The Curious Case of the Notebook from State Lunatic Asylum No.3

Drawings, found in the hundreds, every page hand-bound, every artwork a labour of love. Why was it found in a dumpster in Springfield, Missouri, by a teenager who pulled it out in 1970? For decades, the only clue to its origins was a water mark: “Missouri State ‘Lunatic Asylum’ No. 3.” These drawings weren’t an…

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That Rock and Roll Baptist Preacher Who Turned out to Be an Artistic Genius

They just don’t make ’em like the Reverend anymore. The Elvis-loving, banjo plucking, gecko-wearing Howard Finster was one of the 21st century’s most inimitable, yet misunderstood Outsider Artists— a mere novelty for art critics, who wrote him off as a mad preacher with a paintbrush, and a man to be avoided by prying neighbours in…

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The Asylum That Gave Lou Reed Electroshock Therapy Is Also an Unforgettable Art Museum

“Excuse me!” says a man by a snowed-in dumpster. “Excuse me,” he continues, in a teleprompted tone, “Where are you, excuse me, goodnight!” It’s 2pm at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. I tell him I’m lost, and pull out a map of the 300 acres where he is a patient, and where I’m late…

These are the Real-Life Gardens of Earthly Delights

These are also the places that will confuse the heck out of aliens if they ever do land on this planet. From the forests of Finland to the subtropical mountains of Mexico, we’ve come across some many magical gardens over the years and thought it was about time to put them in one place… The…

Are we looking at a Madman’s Doodles or Messages from another World?

By the time he was out of primary school, Augustin Lesage was sent to work deep in the coal mines of France, which to be fair, would probably be enough to render anyone mad. In 1911, when he was 35 years-old, Lesage claimed he heard a voice speak to him in the darkness of the…

Hidden in Henry’s Room: The Secret Life of a Janitor

Here’s one that slipped past my radar: only the greatest self-taught artist of the 20th century whose work was not discovered until his landlords were cleaning out his room upon his death in 1973. No one had known that hidden behind the door of his single-room apartment at 851 Webster Ave in Chicago, the penniless…

The Mountain Wizard of Woodstock

What happens when you put Rip Van Winkle, Robin Hood and Paul Bunyan in a blender? You get Clarence Schmidt, the iconic outsider artist who spent a lifetime building an eccentric folk art kingdom on a mountaintop in Woodstock… Schmidt was originally from Queens, but he split for the country when he inherited five acres of…

Legend of the Button King

The secret life of Dalton Stevens was born in the quiet of 2:00 am, in the even quieter town of Bishopville, South Carolina. (Population = more or less 3,000.) Stevens, then 53, had recently developed insomnia. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do,” he said. Then he picked up a button. He started bedazzling an old jumpsuit…

For Sale: Spacious Hand-Carved Cave Cathedral

Here’s something you won’t find on Craigslist. Hidden beneath the desert of Northern New Mexico, hand-sculpted from the sandstone cliffs, an etherial cave network built by a single man, is up for sale. Armed with not much more than a pick axe and a wheelbarrow, a sixty seven year-old sculptor and off-the-grid visionary artist, Ra…

The Amazing, the Inexplicable, Orange Show in Texas

Roadside America is filled with unique oddities from giant balls of twine to extravagant kitschy Mexican rest-stops. Each of these unique places were a labor of love, making something impossible somehow possible. One of the most eccentric of these Americana road-stops is simply a living shrine to the orange. The Orange Show in Houston, Texas, is a fantastical collection of…