Welcome to the first installment of a special page devoted to profiling interesting and important people in the literary world. For this first entry, I would like to profile a person who is widely unknown, yet has had a large impact on the community he chose to make his home and create his works of art. This person was a bricklayer by trade and an artist by passion; his name is Kenny Hill. I was fortunate enough to have a private tour of the Chauvin Sculpture Garden in order to learn a little bit more about the reclusive, untrained artist, Kenny Hill.
Kenny Hill: The Writer
When researching the life of Kenny Hill, there are many walls and alleys to traverse to find anything of substance about his character. What I was initially interested in when deciding to profile Kenny Hill was a rumor I had heard about his abilities as a poet. I had already heard of and visited the Chauvin Sculpture Garden—the site of his greatest works—and was greatly interested in learning about his literary chops. When I asked my tour guide, Loreli Bergeron, about Kenny Hill’s abilities as a writer, she was kind enough to share a peculiar anecdote about his abilities and shared with me one of his poems that had been saved from his now demolished home.
(Click to Play Anecdote)
As Loreli points out in her anecdote, Kenny Hill was not a particularly well-educated man, and this aspect of his character is evident in his poetry and song-writing abilities. I would like to make clear, however, that he was not an uneducated man—though his abilities for creation in the visual arts far exceeded his technical abilities in creating in the literary form of art. The sentiments expressed in his poetry were beautiful, despite the writings not being well-written on a technical level, and I would like to share the transcript of one of his poems with you here.
“Give Me Your Smile”
Give me your smile to me —
and make me happy
When the skies are gray
I will give to my love
thru your hurting days —
Share me your heart of Gladness
and I will share my life with you
think of me and I always
will be with you
Kiss me when I cry
and I will cherish you forever
if you need me for no reason
your love is true
Give me your hopes and dreams
I make life worth living
if you fall I will give you my
Shoulder and still stand tall
give me your smile
and make me happy
and I’ll kiss your lips forever
As you can see, in the traditional sense, Kenny Hill was not much of a wordsmith, but the sentiments present behind his poetry were emotionally touching. However, what he lacked in technical writing ability, he made up for in his raw talent as a visual artist.
Kenny Hill: The Visual Artist
His story as an artist on the bayou begins in 1988 when he pitched a tent across from the current site of his Sculpture Garden in Chauvin, Louisiana. He struck up a verbal rental agreement with the landowner of the Garden site and began to build himself a small home on the property. In 1990, he began his work on what would amount to over 100 concrete sculptures on the property. As I’ve mentioned before, Kenny Hill was an untrained artist, and this allowed him to break out of the confines of traditional art. He was able to use techniques and materials that were not normally used in the realm of classical art. For instance, he constructed his life-size and larger sculptures from concrete, wire mesh, and bits of rebar for support. He also used forks and spoons to create some of the details in his works—using forks for hair striations and spoons for the details in the feathers on angels’ wings. He scrounged his materials from the worksites he visited as a bricklayer and other places. Visiting the Sculpture Garden, one cannot be anything but impressed by the scope of the work put into making the sculptures and the fact that Kenny Hill had no formal training in the arts.
Perhaps his most impressive piece on the lot is the 45-foot-tall lighthouse. This giant monument is composed of 7,000 bricks (collected over time from worksites) and is covered in sculptures of various figures—including angels, cowboys and Indians, musicians, soldiers, God, and Kenny Hill, himself.
Kenny Hill’s Lighthouse
Many of the pieces created by Kenny Hill depicted him in different scenes. Throughout the Sculpture Garden, we can see Kenny Hill riding a horse, carrying Christ’s cross, standing with a bleeding heart, and shown with his face painted half black and white, “suggesting [his] struggle between good and evil.”
An important aspect of the story of Kenny Hill is that his initial impulse to create his works of art came unexpectedly and suddenly. Hill refused to publicize his works, insisted that his Sculpture Garden was meant just for him, and allegedly declared it a “story of salvation” for the local community. The idea of duality in the garden—being both a private a public area—seems to be reflected in the two entrances to the garden. The first entrance—the front archway—is very welcoming to visitors and seems to have been meant for the public. The second entrance—the archway located to the side—seems to be Kenny Hill’s entrance, based on where his house was situated at the time the Sculpture Garden was being built. This side archway has a chain across the entrance and is adorned with two foreboding, red-eyed, male angels. Loreli Bergeron explained this entrance by saying that these two angels are “obviously asking you to proceed no further,” and that it “feels as if Kenny is saying, ‘These are my troubles; don’t go through what I went through.’”
Works Open for Interpretation
Keeping this in mind, it is important to note that Kenny Hill did not get paid for his works, but created art for art’s sake and as a sort of outlet for the ideas brewing inside of his head and heart. When prompted by Art Professor Dennis Sipiorski to further explain the Garden’s meaning by asking “Is this your vision,” the response from Kenny Hill was equally as enigmatic as the artist himself:
“It’s about living and life and everything I’ve learned.”
By refusing to explain the meaning of his sculptures, Kenny Hill has accomplished what many of the best literary scholars dream of doing. He allows those who enter to interpret each piece on their own, creating their own connection to the work. What Kenny Hill has accomplished with his Sculpture Garden has been to create a sort of visual poetry and left its poetic meaning open for interpretation by the individual consumer. The walk through the Sculpture Garden then becomes a spiritual, emotional, and intellectual journey for each individual and varies greatly depending on the viewer’s own personal experiences and filters of their psyche.
An Enigmatic Ending
After more than a decade of creating magnificent works of art on the bayouside in Chauvin, Kenny Hill was evicted from his home next to the Garden because he had neglected to cut the grass. In a fit of rage and anguish, he knocked the head off of a statue of Jesus, scrawled “HELL IS HERE, WELCOME” across his kitchen cupboards, and set off down the road with no possessions other than the clothes on his back. Kenny Hill was never to be seen again along Bayou Petit Caillou in Chauvin, Louisiana.
Sources:
-
Interview with Loreli Bergeron
-
http://www.nicholls.edu/folkartcenter/park.html
-
http://www.salon.com/2001/01/24/hill_2/
Phraseology & Fiction & Film, Oh My! 
Think y’all making him some kind of artistic genius but in reality he’s just off his meds trust me I know the real him not the mr. Neal talked about the one who scared his mom and sisters and the one that freaked me out when he left chauvin he lived with us and robbed us blind I’m his nephew and I’m speaking the truth
Henry, has anyone in or outside your family heard from him since he left? Any idea where he is?