Art blooms among the corn in Paoli, Wis.

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The tiny town of Paoli, Wis., sits on the Sugar River at the north end of “Swiss Valley.”

Back when I lived in Wisconsin a few years ago, I was biking through the hills south of Madison when I came to a tiny little town called Paoli.

At the time, I actually lived on Paoli Street, and I knew, vaguely, that there was a town called Paoli at the other end of it. But I'd never stopped there because Paoli was so small that you'd miss it if you weren't looking for it.

Apparently many people were looking for it, because as I rolled though the town, I saw strange things for the heart of farm country. Art galleries. Out-of-state license plates. Tourists.

Wisconsin is known for many things (most of which are edible and delicious), but art is not one of them. Georgia O'Keeffe and Frank Lloyd Wright may have come from the state, but you don't expect to stumble into an oasis of fine art in the middle of nowhere.

Paoli, it turned out, was a bohemian island of art and culture surrounded by an ocean of corn, hidden in plain sight.

Paoli sits on the Sugar River at the north end of what's known as the "Swiss Valley" (the heart of yodeling country is a few miles south, in New Glarus).

It started as a mill town. A huge 1860s building - a limestone structure built to cut lumber, then used for a gristmill - dominates the landscape. But nowadays, all it grinds out are images for postcards.

The mill is still the center of town: shops and galleries are clustered around it and even the old weigh house has been converted into the Paoli Cheese Shop, packed with artisan specialties like Butterkase, Gruyere Surchoix and Wild Morel and Leek Jack.

When I was passing through recently, I dropped in on the town and found it just as I remembered. On a Wednesday afternoon, the streets were full of cars. The shops were busy. The Creamery Cafe was full of people sitting in the sun, talking, laughing and watching the river flow by.

I sat down to join them and ordered a turkey sandwich with green apples and melted cheese. The chef was a young guy who came out to tell me the food was local, and he designed his menu to keep it that way.

I wandered into the Artisan Gallery, which is attached to the cafe. Owner Theresa Abel said that the Paoli renaissance started in this building in 1987 when Eileen Berkley bought it and filled it with art. The 1910 creamery where Swiss immigrants once made their cheeses and butter now features paintings by artists like Kelli Hoppmann, Marlene Miller and Jose Sierra.

I strolled down the road and stopped in the cheese shop to load up on curds before crossing over to the Paoli House Gallery. It's run by Christian Grooms, an artist who splits his time between Paoli and New York.

Grooms sat at his desk, which was overflowing with papers and files and invitations for upcoming shows he was trying to promote. He looked like a man with too much art on his hands.

Back outside, I could see a few things had changed since my last visit. There was a new organic grocery store. Across the road, an old gas station was being gutted, probably to make way for another gallery. And a new restaurant had opened in the Paoli Schoolhouse Shops and Cafe.

When I got in my car and rolled out of town through the corn fields, it stuck me that Paoli might be a little like the Texas canyon where O'Keeffe finally found the space for her art to flourish.

"It was all so far away," she wrote. "There was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased."

Frank Bures is a Minneapolis-based free-lance writer.