Salvation Mountain

Just after the Salton Sea, northeast of Niland, CA, we arrive at Salvation Mountain, a "visionary environment" including a mountain of adobe and straw painted with murals, Bible verses, and Christian-oriented inspiration by local resident Leonard Knight (d. 2014). Fifty feet high and 150 feet wide, this outsider art installation was made with lots of love--and colorful paint. In the desolate desert environment, where temperatures sometimes reach 120 degrees in summer, it's an acid-trip vision a couple miles from Slab City. 

During his lifetime, Vermont-born Knight resided on the property for 26 years, with a gaggle of cats in the back of an ornately decorated 1939 fire truck. He lived without electricity, gas, running water, phone, heating, air conditioning, or any other "modern conveniences." He played himself in the movie Into the Wild, which featured a scene set here.

Tammy 2

Tatt2 Tammy

I first met Tatt2 Tammy in the 1990s on the road between Cerrillos and Madrid, NM, where she'd created a large outsider art installation called Tiny Town. Her creations from found objects included lots of bones and sometimes roadkill, plus a number of dioramas--scenes from her life and psyche. When I took the above photo, she was in a happy place, having found love with the cowboy to her left, and was all too pleased to let me and Maggie roam around and take photos on her property. But in late 2008, her landlord locked her out and she burned everything on the property. Tiny Town was, sadly, history.

Photo of the Day - Cerrillos, NM

Welcome to Tiny Town. Perched on the Turquoise Trail (NM 14), straddling the "ghost" mining towns of Cerrillos and Madrid, once sat several acres of outsider art, the wild'n'woolly creation of Tatt2 Tammy Lange, a former tattoo artist. A high-desert melange of bones, roadkill, scrap wood, rusted metal, discarded dolls, old glass bottles, and objects you can't even imagine sharing the same junkyard, Tammy's place was an institution for drivers blasting the blue highway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. A few years ago while taking a doc photography class, I spent several days hanging out with cowgirl Tammy, trying to step inside her outlaw brain in this piece of the Wild West. Can't say I ever succeeded. But here's the evidence.

Tammy's a firecracker, no match required. If she likes ya, she'll give you a bigggg hug. She glows brightest when talking about creating new exhibits for Tiny Town, firing guns, inking flesh, and heading off on a hot date with boyfriend Steve (right). The last day I visited, in September 2007, Tammy's infectious joie de vivre made it easy to spend hours shooting dozens of sculptural pieces Freud could have penned volumes about. 
But apparently the NIMBYs got her, and Tammy was forced to pack it in late in 2008. Fortunately, her work lives on in the Amercan Visionary Art Museum, in Baltimore, MD. Knowing Tammy, she's still got a little roadkill, ammo, and a few hundred ideas for twisted doll-and-bone dioramas.