Through a grant from National Geographic, I drove 3,000 miles around the middle of the United States to document the stories behind unique museums and art environments, as well as their creators’ motivations, histories, and plans for the future. These individuals built museums, assembled collections, and installed grand works of art for reasons that varied from the spiritual to the entrepreneurial, and, as a result, brought their towns new narratives and new business.

Their work redefined their lives and has come to represent a nostalgic landscape of roadside America, forming a body of attractions similar only in the sense of wonder that they evoke. These sites are extraordinary, commanding passing travelers to stop and experience something they’ve never seen before. Many are free to see and experience — a phenomenon unheard of in most of the country’s tourist destinations — simply existing because someone felt the need to build something new.

Project featured in National Geographic Magazine, on Los Angeles’s KCRW, and on Lansing’s WKAR.

Project Exhibited:

May 2016: Ah Haa Gallery – Telluride, CO

December 2016 – February 2017: Great Park Gallery – Irvine, CA