Georgia: Folk art fans may flock to Finster Fest

PENNVILLE, Ga. — Weeds have sprung up in the cracks of the sidewalk where Howard Finster cemented his broken glass, buttons and silverware into art.

There’s a giant bush growing in, around and through his 30-foot tower of conjoined bicycle frames. His grand World’s Folk Art Chapel is crumbling with rot.

The chapel is so fragile, “we used to hold our breath with snowstorms,” said Tommy Littleton, chairman of Paradise Gardens Park and Museum, the official name of Mr. Finster’s home and gardens. “We were afraid with one big snow that would have been it.”

Standing along the mosaic pathway near one of Mr. Finster’s famed Coke bottle sculptures, Mr. Littleton explained his plan to restore the late folk artist’s home and gardens.

“The real vision of keeping the gardens alive is as a memorial for Howard and to be here for other artists,” he said.

Mr. Finster, the Chattooga County preacher and bicycle repairman turned folk artist, died in 2001, leaving his four-acre property just north of Summerville to his family. In 2005, Mr. Littleton’s nonprofit group bought the property and slowly has begun reclaiming it from the weeds, mildew and weather. This weekend, Mr. Littleton hopes to strike a major blow against the decay through money raised at Finster Fest.

The festival, an annual event when Mr. Finster was alive, brings folk artists together at Paradise Gardens to celebrate its namesake. This year, the first such event since 2003, will feature an auction with proceeds and donations going to restore the Folk Art Chapel, according to organizers.

If the various visitors who come by the gardens each week are any clue, plenty of people should be on hand for the rebirth of Finster Fest, according to Whitney Nave Jones, who runs the Paradise Gardens Gallery on the property.

“A lot of people come by just for curiosity,” she said. “They’re like, ‘I’ve always heard about this place.’”

Experts praise Mr. Finster as one of the pioneers of folk art.

“Everything Finster did was unique and individual, that’s part of why he is so respected in the art community,” said Brooke Anderson, director and curator of the contemporary center at the American Folk Art Museum in New York.

Mr. Finster is best known for helping take folk art mainstream and his merging of pop culture with Biblical stories, she said. The painting of Jesus, Elvis and Johnny Cash on the trunk of Finster’s Cadillac at the gardens speaks to that theme. He also did album covers for R.E.M.’s “Reckoning” and Talking Heads’ “Little Creatures,” which won Rolling Stone magazine's award for album cover of the year in 1985.

These days, Mr. Finster’s garden looks as if someone shook a giant Bible overhead, the verses sprinkling out to land on walls, rocks and sculptures.

The volunteers who work on the gardens every Saturday unearth new pieces of the artist’s masterpiece from time to time, Mr. Littleton said. He acknowledged there is plenty of work to be done and plenty of money to be spent.

The group has raised $25,000, but estimates show it needs $275,000 to stabilize the chapel, open a bed and breakfast and get the landscaping under control, according to Mr. Littleton. He remains confident the restoration can be accomplished and that the finished product will be worth the effort.

“We want to pipe Howard’s voice into the garden and let him tell the story,” he said.