Wausau, Wisconsin: Team USA Snow Sculptors, Mike Martino, Tom Queoff, and Mike Sponholtz – inspired by Stormy Kromer hats, will again work their winter magic at the Woodson Art Museum on Saturday, January 28 from 12 until 5 p.m.
The team’s 33-year partnership with the Woodson Art Museum has become a central Wisconsin winter highlight, with carloads of visitors seeing the snow sculpture creation by day and driving by at night to see the completed sculpture illuminated by colorful lights. The snow-sculpting trio, which originally met while art students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has created hundreds of snow sculptures since it became a team in 1986 and competed in the 1998 Olympics. The sculptors’ finished work will be viewable as long as weather permits.
The “Stormy Kromer: Evolution of a Classic” exhibition currently on view at the Woodson Art Museum, features a tip-top tale and puts a local spin on global headwear. From invention and evolution over a century, the stylish and durably designed Stormy Kromer hat is interwoven into Wisconsin culture. The lore is part of the lure. A pull-down ear band stitched to a baseball cap kept a train worker’s head warm and dry amid winter winds. Ida Kromer’s innovative alteration solved the hat-flying-off problem for her husband, “Stormy” – once a semi-pro baseball player and railroad engineer – while he worked on his locomotive. And so, the Stormy Kromer was born. The caps originally were designed and fabricated in 1903 in northeastern Wisconsin and then in Milwaukee from 1919 until Jacquart Fabric Products purchased Stormy Kromer in 2001. Kromer hats continue to be made by the Jacquart company in the Great Lakes Region – in Ironwood, Michigan, near the Wisconsin border in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s now an iconic, internationally known brand.
“Stormy Kromer: Evolution of a Classic,” organized by Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum curator of exhibitions Shannon Pueschner, with assistance from Gina Jacquart Thorsen, CEO, Jacquart Fabric Products, explores and celebrates Stormy Kromer’s artful evolution through early photographs, processes, and ever-changing fabric designs and forms emblematic of the Upper Midwest. A Dudley Foundation grant supports the Stormy Kromer exhibition. A Joint Effort Marketing grant from the Wisconsin Department of Tourism supports expanded “Stormy Kromer: Evolution of a Classic” marketing efforts. “Stormy Kromer: Evolution of a Classic,” remains on view through Sunday, February 26, 2023, always admission free.
For more information, visit www.lywam.org, e-mail the Museum at info@lywam.org, call 715-845-7010, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Always admission free.
Woodson Art Museum
Hours:
Tuesday – Friday 9am – 4pm
First Thursday of each month 9am – 7:30pm
Saturday – Sunday Noon – 5pm
Closed Monday & holidays
Admission: Always Free Admission
Phone: 715.845.7010
E-mail: info@lywam.org
Location: Franklin and 12th Streets, Wausau, Wisconsin 54403-5007
(700 North Twelfth Street)
Online: www.lywam.org
