WI Day 5 - Charming Bathrooms, Childlike Wonder, and Cheese Castles
Today I started out by visiting the cute and cozy Sven’s Cafe, which is modeled to look like an old fashioned European cafe tucked in the middle of Milwaukee. They also have the distinction of one of the first shops to specialize in fair trade and organic coffees in the state, though I didn’t know that at the time. I was mostly just drawn in by their name and aesthetic.
The coffee was fantastic, and the baristas were really funny and easy to chat with which is always a plus for a coffee shop. The real highlight for me though was their collection of European sweets, including this amusingly Mozart-themed confection called a Mozartkugel which consists of pistachio, marzipan, and nougat covered in dark chocolate. It was absolutely delicious, and, as far I can tell, the only connection to Mozart is that the original inventor was Austrian and just decided to name it after the composer, which I loved.
Fueled up for the day, I set sail to my first stop of the day and one of the more unusual spots in Wisconsin to be deemed a national historic landmark. Located in the town of Fox Point, overlooking Lake Michigan, the home of the celebrated local artist Mary Nohl has come to be known as the Witch House thanks to the artist’s gleefully strange and spooky sculptures decorating just about every square inch of the yard. Nohl’s sculptures are made out of a blend of concrete and found materials and they have a raw quality to them that makes them look almost like childrens’ drawings come to life. The house is not currently open to the public while it undergoes renovation, but the yard offers up enough spectacle to be worth the stop on its own. It’s a weird mix of both deeply eerie and super charming and I’m sure it must have been real fascinating to be her neighbor.
Adding somewhat to the otherworldliness of Mary Nohl’s House is the fact that winding seaside road leading up to it is covered on either side by trees for the most part so that when there is a gazing out over the previously unseen Great Lake it looks like the whole world suddenly just dropped away.
After my visit to the Witch House, I made my way to one of the most fun to say towns in the country Sheboygan. My first stop was to get a big hearty lunch at a great little restaurant called The Black Pig which specializes in creative twists on comfort food staples. I couldn’t resist their decadently creamy lobster mac and cheese which also came with porchetta because it’s Wisconsin and it would be a sin to not have any meat with a meal. Jokes aside the pork belly added a smokiness that beautifully complimented the lightness of the lobster and richness of the cheese and it was just a fabulously over-the-top lunch. To wash it all down, I got a heavy-duty Sheboygan beer called the Uber Joe (how could I not) from Three Sheeps Brewing. The Uber Joe is a deep dark imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels and blended with vanilla and local coffee so it tastes almost more like a fancy candy bar than a beer. It was every bit as ridiculous as the meal in terms of how indulgent it all was for the middle of the day. I was in heaven.
Throw in some wonderfully cheesy pig puns, and you’ve got a restaurant I really can’t recommend enough.
While walking back to my car, I stumbled across a clever bit of whimsical public art tucked within a random Sheboygan alley, The piece is called Natural Bridge study by Mary Anne Kltuth and it was inspired by a real natural bridge in Virginia that was supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. Through a mix of dreamy colors and careful staging of the different panels of wood that make up the piece, the artwork has a really engrossing 3-D quality that creates the illusion of a portal to another place in time while also being not quite big enough to let you forget that you’re in an alley. It was so cool and unexpected, and it really wowed me like the best kind of public art.
You can check out a cool video of how the piece was created here: https://www.jmkac.org/engage-events/art-in-public-spaces/natural-bridge-study-estudio-del-puente-natural/
The great public art continued as I passed by the Mead Public Library which is home to various sculptures curated by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (my next destination) as well as a stunning modernist water feature called the Plaza 8 Fountain named for a former shopping mall that was originally the fountain’s home.
My next stop was the John Michael Kohler Art Center, an absolutely incredible local institution that specializes in large scale art installations that engage the community and explore the connections between art and industry. The Center is named after the founder of Kohler Industries, a plumbing powerhouse that was an important fixture of the Wisconsin economy, and it comprises of both an art museum and Joh Michael Kohler’s historic home.
When I entered the museum, I was amused and surprised when the woman at the front desk said “Be sure to check out our bathrooms!”. I laughed, but then she explained she wasn’t kidding, and the Kohler is actually really famous for each of their bathrooms being specially created immersive art installations. It makes sense that an art museum named after a plumbing magnate would take their bathrooms so seriously, but I still wasn’t prepared for how astonishing each washroom turned out to be.
