You Gotta Go to the Grotto

Brother Joseph Zoettl was either an inspired artist and sculptor or the Benedectine king of kitsch, and Ave Maria Grotto, his work of a lifetime, is either a religious shrine or a loony but lovable roadside attraction, cousin to the alligator farms and the hidden caves of American schlock culture.

The Ave Maria Grotto, in Cullman, Alabama, known to tourists and pilgrims as "Jerusalem in Miniature," is a four-acre park on the grounds of St. Bernard Abbey, and the setting for 125 miniature reproductions of some of the most famous religious sites around the world - Lourdes Cathedral in France and the World Peace Church in Hiroshima, among them -- as well as some head-scratchers, such as "Hansel and Gretel Visit the Temple of the Fairies." Zoettl devoted the better part of his life to creating his "masterpieces," and while some might claim that he missed his calling as a great artist, others will say that, well, that he was putting us on.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, is the theme Brother Joseph took to heart. The sculptures in Ave Maria Grotto are built almost entirely of broken glass, marbles, tile chips, bits of stone and concrete, plastic animals, toilet bowl floats, cold cream jars, and other flotsam and jetsam he found near at hand. Visitors to the site pay five dollars to enter, pass through a gift shop where they can purchase a shot glass, T shirt or commemorative spoon, and step onto a wooded trail that winds through the splendiferous shrines made of junk and emerges onto the awe-inspiring panorama of an entire hillside covered with cathedrals, scenes from the Holy Land and an artificial cave -- the Ave Maria Grotto itself.

The replicas are meticulously wrought and lovingly rendered from the poor materials that were at hand, so much so that the visitor may be rapt with wonder in spite of himself. There are the famous buildings familiar to all from the Bible; the Roman landmarks, St. Peter's and the Colosseum; the famous Spanish Missions of the American Southwest; and replicas of the legendary shrines of Our Lady of Fatima and Lourdes. Most of all, it is the imagination of Brother Joseph that is on display - he never saw the buildings he re-created, but worked from photographs - and his peculiar genius, if you will, which could see in a rusty birdcage the ideal foundation for the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral.

Joseph Zoettl was born in Landshut, Bavaria (Germany) in 1878. ("Hansel and Gretel Visit the Temple of the Fairies," made of bits of stone, marbles and green tile and featuring a dragon, is a composite representation of childhood stories he'd heard in Bavaria.) He immigrated to this country as a teenager and settled in northern Alabama. Soon afterward he began studying at the newly founded Benedictine monastery, St. Bernard's, where he took his vows in 1897. He ran the monastery's power plant and was, even by monk standards, a withdrawn, quiet man.

As a student he had helped in the construction of the abbey buildings, during which time he suffered a back injury that left him permanently hunchbacked. That condition did not deter - and perhaps it even abetted - his artistic inclinations. His solitary pursuit may have been a way for him to further isolate himself; his original dozen or so sculptures were located in an abbey garden closed to the public. But word of the collection spread, and the replicas were moved to their present site and the Grotto opened to the public in 1934.

By then the collection had grown several times, and Brother Joseph continued adding to it until shortly before his death in 1961. After World War II he built a memorial to St. Benedict College alums killed in battle - made, among other things, of colored marbles and shards of glass. He completed his last work, Lourdes Cathedral, in 1958. He is buried in the Abbey cemetery, a short distance from the Grotto gift shop.

Intermingled among the religious articles at Ave Maria Grotto are several secular sculptures, among them replicas of the Great Pyramid and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the latter enhanced with plastic toy elephants. Toy animals also figure prominently in his Noah's Ark, lined up outside the vessel. Cheesy enough - but on the other hand, one may marvel at Brother Joseph's inventiveness and attention to detail in pieces such as "St. Peter's Shrine," in which he depicts with chunks of rock how Christ showed the doubting Thomas how he, too, could walk on water.

So snicker if you will, but Brother Joseph will have the last laugh: In 1984, the Ave Maria Grotto was listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.