Beasts of Beaver Meadow

I didn't look into the second Pennsylvania environment builder very much before deciding to go there during my recent road trip. (Daughter Number Three-Point-One scouted it from Atlas Obscura.) 

The Beasts of Beaver Meadow is farther off the beaten path than Bill Rhodes People Friendly Garden, at least from the direction we were coming from. We traveled some almost-back roads to get there, and I wasn't sure online maps would stay with us the whole way across rural Pennsyvania, so I had written the directions down. They consisted of "this road becomes this road becomes this road," then "turn right then left at this area that's very hard to describe"... and things like that. So I'm glad the 5G or LTE or whatever it was stayed in place well enough the whole time.

We eventually found the Beasts at 1200 Berwick Street in Beaver Meadows. They aren't that far east of I-81 and the substantial city of Hazelton, but we were coming from the southeast, so the shortest way was a circuitous route. 

The Beasts were created by Joseph Woitko from concrete, glass, car parts, and other found objects, so classic outsider artist work. 

 

Woitko is clearly into the macabre. There were a lot of skulls:

Other pieces were hard to interpret (not that that's necessary):

He frequently use some molds with his concrete work, like the ice cream cones in this castle (I think it's a castle):

I didn't see everything (for instance, I just realized there are pieces on the opposite side of the road). 

As a side note, the steep and somewhat treacherous slope on the woodsy, shaded ground was covered with sweet woodruff, a nice ground cover. I've never seen so much of it on one location:

All in all, it has more of a haunted feel — whether that's intentional or not.

 

 

Hartman Rock Garden

Road trips are a time to look at Roadside America and see what environment-builders did their work along the path I'm taking. Recently, on a drive back from Northern Virginia, I found out about the Hartman Rock Garden in Springfield, Ohio, east of Dayton, and stopped for a (too-short) visit.


Harry George "Ben" Hartman began creating his rock garden in 1932 at the age of 48 when he was laid off from his job as a molder during the Depression. He lived just another 12 years, and during that time create 47 buildings or other objects in his family's yard.


The Little Church Around the Corner was the first building he made. It included furniture and carpeting inside and has stained-glass windows on either side (visible here on the left side).

The largest structure is the Cathedral, seen in the background in this photo, behind the arbor and flower bed:


It's 14 feet tall with numerous niches to hold figures and scenes, including the Last Supper and multiple Madonnas:


At the foot of the Cathedral is Reco Sporting Goods, a store that Ben frequented in Springfield:


The Castle is just a bit down the way from the Cathedral:


It's 12 feet tall, and Ben claimed it was made from 100,000 stones. It has a moat (the white area you can see at lower left in the photo above), drawbridge, and 107 windows, and is believed to be based on a castle in West Virginia that Ben saw on a postcard his wife Mary received from a friend.


The paths you walk between the building are narrow and inlaid with messages from Ben, some religious, but others more general.


Noah's Ark, with 14 pairs of animals ascending the plank.


Fort Dearborn (next to the Castle).


The School House was the second building Ben made.

In the last few years of his life, Ben began building in a new area of the yard, which he called the Other Side of the World. He intended to fill it with landmarks from around the world.


One section he finished is Schoenbrunn Village, models of buildings from a Moravian missionary village in eastern Ohio. They're a bit larger than dollhouse scale and appear to be cast concrete.


The final piece Ben completed was the Cherub Gateway, a wall that is interpreted as his version of the gateway to heaven, filled with nooks for religious figures.


The gateway is flanked by two cast and painted concrete cherubs (with the Moravian village in the background).

After Ben died of silicosis in 1944, Mary Hartman maintained the gardens and structures for another 53 years. She died in 1997. In 2008, the Kohler Foundation of Wisconsin purchased the site and restored it, then transferred ownership to a local Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden organization. It had a grand reopening in 2010.

The garden is open 365 days a year from dawn to dusk. It's not very far off of I-70 and was not hard to find. Self-guided tours are free, though donations are encouraged.

Be sure to pick up the detailed brochure and site map when you start your tour. In other words... don't be like me, who wandered through, picked up the brochure at the end, then wished I had consulted the map while I was on site!

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Past posts about environment builders:

Finding Shangri-La

Whirligig Park

Randyland, Not to Be Missed in Pittsburgh

Frog Pond Farm (North)

Outsider artists in Sheboygan

Outsider art, 2012

Save the Wells Street Art Park

The Sculptures of Tom Every

Herman Rusch's Prairie Moon

Details of Dickeyville

The Glass Grotto in Cataract, Wisconsin

Rocks and Glass at the Rudolph Grotto

Wouterina de Raad, environment builder

Dick and Jane's Spot, Ellensburg, Washington

The Enchanted Highway in North Dakota

Concrete Wisconsin

Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas

Another Kansas Original: M.T. Liggett

Finding Shangri-La

When I started this blog, one of the things I wanted to write about the most was outsider artists, sometimes called environment-builders. I've seen most of the examples in my usual neck of the woods, so when I visit other parts of the country I always check Roadside America to see what bit of oddness is on view. That reliable site came through once again when it told me about Shangri-La in Prospect Hill, North Carolina (though its rating was only three smiley-faced water towers out of five, which makes me wonder what gets five water towers).

