Giovanni Cammarata, La Casa del Cavaliere / The House of The Knight

picture of the facade ((2007)

Located in the city of Messina, on the isle of Sicily,  La Casa del Cavaliere has been one of Italy's outstanding art environments. Unfortunately a large part of the site has been demolished because of the construction of a parking lot. Only the facade of this once so wonderful art environment has been left.

Life and works

Giovanni Cammarata (1914-2002) after his primary education became a mason. He had to join the military during WWII and then in 1947 he settled in Messina, where he began a business in the production of garden ornaments made from concrete.

His company was located in Maregrosso, an industrial area of Messina along the sea front, but without the allure one would expect of such a location at the seaside.

In 1957 Cammarata decided to add an artistic element to his daily activities by making ornaments decorated with mosaic and shells. This was the beginning of a lifelong creative activity, which in the 1970s became his full time job.

Eventually Cammarata's efforts would result in a house and a garden completely covered with mosaic and fully decorated with sculptures and ornaments.

this picture and the next one (March 2012, Flickr) 
courtesy of Antonello Mangano 

The exterior wall along the street had high reliefs which depicted all kinds of historical scenes, such as Hannibal crossing the Alps, Egyptian scenes and fighting knights.

There was a garden at the interior which included a variety of mosaics and a lot of sculptures impersonating personalities from fairies such as Snow White and movies such as Laurel & Hardy and King Kong.

Decay of the creation

After Giovanni Cammarata died in 2002, the site gradually was vandalized and many objects were stolen.

As a protest against further decay and demolition, in 2007 a local manifestation was organised.

video (3'19") on YouTube about cleaning the site in 2007,

Gabriel Savesta singing, video made by "Machine Works"  

A group of artists and friends of the site campaigned to preserve Cammarata's art environment. The issue was that the grounds of and around the site in the context of local planning had been indicated to become a parking place for a shopping mall.

However, in 2007 Messina's authorities decided in favor of the demolition of the garden in order to make space for that parking.

Currently only the part of the site which was located on public territory has been preserved, namely mainly the facade of the structure, separated from the street by a fence.

Meanwhile (2021) the site is surrounded by a concrete wall to prevent further vandalism. This also in anticipation of plans to renovate what remains of Cammarata's creation.

In recent years interest in and appreciation of this ever so unique art environment has greatly increased. And the parking lot still is just what it was meant to be: an ordinary parking lot.

Documentation/more pictures

* Facebook page Zonacammarata

* Article on SPACES website

* The online edition of the Osservatorio Outsider Art, nr 4, March 2012 has articles about the site by Gabriele Mina and Pier Paolo Zampieri (in Italian, pictures of the artwork, but also of the situation of the remainder of the site in the midst of the commercial area. Must see!)

* Antonello Manzano, set of pictures (2012) on Flickr

* Cammarata's creation is discussed in the context of other Sicilian sites in a lecture by Eva di Stefano for the 2013 general meeting of the European Outsider Art Association on the topic "Who owns outsider art?" (reprint in OEE texts)

Videos
* This video by Glifo Edzioni (1'27", YouTube, uploaded June 2014) gives a good impression of the exterior wall, filmed through the protecting fence.

* On the video below (YouTube, 2019) Pier Paolo Zampieri gives a public lecture about the site (in Italian, with very interesting aerial photos of the site)

Expositions

*  From 18/4-12/5 2012 an exposition in Palermo by Galleria X of pictures made in 1989 by Alberto Ferrero

* From 30/9-14/10 2012 these pictures in an exposition at the Museo Carlo Bilotti in Rome and from 8/2-2/3 2013 in Rizomi Art Brut Gallery, Turin

first published December 2008, last revised April 2021

Giovanni Cammarata

la Casa del Cavaliere
Via Maregrosso 20 98100 
Messina, Sicily, Italy 
remnants can be seen from the street

Rémy Callot, Palisade avec frescoes / Enclosure with frescoes

this picture and the next three (2010) courtesy of Sophie Lepetit 
from her weblog

This art environment was a hidden treasure until it was discovered after its author had died and the city wanted to demolish house and garden to construct a roundabout.

Life and works

Rémy Callot (1926-2001) lived in the industrious community of Carvin in the north of France, where he had an administrative function at the office of a mining company.

