Museum of Unremarkable Objects
Tucked away in a hollow just outside of Gays Mills, Wisconsin, is a (as it has been referred to), quirky roadside attraction, the Museum of Unremarkable Objects and Sleepy Hollow a.k.a. Creepy Hollow. This very unique off the beaten path attraction is located at 43525 South Sleepy Hollow Road, Gays Mills hosted by Steve and Martha Querin-Schultz.
“I'd say it's more than unremarkable. I think it's pretty cool,” said Martha. “Other people call it Creepy Hollow, but I call it Sleepy Hollow. So, I am an artist and I make things out of unwanted objects and I work with a lot of dolls and doll heads and things like that. I just have this passion for making things out of stuff I find or people give me. When the Cottonwood tree that was across the road from our driveway fell down, I think in 2016, it left a big stump. Steve was all ready to just cut it down and grind it when I said, ‘No, no, no, I have an idea’.”
You may be thinking, where does this lead? To give you a better idea, Martha told me about a place in Mexico called Isla de las Muñecas (Island of the Dolls) on Lago Huetzalin (lake of the ruler, good person or influencer), just South of Mexico City. The island has dolls hanging from the trees, sitting on the fences, dolls everywhere. People come there from all over bringing dolls adding to the already immense doll community.
According to isladelasmunecas.com, it is dedicated to the lost soul of a poor girl who met her fate too soon in strange circumstances. The area has thousands of people, but this small island is home to hundreds of terrifying dolls. It is said that a girl was found drowned in mysterious circumstances many years ago on this island and that the dolls are possessed by her spirit. Local legend says that the dolls move their heads and arms and have even opened their eyes. Don Julian Santana Barrera was the caretaker of the island. The story goes that Julian found a little girl drowned in mysterious circumstances while he was not able to save her life. Others question even the existence of the drowned girl. Reports conclude that Julian has made up the story about the girl in his solitude.
Martha said she has always been interested in the island and a trip there is on her bucket list. “I thought, well, maybe I could do my own like doll head kind of area. So, I just started decorating the stump left from the downed Cottonwood tree with some of my doll heads that I had painted. I'll take dolls apart and put them together like little Frankenstein's of all different parts and stuff.”
After she started placing dolls on the stump, she noticed people were leaving other dolls. “It just grew and grew and grew. Behind the stump is the trunk of the cottonwood tree and people started leaving stuff on that. Then we added another log because we needed more space for people to leave their dolls.” Martha noted that probably more than 60% maybe even 70% of the items that are down there have been left by anonymous people. “Some of my neighbors do it and I know when they leave something, or people will sometimes post pictures on Instagram or Facebook and then tag me so I could see who did it. But most often I have no idea who left it. So that's why I call it a neighborhood art project or abandoned art or outdoor art. People started giving it the name Creepy Hollow because of the dolls. Of course, when you've got those dolls out there over a couple of years, they start to degrade a little bit and yeah, it's creepy. But I just call it Sleepy Hollow. I’ve been doing this since 2016 and just having a ball with it.”
Every day Martha goes down there and looks to see what's new. She admitted it’s fun to see some of the really creative things they do with their dolls or additions. “It's not just leaving a doll. It's leaving like the ‘advice baby’, the little baby sitting in the advice booth. Somebody made that whole thing and screwed it to the tree. There are the little dolls that are catching butterflies with nets. It's a whole system, I mean a whole scene somebody made that brought it here. There's a lot of creative people out there,” she said.
By now, you might be wondering where the Museum of Unremarkable Objects comes in. Martha said she started the very small museum a year ago last spring. She got the idea when she and Steve were on a trip to Vermont, and stopped in Glover to visit the ‘Museum of Everyday Life’. “It was just inspiring and it was big. It was a barn and it's run by a group of people who are artists, puppeteers, and philosophers. There was a lot of thought behind the exhibits. An exhibit on dust and an exhibit on keys and even one on tooth brushes. I think right now they're doing an exhibit on knots and ropes. There are changing exhibits and then there are permanent exhibits. We spent a good day there. I said to Steve, ‘I want to do something like this’. We’re the kind of people that when we go on a road trip, if there's like the world's largest ball of twine, you know, we will go off the highway and go see it. Any kind of those little roadside attractions I'm just attracted to.”
That gave Martha her idea for the ‘Museum of Unremarkable Objects’. She thought she could tie it into her artwork, making things out of unwanted, discarded, or unremarkable items. “So, I just started it up, started making a few displays. And then some people in the area started seeing what was happening and they started donating displays. Now it's grown quite a bit.”
The exhibits are permanent in the museum, except for in the display case, she rotates those. “Right now, there's an exhibit in there on buttons, and the history of buttons. I'm going to be changing that out this month putting in an unremarkable fingerprint dusting powder exhibit. So, there'll be a whole display in there about dusting for fingerprints and the history of it and things like that. I just like fingerprints, or fingerprinting, and I thought that's pretty remarkable. But the dust, no pun intended, that's pretty unremarkable. People will come to me and say, ‘oh, you should do a display on cameras. And I'm like, cameras are pretty remarkable. I try to think of things like safety pins, Q tips, post it notes, you know, things like that we don't think about.” Whatever I put in there, I read all about it and I'll write up the history of it and then I share that in a book that's down in the museum. I just realized how much I'm like my dad. He was a walking encyclopedia. And when you're a kid, you don't think your dad is so cool. Or you know, Dad, I don't really care to know the history of the doorknob, you know, but now I'm doing that too. And I went okay, I’m my dad's daughter. Yeah, I picked that up from him and learn to love little tidbits of information trivia like that,” she said smiling.
Martha said people are bringing new exhibits or people are reaching out to her on Instagram or Facebook with ideas. “A lot of times if people say I have an idea, I'm like, why don't you make it and then I'll write up the history and put it in the museum.”
Martha and Steve are also considering putting up an outdoor display area, just off to the side of the museum, to display heavier objects or metal objects. “We're gonna put a little fence up and then I'll put things on the fence.”
An addition in the works is a UFO crash site and village with aliens. “So that's going to be happening hopefully this fall,” she said.
Open year round, this last spring when the snow melted, Martha found items that people had left she and Steve didn't know were there. “So, they had brought it and then it snowed. The only thing about the museum is, it’s open every day during winter daylight hours. “As long as the snows not too deep. I'll have it open,” she said.
Martha stressed, if people are planning to come visit the Sleepy Hollow stump, they should bring something with them. “I ask that people don't take anything except photos and leave something. Whatever you want. We have such an amazing collection down there. And it's just fun to see what people bring. I think what makes me really happy, is I can hear people laughing down there and talking when they visit, especially in the evening in the summertime. That brings me a lot of joy. So, that's the idea, just for people to have fun.” Martha said she’s not being serious about anything and doesn’t want to offend anyone. “I just want people to smile,” she exclaimed.
