Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden Celebrates the Divine in the Human

Howard Finster, a Southern Baptist preacher and repairman from Chattooga County, Georgia, said God instructed him at 59 to make 5,000 pieces of sacred art; he ended up making more than 46,000, reportedly fueled by instant coffee mixed with Coca-Cola. He built Paradise Garden, a four-acre art environment on a former duck pond, including a five-story former church he bought with NEA grant help and converted into what's called the World's Folk Art Church.

After Finster's death in 2001, Chattooga County bought the garden in 2012 and now leases it to the three-person Paradise Garden Foundation. The church recently reopened after restoration funded by the same NEA grant, with some original pieces — windows and a mosaic cross — returned to the site.

Chattooga County is the only Appalachian county in Georgia the Appalachian Regional Commission classifies as economically distressed, ranking in the bottom 10% of counties nationally. Local residents get free admission, and the foundation runs school programs alongside preservation work on mosaics and murals exposed to weather and time.

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