Due to an accident in his youth he had lost his left forearm, but this didn't stop him making paintings and mosaics as a self-taught artist. 

When Callot in 1966 moved into a house, actually a kind of barrack, with a plot of land of some 400 m² at the rue Michel Montaigne in Carvin, he surrounded the site with a palisade and then, in the late 1980s, when retired, he began decorating the enclosure with colorful frescoes and mosaics.

It took him various years to complete this project, which resulted in 19 decorated panels with a total surface of 56 m².

After Callot died in 2001 his house remained uninhabited and his art environment remained unnoticed.

However, this changed in 2006, when the city had developed plans for a new layout of the street to make a roundabout (or maybe a parking). At the moment the house had to be removed, the frescoes were discovered. The authorities made the wise decision to postpone the public works and preserve the artwork.

The city's cultural center, Centre Jean Eiffel, was actively involved in this decision.

Future of the site

Currently the frescoes are on display on the enclosure walls of Callot's plot. Kind of an open air exhibition.

The Cercle des amis de Rémy Callot, established in November 2008, started a discussion to generate ideas about the future of the site. Maybe it could become kind of a musée jardin, an open air museum.

It would take time to develop plans, but end November 2013 the newspaper Voix du Nord reported that a plan had been made to transform the site into an artist's residence with a workshop, annex to a room for conferences, an exposition room and a café. Now funds have to be acquired.

Expositions 2011 and 2018 

In September 2011 the Centre Jean Eiffel in Carvin had a first exposition of Callot's ceramics, entitled Les mondes de Rémy Callot (Rémy Callot's worlds).

picture courtesy of Center Jean Eiffel

It turns out that some two hundred ceramic creations were part of his legacy which was donated to the city by the family. This collection, mostly in a rather good condition, gives a good impression of Callot's artistic potential.

Pictures of exposed ceramics on the FB-page of the Cercle des Amis de Rémy Callot (Group of Friends).

In January 2018 another exposition was held, showing -often for the first time- drawings and ceramics by Callot (jan 12-feb 21, 2018, l'Atelier Média, Place de la Gare, Carvin)

Renovation of some mosaics and the area around the site

In March 2020 it was announced that the city will enhance the area around the site, which will become a Rémy Callot Square, by transforming it into a public square, enhanced by adding vegetation and installing benches and tables. The project includes the restoration of mosaics that were badly damaged during the last two winters.

Documentation/more pictures
* Website of the association of friends
* Véronique Moulinié, Comment naissent les œuvres des singuliers? (How is the artwork of singular artists born?). A propos de quelques sites dans le Nord-Pas-de-Calais et ailleurs, in Heinich, Nathalie et Shapiro, R. (Eds), De l’artification. Enquêtes sur le passage à l’art, Paris (Eds de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, EHESS, Collection Cas de figure), 2012. pp 63-79.
This study (for a large part available on Google Books) describes the way Callot's creation was discovered and how various actors in the public domain dealt with the artist and the artworks.

The author compares these developments with those around the discovery of the artworks created by Jean Smilowski who lived in the city of Lille, also located in northern France:

* L'inventaire général du patrimoine culturel, Région Hauts-de-France (Official inventory of french cultural heritage)
* Series of pictures on the city's Flickr page 

* Elodie Guillaume, La conservation des mosaïques de Rémy Callot, un habitant paysagiste.(Dissertation in contemporary art history, University Lille III Charles De Gaulle, 2005)

* Tiphaine Kempka, La découverte du jardin secret de Rémy Callot, in: d'Étonnants jardins en Nord-Pas de Calais, Lyn (Ed. Lieux-dits), 2015. pp. 32-35

* The internet has a dynamic representation by Typhaine Kempka of the plan of the Fondation Callot

* Website Habitants-paysagistes (by Lille Art Museum from march 2018 on) has a variety of pictures from their own archives

* Article about the site by Sonia Terhzaz on her website Cartographie des Rocamberlus (environments d'art singulier), reporting the visit she paid in June 2021

first published December 2008, last revised April 2023

Rémy Callot

Palisade with mosaics
Carvin, dept Pas de Calais, region Hauts-de-France,  France

on the corner of the rue de la Gare and the rue Michel Montaigne 
mosaics can be seen from the street

Frédéric Séron, Jardin de sculptures / Sculpture garden

pictures are screenshots from a 1954 tv program 
(see documentation)

In the 1950s in artistic circles in France, especially among the surrealists, interest arose in creations made by art brut artists as they were labelled these days.

