Gallery of California Art
Explore our New Gallery
May 1, 2010 - December 2, 2013
-
In early January, 2010, John Turner, a writer and Folk Art collector, and Philip E. Linhares, visited Salvation Mountain and interviewed its creator, Leonard Knight. Now 79 years old, Knight has been living at this site in the Southern California desert for 28 years; each day is devoted to his mission of devotion to God through Jesus. Located three miles east of Niland, on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, he calls his shrine “Salvation Mountain”. Starting with a barren desert dune of hard-pan earth, Knight erected a cross on its summit, wrote his special prayer in six-foot tall adobe letters decorated with enamel paint, and added other prayers and phrases to the mountainside. While his mountain shrine is now completed and needs only occasional repair, he is currently at work building a massive grotto of straw bales and adobe that he calls his “museum”.
With John ad Phil he toured the mountain and grotto, explaining how he created an armature of truck tires, tree limbs and adobe to support the massive, 30-foot tall walls and roof of the structure. Throughout the video he expounds on his faith and belief that his labors are a simple and humble acknowledgement of God’s love for all mankind. Although he is often visited by clergymen who seek to engage him in religious and sectarian debate, he declines their invitations, citing his chosen motto “Keep it Simple.”
-
About the artist and the work:
Michael C. McMillen (b. 1946)
Aristotle's Cage, 1983-1988
Mixed media installation
Santa Monica-based artist Michael C. McMillen had an early grounding in the film industry: his father was a set designer for film and television, and several of his neighbors were special effects technicians for the industry. After preliminary studies in engineering, McMillen switched his college major to art and began creating both miniature and full-scale walk-through environments based on imagined narratives. After graduation he was employed as a technician, creating miniature sets for such films as Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Aristotle's Cage presents a scene from which the viewer can create a personal narrative. Who lives in that old trailer in a desert junkyard? What must it be like to be alone in the desert at night with only a scratchy radio for company? And what does the skeletal figure chased by an equally skeletal dog bring to the scene? McMillen's miniature fantasy opens the imagination to a series of speculations and conclusions, not the least being "What does this have to do with Aristotle and what exactly is his cage?"
