Beer-bottle shards and baling wire, tin foil and tin cans, bangle bracelets and beach rocks, chicken bones and chains.

The materials used to create the genre of works known as art environments extends well beyond traditional art media. Always revealing ingenuity, the artists’ choices were often driven by frugality or convenience.

Although not as unexpected as some materials, one cannot address what’s in an art environment without mentioning concrete. Ubiquitous and easy to use, concrete forms the foundation of sites from the North Woods of Wisconsin to northern India. Artists Nek Chand (1924–2015), Dr. Charles Smith, and James Tellen (1880–1957) are just a few who relied on it in creating their environments.
Wisconsin Concrete Park, located in Phillips, epitomizes the use of the medium. Filled with myriad life-size and larger-than-life-size concrete memorials to events, historical figures, and the people and legends of the region, it is the creation of tavern owner and lumberjack Fred Smith (1886–1976).

In 1948, Smith became utterly enthralled with the idea of surrounding his pub with sculptures. He made most of his works using wire-wrapped wood armatures that he covered with concrete. He then dressed the figures with what was at hand—pieces of glass from broken beer bottles and what he called “other bits of things.” His subjects range from Kit Carson astride a rearing steed to Ben-Hur, from a massive muskie to a maid milking a cow.

Over the course of fifteen years, he populated three acres of land with more than two hundred embellished concrete sculptures. In his words, his park was “a gift for all American people everywhere. They need something like this.”

Many art environment builders incorporated materials found at hand into their work, just as Smith used beer bottles from his tavern. For example, Mary Nohl’s (1914–2001) cottage environment in Fox Point, Wisconsin, is rife with finds from her beachcombing the Lake Michigan shoreline. Many of the figures in Nek Chand’s Rock Garden of Chandigarh are resplendently dressed in tightly arranged fragments of discarded bangle bracelets. Nebraskan Emery Blagdon (1907–1986) created “The Healing Machine” using baling wire, Christmas lights, tin foil, and metal cut from beer cans among other materials.

A favorite among the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s expansive collection of works from art environments are Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s poultry-bone sculptures. Collecting hundreds of chicken and, occasionally, turkey bones—from his own table and restaurant discards—Von Bruenchenhein (1910–1983) explored their aesthetic possibilities. Finding the shapes to be inherently architectural, he executed scores of small thrones and a series of tower-like structures.

Despite the dramatic differences in their media, styles, subjects, and methods of execution, the creators of art environments offer a unique cultural and artistic legacy. The Art Preserve of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, will offer an unprecedented opportunity to explore this wide-ranging and complex genre of art making when it opens June 26, 2021. Visit ArtPreserve.org.

Find more about art environments: What is an Art Environment