"When Christ called his disciples

October 22, 2001 11:45 PM

"When Christ called his disciples called fishermen, he didn't call nobody from a qualified university," R.I.P. Rev. Howard Finster. Which is your favorite Finster cover art? Mine would have to be R.E.M.'s "Reckoning".
posted by likorish (14 comments total)

I apologize in advance for the rather incoherent commentary. Blame it on a rapidly deteriorating sense of language caused by sinus medication. Pxbblbvh blargh.
posted by likorish at 11:47 PM on October 22, 2001

Wow. I like the "Einstein".

I can't believe I missed the chance to see Paradise Gardens when traveling across America last fall.

Thanks for the link.
posted by Dick Paris at 12:49 AM on October 23, 2001

Argh! I am struggling for something to say here. I knew him personally for a short while when I was 10 years old. We lived not far from the Paradise Gardens. I often went there during the summer alone. I rode my bike. I guess with all of the talk here about religion, the best I can come up with at the moment is that he was the type of person that made it seem worth while. *whimper*
posted by Blacktooth at 2:33 AM on October 23, 2001

Maybe my signed litho will be worth something now. Meanwhile, GA and the South slip further into decline.
posted by wfrgms at 5:39 AM on October 23, 2001

like south carolina is doing much better, wfrgms.

finster's hometown is still worth the trip, as is most of highway 27 through north georgia. it kind of snakes down the northwest spine of georgia, cutting through lafayette, summerville, rome and lagrange.

personally, i don't see the south on a decline. what i do see is this public stream of idiots, the bob barrs, the bill campbells, these fools that show up on the national radar and make us all look like hayseeds and crooks.
posted by grabbingsand at 6:40 AM on October 23, 2001

I saw an installation of his work at the High Museum in Atlanta. Neat and interesting stuff.

With a lot of folk art, people feel compelled to say, "I could do that." But I don't think I could have done what Howard Finster did.
posted by jennyb at 6:43 AM on October 23, 2001

I got a chance to meet Rev. Finster last summer, when some friends and I tripped up from Atlanta one Sunday--the one day he still frequented Paradise Garden. The place is in sad decline these days, but the money you pay for admission is supposed to pay for preservation after ohh so many years of neglect (while his children squabbled over his legacy). I hope that this project can carry forward, for it is a much better memorial for him than anything installed in the High--amazing folk art in its natural environment.

Upon reading this news yesterday, I took out the pictures I had from my visit there, and they brought a smile to my face. I sure Howard is smiling somewhere right now.
posted by trox at 6:57 AM on October 23, 2001

Finster's art always intrigued me. So simple on the surface, but once you truly look at it - amazing. I second likorish's vote for Reckoning. It's one of those covers that really needs the album format versus the smaller CD format.

R.E.M. geeks like me will also note that Finster appeared in the video for "Radio Free Europe". The video takes place in Finster's chimera-like Paradise Gardens.
posted by hijinx at 6:59 AM on October 23, 2001

growing up southern and a road trip away from athens, i remember the impact and validation finster's work gave to traditional and naive artforms. it was a huge respite from accusations of "culturelessness" we heard so much from traditional art criticism channels. along with hatch show print, his work helped spawn a new generation of southern artists who are actually *proud* of their heritage. a favorite is yeehaw industries, owned and operated in knoxville TN by an old college bud.
posted by patricking at 7:49 AM on October 23, 2001

A gardent can be like "a lion in its foreparts, a goat in the middle, and a serpent in its hindparts, and that from its mouth it vomited flames"?
posted by websavvy at 7:49 AM on October 23, 2001

Or garden.
posted by websavvy at 7:59 AM on October 23, 2001

I posted a long, rambling comment about the Reverend Howard Finster on my site last night, and I guess I'm gonna post another here because I'm still sorta sad. He was really special to me. I went to Paradise Gardens the first time about twelve or thirteen years ago when I was still in high school. It was simply amazing. My friend David and I went several times. We even contributed art to Paradise Gardens, as all were welcome to do. I think that Paradise Gardens and Finster help to explain why both he and I and others from our social group in school weren't happy to just do the ordinary thing.

Howard was a true Southerner, his was the last generation to have a truly Southern culture. Yet he, along with folks like Truman Capote, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Michael Stipe made me realize that it was possible to be a Southerner and an artist, an eccentric. In the 80s, Paradise Gardens was still a free for all, you could just show up and poke around, climb all over the statuary and rusted out bicycle sculpture (I wish there was some way to describe it without seeing it, but I find it impossible, it was *that* unique). It was just this beutiful chaos, and it meant the world to me. when it was fenced in it broke my heart, even though it was still a very special place. I've got a few Finsters at home, and even though I look at them every day, I had forgotten how much Finster and his art meant to me. When I heard he died yesterday, it took me all the way back from San Francisco to my bedroom as a junior high school kid in Alabama, staring at the cover of Reckoning, watching old REM videos, and realizing that the world was a big old place full of crazy, beautiful things. Ionly met him twice, but he played a very large role in my life.

Finster woke me up, and I'm *really* going to miss the man.
posted by emptyage at 9:28 AM on October 23, 2001

He also did the cover for Talking Heads’ Little Creatures.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:00 AM on October 23, 2001

Although I would vote for Little Creatures as my favorite I just wanted to point out Rev. Finster's last album cover (I think) before his death from one of my new favorite artists Pierce Pettis.
posted by tdstone at 6:07 PM on October 23, 2001