Sara M. Patterson’s Middle of Nowhere: Religion, Arts and Pop Culture at Salvation Mountain is a multi-faceted meditation on the personality, worldview, and creative mission of artist and spiritual visionary Leonard Knight (1931-2014). The first half of the book is largely concerned with space-making, embodied spirituality, and the gift economy that built and sustains Salvation Mountain. In later chapters, Patterson turns her attention to the forces of commodification as they are enacted upon the mythic figure of Leonard Knight and the continued life of his project. Patterns of pilgrimage, kitsch, “good” and “bad” religious art, and authenticity at a site no longer maintained by its creator are considered. Patterson frames Knight as a Christian “desert father” with his own disciples and pilgrims and argues for an embodied perspective on Salvation Mountain, but refrains from issuing a particular call-to-action for preservation of the site. This ambivalent conclusion invites further dialogue from researchers and advocates.
The Imperial Valley of California’s origins as a failed attempt of civil engineering and environmental mastery to convert an inhospitable, isolated landscape into a “garden” resulted in the patterns of migration, settlement, creation, and degeneration that followed. Original developer George Chaffey’s “dream of technology” was to give way to the dreams of drifters, runaways, and eccentrics like Leonard Knight. The Salton Sea has no outlet, which means salinity continues increasing as water flows in and evaporates. As Patterson indicates, nearly every remainder of Knight’s personality seems to have evaporated with the isolation of the Salton Sea and the dedication to the spiritual and artistic project he began in 1984. According to Patterson, Knight “fashioned his own world where time and appointments did not matter at all . . . . Knight cared about and thought most about the future and how God’s love would permeate the world. These future events he saw radiating forth from the mountain and from believers who visited the mountain” (8).
Patterson positions Knight as a spiritual teacher in the vein of Christ. Citing Lewis Hyde’s gift economy model, she asserts that Knight’s creation was never intended for commercial use and that its sanctity may be compromised (or at least complicated) by visual references in contemporary pop music videos. In addition, the version of frontier freedom Knight enacted is problematized by the patterns of commercialization surrounding pilgrimage and its social media presentation. To truly understand Knight’s project, Patterson argues, an embodied survey of the site is required. Only seeing something makes us maintain a distinction between viewer and object, but with touch the body is affected. Touch and physical exertion can become profound when a shift in perception occurs by climbing Salvation Mountain, resulting in the spiritual development of the visitor (124-7).
However, Patterson does not frame this embodied experience in the context of design choices. There is some brief discussion of possible inspiration from Mexican border art’s uses of clay and adobe and colorful depictions of the natural world, but not much analysis of Knight’s bricolage of artistic techniques, skills, or media. Furthermore, Patterson restricts her discussion of other artists inspired by Knight to those in contemporary Christian music. Reference is made to the art students and professors who visit Salvation Mountain and indicate they have come to see Knight’s work as art that “breaks rules” or challenges the formal conventions they are studying in the classroom (152), but Patterson does not ground that discussion in any overview of art environments or vernacular architecture, spiritual or commercial.
Chapter 4, “When Prophet Meets Exile,” is anchored by Leonard Knight and Salvation Mountain’s appearance in the film adaptation of John Krakauer’s Into the Wild. Christopher McCandless has become a secular saint of sorts; his experiences have been shaped into a mythic narrative of the individual finding freedom in an isolated wilderness. Patterson articulates how Knight’s and McCandless’s visions of freedom are divergent: McCandless detaches through constant movement while Knight connects by staying in place, paradoxically doing so in a landscape that prompts movement. The author indicates that the typical Salvation Mountain pilgrim cultivates a highly individualized narrative. Patterson includes some examples from her ethnographic work, which included interviews conducted onsite in the Imperial Valley and via email. However, readers may note that there is rich territory with regards to the commodification of online personas that might have been explored. A quick peek at the social media hashtag #salvationmountain reveals an entire network of communication about this experience. There is also a missed opportunity to enrich the chapter’s thesis: Patterson does not cover the growth of pilgrimage to the Alaskan wilderness where McCandless lost his life or explore its contrast with Salvation Mountain pilgrimage. Instead, the author chooses to focus on Knight’s cameo in the 2007 film, Knight’s impact on the film character of McCandless, and how the cameo increased visibility of Salvation Mountain in popular culture.
In the book’s final chapter, Patterson provides some intriguing avenues for further investigation, reaffirming the need for a diversity of perspectives and cross-disciplinary scholarship on vernacular art environments. For example, in addition to the ongoing issues of commercialization and physical preservation of Knight’s creation, Salvation Mountain’s self-appointed current spiritual steward of the site has a fundamentalist perspective at odds with Knight’s inclusive Christian worldview. Patterson makes readers well aware that the future of Salvation Mountain is an open question despite Knight’s hopes. This volume will prove a useful tool for future studies of art environments and advocacy for the survival of the Salvation Mountain site.
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[Review length: 907 words • Review posted on July 11, 2018]