Michael Kahn's Sculptural Village in the Arizona Desert

(My Cousin Mike was Inspired by Shelter.)

Apr 29, 2025

Mike was my cousin, one year younger than me. We looked a lot alike. We were pals, played together when we were kids, kept in touch through high school, then went off on our separate ways through life.

Mike was always an artist; he started painting when he was a teenager.

Flash forward to the early ‘60s and Mike and his wife Debbie were living in New York and Mike was selling paintings on the streets lining Central Park.

By 1965, he and Debbie were living in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Mike painting and Debbie creating ceramics — supporting themselves by working in restaurants.

I lost track of Mike after that and by the time we caught up, he’d found a piece of land near Sedona, Arizona, and the owner had given Mike carte blanche to build his free-form structures.

I had sent Mike a copy of Shelter in 1973 and he later told me he was inspired by the wild creations of Bob De Buck in Placitas, New Mexico, as shown in the book (see below).

Imagine my surprise after paddling across the river in a canoe one day in 1988 (only way to get to his place) when I saw all this. The kid I’d wrestled and played cops and robbers with had created his own wild universe. I eagerly got out my camera.

This room in Eliphante is made out of salvaged auto windshields (free at a junkyard), glued together with silicone caulk. The salvaged pieces of stained glass were also glued on with silicone caulk.

Above: Mike standing in the entrance to his structure “Eliphante,” which was built out of “…adobe, wood, stone, ferro-cement and glass”

The first day I came to see his little village, he was painting the grotto-like entrance to Eliphante.

You entered by winding through a sculptural painted tunnel into a room with stone floors, steps, terraces, and a multi–colored profusion of stained glass. There’s a large pond outside Eliphante, a solar heated shower building, an underground kiva, and sculptures of rock, mirrors and found objects throughout the grounds.

Above: Mike named this structure “Eliphante,” when he realized he had (unintentionally) created an elephant shape in his stained glass mosaic.

All the photos above here are of the structure Eliphante. (There are numerous other structures on the site — this is just a small sample of what was there 37 years ago.)

Mike and Leda at their (summertime) outdoor kitchen/dining area. Leda helped and supported Mike during their years together. (He passed away in 2007.)