My heart is too big for my body...

What's left behind

We discovered a few years ago that there's few things Olivia Barfield loves more than taking something apart to see how it works.  At least for the last several months, she's been taking various cameras found at antique stores apart and seeing how they work - the fascination with the process explains the workshop vibe that the kitchen has taken on.  Anyway, after lots of discussion about how images reach film and then become actual pictures with her daddy and Granddaddy (notice she knew not to ask me because she knew my response would be, "It's MAGIC"), she started taking photos.  We don't do anything the easy way so her first batch was from an old Brownie box camera. She's since discovered her dad's old 1970ish 35mm Nikon. This thing weighs about 14 pounds I think and requires actual FILM which hardly anybody but your granddad uses anymore.

Anyway, you would know that we are not the sort of people who would enjoy taking pictures of flowers and birds.  In the last few months we have discovered the joys of abandoned buildings. I'm not kidding when I use the word joy - she's skipping over broken glass with pure glee on her little bespectacled face while Kenny and I fight off mosquitos and stand guard with the pepper spray.

It's these questions of what gets left behind and what's waiting to take over that's fascinating to all of us. Typically, I drive, Olivia shoots and Kenny serves as bodyguard and film support.  All of my pictures are me following her around and I like that.  It's fun for the whole family.  We are already mapping out a route of ghost towns for Thanksgiving break.

After her film is developed (which requires detailed labeling and sorting on her part), we all sit around and talk about what can be done better, what needs to be done again and where we ought to search next. I can't tell you how many of these places we've driven past for years without notice.  It's wonderful especially to see nature slowly push through and reclaim what we don't value.  I want you to see that these buildings aren't tragic - they are filled with the legacy and livelihoods of families, the hopes of communities at ribbon cutting ceremonies held years ago, and now they are filled with the joy of a girl.

Finster

I think a lot about Howard Finster.  He's not new to my radar - you can't grow up 25 minutes from his Paradise Garden and not be a little in the know about the porch preaching tent revivalist who came to art significantly late in life.  He'd done what a lot of novelties do and moved to the back of my mind until Olivia started enjoying junk so much.  We'd spend afternoons in antique stores looking for just the right tiny bottles or spoons to make a junk chime and her delight in all things rusty shook Howard out of the recesses of my brain.

The reason I think he finally even resurfaced was because I was trying to express that the PRODUCT of something divinely inspired doesn't have to be pretty, but it certainly HAS to come forth if a person believes it's been commanded and usually somehow manages to be recognized as a good thing by other people.  I don't think Howard was crazy when at the age of 59 he saw a face on his finger that told him to paint sacred art. I don't think that at all. I think it would have been crazy if he'd tried to NOT paint sacred art at that point.  The great part was that the bicycle repairman did not consider himself an artist before then.  So if he was "picked" by God for this mission, it's not because he was already doing a great job with artwork. It didn't seem to come about with Howard thinking, "Hey I know I'll paint these weirdo visions out with Sharpie markers and stick stuff people have thrown away all around my yard and tell people God said do it and then I'll be rich."  Cause you know how highly the artist community thinks of Sharpie markers.  I think Howard wanted God's direction, listened for it, and I think his compulsion to stay awake all day in his garden and all night in his studio was about fulfilling that mission.  I don't think the money (he said it would have been a distraction) or the recognition, which he surely at times enjoyed, were reason enough for him to invest that time.  I mean, he couldn't have known then that he'd be celebrated as the South's Andy Warhol.  What's crazy is that he undertook this mission without any idea that he would be considered so highly, that all the fame and money and esteem would be attached to the work - the junky, on plywood or maybe a coffee can, elementary work. I love that all of these thrown away items have been reconfigured into something still wonky, but something divinely inspired. It makes me think of people in the same way - that we can be dirty and broken and still become vessels of something divine.

To visit Paradise Garden is a little sad. There's lots of evidence that the work was forgotten but just as much evidence that it's still celebrated.  Rustier and "scrubbier" (his word) than it was originally, some of it is so faded it's illegible.  What draws me there repeatedly lately is precisely that the work doesn't have to be good - it can all be forgotten really (even though I would hate that). What's lovely is to witness the intensity with which God's messages were strewn all about - almost like the words and images where tumbling over one another to get out of this bicycle repairman's body and onto any surface  (ANY surface).  What can't be forgotten is that this place was one man's constant vigilance to fulfilling what God told him to do.  So the shoes and the typewriter and the mailboxes and stacks of bike wheels can all just go to kudzu and you can decide it's not art or whatever, but it's still this rusty testament to faithfulness and the desire of an old man to articulate his relationship with God.  And I think that's beautiful because I like when some person perceived as a crackpot exposes something lovely about the world and about God - even in spite of his own craziness.

Here are some of the pictures Olivia and I have taken out there recently.  Go take a look anyway - it's only $2 for students.

I'm going to remember to do this...