The park in the marsh is hardly a secret at this point. The Wausau TV station, among others, has done stories on Clyde’s work, and in August, the BBC was at the park filming an episode of a children’s television program. Through all the publicity, Wynia relies on his wife, Nancy, to keep him grounded. When the Mitchell Park Conservatory “Domes” in Milwaukee featured his work, camera crews doing publicity for the show interviewed Wynia as he arrived with his sculpture. “By the time I got home,” Wynia jokes, “my welding helmet wouldn’t fit. My wife fixed that.”
Despite his fame, Wynia still speaks humbly about the park’s origins and his own artistic abilities. “To make sculptures, it just wasn’t my thing. Until I [began] digging these critters out of the marsh, welding them back together and then it just exploded.” However, the work speaks for itself, attracting visitors from 34 different countries this year alone.
On top of the remarkable metallic wildlife, the park adds to its quirkiness with an assortment of additional attractions. Nancy sells her glasswork from a squat building with an unevenly sloped roof guarded by two “Hobbit” sentries. This stone-studded building with circular stained glass windows is lovingly referred to as “The Hobbit House.” Outside of the house, Wynia has built a bottle rocket, capable of launching projectiles high into the air above the statues. He claims that the mechanism is powered by a rather unique source. “Well this hose here runs to the shop, and my wife, she’s in there blowing.”
Despite all the jokes, Wynia’s affection for his wife is apparent. Clyde and Nancy first met when Clyde was working at a hospital as a night orderly, “…emptying bedpans, pushing catheters, all those neat things. And, as a night orderly there was this young student nurse chasing me all over the hospital. I didn’t know any better, I just gave in. Sure enough, best deal I ever made.”
Nancy’s work ranges from custom beaded jewelry to knitted sweaters, but one of the most impressive elements of the Hobbit House are the kaleidoscopes. Large wooden periscope-like mechanisms that, when activated, trickle forth a soft tune as the glass patterns within slowly, steadily spin, creating stunning visuals.
Many of Nancy’s glass creations are shaped with a lathe. These machines cost roughly $10,000, but they are essential to Nancy’s work so Clyde simply made one himself.
An Artistic Vision
Clyde’s artistic interests extend beyond metal work and date to when he was a young boy. “I grew up on a little farm and always wanted a welder, and we could never afford one.” Once Clyde bought a welder for himself, he did his best to make up for lost time.
“I made a lot of my woodworking tools, and I did a lot of photography, I had a darkroom. I did a lot of pottery, made my own wheels and kilns and everything, so that required a bunch of welding. I did a lot of stained glass and built a lot of equipment for that, but I always wanted to do sculpture. But nothing ever clicked until I got out in that marsh, and then that just took over everything. I don’t do anything else anymore.”
Jurustic Park defies description. It is inextricably tied to Clyde-—his persona, his unique sense of humor and his humble, inviting nature. Without the stories that go along with them, the sculptures are no more than a congregation of scrap metal. It is as much performance art as sculpture garden. Through this one-of-a-kind style, Wynia has taken the discarded and breathed life into it in a way few artists can. Each creature has a unique life, so he cannot choose a favorite.
“I wish I could. I don’t dare! What would the others think?”
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