Ga. county buys late folk artist's Paradise Garden

ATLANTA — A northwest Georgia county has bought the garden where the late folk artist Howard Finster held court for tourists and art lovers from around the world.

Chattooga County, where Paradise Garden has been based since Finster began building it in 1961, used donations and grant money to buy the small plot for $125,000, said Jordan Poole, executive director with the Paradise Garden Foundation. The foundation will continue to work on restoring the quirky garden, which was featured in a 1983 R.E.M. video.

Finster, a bicycle repairman and preacher who turned to art to spread God's word, has long been considered the grandfather of the American folk art movement. He filled the garden, located about 100 miles northwest of Atlanta, with primitive mosaics, sculptures and buildings. It was the setting for numerous weddings that Finster presided over.

The garden fell into disrepair after his death in 2001. The county's ownership will protect it from ever being closed down, Poole said Wednesday.

"It means Paradise Garden is still owned by an entity — it can't be snatched up by a private investor who goes in there and starts removing everything," Poole said.

The county bought the four-acre plot in late December after receiving news it had won an Appalachian Regional Commission grant, said the county's sole commissioner, Jason Winters. The county is in a much better position to apply for grants to help restore the crumbling structures in the garden than the nonprofit that bought the property from Finster's family, he said.

Winters said he hopes to create a tourism economy around the garden, which drew more than 2,000 visitors last year with no marketing. The county will lease the garden to Poole's foundation, which will be in charge of maintaining and restoring the property, Winters said.

"Finster was a citizen of Chattooga County first, and he was proud of his home and we need to be proud of him," Winters said.

So far, volunteers have helped shore up the tier wedding cake-like World's Folk Art Church and put on a new roof with money raised by auctioning off art from the garden. Volunteers also help guide tours of the garden for visitors who show up on its doorstep.

The foundation has also revived FinsterFest, a folk art festival that Finster held every year in the garden to help promote hundreds of unknown artists.

"It's exactly what my father would have wanted," Beverly Finster said Wednesday night.