Arts Agenda - Howard Finster, 1916-2001
His life story reads like an Old Testament parable: An uneducated man advanced in years gets a calling from God to spread the good word. Despite his lack of formal training or social prominence, the newly tapped prophet’s unusual take on the divine message leads to widespread exposure, an influx of followers and ultimately builds an empire. Howard Finster, the man who changed the way we see folk art, died Monday of heart failure. He was 84.
At the age of 60, the artist had a vision that altered the course of his life. Finster, who had held odd jobs as a carpenter, plumber and a traveling backwoods preacher, was fixing up an old bicycle when he received a calling from above to paint sacred art. On the spot Finster sketched out his first sacred painting using a dollar bill from his wallet.
That painting, of his childhood idol George Washington lifted to the realm of religious iconography, symbolizes the artist’s entire body of work. Finster routinely mixed the sacred with the profane in his art, pairing country music stars with biblical passages, warning sinners of a hell with “no cold Cokes.” His obsession with Elvis Presley is legendary; he even claimed a visit from the King’s ghost in the ’80s.
Fittingly, it was through pop music that Finster’s art reached the public eye, with his work appearing on the cover of Talking Heads’ Little Creatures album in 1985 and his Paradise Gardens showing up in R.E.M.’s 1989 video for “Radio Free Europe.”
Paradise Gardens, Finster’s sprawling cement-and-found-item shrine to sacred art, has made Summerville, Ga., a tourist destination and home to an annual Folk Arts Festival that draws visitors nationwide. The legacy of Finster’s art also has been picked up by his descendents, with his children and grandchildren turning out almost as many works as the prolific patriarch. Ailing for the past couple of years, the aged artist continued painting and kept up his Sunday appearances for visitors to Paradise Gardens.
The sheer accessibility of Finster’s art, making it popular with rock stars and religious pilgrims alike, may be the ultimate key to his success. His down-home take on low-brow subjects mixed with divine messages of upright living was an amazing triumph of the artist as everyman. Finster virtually defined the term “outsider art,” a movement that only arrived at the forefront of the art world thanks to his irony-free and delightfully unpretentious style. Though his artistic career spanned barely more than a quarter-century and came at the end of his already eventful life, Howard Finster enjoyed the rare phenomenon of seeing his vision grow into an industry that changed the world.
-- TRAY BUTLER
Services for Howard Finster will be held at 2 p.m. Wed., Oct. 24, at Erwin-Petitt Funeral Home, 12855 Highway 27, Summerville, Ga. 706-857-2481??