Never a dull moment

In the near future there quite a bit in store at the American Gothic House Center and the town of Eldon. And it all starts this Saturday.

On Saturday, Oct. 27, the annual Children’s Gothic House Halloween Party, for children preschool through fifth grade, will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. This is a favorite of the Center’s director, Holly Berg, as she says it is her “only chance to be a five-year-old again.”

Activities for the day include the Pumpkin-Pitchfork Relays (don’t worry, the pitchforks are brooms), making leaf luminaries, pumpkin bowling, pictures taken in front of the American Gothic House in Halloween costumes, and a visit from a local mad scientist who will conduct spooky experiments (no live subjects). The kids will also get to make paper plate ghosts and create their own spooky cookies. Treats will be on hand including Holly’s own “putrid punch.” I’m not sure what the ingredients are but Holly has hinted there are Gummy Worms involved.

The party will be held at the Center unless the weather decides not to cooperate. If this is the case, then the festivities will move to the Eldon Library Hall located next to the Eldon Public Library. So, if you are looking for something fun to do with your children or grandchildren this Saturday put on a costume and head to the American Gothic House Center. After all, who would want to miss the “putrid punch”?

Next month, on Thursday, Nov. 15, Larry Stone, freelance writer and photographer, and former outdoor writer with the Des Moines Register, will speak at the Eldon Library Hall, Eldon, at 7 p.m. His appearance is one in a series of talks and lectures concerning Iowa, its land and people, sponsored by the American Gothic House Center and the Wapello County Conservation Board.

Stone, who has spent 40 years exploring Iowa and is the author of numerous books on Iowa life and land, will present “Iowa—Portrait of the Land.” Based on his award-winning book written for the Department of Natural Resources, “Portrait,” is a reminder to Iowans of the rich history of their natural resources.

Raised in Southern Iowa, Stone’s boyhood fascination with the creeks and woodlots on his family’s farm brings authenticity to his nature photography, writing, and lectures. With degrees in biology and journalism, he also understands the natural world and can communicate the wonders of outdoor experiences.

Stone’s program, which is cosponsored by Humanities Iowa, is free and open to the public.

In December the Holidays kick off with the Gingerbread House display at the American Gothic House Center. Gingerbread Houses will be on exhibit during normal operating hours from Dec. 1 through 14. If you are a Gingerbread House builder and wish to have your creation on display, submit your Gingerbread House at the Center by 5 pm on Nov. 30. Your house will be displayed until Dec. 14, and will serve as an inspiration for participants in the Gingerbread House making activity on Dec. 8. Amateur builders are encouraged to participate in this entertaining holiday custom.

As mentioned, the Center will host a Gingerbread House building from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday Dec. 8. The Center will have on hand graham crackers, frosting and candy to construct a unique and distinct Gingerbread House that you can take home or leave on display. Volunteers will be on hand to help construct the houses and keep a sharp watch to prevent anyone from eating the building materials.

In addition to the Gingerbread House building, Eldon will be celebrating Christmas in grand style that weekend. On Friday, Dec. 7 through Sunday, Dec. 9, the McHaffery Opera House will hold its “Christmas Tree Wanderland.” Each year volunteers and local organizations decorate and display more than 100 Christmas trees at the historic and renovated opera house. Visitors are invited to “wander” throughout the trees, partake in the complimentary snacks and enjoy the live music. Admission is free. If further information is needed, call Eldon City Hall at 641-652-7510.

Also, on Dec. 8, Eldon comes alive with the spirit of Christmas with “Christmas in Eldon.” Each year Eldon holds a day full of activities to celebrate the holidays including the Christmas Tree Wanderland at the opera house, a Tour of Homes, Christmas noon lunch and the Boy Scouts soup supper, among other activities. For a special treat, the Rock Island Railroad Depot Museum will hold an open house with Christmas displays in waiting area, as well as outside the depot.  Once more, for more information, call Eldon City Hall at 641-652-7510.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
And people say there is nothing to do in Southern Iowa.

