Dickeyville Grotto — Six Years of Shells, Glass, and Faith

Between nineteen twenty-five and nineteen thirty-one, Father Mathias Wernerus built one of the most remarkable folk art environments in the American Midwest, wrapping the Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Dickeyville in a shell-and-glass fantasy of his own making.

Wernerus was a German-born priest who had been the pastor at Holy Ghost since nineteen eighteen. Using concrete embedded with shells, stones, tiles, wood, glass, geodes, and donated gems from local parishioners, he created shrines and grottos around the church that combined Catholic spirituality with American patriotism, an unusual fusion that gave the site its distinctive character. Parishioners donated materials that had traveled from beaches and caves and attics; Wernerus arranged them into arches, alcoves, and small artificial caves.

He died of pneumonia in February of nineteen thirty-one before finishing the project completely. The grotto he left behind is recognized as one of the finest examples of early twentieth-century American Catholic folk art, drawing visitors to a Wisconsin village that might otherwise be invisible on any map.