WISCONSIN — Those of us who come from big coastal cities tend to grow up with a fairly dreary idea of Midwestern American life: endless expanses of corn, “salads” that are really just mayonnaise and maraschino cherries, and culture that consists of little more than a butter sculpture or two.
But drive to the right spots, and you can walk into a Catholic chapel studded with floor-to-ceiling crystals and seashells, gaze upon thousands of glass shards forming a glistening mosaic cityscape, or picnic next to a beleaguered concrete Uncle Sam driving a carriage drawn by a wayward donkey and elephant, which was once displayed with a sign that read, “Can anyone do a days [sic] work with a team like That [sic]?” Countless displays of intense and idiosyncratic brilliance are nestled in the grassy hills of rural Wisconsin — among America’s most glorious examples of folk art.
This summer, my partner and I spent a few days coasting through the rolling, cow-dotted hills, guided by Wandering Wisconsin. Here are five of the roadside jewels we found, which should make any art lover consider jumping in the car for a Midwestern road trip.
Herman Rusche: Prairie Moon Dance Pavilion
52727 Prairie Moon Road, Fountain City, Wisconsin
In 1958, at the age of 67, Herman Rusche built his first stone planter. He had just bought the Prairie Moon Dance Pavilion and turned it into a museum of curiosities to “kill old-age boredom.” The son of immigrants from East Prussia, Rusche worked a farm for most of his life, and never studied art or architecture. But in a year’s time, he built a 260-foot fence out of precisely laid red brick and russet cement, dotted its conical stakes with shining glass shards, and shaped its graceful arches over rusted iron wheels from discarded grain drills. The glorious result echoes the landscape’s rolling hills.
He was just getting started. Over the following 16 years, he created 40 whimsical sculptures on the grounds, including soaring star-topped towers, dinosaurs, and a stern self-portrait, so that he “could see what’s going on here when I’m not around.” He once said, “I just kept on building. You don’t ever know where it will end up when you start.” Works by other artists were added to the site throughout the years, such as Halvor Landsverk’s “Norwegian Hunter Fighting Bear” (c. 1930s), adorable concrete creatures by Fred Schlosstein, and towers covered with glass mosaic illustrations by John and Bertha Mehringer.
After Rusche sold off the site — so he’d have a “little more time for fishing and fiddling” — it was used for a dog kennel for over a decade. The Kohler Foundation purchased the property in 1992 and spent the next two years restoring it before donating it to the town of Milton for its continued care. We arrived days after fresh concrete had been poured for more comfortable walking, and the bees buzzed gleefully around healthily growing flowers. For all its riotous forms, the park exudes a sense of peace, echoing its creator’s creed that “beauty creates the will to live.”
Ernest Hüpeden: The Painted Forest
Painted Forest Drive, Wonewoc, Wisconsin
Ernest Hüpeden began painting during the many years he spent in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. After he was exonerated, he left Germany for the United States in 1878, where he is said to have lived as an itinerant artist, trading paintings on bottles for room and board. Word of his vibrant images of everyday life spread quickly. Before long, he was hired by the Modern Woodmen of America (MWA), a fraternal society, to paint a panorama mural inside their lodge in western Sauk County, Wisconsin.
Over the course of two years, Hüpeden filled every inch of the church-like lodge with a detailed and dramatic narrative painting, charting the course of a member from riding a goat through the wilderness, to being attacked by Prussian mercenaries, to being welcomed by grinning Woodmen. He is shown the way by a man resembling Gandalf, and eventually finds a happy, healthy home in the Wisconsin wilderness.
Father Mathias Wernerus: The Dickeyville Grotto
255-377 Great River Road, Dickeyville, Wisconsin
Just to the left of the Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Dickeyville, Wisconsin, a sprawling vision of precious stones and seashells erupts from the ground. This is the Dickeyville Grotto, built in the 1920s by the German-born Catholic priest Father Mathias Wernerus.
While “grotto” often refers to a small, naturally-formed cave, it can also mean an artificial, decorated cavern. Christian grottos, for instance, can be found throughout Central and Western Europe. They were brought to the Midwest and Southern United States by immigrants, often German Catholics like Wernerus. His creation in Dickeyville exemplifies how these grottos took on a distinctive American DIY vibe. With no art or architecture training — and no blueprint in hand — Wernerus and a handful of volunteers constructed several massive shrines encrusted with an awe-inspiring variety of rocks, seashells, and precious minerals that may be collectively worth around $4.3 million, according to one estimate. A study from the early 2000s, in fact, suggested that it was the “largest collection of semi-precious stones, minerals, and petrified materials in the world.”
