They say he was an electrician...

I cannot say the man's name because I feel it would be a betrayal of confidence but I am going to write here the tale of a man who lived and died in Powhattan. It's not really fair for me to tell it at all because I never met him but I feel that he must have loved animals and Christmas very much. I heard about his place one day in critique. A student informed me after class that an artist who was living out in Powhattan had recently died and all of his sculptures lay strewn about his property. She showed me some pictures and I was sold. It looked like a childhood nightmare. I took my Polaroid, my medium format and a 35mm, I had no idea what to expect. I returned multiple times with a film camera, a holga and my pinhole. I still don't feel like I have one singular image that does it all justice. Some places are just meant to exist in our memories and the harder you try to capture these places the more futile your efforts become. Two sculpture students and I drove out there one evening and it must have been late in the fall because it was getting dark fairly early. We got lost and I was becoming agitated as usual with that chasing the sun feeling. Finally we arrived at the house, which was small and set back in a field with a few acres around it. The tiny brown a-framed house was almost cartoon-like in it's simplicity, with an equally cartoonish tree perched above, the only tree in the whole field. The scene looked like a miniature, and from it in every direction sprawled what must have been a hundred sculptures of various size and color. Most of the work was made out of wood and painted over with designs. There was a mixture of animals I recognized, along with some that haven't been created yet, and a few headless human forms around the side of the house. The bodies had mostly all fallen into the tall grass and sought release back into the earth. In my photographs, more so than in real time, this place resembles a forensic field. There were sharks, birds and tigers as well as goat like creatures and some things that may have been mythical beasts. Many of the animals had flattened bottle caps for eyes. I could tell by the way we all moved with a kind of reverence that we were experiencing something that would stay with us forever. We were really experiencing this mans life and art in the way that it was intended to exist. This more than anything makes me feel as though we can never experience art as it's meant to be when museum and gallery settings by their very nature put everything into a different context. We waded through this shrine for about fifteen minutes before the sun really began to set which was exactly enough time to do nothing. Accessing the situation I realized that this was visual overload. I would have to force myself to snap some quick picture and come back soon. They next time I returned with another photographer. I wanted to share this with someone else who would understand the pressure of trying to capture it all. This time we came during the day and quietly slipped inside through the front door. Once inside we stood in disbelief. If the outside was a shrine then the inside was an alter. Christmas decorations adorned the ceilings and every corner of the room. There was tinsel and garland and a plastic bag stapled to the wall with a plastic wall hanging inside that said "Merry Christmas". To the right of the door was a shelf with plastic cow and deer figurine's. They were placed among gravel and the green cellophane grass that fills the bottom of Easter baskets. I picked up a deer and put it in my pocket. It said $.99 on the bottom in marker. The only human form that seemed to survive with it's head was standing menacingly in the corner and we both jumped back from it's presence. It was taller than both of us, the size of a big man, and he was wearing a woman's nightdress. As we moved through the house things appeared even stranger. The next room was difficult to access because the rooms were already claustrophobic and in the center somehow the floor had heaved upwards as if the house were trying to erupt. The carpet was a golden 70's mustard color and the walls were covered with pictures of animals and fashion models. The pages had been taken from magazines and taped to the walls. Some of them had fabric stapled around the corners. There were mini alters, Christmas lights and images that reminded me of Harri Krishna. It was hard to stand in the middle room without feeling like you were going to be attacked at any moment by a giant creature from under the rug. I found a porno magazine from the 80's in the bedroom. Someone had carefully drawn clothing onto the naked women. I thought about Henry Darger and what they said it looked like in his apartment when he died and they uncovered his manuscripts. Out back there were sheds and woods behind a trailer that was locked and rivaled the house in size. I walked down the trail into these woods toward a yellow refrigerator that was lying on it's side. I wanted a shot of the back of the house through these trees. I was trying to remember if I'd ever seen anything so beautiful and terrifying at the same time. You see it sometimes in movies but how often do you actually physically feel those emotions as a result of something that is not a mediated experience? In the woods I found a giant Santa Clause reclined in a makeshift sled with his mouth gaping eternally towards the sky. I walked back to the car to get another roll of film.