In 1948, after years as a lumberjack in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, Fred Smith (1886-1976) retired to his 120-acre homestead just outside of the small town of Phillips. But retirement didn’t take.
Despite being in his 60s and nearly crippled with arthritis, Smith embarked on one of the most improbable and fantastical art careers imaginable, creating 237 life-size and larger-than-life sculptures of people, animals and events from history, from local lore, and from Smith’s fertile imagination. The concrete sculptures, embellished with colored glass, fill the land around
