If you’re looking to visit someplace quirky, then it’s tough beat Alabama.
Who wouldn’t appreciate our classics: the meteor that hit the housewife, the “Go to Church or the Devil Will Get You” highway sign, and of course, the Vulcan statue, whose toned derrière casts its steely gaze on Birmingham’s suburbs?
Of course, there are many, many more places tucked into hidden corners across the state — places you might never know existed unless you happened to wander in.
Which is exactly how I found the Emma Kane Jordan Folk Art Exhibit in Fort Payne. Surely, thousands of cars pass it every day. But if you park and look closely, then you’ll find a beautiful, little-known art gallery wrapped in a curious past.
Yeah, Yeah…But What Is It?
The gallery houses a collection of 90 dioramas, as impressive as they are varied: a Studebaker driving through a Redwood tree, George Washington hunkered down at Valley Forge, Jack and Jill getting absolutely worked on that hill. Each detail of the dioramas was entirely handbuilt, including the lighting.
They were first discovered among a wealthy northern Kentucky widow’s estate. While her family knew that their mother kept an extensive set of dioramas in her garage (what? don’t act like your parents aren’t weird too), they had no idea where she got them or what to do with them now. So they sold them.
“Two, and only two, of the dioramas featured a name, written in minuscule along the border: Steve Fiora.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the buyer, “Mr. Shankles”, quickly parted with them as well. And really, what would you do? Just imagine your wife coming home to find 90 of those things stacked in the living room.
But fortunately for us, his brother was either brilliant or a glutton for punishment. He quickly bought all 90, insured them, and installed them in a mobile home as a “traveling museum”. And as he was doing so, he noticed something…
The Mystery
Two, and only two, of the dioramas featured a name, written in minuscule along the border: “Steve Fiora”.
But the name meant nothing to the Shankles brothers or the widow’s family.
After some exhaustive pre-Google sleuthing, Steve Fiora turned up. He was an Italian immigrant in Ohio who passed away in 1966. And seemingly unbeknownst to anyone, it appeared that Fiora had privately dedicated much of his adult life, Henry Darger style, to his art.
The Mystery Deepens
At this point, the story goes dark. Did the “traveling museum” strike it big? How in the world did the exhibits make it to Fort Payne? What really happened at Area 51? And was Shankles actually Keyser Söze?
We don’t know. But we do know that a local philanthropist, Emma Kane Jordan, felt the dioramas deserved preservation. (We agree.)
But surely the greatest mystery of all is this: what would Fiora make of it? It’s anyone’s guess what he hoped for his art, but we can assume that he would be slightly surprised to find his art preserved at all, much less all the way down here in Fort Payne.
Want to visit? They’re worth the trip. Find the gallery here.
Want to see it for yourself? Contact the Fort Payne Depot Museum.
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