A Story of Salvation
Kenny Hill's vision of redemption, alive in his Chauvin sculpture garden
Driving into Chauvin, Louisiana, stilted houses dot the banks of Bayou Petit Caillou and Bayou Terrebonne—the two bodies of water crawling up the land, nearly kissing the road, cradling the iconic shrimp boats for which the community is known.
A lesser-known feature of this quiet community, nestled in an unexpected twist along the narrow road that is Bayouside Drive, is the Chauvin Sculpture Garden, a wonderland of Louisiana folk art. Recently, my fiancé Austin and I joined Dr. Gary LaFleur for an exclusive tour of the installation. In addition to LaFleur’s posts as Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Director of the Center for Bayou Studies at Nicholls State University—which owns the Chauvin Sculpture Garden—he is also the garden’s coordinator and is the President of the Friends of the Chauvin Sculpture Garden, which functions as a nonprofit advisory board. A longtime family friend, LaFleur has been taking me and his daughters, some of my best friends, on adventures like this one since I was up to his elbow.
When we arrived, the Petit Caillou was still, the occasional boat softly gliding by. The garden itself is quiet and strange, the dozens of brightly-painted sculptures exhibiting sentiments of both hope and loneliness. A colorful tile near the entrance reads “HEARTOFFACT,” suggesting that this was probably the intended title of the installation, created by the mysterious artist Kenny Allen Hill. The sculptures inside depict men, women, children—of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Angels—some with eyes, some without, some wearing shrimp boots. There’s Christ, exhibited often in modern day plainman’s clothing, in various stages of his life. Cowboys, soldiers, musicians, horses. Major events from American history. Thousands of flowers and tiny water-dwelling creatures. Archways and a colorful winding walking path gently led us to the garden’s grand centerpiece: a forty-five-foot-tall lighthouse comprising seven thousand bricks and adorned with sculptural figures climbing and clinging to its sides. Cables hanging inside the structure suggest that it was designed to illuminate.
While the garden and its inhabitants have evoked wonder for their otherworldliness and their artistic merit, so too does their elusive creator Kenny Allen Hill, a man whose history and whereabouts are—for the most part—a mystery.
What we do know is that in the 1980s, Hill was in his thirties, spending half the year working as a bricklayer in Branson, Missouri, and the other half of the year in a little house on the Petit Caillou, just feet away from where the lighthouse now stands. “He had this little cycle of a whole lot of work, and then some rest,” said LaFleur. The house has since been demolished due to disrepair, but one can still see the old bricks where the foundation once stood. When Hill began building the sculpture garden, he did not have permission from his landlord. He enlisted the help of welder Jacob Neil, his next door neighbor’s son, who placed the rebar upon which the sculptures are mounted.
While the garden and its inhabitants have evoked wonder for their otherworldliness and their artistic merit, so too does their elusive creator Kenny Allen Hill, a man whose history and whereabouts are—for the most part—a mystery.
As to Hill’s motivation for building the garden, the theories abound. In one of his few statements on the matter, Hill was referenced as calling the site a “story of salvation” for the community. The religious iconography is apparent, with angels touching agonized persons and lifting a self-portrait of Hill up the lighthouse, his face painted half black, half white: perhaps a metaphor for the good and bad in all of us. We know that he wanted it to be experienced and enjoyed, evidenced by his allowing people to walk through his yard to view the sculptures when he was still living on the property. Some have argued that Hill’s garden reflects a broken heart, or an effort towards human connection for someone who struggled to find it. A few observers even use the garden to point to some sort of mental illness in Hill, though LaFleur said that most of his closest neighbors describe him as a gentle, private man who simply expressed himself better through his art than through spoken words.
LaFleur shared a handful of stories gathered from neighbors, such as when Hill indulged his next door neighbor whose wife was offended by the naked female sculptures (he added some bathing suits). People remember how he would peek through his curtains to see who had happened upon the garden and then promptly close them so the viewer could experience and interpret it independently. “The community [members], when they would do their own houses and they had leftover paint, they would just come drop it off, or if they had a little pile of bricks they would go give that to Kenny,” LaFleur said. “We say that the community kind of supported what he was doing, even if they didn’t understand it . . . I think it’s a point of pride now. We hear from a lot of locals. Almost every weekend somebody comes and says, ‘I used to watch Kenny making this and I never stopped and looked at it.’”
Hill’s distinct presence in the community met its end sometime in the late nineties, when he started to neglect the grass on the property. “He wasn’t communicating with the landlord, so he got evicted,” said LaFleur. “When he got evicted, still he didn’t talk to them, he just got mad and walked away, like really walked away. People saw him that day, said, ‘Kenny, you need a ride?’, ‘No, going see my brother,’ and he hitchhiked all the way to Missouri,” where his brother lived. That was in 2000. Hill hasn’t been back since.
[Read about Cecil Lapeyrouse Grocery, founded in 1914, in a story from 2018 here.]
At the time, the fate of the sculptures was uncertain. Some stakeholders posed the idea of selling the pieces separately to folk art collectors, but Dennis Sipiorski, the Chair of the Art Department at Nicholls State University realized the artistic value of the unique site, and made efforts to rescue it in its entirety, as Hill had left it. He partnered with the Kohler Foundation, a Wisconsin organization that has dedicated itself to the preservation of folk art since the 1970s. Officials from the Kohler Foundation traveled to Chauvin, inspected the site, and agreed to purchase the property, build an art studio, make necessary repairs, and enlist an art conservator to appraise, clean, and catalog every sculpture. Then, the foundation gifted the site to Nicholls State University, which now owns the property, and integrates the garden into several of its curricular programs.
