Book Review

Miracles of the Spirit: Folk, Art, and Stories fromWisconsin. Don Krug and Ann Parker. Jackson:University of Mississippi Press, 2005. 315 pp.

ANNE PRYOR

See, it doesn’t make any difference what youhave if you don’t have an opportunity to tellyour story.- William Blackmon, Miracles of the Spirit

This reflection from artist Prophet William

Blackmon (p. 22) sums up the driving principle be-

hind the impressive Miracles of the SpiritFto

provide an opportunity for 26 self-taught artists

from Wisconsin to tell their own stories about their

lives and their work.

Authors Don Krug and Ann Parker weave four

strands of information into the structure of Mira-

cles of the Spirit, aiming to stand apart from an art

world that would otherize and exoticize self-taught

artists. Primary to the book is a sequence of first

person narratives in which the artists tell their

personal and artistic stories. Each of these is gen-

erously illustrated by images that feature the

artists as well as the artworks, visually reminding

the reader of the person behind the creations.

Overview essays by Krug and Parker establish the

community contexts in which the artists work, cor-

recting the idea that outsider art springs from

unconscious depths independent of any outside in-

fluences.

While these three strands (the narratives, im-

ages, and overviews) indirectly argue with the

ideas Krug and Parker want to counter, the fourth

is a direct conversation with the art world. A con-

cluding set of essays explores issues such as how

sensationalized language used by some curators,

collectors, and critics to market outsider artists can

distort understanding of an artist’s place in his or

her community. They also trace a history of Mid-

western academy artists’ involvement with self-

taught visionary artists. By combining this strand

with the other three, the authors weave a text that

champions self-trained artists as creative beings

who choose to operate within self-defined para-

meters. Miracles of the Spirit explores those pa-

rameters.

Krug and Parker traveled throughout Wisconsin

from 1991–99 meeting and recording conversations

with many self-taught artists. They limited those

featured in the book to living artists who were not

trained at the time they began their artwork and

excluded artists whose work is derivative of others

or whose inspiration is ethnic folk art traditions.

The result is that we meet artists such as Jack

Dillhunt of Green Bay who draws large abstract

scenes with ballpoint pens on sheets; Hope Atkin-

son who, on the southern shore of Lake Superior,

creates engaging three-dimensional papier-mache

sculptures of people and animals; and ‘‘Dr. Ever-

more,’’ who populates his giant sculptural environ-

ment outside of Baraboo with fanciful machines

like the Forevertron.

The heart of the book is the artist narratives and

their accompanying images. The narratives are

each about ten pages long and solely use the artists’

own words. Because they are based on interviews,

each varies in exact range of content, although

most begin with a brief tracing of earliest years

with family and then turn to the what, how, and

why of their art. Some of the narratives include

highly reflective statements about motivating

dreams and passions. Visionary Mona Webb of

Madison, for example, explains that she seeks to

emphasize the oneness of all life through her cre-

ative process: ‘‘I like the word ‘creative.’ Creating is

giving something back to humanity or becoming a

part of the atmosphere in which you live’’ (p. 153).

Other artists are less interested in speaking ab-

stractly; in those interviews, the objects they create

rather than the ideas behind them are central to

the conversation. For instance, Lester Fry of Iron-

ton, who makes yard art sculptures of glass

insulators, says, ‘‘I don’t know why I started mak-

ing ‘em. I couldn’t tell ya. I made this like a tree,

that’s all’’ (p. 186). No matter where they fall within

the continuum of verbal expression, the artists’ joy

of creating and the satisfaction of communicating

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& 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1379.2009.01055.x

through expressive manipulation of familiar mate-

rials come through. Fry continues, ‘‘When it’s all lit

up and shining through that glass, it shows, you

can see it. You can go way down along the road and

boy, it’s pretty’’ (p. 186).

The book is rich with photographs, most of

which are black and white. The images that ac-

company the essays show more types of Wisconsin

folk art than those featured in the artist profiles,

such as woodenware decorated with Norwegian

rosemaling or a pebble house built on the western

shore of Lake Michigan. An occasional disappoint-

ment are photos of low quality that are pixilated or

out of focus. These stand in distinction to the con-

sistently intriguing larger portrait shots of each

artist with his or her work that open each of the

narratives. My favorite shows Clyde Wynia of

Marshfield (p. 246) seemingly caught in mid-con-

versation with Jerry, a pet crow that perches on his

left shoulder, while Clyde’s right arm casually rests

on the huge nose of a full-sized dragon constructed

of welded chains, sharp metal teeth seeming to

gnaw on his jacket. A dog lies sleeping in the back-

ground. The comfortable and whimsical nature of

the image matches the tone of the subsequent nar-

rative; one finds a similar equivalency between

portrait and words throughout the book.

For all its strengths, the book would benefit from

more transparency in how the interviews were

conducted and the narratives derived: were the in-

terviews completely open-ended or were they

guided by select questions? What guidelines did the

authors use to edit the transcriptions? Also, sur-

prisingly for a book that emphasizes place, I often

had difficulty identifying where the artist lives. But

these are small points in light of the strong contri-

bution this book makes to the existing body of work

that documents Wisconsin’s self-taught artists.

Miracles of the Spirit has already inspired oth-

ers to consider this art in more depth. In the fall of

2008, the Whitewater Arts Alliance mounted a

Miracles of the Spirit exhibition at the Cultural

Arts Center in Whitewater, Wisconsin. Pieces from

more than a dozen of the artists featured in the

book came together in an intriguing show that was

supplemented with multiple programs, including

presentations by Krug and Parker. As does the

book, the exhibition presented this art as a cele-

bration of the creative spirit present in Wisconsin

artists who, unfettered by conventions, manifest

their dreams in engagingly inventive ways.

Anne Pryor is the Folk and Traditional Arts Specialist

at the Wisconsin Arts Board. She works with artists

and arts agencies to support the state’s artistic tradi-

tions. Favorite projects to that end include Wisconsin

Folks, an award winning website related to Wiscon-

sin’s vernacular and traditional arts, and Wisconsin

Teachers of Local Culture, a partnership project to

provide support for K-12 teachers who focus on Wis-

consin culture in their curriculum.

156 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 32 NUMBER 2