Photograph by Patrick Heagney
In 1990, Clark Ashton quit his day job as an electronic technician to devote his life to building a metal-art museum in the front and back yards of his Decatur home. The Augusta native dubbed the ever-growing exploration of capitalism and the divine as the Mechanical Riverfront Kingdom on Druid Hill. In the front yard is a sculpture, “the Commuter Gallery,” a reference to the endless congestion he watches pass by on North Druid Hills Road. Ashton, who recently was awarded an Artadia grant, has fabricated 250 steel sculptures onsite, including the Superstructure, which stretches 35 feet in the air, and Kingdom Come and Skyscratcher, which create a “telephone line to heaven,” he says.
This article appears in our June 2018 issue.
Editor’s note: The story originally implied that the Mechanical Riverfront Kingdom referenced the congestion on North Druid Hills Road, however it is a specific sculpture in the front yard that references the congestion.
