CHAUVIN, La. — Once you lay your eyes upon the curious and sometimes upsetting Sculptures at the Chauvin Sculpture Garden, they may never leave your mind.
The Chauvin Sculpture Garden was created by a man named Kenny Hill sometime between the mid-1980s and the year 2000. He appears frequently through the garden and he said that it was inspired by dreams and visions that he had. Unfortunately, this garden of otherworldly depictions was the whole reason he was cast out of his community.
The landowner wanted to sell her property and believed that Kenny’s art devalued the lot. In January of 2000, she unceremoniously evicted him from the property. Kenny was so upset that he knocked the head off of his Jesus statue before writing “hell is here, welcome” on his cabinets and taking off down the road, with only what he had on his person.
Those who keep up the site never found a blueprint for Kenny’s work but it seems that he knew what he was doing.The garden symbol, which appears frequently, is actually an aerial map of the garden.
The garden is one of opposites, containing angels and the flames of hades both things that Kenny had experienced.
Then there are the two most disturbing omens of Kenny’s mind: the red-eyed, foreboding male angels with black wings. They hold a flaming cross-blocking an archway, and there’s a chain also blocking the path – obviously telling you not to proceed.
Some say it’s the very entrance to the underworld in Chauvin, Louisiana, but whatever happened to the man who resurrected it?
“That’s kind of the wonder of the site, is that mystery that surrounds where Kenny might be right now. Maybe he has already sort of accessed another plane of existence and he may not even know this place exists anymore.”
