An Artistic Vision Towers in Brownsville

Brownsville Artist Billy Tripp reflects on his 30+ years of envisioning and constructing the Mindfield.

“I like things that fit,” Billy Tripp says, staring up at The Mindfield, the acre-large sculpture made out of salvaged, retrofitted steel scraps, abandoned boats, machine parts, and other steel detritus that occupies a narrow lot near South Monroe and West Main Street in downtown Brownsville, Tennessee.

The Mindfield is a one-of-a-kind visionary environment, the tallest metal outdoor sculpture in Tennessee, and a destination for aficionados of outsider art all over the country. There’s simply nothing like it anywhere, and there’s nobody like Billy Tripp.

But if you’ve never visited the Mind Field before, don’t be alarmed if you’re not sure what you’re looking for at first.

An Evolving Artistic Vision

Against the sky, the Mindfield is a forest of monochromatic silver metal pointing into the stratosphere, a huge collection of ornaments, signs, messages, legends, figures, boats and several watch towers.  Anchoring the southern end of it all, a looming water tower taken from a field in Kentucky.

Anthony Turner’s former Barber Shop, located under the Mindfield, is filled with an eclectic look at a menagerie of objects and artifacts, including photos and stories of the Mindfield.

The huge vertical work of art reaches as high as 130 feet into the skies and can be seen from the Brownsville town square.

“This long narrow lot was my dad’s,” Tripp said. “It wasn’t commercially viable.” But it was the perfect dimensions to begin building his monument.

At first he planned on making his work resemble a church. It has a sort of cathedral-like quality to it, in that when you walk amongst its grounds your view is naturally drawn towards the high vaults and the heavens above your head.

As he continued to work on the structure, he began to think of it as a vessel he is preparing to take him into the next world.

“The whole thing is real long and narrow and it kind of looks like a sailing ship with a tall mast,” Tripp says, describing the Mindfield.

Begun in 1989, it has become Tripp’s life work, the never-completed masterpiece that he hopes to be not only his legacy, but also his final resting place.

The city has granted Tripp permission to be buried in the center of the ship, adjacent to the memorial he created for his father after that man’s passing. 

Unending Inspiration

Tripp draws inspiration from his favorite writers, and their names proudly adorn the Mindfield: TOLSTOY, SHAKESPEARE, THOMAS (Hunter S., the gonzo journalist who he wished could have lived longer), and HEAT-MOON.

This last name is for Least Heat-Moon, the American author and wanderer whose 1982 travel narrative, Blue Highways, was a major inspiration to Tripp. Heat-Moon donated the canoe from his Blue Highways adventure to the Mindfield. It gleams at the peak of the artwork’s spire like an enormous silver kazoo.

“I like working with my hands and making custom-made stuff,” he says. Tripp completes all of the work on the Mindfield himself, doing the metal work for his art in his shed, then carting it out to the structure to “bolt it up” himself, usually without the help of tethers.

During cold weather, he works on his journals, a companion artistic achievement that rivals the Mindfield in its scope and longevity. He’s on his eighth volume now and he’s not stopping.

Asked if any part of this process over the past thirty-three years has surprised him as an artist, he takes a long pause and looks back at his creation.

Building the Mindfield, he said, “was very slow. It still seems like I should have done more.”