GUEST: I bought it in
Washington, D.C., in 1985.

There was a gallery near where I
lived, and I just, I loved it.

I couldn't afford it with the
money that I had in the bank.

I was a cook.

And, um, so I talk to her about
it and she says, "Well, I can
sell it to you on installment."

So I was, like, "Okay."

APPRAISER: And, and
how much was it?

GUEST: I paid $1,100 for it.

APPRAISER: In 1985, which
was a lot of money.

GUEST: A lot of money.

APPRAISER: Yeah.

Yeah.

GUEST: For me.

The thing is, he also did the
cover of Talking Heads album
called "Little Creatures."

And I paid my first payment, and
then the next week, that album
came out.

And I was, like...

APPRAISER: And, and who are
we talking about here?

GUEST: Howard Finster.

APPRAISER: Howard Finster, okay.

GUEST: That's right.

APPRAISER: Finster was
a, a visionary artist.

Uh, and he was out there.

And you can look at
this and say, "Wow!"

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: He was born in 1916.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And, uh, he
was one of 13 children.

And he, he declared that he had
his first vision when he was
three years old.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: His sister, who was
deceased, visited him in a dream
and said, "You, Howard, you

will be a man of visions."

He became an
evangelical preacher.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: But he was
all along making art.

He finally moved to near
Summerville, Georgia...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER:...and started
the Paradise Garden.

And the Paradise Garden
still exists today.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Uh, that
you can go see.

It's a, it's a, full of oddball
buildings that incorporate
Finster's art.

R.E.M. and the Talking Heads
discovered him and there was an
article about him in "Atlanta"

magazine.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And people started
picking up on this weird, quirky
guy.

So let's sort of
delve into this.

GUEST: (laughing) Okay.

APPRAISER: And the first thing,
it's made out of boards.

GUEST: Oh, yeah.

APPRAISER: There's some mirror.

This is a piece of plexiglass.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: And he's
painted everywhere.

He's covered every...

GUEST: Everywhere.

APPRAISER: ...complete surface,
which is typical of the work
that he did.

Lots of verbiage,
lots of action.

And then you sort of delve into
this, and you say, "Okay, here's
the Tree of Life,"

and there are clouds in
ascending from the Tree of Life.

GUEST: Happy clouds.

APPRAISER: Happy clouds.

And then, of course, scattered
throughout are keys to Finster's
work.

GUEST: So instead of just
writing the number 3,524, he
wrote the "3,000 and 524 works
of

art."

APPRAISER: Yeah, and, and of
course, Finster had received
another vision that he was to

make 5,000 works of art.

And that's why he
started numbering them.

And he continued to work
until he died in 2001.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: So there, there...

No one knows absolutely how
many works of art Finster did.

But it's probably in excess of
45,000 or 50,000 works of art.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Which brings us
around to value of this
remarkable thing.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: What do you
think it's worth today?

GUEST: Not that long ago, a
gallery owner in Atlanta told me
it's worth maybe $3,000

to $5,000 at auction.

APPRAISER: Yeah.

Okay.

GUEST: That's all I knew then.

APPRAISER: I, I, I would
differ a little bit.

Most of his work, his
small-dimensional work, is
either measured in the few
hundreds...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER:...to $1,500, $2,000.

In the right outsider art
auction, I think this would
probably bring between $15,000

and $25,000.

GUEST: Really?!

That's great!

APPRAISER: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

GUEST: Great.

Good for Howard.

I knew it was very
special when I saw it.