Frédéric Séron (1878-1959) was one of them.

Life and works

Séron, a baker by profession,  lived in the small community of le Pressoir-Prompt, Essonne, south of Paris.

In his dreams he saw images that he wanted to reproduce in reality, so he began making sculptures which he displayed in the garden in front of his house.

The story goes that he put newspapers and other documents inside these sculptures "to give them a soul".

All together Séron made some 90 sculptures, depicting a variety of animals (such as a giraffe, a lion, a swan...) and people (such as young ladies dancing or blowing a horn ....).

In 1958 André Breton and Jean Cocteau  paid him visits (cf le Poignard Subtil, 14-11-2009) and Gilles Ehrmann portrayed him in his famous photo-book Les inspirés et leurs demeures (1960)

Séron also made paintings in a naive style.

It's not clear what happened with his paintings after his death. Although there has been some vandalizing, a number of the sculptures still are present in front of the house (see streetview in the location data, below).

Documentation
* Weblog Art-Maniac (in french) has a number of pictures by Gilles Ehrmann.
* In his weblog le Poignard Subtil Bruno Montpied has a variety of referrals to Séron, included references to a number of articles about Séron published in the 1950s

* Article (2018) by Jo Farb Hernández on website SPACES Archive

* Article (2024) by Sonia Terhzaz on Facebook, with both older and more recent photos

Frédéric Séron

Sculpture garden
(formerly) le Pressoir-Prompt, France
(currently) 140 boulevard John Kennedy
Moulin-Galant, municipality of Corbeil-Essonnes, dept Essonnes, region Île de France, France

streetview 2018

Jean-Pierre Schetz, Un coin au soleil / A corner in the sun

picture by MAD musée, Liège

Life and works

Jean-Pierre Schetz (1921-1986) was born in Reppel in the Limbourg area of Belgium. His family moved in the 1920s to Liège, one of Belgium's big cities, located in the north-east of the country.

After his primary education Schetz got a job as a mason in the road department of the city. Married in 1952, after some years the couple got a house in a newly built quarter of Liège named Jupille. A brand new house in a brand new street and a lot of stonework all around....
.
Schetz who apparently did not like the absence of greenery in the new urban development, provided the front of his house with a layer of soil and began creating a garden, which he named Un coin au soleil (A corner in the sun).

Gradually the garden was transformed into an art environment with sculptures and colored ornaments, all composed of objets trouvés and recycled materials. Schetz has been active in embellishing the site for over twenty years.

He died in 1986 while working in the garden. His wife continued to care for the site.

The site has been demolished

When she passed away in 2006 there was no one to replace her in taking care of the garden.

The house was rented and the housing corporation, a social institution, demolished the garden the same year. Only some elements could be saved thanks to some private persons, among whom a nephew who lived in another part of the country. Some small sculptures ended up in the collection of the private museum La Fabuloserie in France.

In 2007, from September 15 - November 17 the MAD museum (Musée d'art differencié) in Liège had an exhibition in honor of Jean-Pierre Schetz, curated by Brigitte van den Bossche.

Schetz' creations in La Fabuloserie

picture (2014) courtesy of Raija Kallioinen

Documentation

* Article in Bruno Montpied's weblog Le poignard subtil, September 2007

* During the demolition of the garden the C-paje organisation in Liège made a video (13'06", Daily motion, June 2007). The video is also available on YouTube.

first published December 2008, last revised October 2018

Jean-Pierre Schetz

Un coin au soleil

(formerly) Jupille, Belgium

site demolished in 2007

René Escaffre, Jardin de sculptures / Sculpture garden

pictures courtesy of "Foyer de Roumens"

Escaffre's art environment -a classic in France-  portrays the French countryside as many people remember it nostalgically.

Life and works

The fifth in a generation of local masons, René Escaffre (1921-2008) from the small community of Roumens (Haute Garonne, France) when retired at age sixty began making sculptures, using modeled iron frames he covered with layers of concrete and painted in bright colors.