The first bathroom I checked out was called The Social History of Architecture by New York artist Matt Nolen, and as soon as you walk in it is a psychedelic floor-to-ceiling mural taking visitors on a journey through the history of architecture from ancient Egypt to today on their way to the toilet. Basically, every surface in the bathroom is painted, even the toilets and urinals, and the way Nolen so richly renders so many different time periods and styles is really a dazzling artistic achievement despite also being in a place where visitors go to pee and poo. Definitely some tonal whiplash there, but I love the gonzo energy of just deciding every part of the museum should showcase human creativity with reckless abandon.
Next to The Social History of Architecture was the deceptively simply named The Woman’s Room by Massachusetts artist Cynthia Consentino. This installation trades in the wild maximalism of the men’s room for a stranger, subtler, and more pointed look at the gendered history of restrooms. The whole room is suffused in a calming pink tone, and Consentino created 30 different unique sculptural reliefs of different women, animals, mythical creatures, plants, and objects and cast them onto ceramic tiles which were then arranged semi-randomly to combine all the different forms into surreal figures as a riff on the idea of crafting a feminine identity out of the different roles and expectations put on young women. In addition to the tile work, there are hand-painted murals of different historical women’s undergarments to pointedly take an article of clothing that is often concealed much like what is carried out in the bathroom and then use the bathroom as a platform to elevate and celebrate these wild and creative underwears of yesteryear.
After leaving, the first two bathrooms I made my way into the museum proper. Just walking into the gallery space I passed by this fascinating lighting display, and I’m not sure if that’s funky museum architecture or if this was an installation by one of the industrial arts fellows the museum sponsors but either way it made it an impression.
The main gallery spaces are reserved for different site-specific, large-scale installations by invited artists. Each artist’s piece would sprawl across multiple rooms and it was pretty amazing to see the museum give them the space and the resources to really swing for the fences.
The first installation I visited was called Out, Out, Phosphene Candle by Philadelphia-based husband-and-wife artist duo Joy Feasley and Paul Swenbeck. The installation was inspired by themes of science and mysticism and the idea of life being guided by unseen forces, and it frequently resembles a museum gallery curated by aliens, as everything has the general resemblance of more traditional galleries but off in some way. Joy and Paul are primarily a painter and sculptor respectively, and, across the different rooms in the piece, there is a blend of their original works, curated pieces from the museum’s permanent collection, and found historical objects and personal items from their home to create an immersive art environment that seamlessly combines the mudnae and the fantastic.
The first room I entered looked like the inside of a spaceship with a low, carved ceiling and mirrored walls covered in spidery cobalt panels that play with your sense of your perspective. At the center of the room is a surprisingly retro-looking fireplace that centers and grounds the more bizarre elements. In front of the fireplace is a table with light filaments and sculptures that resemble artifacts from an ancient civilization.
Adding to the sense that nothings is quite what it seems in this installation, if you get closer to the lightbulbs you see that inside each bulb the filaments are actually sculpted to look like flowers. It’s surprising but oddly beautiful, like an other-worldly terrarium and it really shows how much thought the artists put into every single detail of their strange and impressive art environments.
There’s also little blown-glass cobras on the ground which like why wouldn’t there be?
Along the walls of the spaceship-like room, the artists play with the idea of curation and old-fashioned curiosity cabinets with little portals featuring carefully arranged items that are a blend of real historical objects, complete fabrications by the artists, found items, and pieces from other artists. In reality, the items may have nothing in common, but the careful arrangement of each portal makes your brain strain to look for connections. Much of the original art is also designed to look like scientific diagrams and figures which adds to the illusion that there are deeper connections between these disparate items, like maybe an alien scientist is trying to catalog anthropological findings. It’s like an entire mini-museum unto itself.
Leaving the spaceship, I entered a new room featuring the largest new original piece by Joy and Paul, entitled Listen, the Snow is Falling. The piece is a room sized diorama of an imaginary but gorgeously realized snowy landscape with a large abstract, glowing candelabra in the center. The piece is surrounded by a glass window but with geometric patterns cut into just to throw you off a bit and make you unsure if you’re supposed to just look or interact with the piece (the answer is just look, but again it’s fun that every detail is just a little bit off normal). Adding to the mind-bending-ness of this fantastical vista is the fact that in the back of the piece is a small round mirror that creates a miniature version of the landscape that seems to extend into the distance far behind the actual piece giving the room an almost impossible sense of depth. It was so out-there and clever, and it really did feel like you were looking out over an alien world. I loved it.
