On the last day of their caravan, the Art Car folks wake up next to the garishly painted sand mound. Atop it, in lettering that might have been done with red lipstick, is the word "God." Beneath that are waterfalls, birds, and flowers painted in colors as artificially bright as a bowl of Skittles. In raised lettering on top of these designs the message continues: "Is Love."
Charlie Russell and Rocket Bob climb to the top and slap paint on a blue and white waterfall. They like helping Knight, who insists on keeping his Godly heap freshly painted at all times for maximum visibility. Russell's loud voice punctures the stillness of the morning.
Paolo Vescia
Charlie Russell's mobile cocktail lounge doubles as
his home.
Paolo Vescia
Philo Northrup exults at one of his favorite Art Car
destinations: the Salton Sea.
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"When Leonard dies, what's going to happen to this?" he asks rhetorically. "It's going to all be fenced off, and you're going to have to pay money to get in, and it's going to suck."
Knight -- a wiry little man with big blue eyes, a baseball hat, and trousers hitched up with a leather belt -- loves visitors. He rises in the morning, works on the mound until early afternoon, and spends the rest of the day showing off his creation.
"I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm having fun doing it!" he quips, smiling cheerfully.
Knight hasn't always been such an enthusiastic Christian. "I used to hate God," he says. Then one day, atop a different mountain, he began to weep and repeat the words, "Jesus, I'm a sinner, please come into my heart." Ever since, he says, he has felt God's joy and wants to share it with everybody.
"But there will be no churches on Salvation Mountain," says Knight. "You gotta love God head-on. When you wake up in the morning, put your face right up into God." To demonstrate, he juts his face skyward like a gosling at feeding time.
The caravan is finished. Already Toy Machine has taken off for the Bay Area, to get King back to school. Leaning against his Buick, Northrup is in a peaceful, contemplative mood. He smiles as his mutt, Huckleberry, rolls happily in the dust.
"We're considered old-fashioned, you know," says Northrup, referring to Art Car aficionados. "I mean, in the art world, the cutting-edge stuff is video, conceptual art, installation. We actually make stuff. We're old-fashioned assemblagists."
Nearby, Knight welcomes some elderly visitors in an RV.
"God just kinda zapped him," says Northrup appreciatively, watching the older man. Normally, Northrup is allergic to Jesus talk. He doesn't believe in organized religion or dogma.
"But Leonard says, "There will be no preaching on Salvation Mountain,'" explains Northrup. "It's just about feeling the beauty, the color, the intensity of the thing."
He looks at Knight's latest addition: an igloo made of stacked hay bales. A backhoe, painted with Bible messages, rests beside it.
"This is so blatantly therapeutic for him," says Northrup with a sigh. "It'll probably keep him alive for a long time."
What keeps Northrup coming back year after year to Salvation Mountain has as much to do with Knight as with the whimsical beauty of his holy lump. When Knight talks about Jesus, Northrup has come to realize, he's really talking about that mystical feeling all artists seek -- what Northrup feels when he works on his Art Cars. Knight calls it "experiencing God," but an artist might call it inspiration, or creative fire, or even ecstasy. It's that state of floating out of your rational brain and into somewhere more exciting.
Knight found his calling by endlessly painting, repainting, and expanding Salvation Mountain, and sharing it with visitors. Most people probably would see that as simply bizarre. But not everybody soups up his Chevy Vega with zebra stripes and deer horns, either. Northrup did, and found his calling, too.
"Leonard Knight has found what all artists are looking for," says Northrup. "He's found self-love."
Seeing Northrup so relaxed and happy in this desert, beside a polluted lake and a sand mound painted with Jesus slogans, you might think he's discovered his Nirvana -- an environment in which the weird not only survives but flourishes.
But that's not quite it. As he talks, two frail old men, one with aluminum crutches clamped below his elbows, totter over to Northrup's Buick of Unconditional Love. Northrup moves away and observes them. One man snaps a picture of the other in front of the wild-looking machine, and then they trade places.
Northrup smiles.
Nope, you realize; Northrup didn't find Nirvana here. He drove it here.
