Seldom seen, always present: Outlaw art & adventure theology in Leelanau

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor
Recent visitors to the Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA) on Pine Street, behind Lake Street Studios, may have been surprised by a large pyramid, traced in steel and enclosing a suspended boulder, that now graces the approach to the building. Yet some have encountered this Art Brut sculpture before, in quite a different setting: peering towards Sleeping Bear Bay from a wooded bluff on Pyramid Point. How the piece, Trismegistus (Mihrab), materialized in Glen Arbor is merely the latest chapter in a decades-old saga that includes mythological gods, heroes, alchemists, outlaw artists and adventure theologians weaving their magic across Leelanau County.
Last December, GAAA board member Beth Bricker received a phone call from Tom Ulrich, assistant superintendent of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. The NPS had found an unusual, manmade structure nestled illegally on public land, and rather than destroy it (as other structures have been), he proposed that the arts group take custody of the sculpture.

Bricker and fellow artist Becky Thatcher trekked out on a wintry day to encounter the outlaw art. ”It was amazing, seeing it out there,” Bricker recalls. “I loved how the points of the base really gripped the ground, sort of claw-like,” she demonstrates with her hands.
The art association agreed that the powerful piece deserved saving. After an undignified sledge-hammering out of the woods and into the bed of a pickup, the wounded Trismegistus was fortuitously put into the care of new GAAA board member William Stege. The recently retired banker — also an artist and longtime metal smith — instantly recognized the work’s integrity. “The way it was constructed is very clever, very well-made,” he says. “Someone really knew what they were doing. This is better than a lot of the sculptures I’ve seen at the Chicago Art Institute.”
Although he was unable to replicate the original metal spiral, which wrapped the approximately 350-pound boulder and secured it from the apex of the pyramid, Stege skillfully restored the piece and recently installed it with fellow metal artist Ben Bricker in its new locale at the GAAA headquarters.
In an era where the cult of the individual ceaselessly worships at the pool of Narcissus, just who would create an unsigned work of fine art, then walk away, leaving it to the vagaries of weather, vandals or the interventions of civilized man? For years, Leelanau residents have heard rumors of an Outsider artist whose oeuvre in stone, wood and steel, strung along the necklace of the 45th parallel, reflects a preoccupation with ancient world myths, midaeval Christian symbolism and modern Jungian psychology. Kenny LaRoche’s quest to create a cathedral comparable to the sacred edifices of Europe and the Near East — a “stone book,” according to Victor Hugo — in Leelanau has been met by strong reactions: enthusiasm and passion by some, bewilderment, skepticism and even legal threats by others.
His most ardent supporters (some might call them acolytes) act as spokesmen and mediators of the artist, while Kenny prefers to communicate more non-verbally through his numinous architecture, including early works like Trismegistus, Baitin’ & Waitin’ for Satan, Fallen Warriors, and more recently, Shakkhina and the magnificent Rose Window, temptingly well-hung 60 feet up a tree, and perilously near public lands. As one spokesman, Skippy, explains, it’s all “metaphor with an attitude.”
“Kenny’s work is seldom seen, but always present,” offers another supporter, the Captain, with a smile. “Think about how many people don’t see his outlaw ‘art park,’ including some, six or seven feet tall, sitting on the bottom of Lake Michigan. Nature totally redesigns the art, covered with zebra mussels, or constantly moving in the wind; She’s taken the seed into Her womb and nurtured it.”
Several of the cathedral’s architectural elements like the east and west porches, installed as gifts of the artist on public lands in Leelanau Township and the National Park, have been destroyed or forcibly removed, radical interactions with the art that were anticipated by a philosophical but unrepentant Kenny. Skippy eloquently notes that all cathedrals share a similar fate: “They rise and fall with the whims of weather, fire, local politics and history. … They are living monuments to what people think lies behind the masks of god as the masks wear away.”
The tension between the artist and those with whom he communicates extends from casual encounters with hunters, hikers and park rangers to the established art world. Some people see issues of safety, liability or preserving nature, while others cheer a poke in the eye of rule binders and authority figures of all stripes. Several works hide in plain sight in village squares, art galleries or garden settings, waiting to be noticed by observant eyes, including a 40-foot tall erect penis with stone seed spewing out, commemorating humanity’s bittersweet experience of loss. How does that play out in a largely conservative community?
“Kenny’s not having an [art] opening!” chortles the Captain. “It opens its own self,” in the interplay between object and viewer. “All of us are vulnerable to our life experience,” he continues. “You’ve got to go beyond your insecurities and take risks,” which include everything from the artist’s dramatic, sometimes life-threatening installations to observers’ interactions with art that might galvanize their thinking about individuality, connectedness, or the intimate spaces between the sacred and the profane. Skippy reflects, “It is the work of Alchemy — and of all of the ‘arts’ — to raise and redeem the Spirit which has fallen into Matter,” even if that spirit then chooses to undergo kenosis, or a descent into the mortal frailty of the human world.
For Trismegistus, now visible in Glen Arbor, the icon has moved from wild wooded site to tame town setting. It has perhaps become a Skeuomorph, a “material metaphor,” according to communications theorist Marshall McLuhan (and paraphrased by Skippy), “lifted from its primary function and exalted to the merely Decorative.” Yet Hermes, shapeshifter and patron of liars and other tale-tellers, may have the last laugh, provoking a new chapter in the ongoing story of Kenny LaRoche.
The Captain offers this food for thought: “You can always justify your means and ends by the heroes you select.” Like Hermes, or the Buddhist monkey king Sun Wukung, or other trickster gods, the juicy gift they offer hides a dark prima materia that humanity craves, and which rocks us back on our heels in an endless spin cycle.
He concludes, “We all fight with the urge to control; ‘Here’s the Story, folks.’ The most exciting pieces Kenny has done are ones he’s given to the community and just walked away. He’s grateful to the GAAA for bringing in the piece, if it creates new dialogue. Come and experience it, and go tell your own story.”