THE HOLLAND OZ PROJECT

by Michael Gessel

Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 64, no. 1 (Spring 2020), pgs. 26–29

Citations

Chicago 17th ed.:

Gessel, Michael. “The Holland Oz Project.” Baum Bugle 64, no. 1 (2020): 26–29.

MLA 9th ed.:

Gessel, Michael. “The Holland Oz Project.” The Baum Bugle, vol. 64, no. 1, 2020, pp. 26–29.

(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with photographs that have not been reproduced here. However, typographical errors have been left in place to accurately reflect the printed version.)

 

The small town of Holland, Michigan, is a special place for Oz enthusiasts. This city of 33,000 people on the eastern shore of Lake Macatawa is only a few miles from where L. Frank Baum spent summers and owned a vacation home, “Sign of the Goose.” From 1969 to 1984, the International Wizard of Oz Club held its annual national convention at Castle Park, just south of the city. Now, there’s a new Oz connection.

During the summer of 2019, the Holland Area Visitors Bureau, along with Holland in Bloom, Herrick District Library, and the City of Holland launched the Holland Oz Project, including Oz character sculptures, a floral display, Yellow Brick Road, and Oz-themed landscaping in Holland’s Centennial Park.

The central feature of the Oz Project is a permanent exhibition next to the Herrick Library, where visitors are greeted by life-sized bronze sculptures of Dorothy, Toto, the Tin Woodman, a Munchkin, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and a Fighting Tree with a Winged Monkey on a branch. The sculptures are close to the Yellow Brick Road, and a sign encourages visitors to “interact with the characters as Dorothy did when she traveled the Yellow Brick Road.”

The sculptures are intended to make interaction fun: the Cowardly Lion reclines so children can sit on his back, and the Tin Woodman kneels to provide an easy perch. Many visitors have their photographs taken in front of the statues.

“Grandmothers show up dressed up as Dorothy with their three-year-old granddaughters dressed like Dorothy,” said Sally Laukitis, executive director of the Holland Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We’re having a blast with it.”

The statues are based on the illustrations by W.W. Denslow from the original publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Holland Oz project could not use the images from the M-G-M film version because they are under copyright. Laukitis acknowledges that viewers could be surprised if they are only familiar with the film, but Holland’s Oz project cannot use MGM depictions because they are under copyright. Therefore, Holland’s Dorothy statue looks like the young girl drawn by Denslow, not the film icon played by a teenage Judy Garland.

However, the statues are instantly recognizable as Oz characters even to those who have not seen the Denslow drawings. Oz aficionados may even recognize some of the specific Denslow illustrations from which the sculptures are modeled. For example, the statue of the Fighting Tree was clearly adopted from the illustration on the book’s subchapter title page.

The sculptures range in size from a four-foot Dorothy to a Fighting Tree that is more than twelve feet tall and weighs about 1,600 pounds. The tree was lifted in place by the construction firm Elzinga & Volkers, which donated the installation work.

The statues were designed and manufactured by Brodin Studios in Kimball, Minnesota, which specializes in creating detailed bronze sculptures of law enforcement, public safety, and military officers using the lost wax casting process. Previously, Brodin Studios made “The Protector,” a life-sized sculpture of a policeman holding the hand of a small girl that was installed in 2005 outside the Holland Department of Public Safety.

The Oz statues were made with Everdur silicon bronze, a high-grade metal which is widely used for outdoor sculptures because of its casting quality and corrosion resistance. This was one of the most complex jobs undertaken by Brodin because it involved so many different statutes on one site. “We really enjoyed it because it gave us something different to work,” Brodin Studios owner Nick Christensen told The Baum Bugle.

Oz Project staff showed Brodin the Denslow pictures they wanted the sculptures modeled on. Brodin worked from those images, with a few modifications.

“Everybody here loved working on it. It brings back memories when you are a kid,” Christensen said.

The first part of the project to be displayed was a living mosaic: a floral book comprising thousands of plants and flowers grown on a steel 10 x 12 foot frame. The frame was fabricated in Montreal, Canada, by Kadriform International, Inc.—a company that specializes in the manufacture of sculptures and metal structures—and then trucked to Holland. The plants are arranged to form a double-page spread of a giant book. The image of the Yellow Brick Road leading to the Emerald City, with lettering that names the title and the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, suggests a book cover. The floral arrangement is made in four sections to be mobile, so it can be stored during the winter in the city’s greenhouse. It is expected to be brought out annually in late spring to display until the fall season turns to cold weather.

The Yellow Brick Road leads from Centennial Park to the Herrick District Library and travels through a landscape of colorful flowers.

To fund the project, sponsors sold personalized engraved yellow bricks for the Yellow Brick Road. For $100, a donor could buy an engraved brick to be placed in front of the floral book in Centennial Park or at the library, and $200 bought an engraved brick that could be placed in front of one of the Oz statutes. (One such brick was purchased by membership secretary Bill Beem, representing the Oz Club.) People could also buy engraved plaques on three benches along the Yellow Brick road in Centennial Park or three by the statutes at the library for $2,500 each.

In 2019, the campaign raised more than $108,000. As of April 2020, plaques on all six benches and about 900 bricks had been sold to Oz fans all over the world. Additional bricks are expected to be available for sale again.

To advertise the exhibit before it opened, seven billboards were placed around Michigan and one in Indiana declaring, “The Wizard of Oz is Coming to Holland.” The dedication ceremony was held September 28, 2019, with a ribbon cutting, children’s activities, Oz-themed merchandise for sale, and two showings of the M-G-M film version of The Wizard of Oz. Theater students from Holland High School dressed up as Oz characters and mingled with the guests in Centennial Park and outside the library.

The inspiration for the exhibit was an effort to promote the connection between Holland and Baum, which is well known within the Holland community. Baum first visited Macatawa Park during the summer of 1899, which might have included the time he worked on writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was published the following year. Baum’s widow, Maud Baum, wrote in a 1943 letter, “He always wrote at Macatawa or wherever he was.”

In 2012, Baum’s grandson, Bob Baum, told the Holland Sentinel that Baum “drew lots of inspiration from Macatawa” for writing the book. Baum later bought a house along the lake and spent summers there until he sold it in 1910.

The Holland Oz Project has its roots with the return of the Oz Club’s Ozmapolitan Convention to Holland in 2012. Following that event, a New York artist suggested the idea of outdoor sculptures of Oz characters to Laukitis and the mayor of Holland. Laukitis put together a committee to explore the idea. The group had trouble finding a location for the project and owners of some prospective sites turned them down. After years of planning, the board of directors of the Holland Area Convention and Visitors Bureau approved the project. According to Laukitis, the board said, “We think it’s a great marketing idea. We love it.”

The most recent character. the Wicked Witch, was installed on June 12. The sculpture has been cast and it is being stored at the Minneapolis studio, waiting to be installed after the coronavirus pandemic is over. A celebration originally planned for the one-year anniversary was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and might end up taking place for the second anniversary. Possible activities at the forthcoming celebration include readings from Baum’s works and a production of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Stay tuned.

“When we started, I never realized how many Wizard of Oz aficionados there are all over the world. This has been an amazing project. Oz will always be at the forefront of what we market here because it has been so well received,” Laukitis said.

What’s the favorite statue? For both Laukitis and Christensen, it’s the Fighting Tree.

For more information on the project, updates on programming, and to buy a brick, go to https://hollandozproject.com/ or the project’s Facebook page at Facebook at @hollandozproject.

 

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