About Wisconsin Concrete Park
Fred Smith spent decades working as a lumberjack. After retirement, he began building people, animals, historical scenes, and entire groups of figures from concrete, wire, broken glass, bottles, mirrors, and whatever else seemed useful.
He started the project in 1948 at age 63. Wooden or metal frameworks were wrapped with wire and covered in hand-mixed concrete, then decorated with fragments of glass and found material. Over the next sixteen years, Smith filled the property outside Phillips with 237 sculptures.
The figures depict lumberjacks, animals, musicians, historical personalities, local characters, and scenes inspired by regional life. Some are recognizable portraits. Others lean toward folk-art invention, with surfaces glittering from embedded glass and objects.
Smith had no formal art training and did not treat the project as a conventional sculpture garden. He simply kept building until his property had become an entire environment.
The Wisconsin Concrete Park now preserves the sculptures and offers visitors trails through Smith’s handmade population. One concrete figure would have been a yard ornament. Two hundred thirty-seven of them became a world of their own.