Leaving the diorama, you enter what appears to be a kind of greenhouse enshrouded in a strange gray mesh-like material. Inside the greenhouse, it’s full of vaguely organic-looking sculptures that give the impression that you’re looking at a horticultural collection from beyond the stars. While sometimes the sculptures are wild, at some points it’s hard to tell if perhaps they actually are a kind of flower or shell (I’m like 99% sure they are all sculptures though) and that constant guessing game is both a testament to the artists’ diverse skillsets and also the fun and playfulness of the experience of walking through the installation.
My favorite part of the greenhouse was these weird lumpy grey boys because they looked like a combination of some kind of sea creature and a slinky and I was all about that.
Leaving the greenhouse, the first thing visitors are greeted with is a chaotic but dazzling series of photographic prints featuring bright rainbow distortions that ruin the pictures as clear images but instead transform them into an engrossing abstract collage. Even photographs of the real world don’t look like our real world in this installation.
The next room of the installation in appearance resembles a more traditional art gallery with white walls and a high ceiling, but every painting either selected by or created by Joy and Paul feels of a piece with the more eccentric previous rooms, characterized by vibrant colors and a sense of magical realism.
In the corner, you can see the greenhouse in its entirety, and it’s impressive how from the outside the grey mesh seems to almost flow out of the walls. I was also impressed because it’s very see-through when you’re inside but almost totally opaque when viewed from the outside which is super neat and makes the “plants” inside more of a fun surprise if visitors are going through the rooms in a different order than I did.
Throughout the larger gallery space were more sculptures that frequently played with shapes and designs to either form different landscapes explicitly or suggest them in more abstract ways. Even the pedestals that sculptures sat on were covered in geological print designs which created a weird effect of looking like photos of alien terrains stretched into three dimensions. They were all very strange, but I gotta give the artists credit, they were strange in ways I truly felt like I’d never seen before.
In one corner of the gallery, there was a big hanging clear-plastic abstract mobile with lights and ambient video projections directed at it so they were reflected and refracted across the surrounding walls in dreamy and surreal ways. It felt like being inside a lava lamp.
Like a miniature of the giant mobile, there was also a small spinning plastic circle tucked on top of one of the gallery walls almost imperceptibly. On top of the spinning disk were different colored bits of plastic and glass which would pass under a light and subtly add different colored shadows on top of the larger videos.
Carved into this wall was a small entry way, which, if you are brave enough to crawl through, actually takes you through the fireplace in the first room (!) and takes the whole exhibit full circle in an inventive and sort of magical way.
Coming back out of the fireplace, I really noticed the mantle more the second time, and I like that this strange abstract landscape pattern actually repeated in different ways and mediums throughout the installation so there is a sort of dream logic and method to all this madness. I was really blown away after going through the whole thing.
The next installation was slightly smaller but nonetheless rich with imagination and larger scale creativity and it was entitled Funk Dreamscapes from the Invisible Parallel Universe by Renée Stout. Somewhat similarly to the previous exhibit, this installation explored the intersection of mysticism and science with additional elements of Afrofuturism and exploration of the African diaspora that give it a really unique and special aesthetic. The installation is built around an imagined alter ego of the artist named Fatima Mayfield, a psychic who uses elements of voodoo and technology to tap into parallel universes. The whole exhibit was a very cool blend of aspects of African-American culture and spirituality intertwined with traditional Sci-Fi imagery and machinery, which makes a pretty powerful case for the untapped potential of letting more voices into the historically quite white, quite male world of sci-fi. Obviously, there are notable exceptions to this rule (Octavia Butler is incredible), but since Black Culture is hardly a monolith and neither is sci-fi, and I’d never seen something quite like the imagery in Renée Stout’s exhibit, there’s still a case to be made that a greater diversity of artists within any genre is both good for the artists in that it opens up doors for work and good for the genre in that it opens up what is possible and conceivable within that genre.
Hopping off my little soapbox to actually talk about the art, the tone was established right off the bat with posters and neon signs for Fatima’s psychic shop. These pieces really really nail the details and do a lot of the groundwork for establishing the character of Fatima (that poster is such a perfect blend of cheesy and hip) and grounding the installation in the real world first before things take a turn for the more fantastical.
