Public Art Directory

East Main Street at Laurel Street

The 90th meridian marker is a pink quartzite marker that sits on the East Main Street boulevard near Laurel Street. It reads: “325 East of this point lies the 90th meridian.”

The marker was dedicated on October 14, 1963. It designates the cities unique position as the only city in the State of Wisconsin located directly on the 90th meridian. The marker has also been incorporated within the Reedsburg Historical Preservation Commission logo.

The marker was donated by Whitney Memorials and was installed by the Kiwanis service club.

Agnes Moorehead mural at City Hall

125 E Main

 

"Beastro & Barley" was created by international muralist Laura Annis after talking with Mike and Kari Walker about the direction they planned to take their new restaurant. The bison focal-point was chosen because of the signature buffalo burger their previous establishment has served for 15 years, the Reedsburger (TM). The mural evokes the bounty found in Sauk County and the closeness we share with the land. The bold colors and majestic buffalo catches the attention of passers-by and visitors, local and otherwise; many have been spotted taking pictures of and with the mural!  This project was funded by a Reedsburg Arts Committee grant. 

Main Street Bridge

The Bicentennial Monument located on the north side of the Main Street bridge was dedicated on July 5, 1976. The 45’ tall spire represents the logs used in early construction of the village and was designed by Edmund Strang, a local architect. An old axe, used by the Kleeber family when they settled in the area, is embedded in the spire and it represents the simple tools used by the early settlers. The concrete base represents the shallow rocky river bottom that made this location ideal for crossing the river and the entire structure rests on a mound that honors the Native Americans who occupied the area and befriended the early settlers.

A time capsule was placed inside the base of the monument and is due to be opened during the celebration of the Tricentennial in 2076. Instructions for opening the time capsule are embossed in Latin on a plate attached to the top of the base. The instructions say “Open from beneath.” To insure its longevity, six well casings were sunk into the bedrock to support the cement cap.

Fundraising for the monument was spearheaded by Mrs. Billy Stadel, chairperson of the cities’ Bicentennial committee. Her group raised $10,000 to cover the costs related to the monument and its placement. A fund of $1,283 was set up at the Reedsburg Bank (now BMO Harris Bank) to maintain the monument and an additional $100 was deposited in the F&M Bank (now Associated Bank) to be used during the Tricentennial celebration.

115 E Main Street

The mural, designed by Reedsburg School District art teachers Jeff Herschleb and Darren Honnold, depicts the arrival of pioneer settler James Babb into what would become Reedsburg.  It provides a unique signature to the bank’s entrance which stands approximately 100 yards from Babb’s Ford, a hard bottom section of the Baraboo River.

James Babb, our most noted pioneer arrived here before Reedsburg was even a place. In the spring of 1844 this was just a lonely spot known to the few settlers in Wisconsin as "Indian Ford". Proceeding up the river Babb reached the fertile tract that comprised what became Babb's Prairie. From 1844 to 1851 "Babb's Ford" was the only river crossing. Mr. Babb was a great friend of the Indians, especially of Ah-ha-choker, the Chief of the Winnebagoes. For years Mr. Babb and his family were constantly surrounded by Native Americans, who for some time were their only neighbors. Because of his justice and generosity, he was always on friendly terms with the Native Americans. Throughout a period of thirty years, neither he nor his family ever lost anything by the depredations of their neighbors. He died in 1875 and is buried in a private cemetery on Old Ironton Rd, on Babb's Prairie.

Research had to be done for such a project.  Herschleb talked to city historian Gordy Emery about the mural and learned that Babb used an ox team, not horses and he arrived on the west bank of the river, not the east.  Those elements were then changed in the preliminary drawing. The Indian houses were originally depicted as teepees, which was more typical for the Plains tribes. However the Ho-Chunk Nation was here when the first settlers arrived and they lived in wigwams.