All creations were located in the garden in front of his house.

Escaffre made sculptures of people and animals, depicting scenes from daily life in the countryside as it was in the first half of the 20th century: farmers leaving for the market, children playing, artisans doing their jobs.

He portrayed la campagne in France as we imagine it and with melancholy remember as the good old days.......

After René Escaffre passed away in 2008, the sixth generation of the masons company (René´s son) handles the maintenance of the sculpture garden. 

Documentation

* Website Habitants-paysagistes (by Lille Art Museum from March 2018 on) has a series of pictures by Francis David (1989, 1990) and documentary panels by René Escard (1984-2008)

* Weblog de l´art improbable aux jardins insolites dans l´Aude et les environs (nov 2013)

* Weblog les grisgris de Sophie (September 2014)

* Article by Sonia Terhzaz on her website Cartographie des Rocamberlus (environnements d'art singulier) with an account of her visit to the site in August 2021.

Video

* Fragment on the South-France video by Serflac (1.37.01-1.38.39, YouTube, cannot be embedded here)

first published December 2008, last revised April 2023

René Escaffre

Sculpture garden

Roumens, dept Haute Garonne region Occitanie, France

can be seen from the street

Theo Wiesen, Totem-like wooden structures

picture from the website of the collection l´Aracine

Born in the rather small community of Welchenhausen in the Eiffel area (Germany), Theo Wiesen (1906-1999) at a young age lost his parents. With the remaining members of the family he moved to Grüfflingen, a community in the German speaking part of Belgium. As an adult he first had there a job as a carpenter and then, from 1939 on, he exploited a saw-mill.

Once retired, in the 1960s, Wiesen began making paintings and carving wood.

He has become known for his totem-like depictions of persons and animals, creations he around 1972 began to display on the premises of the house were he lived.

Some of these creations were displayed amidst surrounding trees, as in the pictures below, other wooden structures were joined together, forming a fence of about 12 meters.

pictures from weblog donews (not available anymore) 
collection of the Lille Art Museum

Theo Wiesen's totem-like structures no longer can be seen in situ.  Most (smaller) works have been absorbed into the french Collection l´Aracine, when Wiesen could no longer take care of  them,

In its turn, the Aracine collection has been donated to the LaM, the Lille Art Museum, located in Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.

Wiesen's creations as exhibited in the LaM
picture courtesy of Richard Bennaars

;

A selection of Theo Wiesen's creations has been included in the museum's permanent exposition, housed in a new annex to the museum, opened late 2010 (The museum's collection includes some seventy works by Wiesen).

The authorities of Welchenhausen paid tribute to Wiesen by renaming the central square of the community as Theodor-Wiesen-Platz.

Documentation
* Website of l'Aracine
* Website Habitant-paysagistes (by Lille Art Museum from March 2018 on) has an entry about Theo Wiesen with a number of pictures of the former garden (from the documentation of l'Aracine)

first published December 2008, last revised March 2018

Theo Wiesen
Wooden structures
(originally) Grüfflingen, Belgium
site doesn't exist anymore
wooden structures were saved
and are currently in the Lille Art Museum

Abbé Fouré, Les rochers sculptés / The sculpted rocks

postcard, from my collection

Located in Rothéneuf, on the coastal road that runs from St. Malo to Cancalé in Brittany, France, the site Les rochers sculptés is a well known classic.

This art environment was created by Adolphe-Julien Fouré (1839-1910), who was a priest and generally is known as Abbé Fouré.

Life and works

Born in Saint-Thual,  Fouré as a young man studied at some seminaries, was ordained as a priest in 1863 and worked in a number of communities in Brittany, among other in Paimpont where he was rector for some years..

In october 1893, in his fifties, he settled in the small community of Rothéneuf, on the north coast of Brittany, not far from St Malo, where he rented a simple cabin.

The legend says that he, after a stroke which made him deaf-mute, no longer could fulfill his clerical duties and so decided to retire as a priest. Recent research by the Association of friends however demonstrates that Fouré was relieved from his duties by his superiors and had to leave after they did not appreciate a firm position the priest had taken in a local conflict.

