Jan 03 2007

One of the things I enjoy most about the Mojave Desert is the bizarre things you find. Whether it's a small town in the middle of nowhere, abandoned houses or cars...or open air museums. I've often wondered driving along Hwy 15, when you see a run down shack with a yard full of broken down cars in the middle of nowhere, who the hell would live out here and why? But the more time I spend in the desert the more I start to get the appeal. Want to build a house out of bottles? Absolutely. Huge dinosaur statues? Why not. Spend a little time and you can find the broken and abandoned dreams of a swindler, or the world's oddest beef jerky store in the middle of one of the most inhospitable places on earth. I once read that LA was a city built in a desert that people turned in to their dreams. I think the Mojave Desert is similar, the locales just have weirder dreams.

During our trip to Death Valley we ran upon one of these gems. Nestled in with the town of Rhyolite, Nevada is the Goldwell Open Air Musuem. To say the museum is bizarre would be an understatement, but if you've spent a lot of time in the Mojave Desert you find the bizarre is actually quite normal. Where else can you find a sculpture of a 30 foot high naked woman built out of cinder blocks?

This is a shot of "Ghost Rider", created by Charles Albert Szukalski in 1984, along with his "Last Supper' sculpture.

From the website...To make the life-size ghost figures, Szukalski wrapped live models in fabric soaked in wet plaster and posed them as in the painting "The Last Supper"; by Leonardo Da Vinci. When the plaster set, the model was slipped out, leaving the rigid shroud that surrounded him. With more refining, Szukalski then coated the figures with fiberglass making them impervious to weather.

It's quite a bizarre read, if you have a few moments I would suggest checking out the museum links.

Rhyolite, Nevada
December 2006