Brother Ted’s Hippie House: a Grassroots Art Environment

Brother Ted’s Hippie House: a Grassroots Art Environment
 
Niagara Falls, NY, a perfect bright sunny day. We pulled over beside the infamous Hippie House at Hyde Park Boulevard and Maple Avenue, into the vestiges of the bygone. The eye could not immediately make sense of what it was seeing: a shambles of eclectic junk growing in clusters from a dilapidated house and surrounding it. Wicker furniture festooned with faded plastic flowers and tangled cords, rain-weary plush toys, a filthy Mickey Mouse in pink sunglasses. There was a bouncy horse with rusty springs, broken Christmas balls, old clocks, a weathered Wurly heaped in kitchen clutter and bicycle tire tubes, makeshift crosses propped with sports netting and batik bandanas, buckets overflowing with warped vinyl and forlorn evergreen boughs, striped orange pylons rumpled psychedelic granny square Afghans strewn amongst vines and unruly grasses. A faded Spiderman mask stared up at me from a wheelbarrow grave. 
 
The rickety house looked like it might blow over from the mildest rustle of breeze. It was covered on every side in murals and graffiti.
 
I started snapping photos of sticks shrouded in mangy t-shirts, of leaned mirrors reflecting the blue sky, of a pillar or bricks painted crudely with what might be Frank Zappa, when a small voice from the rubble caught me off guard.

​I turned toward the faint hello and was startled to see a small and shirtless old man on a refuse throne. Slight, sinewy, he clambered down from his camouflage and extended a sun-bronzed hand toward me. Ted, he said politely, so I introduced myself. He kissed my hand. Ted assured me that it was okay to photograph the yard, with the caveat that I didn’t capture him in any of the pictures. It turned out that I had already captured him in one photo, before he spoke up, but I didn’t know until later. Out of respect at his request, I have kept this image to myself.
 
My friend’s mother drove me to this destination, knowing I would be curious about the weird world on Maple Avenue. I was wading blind through the junk heaps with no context whatsoever for what I was seeing. I told Ted that I was visiting from Toronto, and he asked immediately about some concerts there before my time, told me how he crossed the border on numerous occasions to visit the record shops that were once a Yonge Street mecca. I said I had worked at Sam the Record Man when I was twenty or not even, and his eyes lit up.
 
I learned more later. The junk lot was legendary in these parts, home of Zoundz Music, the house barely standing, where Ted still lived. Music aficionados flocked here for concert tickets and bootleg recordings, a destination in the days you flipped through vinyl albums in milk crates for obscure treasures of sound. 
 
I felt a terrible weight of loneliness emanating from this strange and sweet character, but it might have been all illusion. All the locals knew Ted. He could get you a scratchy bootleg of any performance you wanted or hook you up with new records, Jethro Tull, the Grateful Dead. While many folks recoiled at the mess of it all, most remembered Ted and Zoundz with loyal reverence. I found countless comments on Facebook noting his legendary kindness. “Brother Ted,” they called him. “Nice guy.”  “Ted is awesome, a really good  guy.”  “He got me tickets for BB King.” “Got tickets to my first concert from Ted.” 
 
Long past his heyday, nostalgia abounded. “He loved his Dr. Pepper!”  “I used to shop there all the time. Fantastic vinyl. I bought a bunch of Pink Floyd bootlegs there.” People shared his obsession for music and respect for his knowledge. One commenter mentioned that Ted was so diehard, he even got married at Woodstock.
 
Other comments lamented that Ted should have “laid off the LSD.” 
 
Before Zoundz, the same yard overflowing with timeworn detritus of culture was a hangout for The Animals, a local group of motorcycle bikers. There was apparently a huge pet pig. Before that, it was a gas station.
 
If most of us want manicured lawns and a button down way of life, others live outside of that paradigm in another realm that doesn’t answer to societal expectations. Ted’s world is Ted’s alone, but yards and gardens arranged in ways that colour outside the lines abound across the North American map. They are sometimes called outsider or visionary art environments. 

Seymour Rosen, founder of the SPACES Archive, which documents the genre of art environments, described the phenomenon. “Folk art environments are unique, personal places, which comprise of large-scale sculptural and/or architectural structures hand-built by self-taught artists, often during their leisure time…The folk art environment is quite simply a lovingly hand built, unique dream home.”
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It’s a helpful explanation, but folk art is actually “art of the people” and follows a cultural tradition. By definition, there are many more than “one” of a kind of folk art. For example, Russian nesting dolls and Scandinavian Dala horses are folk art, and there are many versions and creations, often interchangeable. This is not true with the outsider art environment, which is unique to its creator. And since not all of them are made by outsiders, and not all of them are motivated by visionary or religious impulses, I like the term grassroots art environments best.
 
Such environments are not simply the overflow of hoarding, although the mind behind them may have similarities to the minds of those who hoard. These art environments are art in that they have been arranged purposefully. It is tricky to formulate hypotheses about the environments, because no two are alike, which also brings them the category of original art. Just as there are many paintings, but original paintings are singular and reflect their maker. Outsider art environments are personal, large-scale installations or assemblages created by their particular makers. They are profoundly individualist, reflecting unique personal passion, obsession, preference, and meaning. While the public is often welcome in these immersive home installations, they are not made for the public or with the purpose of the market in mind. 
 
Each of these art environments is distinct and driven by a very personal vision. In North Carolina, there is the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park, full of huge kinetic wind-driven sculptures. In California, there is Salvation Mountain, where Leonard Knight created brightly coloured hills  covered in religious messages with adobe clay and latex paint. Elmer Long’s Nevada bottle tree ranch salvages glass bottles of every colour and nothing else. 
 
