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Places to see Reinhold Marxhausen’s art in and around Seward

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This post is currently a work in progress, and I would welcome additions or corrections in the comments below. I’ll try to get a map together after we get the list nailed down. Oh, and I’m very open to anyone who wants to rewrite any of these descriptions.

  • Cattle Bank on the East side of the courthouse square in Seward
    • Grain Elevators of Seward County. A collection of 20 watercolors that the bank commissioned Marxhausen to do in the 1970’s. The paintings are displayed in one of the upstairs conference rooms at Cattle Bank. Just let the person at the information desk of the bank that you would be interested in seeing the Marxhausen watercolors.
  • Jones Bank on the Southwest corner of the courthouse square in Seward
    • A very large and fascinating burnt wood and ceramic tile mural dominates the West entrance to the bank. (image) (video)
  • Concordia University
    • Holy Spirit / Open Book is a large art installation to the West of Link Library that you can see as you drive past Weller Hall. 1959
    • There is an amazing and very large Marxhausen mural immediately to the right when you enter the Janzow Campus Center through the upper entrance.
    • The intricately carved brick benches in the basement of Weller Hall are Marxhausen’s as well.
    • Concordia occasionally shows items from their extensive Marxhausen permanent collection in the Marxhausen Gallery in Jessie Hall.
  • The Center for Liturgical Arts is located due South of Concordia University on Columbia Ave, and stands on the location of the former Marxhausen residence.
    • The front door of the center is the original burnt wood mosaic front door of the Reinhold and Doris’ house. Well worth stopping to see.
    • The Marxhausen Studio is on the South side of the property and has been restored to once again be a working art studio (video of the studio when Marx used it).
    • The Center also has several of Marxhausen’s works on display. They would be happy to show them to you.
  • Masonic Lodge building on the South side of the courthouse square across the street from Jones Bank
    • The entire South side of the building is a huge painted mural by Marxhausen. It was painted with the help of his students around 1980 and was restored around 1998, but could probably use some TLC again. The text is this poem by his friend, William Kloefkorn, who was appointed State Poet of Nebraska 1982:

      Nebraska, water and soil and wind, color and light and heat: Something forever plump and firm, above the ground, the itch forever. Of something small but ripening, underneath

  • St. John Lutheran Church located at 900 Columbia Avenue, across the street from Concordia University
    • The stained glass windows that run the length of East and West walls of the church, as well as in the balcony and a central skylight.
    • The communion cross which is generally on the altar during communion services.
    • The liturgically themed processional crosses that are used at various times though out the church year.
    • St. John also has a fairly extensive collection of Marxhausen pieces most of which can be viewed online.
  • The Law offices next to Red Path Gallery on the North side of the courthouse square
    • There are about 20 Marxhausen pieces on display in the front windows. The pieces are rotated a few times a year. While you’re there, why don’t you stop by Red Path Gallery next door? Have a drink, look at the art, and ask them why they don’t have a little Marxhausen display.
  • The LCMS Nebraska District Office on the corner of Highway 34 and Columbia Ave.
    • Two stained glass windows in the tower. The windows are more impressive when seen from the inside.
    • In the same room as the stained glass windows is a large burnt wood mosaic. This mosaic was part of an altar that was removed when the building was remodeled.
    • In the lower level conference room is a small metal cross.

Have I missed anything? Do you have any corrections or additions? Just rewrites to make this sound better? Links to photos? Please add them in the comments.

Installation Day

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Lauren was at work, so Wally and I had to get ready for the new washing machine. There were twenty-four years of stuff under the dryer, but I didn’t get a proper before picture. Because the new washer didn’t have a reversible door, I had to swap the positions of our washing machine and dryer.


You can see the total amount of debris that was recovered. Speaking of recovered, I’m sure there must have been $2.17 worth of change in that pile, but neither Wally nor I were going to dig through it.

The movers knew what they were about. They had the professional version of Lauren’s fore-arm-forklifts. This one goes over your shoulders, so it’s even easier to lift things. The only real problem with it is that it only has one strap, so there is a little more balancing involved. On the other hand, what else are you going to do with your hands? Delivery cost $104, but I didn’t have to use fore-arm-forklifts, so it was well worth it.

