WAUPUN — The Waupun Fine Arts Committee held a reception this week for their current art gallery, composed of wood carvings from local artist Erika Scheer. The reception was held Wednesday, September 24 from 6PM to 7:30PM.
Erika has lived in Waupun for the last seven years, having grown up in Chicago, Illinois and Naples, Florida, more recently living in Ohio before moving to Wisconsin with her family in 2018. She is a fourth generation word carver, having been an apprentice of her father who was from Budapest, Hungary.
“It’s a passion that’s pretty much in the blood,” Scheer said. “I fell in love with the medium, I fell in love with the creativity and the fact it was done by hand—I’m just a very tactile person.”
Scheer said that it was common for people to say that it was a “relaxing” hobby, but in reality wood carving is a very physical and noisy activity.
While she doesn’t have any favorites among her art pieces, she said she had a lot of inspiration for all of them.
“Different pieces have a different meaning and inspiration,” she said. “Some of them come from dreams, some of them from old memories, some of them are just studies. I like to show every single aspect—I think we’re all complicated people, I have different sides of me and I think everyone has different sides to themselves. So I just like to express myself in different ways.”
Scheer has art on display in many different art museums around Wisconsin and across the county, including in Milwaukee and Green Bay—especially some of the more experimental pieces. The ones on display at the Waupun Public Library were chosen for their wider public appeal, most of them nature-themed and some inspired by the Horicon Marsh.
One example she explained was a piece she made using some leftover pieces that were cut by her father, who passed away in 2021. The piece is titled “The Last Dance” and is composed of basswood on a plywood panel. The herons were pieces cut by her father, which she finished carving for the piece—the last collaborative piece they made together. It was made about three years ago, while she was living in Waupun.
Many of her works can be found in the upstairs fiction area in the southwest region of the second floor.
