Temperatures will continue to fall over the next few days

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

It takes a lot of thinking to make a statue of a woman throwing her hat into the air.

Gwen Gillen, who died two days after Mary Tyler Moore, is the woman who beat 20 other sculptors for the right to make the MTM statue that might have seemed like a tacky project at the time -- after all, it promoted a TV network -- that has, instead, become a symbol of Minneapolis.

today, the complexity of creating the statue is revealed, based on a previous interview Gillen gave to the paper.

Mary Tyler Moore was her signature piece, but certainly not her only piece.

There's Gertie the Duck on the Wisconsin Avenue bridge in Milwaukee.

In Plover, Wis., the Korean War Memorial features a nurse and Army and Marine infantrymen, because the infantry bears the brunt of the battle. None is carrying a weapon. That's intentional.

You've seen her work if you've been to the Wisconsin State Fair. The tile of a cow eating a cream puff? That's hers.

And Michelle Witmer will live forever at the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs in Madison, even though 

Gillen told NPR in 2005 that she was going to put a typically serious face on the statue, the kind that usually memorializes the fallen. Then she met Witmer's family.

"You figure there's so many military sculptures out there, and they all have the sort of same feeling to them as far as being honorable, country, duty, serious," she said. "I mean, it's not a light subject, but you don't see many of them smiling. And it's not made up something--it's not something--`Well, I want to put a smile on her.' She constantly had a smile on her. You've got young people that are dying in this war, and young people don't go around with these serious expressions on their face."

There are more. In Lake Geneva, Wis., this golfer is hoping the foursome will hurry up.

She also created the life-sized sculptures of Father Kentenich, founder of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary, that stand outside the Order’s chapels near Pewaukee, Wis., Rome, Italy, and Puerto Rico.

"I did what I wanted to do, but I never knew beforehand what that was," she said 

. "You have to go with what you are. If you do things just for money, it will be terribly boring. If you do what feels worth doing, money is a side benefit."

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

It takes a lot of thinking to make a statue of a woman throwing her hat into the air. Gwen Gillen, who died two days after Mary Tyler Moore, is the woman who beat 20 other sculptors for the right to make the MTM statue that might have seemed like a tacky project at the time -- after all, it promoted a TV network -- that has, instead, become a symbol of Minneapolis.

Gwen Gillen was much more than the Mary Tyler Moore statue

Go Deeper.

Like this?