Wisconsin artist’s Shangri-La set in concrete
MOUNT HOREB, Wis. — The relationship between art and environment can be seen on a back roads trip to Wisconsin.
I checked out Nick Engelbert’s Grandview, a sloping front lawn speckled with concrete sculptures in Hollandale, 45 miles southwest of Madison.
Engelbert, a dairy farmer, installed them between 1936 and 1951 on Highway 39. Grandview consists of more than 25 sculptures that include a tall monkey tree, a stork with a baby and Snow White in the center of a flower garden with five of her seven dwarves dancing around her. The little guys are not dwarf specific, although Cheesy would be appropriate for Wisconsin.
(Photo by Dave Hoekstra)
(Photo courtesy of Cyrill Burns, Pecatonica Educational Foundation archives)
STAYING THERE: Village Inn Motel is five blocks from downtown Mount Horeb at 701 Springdale St.; (608) 437-3350, littlebedder.com.
EATING THERE: For breakfast, stock up on excellent homemade raisin toast at Fink’s Restaurant, 204 W. Main St., Mount Horeb; (608) 437-8922.
Engelbert, who died in 1962 on his 81st birthday, worked with smooth stones from an area quarry and the shores of the nearby Pecatonica River. He also used colored glass, china, beads and buttons in his artwork.
“Once his neighbors realized what he was doing, they would drop supplies off at his house,” said Christine End, collection programs specialist at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, part of a consortium that includes the Grandview site.
Kohler Foundation purchased Grandview in 1991 as part of its commitment to preserve art and sculpture by self-taught artists. It restored the site and donated it to the Pecatonica Educational Charitable Foundation in Hollandale, which now owns and operates Grandview. Admission is free.
Kohler recently released a free map titled “Wandering Wisconsin (Art. Stories. Adventure),” featuring driving tours to nine art environment sites across the state. Tours can be downloaded in podcast form at jmkac.org/wanderingwisconsin, or call (920) 593-9049. The maps include coupons and suggestions for other places to visit, such as Country Side Bowling Lanes at 1225 Country Road F in Hollandale.
“Wandering Wisconsin” was put together by the non-profit Wisconsin Art Environment Consortium.
“The response has been great,” said End, a key figure in developing the map. “We printed about 40,000 maps and they’re almost gone.”
Besides the fantastic Grandview, the map includes popular installations such as Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park in Phillips, Ernest Hupeden’s Painted Forest in Valton and the world-famous Dickeyville Grotto (an influence on Engelbert) in Dickeyville.
Another template for “Wandering Wisconsin” was Lisa Stone and Jim Zanzi’s 1993 book, Sacred Spaces and Other Places (A Guide to Grottos and Sculptural Environments in the Upper Midwest. Stone and Zanzi devote a couple of pages to Engelbert, writing about how he was assisted by local masons to cover “the vertical surfaces of the entire [clapboard] house with delicate concrete embellishment designed by [his wife] Katherine ... animating the hillside property with over 40 sculptures of exceptional poignance that pictorialize moments of history, mythology and various imaginative constructs.”
What’s the deal with Wisconsin free spirit?
And we’re not even talking about the atrocious House on the Rock. Or the World Famous Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb.
“Wisconsin landscape definitely plays into the muse,” End said. “And the period they immigrated here has something to do with it. They brought the history of the European grottos and places of reflection.”
Engelbert was clearly moved by the vista from his seven-acre farm on a hill outside of Hollandale. He was born in 1881 in Austria and married Swiss immigrant Katherine Thoni of Chicago in 1913. In 1922, they bought the farm where they raised four children.
Engelbert’s favorite line was: “If a man can’t be happy on a little farm in Wisconsin, he hasn’t the makings of happiness in his soul.”
He cheerfully began creating his first sculptures in the mid-1930s, reportedly while recovering from a sprained ankle.
“He couldn’t do his farm work so he started to make an encrusted planter,” said End, 39. “The first real large piece was a lion.
“He was a quiet man,” she added. “He left the home open for people to visit, but his wife would usually show people around. He was secretive about the projects he was working on in his shed. And his techniques.”
My favorite piece is Engelbert’s 8-foot-tall “Family Tree,” with five monkeys perched on branches overlooking the highway. Another monkey leans on the tree, next to a gentleman I would politely describe as a drifter or hobo sipping a bottle of hooch. End explained, “He had a plaque identifying which members of his family were which monkeys.
“In the community, the Engelberts were known to help sick people and deliver food to people. The man at the bottom of the tree depicts that.”
During Grandview’s heyday of the 1940s, visitors entered through a giant welcome arch, now on display in the Engelbert house, where you can also see oil paintings he made at the end of his life. Visitors encountered an organ-grinder sculpture with a donation box. A replica organ grinder is now on Grandview’s front yard. The original is in the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
“Sometimes environmental pieces are too fragile to remain outside, so replicas are made,” End said. A statue of Paul Bunyan holding the state seal of Wisconsin was destroyed, but pieces of it are in the small museum in Engelbert’s house.
“Nick always said his work was celebrating America,” End said. “He felt you couldn’t appreciate the United States unless you lived somewhere else.”
I have never stayed somewhere quite like the Village Inn Motel in Mount Horeb. It is not on the “Wandering Wisconsin” map.
I was the only guest on a Sunday night in the 14-room single story motor lodge, built in 1949. The thermostats in my small room were hand color coded. Detailed rules were posted everywhere (it is a non-smoking motel).
Owner Ed would not bend the rules to give me a wake-up call. A concrete gnome stood on guard outside my front door. I felt like Tom Waits crashing in an outsider art environment.
There are no accommodations in Hollandale (pop. 283), about 20 miles from Mount Horeb.
The Village Inn is one of only two hotels in Mount Horeb, which bills itself as the “Troll Capital of the World.” The road into town is known as “the Trollway” and is punctuated by confusing turnarounds.
Good thing Engelbert isn’t around for this.