Art Beal spent 61 years building a house out of found materials at Nitt Witt Ridge in Cambria, CA. He served for a time  as the town garbageman, dumping his truck directly into his own backyard and rummaging for salvageable building supplies with which he slowly built a house in the shape of his own mind. There is now little trace of the 20 feet of landfill underneath the hill. where his house rests.

Beal, born in Oakland, was a celebrated long-distance swimmer in his youth but decamped in his 20’s to Cambria, 200 miles south along the California coast. He built a small house and lived in it with “Gloria” whose life is otherwise lost to history. At some point she disappeared. He abandoned that house and began constructing his masterwork, the unfinished project of the rest of his life.

There is no place in our world for some men. Through accident of birth some men are born different and they accumulate injuries in the world as they repeatedly are rammed through holes of the wrong shape. Beal was lucky. He found a place for his energy, found a way to preserve himself in a world that has no room for difference of mind.