Gilgal Garden

The Sphinx with the face of Joseph Smith

Gilgal Gardens was created by a masonry contractor Thomas Battersby Child in his backyard, about a mile from downtown Salt Lake City. Gilgal is a biblical reference meaning "circle of stones." Unlike most other visionary artists, Child was a man of means and thus was able to hire trucks and equipment to haul huge boulders to his property and to hire a sculptor to carry out his ideas on the stones that he arranged in his yard. The stones were carved using an oxyacetylene torch instead of a chisel, a technique that Child invented and that his son-in-law, who was an expert welder, taught to the sculptor they hired for the figurative aspects of the sculptures, Maurice Brooks He spent many hours scouring the hills and canyons for interesting looking rocks that spoke to him. The project went on from 1947 until his death in 1963. The property passed to other owners, who tried to maintain it despite vandalism. After it was threatened with destruction for a building project, a non-profit group, the Friends of Gilgal Garden, was formed and they, along with a gardening association, maintain the 1/2 acre site, nestled behind residential properties. It is, by far, the most interesting art work you will find in Salt Lake City. 

Monument to the Trade

Birdhouse

Captain of the Lord's Host

Last Chapter of Ecclesiastes

The grasshopper, for example, was carved from a stone that Child found at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon using the oxyacetylene torch. It was displayed in New York by the Linde Air Products Corp, which made the torches. 

California Quail climbing down from a sculpture