Destination: Folk Art

Folk Art.  
It should be no surprise to me that Jason likes folk art.  He may not love the style but he likes the spectacle of it.  This summer while we were in Houston, he planned a day for us.  Our first stop was The Orange Show.  It wasn't in a great part of Houston and we were mesmerized when we got there.  
{{ The Orange Show^[
Jeff McKissack, a mail carrier in Houston, Texas, transformed a small suburban lot near his wood frame house into The Orange Show^[1] in honor of his favorite fruit. Between 1956 and 1980 McKissak used common building materials and recycled junk such as bricks, tiles, fencing, and farm implements to transform his home into an architectural maze of walkways, balconies, arenas and exhibits decorated with mosaics and brightly painted iron figures}}

Next on our Houston tour of folk art was the beer can house.  

{{The Beer Can House is a folk art house in Houston, Texas, covered with beer cans, bottles, and other beer paraphernalia.  Milkovisch started his project in 1968 inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks, brass figures and metal pieces in concrete blocks and redwood, all of which were used to make patios, fences, flower boxes, and an array of other items. The result was a yard with no grass, as the entire front and back yards were covered with cement. When asked why he did it, John simply answered, “I got sick of mowing the grass.”}}

Right up Jason's alley!  
So I knew right away I had to take him to a place I went as a child.  It's folk art at it's finest and it's in Alabama!
The week of Fall break, we kicked off our fun at Ave Maria Grotto.  I hadn't been since I was about 12.  It looked exactly the same!

{{Ave Maria Grotto, in Cullman, Alabama, is a landscaped park in an old quarry on the grounds of St. Bernard Abbey, providing a garden setting for 125 miniature reproductions of some of the most famous religious structures of the world.  The stone and concrete models are the work of Brother Joseph Zoettl, a Benedictine monk of St. Bernard's, who devoted some 50 years to the project, the last three decades (1932 to 1961) almost without interruption. They incorporate discarded building supplies, bricks, marbles, tiles, pipes, sea shells, marbles, plastic animals, costume jewelry, toilet bowl floats and cold cream jars.}}

The boys were intrigued.  It's very...different.  They did love that we had seen the Capistrano Mission this summer and they noticed that we had been there!  Jackson later referred to it as "the God place".  I remember liking it as a kid, thinking "I could probably do this."  
No one can say we are not a cultural or artistic family.  
We just see art differently.