Nohl’s yard gave rise to sensational stories about her and, like many creative and independent women throughout history, her uniqueness was used to hold her at arms length. She was often harassed and called a witch by local youths, some of whom made dares out of vandalizing her property and even set fire to several wooden sculptures. Witty and sociable by nature, Nohl remained largely undaunted by such brutal responses. Her close friendships were lasting, but few, and her stone-inlaid concrete figures embody a poignant duality of companionship and loneliness.

A growing interest in art environments in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in Nohl’s inclusion in still another loose classification of artists, often referred to as Outsiders. Although the term does not hold up to rigid examination, it was intended to refer to artists who eluded mainstream classifications and cultural influences. Nohl had, indeed, transformed her house and yard into a complex, multi-faceted work of art that defied established modes. She had sacrificed the high polish and clear intentions characteristic of successful modernists to exploration and whimsy. Nevertheless, her work did not fit into the Outsider concept of being “untainted” by art and culture. Nohl would reach the end of her life having always found herself between worlds.

The recognition that she once sought, then spurned, came near the end of her life. Between 1998 and 2001, she was included in two group exhibitions at the Kohler Arts Center and a solo exhibition at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts. The last exhibition Nohl lived to attend was “Mary Nohl: Silver and Stone,” the 2001 Kohler Arts Center debut of several hundred pieces of her sculptural jewelry, an exhibition that brought her both critical and popular acclaim. Nohl’s inclusion in several additional shows since her death in 2001, particularly “Sublime Spaces & Visionary Worlds,” has continued to elevate her profile as an important American artist. In 2008, she was given a posthumous


A Singular Space
Before her death in 2001, Mary Nohl donated a significant body of her work to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin (www.jmkac.org). She also entrusted the preservation of her home, yard and the art that is integral to the site to the Kohler Foundation (www.kohlerfoundation.org). The Foundation is working to preserve the site, which is listed as one of the ten most endangered properties in Wisconsin by the Wisconsin Preservation Trust. Nohl’s Lake Cottage Environment has also been placed on the Wisconsin Registry of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places and has been nominated as a Milwaukee County Landmark. The site remains private and is not open to the public at this time.