Mary Nohl
An Artist Between Worlds
By Leslie Umberger and Jane Bianco

Mary Louise Nohl was an artist undaunted by any challenge. Even with her exceptional character and talent, it was especially difficult as a young woman coming of age in the 1930s Midwest to gain artistic credibility on par with her male counterparts. Tackling each obstacle she encountered with humor and aplomb, Nohl eventually discovered that if she could not find a comfortable place in the existing world, she would have to make one of her own.

Born in 1914, Nohl would become, albeit posthumously, one of Wisconsin’s most notable artists. In 2007, six years after her death, her work was included in the major exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, “Sublime Spaces & Visionary Worlds.” The show situated Nohl among 21 other artists who had, over many years, transformed their personal surroundings — homes, yards, automobiles — into multi-faceted artistic realms. Nohl explored many materials and methods over eight decades; she was variously a cartoonist, painter, ceramist, silver smith, sculptor, printmaker and puppeteer. Her very versatility may have impeded recognition in any one area and throughout her artistic life, she remained on the margins of more focused groups of artists.

Today, Nohl is best known for the eye-popping art environment that she created in the yard of her parents’ summer cottage on the western shore of Lake Michigan, which she made her permanent home starting in the 1960s. She populated the one-and-a-half-acre lot with a curious assortment of stone and concrete creatures and objects: glass-inlaid fountains, pools, totems, human and biomorphic forms echoing variously the monuments of Easter Island and the beasts in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, giant fish walking upright and ghost-like figures hanging from the tall pines. But during her lifetime, it was her sculptural jewelry, of all her art forms, that garnered her significant critical attention.

Possessed of an artistic character, Nohl first became enamored of making things as a girl in the summer of 1924, building stone fence posts with her father at their summer cottage. He paid her 25 cents an hour to dive into the chilly water of Lake Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132