Road Trip: Alderley, Wisconsin and the West Bend Jailhouse.

Sarah's family lived on their farm in Pierce County since 1867.  Her great grand parents immigrated from Norway, but we knew they had spent some time in southern Wisconsin somewhere around Watertown.  Recently Sarah uncovered a handwritten note her grandmother had written for her for an assignment in grade school about her ancestors experiences.  It contained the line "Shortly after they were married they left Alderley, Wis. in a covered wagon pulled by oxen, which took them about 30 days."

A few minutes on Google Maps, and sure enough, Alderley still exists in eastern Dodge County. Curiousity overwhelmed us and we had to go take a look.

Alderley turns out to be like a lot of unincorporated villages in Wisconsin, about eight houses and a bar, who's main feature is a small dam on the Ashippun River, with a golf course next to it.

Just east of Alderley is Norwegian Road.  Probably has something to do with Rasmus Hanson spending some time here.  Here Sarah photographs a house that looked like it might have been around at the time they left for Pierce County.

Norwegian Road crosses an unnamed intermittent tributary of the Ashippun River.

On the other side of the road, several cows watched Sarah take pictures.

West Bend is only about 20 miles away, but most of the route we took goes through several small towns with stop lights and it took us about an hour to get there.  We were planning to visit the Washington County Historical Society's museum in the old courthouse, but it was pretty late and we just had time to go on the tour of the old jailhouse next door. It included not only the lock-up, but the front of the building was also the residence of the Sheriff and his family. Must have been an event for them when miscreants were brought in through the front door, the only entrance to the building.

I tried taking pictures inside, but we had to follow the tour which included a family with some really curious children, and I only could get about 30 second exposures, which only yielded this rather dark image of one of the cells, which I guess is kind of appropriate for the subject.

All with the Populist.  .15mm pinhole, 24mm from 24x36mm frame.

Roadtrip: The Museum of Wisconsin Art

I've never been to West Bend.  When I moved to Wisconsin and told people we came from South Bend, Indiana everyone misremembered it as West Bend. We saw a segment on a Wisconsin tourism show that featured the Museum of Wisconsin Art, which we had never heard of and looked cooler than I would have expected, although Wisconsin does boast some pretty heavy hitters – Georgia O'Keefe, Edward Steichen and Frank Lloyd Wright.  Among pinhole notables, Ruth Thorne Thomsen is from Door County. (later edit: I was wrong about that but she did do work there.)

Sarah needed to replace some specialized light bulbs so we stopped at the Kristopher Kringle Shoppe since it was right on the way in Fond du Lac.

It's crammed with decorated Christmas trees and every sort of collectible figurine or miniature village you can think of.  Surprisingly cheering on a bleak, windy February morning.

Six rooms full of the stuff on two floors.

West Bend has several really interesting sounding restaurants, but they're all open only for dinner, so for lunch you're left with the chains out by Highway 45, or the bars downtown.  You can't go too wrong by picking a microbrewery.  This dining room is probably pretty cheery in the summer.  The Milwaukee River with a nice patio is right out those windows.  Kind of dark and drab in February.

The Museum is a new building shaped like a rather severe acute triangle that points due north.  The point is made of windows and a stairway.

It is focused on work of artists born in, or who worked in Wisconsin for a significant time.  It includes the largest removable framed painting in Wisconsin, The Flagellents by Carl von Marr (born in Milwaukee but mostly worked in Munich).  After being exhibited in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, it was bought by someone from Wisconsin and actually belongs to the Milwaukee Art Museum.  Kind of a gross idea, but surprisingly unbloody for the subject. It's 14 x 23 feet and from the bench I had the tripod on I didn't expect to get the whole thing in the frame. Does it occur to anyone else that somehow I must have bowed the film plane somehow to create those curves at the top and bottom of the frame.

The south end of the building has the special exhibitions gallery, a reception area and another windowed stairway.

The Wisconsin Biennial juried show was the current special exhibit.  Lots of pretty good stuff (no pinhole though).  My favorite piece was an erased geological map of Wisconsin with a small display case next to it with the erasings from each county, each in a separate labeled compartment.

You get a pretty good view of downtown West Bend through that south window.  Looks like the weather is a little nicer for the drive home.

All with the Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame.