Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia, was the home and workplace of Baptist minister and folk artist Howard Finster and is now a public park dedicated to his life and art.
It encompasses two and half acres densely filled with buildings, constructions, sculptures, and thousands of objects.
As an extension of his preaching duties, he erected signs covered with Biblical verses or simple exhortations, such as "Yo Jesus."
These objects, largely based in the Bible, American history, and popular culture, filled Paradise Garden.
Roberta Smith, a critic for the New York Times, described Finster's work as "apocalyptic text-image paintings, which he seemed to produce at assembly-line rates.
Their lush, extravagantly crowded surfaces form later-day illuminated manuscripts and cover subjects that included heaven and hell, tales from the Bible and American history and popular culture."
He painted Jesus, Elvis Presley, winged angels, George Washington, self-portraits, Marilyn Monroe wearing an American flag dress, demons, Coca-Cola bottles, the Mona Lisa, Mickey Mouse, policemen, cowboys, Old Testament prophets, and other subjects in a torrent.
Interest grew over the years and in 1991 Howard and his wife, Pauline, moved from Paradise Garden in order to escape the crush of visitors.
After Finster's death Paradise Garden began to decay into the heat and humidity of rural Georgia.
In 2012 a non-profit group, Paradise Garden Foundation, signed a fifty-year lease with the county and took possession of Finster's property.
In 1982 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Finster had purchased a small church adjacent to his property.
On top of the original structure, he built a four layer, twelve sided "wedding cake", ending with a spire shaped like an upside-down funnel.
Walls and pathways are embedded with shards of colored glass, shells, bits of mirrors, and broken pottery.
Its corrugated metal roof and planked siding echo the area's traditional agricultural buildings.
The site is managed by the Paradise Garden Foundation and is staffed by hired professionals and a large body of volunteers.