Artist Spotlight - Levi Fisher Ames

I love small things. I love things displayed in boxes. 

As a result, I love Levi Fisher Ames' menagerie of carved animals.

Ames was born in 1840 in Pennsylvania and moved to Green County, WI while young. In 1862, he joined the Union Army's Thirty-seventh Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. He was wounded, discharged and rejoined three months later. His records indicate that he was hospitalized for much of his three-year enlistment. Afterwards, he moved to Monroe, WI where he lived for the rest of his life. 

Although he was a carpenter before the war, he honed his whittling skills while hospitalized and continued to work as a carpenter and artist after the war. 

This is where things get interesting, in my opinion.

So Levi Fisher Ames carves and carves and has all these creatures and makes all these boxes for them and then makes bigger boxes for the little boxes and then he travels around Barnum and Bailey style and calls it a museum and charges 10 cents for people to look at it... and it worked! People paid! 

Something that I think is pretty remarkable is that the pieces within have never been separated. Ames felt that it was a set and refused to sell off creatures from it. Eventually, Ames died and his sons inherited the menagerie. During the Depression, they sold the whole thing to a pawn shop. However, they were able to get the whole museum back intact a few years later. Now John Michael Kohler Arts Center is taking care of the zoo and it will surely not be separated then. 

Here's a book, if you wish to learn more! 
http://www.jmkacstore.org/levifisheramesmenagerie.aspx