“It is like a museum, but it’s a museum that’s a school.”
Ralphael Plescia
Ralphael Plescia spent decades interpreting scripture through art in his self-described ‘Christian School’ in Salt Lake City, Utah. This documentary is an inside look at one of the more remarkable art environments created by one man. Directed by Travis Low and Torben Bernhard, this doc was selected as an “Editor’s Pick” by The Atlantic.
For nearly 50 years, Ralphael Plescia has been making religious art to explore the story of creation in his private museum in Salt Lake City, Utah.
His project has one overriding vision: to tell the story of Biblical creation in the right way by restoring characters and tales lost to history. The sculptures and paintings are not within the rooms, but are a part of them. Underground tunnels have been hollowed out to make space for Hell and the Garden of Eden. Narrow pathways and bridges traverse groundwater bubbling up from below.
via OHO Media
Plescia believed the building has a 98% (chance) of being bulldozed when he dies, but that knowledge does not stop him from working every day to complete his life’s work.
Per the The Salt Lake Tribune, “Plescia died Aug. 14 in Salt Lake City, according to an obituary released by Larkin Mortuary and by family members. He was 84. No cause of death was mentioned. Plescia’s death leaves the fate of his most notable work — the two-story personal sculpture garden he called Christian School — in doubt.”
Check out a more comprehensive, perhaps even the greatest list of outsider art must-watch documentaries.
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