In 1894 Fouré began making sculptures, both creations from stone, displayed on the exterior facade of the cabin and wooden creations, displayed in its courtyard and interior.

postcard showing the facade

So his house became kind of a museum and since in the region tourism had begun to develop, the site attracted tourists.

wooden sculptures inside the house, the "Grande Galerie"

Fouré became known as the hermit of Rothéneuf, although one can wonder if he led a lonely life.

He would be present at the premises, selling postcards which showed him and his creations. The revenue went to the local poor. During the priest's lifetime some 400 different postcards have been made.

postcard, from my collection

Currently the priest is mostly known because of the around three hundred sculptures he carved into the rocks along Rothéneuf's coast.

These sculptures represent folklorist, religious and historical themes, for example the Virgin Mary with nations at her feet, or impersonations of all kind of people related to the past of Brittany (among whom, but not exclusively -as legend says- a family that in the 16th century happened to live in that area and had a reputation of bandits behavior and piracy).

signature of the Abbé on a postcard, my collection
it shows he used to write his name as Fouré, 
although his original family name was Fouéré

Abbé Fouré stopped carving rocks in 1907, but he continued making wooden sculptures until his death on February 10, 1910.

Auction of Fouré's belongings

After he died his belongings were auctioned. The furniture was bought by various people and some items of this furniture nowadays are still available in art galleries. The wooden sculptures did not attract so much interest. Most items have been bought en bloc by the owner of the cabin, who had the purpose to let them stay in situ.

Fouré posing in his museum

However, the cabin/museum has disappeared, and so have almost all wooden sculptures¹. This probably happened in the period during world war II (around 1944?) when the French north-west coast was a military zone (to prevent an eventual allied invasion) where the civilian population was deployed.

Currently the sculptures in the rocks still exist, but the site hasn't a protected status and the creations gradually become affected by the weather and the visitors. Originally painted, meanwhile they have lost all color.

Livre d'or

The Abbé kept kind of a guest book in which visitors or he himself could write remarks and/or make drawings. This Livre d'or (golden book) was donated by the family to the Association of friends of the oeuvre of Abbé Fouré.

Here is a picture of the book's cover, from a series made available by the Association of friends for publication on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

More pictures on the weblog lesgrigrisdesophie of February 4, 2012.

An association of friends

Presided by Joëlle Jouneau the association Les amis de l'oeuvre de l'Abbé Fouré, founded in 2010, documents Fouré's life and works, organizes expositions and meetings, and promotes the preservation of the site. They have a website (in French).

In the summer of 2013 Joëlle Jouneau was interviewed about the activities of the association. The text of this interview is in my collection of OEE-texts.

Exposition in Paimpont in 2012

In February and March 2012 the association of friends organized an exposition in Paimpont, Brittany, entitled Life and works of Abbé Fouré. 

Paimpont is special in Fouré's life. After in 1863 he was ordained as a priest, he became in 1865 the chaplain of the Chapel of St Eloi des Forges in this community, which is located in the Brocéliande area, known for the forges (furnaces) that at that time for some 200 years had been producing cast iron.

But in the 1860s economic tide had become unfavorable for the exploitation of these forges and the owners decided to gradually close them. Legend says that Fouré traveled to England, where the owners resided, to advocate the survival of the furnaces, but this story probably is apocryphal. 

Publication of a booklet about Fouré in May 2013

By means of crowdfunding the Association collected money to publish a booklet about Fouré. Written by Joëlle Jouneau and entitled l'Ermite de Rothéneuf, this publication (published in May 2013) offers a biography and a description and assessment, based on the latest insights, of his creative and other activities.

Fouré's life and work for long time have been surrounded by frills and legends. Only lately an attempt is made to figure out the truth and this book contributes to this.

Just some examples:
* it has been related that Fouré, when he was the rector of Paimpont, traveled to England to ask the owners of the local forges to refrain from the phased closure of these forges (cf Noguette, 1919); recent research in English archives up to now has not confirmed this;
* it also has been related, that Fouré in 1893 had to terminate his activities as a priest because he had become deaf and suffered from a stroke; in this respect the archives reveal that the priest in a local dispute took position against the authorities, after which he was dismissed from his office by the leadership of the church.

The booklet also has a review, as accurate as possible given the available knowledge, of Fouré's creations, both the ones in and around his house and the ones carved in the rocks. Since there still are many questions, this is an ongoing project.

