(male announcer) Production costs for Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations have been paid for in part by: Generous supporters of Kansas City Public Television.

And by: Thank you.

(man) ♪ Welcome to a show about things you can see ♪ ♪ without going far, and a lot of them are free.

♪ ♪ If you thought there was nothing ♪ ♪ in the old heartland, ♪ ♪ you ought to hit the blacktop ♪ ♪ with these fools in a van.

♪ ♪ Look out, they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out art in their own backyard.

♪ ♪ Randy does the steering so he won't hurl.

♪ ♪ Mike's got the map, such a man of the world.

♪ ♪ That's Don with the camera, ♪ ♪ kind of heavy on his shoulder.

♪ ♪ And that giant ball of tape, it's a world record holder.

♪ ♪ Look out, they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out art in their own backyard.

♪ ♪ Look out, they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out the world in their own backyard, ♪ ♪ checking out the world in their own backyard.

♪ (Mike) Yeah, go ahead.

Get your bagel.

(Don) Get your bagel.

(Don) Dear TV Mailbag: Has it come to this?

I just got this for the ride, come on.

(Don) Hi, Don the camera guy here, breakfasting with the birds while TV weasels do some last-minute research.

Oh, I'm looking at this incredible, great book by Gary Monroe of all these Florida self-taught artists.

It's got punctuation.

It's got color pictures.

It's got some kind of little scratching that I can't quite figure out.

(Don) There's some irony here, and the irony is this: good as Gary's book is, we're starting this show with someone who's not in it: the world-famous J Jonny in Boca Raton, whose art we've never seen but whose name intrigues us.

World-famous, it seems; takes common household products and colorfully misuses them to his heart's content.

(J Jonny) It's inflatable sod.

I started out with, like, a little piece of foam to make this shape.

It was only this big.

But now when I inflate it, it gets, like, three times the size.

I have no idea why I made this.

That is caulking silicone.

I would add color to it, make sheets out of it, and turn it into something more magical, you know, than their boring caulking.

Well, some of the materials are smooth or rough, the surfaces; and sometimes, like, this material has a little stickiness to it.

I have one piece in the tub.

(Randy) Oooh.

(J Jonny) Actually, this was going to be-- I was trying to make a tire.

A lot of times, it doesn't turn out the way I was thinking, but it turned out, you know.

It became a thing that I've made, and then I make a lot of different things, and I put them all together, and I have a lot of things.

This was the body of the dog.

Maybe a head would go here, a tail, and then some legs.

Well, legs must be marked "legs," right?

There's some legs.

(Mike) It's got a great feel to it.

You're just--this stuff-- something about it does make you just want to touch it.

(J Jonny) Many times, people say, "If you're so world-famous, how come I've never, you know, heard of you before?"

So I would just say, "Well, I didn't say I was world-famous.

That's just my name," you know.

I named myself after my twin.

My twin's name was Jonny.

It's a happy name, and it's meaningful to me.

Okay, so here's some more stuff.

This is the one that was falling over a lot, and I decided, if it falls over again, it's going to be a piece that's on its side.

A lot of things that I do are not--do nothing practical, you know, so I'm just making things.

When I show the work, I hope that other people are-- that they feel welcome to touch it and be part of it and experience it.

(Randy) So can we touch it?

Oh, you guys?

No way; no, no, no.

I mean, no, you-- Okay, hands off.

Here, you can-- Oh, oh, geez.

(J Jonny) When people see individual pieces of my work, they think, say, "Oh, that's nice."

You know, but when I put them all together, I create a world, and it's sort of like a carnival.

You can't describe a carnival to somebody.

They really have to be there.

And sometimes I actually feel the pieces saying, "Hey, what about me?"

you know, "There's a show; I'm not invited?"

And a lot of times, I add more and more of my art to a show.

I guess I feel like more is more with my work.

It's like you can never have too many birthday cakes and smiles.

(Randy) Are there a lot of fumes with this stuff?

That was my other question.

When I answer the questions, does it sound like I have a lot of fumes in me?

(Don) Think I'll sit this one out.

But here's something I do know: that's one big, honking glove for which we have the perfect mate.

(Randy) That feels good.

Whoa, ho, that was a burner.

