Biography/History

Sidney “Sid” Emmet Boyum was an artist, graphic designer, photographer, filmmaker, and sculptor from Madison, Wisconsin. Boyum was born in Duluth, Minnesota on August 16, 1913, to Severt Louis Boyum and Emma Maria (née Schroeder) Boyum (1885-1974). In 1917, his father and mother separated, with Severt moving to Madison with his oldest son John the same year and Emma moving with Sid and her youngest child Bernice (1915-2006) in 1919. Sid graduated from Madison East High School in 1932, and married Margaret L. Klassy (1911-1977) in 1939. In 1946, Margaret moved in with his mother, while their only child Steven (1940-2010) was sent to life with his mother's parents in Monticello, Wisconsin. Around this time Sid Boyum became involved with Beatrice “Bea” (née Walusiak) Heitmeyer. The affair never resulted in divorce, but Margaret moved out of her mother-in-law's house in 1959 when their son finished high school. Boyum eventually inherited his mother's house at 237 Waubesa Street, where he turned the house into a neighborhood landmark serving as a commercial studio, art gallery, and sculpture garden for his two- and three-dimensional work.

Since childhood, Boyum created art that combined a witty sense of humor with a method based on imitation, which is evident throughout the collection. He started drawing by copying newspaper comic strips and cartoons. By his senior year at East High School, he served as both art editor for the yearbook, Tower Tales, and president of the Cartoon Club; early versions of his style and signature appear throughout the yearbook. Boyum stated that he hoped cartoons would promote “a spirit of fun” and make others “appreciate art”^[1] —two sentiments he lived by and expressed throughout his lifetime. Upon graduation, he attended classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison but quickly withdrew for financial reasons, taking a job with the Brock Engraving Company.^[2] Boyum reportedly worked there as an artist and photographer for a decade which overlapped employment with Rayovac in 1939.^[3]

By the late 1930s, Boyum earned a scholarship from the Federal Arts Project.^[4] With this fellowship, he formally studied art and graphic design at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee which specialized in Modernism, and at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. ^[5] Boyum landed a brief stint in 1940 painting canvases for the Milwaukee Toy Loan Program ^[6] overseen by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). While studying in Chicago, he worked as a portrait photographer, a photo retoucher for catalogs printed by Sears and Roebuck, and a candy wrapper designer for McMillian Studios.^[7]

By the mid-1940s, Boyum established himself professionally in Madison by opening Graphic Arts Service^[8] in the Waubesa home which he ran for the next forty years. There, he created mechanicals and paste ups for commercial advertising designs ordered by local businesses such as Swann Studios, Cecil's Sandals, Martin Glass, Union Tavern, Virginia Dance Company, and Ole's Clothes. He also did photography for Ducks Unlimited, R.L. Bender Deluxe Cab Limousine Service, and Gratco Corporation (later Graftobian; a Madison make-up company started by Boyum's friend, Gene Coffman, which produced Disguise Stix©). In addition to his home studio, he worked at commercial photography firms located on State Street, starting with Meuer Photoart House in 1939 and then Sanchez Photography Store.

From 1943 until 1973 Boyum served as the Gisholt photographer and graphic artist for advertising. During his thirty-year career at the company, he created images for product pamphlets and brochures, trade magazines such as American Machinist, and safety signs for the plant.^[9] Boyum also regularly contributed cartoons, Christmas holiday art, and humorous writings to the News Crib, the bimonthly employee newsletter. He also regularly shared his knowledge of photography by offering classes for the company's Camera Club (established in 1948 ^[10]) and by formal invitation. For a number of subsequent years, he gave instructional lectures at the American Society of Tool Engineers, and in 1958 he presented a slide lecture on industrial photography for a UW Department of Engineering workshop that included other photographers associated with local businesses such as Bjorksten Research Laboratories. In 1954, Boyum studied film production, earning a certificate on industrial film from Marquette University. It is at this time that he began to make promotional and training films for Gisholt as well as home movies.

Boyum's most notable (and notorious) work at Gisholt, however, documents amusing antics and carousing fishing trips with co-workers in the 1950s and 1960s. Among these are countless retirement parties for friends and annual winter banquets for the Ice Chippers, all held in local supper clubs with walls plastered in Boyum's posters of characteristically sassy and bawdy cartoons replete with drinking and sex humor. Boyum designed jocular invitations for the Ice Chippers (also known as the Piscatores), an all-male ice fishing group of Gisholt employees who met on Lake Mendota typically in January or February. He also designed other greeting and holiday cards to send to Gisholt friends, all requiring graphic design that combined photographs, paste ups, and poetic text. Boyum's other poster art, photography, and film also show that he interacted with everyone at Gisholt from corporate administrators to plant workers and clerical staff (both male and female). His political posters champion working class issues. Examples of these outings, parties, posters, and cards are included in the collection.

