Hans Widmer, Sodhubel Sandsteinskulpturen / Sodhubel sandstone sculptures

all photos (June 2021) courtesy of Hannes Bürgelin

Safenwil is a municipality with about 3600 inhabitants in the canton of Aargau in northern Switzerland, bordering Germany. Some two kilometers south-west of this city is a forested area called Sodhubel, which is characterized by sandstone rock formations. 

In that area there is an art environment formed by sculptures mounted in a vertically rising rock wall

Life and works

Hans Widmer (1887-1964) was born in the village of Schönenwerd as the son of a local baker. He grew up in this village, which is about six kilometers north of Safenwil.

After his primary education, he did an internship as a gardener and then worked as a mechanic in a small shoe buckle factory.

As a young man he was a member of a gymnastics club and during an exercise he had an unfortunate fall that left him with back pain for the rest of his life.

Widmer was a somewhat withdrawn personality, who did feel an urge to improve the world. From that point of view, he joined the religious group Jehovah's Witnesses in Safenwil.

Here he met the woman he would marry, Amalie Hilfiker (1890-1967), living in Safenwil. She was a somewhat dominant but also charitable person, who did a lot of good for people in Safenwil who were struggling financially. She herself had a good job at a regional firm.

Partly because of the financial security that his wife offered, Widmer was able to develop activities as a preacher. and missionary. He also had himself hired as a comedian at weddings and association events, but that was not such a success, because people preferred to hear funny jokes instead of his message that one should strive for the good life.

Widmer only found his true destiny in terms of work when he became acquainted with a local cabinetmaker and woodcarver from whom he learned woodcarving. Here he discovered his artistic talent. 

He started designing boxes, tables and chairs and he carved his first animal figures. And then, when in 1939 he was in his early 50s, he began carving all kinds of creations into the sandstone rocks at Sodhubel, a project he would work on until 1945

Creating an art environment

In earlier centuries, on the hilly spot where Widmer started making sculptures, there was a building named Scherenberg Castle, which was abandoned in the 17th century. 

Then the inhabitants of Safenwil used the already cut sand stones of the castle walls to build their houses. And after the castle was completely demolished (only a few foundations remained) the stones for constructive projects in Safenwil, were extracted from the hill itself, which resulted in the vertically sloping sand and stone expanses, into which Widmer could carve his sculptures.

The very first image and the one above give an impression of the rock face that Widmer used.

In a studio in a small basement space owned by people in Safenwil he knew, Widmer could spend days working on drawings of the sculptures he wanted to make. And then suddenly he got the urge to act, and he would go to the sandstone walls of the Sodhubel and work there day after day on his sculptures.

In the area in front of the sandstone walls he had built a wooden barrack to store his tools and to shed in bad weather.

The themes that Widmer expressed in his sculptures have been aptly summarized by Walter Hess in an article (see documentation) as a biblically substantiated fairytale patriotism.

Indeed, there are biblical stories portrayed, such as an Angel of Peace, there are scenes taken from fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, and there are expressions of Helvetic patriotism, such as the Rütli Oath, an oath sworn in 1307 by the delegates of the three states that united and were the beginning of what would later become Switzerland (see the picture all the way down).

In addition to the sculptures related to the above-described theme, there are also stand-alone sculptures of, for example, a vase with flowers, as well as all kinds of animals, such as an elephant, a deer and others.

After completing his creation, Widmer remained active in carving mainly wooden boxes, tables, candlesticks and clocks until the end of his life.

In the field of art environments

the site isn't very well known 

There are only a few publications on the internet about this art environment, and certainly no articles that offer a systematic analysis of the sculptures. It seems that Widmer's art environment has not become very well known in the field of art environments..

For example, the Swiss Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne on its website has no referral to Widmer, although the museum published many monographs on non-professional artists and also payed attention to non-professionals who created art environments, such as Schulthess (Switzerland) and Nannetti (Italy).

Gradual decay of the sculptures

Standing in the open air, the sculptures are highly exposed to weathering. The sandstone of the rocks into which the sculptures are carved is very soft and treating the sculptures with a hardening agent means that the outer layer in winter would harden by freezing, but would peel off when thaw sets in, which eventually leads to large damage.

