Follies

Cabot’s Pueblo Museum, Desert Hot Springs. Built to look like Hopi!

Topiary Garden, San Diego

Location Location Location

Where am I?
3,333.33 feet above sea level in Kingman, AZ.

UFO in Yucca, AZ. I bought an ice cream pop and asked the owner what he’d do if the original owners came back for it. He wittily retorted: “Unless they have a deed, it’s Intergalactic Court to settle the dispute!”

Windy in the middle of the Mojave

No direction home…

Photos by Rich Feldman

Truth or Consequences Photos by Isabel Winson-Sagan

Editor’s Note:

I think this is the most extensive piece of outsider art in T or C. We saw the artist at work in his open air studio down by the river. But he looked busy, and I was too shy to say hello.

Signage

Painted on the wall of a Colorado motel:

Wash your hands and say your prayers/ Jesus and germs are everywhere

At the cider factory: Violators will be crushed and destemmed

This little bug doesn’t mean anything in particular along the path…

And found in my purse, scribbled on a paper receipt, my monoku:

“in memory of my father eating only ice cream for lunch”

Robo Lights

In an ordinary neighborhood in Palm Springs…photos by my travel guide Richard Feldman, who is in himself an Atlas Obscura.

Christian Roadside

In our travels through the south, it would seem inevitable that we’d find some Christian outsider or roadside art. Paradoxically, it was the least welcoming.
Here is the Minister’s Tree House:

Presumably a house for spirit as well as flesh. (And looking like parts of the Mindfield). But unlike the friendly signage we were used to at such places, we found

And then, hilariously, four trespassers hurtling over the gate (looking like middle aged church goers instead of vandals).

We also stopped at Millennium Manor Castle, built as a fortress in the late 1930’s to survive Armageddon. Surprisingly, we found the current owners working on it, and were treated to a tour of the rather eerie underground spaces, now sporting a medieval theme.

The 14 room fortress has a two-car garage and a gazebo. And a throne for Jesus.

We also, later on the trip, saw Foam Henge, which is what it sounds like–and rather amusing. Back to the secular (Or Druidic) and friendly signage.

Dot’s Mini Museum, Vega, Texas

Boot Tree

Extremely Wild and Funky Outsider Roadside Art

by Floyd Johnson, outside of Cortez, Colorado.