I never like making errors but maybe it’s a good thing I was tired last night when blogging (that’s my excuse) and made two errors in my post about the Garden of Eden BECAUSE I got an email today from the great-grandson of S.P. Dinsmoor (yes it’s S.P. – for Samuel Perry, not E.P. as I mistyped yesterday) politely setting me straight. Which I appreciate. And it’s interesting to hear from a vigilant member of the Dinsmoor clan. The great-grandson also noted, rightly, that technically S.P. is entombed, not buried, in the mausoleum. Again, I stand corrected.
Tag Archives: Kansas
Kooky Kansas: pt. 3 Garden of Eden
What really put Lucas, Ks. on the map, is an astonishing place called The Garden of Eden, which was built by an eccentric Civil War Veteran named S.P. Dinsmoor. The Garden is in the backyard of Dinsmoor’s small cabin made of limestone logs (vs. wooden logs.) I’ve struggled for years to describe it properly. It’s a true concrete jungle, made of concrete and stone vines and pillars with statues of Biblical figures (Adam and Eve are there) as well as pro-working Joe tableaux (such as the working man being crucified by the banker, the lawyer, the preacher, and the doctor.) One of my favorite parts is the large limestone mausoleum where Mr. Dinsmoor is entombed. A guide hands you a flashlight so you can enter and look through a plate of glass at Dinsmoor’s disintegrating skeleton. I have a priceless photo of my sister, who was visiting from the east coast during the late 1980s when I lived in Kansas, outside the mausoleum looking at me with a “You’ve got to be kinding me” expression.
Filed under Kansas, Kansas misc
Kooky Kansas: pt. 2 Lucas
While grassroots art can be found – as it should be – scattered in random rural locations throughout Kansas, there also is a self-conscious concentration of it in the small Kansas town of Lucas which has a storefront museum in some old limestone buildings devoted to grassroots art. This is the art stereotypically practiced by self-taught, iconoclastic loners – like farmers and ranchers – but also by trained artists and savvy hipsters living in remote places and it ranges from enticing odd to childlike to a little scary. A relative of folk art, grassroots art sometimes is called visionary art, naïve art, or primitive art.
You’ll see it all in Lucas – not only at the Grassroots Art Center but at a few other locations in town. When we visited a few years ago in December, someone from the museum took me, my husband and two young-teen kids, to a plain little unheated bungalow on a quiet street a few blocks away – and inside was the most astonishing sight. Every single room was covered with Barbies – yes, that Barbie – and other dolls. There were Barbies dripping from walls covered in aluminum foil and piled up in the bathtub, Barbies exotically-decorated and decked out in every which way. If this hadn’t been labeled “art” it might instead be viewed as a “cry for help.” We were all a bit spooked walking around this ice cold bungalow of Barbies – including my daughter who was never a huge Barbie fan but played with them occasionally. Check it out yourself at http://www.kansastravel.org/isis.htm
In the backyard is local Lucas legend Florence Deeble’s Rock Garden – a rather worn collection of “concrete postcards” – sculptures depicting famous places Florence visited, such as Mount Rushmore. A few blocks away, is the real Lucas masterpiece (which inspired young Florence and spawned the Grassroots Art Center) known as The Garden of Eden. Again, stay tuned.
Filed under grassroots art, Kansas, Kansas misc
Kooky Kansas
A Wall Street Journal reporter seems to be mining the kooky Kansas beat, which I used to fancy as my own. After writing about the Big Well in Greensburg, Ks., she wrote a piece on the eccentric roadside sculpture in nearby Mullinville, Ks., pop. 202, which has long been a source of fascination for my family as we drive to and from my in-laws house in western Kansas. Last December, in addition to slowing down on the not-that-busy state highway to look more closely at the ever-growing line of scrap-metal whirligigs, many of them with political references of an indeterminate nature, we turned north on a country road in town and past the sculptor’s workshop – a shed with heaps of scrap metal and half-finished whirligigs (maybe that’s gigs.) There must be several hundred by now along the road – made of junk metal, glass bottles, presumably pilfered road signs, toilet seats, tractor gears, bowling balls, all whirling in the wind.
From the WSJ story, we learned that the sculptor is 79-year-old farmer named M.T. Liggett, that his subjects include three former wives and many girlfriends including one portrayed as a mouse in pearls holding a piece of cheese, caught in a mousetrap. (Guess that relationship didn’t go so well.) Among his favorites is one of Bill Clinton with a padlock welded to the zipper of his pants. Word has it that the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore – which I was dismayed to discover was closed on the Monday I visited – is displaying Liggett’s work.
It’s part of a genre of art by self-taught folks known variously as grassroots art or naive art – and Kansas is full of it. Stay tuned.
For more, see: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703894304575047461204497670-lMyQjAxMTAwMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html
Filed under Kansas, Kansas misc
Christmas in Dodge City
We made it with no problem from Des Moines to Dodge City (technically the small town of Wright, outside Dodge) and it’s a good thing we’re not traveling today. It is bitter cold, with fierce winds, making an already harsh landscape look even harsher, the trees even more battered and windswept, the land flat, frozen,empty, the sky a dull, slightly menacing shade of blue-gray (is there snow in them there clouds.)
Emma, my trusty computer tech, is here with me at the wonderful new Cup of Jo-nes on Wyatt Earp Blvd. (the kids here “drag Earp” for fun) which has great chai and much-welcomed WiFi. Thank you, thank you. Our drive yesterday featured various forms of precip – starting with the worst, frozen drizzle (is there such a thing a “freezing fog”?) outside Des Moines, then rain in southern Iowa and northern Missouri, brief sunshine in K.C. then dense fog, which ruined my favorite part of the trip – the scenic Flint Hills of Kansas, which were shrouded beyond recognition. By Wichita, we just had wind, a lot of fierce wind (which just blew open the heavy wooden door to this coffee house) . The wind also knocked out the heat at D’s mother’s house so we had a very cold night and morning until some neighbors came and started fiddling with the boiler.
Who knows what weather comes next? Doesn’t look like much snow but we may get more ice – and the wind is likely to remain fierce. We will probably try to get to a movie in the mall and maybe our favorite mexican restaurant in Dodge, otherwise we’re not likely to check out the tourist hotspots which include A reproduction of Boot Hill (my husband had a friend who had a summer job playing the part of the “Drunken Indian” there in in the 1970’s. I’m thinking that part has been eliminated these days), the “Kansas Teachers Hall of Fame & Gunfighters Wax Museum” (no joke), and the Bridle Bit Museum.” We’re rather much-welcome spend time with family!
Filed under Dodge City, Kansas, Kansas misc
TakeBetsywithyou 