Dickeyville Grotto’s statues of Jesus, Mary, and a pantheon of Catholic saints of course demonstrate its creators’ commitment to their faith. But at the same time, its American flag mosaics and statues of Lincoln, Jefferson, and yes, Columbus, communicate an equally strong message of patriotism. In Wernerus’s time, when Catholics were accused of not being “true Americans” due to their dedication to the pope, building the grotto was not only an act of religious devotion, but also a defiant political stance. Wernerus’s deepest motivations, however, are still mysterious. As I learned in a small book I bought for $3 at the church gift shop, he later wrote: “The main reason why it was done I could not reveal.”
Paul & Matilda Wegner Grotto
7788 Daylight Road, Sparta, Wisconsin
After visiting the Dickeyville Grotto in 1929, Paul and Matilda Wegner caught the Midwestern mosaic bug. Like Wernerus, they immigrated from Germany and settled in Wisconsin, and after Paul retired from his job as a car mechanic, they began to build a grotto of their own. Their first sculpture was ambitious: a 12-foot model of the 19th-century SS Bremen ocean liner that brought them to the United States, encrusted with glass shards and seashells, including a ballroom complete with a tiny bride and groom dancing together inside. For 15 years, they surrounded their small farmhouse with more works of art, including a friendly bull with marbles for eyes, a World War I memorial, and a facsimile of the wedding cake from their 50th anniversary celebration.
Their crowning achievement is a small chapel completely covered in glittering glass mosaics depicting what could be church steeples from their native Germany. A plaque next to the chapel reads: “Over 70 weddings and one funeral (Paul Wegner’s) were performed here.” Tiles on the two bottom corners of the front display the abbreviations “CATH” and “LUTH” — performing the unity of the two major German religions of the time, which had often been in bitter conflict. And, incredibly for the time during which they lived, above the arched entrance is a mosaic Star of David and the building’s most prominent text, completing what they saw as an inseparable triad: “JEW.”
Nick Engelbert: Grandview
7351 WI-39, Hollandale, Wisconsin
Newlyweds Nick Engelbert and Katherine Thoni decided to settle in picturesque Hollandale, Wisconsin after they visited on their honeymoon in 1914. Born in present-day Slovenia, Engelbert was decidedly the best-traveled of the artists on this tour: He had bicycled throughout Europe, worked as a nautical engineer in the West Indies and South America, harvested wheat in Kansas, picked grapes in California, and sifted for gold in the Sierra Nevadas. After settling in Hollandale, he took up cheesemaking and winemaking, eventually tending a herd of 25 cows on his farm, which he named Grandview.
Like the Wegners, Engelbert began making art after finding inspiration in Dickeyville Grotto. He crafted his first concrete sculpture while recovering from a sprained ankle. Eventually, he would cover his yard with upwards of 40 sculptures. These imaginative creations were inspired by a distinct fusion of American and Central European culture and folklore, including a stork asking for help after forgetting where to drop off a new baby, Uncle Sam struggling to steer a disobedient Republican elephant and stubborn Democratic donkey, and Paul Bunyan paying a visit to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. A building on site, which is covered with more recent mosaics and filled with art supplies and materials, hosts a thriving summer art program, where children and adults today carry on Engelbert’s legacy of infusing fantasy into Wisconsin’s countryside.
Each of these art environments was at some point purchased and restored by the Kohler Foundation, known for its stewardship of art by folk or self-taught artists. In a reversal of what we’ve come to expect from most self-serving institutions, they were eventually donated to the respective communities from which they emerged. Along our travels, we met Finn, a teenager cutting the grass at Paul & Matilda Wegner Grotto; Margie, who helped us reroute around traffic near Painted Moon; and Kevin, who graciously walked across the street from his house at 8am, cup of coffee in hand, to not only unlock the door to the Painted Forest, but also give us an hour-long tour, complete with oral history. Teachers, church ladies, camp counselors, and all sorts of neighbors who live near these sites have tended to them lovingly for decades. The work they do to preserve these sites, no less than the work their forebears did to create them, is a singular expression of love: of home, of community, and of the boundless possibilities of human creativity.