The booklet, 12 x 17.5 cm, 64 pages, richly illustrated with old postcards, can be ordered at Librairie La Procure,

the interpretation center

Opening of an interpretation center (2021)

After ten years of preparation, the association of friends of Fouré opened a Centre d'Interprétation de l'Ermite de Rothéneuf on 9 July 2021. Located in Saint Malo, this center can organize exhibitions and conferences, and can arrange walks and virtual tours on the sculpted rocks.

The center has a page on Facebook.

Documentation

Stories from former times
* Noguette, La vie de l'Ermite de Rothéneuf, St. Malo, 1919. This brochure by Eugène Herpin, 1850-1942, has been republished on Bruno Montpied's weblog. A translation into english in OEE texts.
* Another early 20th century text is R. Brooks Popham, The hermit of Rothéneuf, 1912, also republished in OEE texts.
* Also from the early 20th century, first published in 1919, republished in 2010 the Guide du Musée describing the wooden sculptures. This new edition has an introduction by Bruno Montpied and is illustrated with items from the author's collection of rather rare old postcards that show these sculptures. The document is published in the very first edition of the new French art periodical l'Or aux 13 isles

Websites
* Article on SPACES website, with pictures (made in 1988) by Seymour Rosen
* Website of the Association of Friends
* Website Habitants-paysagistes (Lille Art Museum, from march 2018 on) has an entry with a variety of pictures by Francis David (1983-1991) and l'Aracine ((1900-1945) and documentary panels from René Escard's documentation)

* Article by Sonia Terhzaz, reporting the visit she paid to the site in 2014, on her website Cartographie  des Rocamberlus 

Video's/movies
* Jarvis Cocker's Journeys into the Outside (1999, on YouTube in 2012, see my post of august 23, 2012)

* Trailer on YouTube of Frédéric Daudier's film l'Homme de granit (2002, 52 min, Arcanae Productions (can be ordered on DVD).

More pictures
* Some panoramic postcards on Jean-Michel Chesné's weblog (19-1-2011)  These special pictures can be enlarged and give a good impression of  the vastness of the site.

* On Facebook a large series of pictures of Abbe Fouré's creations collected by Françoise Genty 

Expositions

* Life and work of Abbé Fouré, Les forges de Paimpont, February/March 2012 (organized by the Association of friends of the oeuvre of Abbé Fouré), continued in the Chapel of St Vincent in the Normand community of Saint Coulomb, east of Saint Malo (April 8 - June 30, 2012)

picture via Joëlle Jouneau

* In 2013, at the occasion of the manifestation l'Art brut à l'Ouest in Brest, Brittany, with the cooperation of the Association of Friends, an exposition about Abbé Fouré, "as you have never seen him before" (April until end of June 2013).

note
¹ in December 2010 it was made public that an inhabitant of St. Malo owns a wooden sculpture made by Abbé Fouré, a present to her mother (see Jean/Michel Chesné's weblog, 19-1-2011)

first published December 2008, last revised April 2023)

Adolphe-Julien Fouré

Les rochers sculptés
Rothéneuf
34500 Saint Malo, dept Ille-et-Vilaine, region Brittany, France

open for the public

a private firm exploits the site, asking an entrance fee
at low tide the site can be reached freely (by those familiar with the surroundings)

George E. Howard, Shell Garden

pictures (around 2000) courtesy of Ann Davey
(Cream Tea Club website)

The Shell Garden, a site once beloved by locals and holidaymakers, located in the community of Southbourne on England's south coast, doesn't exist anymore.

Life and works 

The man who made this site, George Howard (1898-1986), had a job as a coal miner in South Wales and later served in the marine, a job that led him to sail many seas in the world.

When retired in the 1940s, he and his wife settled  in Southbourne in a house on Overcliff Drive facing the sea.

Howard's lifelong passion for shells activated him to collect them, a hobby probably facilitated by his many travels.

In 1948 he decided to transform the front garden of his house into a shell decorated art environment.

For almost twenty years Howard has been active in creating the Shell Garden.

Located on a street along the seaside, the site could easily be entered by passers-by. As above picture shows, the garden was provided with benches which allowed visitors to quietly enjoy views of the garden and the sea.

The picture also shows that Howard paved the ground with mosaics, apparently made by using slices of monochromatic tiles.

