NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

February 4, 1999

Plains Folk: Visionary Grassroots Art

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

©1998 Plains Folk

Here's a new book, "Backyard Visionaries: Grassroots Art in the Midwest," that's visually striking—but way too interesting to leave lying on the coffee table. It's written by members of the Kansas Grassroots Art Association and published by the University Press of Kansas, but its subject goes way beyond the state.

The KGAA is a voluntary organization founded in 1973 to document and preserve such wondrous curiosities as the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kan. What is grassroots art? Carl Magnuson, a folklorist with the Kansas State Historical Society, explains. There is elite art, which one learns by formal training and which lives by patronage. There is folk art, which one learns by informal teaching and which lives for the community. And there is grassroots art, which is cooked up by individual artists who "seem to come from nowhere." They often use unconventional materials, they have no definite audience and they have their own off-beat messages.

Samuel P. Dinsmoor, creator of the Garden of Eden, is the best-known example on the plains. His complex of concrete statuary drawing on biblical and political motifs is unsurpassed for intricacy or for quirky artistry. His April-December marriage and his mausoleum (in which he lies on exhibit under glass) add to popular interest in him.

Most grassroots artists of the plains, like Dinsmoor, are men, and most of them build not just individual pieces but rather elaborate environments, surrounding themselves with stuff that drives their neighbors nuts. Concrete is a medium of choice for many of them.

Among the other grassroots artists of the plains featured in the book are these interesting fellows:

• Ed Root, of north central Kansas, who sculpted concrete forms with little objects—everything from buttons to photos rolled in jars—embedded in the concrete.
• Dave Woods of Humboldt, Kan., who filled his yard with spinning windmills, brightly painted fences and such still-life objects as an orange-painted tire in a laundry basket.
• Emery Blagdon of North Platte, Neb., who filled rooms with hanging sculptures of wire and metal tubing he said emitted power fields and acted as healing machines.
• Ed Galloway of Foyil, Okla., who built, among other fantastic objects, a 62-foot-tall totem-pole tower of concrete painted pink, brick red, and lime green.

Beyond what is covered in "Backyard Visionaries," there is much more great grassroots art to be discovered on the Great Plains. The Petrified Wood Park of Lemmon, S.D., created in the 1930s by gas station owner Ole Quammen, gets nowhere near the attention and respect it deserves.

When it comes to mastery of concrete as medium, though, no one surpasses the energetic Tig Seland of Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. He did the Canada goose for Hanna, the pronghorn for Oyen and Cereal, the giant squirrel for Edson, the T-Rex by the river bridge in Drumheller, but most of all, his own fantastic Valley of the Dinosaurs, with Jesus and a pterodactyl facing one another from opposing ridges.

All best wishes to the KGAA and its book (wonderfully illustrated in both black-and-white and color). If you have grassroots art in your community, think about getting involved in its preservation. (And I wouldn't mind if you told me about it, either.)

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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339

Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136