Interesting Ideas

Denver streets were lined with some real beauties when these pictures of roadside art were taken earlier in the decade. Also two nice places from Colorado Springs. Whether in muffler men or murals, vernacular creativity abounds.

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