LUCAS — Vintage computer motherboards, action figures with weapons, car parts, clock gears, and a visionary worldview – these are Mri-Pilar’s materials. Her installation, The Garden of Isis, fills the main floor of the Florence Deeble House in Lucas, and is an ongoing project 20 years in the making.
This summer, Pilar installed 50 new pieces on a wall she titled “Continuum.” The works were made in the spring at an artist’s residency at the Red Barn Studio in Lindsborg.
“The wall is a mosaic,” Pilar said. “It is very dense and close together with few breathing spaces, but as it moves out, it starts to open up and the silver reflection starts to happen.”
Years ago, when the Grassroots Art Center approved Pilar’s plan for the Garden of Isis, she lined the walls with reflective silver. Light from windows and electric fixtures plays among the thousand-plus individual pieces throughout the house once occupied by local teacher Florence Deeble. Deeble watched S.P. Dinsmoor work on his concrete Garden of Eden when she was a child. At the age of 50, Deeble began her own backyard environment with concrete and rocks she collected on her travels.
The rock garden is open for visitors, but to experience the Garden of Isis requires a visit to the Grassroots Art Center, 213 S. Main, celebrating its 25th year of discovering, collecting, and exhibiting art by Kansas and national outsider and visionary artists. The art center and Garden of Isis are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 1-5 p.m. Sunday, through September. Fall and winter hours begin in October. See the website grassrootsart.net for details on tours, ticket prices, and events.
“The Garden of Eden was made to last forever,” Pilar said. “I am making an ongoing ephemeral environment subject to the whims of time.” Her original plan with “Continuum” was to make two groups of objects that reflected the dark and light sides of creation. When two young girls tried to guess which objects belonged in which category, Pilar laughed at her error. “Light and dark are forever entangled and intertwined. This wall is a deep dive bringing to light the dark side of the Isis-Osiris cosmology. It is not a polarity,” she said.
Pilar’s work in Lucas can also be seen at Bowl Plaza, the public restroom that opened for visitors in 2012. Interior bathroom walls and an exterior mural are covered in mosaics she created. Outside on the adjoining lot, Pilar’s American Fork Art Park includes sculptures that pun on the “folk art” label. “My work is so playful because all that’s left to do once you disappear is to come back and play.”
