By Laurie McAndish King
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Most Unforgettable Character category
East Jesus is not an easy place to get to. It’s in southern California, off the southeast side of the Salton Sea—the opposite side from Palm Springs. The unpopulated side. Highway 111 takes you to the turnoff at Niland, which leads you over to Slab City, and then you’re almost there.
Slab City, also known as “The Last Free Place,” is a rent-free, plumbing-free, power-grid-free, trash-pickup-free jumble of ramshackle structures where a US military training facility once stood. The government dismantled its site back in the 1950s, removing pretty much everything but a raft of concrete slabs, which formed the basis of the current encampment. It’s a haven for the impoverished and indigent, for off-the-grid artists and the photographers who follow them.
A dusty, rutted road leads out the back of Slab City and curves around to the left, delivering visitors to a small parking area where a sign designates the “En-Trance” to East Jesus. And entrance you it will. At first the place looks like a junkyard, with old cars and random pieces of detritus strewn about. But stroll through the sandy pathways of East Jesus and an odd kind of order emerges. The desert junkyard morphs, on its own schedule, into an outdoor art gallery—an art yard—as viewers take in more and more of the elaborate detail, the clever assemblages, the creativity that has blossomed here.
I’d visited other art installations in the area—Noah Purifoy’s found art near Joshua Tree; the eerie, sand-swept installations at Bombay Beach; the 100+ gigantic rusted-steel dinosaurs at Galleta Meadows. But East Jesus excites my imagination the most.
Named because it’s so isolated, rather than for any religious reason, this “experimental, sustainable, habitable art installation” is technically a museum “interested in low-tech solutions, unresolved theories, non-linear advancement, and creative reuse.” The community also seeks to inspire people to see beyond what something is, and instead see what it can be. I’m eager check it out.
When I arrive in East Jesus the first time, at ten o’clock on a June morning, a hot breeze is already blowing. I am immediately overwhelmed by the view from the parking area: a rusty swing set with automobile seats hanging precariously from its bent crosspiece, a motorboat with an airplane propeller at the bow, a mannequin sporting robot arms and a gas mask, harvested circuit boards, painted tractor tires, bowling balls.
A makeshift canopy near the entrance throws off a small shadow. Beneath it, a man with a big belly, a long white beard, and a curved long-stemmed pipe sits on a chair in the shade. From a distance, he looks so much like Santa Claus that for a moment I have the idea this is where Santa comes to warm his bones during the off season, but then I realize that doesn’t make any sense. Maybe the desert heat is getting to me. This man is wearing a fluorescent orange East Jesus T-shirt that reflects upward to give his face an eerie, un-Santa-like glow. Also, he has a yin/yang tattoo the size of a quarter in the middle of his forehead.I approach cautiously.
“Hi, I’m Laurie. Do you live here?
“I do.” He nods.
“What’s your name?”
“They call me the Wizard.”
Not Santa, then. That clears things up. The Wizard invites me to sit down, and we chat for quite a while about Marvin the Martian Loony Tunes, the Wizard’s memories of his various churchwarden pipes (“each one is unique, and to be cherished”), and social evolution (“mutate or die”). He mentions his estranged son, but when I ask what his son thinks of this lifestyle, the Wizard clams up. For a minute I think he might cry, but his eyes remain dry.
We are in the desert.
The Wizard has lived in East Jesus for more than a decade, almost since the inception of the community.
“I’m an amateur sociologist,” he says. “I’ve watched East Jesus and Slab City grow and dance around, trying to form a community without rules. There lies an inverse relationship between freedom and security. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.”
Yes, I think. That’s part of why I came to the desert—to escape the security of my daily life, to taste the real freedom that comes with insecurity. But now that I see what life is like here, I’m not sure I’m up for more than a quick visit.
“Slab City was here first, then East Jesus came about, then Bombay Beach is most recent,” the Wizard continues. “It’s the most vibrant; it’s getting all the big money… Oh! Oh!” he interrupts himself excitedly with an idea that just can’t wait. “And my favorite, my very favorite, is the twelve-foot seesaw.”
He points to a gigantic seesaw that until now had been overshadowed by the boat and the swing set and the masked mannequin. “I am the creator of one thing here. I held it all up with bowling pins, put some rebar in and some glue in. I was at the top of my game there.”
He laughs. The East Jesus seesaw really is twelve feet tall. It consists of one very long board balanced on a neatly welded steel frame. Rusted bicycle seats are attached at each end, and the handles seem to be made from old saw blades. The contraption looks impossible to ride, but the Wizard tells me it can be done, although it takes three people to maneuver two riders onto the seats.
“It’s like the first time,” he says. “Remember when the seesaw was twice as tall as you were? It still is!”
The Wizard pauses, perhaps assessing my vibe.
“Are you familiar with term power vortex? Some people have a desire, a compulsion, a force—call it what it is!—to create art.”
“A lot of them seem to have ended up around here,” I observe. “Is there much interaction between these artist communities—Bombay Beach and Slab City and East Jesus?”
“We know each other very well, but interaction, no. They’re a bunch of artists. They have these things called egos; there are different groups, camps.” Another part of the reason the residents didn’t talk to outsiders was that they didn’t want to invite company. “Unless it was someone you wanted to live real close with for a long time,” he continues. “No one talked about Slab City. No one talked about anything.”