Right when you think you have a handle on Fatima and her world, Renée pulls out the rug as you walk into the main exhibit and see the sculptures of Fatima’s machines. They’re such a funky remix of familiar technological elements like radios, turntables, and hard drives with elements of more traditional Afro-Carribean Sculpture to create a really unique visual aesthetic that is at once deeply rooted in the past while seeming totally futuristic.
Accompanying these sculptures were a series of beautifully surreal paintings and collages of the parallel universes Fatima explores. These pieces strike an interesting tone between mesmerizing and eerie, and seem to really capture the moment where advanced science and magic become indistinguishable and objective reality starts to destabilize. Even without any heady themes, I think they’re just super cool to look at, and a great way of showing off the scope of Renée’s talents and imagination.
Two items that added to the general off-kilter vibe of the space by being sort of inexplicable were this delightfully strange coffee table that I don’t know if Renée found or made herself, or this strange blobby bit of ethereal blown glass casually put on a tiny pedestal. I either don’t remember or never read what these pieces were supposed to be, but their strangeness definitely added to the overall charm for me.
My favorite piece in the whole installation though was this multimedia piece of a Roots & Herbs Vending Machine, because I just love how Renée was able to create the perfect sense that this thing that has never existed is totally vintage and has been used for years.
The next installation was called A Tale of Two by Iris Häussler. In this exhibition, the artist created a retrospective of works by two fictional artists named Sophie la Rosiére and Florence Hasard, and the exhibition is a blend of “their” works with biographical information about the two women to create the illusion of a real history. It was very ambitious and so well-thought that if you didn’t know it was all imaginary you would never guess. I saw on the artist’s website that she’s referred to this installation as a “novel in three dimensions” and it really does feel like that as the biographical details and the artwork work so well together to tell a vivid story.
The story of these two fictional artists goes that they grew up in the same small French town 15 years apart and met as adults in Paris, where Sophie was living as an artist. Florence initially worked as a model for Sophie, but the two women became lovers and collaborators though they had to hide their romance from French society. Florence became a nurse during WWI and was traumatized by the horrors and violence she witnessed, and the women eventually drifted apart. Sophie would return to her small French town where she would continue to paint in relative obscurity, and Florence ended up moving to Milwaukee where she began making her own art as a therapeutic way of dealing with what she witnessed in the war.
The exhibit features paintings by both women. Florence’s paintings are darker and more reflective of her anatomical knowledge from nursing, while Sophie’s have a somewhat lighter touch are more focused on female forms, but you can see how both women influenced and inspired each other.
The piece by Sophie that stood out the most to me were these eerily mesmerizing pieces that were supposedly paintings she thought were too overtly queer and/ or sexually charged to be seen by the public so she covered them in black encaustic painting and only once they were x-rayed were the original paintings discovered. To be honest, in my opinion they’re a bit too abstract to be offensive (but I’m also not a turn-of-the-century Parisian so who knows), but the ethereal black and white of the x-rays gives them a strange beauty that really makes them stand out. It’s also a clever way for the real artist to work in themes of identity and belonging into her fictional historical narrative.
Florence’s pieces that really stood out for being unlike anything else I’d ever see before were theses spooky yet oddly graceful pieces made by layering paint onto cut up women’s clothing. They looked almost like giant winged creatures in a weird way and you can see the dark and searching emotionality of the artist’s post-war life really come out in the haunting mix of colors and the physicality of the cuts into the fabric.
To add to the verisimilitude of the installation, the two women’s works were accompanied by sketches, personal items, and letters of correspondence to add to the illusion that these lives aren’t simply the creation of an artist. It’s a testament to the real artist Iris Häussler’s commitment to her vision that she goes through the trouble to render all these different elements so believably.
After these three big installations, it was time to check out another of the museum’s signature bathrooms. The Sheboygan Men's Room was designed by the museum’s first artist-in-residence Ann Agee, a painter and Yale graduate, who decided to evoke historical Delft and Staffordshire ceramics with her bathroom’s signature gorgeously painted blue and white tiles. The paintings on every surface (toilets and urinals don’t let the walls have all the fun) feature scenes from around Sheboygan with an emphasis on imagery related to water partly because it works beautifully with the color scheme and partly because water is about the most bathroom-related motif you can choose without getting gross. Honestly, I think this was my favorite of all the bathrooms because, while using only two colors might imply a sense of minimalism, every painting on the walls was so rich and full of depth and detail that it looked like there were little portals looking out over different parts of the world. I was all just so much prettier than a bathroom has any right to be.
