SALVATION MOUNTAIN
From Niland, California, a short trip off the main road in the direction of the Chocolate Mountains, Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain is a pleasant surprise in an otherwise fairly ordinary stretch of desert. I had heard about Mr. Knight’s creation and had expected not to be impressed. I expected to meet a desert kook who would quiz me on the condition of my soul. Wrong! Mr. Knight is a gentle folk artist committed to creating a huge sculptural happening in an out-of-the-way wasteland that very few people will take the time to visit. Midmorning on the day of my visit, I found him asleep on an old piece of foam. He had begun painting early and had grown tired.

Mr. Knight’s glaring message is simply that God is Love. He obviously believes God loves everybody. Nobody is left out.
At the end of a brown ridge northeast of town, Salvation Mountain rises out of a stark landscape, and in spite of the vast difference in setting from urban Barcelona, I thought immediately of the work of Antonio Gaudi. It also makes me think of Grandma Moses. Picasso would have been fascinated, and maybe even a little jealous. Leonard Knight’s medium is mud and straw, adobe baked in the sun, and house paint. He says he has probably used over a hundred thousand gallons of paint since he began in the mid-1980s. Most of the paint was donated. There are other donated objects as well, all of them painted by Mr. Knight. A truck where he lives is covered with the messages of love.

I expected an admission cost. Wrong again...not even a “suggested donation” box. And he didn’t ask for money.I’ll confess that I had put a five-dollar-bill in my front pocket so I could pretend it was what I had and could easily get to it without having to go to my wallet. I went to my wallet for a twenty.

Mr. Knight on the left is explaining his work to my friend Richard.