Artist Mri Pilar created the extensive mosaics that cover the restroom walls at Bowl Plaza in the tiny town of Lucas, Kansas. Bowl refers to, yes, a toilet bowl. (There’s a ceramic bowl outside with various strange ceramic objects being “flushed,” as well as a giant cement roll of toilet paper on the lawn, as well as another mosaic by Pilar and mosaics by community members.) It all sounds, and is, very strange and wonderful. Bowl Plaza is just down the street from the Lucas Grassroots Art Museum, which features outsider art and which I wrote about last year. It’s also a few blocks from the “Garden of Eden,” a very large, classic assemblage of Bible-related outsider art created on and around a home in Lucas.

Bowl Plaza was closed last year for repairs, so when I drove through Kansas a few weeks ago I had to make a return trip. I haven’t yet seen Pilar’s own “Garden of Isis” in Lucas, so I need to return a third time. Her website (above) shows Bowl Plaza in progress. Here’s a detail from one of Pilar’s mosaics in the women’s restroom at Bowl Plaza. iPhone photograph.