Moving to the next exhibit, I got a great view out the window of the Library Sculpture Garden which features the grand and stately stone facade of the city’s old Carnegie Library which used to stand on the grounds where the museum currently is. As a way of both honoring that history and also giving themselves an amazing backdrop for outdoor events, the museum left the facade standing when most of the library was demolished and it really is a pretty spectacular sight.
The next exhibition was actually a continuation of Iris Häussler’s installation about the fictional Florence Hasard. The installation was called Apartment 4, and Häussler worked with Kohler and the Chipstone Foundation to turn the historic John Michael Kohler mansion into an imagining of Florence’s home. Before walking into the mansion there was this very sleek modern foyer with a station where visitors would sit and listen to an informational presentation that sets the tone of the exhibition by telling you about the life of Florence Hasard and about the home you’re about to enter.
Cleverly, since the installation is in an actual historic mansion, Häussler is able to leave much of the period furniture untouched and their beauty speaks for itself and helps lend an authentic ambiance to the scene that blurs the line between fact and fiction.
Of the historic artifacts, my favorite was this gorgeous painted screen:
Highlighting the formative time in Florence’s life, there was a display case full of artifacts from her time as an army nurse during WWI.
The lingering trauma from her time in the war, manifests and shatters the air of a typical of typical home as visitors turn a corner and enter her studio which looks like tornado had blown through it. The walls were splattered with paint, and there is a visceral quality to Florence’s art still in the studio that captures the physicality of her process giving a sense of the way she tried to expel her painful memories through her art.
The paint on the walls almost looked like blood splatters and it sort of gave me the heebie jeebies being in that space which is I guess is a testament of the artist’s ability to generate emotional responses through her art environment.
The next exhibit was more lighthearted which was a nice change of pace and also marked a departure from the more immersive art environments to a more standard but still fascinating gallery display. This gallery highlighted the works of the artist Don Baum, who is most famous as a Chicago curator who championed Mid-Western contemporary art and was a founding member of the influential surrealist collective the Chicago Imagists. While he received more attention for curating shows that launched the careers of more famous artists, Don was a pretty amazing artist in his write painting beautifully strange scenes on salvaged wood which looked like a blending of children’s book illustrations and surreal Salvador Dali dream logic layering of different forms and imagery.
My favorite paintings of Don’s were ones that more drastically broke from standard canvases and sprawled dreamily across wooden assemblages in the forms of houses and silhouettes. Really incredible.
After the Don Baum exhibit, I checked out some more bathrooms. The next bathroom I visited was probably the most playful entitled Tell Me Something I Don’t Know by Carter Kustera. For the project, the artist received over 900 submissions from local community members featuring their names and a small one sentence description. From these descriptions, the artist created colorful silhouettes of what he imagined the person looked like and each tile in the bathroom was adorned with these silhouettes and descriptions for a really fun and coloring-book like aesthetic.
In stark contrast to the bright colors of Carter Kustera’s bathroom, the next bathroom entitled Filling and Emptying by Merrill Mason had a very stark, monochromatic, minimalist aesthetic. The bathroom plays with the idea of femininity by highlighting cast iron sculptures of traditionally intimate feminine objects such as linen towels, perfume bottles, and hair combs in marble enclaves. The coldness of the iron is so counter to the familiarity of these objects and gives the sculptures a sort of off-putting elegance and weight. In addition to these iron sculptures, the tiles are embossed with riffs on different styles of monograms that might be placed on personalized clothing and linens, and the sinks were specially made and feature text around the rim that says in a formal, scrawling script “filling and emptying” over and over to mimic the flow of the water in the sink and draw attention to the functionality of the sink. Next to the mirrors there were surreal high contrast photographic prints of women holding the iron sculptures. There was chilliness to the whole aesthetic that was so different from the other bathrooms in a really interesting albeit vaguely unsettling way.
After the bathrooms, the next exhibit I visited was dedicated to the personal correspondence of Mary Nohl, the artist whose home and sculptures I visited earlier in the day. While letters might make for a sort of dry exhibit for anyone else, Mary’s letters also featured playful doodles and sprawling paintings that made them pop and accentuated the wit and charm that came through in the text. The letters along with some photos of Mary as well as her type writer added a real fun sense of her personality to compliment her artwork.
