Wisconsin State of Department of Workforce-Dwd

Located in Phillips, Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Concrete Park is an outdoor museum comprised of 237 embellished concrete sculptures and other objects built by the retired lumberjack Fred Smith. In this sculptural environment Smith created a cohesive panorama of local, regional, and national history, combined with legends derived from late 19th and early 20th century Northwoods culture. Conceived and created in his senior years, Fred Smith built the Wisconsin Concrete Park, as he said, "For all the American people everywhere. They need something like this." Throughout this extensive site Smith depicted history, not as a string of isolated moments, but as an elastic, organic entity in which local and national people, events, and histories were intermingled with animals, all sharing a common landscape. Self-taught and entirely unmotivated by financial gain or art world fame, Smith created this site for the people, and placed it where they could find it, not in an indoor museum, but right on the side of the road. The site is recognized as a masterwork in the genre of 20th century sculptural environments by self-taught artists.