(Don) Our world record holder's famous too, but not so famous that it doesn't end up just like us: crammed back in the van, heading down Florida 441 to our next destination, Mad Hatter Muffler's.

And luckily, it's art, not repairs that brings us.

We've seen pipe benders before, but never a menagerie quite like Kevin Doyle's.

And someone seems to have done their homework.

Unless I'm mistaken, that would be a metal me.

(Kevin) Some of the smaller parts are catalytic converters, but the majority of them are mufflers.

That's off of that ill-fated car company, the Daewoo.

Them cars have a lot of problems, mufflers are the least of it.

You lay a couple pieces on the ground, and you look at it, say, "What can you make out of that?"

Well, that could be a little guy, yeah.

Anything in there, you can make something out of real quick.

You just have to have a little imagination and a wire feed welder.

[zapping] (Mike) And some welding skills.

(Kevin) That's what does it; it's a dangerous combination.

You start playing with stuff, and you can just stick one piece to another real easy and add another, add another, add another.

Pretty soon, you got something really weird like this.

[zapping] (Randy) Okay, so what is it?

Slinky dog; did you see Toy Story?

Obviously, we got a giraffe and a rabbit... the blue sad dog, and Dalmatians-- fat little Dalmatians are a given; same with the big old hound dog.

[zapping] (Randy) Reindeer.

(J Jonny) Close.

It's a Whatsit.

[zapping] Oh, the little hitchhiker, he's hitchhiking, but people always think he's flipping them off.

[zapping] So I built this guy, and I built it inside the shop.

Once I built it, I had to try to get it out of the shop.

It's pretty heavy.

[zapping] We just worked on a 350Z this morning, brand-new.

Guy brought a fancy exhaust system.

I saved the parts 'cause they're going to be something.

We take their stuff off, put in a noisier one; they're happy.

I got a fresh body part.

I'm telling you, it's contagious.

(Don) Now, TV crews are just one source of ideas.

Kevin says his kids have helped inspire quite a few creations, so they deserve some face time too.

In fact, it appears Connor might be about to leave us one producer down.

Yahh.

Hey, what's that on your foot?

Ahh!

(Don) Thanks to treachery, we're still hauling a full load on to Fort Lauderdale, where, once again, we're about to be luckier than we are good.

In Florida folk art circles, no name is better known than Purvis Young, who's been painting scenes of inner-city life down in Overtown since the '60s.

But now, thanks to one Larry Clemons, a Purvis Young Museum has sprung up here.

And today, at least, the man himself is on hand.

(Purvis) I paint problems of the world.

You know, I looks at crimes; I look at what's going on, you know, in the world.

When I see a world that's safe, then I paint safe.

What I try to do sometimes is paint angels all chained up or, you know, my angel don't got home, you know.

(Larry) I've always loved his work, but he was just always very hard to find.

And then coincidentally, a friend of mine told us where we could find Purvis and literally said, "Larry, if you'll go down under the expressway, "you get off at the 8th Street exit; "drive up 3rd Avenue, and there's a church.

"And if you pass the church, "it's the next expressway overpass.

"He sits right there.

"And if he's not there, make a right at the first street, "and he's in that little shed building across from the next church."

(Mike) Purvis, was there a point when you knew you could start painting?

I mean, what was that moment in time?

(Purvis) Well, I picked up a brush... And I picked up a brush and just taught myself.

It really come to me when I sold my first painting that I was professional.

And I could look at my artwork and tell I paint different from other people.

You know, I'm not going to do no flowers or get too deep into landscaping and all of that, you know.

I don't want to do that.

Sometimes I mix colors up.

I mix the colors.

I mix the colors, put yellow and all that in the colors, and sometimes people go crazy when I do that.

(Larry) When I met Purvis, he didn't have a doctor, and so the first thing I did is just say, "Hey, Purvis," you know, 'cause a lot of people have taken advantage of Purvis.

You know, people were out there spreading rumors that-- armed robberies, why you went to jail.

You see it in all these biographies.

And so I said, you know, "We've got to right these wrongs.

"People were talking like you're a drug addict or an alcoholic or that you're a dangerous person," and it's really all the dealers that were just literally trying to keep people and collectors from going to find and seek Purvis.

(Purvis) I just live a simple life, you know.

But I prayed to become great.

You know, I don't go to church and nothing like that.

I'm just like the American Indian.