Also included in the $104 was me just standing around while they lifted it on the pedestal, which I had completely forgotten about, and doing all of the setup. Lauren got the pedestal from their scratch and dent section. It’s pretty messed up on the side that no one is ever going to see.

The delivery people didn’t switch the door on the dryer for me, so I actually had to do something. There are 12 screws to take out and put back in to reverse the door –in case you were wondering.

The only thing left to do is to connect the washer to the internet, so I can do laundry online.

Family Tree

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About a decade ago we went to the Nebraska Sommerer’s family reunion. We only knew two people there before hand, but we met a lot of nice people, including Jordan Larson‘s mom, Kae. It’s nice to be related to someone famous other than Lauren. We’ve since gone back to the reunion several times, and each time we meet new people, and afterwards, in true Sommerer form, my parents and I argue about how they are all related.

This led to several hand drawn family trees where we tried to sort it all out. Eventually that led me to look for something better than drawing boxes and lines out by hand. After off and on searching for a few years, I started putting some information into FamilyEcho. I picked it because it was free, online –so I could show it to people from anywhere–, and it allowed other people to work on a family tree together. Oh, and it looks nice too.

I worked on adding information to this family tree off and on for the last year and a half. Then I found out something that FamilyEcho didn’t do very well. It didn’t print large family trees nicely. I tried anyway, but I had to cut pages and tape them together, and the text was pretty small anyway.

I finally ended up buying Family Tree Maker. It’s a nice program, but you can’t work on it from different computers, or show people from your phone, or work together with others. But it does print nicely. So working in FamilyEcho, exporting and printing from Family Tree Maker seems like a win.

Except for one stupid problem: PDF documents can not be larger than 16.8 feet long (200 inches actually). Doesn’t that seem like an odd limitation?

“Who could possibly need to print something over 200 inches?”

–someone who works at Adobe

That limit probably turned out for the best, because I had to think a little more creatively about the family tree. If it wasn’t for that limitation, I would have had to print something that was about 5 feet tall and 24 feet wide, and that’s a little on the big side. Instead, I split the tree into 5 sections and moved them around until they pretty well fit on a 3 feet by 16.8 feet piece of paper. Office Depot wanted $195.00 to print it.

I eventually found some guys online who print blueprints. They wanted about $50 to print it, so I ordered 3 of them. They came pretty quickly, and Lauren helped me reinforce the edges and every so often in the middle with tape. I thought about laminating it, but I’m sure there are any number of errors on it. I’ll let everyone make corrections at the family reunion before I commit to something like that.

There are almost 600 people in the family tree right now. There are huge sections that are incomplete. My great grandparents and down should be pretty complete, but after that it gets pretty iffy. I didn’t do hardly any genealogy work on this. Other people did that. I just put it in a format that would print nicely (more or less).

The cats were very interested in their heritage.

I inconvenienced a deer

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Wednesday morning, right outside of Seward, by the parade of flags, I noticed a deer on the other side of the road headed away from me. I let up on the gas and then noticed the other deer on the shoulder moving toward me. I did two things next, and I think one of them was wrong. I slammed on the brakes and slammed on the horn both at the same time.

The second deer had time to get to my lane and then spent too much time wondering what I was honking about.

I hit the deer.

But not too hard.

I pulled off the road to check out the damage. I’d seen lots of cars that had hit deer and wasn’t looking forward to seeing the front of the car. But it was surprisingly mild.

I spent a lot of the rest of the drive in to Lincoln trying to put those 1 or 2 seconds in some sort of order in my mind. I think I was going about 50 mph when I saw the first dear. I think I had my foot off the gas for maybe half a second before I hit the brakes and maybe a half second of braking before I hit the deer at maybe 35-40 mph. It could have been slower. I don’t think I could have been going much faster with that little damage.

The deer didn’t go over the car or up on the windshield or anything. There was no blood. The deer walked away. I think it gave me a dirty look for honking.