Henry Warren was a tobacco farmer who retired in 1968 and began building miniature buildings out of concrete, bricks, decorative cinder blocks, and marble blasted from his own land. From the looks of it, he raided a couple of gravestones as well.

He called his village Shangri-La and worked on it for just about every waking moment until 1977, when he died at age 84 as he was finishing the village's hospital.

Shangri-La is a little hard to find, as it should be, but if you follow the directions on Roadside America and remember it's just down the side road from the volunteer fire department building, it's right where they say it should be.


I didn't get a very good overall shot. Most of the village is below the road and driveway level and the light was not in my favor that day.


Warren commonly used regular bricks, painted red, turning their open tops or bottoms into decorative details.


Another material he liked was diamond-centered cinder blocks, often painted as shown in this building.


The roof line on this building is excellent.


Here it is from the other side.


A church, I think.


Not sure what this is, maybe a Southern mansion?


This may be my favorite building. The stone is set tighter within the concrete than it is on the others; the steps and door frame are more finely detailed; and the inset metal railings are a bonus.


This is the front and other side of that building. It's hard to see in this shot, but the black metalwork porch on the right side is a square steel milk crate.

In general, the details on Warren's buildings are worth looking for:


I find this out-sized terra cotta pipe very amusing.


Half a wheel is better than no wheel. Not sure what the railing is made from.


Possibly a gravestone detail.


The little connecting roof between a larger building and an outbuilding.


That is definitely a gravestone piece. July? Julia? Who knows.


For scale, those door knobs are made for regular doors.


I thought I'd end with this bric-a-brac obelisk.

Other environment-builders I've written about in the past:

Randyland: Not to Be Missed in Pittsburgh

Outsider artists in Sheboygan

Outsider art, 2012

Save the Wells Street Art Park

The Sculptures of Tom Every

Herman Rusch's Prairie Moon

Wouterina de Raad, environment builder

Dick and Jane's Spot, Ellensburg, Washington

The Enchanted Highway in North Dakota

Concrete Wisconsin

Randyland: Not to Be Missed in Pittsburgh

My final post about Pittsburgh is a big one: it’s all about Randyland.

Long-time readers already know I've got a thing for the outsider artists known as environment-builders. They don’t consider themselves artists, generally, but just feel compelled to modify their environment, usually their home or yard.

Randy Gilson fits that model. He’s just the second environment-builder I’ve met, and the only one who was still in his prime at the time. I thought I had shot a video of him explaining his reasons, but… oops, it failed to record more than a few seconds. So here’s another visitor’s interview with him that captures a bit of what he said when I was there:


You can get an idea of his bio here.

Before there was Randyland, there was the Old Allegheny Garden Society, which Randy started in 1982 by buying old whiskey barrels to plant with flowers along Taylor Avenue in the Mexican War Streets area of Pittsburgh. Over time, the Society grew to 800 gardens in a relatively small area of the city.

Randy bought his brick house on the corner at auction for $10,000 in 1995. The informational sheet at Randyland quotes Randy as saying, “I’ve always been a punk. I love it! I’m not an artist, I’m a dreamer. Randyland is an incubator—little eggs that I’ve got in my head that I keep opening up.” He has a day job (as a waiter) and supports the place through donations and his wages and tips.


And now my many, many photos. I'm splitting them into a few categories: overview, painted surfaces, found objects, and gardens/plants.

The overview:


When Randyland is open, it's open. There's no admission and the donation box and items for sale are not monitored closely. I'm not sure if Randy owns the house on the left or not.


His house, which is the original building, is the yellow one on the right.


In the interior space of the yard, there's a two-level courtyard with lots of seating.


And a port-a-potty.

As you might expect at the most painted house in America, it's hard to find a surface at Randyland that's not painted:


This stylized map of Pittsburgh is along the sidewalk side of the yellow house. A somewhat stern face looks on from the telephone pole.




The Welcome Wall at Randyland... I gather that all or most of these are painted by people who have visited from the various countries or cities noted.


The painted fence is a major feature, with many musical figures.










A close up of those drums: these words are Randy's philosophy of life.






Randy's front door.




Even the newspaper box and trash can outside the property have been painted.




There's a lot of paint, but Randy (or someone helping him) is also serious about the gardens and plants:




There's a joke on these steps: Hen and chicks are planted in these chickens.


Found objects are the core of most of the material and assemblages at Randyland (including the paint!), but a few deserved special attention:


Two pigs along the sidewalk...


...old metal lawn chairs climbing the fire escape stairway...


...and a hugging robot right at the entrance.

The house across the street has gotten in on the act, too:





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Past posts on environment builders:

Outsider artists in Sheboygan

Outsider art, 2012

Save the Wells Street Art Park

The Sculptures of Tom Every

Herman Rusch's Prairie Moon

Wouterina de Raad, environment builder

Dick and Jane's Spot, Ellensburg, Washington

The Enchanted Highway in North Dakota

Concrete Wisconsin