Honnold did the final drawing, which became the basis for the mural.  Their sketch went on to the Endicott Brick company in Nebraska where the drawing was refined and transferred to brick.  This mural was especially challenging for the firm as it was on rounded corners instead of a flat wall. Each brick was designed, made and numbered.  Dick Schara and Mike Corwith were the two local bricklayers to actually assemble the mural in Reedsburg. Working on two of the hottest days in August of 2001, Schara and Corwith assembled the mural you see today.

265 Railroad Street

In the fall of 2016, while 2 artists were hard at work backfilling around new sidewalks recently installed in Harvest Park, they exchanged ideas about a crosswalk connecting Harvest Park to the Reedsburg Area Chamber of Commerce that would reflect the agricultural spirit of Harvest Park and our community. One of those artists was Austen Weymueller. Already Iiving in Reedsburg for the month to complete her To Re-Wild public art project in City Park, she designed and painted this crosswalk just in time for the 2016 Fermentation Fest. This crosswalk was a Reedsburg ArtsLink initiative. Donors included Ann Lawler, Laura Mortimore, Touchdown Tavern and the City of Reedsburg Public Works Department.

Reedsburg Farmers Co-op - 224 South Walnut Street

The Cowboy  Reedsburg Farmers co-op management was interested in mural imagery that would appeal to a younger generation of farmers.  Late in the summer of 2016, artist Austen Weymueller created this mural combining elements of contemporary street art with a traditional agricultural image.

Weymueller is a Texas-based artist who works in rural spaces with larger scale processes.  Her first introduction to Reedsburg was as a resident artist with the Wormfarm Institute during the summer of 2015. She returned in 2016 to create To re-Wild a temporary installation in City Park consisting of five 12 foot white concrete cowboys.

The artist donated her work for this mural.  Pat Farber, Reedsburg, donated the paint and equipment needed to complete the project.

Reedsburg Post Office - 215 N. Walnut St

The mural painted inside the Reedsburg post office in 1940 is entitled “Dairy Farming”. The artist was Richard Jansen who had previously painted a mural in 1938 at Lincolnton, North Carolina.

The project was the result of a New Deal agency established under President Franklin Roosevelt that allowed for murals to be painted inside several post offices around the country.

A Live Culture Convergence is an annual celebration of live culture in all its forms, from dance to yogurt, poetry to sauerkraut. Presented by the Wormfarm Institute the first two weekends in October, Fermentation Fest brings together farmers, chefs, artists, poets and performers in the beautiful working lands of Sauk County for tastings, demonstrations, cooking classes, art events, performances, food carts and more.

The featured event of Fermentation Fest is the biennial Farm/Art DTour - 50+ mile free, self-guided Agri/Cultural excursion. Take it at your own pace, by car, bike, or buggy. You’ll wind through scenic working farmland of central Sauk County punctuated by site-responsive art, roadside poetry, local food, pasture performances, and more.

 

Fermentation Fest

Little League 'Reedsburg' sign at Nishan Park

Harvest Park - 265 Railroad Street

Artist/Designer's name: Vicki Wildes

Builder's name: Gawronski Signs

How/why/who:  Created by a Sauk County Institute of Leadership Group to honor Milly Zantow.  

Who is Milly Zantow and why is she important?  Milly was a Sauk County resident that was inspired during a trip to Japan in 1978.  She witnessed a system of recycling that would change everything. People would set out sorted waste materials every day.  Upon returning to Wisconsin, Milly learned that the county landfill was closing early. She studied the landfill and discovered that a lot of the waste materials were plastic.  Through research, Milly figured out a system to recycle plastic. She and her friend, Jenny Ehl started a recycling collection center in Sauk County. Milly helped write Wisconsin’s first mandatory state recycling law, which passed in 1990 and developed the system that is used worldwide to identify and separate seven different types of plastics (look at the triangle at the bottom of plastic products).  Milly passed away in 2014. Her passion and determination continue to inspire people around the world.