Brian Chambers
Media Coordinator
The American Gothic House Center                                                                                                      
641-652-3352
wapellocountymediacoordinator@gmail.com



The American Gothic House Center strives to become financially independent through gift shop revenue, sponsorships, and by establishing an endowment fund. Funds raised in this campaign will be used to match the Iowa Cultural Trust Endowment Challenge Grant and will become endowment funds to support the Center's annual operations. As a subscriber to the weekly newsletter, you have already shown support for the American Gothic House Center. I invite you to strengthen your role in the valuable experience we provide the community by making a contribution to our fund drive. Click here to give your tax deductible gift, or head to our website for more information. Thank you to all who have donated so far!

        Our Mission: Integrating the puzzle pieces of American Gothic

300 American Gothic St | Eldon, IA 52554 | 641-652-3352 | theamericangothichouse@gmail.com

The Evolution of American Gothic

Since the portion of my brain that generates original thought (I believe it is the cerebral cortex, but I don’t really know) appears to be on strike, today’s blog will be a exert from a 2005 PopEntertainment interview conducted by Ronald Sklar with Steven Biel, author of, American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting.  (Plug: The book is stocked in our gift shop.) Biel, the executive director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University and senior lecturer in History and Literature, provides insight as to how the perception of the painting has changed over time and how he was introduced to American Gothic.

Sklar: In the beginning, the painting was despised by certain people and celebrated by others. As time went on, the painting took on new meanings.

Biel: It was despised and embraced, as far as I can tell, for the same reasons. It was perceived as being a work of satire. The critics who really made Wood’s reputation understood it that way. They understood him as a victim of these people and their repressiveness and hostility.

Sklar: How exactly did this painting become an American icon, the most famous painting in American history?

Biel: There is no quantifying that, really, but I would say so. It happened because over the course of the thirties in the context of the depression and throughout World War II, it changed from being that satirical image to a national symbol of stability, order, prosperity, virtue and wholesomeness.

Instead of holding its subjects up to ridicule, it now came to be seen as holding them up for admiration as quintessential Americans.  In hard times, the “let’s make fun of yokels” idea seemed kind of cruel. The conservative virtues of the Midwest were re-embraced by some East Coast critics, and even the left in the 1930s paid homage to the fortitude of the “folk.” It was a way of fighting off despair.

Sklar: From the sixties onward, this painting becomes a real source of parody -- everything from Green Acres to the yuppies to The Simple Life.

Biel: I started thinking about where I first became aware of this image. It certainly wasn’t at the Art Institute of Chicago and I certainly didn’t see it in a non-parodied form first. The first time I became aware of it was in a Country Corn Flakes commercial and in the opening credits of Green Acres. It had already become such a well-known image that it was an easy move to make. If you want to send up American heartland values or if you want to encapsulate those values in a single image, you use “American Gothic.” It’s a really effective shorthand way of capturing those myths of the true America.

The Beverly Hillbillies on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post [in 1963] is suggesting something about the wholesomeness of these yokels who find themselves in the corruption of LA. In an issue of TV Guide in the late sixties, Irene Ryan [who played Granny] really defends the non-ironic interpretation of “American Gothic.” Ryan said that the timeless values of “American Gothic” are the antidote to what was going on in the late sixties. She really identified with that image.

After that, the floodgates just opened. The first presidential couple to be parodied was the Johnsons. Every presidential couple since then have been plugged into the “American Gothic” pose.

Then you start to get these lifestyle parodies, where those old-fashioned people in the painting aren’t having any fun, but we are, with a tennis racquet or an electronics product instead of a pitchfork. They are playing on the immediate recognition of the image and at the same time saying that consuming this or that product is wholeheartedly American.


The joke couldn’t be more blatant than with Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie in The Simple Life. These people are being plopped into middle America and there is a clash of values. That’s the whole premise of the show.

Sklar: Is the actual painting itself still relevant today?

