Dickeyville Grotto: The Vision of Father Mathias Wernerus

by Susan A. Niles

good illustrations of the grotto

Genres: Art

72 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1997

Reviews

[Muzzlehatch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first visited Dickeyville on a long weekend tour around Wisconsin with my mother, sometime in the neighborhood of 1997-98, shortly after this book was published. We didn't really set out to look into all the obscure little roadside attractions that the state seems to be full of, but whether we tried or not we certainly ran across several of them, and the Dickeyville Grotto was probably the most memorable and impressive.

Religious grottos, typically built by Catholic priests in small communities, have a tradition in the midwest, particular in Iowa and Wisconsin, going back a century or more. Susan Niles' informative and scholarly little book traces just a bit of this history (I'd have liked more) but mostly focuses on the work of Father Mathias Wernerus (1874-1931), a Belgian-born, German-speaking priest who emigrated to Wisconsin shortly after the turn of the century and proceeded to construct this fascinating folk-art grotto of concrete, cement, glass, quartz and other stones, and a variety of other materials found and bought, in the small town of Dickeyville a few miles from the Mississippi River in the southwestern part of the state. She describes Wernerus' parish and the town a bit, tries to answer the question of how he came to decide on building the grotto, describes the work and its cultural and religious significance, and writes about his contemporary Paul Dobberstein, who built the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend Iowa, beginning in 1912. Wernerus started the Dickeyville project in 1920, finishing just before his death and there are many similarities between the two, though there was at the time this book was published no hard evidence that the two artists were aware of each other's work.

The text makes up half of this 72-page book and is illustrated by several detailed plans of the grotto as it stands today; the second half of the book is taken up by quite beautiful color phots of the grotto and its details, as well as some plates of the Grotto of the Redemption and a couple of other similar midwestern shrines.

Anybody interested in this fascinating sub-genre of American folk art is strongly urged to check out this book - and take a tour of the Grotto itself and the many other interesting and unique roadside folk-art attractions in that part of America.

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 3 out of 5]

from the front matter:

"Books in this series focus on the work of informally trained or self-taught artists rooted in regional, occupational, ethnic, racial, or gender-specific traditions. Authors explore the influence of artists' experiences and aesthetic values upon the art they create, the process of creation, and the cultural traditions that served as inspiration or personal resource. The wide range of art forms featured in this series reveals the importance of aesthetic expression in our daily lives and gives striking testimony to the richness and vitality of art and tradition in the modern world."

In this case, the informally trained artist was Father Mathias Wernerus, and his art form the grotto, a traditional Roman Catholic artificial cave made with concrete, colored glass, and donated odds and ends. The book situates Father Wernerus and his parish in the context when grotto-building was the fashion across the Midwestern US, and also relates the dual themes in the Dickeyville Grotto--Catholic spirituality and American patriotism--to the often tenuous character of American Catholicism and the questionable status of German-Americans during and after WWI.