Surrounding the entire sandstone rock with a building that protects the sculptures against the weather, might technically be possible, but the question is whether that is financially and spatially acceptable.

this cold be the scene of the Rütli Oath

Documentation

* Article by Ernst Lüscher, Steinskulpturen beim Sodhubel in Safenwil (Stone sculptures at the Sodhubel in Safenwil), in Magazine Heimatkunde Wiggertal, Volume 51 (1993)

* Article (March 2007) by Walter Hess, Sodhubel Safenwil: Friedensengel mit Löwe bei Rütlischwur (Sodhubel Safenwil: Angel of peace with lion at Rütli oath) 

Hans Widmer, 

Sodhubel sandsteinskulpturen,  

Höliweg, 5745 Safenwil, Canton of Aargau, Switzerland. 

can be visited
Google Maps (with pictures)

Henryk Sawko, Kamienny park / Stone park

near the entrance of the park (streetview)

The Paprotecka country road leading to the entrance of Henryk Sawko's Kamienny Park (Stone Park) in Poland, on one side is richly lined by rocky stones, as can be seen in the photo above and also on Google Streetview.

The visitor to the park thus gets a foretaste of an art environment that is largely formed by an exposition of stones, both those arranged in various geometric shapes and those transformed into sculptures.

the entrance of the park
this picture and the next one (2017) courtesy
of Radek Łabarzewski from his  weblog Znalezienie

Life and works

In the late 1990s Henryk Sawko came up with the idea of building a stone memorial to mark the turn of the century, a project that in the early decades of the new century would evolve into a major art environment called Kamienny Park.

Sawko was born in 1950. In his younger years he was trained as a locksmith and he also liked to go out with his motorcycle to discover Poland. These travels convinced him that his native region of Mazuria was the most beautiful in all of Poland

He did not go to work as a locksmith, but became a farmer on a farm in the village of Rydzewo, which is part of the municipality of Miłki, in the Giżycki district of the Warmia/Mazuria region in the north-east of Poland. 

Sawko got married and the couple had children.

Sawko seated on the monument to the turn of the century

When in the late 1990s Sawko came up with the idea of making a memorial to the centenary, he was approaching the age of fifty. 

His children had left home, farming became less and less profitable, so once the memorial was completed it was a small step to feel inspired to use the stones that abounded on his farmland, to create a park with an exposition of stones and stone sculptures.

this picture and the next three screenprints from the 

first video below, in agreement with Kamil Pietrowiak

Construction  began on a hill in the land behind the farm. A striking self-built windmill was added to the hill, and was surrounded by an arrangement of stones. 

From the hill towards the house/farm, alignments of stones were laid that are reminiscent of the Neolithic arrangements as in Carnage, Brittany.

The photo below gives an impression of the way the stones are arranged, and the website Mazury 24 has aerial photos that very clearly depict the alignments of stones.

The alignments of stones are generally composed of quite large boulders, collected in the thousands by Sawko from the surrounding farmland. 

These lines are regularly interrupted by somewhat larger, upright stones that portray specific characters or from a Neolithic point of view could be compared to menhirs. 

These larger stones are often worked and transformed into human characters or animals. Other stones, flatter in shape, can serve as a background for texts.

Around the home

In addition to the rows of stones that creatively shape a large part of the area behind the former farm, the yard near the house and the associated barns are also part of the art environment. 

First of all, there is a collection of tools and implements that give a picture of farming as it was practiced on Masurian farms in former times.

this picture and the next one (2017) courtesy
of Radek Łabarzewski

In addition, Sawko has put his own hand-made decorations on the walls of buildings around the yard.

He decorated a whitewashed wall with black images, cut from metal, such as birds and other animals, but also sailing ships

 

Documentation

* Article on website Mazury 24 with among other things, aerial photos of the alignments of stones

* Article by Radek Łabarzewski (March 2022) on weblog Znalezienie

* Article by Kamil Pietrowiak, "O sztuce, która niejedno ma imię. Przypadek Henryka Sawki, twórcy Kamiennego Parku w Rydzewie" (About art with many names. The case of Henryk Sawko, the creator of the Stone Park in Rydzewo)

Pietrowiak also wrote a thesis (defended in 2011) on Henryk Sawko and his creations: Mazurski malarz krajobrazu. O życiu i dziele Henryka Sawko, twórcy Kamiennego Parku w Rydzewie (Masurian landscape painter. About the life and work of Henryk Sawko, creator of the stone park in Rydzewo) 

 * A large variety of photos collected by Pietrowiak and presented in a video (YouTube, 2013, 32'14")

 

Videos

*  A video by Pietrowiak, made in the context of his dissertation (YouTube, 12'02", 2013)

* A video by Mazury24eu (YouTube, undated, 1.15'47")

Henryk Sawko

Kamienny Park

Paprotecka 2, 11-513 Rydzewo, dept Mazuria, region Warmia/Mazuria, Poland

visitors welcome

streetview (2012)

Josep Amenós Felip, Parc de les rodes / Tire park

pictures are screenprints from the video by Turisme Urgell 

About 130 km west of Barcelona, Spain, is the village of Sant Marti de Maldá. Along with several other villages, since 1972 this community has been part of the municipality of Sant Martí de Riucorb, located in the Urgell region with Tàrrega as its capital.

