At the Bottom of the Driftless
At the Bottom of the Driftless examines the places, people and events of a unique but little-known region of middle America. While no single photograph tells a complete story, these images serve as fragments of time coming together to create a visual narrative of a whole. They question the sense of place, belonging, and identity. They show where I come from and, in many ways, where I am returning.
Growing up in eastern Iowa, I never knew I lived in an area called the Driftless. I was vaguely aware of an artist named Grant Wood, who was born nearby and painted a famous picture. And I thought old stone farmhouses were little more than old stone farmhouses.
Through research and exploration and time, I better appreciate the uniqueness of this place and the connections found throughout. I see the beauty in this region – where the states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin meet – untouched by the glaciers of the last ice age, leaving behind rolling hills and winding streams and steep bluffs of limestone more than 500 million years old. I’ve learned more of the world-famous artist, born and buried in this region, whose technique was influenced by the painters of the Renaissance and whose work was slyly political while needing to hide his life as a gay man. I became part of a family who have made me realize that a farmhouse, when it’s been in that family since the Civil War, is more than just a farmhouse.
Today, I see threads that link these subjects, from the limestone that is the region’s literal and figurative foundation to the iconography of a famous painting and more, all along a road that marks the bottom of the Driftless.
The Environs
Maquoketa. Anamosa. Wyoming. Monmouth. Baldwin. These towns dot the bottom of the Driftless. Like other such dots sprinkled across rural America they are declining by many measures, losing jobs and opportunities and people. Only Wyoming saw an increase in population; eight more residents call it home since the previous census. In the midst of this unique region, with some of the most valuable farmland in the nation, rural poverty is apparent. It isn’t much different from urban poverty, except maybe lonelier.
And yet, life and culture are vibrant. Some activities may be what you would expect. County fairgrounds host rodeos and tractor pulls and stock car races. Farm equipment auctions always draw a big crowd, complete with a booth selling home-made fruit pies. Some may be unexpected. An award-winning winery is a couple of miles off the main highway. A local artist has an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. A nearby barn hosts concerts by the likes of Norah Jones and Ani DiFranco and the Milk Carton Kids.
An abandoned church with Gothic windows sits on a foundation of limestone. Someone spray-painted “cursed” on the side of a structure that is supposed to be blessed, an apt message of the duality to be found in the Driftless.
The Artist
If people know only one thing about Grant Wood it is his double portrait of a farmer and his daughter (in reality,Wood’s dentist and sister). American Gothic is not named because of the dour expressions and dark clothing of the subjects but for the style of the ornate window in the otherwise simple home in the background. The painting competes with the Mona Lisa for being one of the most recognized – and parodied – works of art in the world.
It is easy to dismiss Wood, who created an aw-shucks persona of overalls and colloquialisms, as an artist known simply for painting the people and places near where he lived. He hid layers of complexity.
Trained in France and Germany, he applied the technique of the Northern Renaissance painters to create his 20th century middle America tableaus. His work was full of social and political commentary about his era. He was a gay man at a time when the rumor of that nearly cost him his career. He was censored by the U.S. Post Office for daring to sell lithographs showing a man’s penis. He was a Regionalist artist whose signature style was openly attacked near the end of his life by the up-and-coming Abstract Expressionists.
While European-trained and internationally-known, Wood spent most of his life within a 30-mile radius of where he was born and is now buried in Anamosa, Iowa: a studio in Cedar Rapids, a professorship at the University of Iowa, an art colony in Stone City. Today the eponymous scenic byway – Highway 64 – marks an unofficial southern border to the Driftless. That concrete and asphalt ribbon winds through the rolling hills and the limestone bluffs, past the places and the ghosts that his paintings immortalized.
The Farmhouse
As the Civil War was coming to an end this home was being built. Within five years it was owned by a family named Tabor, a name that has been on its deed for 153 years and counting. Built of the region’s limestone, it has been both a literal and metaphorical foundation for six generations. Thousands upon thousands of days, one after another, farming the surrounding fields. Waking up on Christmas mornings no where but here. Grandchildren on summer breaks playing games and catching fireflies and climbing hay bales.
My mother-in-law was the last person to call this home. When she died a few years ago my wife and her siblings – none of them farmers – sold off much of the land. But what to do with the house? It was not ready for a different name to be on the mailbox across the gravel road.
And so my wife and I bought the old stone farmhouse along with a few outbuildings and eight acres of land. Room by room we are restoring the place for weekend getaways and family retreats, a place for our own grandchildren to one day wake up on Christmas mornings and catch fireflies on summer nights.