I’m honored that the Wizard is talking to me now. He doesn’t seem to have anything else to do—nothing that’s pressing, anyway—but still, it’s nice that he’s sharing his time with me, telling me about the history of the area, introducing me to art-yard highlights. This must be what all his days are like, talking with visitors who have come to take in the spectacle that is East Jesus. Some are doubtless Green Day fans, here to pay homage to the band’s 2009 anthem “East Jesus Nowhere.”
Some have come specifically to see the TV Wall. East Jesus’ best known installation was constructed from more than one hundred scavenged televisions and computer monitors. Each screen displays a hand-painted message: Better Living through Sedentary Obedience. Insecurity We Trust. You Need More Stuff. You have the Wrong Opinion. White People Yelling at Each Other. Turn Me On. Dear God No. The official description calls it “a castrated pile of technology,” and says the TV wall will remain a work in progress as long as there’s room to keep adding on, either horizontally or vertically.
“What do you do here all day?” I ask.
The Wizard pauses again. He pulls a hefty pinch of tobacco from the canister that hangs around his neck, fills his pipe, and tries several times to light it, but the breeze interferes. I stand up and move to his side to block the wind. The Wizard is focused on what he’s doing and doesn’t seem to notice. Eventually the fire takes, and he drags on his pipe. Then he turns and looks at me.
“What are you doing over there?”
“I blocked the wind.” This doesn’t register with him. “So you could light your pipe.”
The Wizard looks from his pipe to me and back again, then rewards me with a broad grin.
“Thank you!”
Finally he replies to my question, “I write on the blackboard whenever the voices in my head tell me to. This is a place for the insane to go. I have the credentials. I have the pedigree.”
I wonder what the Wizard’s life has been like, what kind of childhood he had, what kind of challenges he’s faced. I thought of my own late brother, plagued for many years by schizophrenia. John would have loved it here in East Jesus. “We create a microcosm,” the website says, “where those who fall through the cracks of the modern world may thrive.”
“The crazies come here, the empaths,” the Wizard continues. “Some who just plain want to get off the grid—they feel happier that way. There’s some trauma in their past; they’re running from something.”
“Is there a drug problem in East Jesus?” I ask tentatively, because earlier the Wizard had mentioned his use of meth.
“The only drug problem we have are meth heads. We don’t change. We get it under control. We survive. It takes one hell of a toll on the body, though. Yes and no, both. It is. Do good. Oh! Oh!”
The Wizard interrupts himself again to tell me, excitedly, “We’re hoarders! We never give anything away. Charlie Russell started the whole thing, named it East Jesus, made the T-shirt; he was a bit of a hermit. Charlie wanted to do a Burning Man 365, but you’ve got to pace yourself. It’s not for amateurs.”
The desert is not for amateurs—that’s for sure.
“How many people live here?”
“Right now, off season, there are three of us here. We have solar panels, diesel backup, two refrigerators, a freezer and three air-conditioned rooms. It’s too hot to support very many more people. Do you realize how much they drink? The bar bill! We’re artists, gulp, gulp!”
The Wizard mimes drinking a long, slow draft.
“What about short-term guests—do you get many of them?”
I’m imagining what it would be like to live in East Jesus—the heat, the isolation, the meth. Blinding sunshine, monotony, sand in your pants, a visitor, a donation … bursts of creativity! More heat, more isolation, more meth….
“We’ve had three guests for a couple of days each in the last few months. It changes the balance. We have to exist here, so we have our own patterns. It’s nice to have a change, but we’re in this for the long run. We do it well. We don’t talk too much to each other.”
The art at East Jesus, more than 2,000 pieces, has all been donated over the past ten years.
“Some pieces scream: Look at me!” the Wizard points out. “Others say: You have to look for me to find me. We have several acres of raw materials; we have a glass studio. A guy here named Pyro was really into glass. We have fuel and everything back there. We have a 110-volt welder; used it to repair the seesaw.”
“Do you need any more materials?”
“No, but we need artists to come and work here. Ones who want to suffer for their art. We also accept money, alcohol—any really cool stuff.”
“You have to look for me to find me.” The Wizard was talking about the art, but he might just as easily have been referring to other aspects of the desert: the East Jesus encampment itself, the freedom that comes with living off the grid, the beauty that grows from austerity—art from junk. He could have been talking about himself, a recovering addict who’s been able to find joy in creativity, despite adversities.
I visited the desert again the following year, and drove over to East Jesus to say hello. My heart was light that morning; I was off to see the Wizard! The “En-Trance” sign was still there and so was the canopy, still casting a little square of shade over the Wizard’s chair. But a thin young man (dressed all in black—in the desert) sat in the Wizard’s place.
He was pale and friendly, and said the Wizard was no longer in East Jesus because he had gotten stuck in an ashram in India. He’d just flown over for a quick trip, but then got caught up in Covid-related flight cancellations and possibly other bureaucratic issues, and was unable to leave the country.
“You have to look for me to find me.”
~ ~ ~
Laurie McAndish King is an award-winning travel writer and photographer with an eye for the quirky. Her subjects include 20-foot-long Australian earthworms, an Ivy League astrophysicist’s explanation of how flying saucers are powered, and finding the perfect site for watching eagle sex. King’s essays and photography have appeared in Smithsonian magazine, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Lonely Planet’s The Kindness of Strangers, and other magazines and literary anthologies. Awards for her work include a Lowell Thomas Gold Award, a First Place photo award from Smithsonian magazine, and others. Her three books of travel essays—insightful, poignant, and often quite funny—have inspired and entertained readers since 2014.