David Rousseau's Model CityDavid Rousseau (1885 - 1963)
About the Artist/Site
Little is known about the life of David Rousseau beyond the fact that he lived in Belle Plaine, Kansas and spent most of his life working in construction with a specialty in building basements under existing homes. Rousseau became notable in the city of Belle Plaine for building a miniature model town in the front yard of his own home out of wire mesh and brightly dyed concrete. The model town was suspended over a fish pond and had a series of ramps which connected the buildings to one another. Gregg Blasdel, another artist from Belle Plaine, Kansas who would eventually became a pivotal advocate for “grassroots environments” in the latter half of the 20th century, cited David Rousseau as his earliest experience with self-taught artists. Blasdel included Rousseau as one of the featured environment builders in his seminal article “The Grass-roots Artist,” which was published in Art in America in 1968 and brought artist-built environments to a broad audience for the first time.
Narrative by Gabrielle Christiansen, 2024
Sources:
- Gregg Blasdel, "The Grass-roots Artist,” Art in America, September-October 1968, p. 27
- James Smith Pierce, essay and super 8 film from Folk and Self-Taught Film Collection, University of North Dakota, https://commons.und.edu/fast-films/40/
Contributors
Map & Site Information
713 North Summer
Belle Plaine, Kansas
Latitude/Longitude: 37.3939098 / -97.281155
Nearby Environments
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