Sometime, when I paint on wood-- I like wood.

When I paint on wood, I say, "Well, I'm not the one "cutting the forest down.

It's something I found."

And then I kind of look at the world problems.

(Larry) I've been helping the family for a long time, and I've been collecting his art to maintain the body of the collection, 'cause, you know, some people will look at a piece of art and many times say, "Well, I would like to buy that."

And I'd say, "Well, I'm sorry, but I can't sell that," because I'm trying to keep the body and the story of the collection together to one day build a museum, so people can truly understand the story of Purvis Young.

(Randy) So do you put your energy, when you're working, into the work totally and just ignore everything around you?

Is it like that?

(Purvis) Sometime I do.

Sometime I put it up, and sometime I wait another ten minutes, look at National Geographic or something, and I go back and add more to it.

I'd be thinking.

I want to paint something different from any other artist.

(Don) Purvis, it turns out, has actually seen this show and didn't hold it against us.

Perhaps by the time you see this, Larry's dream of honoring him in his own hometown will come true.

But for now, the museum's here, and "here" is close to the beach.

(Randy) Did you win?

(Don) Which, as soon as we master this high-tech machinery, we will show you, if only to prove this long and fruitful day is finally done.

Good morning from the world's largest parking lot: eight sunshiny lanes going nowhere fast.

(Mike) Is it like this all the time?

(Don) Until finally, the vise grip of Miami traffic loosens a little and lets us proceed onto Homestead and one of the granddaddy sites of grassroots art.

I'm talking about the Coral Castle, built, according to legend, by one little man in sorrowful tribute to "Sweet 16," the bride-to-be who bailed on him at the altar.

(Louis) Ed-- Mr. Edward Leedskalnin.

Ed was born in Latvia in 1887; had to leave school after about the fourth grade and go to work for the family.

And later, he was mentored to a man who was-- taught him to be a stonemason.

But at the same time, that gentleman was very heavy into Egyptology, so Ed ended up studying Egyptology, the Pyramids, and a lot of people make some connections with that as to how Ed might have built Coral Castle.

It's the stones from 15 to 30 tons that make people wonder how a guy with just wooden tripods and pulleys, refusing help through the years-- many people wanted to help for free and learn how to do it, but it was always a courteous "No, thank you."

This is his turnstile.

Oh, look at that.

That's 6,000 pounds.

Come on through all the way around.

Let's go all the way around.

And so Ed would get a "wow" at the very beginning, and he'd get lots more "wows" during the tour.

This is really what started it all.

That was his first piece; he was proud of it.

(Randy) Would he have really fit in that bathtub?

(Louis) Yes, he would've fit in that bathtub.

And he used that bathtub; that's the real thing.

He used it for over 25 years.

And he used it at his prior park.

Let's don't forget there was a complete park ten miles southwest of here.

And that's where a good portion of the biggest structures here came from.

And there, he quarried stones like the obelisk in the corner, which I believe is really the greatest work of all.

Next to it, which is the Repentance Corner wall with the stone steps built into it-- that's over 25 tons.

That stone doesn't get much recognition, but it's a tremendous stone.

And this beautiful Turkish or crescent of the moon is another 23-ton piece that he moved from the first location and mingled with the planetary system that he built at this location.

Being the king of the castle, he could rock in his throne.

This was a ten-acre pine forest that he bought, so he had to clear the pine trees and start moving these big structures and quarrying all the walls in that two-story building over there.

And he's done and back open for business in a period of about four or five years.

But he had an uncanny sense about if anybody was near, and he would cover his work if anybody was around.

He would cease work if anybody was watching.

(Mike) Well, I'm thinking he had power tools or something.

He was secretly using power-- well, probably not; no electricity.

No electricity.

He did create electricity with his own designed AC generator, but that was only to drive experiments in electromagnetism and radio, which he published works on that are available today.

He became very educated in his adult years.

He probably had a genius-level IQ.

You couldn't achieve those things without that.

Everything in the park was layers.

It's from the other place.

It's called striated limestone.

(Mike) Striated, yeah.

That's called lithic limestone.

That's striated limestone.

Is there any what?

(Don) Lemon limestone?

(Louis) Yes.

He was a very kind man, very interesting, always ready to show you around, hospitable.

