Loy Bowlin, The Beautiful Holy Jewel Home, McComb, MS

Loy Bowlin in his Beautiful Holy Jewel Home, McComb, MS. Photo: Sally Griffiths.

Loy Bowlin, Beautiful Holy Jewel Home (site view, exterior, 1997), McComb, MS, c. 1985–1990. Photo: Katy Emde.

Loy Bowlin, Beautiful Holy Jewel Home (site view, exterior), McComb MS, c. 1985–1990. Photo: Harrod Blank. www.harrodblank.com

Loy Bowlin, Beautiful Holy Jewel Home (site view, exterior, c. 1990–1995), McComb, MS, c. 1985–1990. Photo: Ted Degener.

Loy Bowlin at the Beautiful Holy Jewel Home (site view, exterior, c. 1990), McComb, MS, c. 1985–1990. Photo: Sally Griffiths.

The Site

After a divorce and retirement left Loy Bowlin depressed and bored, he transformed himself into “The Original Rhinestone Cowboy.” Dressed head to toe in dazzling outfits he painstakingly embellished with rhinestones and glitter, he performed daily in local shopping plazas, fairs, and flea markets, playing the harmonica, dancing, and telling jokes. Calling himself “The Original Rhinestone Cowboy,” he pursued fame in an adorned 1967 Cadillac. In the mid-1980s, as he approached his eighties and was no longer able to go out and entertain, he redirected his creative energy to his house in McComb, Mississippi, transforming it into the Beautiful Holy Jewel Home. Covered in rhinestones, with the interior swathed in glitter-coated construction-paper wallpaper panels, the house is a complete and total work of art; even the ceilings and furniture were adorned by Bowlin.

After his death, Houston artist Katy Emde acquired the house with the stipulation that it be moved. She worked with Kohler Foundation, Inc., which donated original walls, the front porch, and hundreds of interior elements to the Arts Center.

Loy Bowlin

1909–1995

Loy Bowlin was born in 1909 in rural Franklin County, Mississippi, and lived in poverty for much of his life. He married Ina Mae Mitchell in 1933, and the couple farmed and scrapped metal to get by. After their divorce in the 1950s, Bowlin struggled with depression and sought comfort through his Christian faith.

In 1975 Bowlin began to adopt a new persona to lift his spirits, inspired by Glen Campbell’s hit record Rhinestone Cowboy. In a project that took about five years to complete, he covered every inch of the interior, and part of the exterior, with daubs of bright paint and intricate patterns of cutout paper, rhinestones, glitter, tinfoil, tinsel garlands, Christmas ornaments, and collaged photographs and magazine illustrations.

After Bowlin’s death in 1995, Houston artist and collector Katy Emde acquired the house under the stipulation that she remove it from the property. Emde documented and dismantled the home, and Kohler Foundation, Inc., acquired all the components in 1998. The foundation gifted the home along with many of Bowlin’s customized hats, suits, and furniture pieces to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.