Three of the ghostly figures in Albert Szukalski’s Last Supper at the Goldwell Open Air Museum near the ghost town of Rhyolite Nevada.
Peggy and I are wandering through Nevada celebrating my birthday so I decided to re-blog an earlier story I did. We had stopped off to check out the ghost town of Rhyolite on our way into Death Valley from the small Nevada town of Beatty.
I was looking around at abandoned mines and contemplating the lonely life of prospectors when I spotted a 30-foot tall naked blond. She caught my attention. Totally by chance, we had stumbled on the Goldwell Open Air Museum.
A 30 foot tall naked blond created by Dr. Hugo Heyrman was my introduction to the Goldwell Open Air Museum on the border of Death Valley National Park.
I couldn’t resist a close up of Blondie. Dr. Heyrman calls his pixellated woman “Lady Desert: The Venus of Nevada.”
Another view of the lady displaying her bubble butt.
The museum had its inception in 1984 when the Belgian artist Albert Szukalski wrapped a number of Beatty residents in wet plaster as models for a ghostly rendition of the Last Supper.
Another view of the Last Supper by Albert Szukalski at the Goldwell Open Air Museum. The dark, cloudy skies add drama.
I once bicycled through Death Valley as part of a 10,000 mile solo bike trip I made around North America. I can empathize with this guy.
Szukalski’s work inspired other well-known Belgian artists. Dr. Hugo Heyrman added the giant naked blond. Dre Peeter carved a female version of the Greek Icarus who flew too close to the sun with wax wings. Fred Bervoets created a metallic sculpture of a gold miner and threw in a penguin for good measure.
Dre Peeter’s carved wood female Icarus flies through the sky on the edge of Death Valley.
It’s understandable that Belgian artist Fred Verboets would create a sculpture of a prospector but what’s with his penguin companion? Verboets explains that’s what he felt like in the desert.
The Swiss/California artist Sofie Siegmann added a sumptuous ceramic couch and titled it “Sit Here.”
Sofie Siegmann’s brightly colored ceramic couch.
Another view of the couch. Long abandoned miners’ shacks in Rhyolite are in the distance.
The Goldwell Museum is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Admittance is free. A large, red barn-like building provides a studio for resident artists.
What’s the wild west without an old cowboy boot. This one was affixed to a telephone pole sculpture that served as a desert lost and found. I flipped it around right side up. You can almost sense it walking.
I even found my own little work of art in an old Rhyolite dump near the Goldwell Open Air Museum. To avoid being sacrilegious I call it the Last Dinner.
Any Old West museum… art or otherwise, has to have a wagon wheel…. and indeed we found one at the Goldwell Open Air Museum.
NEXT BLOG: More on Nevada including ferocious bears, UFOs and ladies of the evening.
