Category: Vernacular Art

The Mukwa Motel/Farmers Retirement Home is a vernacular art environment on Wisconsin Highway 54 west of New London. It’s on the northern edge of the Mukwa State Wildlife Area and was photographed before 1995. An artful bit of rural humor built by farmer John Kraske shortly before his retirement. According to the Post-Crescent newspaper, he assembled the site in 1991, two years before he retired from farming. Kraske, who died at 96 in 2016, told the paper in 2001, “It’s just something some crazy farmer did who didn’t have anything better to do with his time.” “Every year or so

Father Paul Dobberstein’s Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa, is on the way to nowhere, but the right way to go: It’s one of the most spectacular places in the world. Dobberstein was a parish priest with a vision, and the decades he spent fulfilling that vision paid off. For that we should be grateful not only to Dobberstein, but to the parishioners who tolerated and supported his obsession, which in turn helped spark similarly over-the-top constructions all over the upper Midwest. The grotto includes a number of mini-grottos and fountains as well as an avenue lined with

Another Iowa vernacular masterpiece built by Father Paul Dobberstein, creator of the Grotto of the Redemption. Dobberstein was commissioned to built this memorial, officially called the Liberty Fountain, in honor of Fay Hessian, a young girl who died from tuberculosis in 1912. The fountain was dedicated in 1918 and restored in 2011. It sits in a park in Humboldt, Iowa, with organic shapes and encrustations that make it unlike any city park fountain I’ve ever seen. Back to the Grotto of the Redemption

If Paul Dobberstein’s Grotto of the Redemption is out of the way, his War Memorial is nearly inaccessible. You have to follow gravel roads to what used to be the site of a town called Rolfe to find this modest structure sitting in the middle of a small grassy field. Back to the Grotto of the Redemption

In an out-of-the-way cemetery in Wesley, Iowa, you can find Father Paul Dobberstein’s Crucifixion Group, a mini-grotto unto itself. It’s another example of the decorative impulse filling every available space with something that looks cool. And like the big grotto a few towns away, it provides an effective setting for the underlying religious message. Back to the Grotto of the Redemption