SCIL Group members:  Morgan Tribbey, Vicki Wildes, Pam Thompson,   Laura McArthur Rossiter

Month and year it was installed? August 2015

Where it is installed: the Northest corner of Harvest Park

Other info that you think is important/relevant:  Milly was inducted into the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame on April 22, 2017.  In 2016 author Elise Moser released a children’s book “What Milly Did: The Remarkable Pioneer of Plastics Recycling”.  The art piece is made of recycled machinery parts in the shape of the universal recycling symbol and the bench is made of recycled plastic – a fitting tribute to Milly.

148 E Main Street - (Dinner Thieves)

This colorful mural was done by Baraboo artist Justin Woods in 2013. It was commissioned by Gatlin Fenwick, , a previous owner of the building. It took Woods six weeks working nights and weekends to complete the Kettle & Cup’s facade. The mural features musical notes, handprints from Wood’s young daughter, swirls, tribal designs, stars and many other elements.

City Park - 222 N. Park St.

Peace Posts are the signature project of Milwaukee artist, Muneer Bauhaddin. Site specific and created in conjunction with a host community, they have usually been installed in urban neighborhoods but have also been appeared in Ghana and Bali. Reedsburg’s Peace Posts were started in the summer of 2017 and completed and installed in 2018. This collaborative effort began with the artist explaining the history and purpose of the project. Many cultures around the world use public monuments to link their individual creative energies in communal effort and shared intention.

Community members met Muneer at a celebration in City Park where he was set up with clay tiles prepared for use. He gave an introduction and brief instruction in how to model the clay and color it with glazes. The tiles were then fired and set with mortar & grout into stout, rot-resistant wooden posts. Four large black locust trunks were chosen for the posts as it is extremely durable native tree and for this reason often used locally for  fencing. The logs were custom sawn by an Amish sawyer in the Sauk County panhandle. Two sets of posts with about 50 ceramic tiles each were installed along the diagonal sidewalk on the NE and SW axis of City Park. Two more sets may be installed on the crossing axis in the future.

This project was funded in part by the Reedsburg Revitalization Organization, a Good Idea Grant from the Sauk County Arts Humanities and Historical Preservation Committee and Wormfarm Institute. It was facilitated as part of Wormfarm’s Rural/ Urban Flow Initiative.

Eighth Street & Viking Drive

Reedsburg Area Veteran’s Memorial area was dedicated on the 4th of July in 2011. It marked the culmination of several years of planning and fundraising to make this project a reality.

The Thurber-Greenwood VFW Post 1916 started a plan to build a memorial early in 2008. A committee within the VFW was formed and the plans were revealed to the community on Memorial Day, 2008.

It took over three years to raise the funds through multiple events thanks to outstanding community support.

The memorial consists of 10 granite panels, laser etched with scenes representing all of the major military conflicts our country has been involved in, beginning with the American Revolution and ending with the War on Terror.

Corner Pub - 100 E Main Street

This is the 2nd in a series of murals created depicting the history of Reedsburg and its impact on contemporary culture. In the early 1860’s, Reedsburg benefited from short-lived economic expansion based upon the cultivation of hops for rapidly expanding the brewing industry. When the hop crop in the eastern US failed, Sauk County & Reedsburg hops became instantly valuable and the region experienced a boom. In 1867, 4 million pounds of hops were shipped from Sauk County- the harvest was so labor intensive that train loads of city dwellers descended upon the the region every fall to assist. Handling hops was rumored to be beneficial for women’s reproductive health so many of the visiting harvesters were young women. (We now know that hops are a source of

phytoestrogen so there may be some basis to the rumor.)

The bubble quickly burst as over-planting a monoculture soon led to disease, pests and when the east coast crop recovered, it signaled an end to the craze. Fortunes that were suddenly made were lost just as suddenly leaving almost no trace of this windfall. Wild hops can still be

found in the county and only recently has there been any agricultural production of this crop. The mural was completed in 2003 and mounted on the old Clossey’s Bar. a community landmark for generations which now hosts the Corner Pub, Wisconsin’s only “craft nano brewery”. This was a community project facilitated by Wormfarm Institute and supported by a

grant from the Sauk County Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Committee.