Keeping the Mary Nohl love going, the next exhibit featured a collection of works by artists who had received the Mary Nohl Fellowship, a fund she donated her assets to after her death to help aid emerging Wisconsin artists. The exhibit was called Mary Nohl and the Walrus Club, nicknamed after an actual Milwaukee social club dedicated to furthering the arts in the early 20th century to draw parallels with the way Mary has continued to inspire and influence a community of contemporary artists.
Playfully the gallery opens with a fake clubhouse for this imagined new Walrus club complete with an adorable Walrus mascot embroidered on a banner by Maggie Sasso.
Maggie Sasso’s works were also featured inside the exhibit in the form of a display of embroidered and woven ribbons and merit badges inspired by Mary Nohl’s life paired with some of her actual kooky silver jewelry which add to the fun spirit of this exhibit being like a club of artists hanging out.
Other highlights from this exhibit included: interactive furniture by Sarah Gail Luther inspired by Mary’s concrete sculptures; a hypnotic kaleidoscopic acrylic painting by Robin Jebavyn; a stunning print by Cecelia Condit of the shores of Lake Michigan viewed from Mary’s property made up several photographs so seamlessly stitched together to create a fictional landbridge that looks so real you’d never guess it was a photographic trick; a fantastical piece by Sheila Held that looks like a surreal landscape painting but is actually a masterly woven tapestry called On the Qui Vive; and multi-media piece by Anne Kingsbury that is an imagined recreation of Mary Nohl’s Studio space consisting of cubicles full of a mixture of original art and small pieces by Mary grouped side by side, and a very elaborate and vibrant work in progress sprawled across a stretched out canvas.
Perhaps the piece that stood out the most though was this giant installation by Sonja Thomsen entitled Her Prenumbra that is giant abstract composition of dramatically interlocking glass panes some of which have photographic prints of Mary’s artwork printed on them to capture and refract the light in the gallery in strange and captivating ways.
Naturally the exhibition also had plenty of pieces of Mary Nohl’s original artwork which showed just how much range and creativity she had beyond her bizarre concrete sculptures. She made delicate glass and ceramic sculptures, playfully cartoonish drawings and paintings, and even a stained glass window. Maybe the most striking piece though was a haunting out-reached hand cast in resin.
While these piece showed the breadth of Mary’s talents, of course they had to have some of her signature giant freaky sculptures or the exhibit would have just felt incomplete.
That was the last open exhibit while I was there but the museum also had some pretty gardens filled with interesting art and architecture that made for some wonderful strolling and sightseeing.
My favorite outdoor sculptures on the grounds were: two giant metal birds made out of scrap metal and musical instruments by Tom Every, and some intricately created concrete castles decorated with stones and shells by Carl Peterson.
Leaving the museum, I passed by a funky spaceship looking thing which I found out was called M.I.K.E (short for Music Integrated Kiosk Environment). M.I.K.E was designed by artists Richard Saxton and Stuart Hyatt, and besides looking super cool it actually unfolds and can become either a full recording studio or a stage for musical performances. They’ve even recorded an entire CD in there which is such a fun use of community engaging public art.
To see M.I.K.E opened up and hear some of the recordings, visit http://teamrecordsarchive.com/mike
After finishing my visit to the Kohler, my next stop was legitimately one of the most heartwarming places I visited in the country: Sheboygan’s Bookworm Gardens. The gardens began in 1999 as the brainchild of Sandy Livermore, who had an idea to create a place where children’s books could come to life, encouraging reading, imagination, and a love of nature in young visitors. She worked with landscape architects, teachers, librarians, and reading specialists to select different children’s books with importance and appeal and to design gardens inspired by each story. After almost 7 years of fundraising and designing, construction began in 2006. With the help of local architects, landscapers, artists, and over 100 community volunteers the gardens opened up to the public in 2010, after 11 years of dedication and hard work. To think that so many different talented and caring adults dedicated their time, money, energy, and creativity into doing something just to make a special place for children genuinely moved me to tears, which I think is pretty understandable even if it maybe isn’t the best look to be an adult by yourself crying at a children’s garden.