Biel: It’s hard for a parody of this painting to really work anymore, to carry any kind of potent message. To give it some power, to make it stand out from all the other parodies, takes extraordinary creativity. Of course, it’s impossible for it to stir up the passions that it stirred up in 1930. But it’s well worth understanding its rich history and coming to see how and why, at one time, it had the power to offend people

Me: It is difficult to imagine how American Gothic would offend anyone, but I did not live during that time, and like Biel, was introduced to American Gothic in a similar fashion. If nothing else the evolution of American Gothic is food for thought, especially when it is applied in a broader sense. But that will be for another day when my brain goes off strike.
Don’t forget the upcoming events:

October 27: Children’s Gothic Halloween Party, 2-4 pm

November 15: Humanities Iowa Lecturer Larry Stone. Eldon Library Hall, 7 pm

December 1-14: Gingerbread House Display

December 8: Gingerbread House Decorating, 1-4 pm


Brian Chambers
Media Coordinator
The American Gothic House Center
641.652.3352
wapellocountymediacoordinator@gmail.com

The American Gothic House Center strives to become financially independent through gift shop revenue, sponsorships, and by establishing an endowment fund. Funds raised in this campaign will be used to match the Iowa Cultural Trust Endowment Challenge Grant and will become endowment funds to support the Center's annual operations. As a subscriber to the weekly newsletter, you have already shown support for the American Gothic House Center. I invite you to strengthen your role in the valuable experience we provide the community by making a contribution to our fund drive. Click here to give your tax deductible gift, or head to our website for more information. Thank you to all who have donated so far!

        Our Mission: Integrating the puzzle pieces of American Gothic

300 American Gothic St | Eldon, IA 52554 | 641-652-3352 | theamericangothichouse@gmail.com

Surprise yourself with another look

I make a habit of revisiting good books, or other forms of art, which especially move me. There is no set time for this relook but it is usually after something jogs my memory. Such has been the case this past week.

Recently, after a visit to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.—home of the Green Bay Packers—I got to thinking about a book I read when I was around 12 years old about the Packers. I recalled little about the book other than it was written by a lineman with the last name of Kramer and it made quite an impression on me at the time. Last week, while at a book store I frequent, the clerk and I got into a discussion about the Packers (they had lost miserably the day before). One thing led to another, I mentioned the book, found it had been re-released a few years back and, by luck, she had one in stock. That very afternoon I tore into Instant Replay, by Jerry Kramer.

It is one thing to read a book a few years after the first read, but quite another to visit it 30 years later. Think child’s eyes versus an adult’s. For instance, from the first read I remembered Kramer writing about how the players would drink pop at the local bowling alley during breaks in pre-season training. The second time around I realized “pop” was code for beer (no doubt trying to protect impressionable young men like me). I also noticed how much money was a motivator to Kramer, as well as other players on the team ($25,000 to each player on the team that won the NFL Championship). This was something I hadn’t picked up on before, no doubt focusing on other aspects of the game which intrigued me more.

But there is one stark difference that struck me more than anything else: at the time all the players Kramer wrote about were playing. I would see them on Sunday afternoon, read about them and when the neighborhood gathered for a game of touch football we were Bart Starr, Paul Hornung or Ray Nitscke. In the 1960s they were in their prime as players, now most are in their 70s and some are gone. Today, the book is history; then it was real. Thirty years makes quite a difference in perspective.

Perspective is the primary reason a relook at literature or art is worth the time. When art is approached it is usually viewed through a certain lens. Sure, there are folks out there that have the ability to look objectively and deeply into art, discovering the intricacies it offers, but it is my belief that most of us are casual observers. We approach a work of art with a certain perspective which narrows the experience. It’s not a bad thing, but this perspective is the exact reason why art should be revisited, to find yet undiscovered—by many of us anyway—vagaries and meanings.

I do this on a weekly basis with the work of Grant Wood. Since the Center is lined with various prints by Wood there is ample opportunity to revisit all of his most famous works and discover something new, or realize that a certain work is gaining favor over another. So, if you haven’t visited us for awhile, or never have visited us, plan a trip or stop by, take a closer look at the repeating images in American Gothic or Parson Weems Fable. Or discover for the first time the smug faces on the dowagers in Daughters of Revolution. It is not only revealing, it’s fun.

Speaking of fun, it’s almost time for the annual American Gothic House Halloween Party.

This year the party will be held on Saturday, Oct. 27 from 2-4 pm. Children preschool through fifth grade are invited to come to the American Gothic House in costume and make a spooky American Gothic parody in front of the house that made Grant Wood famous.  Other activities planned for the day include making paper-plate ghosts and leaf luminaries, pumpkin-pitchfork relays and a mad-scientist will be making an appearance. All activities are free. In case of rain the party will be moved to the Eldon Library Hall. For more information contact Holly Berg at TheAmericanGothicHouse@gmail.com.