And people would come time and time again with their Sunday school picnics, church picnics, family outings.

This was a favorite place for people to come and have family recreation.

He made many pieces in dedication to his lost love, talked about Sweet Sixteen for many, many years, still hoping maybe she was going to come back and be with him, but it never happened.

(Don) Ed's hair.

(Randy) Think so.

I'll remove it with this archival tool.

(Don) You stole from the hotel.

Shh, it's a secret.

(Don) All right, then, here's a few things we haven't gotten around to: Ed's Polaris telescope, his sundial, and the Coral Castle gift shop-- flat-out great.

So with fistfuls of Ed-mabilia in tow, our vehicle was grown even less spacious, traversing Florida's highway 41, the infamous Alligator Alley, the mere mention of which makes Mike slightly shaky.

(Mike) In a footrace between the gator and you, you lose; the gator wins.

I figure I only got to run faster than Don.

(Don) Now, volumes and volumes have been devoted to the delicate balance of the Everglades' ecosystem, but you'll have to find them yourself.

We're here for the mailbox standing proudly in Ochopee at the world's smallest post office, where the urge to play catch has suddenly struck us.

My arm's sore.

I don't think I can play today.

(Randy) Oh, yeah; get down on it.

Get down on it; fire to first.

All right.

(Don) And our impromptu guest, Barbara, as well.

Have you ever been to the littlest post office before?

Nope.

(Randy) It used to be an irrigation ditch thing.

Oh, yeah?

And it's also the bus depot.

(Mike) Ho!

Turn two!

(Don) Not bad for a Yankee fan, and best of all, no gator crawled out to disrupt us.

Just how small is it?

While no man likes to hear that, here's Sacajawea with the answer.

More Florida on the morrow.

Guess you could say it's come to this: another day, another castle.

No coral up here, though.

This is farmland for sure, and here outside Ona, we found Solomon's Castle and restaurant, named for the manic little man who built them.

(Howard) 1972, I started building a castle.

When I found out that I bought a swamp, I figured I better build something tall, and palaces were much too expensive to furnish.

Castles are easy.

I mean, you just build a tower here, a turret there; pretty soon you got a castle.

These are offset printing plates from our local newspaper.

There was an ad in there: "Come and buy our printing plates to repair your chicken house."

(Mike) But it has to actually survive, you know, heavy winds and things like that, so structure, engineering-- some of those things are important.

(Howard) It helps, yeah.

But I was born that way.

I started wood-carving when I was four, and I just had a knack for it.

I was born a carpenter or a craftsman, steelworker-- all those things.

Remember during the '90s, the farms that were going bankrupt?

Well, during that time, I designed a tractor without a seat or steering wheel for the farmer that lost his ass and had nowhere to turn.

This is A Tomcat With a Heart On.

And this is The Cat and the Fish.

The cat ate and left.

This one old friend of mine from Italy told me, "You're never going to amount to anything "because you make fun of your work.

You know, you got to be serious."

He said, "Now, look at this piece here."

He says, "I suffered over this."

I said, "You know, if you suffer in your work, you ought to get new work."

This is an attachment from a Hamilton Beach food processor.

That's called Darth Vader and Stash.

That's called Too Much Fish to Eat and Not Enough Woman to Love.

This is a village in the Bahamas where I resided for seven years.

This is a gas tank from a Honda motor scooter.

The rear end cover from International Truck.

The roller chain is called "the permanent permanent."

See the tortoise and the hair?

[laughs] In 1990, I had heart surgery, and I was told, in order to rebuild my chest muscles I would have to do something very physical, so I took on a four-year project building this ship.

You know what kind of socks pirates wear?

Arr-gyles.

It's 65 feet.

It's 3/4 the size of the Santa Maria, but it's nothing like the Santa Maria.

This is a gunship.

It has 12 guns, and that's in case the attackers come from the strawberry fields.

The elephant is made out of seven oil drums.

It took 300 hours to construct.

His toenails are clam shells.

His tusks are manatee ribs.

These are master cylinders.

That's called Give Me a Brake Fluid.

Don Quixote returning to the windmills.

[metallic grinding] This steam engine took over a year to gather the parts for it.

That's a valve out of a trumpet in a lamp shade.

This is a 1910 Ford kerosene lantern.

This chair is made out of 86 cans of beer.

