Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Father Peter Scheier
American; 20th-century
Farmer, SD: 2nd Street
69%
St. Peter’s Rock Grotto. 1926-1933
Father Scheier was no Father Dobberstein, but this humbler building is still a thing of quality, in a small way. Romanesquely squat and round, it hulks on the Dakota plain like a predator, but also looks sort of lonely. It was a stroke of Scheier’s to leave the peak of his structure open to the air, not only for natural light but because it tempers the thing’s thickness and heaviness without at all curtailing it. Ornamentally, though, it’s less inspired than other American grottoes I’ve seen. (2024)