Loy Allen Bowlin etched himself in local lore by being a living vision of art brought to life as The Original Rhinestone Cowboy.
Outside of a bit of recognition late in life, Bowlin wasn’t taken seriously as a self-taught artist. Now, more than a decade since his death, Bowlin’s primitive, yet spectacular artistry is delighting people anew.
Bowlin’s “Beautiful Holy Jewel Home,” which once stood off Highway 51 South in McComb, was carefully dismantled and has been re-installed as part of the permanent collection at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis.
It’s also part of the 16,000-square-foot environmental art exhibit, “Sublime Spaces & Visionary Worlds,” which runs through Jan. 6 at the museum.
Bowlin’s creativity turned inward in the latter part of his life. He became “Rhinestone Cowboy,” he said, to beat loneliness.
He painstakingly decorated his house, his clothes, his old Cadillac — even his dentures — with rhinestones and other glittering objects. In his bejeweled costumes, the man who was featured on television’s “Real People” danced for onlookers, many of whom were more than wary, as his red portable tape recorder poured out tunes on Main Street in McComb.
The story of how Bowlin’s house ended up in Wisconsin is a winding one.
It started with the rescue efforts of Houston resident Katy Emde, who learned about Bowlin’s art through the Webb Gallery in Waxahatchie, Texas, a place where one-of-a-kind exhibits from self-taught Southern artists are on display.
When Emde visited Rhinestone’s house, it had been empty for two years, and Bowlin had been dead for a year. The property had been sold to a neighbor, who wanted the lot to expand his business but really didn’t want the small house, which was intricately decorated — wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling — with collages of rhinestones, colored foil, paper, sequins, paint and Christmas ornaments.
Local efforts to establish a folk art museum at the house didn’t get off the ground, and nobody else was coming to its rescue.
So Emde intervened and worked out a deal to buy the house and its contents.
“I was just blown away. When the guy opened the door and I walked in, I just couldn’t believe it,” Emde said. “I just thought it was the most beautiful thing. It was a fantastic place.”
She paid to have it dismantled and shipped to Texas, where she wanted it to stay. That left Emde with an art shrine on her hands.
“Now what?” she asked herself.
“Really in my heart, I know … it’s better that (environment art pieces) stay where they were created. I thought about it,” she said. “I didn’t see any way it was going to survive in McComb, and the artwork was very, very fragile.”
She considered the time and money that would be involved in restoring and conserving the artwork, almost all of which was done on paper that was becoming ever-more fragile.
“Everything was still sitting there,” she said, noting there was no security to keep out vandals, or even unscrupulous art collectors. “I thought, ‘I know what I’m capable of doing. I think I can get it to a museum.’
Emde had the house pieces stored for three years before sending them to Wisconsin.
“The Kohler has done such a great job,” Emde said. “They are wonderful people. When they first got it, they had no idea how much they would love it.”
Ruth Kohler, director of the arts center, said Emde took great pains to make sure the house survived.
“They very carefully took every collage in it and labeled them, so that every collage is in the same place as it was when she first saw it,” Kohler said.
Emde was able to save most all of the house — even the bathroom.
“Everything except the kitchen is on display,” Kohler said, adding that red carpet was added to match the original home carpeting as closely as possible.
“We were given it in two parts,” Kohler said. “We have been lucky to have a local foundation in the area (the Kohler Foundation). I would say in the last 20 years, high priority has been on trying to preserve environment (art) such as Rhinestone’s house.”
Kohler said Emde gravitated toward the Wisconsin center after she attended a national folk art conference in nearby Milwaukee.
“She really liked the arts center and our commitment to the site. It took a couple of years, and she decided that this was the place that she wanted to give it,” Kohler said.
Bowlin’s house is in the museum’s collections gallery and took about four years to conserve.
“When the living room and the porch were finished, we showed those, and I think that was in 2000. The foundation preserved the rest of it,” Kohler said.
Although Bowlin’s home isn’t in Pike County any longer, Kohler said it’s in a loving new location with renewed appreciation from visitors who are amazed at Bowlin’s artistry.
“I have to say if anybody from McComb is disappointed that it’s in the state, it is so loved,” she said. “I cannot tell you how amazing people think it is and how much they treasure it because it’s really wonderful to see.”
Kohler told the story of one young girl, maybe 4 or 5, who visited the museum weekly with her mother and was mesmerized by the glittering walls and ceilings of Rhinestone’s house.
“The little girl was just totally in love with the house; she wanted to live there. She wanted to be there by herself.
“It is loved beyond measure, I must say. Everybody can be assured that although it’s no longer in Mississippi, there are a lot of people in this world who think about McComb, Mississippi, because of Rhinestone’s house,” Kohler said.
And Emde can sleep well at night knowing that Loy Bowlin’s legacy is alive.
“It will live forever,” she said. “I feel really good about it. That place was saved.”
For more information about the exhibit or the Kohler center, visit online at www.kohlerfoundation.org or at www.jmkac.org.
