The Wisconsin Project: Found: The House on the Rock, Spring Green, WI

12.10.12

Found: The House on the Rock, Spring Green, WI

Found: "The House on the Rock at Spring Green, Wisconsin on Highway 23, North of Dodgeville, Wisconsin" copyright The L.L. Cook. Co., Milwaukee, Wisconsin from Ektachrome Transparency, circa 1965

Less than seven miles from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin in Spring Green hovers a spectaclar manifestation of hording, imaginative architectural design backed with an astute ability to appeal to public curiosity. Wisconsin Dells is not far away nor is Cave of the Mounds. Tourist pamphlets didn't prepare us for the sensory overload that is The House on the Rock. More proof positive what isolation, time, and money can produce in Wisconsin. Built on "Deer Shelter Rock" by Alex Jordan, Jr. in the 1940s, this maze of rooms and objects wasn't originally intended as the sort of tourist attraction it has beomce with inn, spa, golf course and tour packages. Plunk down the $28.50 and try to power through it. After an intense darkly mysterious 3 hours of gawking, strolling, striding, and absorbing, we were expelled back into the bright light of Wisconsin on a summer afternoon. Inside, the eerie pneumatic 35 piece orchestra of stringed and percussion instruments (from sitars to cellos) was topped by the surreal installation of an immense and swirling carousel with topless winged women peppered throughout. Back then, disposable cameras and rolls of 35 mm film were vended near the carousel to satisfy the overwhelming urge to document the intensity photographically. At the core of the house is a carpeted dank lounge/pit where Jordan is said to have sipped Tom Collins and read books. A stream of nosy tourists pushed him to start charging to look around the place. He applied the income to acquiring and expanding his home and collection over time. The house sprawls to display collections of eccentric and associative objects from dolls to steam locomotives to pipe organs. "Despite the globe-trotting aura of the collection, Jordan hated to travel and never left the country. He died in 1989, at age 75," wrote Roadsideamerica. Alex's world makes a great exotic location to stage your next wedding or a Halloween party...

Author Neil Gaiman, who lives near Menomine, Wisconsin, appeared at the
The Gathering of American Gods Costume Party at HoTR, 10.29.2012.. Video by EvilWylie.

NOTE: Thanks to Professor Ed Kern, our Lawrence University colleague, for the tip on Neil Gaiman's references to the House on the Rock in American Gods.

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THE WISCONSIN PROJECT

Our research-driven Wisconsin Project contemplates the rooted-ness and state-of-mind resulting from inhabiting a single place, our native Wisconsin, for a long time. Through critiquing postcard views both made and found, we learn a great deal about past and present Wisconsin. We began making postcard views of the places immediately around our studio and on our drives around Wisconsin in about 2008. We use the vintage postcard film format and print the cards in palladium and cyanotype. By communicating details of a specific place, seeming to register only marginally on the national radar, the project seeks to bring audiences into a Wisconsin mental space. Some in the art world would argue that the Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, makes for banal “fly over” subject matter. Our project challenges that by finding meaning in the ordinary and inviting audiences to examine, dialog, and reflect on the particular emotional quality of the idiosyncrasies of place and the perceptions of those both inside and outside of it. Sometimes distant memories are involved and a longing for a time now gone. Wisconsin’s glacier inflected landscape and proximity to the Great Lakes creates an exotic arena for living that informs our project. The life cycle plays out and rural and urban ruins serve as monuments to existences as people, places, and ideas surface then vanish. Ultimately, we aim to grapple with complex perceptions of Wisconsin ranging from nostalgic, romantic, and idealized--as depicted on myriad real photo postcard and standard tourist postcards--to mysterious, dark, and Gothic as conveyed in works of art and literature such as Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip" book and Werner Herzog's "Stroszek" film. The project culminated in a residency with workshops and community collaborations and the installation "We Go From Where We Know" at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center 10.13.2013-3.7.2014 and later the Harvestore Bandshell for Fermentation Fest in 10.2014. The blog continues the exploration of postcards.