Wednesday 9-12 A Day of Culture?

Laugh and have fun

We had another great day of having fun stopping in small towns in Wisconsin.

We started our day in Wausau at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. It is located in town on a 4-acre estate of a 1931 English Tudor style house. It was donated by Alice Woodson Forester and John E. Forester in 1973. Alice was one of Leigh Yawkey Woodson three daughters. The museum opened in 1976. The museum is known for their annual "Bird in Art" exhibition which exhibits contemporary artistic representation of birds. The grounds are immaculate with a sculpture garden. There are lots of sculptures and they give you a list of six to try and find. We located five of the six and had fun doing so. After walking around the sculpture garden we went into the museum. It was on two floors. The main floor had the annual Birds in Art exhibits from different artists. One section was Master Wildlife Artist: Cindy House. While walking through the exhibits we saw a lot beautiful artwork of birds. They were done in many formats including: paper, oil colors, pastels, pencil, feathers, wood and a lot more. The lower level was where the classrooms are, you can learn to be an artist. They had hands on exhibits where you can use stencils to create a bird. They had a childrens area where children can put together puzzles of animals and play. We enjoyed putting one of the puzzles together. We thought because the pieces were big it would be easy but we were wrong. It was harder than it looked. The museum was free and accepts donations. We had a great time.

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum

Standing in front of a sculpture at the entrance

A dog laying on its back sculpture

Two cubs playing sculpture

One of the Bird in Art exhibits

The puzzle Larry and I put together

The next stop was in the town of Stevens Point at the city park to walk through their Sculpture Park. The Sculpture Park is a 40-acre section of the park featuring local, regional and national artists. The sculptures are located along a very nice trail. We were surprised to see so many sculptures. We walked around for about an hour and saw a lot of cool artwork. Each sculpture had a sign that told you a little bit about the sculpture and how the artist interpreted the piece. We had fun walking the trail.

Entrance sign

The sun and moon

First Flower in Spring

A giant bench

          

The last stop was in Marshfield to visit Jurustic Park, which is a display of sculptures created by Clyde Wynia. Jurustic Park is very unique. We walked around and looked at a lot of junkyard creatures for over an hour. Clyde showed us different creatures and told us stories about them. He is a very interesting guy. He was a lawyer for over 40 years and found that he enjoyed creating creatures out of old scrap metal. He is very talented and has a great sense of humor. His wife is also an artist, her art is out of glass. They have a gift shop that displays some of her art. He has a lot of sculptures all over the place and keeps creating more. He also donates some of the sculptures to charities to raise money. You will certainly miss some of the sculptures because there's so many of them.

Standing in front of a dragon

Dinosaur Helicopter  

A man and woman sculpture

The dog pound

We called it a night when we got to Owen City Park. It is a small park with 11 rv sites with electric and water. There are no hiking trails but it's very pretty. While there I walked around to get my steps in for the day. There is a railroad track that runs right by it but it wasn't a problem. We had a super day.