Reporting by Kendra Meinert, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
The accomplished plantsman who co-founded The Plantscapers in 1988 on the same property has found a new passion since retiring from the nursery, and you might say he’s leaving no stone unturned.
An old brooder house for chickens that dates to at least 1850 has been remodeled on the inside, but it’s the transformation on the outside that is the work of art. Marcelle is in his third year of completely covering it with stones and other treasures, each carefully placed by hand in mortar to make for an everlasting masterpiece.
“Rocks piled in a barn are no good,” Jerry Marcelle said.
Place them on the blank canvas of a building wall, however, and the detail and uniqueness of each one gets to shine. Many are his own. Some are from collections given to him by others, like a man in Mountain with no family to pass his along to. A few are from as far away as Norway. One is from the early blasting for the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, a gift from a couple there on their honeymoon.
But it’s what is nestled alongside and poking out from all those stones that provides the whimsy. The longer you look, the more you see.
Yep, that’s a bowling ball stuck in there and a teacup from Korea. He made the dinosaur for his two grandchildren, Miracle and Zen. His seashells from his time serving in Vietnam got a special spot. A porcelain cherub head that somehow went through a wood chipper unscathed and was discovered in mulch most certainly had to make it on a wall.
A mysterious metal-looking item is something his son rescued from a junk pile at a job. A neighbor gave him “whatever this is,” Marcelle said. “I don’t think he knows what that is.”
There are many handcrafted critters incorporated into his designs – a snowy owl, rooster, dog, badger, that horse head on the front of the building that’s impossible to miss. He wanted to do two pigs squeezed together like they were trying to go through the same opening at the same time, in honor of a neighbor who raised pigs, but he didn’t think he could pull that one off.
The back wall, which was still a work in progress this summer, will feature a badger, a deer and a tree with birds and squirrels.
Ask him where he comes up with it all and he points to his head. “Up here,” he says. He doesn’t sketch any of it out in advance. He simply works as he goes.
“I don’t have any talent,” he claims. “I just wing it.”
Once upon a time, it started with an outhouse and a mermaid
His first foray into the world of mosaics came when he and his former Plantscapers partner Mary Carlson did an outhouse on her land that included a mermaid and a shark coming out of the wall.
Then came another mosaic four years ago for what appears to be a self-portrait.
“That’s what people think,” Marcelle said, laughing. “I made him a little taller and a little younger.”
He created it in his shop, and it took four men to lift it and get it onto the back of a building by the blueberry patch.
A man who spends no time online, he’s self-taught. No Google, just a lot of old-fashioned trial and error.
He has the process perfected now to ensure that the rocks and art are embedded in a way that they won’t pop out. He knows when the weather is too hot or too cold to interfere. Even under ideal conditions, it’s slow “work,” although you won’t ever hear Marcelle calling it that.
He often gets an assist from Sarah Shin, who has worked for more than 20 years at The Plantscapers, now run by Marcelle’s son, Eric, and open select days and by appointment. She enjoys getting lost in the projects.
“You go in with an idea, not always knowing what it’s going to turn out to be,” she said. “It’s like a puzzle piecing it together. It’s a little bit of you surprise yourself.”
“You kind of have to have faith knowing you’re going to pull it off, without knowing what you’re going to do,” said Marcelle, who never looks at a completed wall and wishes he had put that rock here instead of there.
He also creates animal sculptures from barbed wire and does bonsai
Mosaic is just one medium Marcelle uses to create on the peaceful and beautifully landscaped property he shares with wife Bonnie. He’s lived there since 1969, just 5 miles down Luxemburg Road from where he was born.
He has also made creatures great and small from nails (a rabbit) and old barbed wire (a wolf), none bigger than a buffalo that stands outside one of the mosaic buildings. He made a paper cutout to start but as the animal took shape, he realized he had a problem on the back end.
“At first I made his butt too small and then the head part got too big for his butt, so I had to give him more butt,” Marcelle said. “I’m just winging it. I wouldn’t even know how to plan.”
A framework of bars inside the barbed wire makes sure that head-heavy buffalo with eyes made from old electrical insulators stays on his feet. At 80, Marcelle thinks he might have one more big animal sculpture in him. He has his heart set on a grizzly bear.
The stone mosaic buildings and sculptures are visible to Plantscapers customers, but a gallery in the barn is a private space that feels like some kind of artistic wonderland.
When he retired 13 years ago, Marcelle cleaned out the upper level and has since filled it with art – much of it wood, but there’s also ceramic and stone. Most of it was made with his own hands, but some are pieces he bought as an art lover. Nature and natural things, including birch bark, horse hair, feathers and even snakeskin found on walks, figure into many of the pieces
He doesn’t sell his work. It’s a display for his own enjoyment.
“When I’m old I’m going to come up here and look around,” he said.
Marcelle also does bonsai, the Japanese art of shaping miniature trees in pots. Plantscapers is known for its large inventory of trees for bonsai, including evergreens, olive, dogwood, beech, fig and gingko, and frequently hosts events with the Bay Area Bonsai Society. Marcelle also makes bonsai pots, both ceramic and cement, some of which he sells.
He’s been at it for 20 years now and jokes he’s not sure if he’s any better than when he started.
“Either you’re a grower or a show-er. I’m a grower.”
Said the man who also claims he has no artistic talent.
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: In rural Luxemburg, remarkable mosaics, wire animals, a humble artist
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