Cave is home to multi-media art show by Pauline Walle, The Rochester Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minnesota , October 7, 1995, Vol. 70, No. 240
Cave exploration is taking on new meaning this weekend in the Catacombs of Yucatan.
Washington State artist Dan Senn has installed a light, sound and history show in the limestone playground of his childhood. The cave, which is 272 feet long and about 14 feet high in places, is located beneath a bluff on his aunt and uncle's farm between Spring Grove and Houston in Black Hammer Township.
Senn's installations will be open to the public until 5 pm. today and from 10 am. to 5 pm. Sunday. The free event is part of the Spring Grove Autuum FoWWe Festival and sponsored by Ye Olde Opera House.
The musician/artist has created his "instruments" from ucer microphone parts. PVC pipe, springs and 14-pound fish line stretched within PVC chassis.
"It's mostly hardware stuff," he says. The sound oscillates in his "Winged Pendlyre" by pulling on the fishline.
Senn also photographed the texture of wood and other natural objects and displays these imagesin a multimedia show within the cave. A series of colored lights puts a glow on the path and helps to guide footsteps.
The cave probably was well known to Winnebago Indians who lived in the area. Its white visitor was William Carrier, whose son Peter found agold coin inside. Farmer Louis Benson, exploring at the turn of the century, reported a "bottomless pit" and two skeletons, thus the name Catacombs.
In the 1930s area residents enlarged the opening, built a dance hall platform and cafe over the mouth of the cave. Couples ate nickel burgers and drank Spring Grove pop. They took their breaks on "inspiration point," the escarpment 400 feet over the scenic valley.
"There were three years of intense social activity" before people tired of hiking to the secluded location. Senn learned. "But that ldnd of music is still played for dances at Hyland Schoolhouse just over the Iowa border."
Senn got so interested in that period that he interviewed neighbors who frequented the area 60 years ago. Their stories are told via a series of computer monitors installed in nooks and crannies of the catacombs and powered by agas generator.
Helen Jameson, a former Rochester Methodist Hospital executive and her sister Myrtle, Senn's aunt Maribm Hahn, Paul Groteboer, Gladena Reierson, Allen Orr and Oneida Stange speak out from the monitors.
One of the cave's natural resources is gone. Someone cut the stalactites from the ceiling and sold them. But they appear to be growing back in the moist interior. Stalagmites rising from the floor also are gone and Senn leveled the [cave floor] with a pick to make a safe pathway. The interior also had its layer of manure because cows were among its explorers.
If there is still a bottomless pit, it is not on tour. But it's a "bat-free enviroranent," Senn said. "They left when I started my work and I'll let them back when I leave."
Senn is a native of Watertown, Wis. He calls himself a sound artist who came to contemporary music by way of the visual wU. He studied French hom and vocal music from childhood, later learning ceramic sculpture while in music school at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse.
He has his doctorate in music composition and ceramic sculpture from the University of Illinois and served professorships in Australia and campuses in Illinois.
Senn performs widely on his sculptural instruments and exhibits "percussive videos," the frame-by-frame rhythmic mapping of a single object or territory like those in the cave. He also developed a computer software program called the Raku Composition Program named for a method of creating pottery.
Since 1974 his personal journals have figured into his music and performance art.
While Senn certainly is a contemporary artist, "he's not wacky," observers have noted.
Senn thinks visitors will find something to enjoy in the Catacombs of Yucatan with their unique acoustic environment.
"Some will come for the art, some for the videos (history), and some because the cave is beautiful and cool."
To reach the "living instrument of light and sound." drive to Houston and go south on Minnesota 76 to Houston 4. turn right and drive eight miles past Yucatan (population 20) take the first right after the road turns to gravel and go up the hill one mile. From Spring Grove: Go north eight miles on Houston 4 to bridge; take second gravel road and go left, up the hill one mile. Hikers will find the cave a quarter of a mile off the road over pasture. The cave also is part of the Fall Foliage bus route.