Finster’s Finest Work May Fall into Ruin
Despite all its faults, there is a wonderful tradition in the South of celebrating its eccentrics and reveling in its oddities. For that reason, I knew about folk artist Howard Finster long before the Little Creatures album cover he created for Talking Heads brought him into the public eye. He was the best-kept open secret in the Southern art and culture underground of the late ’70s and early ’80s — a kind-hearted fundamentalist preacher turned folk artist, sort of Jean-Michel Basquiat in overalls — and even as we lauded Mr. Finster’s “discovery” when it occurred, we were also rueful and felt we were losing a weird native son. Howard Finster didn’t care one way or another. He simply obeyed God and kept turning out art.
Today a troubling story in the New York Times (including a delightful slide show) tells of the tension between Chicago art dealer David Leonardis, who has been restoring the Howard Finster Vision House, and Rev. Tommy Littleton, a preacher and real estate investor from Birmingham, Alabama, whose nonprofit group is dragging its feet as Mr. Finster’s World’s Folk Art Church is falling into disrepair. Because I am suspicious of any real estate-selling preacher, I smell a rat; but the real shame is we may be losing a Southern treasure while people harangue about raising money to save it.
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