The vertical constructions in the garden, such as the wall (of a small grotto) pictured above, also were decorated, in this instance by adorned tiles and inlays of shells.

The garden had some special features. One attraction was a very large shell, transported from the Philippines, so giant it could seat a child, which would enable making nice photo-shoots of course. "Please take a photo of your wee one sitting in shell", Howard noticed on a plaque (wee one is Irish and means small one).

Other plaques informed the visitors that this was "the worlds most unique shell garden" or invited them to throw some money in a fountain (the collected money would be donated to charitable institutions, such as the local hospital).

The website Cream Tea Club has a page with pictures of a number of the plaques Howard had placed in the garden, some with proverbs, others with wisdom and advice for everyday use. Take a look, because "to see much is to learn much", a phrase coined by.....?

Other features of the garden were shrines and two grotto's, a large and a small one, all abundantly decorated on the outside and the inside, occasionally with very big shells, but mainly with smaller ones, probably collected on nearby beaches.

The site ultimately has been demolished

After Howard and his wife had died (in 1986, respectively 1989), their son and his wife continued taking care of the garden.

However, end 2000, early 2001 the family made the decision to remove the site. as they said "with pain in their hearts". Their main argument was, that the garden had been vandalized so many times.

On February 5th 2001 the site has been cleared away.

Documentation

* The shell garden on the Cream Tea Club website, with an informative review and many pictures and on another page pictures and reviews of texts on plaques made by Howard

Video

* A video, shot in 1992 by Bogardesbar (YouTube, 1"15', uploaded 2012)

first published December 2008, last revised August 2021

George E. Howard

Shell Garden

(formerly on) Overcliff Drive

Southbourne, Dorset, South West England, UK

this site doesn't exist anymore

Vilius Orvidas, Sculpture garden

picture courtesy of Alexandre Serain Shuvalof

Lithuania is one of the three Baltic states in northern Europe. After World War II it was occupied by the USSR, but in 1990  the country regained it's independence.

A private affair

In the neighbourhood of the community of Salantai the Orvidas family owned a large plot of land.

Vilius Orvidas (1952-1992) was the one who transformed the garden into an art environment, but his father, Kazys Orvidas, laid its foundation.

this picture and the next one stills from 

the video by Ekalahdas (see documentation)

Kazys was a stonemason who made a lot of tombstones which would mainly give expression to the christian belief. When in the former century Lithuania was under Russian rule, the communist regime had forbidden all religious expressions. This included statues of saints and also tombstones with religious texts or symbols.

Kazys Orvidas however wanted to counter the loss of these artifacts and he collected a lot of tombstones that he hid on his property. Maybe the authorities knew about this and they occasionally may have intervened, but during Russian rule the site as such somehow has survived.

So in the 1970s and 80s this collection was supplied with creations made by Vilnius Orvidas. As a self taught sculptor he made all kinds of sculptures and wooden structures. He decorated a lot of these creations with symbols, giving expression to his deep religious convictions.

Orvidas stands in a Lithuanian tradition where the catholic belief is influenced by pagan lore.

this picture and the next two were made early 2018 by

Tiramisu Bootfighter who traveled Lithuania in the context 

of  the project La Valise, Galerie Ambulante 

(pictures as published on Facebook)

All creations are exposed on the plot of land around the family property, which in this way has become kind of an open air outsider art museum.

In the 1990s tourists from Lithuania and abroad began to visit the site, which currently is cared for by younger members of the Orvidas family

In recent years, however, it has lost some of its original outsider character. Nowadays one also focuses upon being an open air museum, showing remarkable stones and rocks, that are found in Lithuania and other northern countries, a collection under supervision of scientists.

The Orvidas Garden still attracts a lot of visitors, domestic and foreign.

Documentation

* Wikipedia

* Article (2010) by Lina Buikiene

Videos

* Video (1.08.09) on YouTube of the movie "Vilius Orvidas" (2001) by Vytautas V. Landsbergis 

* Video by Ekalahdas (5'34", YouTube, uploaded September 2008)

first published December 2008, last revised July 2025

Vilius Orvidas 

Sculpture Garden
near Salantai,
on the road to Plungé
Lithuania 

open for the public, 10-19 hrs (Monday closed)