Mary Nohl’s Art Environment in Fox Point, Wisconsin (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) Stained glass covers the windows (“Almost all doors and windows once had stained glass,” Gartlemann explained), skeletons made from chicken bones hover on the kitchen cabinets, and along the fireplace in the living room, a snake chases an apple.
“And she was above it all.” While the interior of the house in Fox Point, Wisconsin, is now mostly empty as Mary Nohl’s Art Environment has been undergoing a restoration project since 2015, there are traces of the dense art that filled it from floor to ceiling. “She lived the myth making,” artist Alex Gartelmann, who is now living in and restoring Nohl’s house, said as we stepped inside. She called herself simply “ a woman who likes tools.” However, to many suspicious of this single woman toiling away at her eclectic cottage on the Lake Michigan shore, she was the “ Witch of Fox Point.” So, on her front steps, she embedded in pebbles the greeting: “BOO.” For 50 years, Nohl constantly tinkered with the art, adding lattices of concrete faces and glass that caught the light, wind chimes in the trees, and whimsical mosaic creatures. It was unlike any home in the Milwaukee suburb, with colossal concrete heads looming between the slender trees, driftwood sculptures adorning the colorful siding, and wooden cut-outs of boats and fish decorating the garage. Mary Nohl at her lake cottage environment (1994) (photo by Ron Byers, courtesy John Michael Kohler Arts Center)įOX POINT, Wisconsin - Mary Nohl knew what some of the neighbors thought of her house.
0 kommentar(er)
