One man’s artistic wonderland, created secretly in rented apartment, given protected status (msn.com)

A U.K. Home Filled With Surreal Outsider Art Receives Protected Status (artnet.com)

When you drive down to the mall or along the city strip where the fast food stores lurk, you are often struck by the sterile sameness of it. You’re looking at a kind of scenery duplicated thousands of times all across the United States and to a lesser extent across the world. A great deal of end stage capitalism is devoid of creative and artistic merit because all values aside direct monetary value have been long ago discarded.

More than twenty years ago, I spent a year working the legal department of the Wal-Mart Home Office in Bentonville, Arkansas. You are no doubt well aware of the utter sameness of the store designs. They have a very distinctive look. So, you might assume that all the stores look the same. But you would be mistaken. While I was there Wal-Mart wanted to put a store in a particular city in California but the building codes did not allow for the typical design. So, they had to create a store to meet those codes. The design department was very proud of their new building and big beautiful drawings of the new store were placed on easels for employees to admire.

The new building was surrounded by shrubbery and extensive green lawns well back from the main drag. To drive to the parking lot you had to navigate meandering zig-zag roads designed to keep you at a very low speed for pedestrian friendliness. The building itself was red brick faced or actually brick in design, very elegant looking something like an upscale bank.

So, even Wal-Mart was willing to spend the time and money to build a good looking store, a tribute to the community, a recognition that there are community values beyond simple profit. I’m sure they didn’t like it being who they are — but they complied.

It is important the we realize we don’t have to live in sterile sameness. We don’t have to live in pedestrian hostile environments. We don’t have to live in a community that looks just like the community up the street and everywhere else in America.

We can live where people can walk in safety, where bicyclists can ride to work without fear. We can live in an environment full of flowers, trees, healthy shrubs surrounded by nature. And above all we can do our buying and spend our time in buildings full of art and beauty.

There once was a fellow named Ron Gittins. He lived in a apartment for many years and during her time there he built it into a temple of beauty. The links are above. Look at what he did. This is now a protected site. It is in Britain. We in the United States would do well to create protected sites like this.

Why did he transform property that he didn’t even own in such a dramatic way? I tend to believe that he couldn’t stand the ordinary, that his life and his soul yearned for greater things. And you might realize at this point in the essay, that you too desperately yearn for high values and greater things. We all do.

The pursuit of profit, the bizarre and troubling worship of the free market, is a wrecking ball to many of the values in this nation. Our churches have become “mega-churches” where political power and connections are pursued. Our colleges and universities increasingly build dorms and facilities to attract a higher paying customer as if learning and a life of learning was only valuable if it could be immediately turned into a salary. I see ad after ad talking about art as the newest safe investment for retirement. I see young men and women looking for mates based on their lifetime earning potential and while I was in law school observed the my male comrades were actively planning to to trade up wives just as soon as the money got good. It is depressing.

We don’t have to live a life as money grubbing barbarians. The liberal arts, an appreciation of painting, sculpture, music and architecture enriches not only our lives but every other life we touch. We might also actually cultivate friendship and love based not on economic advantage but actual honest relationships. Just saying.

Think of Ron Gittins. He didn’t make art in his apartment for money. He created because humans, the whole, developed kind, need to create and to make value.

That the pursuit of money at all costs would deny the creation of the whole human being, so important to our civilization is one the strongest argument that we must develop a more nuanced economic system. And we need to start creating it now if we are going to preserve the values of real importance in our society.

James Alan Pilant