Advertisement Built 80 years ago by a retired German-immigrant couple, Paul and Matilda Wegner, the site is laden with symbolism.
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The concrete sculptures with thousands of colored glass shards inlaid on the surfaces range from a German ship, an American flag and a peace monument to a chapel, a pulpit and a concrete deer with wooden antlers.
“I wish we had more documentation about why they built certain things and what they mean,” said Jarrod Roll, director of the Monroe County Local History Room and Museum.
“All they had was a vision of how to create this stuff,” said Roll, who said the Kohler Foundation has generously helped in restoration and preservation efforts since 1986. “They weren’t made to last forever. They were just made to fulfill that vision they had.”
Roll, 35, met me at the site on Thursday and guided my curiosity with his own.
Standing in front of a conifer tree surrounded by concrete railing and an arched entrance, Roll explained the area has been known as the prayer garden.
“Why they wanted a tree I don’t know,” he said. “We can speculate. Was it the tree of life? But I don’t know. I wish we had their words.”
Nearby, a sculpture of a crescent moon sat on the ground.
“I don’t know if they just liked what the moon looked like,” he wondered.
Stories have been passed down over the years, but Roll said some have been disproven and others have been hard to verify.
The longer we stayed there, the more questions emerged, like “Why the flamingo?”
Why the 6-foot-tall reproduction of a 50th or 51st or 52nd (the records aren’t clear) wedding anniversary cake? Were the two madly in love? Is it a monument to commitment?
And why did one of the two use their finger to etch the words “Take Christ in your life boat” into the concrete ship?
You can draw some conclusions. The images, as Roll explained, reveal materially what was important to the couple.
A cement-and-glass American flag and an American Legion symbol show a love of country.
The cake and an archway with the word “Home” on it show a love of family.
And a small chapel, with the words “One God, One Brotherhood” and then “Jew,” “Luth” and “Cath” near the entrance, shows an ecumenical bent.
But understanding these particulars, like understanding the particulars of a scripture, does not reveal the strange wonder of the place.
It doesn’t reveal what the experience must have been to stand in what was once the Wegners’ yard, to look around and see concrete animals, ceramic animals and real animals, to see images of a country near and a country far, to see real trees and a tree stump with concrete and glass shards embedded in it — in a sense, to see symbols from all of Creation. And it doesn’t reveal what it must have been like to stand there and watch a preacher raise his arms behind the concrete pulpit with a monument behind him, which now faces Hwy. 71, reading “For Peace on Earth.”
Looking around, imagination becomes a better guide than understanding.
Imagination leads you to all those children who brought the colored glass shards to the Wegners for pay. It leads you to the alcohol that was in the bottles before they were recycled into art, and it leads you to the stories that must have flowed out of people as the alcohol had flowed into their bodies.
And mostly, imagination leads you to stand in mystery as you gaze at the remains of the bottles, which have become brilliant, jagged mosaics on the sides of the chapel and everything else.
ABOUT THE WEGNER GROTTO
Paul and Matilda Wegner, who raised five children, built what has become known as the Wegner Grotto from about 1929 to 1936. Neither were trained artists, and as a brochure of the site explains, their vision existed outside the academic artistic tradition and was inspired by another grassroots art environment, The Holy Ghost Park in Dickeyville, Wis.
In 1986, the Kohler Foundation acquired the site for restoration, as it has with other grassroots art sites around the state. In 1987, the foundation gave the Wegner Grotto back to Monroe County. Jarrod Roll, director of the Monroe County Local History Room and Museum, which oversees the site, said more restoration is planned.
A group of Eagle Scouts are helping erect a sign at the site. Visitors are welcome, and couples can get married there for $50.
Read more here: www.kohlerfoundation.org/wegner.html
Joe Orso works part time for the La Crosse Tribune and the Franciscan Spirituality Center. Opinions in this column are his own. He can be reached at jorso@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8429.
