In 1942, Wisconsin furniture worker James Tellen began making concrete figures; over 15 years, he created more than 30 historical, religious and mythical sculptures in his family’s woods

James Tellen, a factory worker in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, began creating concrete sculptures in 1942 after a hospital stay left a lasting impression on him. According to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, he was inspired by the views of statues in a churchyard out of the window to create his own sculptural environment. Over the next 15 years, he filled the woods around his family’s summer cottage with more than 30 figures.

James Tellen (1880–1957) created over 30 historical, religious, and mythical figures out of concrete between 1942 and 1957, the year he died, in the woods surrounding his family’s summer cottage in the Black River area of Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

A day job with a decorative streak


Despite not being a trained artist, James worked as a “striper” at Northern Furniture Company in Sheboygan, where his job was to paint decorative striping and other fine detailing onto furniture. During the Great Depression, when the factory slowed and his hours were cut, James had more free time, which he used to carve wood and attend six years of night classes in industrial art at a local school.

James began working in concrete in 1942, at age 62. Each winter, he would sculpt a master model of a figure’s head in clay, cast it in plaster to make a mold, and then cast the head itself in concrete: work done indoors, which avoided the problem of pouring concrete outside in freezing weather. The following summer, he would mount these finished concrete heads onto wire-mesh armatures and build out the rest of the body with more concrete. He arranged the figures into realistic scenes. His first major concrete piece, “Fallen Log,” was 65 feet long and included weathered logs, a large bear, two cubs, and a Native American man, woman, and child.

Clay, plaster, and dishpans of cement

James was a perfectionist who struggled with anatomy and was very self-critical, spending a great deal of time refining the facial features of his major figures. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy work he wasn’t satisfied with, so he buried his rejected attempts in the garden instead, a quirk the Kohler Foundation has noted gave him a kind of quiet satisfaction, imagining someone might one day unearth his buried concrete heads.

The current state of the woods

The site has been fully preserved and is now owned by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Kohler Foundation, Inc. first acquired and preserved the garden, and it became part of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s collection in 2001: the first off-site addition to the Art Center’s collection. In 2020, James’s granddaughter donated a nativity set he had created; it was preserved by the foundation and given to the Arts Center. The garden is open to visitors and is part of Wandering Wisconsin, a group of nine art environments across the state.