Detour Art
A curated guide to Artist-built Environments
region by region, coast-to-coast.
Dedicated to the sheer joy of outsider, folk, visionary, self-taught, vernacular art and environment discoveries found all along the back roads (and side streets).
Artist-built Environments in the United States
Note: Things change, so check first before arriving. When visiting art environments, remember they are usually on private property, so please be respectful and don’t trespass.
Road stories
Davis Memorial - John Milburn Davis
Although this wasn't sculpted by a Kansan, it has a great Kansas story. You see, after a lifetime of feeling snubbed by his wife's family, old John Milburn Davis chose to have an incredibly ornate gravesite built, insuring that there wouldn't be any money left for them to inherit! It's a story told in fine Italian marble, a pictorial history of Davis and his wife at various stages in their marriage, culminating in the sad, mysterious Vacant Chair.
The Controversial Gravesite of Sacajawea
Two locations claim to be Sacajawea’s gravesite. One report suggests that Sacajawea died in 1812, from putrid fever, a few years after giving birth to her daughter Lizette. The record shows that the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake Squaw, died leaving an infant girl. There is no mention of Sacajawea’s name. There also was no mention of the daughter Lizette after this record. In contradiction, a Shoshone oral tradition relates that Sacajawea left her husband, Charbonneau, married a Comanche, and later in life returned to her home in Wyoming where she died in 1884 at the age of 100.