I was trying to drink 150 cans because I really wanted to make a couch.

We have a policy of no apologies.

This is Napoleon's pistol.

That's why he had to keep his hand on that shoulder holster.

That's the Minute Man Gun for killing time.

And this is the Square Shooter, made with a toilet valve for flushing out the perpetrator.

And that Venus Update.

She won the No-belly prize.

[groans] (Howard) Abe Lincoln the day that he fired his tailor.

That's for whole milk.

Okay, all right, here, we can't take this anymore.

(Don) Even I can't keep pace with Howard, and that's kind of scary.

(Howard) He was crazy about her because she was a hell of a necker.

(Don) We left him any way we could, still riffing away with his kingdom to survey.

(Howard) Bye.

(Don) And proceeded on to the aptly named Plant City, racing some very dark clouds to Ruby's produce stand, where, since 1990, vegetables and art have been happy together.

(Randy) When you made those first strawberries and watermelons, were you thinking about art, or were you just thinking about selling?

No, that was to promote the stand at the time.

In my mind, I wanted to do art, but I was going to wait.

When other people began to come tell me this, I got excited, said, "Yeah, you like it."

Some did; some didn't.

But then I said, "I don't care if they don't like it.

I like it."

And I was excited by it.

(Randy) Well, Ruby's folk art is hot, hot, hot.

(Ruby) It's hot now.

It is hot; it's the hottest thing I think I've ever seen in a long, long time.

I thought the produce stand was hot, but the art is hot.

That's Barny.

That's an old painting.

She's been around here since 1993.

Farmers always have to have plenty of food to eat to work.

And it came up just to me yesterday, do a farmer's breakfast, because we eat anything.

"I sing because I'm happy"-- it is a song, but I did that because they say, "You happy?"

I'll say, "Yeah, I'm happy with what I'm doing."

This stuff was for a house, and they reject this, so sometime I go by where they're building houses and call them up and ask them, "Can I have the scraps?"

'cause they'd be in the garbage bag, and they say, "Yes," and I get it.

And so I just take it and use it.

Oh-ho.

I don't even know how to explain this one.

This one is just put back-- backwards.

The words is backwards; turned around backwards.

(Randy) Who's RCW?

(Ruby) That's me.

That's my logo for the art.

I always wanted to be an artist, wanted to be a detective, and then I wanted-- then later, the Lord called me to be a minister.

You can't want to be a minister.

You have to let God.

See, He have to choose you.

It's just marvelous to do things, not to copy off of other people, have your own personality, your own mind, your own will, and be devoted to it.

(Randy) What time do you get up in the morning to come do the produce?

(Ruby) I get up every morning about 6:00.

Have a lot of Scriptures to read, so I have to get up and read all those Bible Scriptures before I can come out the house.

(Randy) And you work right here.

(Ruby) There, out-- anywhere I like to work, wherever I want to work.

I work outside, inside.

We have to follow the sun around.

If the sun is shining, you know, you don't want to be in the sun, not in Florida.

(Randy) Even though you're now like a world-famous artist, you still like-- (Ruby) Oh, I didn't think about being famous.

When you say I'm famous, then I think about it.

I don't even think about being famous.

I just think I'm some little old... little old somebody on the side of the highway trying to sell produce and trying to be a missionary or minister, whatever.

(Don) One of Ruby's signature pieces tells us, "Timing me is wrong," but this is TV, where the clock's always ticking.

And Mother Nature's ticked off too.

[thunder rumbles] (Randy) Okay, Ruby.

(Don) So this is Don the camera guy signing off.

(female announcer) To learn more about the sights on this show and how to find them, visit us on the web at: DVDs, tapes, and a companion book to this series are available by calling: Captioning and audio description provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Captioning and audio description byCaptionMax www.captionmax.com With a tilt, you know, a tilt.

(Don) Look out for that fire ant mound there.

(Mike) Yeah, those are big fire ants.

You just had whiter legs on it, I think you'd have it.

Yeah, that's the real problem here is, those legs are way too dark.

I wanted to see if the air would stay in the silicone.

(Randy) Silicone seems to be the big thing down in Florida, we noticed.

(male announcer) Production costs for Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations have been paid for in part by: Generous supporters of Kansas City Public Television.

And by: Thank you.