The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers

Since discovering hodags in cartoonist Chris Monroe's Violet Days, I keep hearing about these mythological creatures. I can't believe I never knew about them before. Maybe I'm just tapping into the hodag zeitgeist or something.

My latest hodag sighting is a picture book by Caroline Arnold, with art by John Sandford, called The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers. I was immediately struck by the quality of Sandford's scratchboard illustrations -- and the fact that they are black and white. It makes so much sense for this tall tale, set in the early 20th or late 19th century.


Sandford works the spread, using the space of both pages dynamically. In this scene, the lumberjacks confront the city men who have come to capture the hodag so they can place it in a zoo.


Sandford changes scale from spread to spread -- from close-ups of faces to landscapes with tiny figures among the trees.


This one is fun! Instead of literally showing the hodag tramping through the woods to make it hard for the hunters to follow its trail, Sandford shows the results of the hodag's efforts.


And then we finally get to see the hodag and it's huge, filling up the whole spread, almost pushing the words out of the frame.

Definitely one for the hodag hall of fame.

Hodag Redux

I was just checking out the Museum of Hoaxes website, taking a look through their photo gallery, and came across this photo of a hodag!


The caption reads:

This picture, and ones like it, appeared on many Wisconsin postcards during the first decades of the 20th century. It shows a creature called the Hodag cornered by men with pitchforks. The Hodag is a supernatural beast native to Wisconsin. It has the head of a bull, the back of a dinosaur, and the leering features of a giant man. Its legs are short, its claws are long, and its tail is spear-tipped.

Gee, and I thought Chris Monroe was at least partly making it up!

Chris Monroe, Goddess of the North

Cartoonist Chris Monroe creates one of the most idiosyncratic and supremely local cartoons on earth: Violet Days.

Based in Duluth, she often writes about memories from childhood and weird details from Minnesota and Wisconsin. Last Friday's strip (in the Star Tribune) was a fine example of all of the above:




A bunch of her strips are collected in a book, called Ultra Violet: Ten Years of Violet Days. I highly recommend it.

Almost All the Artists But One at the Art Preserve

We didn't spend enough time at the Kohler Art Preserve, maybe a couple of hours.

I have an excuse, because I have seen entire exhibits of most of these artists' work before at the John Michael Kohler Art Center over the years. If you go to the Art Preserve — and especially if it's your first time seeing these works — you should plan to spend much of the day. Bring your lunch and picnic outside, or go over to the JKMAC to their cafe. 

It's a place full of details. These are entire collections by artists, people who created thousands of pieces. They aren't all on display at once, but a lot of their pieces are there for you to see, or there are videos showing more. 

I spent more time with the work of Mary Nohl than anyone else, including watching the video of her house one and a half times. (There are a few images of her house, which is located right on Lake Michigan north of Milwaukee, in my 2012 post.)


Some of Nohl's wooden painted sculptures.


One of her many paintings. Of the ones on display in the sliding storage racks, the color palette and style of this one was unusual.


In addition to ceramics, Nohl (who described herself as "a woman who liked tools") also made jewelry.

Here's a sampling of just one piece each by several other artists whose work is in the Preserve. This isn't anywhere near everyone whose work the building contains:

This bike by David Butler is part of an enigmatically partial collection of his work.


Levi Fisher Ames is probably the earliest artist in the collection. His 600+ whittled creatures, each encased in a wooden box, were part of a traveling exhibit he showed around the region in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is the famous Wisconsin hodag.


A few birds by Albert Zahn of Door County, Wisconsin. His work is widely collected and in other museums. The outside of his house, though mostly sans bird sculptures at this point, can still be seen along the main road in Bailey's Harbor.


Fred Oebser of Menomonie, Wisconsin, was a farmer who started making sculptures from fabrics and equipment in his barn and out-buildings after he retired in the mid-1960s. The Art Preserve contains all of his existing work, including this sculpture of him as George Washington milking a cow.


A Dream House by Jacob Baker, made some time between 1920 and 1939 in Menominee, Illinois, probably inspired by the Dickeyville Grotto.


I don't remember seeing the work of Mississippi sign-maker Jesse Howard before. I would like to spend more time with it on another visit.


I've seen work by Carl Peterson before, because many of his concrete and stone buildings are on display outside JKMAC. But I don't think I've seen his animals, such as this alligator (crocodile?) in the past.

Tomorrow, I will end with a full post about just one artist, Nek Chand, whose work I had never seen before in a full exhibit.

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Kohler Art Preserve: Restrooms