Other upcoming events:
Nov. 15: Humanities Iowa Lecturer Larry Stone 7:00 pm
Dec. 1-14: Gingerbread House Display
Dec. 8: Gingerbread House Decorating 1:00-4:00 pm

Brian Chambers
Media Coordinator
The American Gothic House Center
641.652.3352
wapellocountymediacoordinator@gmail.com
The American Gothic House Center strives to become financially independent through gift shop revenue, sponsorships, and by establishing an endowment fund. Funds raised in this campaign will be used to match the Iowa Cultural Trust Endowment Challenge Grant and will become endowment funds to support the Center's annual operations. As a subscriber to the weekly newsletter, you have already shown support for the American Gothic House Center. I invite you to strengthen your role in the valuable experience we provide the community by making a contribution to our fund drive. Click here to give your tax deductible gift, or head to our website for more information. Thank you to all who have donated so far!

        Our Mission: Integrating the puzzle pieces of American Gothic

300 American Gothic St | Eldon, IA 52554 | 641-652-3352 | theamericangothichouse@gmail.com

American Gothic and Grant Wood turns up when you least expect

On a trip to the grocery store in Egg Harbor, Door County, Wis. last week I was somewhat surprised to see an American Gothic parody on the door of a unisex bathroom. At first it appeared to be a normal parody, but upon closer inspection the structure was not the American Gothic House, but rather the grocery store. In the background, fittingly, was Green Bay, which borders Egg Harbor on the West.

As far as props, the man is holding a turkey and bottles of wine (the latter something Door County is noted for) and the woman is holding, most likely, either an apple or cherry pie (both grow in abundance in the area, the fruit not the pies). As all parodies go it was fun, but the background detail found in the painting was impressive. Obviously the artist, or the owners, perhaps one in the same, wanted to showcase their store (and the bathroom door) via the recognizable and iconic American Gothic—clever.

A bit closer to home, in Marshalltown, word is there may be a hidden Grant Wood mural in the Tallcorn Towers Apartment building (drum roll, please). However, residents of the town will not know for sure until after the first of the year.

Built in 1928 by the Eppley Hotel Company, the building has recently changed hands and renovation is scheduled to begin in January. After the discovery of an article in a June 6, 1949 edition of the paper, which reported Wood had been commissioned to paint a mural in the ballroom, eyebrows began to raise with the possibility of a Grant Wood original in the soon-to-be-renovated building

According to a Sept. 21 article in the Marshalltown Times-Republican, under the layers of wallpaper and paint in the ballroom hallway (photo at right courtesy of the Marshalltown Times Republican and Mike Donahey) of the former hotel a mural by Grant Wood could exist based on the article found in the archives of the newspaper. Evidence is sketchy, however, as local historians are unable to confirm Wood ever worked at the hotel. Stay tuned for future updates.

Getting back to Door County—we don’t mind if we get a plug from other parts of the country so I don’t mind giving one—if you are not familiar with the area it is a peninsula wedged between Lake Michigan and Green Bay. It’s a place of sailing vessels, blue water, lighthouses, roadside stands and an ample supply of bars—plenty of bars—and restaurants. Cheese and fruit is in abundance, as well as every kind of beer imaginable. It  does not allow chain restaurants and hotels and motels are locally owned. It is known for big water, trees and quiet. A perfect place to escape, relax, and reflect. Something we all need to do on occasion.

Brian Chambers
Media Coordinator
The American Gothic House
641.652.3352
wapellocountymediacoordinator@gmail.com

The American Gothic House Center strives to become financially independent through gift shop revenue, sponsorships, and by establishing an endowment fund. Funds raised in this campaign will be used to match the Iowa Cultural Trust Endowment Challenge Grant and will become endowment funds to support the Center's annual operations. As a subscriber to the weekly newsletter, you have already shown support for the American Gothic House Center. I invite you to strengthen your role in the valuable experience we provide the community by making a contribution to our fund drive. Click here to give your tax deductible gift, or head to our website for more information. Thank you to all who have donated so far!

        Our Mission: Integrating the puzzle pieces of American Gothic

300 American Gothic St | Eldon, IA 52554 | 641-652-3352 | theamericangothichouse@gmail.com