When I was young and travelling through the Mississippi, I visited Margaret’s Grocery, where the Reverend Dennis stacked bricks up to the sky and painted them red and white, then painted scripture verses onto every available surface. There is a house in Toronto where I live that is completely covered in stuffed animals, which are also glued to the car parked out front. And just down the road from Ted’s is another art environment, created by Prophet Isaiah Robertson. Robertson painted his whole house and numerous erected crosses with intricate patterns in meticulous geometrics, each shape holding personal religious messages for him that he wanted to share with passersby.
 
Photographer Greg Cook spent more than ten years driving around the USA documenting these curious displays.  He is a frequent contributor to Raw Art Magazine, and holds exhibitions of his photography on the subject He calls them Wonderlands.
 
It is extremely difficult to categorize and theorize about these Wonderlands. But those who attempt to understand them believe they are often driven by deep spiritual convictions, personal obsessions, or traumatic events.
 
Some creators are impacted with severe mental illness, managing their minds through construction of their own realm. Others are simply eccentric and live by their own vision rather than by the norms and mores of society and culture. 
 
The creators transform ordinary spaces into their own deeply personal and idiosyncratic universes, often using recycled or discarded materials and repurposing them with their unique interpretations. The religious impulse is at the core of many such installations, such as Reverend Dennis’s world or Salvation Mountain, and that is why they are often called visionary environments. But many others are driven by other or unknown motivations. There may be a relentless desire or need to create, or more specifically, to build a world of their own, an environment that reflects their unique self that they themselves build, control, and transform. 
 
These impulses and obsessions reflect the fact that such environments are often born of trauma, offering the creator a sanctuary of their own space, an untouchable kingdom. Creating a paracosm or private universe provides people a psychological haven from a wider environment that may be confusing or abusive, while the creation itself offers space for processing and managing severe psychological distress or isolation. The repetition of motif or movements in the construction of the art environment often reveal a positive outlet for compulsive behaviours, helping creators manage traits like obsessive-compulsive disorders. 
 
Paradoxically, the paracosm can also reflect an identity that is unusually stable. Eccentrics live by their own passions without need for validation from group norms.
 
Grassroots art environments are built by makers with diverse skill levels rather than by trained artists. Some have profound artistic talents or specific trade skills that contribute to the overall aesthetic and durability of their creation. Others do not. For this reason, each world is completely different and viewed with various levels of appreciation (or not) by those who chance a visit. Prophet Isaiah Robertson’s environment is kaleidoscopic, but very tidy, skillful and precise. Others, like Ted’s, are improvisational. The environments are vulnerable because they are subject to time and weather, with materials that are difficult to maintain and restore.
 
Public perception of these art environments varies wildly. We are largely fascinated by them and drive long distances to gawk in admiration and horror. Most of us are naturally curious about anything unusual  and about the motivations and behaviour of people we see as living outside the norms. While we may cheerfully spend money on an excursion out of town to take photos of these art environments, we often respond differently when the subject at hand is in our own backyard. Some communities rally for state funds to maintain or restore art environments when the owner moves away or passes on, but immediate neighbours often complain to the city or simply view the environment as an eyesore or hygienic risk. 
 
Comments on Facebook mention that someone tried to burn Ted’s house and yard down last year, though I can’t find an official account to verify whether this is true or not. Ted himself said to me that people often drove by and threw things at his yard, screaming out the window. 
 
I declined Ted’s invitation to venture inside the house, admittedly worried about fleas and rats. It was enough for my curiosity to be permitted to take photos outside. 
 
As I prepared to leave, Ted asked me to send him postcards from Toronto. He said he enjoyed getting mail. Again, I sensed a profound loneliness. I’ve never shaken that feeling, even when reading so many fond declarations about him. Sometimes a person with many friends can still be lonely.  

Even as I am uncomfortable imposing my own feelings on another, whose identity is theirs to define, I could not quite let go of the sense that being different and difficult to understand can be isolating even if everyone likes you. There are invisible barriers between people,  even when they are nice to each other, and intimacy and deep connection is about more than cheerful wishes. Yet even if my feelings were true, there was little I could do beyond offering simple kindness.
 
Later, when I showed my photos to a friend, he was outraged by the heaps of garbage on Ted’s lawn. “This is shameful,” he said. “The city should clean it up.” I was silent at first, but thought better of it after a few minutes and went back in conversation in defense of Ted’s world, told him how sweet Ted was to me when I intruded on his yard.  
 
Another friend introduced me to metta last year, gifting me a class at Toronto’s Zen Buddhism centre. Metta is a concept that translates to “benevolence” or “lovingkindness.” It may be interesting to note that religious rituals like metta or Christian prayers include repetitive practices that believers find invaluable in managing and processing the world. Metta involves repeated invocations for the wellbeing of others, working to shift one’s own heart into compassion for all people. The prayer is traditionally practiced in stages that aim to break down the barriers between yourself and others. It can be just a few minutes, or it can be repeated for twenty minutes or even hours.
 
I practiced metta for Ted. 
 
May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be free from suffering. May you live with ease.
 
One is meant to empty their mind of everything during the prayer but the words and the feeling of metta, as a novice, or a visitor really to the ritual, my repetitions brought the idea of a record player skipping to my mind, in sync with the world of Ted’s Zoundz.
 
When we said our thankyous and goodbyes, Ted kissed my hand again, and retreated back up onto the chair where he disappeared against a heap of bricks and blankets. 
 
I stepped over some soccer balls, hubcaps, and a pink pony. 
 
Darth Vader caught my eye beside a spindly broom, sweep side up, and scraps of an American flag, waving farewell. 
 
A stone Buddha statue tilted its head, a sage sentinel, as we drove away.
 
Lorette C. Luzajic