The most outstanding and unique graphic work is the series, “Opening Day.” Running from 1963 to 1989 on the front page of the Sports sections in the Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal, this series includes elaborate and imaginative drawings which promoted the first day of the general fishing season. They were often captioned with Boyum's writing, sometimes poetic odes to the outdoors, sometimes comical word play about the fishing fantasy depicted. He reportedly created the drawings without compensation from the newspapers but as an exchange for prints. Like his other commercial and non-commercial work, Boyum applied the many techniques of graphic design with an added element of staging zany scenarios with friends outdoors and fishing, which were then photographed to serve as visual aids for the drawings.

One of Boyum's other side jobs was assisting Alex Jordan Jr., with the creation and promotion of the House on the Rock, which opened in 1959. Boyum and Tom Every (also known as Dr. Evermor) helped in the construction of many exhibits, including the carousels, and later appointed artistic director and board member, Boyum photographed interiors and exteriors for tourist brochures which he designed. In 1975, he also wrote to the National Trust for Historic Preservation on behalf of Jordan to seek outside support for the site. The Asian and African themes repeated throughout the site's art and architecture inspired Boyum, who by the mid-to-late 1960s began altering his home. Inside, he decorated walls with carvings, paintings and collected works, treating his home as an ever-evolving gallery space. Outside, he converted his back and side yard into a sculpture garden, beginning with a torii (a Japanese gate), an arched bridge by a reflecting pond, lanterns, and a pagoda. It was at this time that Boyum began his outdoor sculpture phase with large-scale painted concrete-cast forms inspired by Asian and African motifs, abstract and geometric designs, whimsical creatures, and other works influenced by art that he saw in major museums, on Milwaukee buildings or state historical markers. His colorful and imaginative profusion of sculpture endeared him to the neighborhood and attracted the attention of others, including Charles Kuralt who featured Boyum in an “On the Road” television segment in the 1970s. Boyum's reputation as an “outsider artist” is based on these outdoor sculptures.

Conservation and relocation projects of Boyum's outdoor art began after his death in 1991. When Steve Boyum inherited his father's home in 1992, he sought solutions to preserve and restore the folk art, which led to the founding of Friends of Sid Boyum Sculpture.^[11] The works were surveyed by UW students in 1992 as part of the Smithsonian and Heritage Preservation Inc. sponsored the Save Outdoor Sculpture! (SOS!) initiative.^[12] Steve and concerned neighbors organized the community to ensure long-term preservation and immediate conservation of the painted concrete art through several means including official city approval; professional advice from art conservator Anton (Tony) Rajer and architect Lou Host-Jablonski; applying for financial assistance through Madison's Community Enhancement Grant Program; and conducting a second inventory by a UW conservation class in 1999. Due to this community action, the City of Madison accepted thirteen of the seventy Boyum sculptures to be placed throughout the Atwood-Schenk neighborhood, which resulted in the largest, single donation of public sculpture in Madison's history.^[13] The first move took place in 2000 of the Smiling Mushroom, followed by the Polar Bear Chair, blue tripod, hippopotamus, and others. This “Sculpture Project” has been documented and mapped by Host-Jablonski and members of the Friends of Sid Boyum Sculpture organization such as filmmaker Gretta Wing Miller for the Design Coalition website.

In 2015, Friends of Sid Boyum (FoSB) incorporated as a non-profit to save the dilapidated 237 Waubesa Street property and to conserve “the art and legacy of … Sid Boyum.”^[14] The home had been seized by the County for non-payment of taxes, and FoSB worked with the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission on solutions to save the house.

Tower Tales, East High School, Madison, Wisconsin (1932).

Seifert, Kristi. "Neighbors To Decide On Public Sculpture, "Eastside News, 126, no. 3 (May/June 1997), front page.

Newspaper clipping of wedding announcement in photo album (PH 6986, Box 6, Folder 10, page 24).

Seifert, front page.

Ibid., front page and 15.

The Sixteenth Census of the United States Census (1940) lists “Sidney Boyum” as an “artist” for the Toy Loan Program.

Seifert, front page.

Evidence for this business appears as letterhead stationery dated as early as 1945 sent to Bea Heitmeyer (Mss 1213, Box 1, Folder 3).

News Crib, 10 (1958): Gisholt Machine Company Press, Madison.

Ibid., 2 (1948).

Host-Jablonski, Lou, and Anton Rajer, "From the Folk Art Messenger,"The Journal of the Folk Art Society of America, 12, No. 4 (Fall 1999); also "Sid Boyum's Sculpture: The Challenges of Preserving Folk Art Environments," on the Design Coalition website.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Friends of Sid Boyum website, “About Us” page, accessed May 29, 2019.