The Hartman Rock Garden in Springfield, Ohio is a one-of-a-kind art environment. Its reach extends far beyond its picket fence and into the surrounding community. Visitors often come from all over to see the unique rock art, and then stay local to eat in restaurants, hike on trails and shop in stores.
For years the site has operated on a fifteen thousand dollar budget. But now, thanks to a seventy five thousand dollar annual legacy grant from the Ruth Kohler Foundation, this unique Ohio attraction will be able to expand its offerings.
The Hartman Rock Garden in Springfield is an eclectic folk-art site created during the Great Depression by former resident Ben Hartman. The garden consists of hundreds of miniature recreations of famous buildings, religious shrines, patriotic imagery and 1930’s pop culture. It’s constructed from hundreds of thousands of small stones set in concrete that have been gathered from nearby streams and land surrounding the property.
People always ask, "How did Ben Hartman get all these rocks here?"
"One bucket at a time," said Kevin Rose.
Kevin Rose is the historian for the Turner Foundation in Springfield. He’s been working with the Hartman Rock Garden since the restoration began in 2009.
“I come from, kind of, a fine arts background, and when I first kinda got involved in these sites I was like what is this stuff? It was not my cup of tea. It took me a while to warm up to it,” he said.
Rose has now spent a good portion of his life trying to maintain, preserve and interpret Ben Hartman’s legacy. He said there’s this view that there is a certain type of person who makes this art, and there is — it’s a creative person.
“They used to use the term for the Hartman Rock Garden concretia dementia,” Rose explained. “Concretia is a fancy word for concrete, and dementia, dementia is the loss of cognitive ability. It’s the opposite of that — It’s the brain working at its fullest capacity.”
The term Folk Art or Outsider Art are often used to describe these types of work, but Rose prefers the term Visionary Artist. “Those visions might be small, they might be one object, and the next vision is another object, and before they know it they have an entire world they’ve created — found, assembled, whatever that might be — and really created something special.”
Historically these kinds of sites have been viewed as roadside attractions rather than works of art. That’s largely due to the interpretation of art as something that hangs on a wall in a museum. So many of these kinds of sites are off the beaten path; they’re not the city art museums with official signage in cities directing you to their location.
Rose said, “There’s a certain neighborhood you often find these places in, and they’re the places visitors are not historically going to, right? You don’t often historically find visitors coming to Springfield and going down to the south west neighborhood where the Hartman Rock Garden is.”
Fernado Romero:
Fernado Romero is the current artist in residence at the garden. He has lived in Ben Hartman’s former house for the past five years and serves as the caretaker for the grounds. He said he’s seen people from all over the world visit the garden. “It’s a very unique experience I would say, because I’m basically living in a museum. Everyday I wake up and I’m like man, I’m so lucky to be here.”
When asked if Romero has a favorite piece in the garden he responded, “Maybe not a piece, but a place, and I would say it’s right in the center of the garden. There’s a great sense of comfortness, just sort of letting go of your stress, letting go of your negative thoughts. It helps me. I would like to think it’s the energy of Ben that gives me comfort.”
The Hartman Rock Garden is one of 10 environmental art sites that received legacy funds from Ruth Arts — a newly formed foundation named after Wisconsin arts benefactor Ruth DeYoung Kohler. Ruth was a former board member of the Kohler foundation before she passed away in 2020. Ruth believed passionately that the arts reveal who we are as a people: Past, present and future.
“I believe these sites should be saved because they represent stories that we are not hearing in other places — places that so naturally attract everyone, and I mean everyone,” Kevin Rose said. “When you’re at a site you see the diversity of human beings that are there at any given time. Nothing else I work on so naturally does that. That’s what’s so beautiful about it, and that’s one of the reasons I love it.”
Rose believes that it's equally beautiful when an entire community wants to preserve and save and continue sharing something that was created by someone that, in some cases, they didn’t even know.
“It’s that act of creation, that act of sharing that really connects those people,” Rose said.
The Hartman Rock Garden plans to use some of the money from the grant to help create an on-site visitor center with bathrooms for guests, and expand programming.
