Featured Exhibit

Ole McKellip

Ole McKellip works primarily in metal, fabricating animals and people both real and imagined - out of pieces of steel posts, rebar, grating, and other objects.  He is owner of Flat Toad Iron Works where he did paint and body work on cars and antique restoration.  Most of his sculptures can be viewed in his yard in rural Newton, KS.  Ole  is a perfectionist and wants the figures "just right."

Inez Marshall

Limestone Carving

Inez started carving Kansas limestone in the late 1920's while recuperating from an  accident. Her prior jobs included auto mechanic, truck driver, and traveling evangelist. She carved in native Kansas limestone for over 51 years.

John Woods

Mixed Media Collage

John Woods came to Kansas from California around 2000. In the 1970's a nearby lake in MacArthur Park was drained. Woods began to collect the objects found at the bottom in layers of mud. Some of the found objects include toys, tools, cosmetics, dice, rings, guns, and even a WWI bomb! In addition art works created with puns are a specialty of John.

Florence Deeble

Concrete Rock Garden

Since 1955, local Lucas resident and school teacher, Miss Deeble has created miniature "postal card" scenes of places she visited or read about in books in her own back yard. Some of these include Mount Rushmore, Estes Park and the Tetons.

Paul Boyer

Animated Carvings

Paul Boyer has a unique ability to combine carving and mechanics. Working with pine, cedar, and walnut, finely shaped wires, gears from clocks, meters, timers, chains from old necklaces and motors, he creates whimsical animated scenes.

Adolph Hannemann

Wood Carving

Adolph Hannemann retired from farming in 1985, when he was 69 years old and devoted his time to carving. He was inspired to carve groups of people partially because he was one of 13 children growing up. He also carved animals furniture and scenic narrative sculptures.

Ed Root

Concrete Mosaic

Ed Root and his wife Lydia raised 10 children on their farm south of Lucas. In 1937, he suffered a broken hip in an accident. This ended his farming career. During the next 20 retirement years, he spent most of his time building a unique sculpture garden of hundreds of cast concrete pieces studded with rocks, broken glass, ceramics, and jewelry.

Ernie Poe

Barbed Wire Art

Kansas is FULL of barbed wire fencing. Rancher, Ernie Poe saw an opportunity and took it. Barbed wire is the medium he uses to create life-size buffalo, oxen, horses located at Sharon Springs, Ks to assorted smaller sculptures like this Kansas Jayhawk.

Ida Kingsbury

Mixed Media

After her husband passed away, Ida spent the next 17 years filling her yard with these grassroots art treasures. Painted metal chickens and fencepost farmers are just some of her creations. From Pasadena, Texas, this grassroots artist pushes past the Kansas borders.

M.T. Liggett

Metal Totem Poles

Freedom of expression takes an artistic turn at the outskirts of the small rural community of Mullinville in southwest Kansas. In 1989 M.T. Liggett began to weld oddly shaped pieces of scrap metal together into totem poles. Each totem pole carries a message or story and soon finds a place along his fence row(s) North of Highway 54.

Jim Dickerman

Mixed Media

He creates creatures. Jim Dickerman is known for the crazy metal and organic bone media that he combines to make these creatures. He uses old farm equipment and bicycle parts and mixes that in with skeletons and bones from different animals. Jim has a very stylized method of painting his creatures.

Earl Slagle

Metal Machines

Metal machines are what Earl loved to make in his working days. Working for Kansas State University, Earls job was to create machines for the forestry department. But as Earl retired, he wanted to make machines that did not necessarily do anything. Many of his wood and metal work are called, "play pretties" and a flat bubble machine was created for his grandchildren.

David Gustafon

Wire Sculpture

David meticulously uses small wire clippings to piece together these awesome works. Bending each small wire and soldering them together. He resides in Topeka, KS.

Gary Pendergrass

Steam Punk Machines

Gary worked in construction for 30 years, then jumped head first into creating these steampunk machines. He creates small intricate pieces to sculptures that are ten feet tall. Come view his magical world of recycled materials at the art center.

Betty Milliken

Chewing Gum and Grapefruit

Meet Betty, a little "spit-fire" of a woman. She took what you and I throw away like chewing gum and grapefruit rind and spent 75 years of her life creating hundreds of cameos, creatures, and portraits.

Doren A. Spillman

Mechanical Wood Carving

Doren owned and operated a filling station throughout his lifetime.  One of his many creations is this tabletop farm. Carved out of wood, this interactive and moving farm shows chickens feeding, wood cutting, wheat harvesting and farmers tending to their crops. This creation sat in the window of his Hoxie filling station for years before landing here at the Grassroots Art Center.

Bob Mix

Metal Sculptures

A conventional metal fabricator by day, Bob Mix lets his imagination run wild by night and on the weekends. In his skilled hands, bearings and bushings and sickle guards take on new life and function in whimsical machines and creatures lurking about in his yard surrounding his home.