Reedikulus Polychrome Wildflower 

 

The Reedikulus Polychrome Wildflower, created by Wonewoc-based artist Peter Krsko, is a temporary participatory public art piece installed June through October of 2019.  This piece was inspired by the Black-Eyed Susan, a wildflower native to Wisconsin.  Visitors to the park weaved twine between attachment points on the flower frame to complete the colored petals over a period of months.  Materials: lumber and fasteners, colored baling twine.  Dimensions: Diameter, 15', height, 20'.  This project was made possible with support from the Sauk County UW Extension Arts and Culture Committee and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the state of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the City of Reedsburg's Arts Committee.

 

Photo: 

Families gather around the Reedikulus Polychrome Wildflower during the 2019 Fermentation Fest.

Photographer:  Joann Mundth Douglas, 10/6/2019

Harvest Park - 265 Railroad St

Ruminant (The Grand Masticator) is a harvesting combine clad in 34 agriculturally themed, back lit stained glass panels.  Americans for the Arts selected Ruminant as one of the most compelling public art pieces in the US for 2013.

A tribute to agriculture, farming and food, Ruminant is also an anthropomorphic beacon of contemplation and an intricate play on words and concepts.  Its creator, artist Karl Unnasch explains: "Just as food goes through several chewings and other processes as it is picked and broken down by cattle, so does the harvest as it is gathered and processed by a combine, or art as it is pondered and enjoyed by its viewer.  We are ruminants of visual language in the same manner as a cow is of its feed or a combine of its crop."

Originally a temporary installation along the annual Fermentation Fest's Farm/Art DTour in 2013, Ruminant resonated so strongly that a group of locals organized to acquire the piece for the City.  A vacant lot was selected as a site and converted into what is now known as Harvest Park. Ruminant was publicly dedicated to the City in October 2014 and became an instant landmark.

City Park - 222 N. Park St.

July-October 2016. Artist Austen Camille Weymueller is a Texas-based interdisciplinary artist. Cement, rebar, chicken wire, muslin, plywood, & latex paint. Five sculptures of varying heights (12-18ft tall). Public art commission made possible by Reedsburg ArtsLink.

 Reedsburg Area High School

 

The Roots & Wings sculpture at the high school was a gift from the Class of 1946 to the high school when it opened in the fall of 1998.  The sculpture was the brainstorm of Nancy Christie Goessel and Bud Schroeder, both members of that class. It was designed specifically for RAHS by Owen "Verne" Shaffer who was an art professor at Beloit College and a friend of Nancy's.  The sculpture weighs a total of 1,200 pounds and a crane was used to hoist it in place.  

Woolen Mill - 28 East Main Street

Created in 2002, this mural commemorates the history of the Reedsburg Woolen Mill and its importance in the early economic development of the city. It also acknowledges the restoration of the Baraboo River by the removal of the remaining dams that occured around that time making the Baraboo the longest restored river in the U.S. Harnessing the power of the river with dams to power grain, lumber and woolen mills was a common practice by Europeans settlers in the New World. At its peak the Baraboo River was contained by 11 dams with the last of them finally removed in the late 1990’s. The mural depicts downtown Reedsburg in the early 20th century with the Mill and dam prominently featured. A large stylized portrait of a woman mill worker is unspooling a bolt of

fabric that morphs into the river highlighting the connection between the flowing water and the resulting manufactured products. These relationships are further connected by the surrounding farmland and the prominence of sheep in the mural. The caption “Agriculture, Natural Resources & Industry” ties together these features of the composition.

There is a small mural within the mural recreating a cartoon of boys skinny dipping in the River drawn in the 1920’s by artist Claire Briggs, a  Reedsburg native whose work appeared in national publications. The mural was a community project facilitated by Wormfarm Institute with the support from a Sauk County Arts, Humanities & Historic Preservation grant. It is mounted on the last remaining building in the Woolen Mill complex as the Mill itself burned down in the 1960’s.