Artist Shapes His Mountain Tribute to God

N I L A N D, Calif., June 2, 2002 -- The desert in California's Imperial Valley might look Godforsaken, but don't tell that to 70-year-old Leonard Knight.

This is where he came to honor God.

"I started down approximately where that big heart is," he says, pointing to a pink heart at the base of his tribute.

17-Year Transformation

Knight has spent the last 17 years transforming an ordinary hill into what he calls "Salvation Mountain" — a mountain with a message.

"I like to talk about love," Knight says. "Boy, I think it's the most powerful force in the whole world."

The terraced hill is three stories high and 100 feet wide. It is covered with Knight's favorite scriptures, cascading waterfalls and, still in progress, a deep blue ocean. But before he can paint, he has to cover all that dirt with adobe, a mixture of clay and straw.

"Feel how hard that adobe is," Knight says. "The whole mountain's made out of that."

Bucket by bucket, year after year, he has sculpted a labor of love, complete with a stairway lined by brilliant flowers.

"You put a great big glob there and a glob there and you hit it with your fist and you let California dry it," Knight says.

The temperature can reach 120 degrees in the summer.

Knight, a former auto mechanic, takes occasional refuge in his beloved truck. It, too, is decorated with adobe flowers and painted scripture. It is also his home.

"There something about living in a truck with a patio in the back," he says. "You can see the stars. That's all I need, that's all I want."

Eviction Threat

There was just one problem with Leonard Knight's project: It was built on state land.

In 1994, the county and the state tried to evict him, citing dangerous conditions. Knight feared that all his work would be destroyed. But testing showed the site had not been contaminated, and the publicity made Knight a cause celebre in the art world.

"Leonard Knight is one of the great visionary artists of all time because his work is so palpably spirit filled," says Rebecca Alban-Hoffberger of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, a repository for works by self-taught artists. "It inspires people with faith and without faith."

Knight keeps adding to the project — an enormous adobe tree, an adobe dome decorated with items found on the highway.

Often, even he wonders why he does it.

"I'm still saying that: 'Lord, what am I doing?'" he says.

Then, Knight answers his own question.

"I'm having fun doing it, God, and I love you," he says.