“We’re trying to keep it in the spirit of Kenny by never charging admission and thinking of it as a gift to the community,” LaFleur said. He also spoke to the challenges of maintaining the site. “Chauvin [is] a place that’s threatened by coastal land loss,” he explained. “Every day water is encroaching. That means that if the community is threatened, then this whole garden is threatened. We worry about that.”
Hill is in his seventies now. As far as his current whereabouts, his family reports that he is alive and well but protects his privacy by declining to disclose where he now lives. According to LaFleur, they seem to appreciate what is being done to preserve his art. We know that he was once married, has children, and grandchildren who sometimes visit the garden. Some family members have even attended the Chauvin Folk Art Festival, a community celebration of the arts held at the garden every year.
“Chauvin [is] a place that’s threatened by coastal land loss,” he explained. “Every day water is encroaching. That means that if the community is threatened, then this whole garden is threatened. We worry about that.”
The festival is held each spring alongside Chauvin’s Blessing of the Fleet, a longstanding custom during which a Catholic priest blesses the shrimp boats prior to the start of shrimp season. Boats are decorated to parade through the water as the community cheers on the shrimpers. “It’s a beautiful time to see the garden itself and to see this traditional ritual,” LaFleur said. “Before [the garden] was here, there was always a Blessing of the Fleet, but there was no place to really watch it unless you lived here. I think Chauvin kinda appreciates that. We’re all clapping for the shrimpers, so they feel some support.” As for the Folk Art Festival, one can expect to enjoy live music, food, dancing, and live artist demonstrations, all culminating in the boat blessing at the end of the day. According to those who knew Hill, these gatherings in the garden fulfill his purpose in creating it at all. In a 1993 article by Vivien Kay Daniel from The Courier, Hill is quoted saying: “This [place] is a gift to the people (who live) on the bayou, but it’s a doubleback gift to me.” “It’s just a beautiful kinda working-man way to say ‘My reward is when people look at the garden,’” said LaFleur.
As we explored the garden and the adjacent Contemporary Garden, two docents swept the walking path. An important support for the garden, docents help to clean and maintain the space through repainting the sculptures, making small repairs, and leading weekend tours for interested patrons. Docent support was especially critical after Hurricane Ida, whose destruction damaged some of the sculptures. Raegan Boudreaux, Senior Docent, recalled her first time experiencing the garden: “I was probably fourteen. I was riding bikes with my friends, and we decided to stop and look around… I was just amazed. The sculptures were so captivating and beautiful.” Now, as a tour guide of the garden, “I love when people talk with me and tell me what they think everything means,” she said. Docents are currently working closely with the garden’s board to locate an art conservator who can repair and restore the damaged pieces, though this takes time.
Across the street from the garden, which is open daily for self-guided tours, one can explore the Nicholls State University Art Studio on weekends from 11 am to 4 pm, during which times docents keep the small baby blue building open for the public and offer tours. The studio houses a small gift shop (I recommend the book Heart of Fact: The Visionary Environment of Kenny Hill by Karin Eberhardt) and displays relics from Hill’s lost home: tools used to create the garden, dime store models that inspired several sculptures, his own paintings, photographs of early sculptures in the garden and Hill with his family, handwritten notes (one of which came from his ex-wife), and newspaper articles. The Nicholls Studio Gallery lives in the back portion of the building and hosts a number of local artists throughout the year, often featuring art exhibits by students and faculty of the Nicholls Art Program.
During our visit, the work of Nicholls BFA graduate Lydia Sayes was on exhibition, titled A World Without. Drawing on influences such as John James Audubon, Ernst Haeckel, and Walton Ford, Sayes’s paintings elevate lesser-known endangered species—such as brown pelicans, African wild dogs, aye-aye lemurs, and yellow-eyed penguins—who are often overlooked in favor of flashier species like the Siberian tiger or the giant panda.
“It’s just a beautiful kinda working-man way [for Kenny Hill] to say ‘My reward is when people look at the garden.’” —Dr. Gary LaFleur
“Because some of the creatures I’m showing in my show are fantastic and strange, some people think that they aren’t alive, that they’re relics of our past,” Sayes explained. “I really want people to understand that these extremely unique animals are, in fact, still a part of the ecosystems on Earth today and that there’s still time to save them.” Sayes expressed gratitude that she could show her work in the Chauvin gallery, largely due to the connection of preservation between the garden and her exhibit. “We need to find these really beautiful spaces and keep them for other generations to see. Even if the artist isn’t there, the objects are still there, and I feel that way about my art,” she said. Since the artist can’t always be present to explain the work, Sayes posited, she hopes that her art will speak her message for her, much like Hill and his sculpture garden.
There are a number of ways people can help to support the garden. “Maybe the first thing to do is to visit the garden and see for yourself,” LaFleur said. “When people are here, it can be the first stop on a trip to kind of observe how coastal communities of Louisiana are dealing with coastal land loss.” Boudreaux agreed and added that posting about the garden on social media also helps others to learn about it. Additionally, donating money and time is beneficial, especially as the garden holds work days leading up to the Folk Art Festival in the spring. This preparation usually starts in January, and interested volunteers can email LaFleur at gary.lafleur@nicholls.edu. For more information, visit nicholls.edu/folkartcenter and follow the garden on Facebook at @ChauvinSculptureGarden.