Josep Amenós, an inhabitant of Sant Marti de Maldá, owned an area outside the town which he transformed into an art environment, that he recently donated to the community. Here is the story. 

Life and works

Josep Amenos Felip was born in 1934 into a farming family with a farm in or near Sant Martí de Maldà. He was the youngest of two sons, both of whom would remain unmarried and would continue to live on their parents' farm.

However, after his primary education, Amenós lived for some time in the town of Tàrrega, also located in the Urgell region, where he worked at a company that manufactured rabbit cages. Since he from an early age showed a certain artistic ability in making drawings, he took the opportunity to take drawing lessons at the School of Arts and Crafts in Tàrrega

However, a career as a professional artist wasn't in the offing, as it soon became obvious that his future lay in running his parents' farm together with his brother.

The Amenós brothers ran the family business successfully. They were willing to work hard and live frugally, what allowed them to expand their land holdings with excess income. One of those areas was a piece of land about 2 to 3 km north-west of Sant Marti de Maldá, which had previously been used as an orchard with almond trees, but meanwhile had become neglected and was used as an illegal waste dump.

In the late 1990s, this piece of land was to be transformed by Josep Amenós into an art environment. He was now 64 years old, probably retired, as well as his older brother. (His mother had died in 1993 and his father in 1994).

The project started with refurbishing the neglected grounds, then he went on to work on the decorative elements, which can be distinguished in wall drawings, sculptures and installations/structures.

With regard to structures and installations, first mention should be made of the old barn on the site, which Amenós converted into a chapel, richly decorated on the inside and with a large stone cross on the outside. The roof of the chapel is decorated with a car tire structure, two horizontal and one upright, as can be seen in the second image from above.

As is also apparent from the name by which the site is often referred to, Amenós made extensive use of old car tires. This not only as a decorative element, as in the chapel and in the picture below, but also functionally to create stairs to overcome height differences. The use of the many old car tires initially met with objections from environmental defenders, but later they realized that in using the tires, this waste had been properly disposed of.

As for the installations, an aircraft resting on a wall of bulky stones, stands out, as in one of the images above. The available documentation doesn't state why this aircraft is part of the decorations.

The park includes some sculptures, such as the character in the image above and a (two-dimensional) peasant couple located at the entrance of the park, but the largest number of decorations are drawings applied to the rock walls. 

Near the entrance of the site are a number of large stones in a circle, with numerous carved images, such as the Titanic and an airplane. The rock walls in the rest of this art environment are richly provided with all kinds of images that often refer to life in the countryside, depict biblical situations, or deal with all kinds of other themes.

The drawings are often executed in a black shade, which contrasts sharply against the yellowish color of the rocks.

In December 2018, Amenós donated the site with the art environment to the community of Sant Marti de Malda, this on the only condition that a rental income would be used for its maintenance. As related,  his father and mother died in the early 1990s. In 2015 his brother had died and there was no other family.

The municipality accepted the donation with approval and appreciation. Because there was still an ongoing lease contract, the village became the actual owner from 2021, but preparations were already made from 2018 to give the park more publicity, such as signage and expansion of bungalows and the like of the campsite near the park.

Amenós, who is now in his late eighties and has become less energetic, has ended further expansion of the art environment.

Documentation

* Article by Jo Farb Fernandez, "In northeastern Spain, a self-taught sculptor-architect has created an open-air, art-filled refuge", in Brutjournal (January 2022) (First published in September 2021, Brutjournal is a new web-magazine in the field of outsider art, with articles accessible to subscribers)

* Article (December 2018) in regional newspaper Segre Tàrrega

* Article (December 2018) in the newspaper of Urgell TV, with video

* Location of the site on Wikiloc

Videos

.* Video by Turisme Urgell on YouTube (undated)

Josep Amenós Felip

Parc de les rodes

Sant Martí de Maldà, county Urgell, region Lleida, Catalonia, Spain 

visitors welcome

streetview, with a variety of photos

Roland Vincent, Jardin avec têtes de granit sculptées / Garden with carved granite heads

unless indicated otherwise, the pictures are 

courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, from her weblog

Sardent is a small community with about 800 inhabitants in the French department of Creuse in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. North-west of this community is a hamlet called Mont de Sardent (Hill of Sardent), surrounded by a wooded, hilly landscape, with many rock formations, as can be seen in a series of photos on the All Trails website

Roland Vincent in his garden (2021)

Life and works

This is the region where Roland Vincent (1948-2024) was born. Like his father and grandfather, he became a bricklayer.