The welcome garden pulled out the big guns right away with some sculptures based on real classics to set the whole magical tone of the place. Some early highlights included: a full-scale school bus decked out like the Magic School Bus transforming into a butterfly; a pair of really excellently sculpted boots that looked like the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk had fallen head-first right into the gardens and was sticking out of the ground; a big purple crayon nestled among some bushes to represent one of my personal favorites, Harold and the Purple Crayon; and a cute little shady seating area inspired by Frog and Toad are Friends.
One sculpture that I really loved was from a book I hadn’t heard of called Frankie the Walk and Roll Dog by Barbara Techel which stars a dachshund with a spinal injury who uses a little stroller set up to get around which is beyond adorable.
Walking to the next garden, I passed by two distinctive water features that added to the calming ambiance of the gardens: a bending stream with flower pots shaped like faces (not sure what story they were from) and a gentle stone waterfall with a little bird on top inspired by The Waterfall’s Gift by Joanna Ryder + Richard Jesse Watson.
After the water features, I made my way to the Woodlands Garden which looks like real-life enchanted forrest. Highlights for me included: tiny carved fairy houses shaped like mushrooms with miniature furniture; a full covered wagon and frontier style cabin inspired by Little House on the Prairie; some creative painted frames inspired by a story called Katie and the Sunflowers by James Mayhew that let visitors become works of art; and cute woodsy sculptures of the three bears from Goldilocks playing together before some little girl breaks into their home.
In one particularly peaceful corner of the Woodland garden, there is a full Japanese Tea House with sculptures and specially selected flora to instill a sense of serenity and add some extra international cultural education to the storybook world of the gardens.
Naturally my favorite part of the woodlands garden though was a recreation of Winnie the Pooh’s house from the Hundred Acre Woods. I got a big kick out of how perfect the exterior was compared to how relatively shabby the inside looked, because on the one hand any space where lots of children play probably gets gross no matter how much you clean it but also that is honestly the amount of cleanliness I would expect from Pooh Bear.
Leaving the woods, I walked by an absolutely stunning wooden observation deck nestled among the trees inspired by the Magic Tree House featuring really gorgeous woodwork and an elegant branch and leaf pattern around the railings.
After the Woodlands garden, the next garden featured a beautiful pond and wetland plants. There are a few more subtle sculptures tucked throughout the pond, but I like that for the most part they just let the natural wonder speak for itself:
Next up was a small farmhouse-inspired garden. Highlights for me included: a scale replica of Farmer McGregor’s garden from Peter Rabbit; a gleefully horrifying sculpture of a giant worm going to town on a plate full of dirt; a cow sculpture lounging next to a cow-print milk jug; a sweet riff on the giving tree where local educators can put supplies they need on little leaves and then if visitors are feeling charitable they can leave checks attached to the back; a bench inspired by the story of Johnny Appleseed; and some clever totem-pole-like sculptures nestled in the garden that look like little mini-spherical landscapes.
After the farmhouse, I followed a stone path to a site called the Memory Gateway which was a sweet nostalgia trip of a courtyard designed to look like an old schoolhouse library with sweet bronze sculptures of children reading and playing all around.
From there, I made my way back to the wetland gardens where I walked along a boardwalk that went through the marshy areas on the way to the next garden. Fittingly along the boardwalk there were tons of sculptures of different literary creepy-crawlies from snakes to snails to very hungry caterpillars. There was also a big metal Curious George making a pizza, which seemed a little off-topic but still delightful.
Walking along the boardwalk, I was really blown away by just how green everything got (it didn’t hurt that I had a perfect summer day) and there were some colorful birdhouses along the way giving the environment some pops of color while also helping protect native wildlife.
At the other end of the boardwalk was a more play-based and interactive garden. Right away I was greeted by a bright colorful crooked house inspired by the story A Playhouse for a Monster by Virginia Mueller, as well as some really cute mosaic tiles along the walking paths with fun animal images and encouraging words. Together these really set a warm, welcoming, and playful tone.
Some highlights from this garden included: scale models of the different homes built by the Three Little Pigs pre-huffing and puffing; a topiary Llama inspired by the story Is Your Mama a Llama by Deborah Guarino; a cute sculpture of Harry the Dirty Dog from his namesake story by Gene Zion; a giant sail made out of cheese which I think was just some very Wisconsin whimsy; a little house with Stuart Little greeting visitors at the door; and a fancy child-sized country club inspired by a story called Connor the Caddie by Ulrich Koberstein about a sheep who learns to caddie golf.
