For the first time since the 1970s, an American flag hangs above the 200-plus statues that dot the grounds of the Wisconsin Concrete Park.
Renovations at the popular roadside art display in northern Wisconsin were completed just ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.
The Price County park includes hundreds of works by the artist Fred Smith. Smith, who never learned to read, was a retired lumberjack and self-taught artist who turned his property in Phillips into an art park. Smith died at 89 in 1976.
Like all art pieces in the park, Smith created the flag sculpture himself. He was at least 62 when he painted an American flag on an old metal Hamm’s beer sign and installed it on a 20-foot pole.
It joined a host of other creations — horses, wagons, moose, farmers, milkmaids, donkeys, drinkers and even a giant muskie — that make up the park. The Friends of Fred Smith, who look after the statues, refer to the pieces as “vernacular art.”
They’re made of concrete, old glass bottles, rebar, wood, horse bones — and a beer sign.
While it’s been lost to time exactly when Smith created the flag, it came down in a storm in the 1970s. The flag was never rehung, and wasn’t well preserved, according to Ann Grzywnowicz, the park’s operations manager.
But the Friends group keeps all pieces of Smith’s artwork for eventual repairs. The flag was stored in a workshop for decades, rusting away.
Restoration of artwork happened decades after damage
Wisconsin winters can be hard on the outdoor artwork, Grzywnowicz said, and water can damage the concrete. The glass pieces can sometimes chip or fall off and need to be replaced.
Last year, a board member saw the old flag and said it would be nice to get it back up this year. Grzywnowicz said her husband removed the rust, added a new frame and welded the metal pieces back together and restored the old sign’s shape.
Then it was passed on to a board member who restored the American flag paint to the sign — which still reads “Hamm’s” when the light catches the edges just right.
The flag was coated in polyurethane to help protect it, Grzywnowicz said.
And, finally it was reinstalled ahead of the Fourth of July — on a 12-foot pole, which Grzywnowicz hopes is safer for the flag itself and visitors.
“It looks great back in its original location, and flying high,” she said.
‘It’s gotta be in you to do it’
Smith’s art style is unique, as was his decision to spend his twilight years on the creations.
“I would say the majority of the community locally thought that Fred was kind of nuts,” Grzywnowicz said.
She means that respectfully, she said. Many locals couldn’t understand why the old lumberjack suddenly decided to make life-size statues of men out of old telephone poles and cement.
They weren’t alone.
“He never really knew,” Grzywnowicz said. “He just kind of said, ‘It’s gotta be in you to do it.’”
Smith celebrated different aspects of American culture in his works. Folk tales, historical and cultural events feature in many of his works. He created an entire mosaic tribute to the U.S. Marines who died during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.
“He took inspiration from anything and everything — people he knew in his daily life, things he saw in magazines or pictures, books,” Grzywnowicz said.
One statue depicts the famous Shoshone guide Sacagawea, who guided Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the Pacific in the early 1800s.
The park has tried to document some of Smith’s thoughts on his pieces, and its website includes this on the sculpture of Sacagawea: “The woman didn’t need no compass.
She’s the one that opened up the whole country. That’s why I got so many Indians here. I like Indians because they’re damn smart people.”
Smith was a first-generation American, born to German immigrants to Wisconsin in 1886.
He never received any formal schooling.
“In later life, Smith was asked if he had been hindered by his inability to read or write,” the park website states. “He replied: ‘Hell no, I can do things other people can’t do!’”
The Friends work with Price County to preserve this site, which has become a county park. While the property is protected by fences, visitors can freely explore the artistic works decorating the property.
“I think folk art, vernacular art, like this is made to be experienced a little closer up. This isn’t standing back and looking at the Mona Lisa,” Marjory Brzeskiewicz, president of the Friends group, said.
Pam Kling, a Madison resident, brought her visiting sister all the way to Philips to see Smith’s work. She loves the art, and has visited it at least four times.
“It seems fitting for up here, the independent spirit,” she said of the park. “I think it’s worth the time invested to kind of go a little out of the way and get here.”
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