Sometimes, the smallest, most insignificant things can be transformed into something much greater. This is certainly the case at the Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman, Alabama, where a Benedictine monk’s hobby of creating items out of concrete and found materials turned into a world-famous tourist attraction. This summer, I was fortunate to receive a St. Thomas Graduate Art History Department travel grant to spend a week at St. Bernard’s Abbey researching the Grotto. I had three goals:

1. Experience and explore the site
2. Conduct interviews with those familiar with the grotto
3. Research in the St. Bernard Abbey Archives for vital primary source information

The Ave Maria Grotto is a landscaped, four-acre park spanning two city blocks. It contains 125 miniatures of buildings and religious sites from around the world as well as fantasy scenes, monuments, memorials, and sculptural works. Brother Joseph Zoettl, a German immigrant, created these over forty years (1915-1958) using concrete and found objects such as marble, glass, stone, tile, seashells, and costume jewelry. He even used empty beauty cream jars to create a tower in one miniature, and a bird cage and toilet tank floats as the domes on his version of St. Peter’s Basilica. He only saw six of the buildings in person; the rest were from images, postcards, or his imagination.

Born as Michael Zoettl in Landshut, Bavaria in 1878, he immigrated to Alabama at fourteen to become a student at the newly founded St. Bernard College. When an accident left him hunchbacked and unable to become a priest, he instead professed vows as a lay brother in 1897 (historically, lay brothers were responsible for manual labor rather than ecclesial duties). In 1911, Brother Joseph was assigned to run the monastery power plant, a demanding job with long hours spent shoveling coal. Here, he developed his hobby of creating miniatures to pass the time. First, he made over 5,000 small concrete grottos for Marian statues sold in the Abbey gift shop.

In 1915, he began constructing “Little Jerusalem,” miniature versions of biblical landmarks from the city. Originally placed around a small Marian grotto behind the monks’ recreation house, they eventually became so popular with tourists that they disrupted the monks’ prayer. In 1932, a solution was found when the abbot approved the creation of a large Marian grotto on the site of the monastery’s rock quarry. “Little Jerusalem” was moved there and Brother Joseph added new miniatures until his retirement in 1958. The namesake grotto is a massive, 27-foot-tall manmade cavern rising out of the hillside. It was built to Brother Joseph’s specifications and he decorated the interior, even creating manmade stalactites out of chicken wire and concrete. In 1934, the altar was consecrated and the park opened to the public. A significant example of a 20th-century Southern folk-art environment, the Ave Maria Grotto is on the National Register of Historic Places and the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage. It is still open to the public as a tourist attraction complete with a visitor center and gift shop.

Being on-site provided firsthand accounts and primary source information not available through secondhand research. I walked the same grounds Brother Joseph walked, saw the power plant where he worked, and was even invited into the private Grotto workshop, which contains a collection of his original materials.

I made discoveries that I would not have made if I had not been onsite.  While walking a wooded path, I found a decaying structure I thought was a well or monument. I later mentioned it during an interview with a monk. He told me there had been a college seminary at that location.

Then, browsing books in the monastery archives, I came across a photo of the seminary grounds. To my amazement, it included this structure in its prime! It was not a well, but a pedestal for a statue of St. Benedict of Nursia. With the archivist’s help, we found a very similar-looking statue on the monastery grounds and theorized that the statue itself was moved.

While I am unsure if this particular discovery will be included in my qualifying paper, it demonstrates a practical application of the research process I was taught, forming a research question and combining various pieces of evidence from interviews, observations, and archival records to make claims and support (or disprove) theories. My overall classroom education and professors’ advice prepared me to conduct this research well: look closely, immerse yourself in space, see where the research leads you.

Due to its massive size and number of works, the grotto is constantly revealing new details. Someone could walk through for days and still not notice everything, reiterating the sheer scale and creative complexity of Brother Joseph’s creations. I noticed something new every time I walked through and every encounter I had during the trip revealed a new perspective. My second time walking through the park, I met two conservationists working on preservation of the miniatures. They provided a wealth of information about Brother Joseph’s original techniques, ongoing preservation efforts, and the challenges of maintaining an outdoor built art environment.

The Grotto park serves a multiplicity of roles as complex and multifaceted as the miniatures it contains: it is a roadside tourist attraction, pilgrimage place, cultural heritage site, prayer garden, a folk art environment, and more. This shapes how viewers relate to and interpret it. It was important to be on site to listen to different people and hear their perspectives to begin understanding the Grotto’s full meaning and overall significance.

The travel grant enabled me to move beyond the pages of a book or a classroom, and to use the skills I have learned to make discoveries that will shape the direction of my qualifying paper. I am grateful to the Art History Department for their support and am excited to continue this research on the creative genius and art of a monk who dedicated his life to humbly living out the Benedictine motto of “Ora et labora” (pray and work) through his creations.