Technomadia

Adventures in Nomadic Serendipity

Roadside America – Epic Artists

Travelogues Video Edition

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Leonard Knight at Salvation Mountain, Slab City

Over on the Escapee Forums, someone asked what quirky museums RVers have visited in their travels across the USA.  In compiling my response, I realized we’ve started a bit of a video collection of some amazing inspired artists.

Join us for a little journey in reminiscing about some past adventures.

(If you’re reading this post on RSS or e-mail, you may not see the embedded videos for each attraction. To view them, simply click through to the original post).

City Museum – St. Louis, MO

Our original post after a visit to City Museum.

We visit St. Louis often in our travels as we have family there, but it’s also become one of my favorite cities to spend time in. And we’ve had more nomadic rendezvouses here than anywhere else. And we always take our visiting friends to the City Museum.

City Museum

The City Museum is no ordinary museum, however.  Sure, it is full of found things that are preserved. And it gets the City’ part of its name because the found things are entirely from within municipal St. Louis.  But that’s where the museum part ends.. because this is definitely a place where you don’t just look. You touch. You crawl. You slide. You climb.

This place is what you might imagine would happen if you gave Peter Pan a blow torch.

Here’s a video we produced on the City Museum:

Sadly, the artist behind this project – Bob Cassily, passed away last year in a freak bulldozer accident while working on his next major art project.

 

Cathedral of Junk – Austin, TX

I grew up in Austin – but didn’t discover this quirky place until just a couple years ago while we were in town for SXSW.  Starting with just a few hubcaps, Vince Hannemann has amassed an amazing cathedral of junk in his back yard.
You’ll know you’ve arrived to the Cathedral of Junk when you spot a car on the roof of a house, and obviously displeased neighbors displaying Keep off the Grass’ signs.
Here’s a video we produced of our visit to the Cathedral of Junk:

If you’re interested in visiting, be sure to visit the Facebook Page to see what the current status is.  This project has encountered a lot of local city ordinance problems and has been shut down on and off for the past couple of years.

Magic Gardens – Philadelphia, PA

As you wander throughout downtown Philadelphia, particularly around South Street, you’ll notice a lot of buildings decorated with broken mosiac murales.
These are the artwork of Isaiah Zagar, and you can tour his huge installation at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens at 1020 South Street.

Video of one of our visits:

Salvation Mountain – Slab City, CA

In 1967 Leonard Knight was inspired by a message. Decades later his ”small statement” has grown into a 150 foot wide by 50 foot high mountain, called Salvation Mountain, built out of adobe clay and buckets of paint just outside the no man’s land of Slab City, CA.

Salvation Mountain entered further into the pop culture mainstream when Leonard and the mountain were featured in Sean Penn’s 2007 Oscar-nominated movie Into the Wild (read our movie review), a dramatization of the true story of Chris McCandless, who spent time in Slab City on his nomadic journey towards his tragic death in Alaska.

Video of our visit with Leonard Knight:

Sadly, late last year Leonard was placed in a full time care facility – and the future and preservation of Salvation Mountain is in the hands of others.


What other epic art projects are there to explore in the USA?  We seriously need to continue this journey!

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Comments

  1. I enjoy learning from your comments about your nomadic experiences. It is interesting you started your journey with a truck and trailer, which seems would provide max road mobility along with minimal domestic features, and now have reversed the formula to a large bus and puling a small car. Do you have any particular blog where you weigh comparisons of the benefits and costs of both?

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  2. Roadside America has an app that lists some. Then there’s waymarking.com, which is run by is by the geocaching folks. I have a love hate relationship with that site as there are lots of duplicates…often on the same page. And it’s slow and cumbersome. That said, the site has helped me find lots of new things to see in San Diego where I have lived for nearly 50 years.

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  4. Cambridge, OH has a Paperweight Museum on the 22/I-77 interchange, behind the BP.

    There’s a Mustard Museum in Mt Horeb, WI.

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  5. LOVE these kind of spots. What a great round-up! I managed to explore City Museum when we passed thro’ St.Louis in 2010 and had so much fun climbing around and exploring w/ all the kids. The other spots are now added and ON the list!!
    Nina

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