Homeless man creates garden oasis amid decay of industrial L.A.

Charles Ray Walker, a 59-year-old homeless man, has turned a grim patch of land off the L.A. River in Boyle Heights into an unlikely exhibition of his tastes, quirks, obsessions and comic observations.

For the better part of 18 years, Walker has lived on this dusty plot — no more than 40 feet wide and perhaps 200 feet long — wedged between a truck yard and a warehouse. Homeless people have long struggled to fashion simple comforts from society's cast-offs.

But few have done so with Walker's flair.

His meticulously arranged found objects suggest a junkyard designed by Santa's elves or a post-apocalyptic Disneyland. There's even a faint echo of large-scale specimens of over-the-top folk art, such as Daniel Van Meter's Tower of Wooden Pallets in Sherman Oaks or Simon Rodia's world-famous Watts Towers. Walker's raw materials are discards of every description: sea shells, marbles, SpongeBob figures, a Pillsbury doughboy, an Osama bin Laden puppet in camouflage, the Grim Reaper.

Posters, traffic signs ("No Smoking — Stop Your Motor," says one) and other detritus contribute to the surreal atmosphere. 

"That's my drug exhibit," Walker says, pointing to a horned figure holding a broken marijuana pipe and an orange lighter. "The devil's right there. He's trying to blaze it up." On a terrace, a doll that looks like a young black prince stands surrounded by a harem of Barbie and Bratz dolls. A foot away, a grinning Tigger figure holds two curvaceous dolls in its stubby arms.

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