PLACES & SPACES | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA
Taylor Hall O'Brien shares a highly personal coming of age story, in which a central character is a once-derelict, reputedly haunted 'farm' in Wisconsin. The property has an intriguing, storied history and, it turns out, a bright future thanks to a pair of visionary artists. Taylor revisits the Poor Farm and discovers that, despite sitting deep in a "relatively poor county in middle-of-nowhere America", it is challenging the assumed politics of the contemporary art world.
BY TAYLOR HALL O'BRIEN | ROOMS & GARDENS | 23 FEBRUARY 2025
In high school, I was the groundskeeper for a well-to-do family who lived a few minutes outside my hometown of Manawa, Wisconsin. For several hours each week I would ride a lawnmower back and forth, cutting rows of alternating shades of green into hundreds of acres of lawns. I would daydream about getting out of my tiny hometown with its five churches, nine taverns, and no stoplights, and going straight to New York City where I, undoubtedly, would become a famous fashion designer.
As a teenager, I was obsessively creative. My art teacher, Nancy Zabler, saw something that I didn’t see in myself and encouraged me: “Don’t overthink it, just keep creating." So, between workdays mowing lawns, slinging burgers at the 1950s themed Cruisin’ In Diner, and stocking shelves at the local grocery store, I created. I painted, drew, sewed, dabbled in ceramics, and, little did I know then, took one class that would forever change the trajectory of my life—I learned film photography in the dark room at my high school.
Across County Road Bb from where I mowed lawns was the Waupaca County Poor Farm, an abandoned brick building in the township of Little Wolf, originally built in 1876. Before US social security systems, 'poor houses' and their rural counterparts, 'poor farms', were places where those unable to support themselves financially were sent to live and work in exchange for clothing, food, and housing. Local lore said the place was haunted, and legend had it that a basement jail cell held residents during psychotic episodes. Raised in a very religious family, even the word 'haunted' ensured that any curiosity about the inner happenings of the Poor Farm would damn me straight to hell.
Needless to say, I avoided the place. Just as I was preparing to graduate in 2008, however, I got word that two artists from Milwaukee were planning to purchase the farm with plans to turn it into an artist's residency. When I drove by the farm my final summer in my hometown, signs of new life had emerged: a handful of cars in the driveway, lights on at night, a campfire pit still smoking in the morning. I had to investigate.
After discovering my newfound obsession and honing my skills, I started shooting portraits and weddings for family and friends. On a summer day before I left for college, I stopped by the Poor Farm to ask if I might be able to use the building and grounds as a backdrop for upcoming portrait sessions. To my luck, owners Michelle and Brad obliged. They allowed me full run of the place - inside, outside, even the basement to finally confirm that there was, in fact, a jail cell. It was quite spooky and maybe even a little bit haunted.
Being 18 and less than informed on the happenings of the art world, it was lost on me who the new owners were or what they were up to. I took a handful of portraits at the farm throughout college summers, thanked them each time, and left. Fast forward 16 years, and I returned with a much deeper understanding of, and appreciation for, what is happening at the Poor Farm. For nearly two decades, Michelle Grabner, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Crown Family Professor in Painting and Drawing, and Brad Killam, Professor at the College of DuPage - both prolific artists, critics, and curators - have poured themselves into creating a space that fosters creativity and community.
“If you build a space that is bigger than yourself, where artists and ideas can intersect, there will be meaningful intensity, a space that can incubate experimentation and enact the potentials of independence,” Grabner explains. For the first decade, Summer School, a program created by artist and educator, Aaron Van Dyke, offered artists the opportunity to create without the structured confines of more traditional ways of making work. Van Dyke wanted to create, “an antidote to the shortcomings of formal education, stressing openness, experimental forms of education, and educational and artistic agency.”
Sometimes the incoming group was a handful of individuals with no connection to one another, other times they were an entire cohort of college classmates. Regardless of their origins, artists in residence showed up for three months in the summer, lived on site, and made work. At the end of the summer, a show would open with a reception and remain open until the following summer when a new crop of creatives would arrive. Since 2018, the farm has housed a long-term research residency, Living Within the Play, where artists explore, “the contingent nature of hosting and gathering, the fleeting and the reverberating, particular to the moment of temporary, intentional assembly,” explain directors Mark Jeffrey and Kelly Kaczynski of Chicago.
Hundreds of artists have created work here, some of the most notable being: Nelly Agassi, Gregg Bordowitz, Assaf Evron, Francisco Goya, Sky Hopinka, Dorothea Lange, Louise Lawler, Miller + Shellabarger, Denmark-based Piscine, Faith Ringgold, Cauleen Smith, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung.
Grabner and Killam have created something remarkable, all while maintaining their personal practices as artists and careers as professors, critics, and curators. In 2022, The New York Times Style Magazine highlighted the Poor Farm as one of the most notable artist-in-residency programs in the world.
I must also note the Poor Farm’s thriving predecessor, The Suburban, a backyard gallery and exhibition space started by Grabner and Killam in 1999 in Oak Park, Illinois. It has since moved to the couple’s new base in Milwaukee. Additionally, they have announced their latest offering, a summer sister-residency in the Umbrian hill town of Monte Castello di Vibio.
The future of The Poor Farm is bright. In 2025, guests will enjoy the exhibition of new works by artists Katharina Grosse and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle—these works in addition to the continuing works created by artists in the Living Within the Play residency program. Grabner explains: "I don't want artists to know; I want artists to develop…I want foundations or patronage to support artists' discovery, and not to support a predetermined outcome.”
There are a handful of highlights in Grabner’s mind: there is Stephanie Barber who wrote multiple acres of poetry in a field on the property, or a survey exhibition of Sky Hopinka's experimental film work in 2019. In 2013, the Poor Farm curated Tracking the Thrill, an exhibition of Gretchen Bender’s television performances. If not for that exhibition, Bender’s large-scale, multiple-channel videos from the late 1980s may never have found their way into permanent collections at the Art Institute of Chicago or the Museum of Modern Art.
The Poor Farm and its geographic position, sitting in a relatively poor county in middle-of-nowhere America, continues to challenge the assumed politics of the contemporary art world. Happenings on the coasts or in larger urban art centers abroad have little influence on their motivations. “Influence does not need to be measured in how big you are, how many resources you have, the numbers of people you impact, but instead, can be achieved by longevity, dedication, and doing difficult, tiring work,” Grabner says.
I spent hours of my young life on that lawn mower, looking at the Poor Farm and dreaming of a life outside my hometown where I could travel the world and create work that I was proud of. It was nearly impossible to believe that I, a Midwest kid of humble beginnings without any ties or connections to the world beyond the edge of the cornfield, could thrive as an artist.
“If you put the hardest of hard work in, regardless of how many resources you have, it will create an impact, and sometimes in the most unforeseen and beautifully surprising ways,” says Grabner.
Connecting with Michelle and Brad throughout multiple decades and phases of our lives, and to be able to share this story on an international stage with Cabana, is one of those rare moments in life where you know that you are exactly where you are meant to be. Even now, decades since I took my last art class, I hear Mrs. Zabler’s voice when I walk out the door to photograph a new project, "Don’t overthink it, just keep creating."
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