The Blaine County Journal News-Opinion - We've Got The County Covered

Reporter's note: Last year Blaine County Wildlife Museum Manager Tammy Edwards told me Kurt Wohnsen and Liz Marshall would be returning to complete the last major diorama exhibit for the wildlife museum. They completed the first diorama, the Buffalo Jump, in 2001. Wohnsen and Marshall, husband and wife, are owners of Acorn Exhibits, LLC, through which they do dioramas, props and sculpture work for clients across the U.S.

During this current visit, in addition to the major completion of the Foothills Exhibit, they are working on new signage for the museum exhibits and completed a mobile exhibit about taxidermy. The Foothills Exhibit, their current focus, will be the eighth major exhibit they've completed, along with a number of other projects, since first connecting with the Wildlife Museum in 1999.

With the upcoming annual banquet set for March 4, I thought this might be a good time to learn more about these artists who have poured so much of their souls into the museum. I was curious about how they began their unusual line of work and how they first connected to the Blaine County Wildlife Museum. I found them an engaging and creative couple, self-described problem solvers and folks with a real passion for the work they do. Visiting with them gave me an entirely new appreciation for the museum, its extraordinary exhibits and the efforts by many locals, over the years, that made the museum a successful reality.

From training as artists to careers as exhibition creators

Liz and Kurt both studied art in college. Liz, studied fine arts and painting as well as natural sciences, especially animal and plant biology. She first gained experience building exhibits as a volunteer in California. Kurt studied sculpting and photography in college, then did contracting and carpentry work, specializing in restoring older houses in St. Paul, Minnesota. He eventually took a job in the exhibit shop of the Science Museum in St. Paul, building display cabinets and related items.

One of Kurt's projects involved creating displays for a traveling exhibit about bears. He said, "That exhibit traveled all over the country and sometimes I would be sent to a location to help set up or take down the exhibit." On a trip to Denver, Kurt met Liz at the Museum of Natural History where she was working on three-dimensional exhibits. They've been together since 1993, starting their own business in 1996. They said a major reason they began their own business was a trend they were seeing in which many museum exhibits were built to entertain rather than educate. Their backgrounds help define their role in creating their projects for clients. Liz said, "Kurt is more the 'big picture' person, I'm more in to the details." She explained, "In a diorama here in Chinook Kurt will be focused on the bigger structures like trees and rocks or where the animals go and the direction the animals are looking. I'll be assessing the details that make the foreground believable, like putting leaf litter under a bush or painting lichen on a rock to enhance the realism of the diorama." Liz added, "I also work to make sure the transition from the foreground to the background mural is seamless." Kurt said, "We both understand what the other is doing, it's just we have preferences about the things we like to do." He said his background in carpentry and contracting gave him a lot of experience in creating and stabilizing big items, like trees or large animals, in an exhibit.

Asked how a typical project proceeds, the pair said it was hard to say because every project was custom. Through the years they have become more adept at estimating costs and time to do a project. Kurt said, "Our estimating is usually a combination of the square footage of an exhibit plus any unusual items that we'll have to create or incorporate." Liz said, "We are typical artists, we often spend more time than we anticipated because we want things to be just right."

There's also a good bit of planning that has to occur before a project begins-like finding and collaborating with a muralist who will paint the background for a planned diorama. In the local wildlife museum they've used several different muralists over the years, but most recently have worked with Dave Rock. Working beforehand with the muralist assures the foreground items mesh with the background (painted mural) and the transition between foreground and background can be built to look realistic.

Connecting with the Blaine County Wildlife Museum

In the late 1990's Scott Mackenzie, a museum board member and a long-term supporter of the move to develop the museum, called the Denver facility asking about artists who might build an exhibit. Liz's former boss at the museum in Denver took the call and told Mackenzie about the pair who had started their own exhibit building business.

Kurt and Liz said that early on it was agreed, with the museum's governing board, to do the Buffalo Jump exhibit because it would be so dramatic and should stir excitement, hopefully, for future dioramas and related exhibits. The Buffalo Jump was the first diorama to be started but there was an overall plan as to how the museum would ultimately be developed. Kurt said, "We've pretty much stuck to the original layout with some modifications along the way." The Buffalo Jump project took three years to complete with the artists actually on site about a year and half during the construction.

The second diorama was the beaver pond along the south wall of the museum. Kurt and Liz explained why they pushed to make that diorama enclosed. They said, "Open dioramas draw the visitor more easily into the scene, but the open exhibits are more difficult to maintain. We felt with all the detail that would be in the pond exhibit it needed to be protected." Kurt added he was aware of an enclosed exhibit that is still pristine after 100 years of public viewing.

Even as completion of the last planned major exhibit moves forward, there is still work to be done at the local facility. Liz showed a template for a new signage system that will help visitors more quickly identify animals in an exhibit and provide some 'factoids' about the wildlife on display.

A new, mobile exhibit about taxidermy has been completed. It's constructed in such a way it can be moved to different locations to be viewed by visitors. The designers said the taxidermy display answers the question frequently asked by children, "Are the animals in the museum real?" The new exhibit has two components, one that shows the process of how taxidermy works and another that shows the materials (eyes, noses, mouths) used in taxidermy.

Twenty years of working side by side

By the nature of their business, Kurt and Liz spend virtually every waking moment working side by side. Asked about the challenges of so much time together, Liz laughed and said, "We are a long way passed the 'getting used to working together' stage." While they each have their own special skills they bring to the project, Kurt added, "We can still understand what the other needs to make their part of the project work. But it's always a challenge to figure out how to create an exhibit that makes the point we want it to. We have to constantly keep a 'can do' attitude."

A major challenge of their work that they both mentioned is the necessity to move around and be gone from home for long periods. Liz said, "When we first got the business going we would sometimes be living away from home eleven months out of a year. I once was gone so long I had to relearn where everything was in my kitchen when I got home." Kurt said they typically load and take all the tools they might need on a job plus their living necessities. He added, "Packing could include taking clothing for four seasons to a job. It's a major task to pack and load, then unpack and repack when the job is done."

The two said they were looking forward to doing more 'prep' work at their studio and bringing that with them to a job. Kurt explained, "It can be very difficult, and not healthy for us, using some of the materials we use to make parts of our exhibits on the job site. In the future we'll be looking for ways to do things in the more controlled environment of our own workshop."

Steve Edwards

The Foothills Exhibit is the last major diorama to be completed in the museum. Ticket holders for the annual Wildlife Museum banquet will have a chance to view progress on the new exhibit during the before dinner tour of the museum.

As to the future for their type of business, they don't see many young people being attracted to it. Liz said, "It takes a special kind of commitment to do things the way we do them. You have to be willing to put in the time and be gone from home for long periods of time." Most emerging exhibit producers are looking for ways cut corners to save time and money. Kurt said, "We have the luxury of being able to spend more time than we might have estimated because we have a side business of making photo props for school photographers. They use the sort of three-dimensional items we are very good, and efficient, at making."

They are still highly motivated to make exhibits that teach. Kurt said, "We believe a diorama should tell a story, a viewer should learn from it." They explained a well-designed diorama or exhibit is more than just a bunch of stuffed animals, fake plants and props. And they want to continue to create the most realistic experiences they can for museum visitors. Don't expect these two to kick back and rest on their laurels. They are still passionate about the work they are doing and future projects they will be taking on.