Herman Divers

Pull-tab Engineering

Herman Divers was the master of pull-tabs. Divers used to construct his models in the evenings after his day job, letting the materials dictate the pace of the work; "I'd work on pull-tabs until one broke, sometimes after an hour, sometimes after 2 or 3 hours. His first project was a bedspread, then eventually he created a full-size automobile.

Kathy Ruth Neal

Wood Carving

Kathy Ruth Neal was an extraordinary wood carver. After a bout with cancer, she tried to carve a wooden walking stick on a trip to the mountains.  She progressed in skill and creativity to create masterpieces in wood. Her joy for living and laughter is expressed in her art.

Bob Fredericks

Bottle Whimsy

Bob Fredericks was always taught growing up, "If you want something, you had better learn how to make it. His dad taught him how to make boxes out of wood and hammering nails before he was in school. He later found a passion for carving in wood. Bob carves detailed figures, creating scenes inside glass bottles and sometimes they even move.

James Perucca

Yard Environment

James Perucca spent 30 years quietly surrounding his home in Overland Park, Kansas with a yardscape of plastic bottles, figurines, stuffed animals and anything else that pleased his eye. He loved color and movement.

John Scott

Mixed Metals

Salvaging scrap metal pays the bills, but creating sculpture from that junk is what makes John Scott happy.
Most of John's small sculptures are extremely detailed, whether it's a Harley Davidson motorcycle, hand gun or an oil pumper unit. He created the 9 foot tall metal free range chicken that roams at Kansas Originals, Wilson, KS.

Mri-Pilar

Mixed Media

Mri-Pilar is an eclectic mix of international traveler, mystic, vegetarian, independent, poet, and alien. She lives part-time in Lucas and part of the time at Lindsborg, Kansas. Over 1800 recycled sculptures reside in a foil lined house and are created from computer motherboards, kitchen utensils, game boards, clock gears, farm machine parts, toys, metal, plastic remnants, and other items.

Lawrence Reynolds

Scrap Wood

An imaginative artist created with found or discarded materials from Fort Hays State University dumpsters. Lawrence Reynolds' work is usually an illustration of a text, either Biblical or from popular culture.
Using discarded scraps of metal, he portrays a sprawling man tripped up by his own tongue with the title, "Man is judged by the transgressions of his lips."

Paul Seiwald

Wood and Putty

Seiwald's paintings are not created on canvas but rather plywood adapted with some coatings of wood putty to give it texture. He just likes to paint on that surface better. Paul retired to find a world of creativity.

Marlynne Joy Snare

Painting

Simply walk into her home to take a trip down memory lane. Marlynne's paintings include 1950's memories of her childhood holidays at Easter, Independence Day, Memorial Day and Christmas in downtown Kansas City, MO.
Each painting, greeting card, wooden cut-out is extremely detailed, and Snare can tell you a special memory about each little detail that has been included in the painting.

Glenn Stark

Wood Carvings

When Glenn was just a boy he taught himself how to carve. It wasn't until later in life that he started creating an environment around his house with a western theme. A mural painted on a retaining wall and large concrete Indians, buffaloes, horses and longhorn cattle began appearing in his yard as well.

Dennis Clark

Pencil Drawings

From Topeka, KS, Dennis Clark creates "Imaginary Cities," new lands with simply a pencil and poster paper. He works 2 1/2 - 3 years designing and drawing maps of imaginary cities, such as "Isconsigan."

Ole McKellip

Metal

Ole was rather shy to share about his metal yard environment that is evolving at Newton, KS. He creates various animal, human figures and more out of recycled metal. He uses a farm fencing staple, the ordinary T-post, as the central component of many of his sculptures.

S.P. Dinsmoor

Concrete Sculptures

Dinsmoor, a civil war veteran and school teacher from Illinois, farmed in Lucas, Kansas and was active in Populist politics. He moved to town in 1905, built a stone log cabin, and started making concrete sculptures in his yard. By 1915 Dinsmoor's yard had attracted 2,000 visitors

Roy Miller

Rocks and Concrete

Roy and Clara Miller created the one-half acre, "Miller Park" at their home located in Lucas. The rock garden began in 1932 and evolved until Roy's death in 1964. It took over 50 trips to Colorado for the Millers to acquire their building materials. Each time they brought back a trunk load of beautiful rocks from the scenic places they had visited.

Barbara McCreery

Sequin Mixed Media

 Barbara was creative in her landscaping business in Kansas City and continues that in retirement.  She commented that her intention was only to create some sequin fruit but that idea soon gave way to colorful, elaborate scenes.  Her art specialty is Day of the Dead.

Janet Fish

Janet Fish

Janet Fish

Sequin Mixed Media