Angel Forlorn

I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out the expression on this angelic sculpture. One moment it strikes me as uncaring, the next deeply compassionate. As you can see from the title, I settled on forlorn. Maybe the title reveals more of my own feelings about the setting than the statue, itself.

I found this angel in a dark recess among the complex, eclectic collections found at House On the Rock – a notable Wisconsin tourist attraction. We visited this attraction of oddities last August. I took a lot of photos, as you would expect, despite it’s unusually dark atmosphere. There is so much to see there, and yet, they seem to want to make viewing difficult and photography near impossible.

As a photographer, there was a lot at House On the Rock to grab your eye…and frustrate your technique.  Setting my camera aside and looking at it as a common tourist, I did not like the place. It was all too dark, dreary, strange, unkempt and macabre for me. My favorite parts were the gardens outside the buildings, where there was sunshine and life, paths and ponds, goldfish and waterlilies, flowers and honey bees. The dark, cavernous, foreboding nature of the indoors is such a shame because there are so many very cool items in this gigantic and wildly diverse collection.

Twenty years ago, American novelist, Jane Smiley, offered her thoughts after a visit to House On the Rock. I think her description remains accurate today…

Though most people outside of the Midwest have never heard of it, the House on the Rock is said to draw more visitors every year than any other spot in Wisconsin. …it is hard not to be overwhelmed by the House on the Rock. The sheer abundance of objects is impressive, and the warmth most of the objects exude, the way that the toys ask to be played with, for example, makes the displays inherently inviting. But almost from the beginning, it is too much. The house itself is dusty. Windowpanes are cracked. Books are water damaged. The collections seem disordered, not curated. In fact, there is no effort to explore the objects as cultural artifacts, or to use them to educate the passing hordes. If there were informative cards, it would be impossible to read them in the dark. Everything is simply massed together, and Alex Jordan comes to seem like the manifestation of pure American acquisitiveness, and acquisitiveness of a strangely boyish kind, as if he had finalized all his desires in childhood and never grown into any others.

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