Architectural Fantasies: Artist-Built Environments

"Profiles more than 60 dwellings and monuments built by artists." --Publishers Weekly

From Miami's Coral Castle to LA's Watts Towers, Architectural Fantasies explores over 60 dwellings across more than 30 states. These artist-built spaces allow one to step directly into the artwork, and range from scratch-built creations and modified structures to monuments, sites of devotion, and intricately decorated interiors.

Is it a rollercoaster? A cathedral? A dream? There you are, traveling along the beautiful backroads of western Tennessee, or the majestic mountains of Colorado, or a quiet neighborhood in upstate New York, when you encounter a monumental and wondrous creation. You have found Billy Tripp's Mindfield, Jim Bishop's Castle, or Prophet Isaiah Robertson's Second Coming House--examples of unconventional and unique visionary architecture.

All across the U.S., these self-taught artists and architects, working outside of the mainstream, unite function with fantasy. The works are generally monumental, frequently provocative, often whimsical, sometimes reverential, and regularly misunderstood--but always remarkable. Experience this window into the passion and the innovation of some of our most creative artists and the ways they transform the spaces in which they live and work.

Author: Jo Farb Hernandez
Publisher: Tra Publishing
Published: 04/14/2026
Pages: 456
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 2.70lbs
Size: 9.77h x 6.70w x 1.19d
ISBN: 9781962098298

About the Author
Jo Farb Hernández, Director Emerita of SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments) and Professor Emerita at San José State University, is an internationally recognized scholar of the work of self-taught artists, and an award-winning author, curator, and photographer. Hernández has been particularly focused on the field of vernacular art environment builders for over five decades-first in the US and, for the last 25 years, in Spain-and is one of very few scholars worldwide to dedicate their careers to this under-recognized group of makers. Notably, her series Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments, (Raw Vision 2013; 5 Continents Editions 2023), based on two dozen years of primary fieldwork in Spain, provides an encyclopedic treatment of the field.

Fred Scruton worked as a Brooklyn-based freelance photographer of artwork and architecture for twenty years, and his photography and writings have been reproduced in numerous books and periodicals, including Raw Vision and Folk Art Messenger magazines. His work has also been exhibited widely at such venues as The Drawing Center and OK Harris Gallery in New York City. Now Emeritus Professor of Art at PennWest University, Scruton travels extensively throughout the United States to document self-taught, "outsider," and "visionary" artists and their built environments. Often befriending them, his process of collaborative documentation typically extends over many years, with repeated return visits.