In the early 1980s, when he was in his early thirties, he came up with the idea of collecting and processing the blocks of granite abundant in the environment.

For Vincent this processing of the found stones was mainly a matter of intuition. 

Characteristic of such an approach is that when considering a collected stone, the artist already envisions in his mind what would emerge from the material after processing. So it is not the artist who assigns the form to the stone, but rather the qualification of the stone that determines the final form.

The surrounding images show that each of the dozens of sculptures has its own appearance and that no two resemble each other. Some have hats on, but differ on other aspects, each sculpture has its own look in the eyes, some have the hands depicted, there are smaller and larger versions.....and so on.....

  

Working in this way, Vincent gradually created an extensive collection of sculptures, all of which got a pitch in the garden near his house.

Babòias

Around 1995, Roland Vincent started to create a completely different type of sculptures, which didn't get a place in the garden, but were collected in the garage of the house.

These sculptures were generally small in shape and were made by attaching grit and ancillary items to an infrastructure made of a variety of scrap materials, shaped into the appearance of the character envisioned.

The sculptures, which Vincent referred to as Babòias, look very different from the creations in the garden, as can be seen in the photo below by Bruno Montpied.

Some characters, in certain attire, look comical, others more homely, especially when fitted with domestic attributes, and still others are terrifying, especially those made almost entirely of granite. 

In the exhibitions to which Roland Vincent was invited (in 2013 at the town hall of Saint-Éloi and in 2018 at the Cécile Sabourdy museum in Vicq-sur-Breuilh) in addition to a single creation as included in the garden, mainly the Babòias were shown.

And then, a meeting that Jean-Bernard Philippot (of the theater company Nomades) had in 2010 with Ronald Vincent, during which Jean-Bernard saw the Babòias, resulted in a play Le petit peuple de pierre (The little stone people) in which these sculptures filled the stage (performed for the first time in 2011).

 picture (2005) by Bruno Montpied, from his weblog\

 

Roland Vincent passed away on April 26, 2024, at age 77.

Documentation

* article (July 2009) by Bruno Montpied on his weblog

* article (2018) reviewing Vincent's creations at the exhibition in Vicq-sur-Breuilh

* article (around 2011) by Jean-Bernard Philippot about the creation of the theatre play Le petit peuple de pierre  (The little stone people)

* article (July 2012) in regional journal La Montagne about the theater project with the Babòias

* article (March 2022) with a variety of photos by Sophie Lepetit on her weblog

Roland Vincent

Garden with carved granite heads

Le Mont-de-Sardent 

23250 Sardent, dept Creuse, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

Krystyna and Eugeniusz Msciwojewscy, Ogród z drewnianymi rzeźbami w zieleni / Garden with wooden sculptures in the green

pictures courtesy of Eliza en Radek Łabarzewscy 

from weblog Znalezienie

Tykocin is a small community in the region of Podlaskie in the north-east of Poland. It has some 2000 inhabitants (2012) and many sights, which means that more and more people from home and abroad visit it.

Whether the city also includes the garden of  Krystyna and Eugeniusz Msciwojewscy as one of its attractions is open to question, but from the point of view of art environments, this site is really a little gem.

Life and works

Eugeniusz Msciwojewscy had a job as a bricklayer and was involved in many construction projects in Tykocin and his wife Krystyna worked in a local shoe factory. Both are now retired.

Krystyna in particular takes care of the plants in the garden, which is located in front of the house, along its side and for a large part at its backside. 

The view on Google Streetview, dating from July 2013, shows that the garden is richly overgrown with plants and shrubs, including large hydrangeas and barberries.

Eugeniusz takes care of the decorations in the garden. In particular, he made creations of human and animal characters, which he composed from tree branches, logs and other pieces of wood that he found during walks in a wooded area.

 

The sculptures are set up in the midst of the greenery, in a natural way, harmoniously and in a good mood. 

The human characters are not highlighted with paint, but they are provided with all kinds of attributes, such as fishing rods and bags, or characteristic clothing, necklaces, pendants or nice hats. giving them a recognizable qualification.

Manifested in this way, there are musicians, forest people, all kinds of ghosts, animals and so on.

As for the animals, especially those that are in the vicinity of people, such as storks and goats, are depicted 

In the community of Tykocin competitions have been held  to see who has the most beautiful garden around the house, but the Msciwojewscy couple has never won a prize. An art environment is apparently still an unknown phenomenon here.

Documentation

* Article January 2022) on the weblog Znalezienie

Krystyna and Eugeniusz Msciwojewscy

Garden with wooden sculptures

ul. Jordyka 16

Tykocin, region of Podlaskie, Poland

visits on appointment,

site can be seen from the street

streetview