame reached far beyond Georgia through popular music. He collaborated with Michael Stipe on the cover of R.E.M.'s 1984 album Reckoning, and Talking Heads commissioned him to paint the cover of Little Creatures in 1985, carrying his scrappy, visionary style into wide circulation.
After years of decline, the garden was purchased by Chattooga County in 2011. The Paradise Garden Foundation was formed in 2012 to restore and preserve Finster's buildings and garden structures, and it manages the site today.
At the time of writing, Paradise Garden is open year-round, Tuesday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, and closed on Mondays; admission is charged. It is at 200 North Lewis Street in Summerville, about three miles north of downtown. Because hours and prices can change, check the Paradise Garden Foundation's official site before visiting.
