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Frank Oebser, Little Program, Menomonie, WI

The Site

Frank Oebser’s Little Program was a small amusement park that filled a machine shed he had built for the purpose. Through a combination of kinetic and stationary sculptures, Oebser illustrated farm life in animals and people working and playing. He often started with a wooden armature and then filled the body structure with straw before wrapping them in plastic or tarpaulin and adding paint, newspaper clippings, and other found objects. The five sculptures in the Arts Center’s collection are all that remain of Oebser’s environment.

Frank Oebser

1900–1990

Frank Oebser at his Little Program (site view, c. 1989), Menomonie, WI, c. 1965–1989. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Artist Archives.

Frank Oebser was born in 1900 in Menomonie, Wisconsin, and lived his entire life on the family dairy farm. In the mid-1960s, he began to work on a series of whimsical and inventive kinetic and stationary sculptures. For Oebser, transforming obsolete machines into works of art answered both his desire to preserve the objects and his need for his farm to be a place of joy.

Oebser’s art environment grew throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Five of Oebser’s mixed-media sculptures were conserved and gifted to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center by the foundation in 1992.

Selected Works by Frank Oebser

Further Reading

Congdon, Kristin G., and Kara Kelley Hallmark. “Frank Oebser.” In American Folk Art: A Regional Reference Volume 1, 425-27. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012.

“Heartfelt and Handmade: Six Artists Who Made Their Own Way.” In Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists, edited by Leslie Umberger, 403-06. Sheboygan: John Michael Kohler Arts Center and Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

Stone, Lisa. “Frank Oebser’s Little Program” In Sacred Spaces and Other Spaces: A Guide to Grottos and Sculptural Environments in the Upper Midwest, 132-34. Chicago: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1993.

Additional Resources

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