I think the largest piece was a giant dinosaur sculpture very fittingly placed near a sandbox to inspire little paleontologists-to-be the opportunity to start digging for dino bones of their own.
My absolute favorite part of the garden though was that they had artists bring to life Dr. Seuss style trees with funky branches and dyed pom-poms of different colors, because it was just such a treat to see such staple images from childhood actually come to life.
Leaving the garden you walk through a really cool archway that is meant to look like a giant caterpillar (though it’s probably best not to think about that when you go out the other end).
One last great touch was that even the gift shop and restrooms had a whimsical element to them as they were made to look like a beautifully quaint old cottage:
After bidding farewell to the Bookworm Gardens, I stopped on the way to my next destination for a little pick me up at the wonderful Küps Coffee and Ice Cream because those are two things I can’t resist. I got a good strong cold brew coffee, and a black raspberry fudge swirl both of which greatly brightened up my afternoon.
My next stop for the day was the birth place of the titan of film-making Orson Welles in Kenosha, WI. The house is surprisingly cute and quaint for such a larger than life personality to spring from it, and Welles himself would very inconsistently refer to his hometown as either “vital and charming” or “terrible place” which is pretty telling of his grandiose theatrical personality. Still it was cool to make the little pilgrimage even if you can’t visit the inside because it’s currently a private residence.
While Orson Welles was genuinely one of the greatest filmmakers to live (which he would surely tell you), I think my personal favorite thing he ever did was when he got way too drunk for this commercial and provided some absolutely hilarious outtakes:
While in Kenosha, I next made my way to one of the most amazingly ridiculous Wisconsin landmarks: The Mars Cheese Castle. This one-of-a-kind highway stop is a specialty cheese store, deli, and taproom and you better believe it is actually fully made to look like a grand medieval castle.
Inside, the actual cheese, beer, and deli products are all genuinely top-notch but naturally my favorite part was the bonkers commitment even on the inside to both novelty cheese products and castle adornments because I love that this is something clearly talented artists and artisans have chosen to dedicate their time and talents to.
I got my “dinner” for the day at the cheese castle which featured a very nutritionally balanced blend of aged local cheddar cheese, homemade garlic pita chips, and a specialty Bourbon Barrel Aged Cherry Imperial Stout from Central Waters Brewing Company in Amherst, WI. I waited to indulge until I got to my AirBnB for the night, but since it was an off-night for comedy, you really can’t ask for much better than a night off with good beer, good cheese, and good snacks.
Favorite Random Sightings: At Random Specialty Drinks (if the name is true then those are quite special drinks indeed); a craft store called the Past Basket; a restaurant called The Blind Horse (appetizing); and some delightfully unappetizing branding in the form of Old Wisconsin Sausage
Regional Observations: People from WI are always surprised when I say what a fun and wholesome time I had in Sheboygan because I guess within the state it has a bit of a bad reputation for crime and seediness but I didn’t personally see any of that
Albums Listened To: This was another day of various “unknown albums” made up of random singles from various mixtapes and compilations but they included “Brand New Step” by Angelo Moore; “Pick Up the Pieces” by Average White Band; “Lean on Sheena” by Avoid One Thing; “The Wanderer” by Bad Cards feat. Jesse Wagner; “Where It’s At” by Beck; “Can’t Be Caught”, “Jeremy”, and “Quiet Room” by Big D and the Kids Table; “What’s My Age Again” by blink-182; “Kids and Heroes”, “Kate is Great”, “Manthem”, “Gone”, and “Late Bloomer” by Bouncing Souls; “When the President Talks to God” and “The Bottom of Everything” by Bright Eyes; A full EP of early songs by my sister’s college roommate Casey Tepp (you can find his first full-length album here: https://caseytepp.bandcamp.com/)
Joke of the Day:
One night, a lady stumbled into the police station with a black eye. She claimed she heard a noise in her backyard and went to investigate. The next thing she knew, she was hit in the eye and knocked out cold.
An officer was sent to her house to investigate, and he returned 1-1/2 hours later with a black eye.
"Did you get hit by the same person?" his captain asked.
"No," he replied. "I stepped on the same rake."
Songs of the Day:
Not the song I had on my iPod, but a fun cover and showcase of Angelo’s manic stage presence
Quite Possibly the funkiest Scotsmen
Fun Dion Cover
The intro cracked me up. A classic of early 2000s folk-punk
I never really tried to get into Beck but his band is fantastic in this