Sculptor Florence Sprague Smith

Sculptor Florence Sprague Smith

Florence Sprague said the stone talked if you let it. She’d hand you a hammer, point to a block, and tell you, “Stop thinking. Listen.” If someone asked her what she meant, she’d shrugged. “Everything worth saying’s already in the rock,” she said. “You just have to shut up long enough to hear it.”

People said she had farmer’s hands and a pianist’s patience. In 1914 she created a bronze called Joy of Labor—a woman mid-stride, sleeves rolled, muscles showing. The Des Moines Register described it as “simple and strong, a hymn to honest work.” 

“Work is beautiful if you let it be,” she told a student who complained about mixing plaster. That was Florence: no theory, just doing. “You don’t need Paris,” she’d say. “You need a place to stand and something worth hitting.”

When Grant Wood started his Stone City Art Colony in the early ’30s, she packed her tools and went. The colony was supposed to give Midwestern artists a reason to stay home instead of chasing New York glory. Florence didn’t need convincing. “We’ve got better stone,” she said, tapping the local limestone. “And cheaper rent.”

Sculptor Florence Sprague

Charcoal drawing after an image in the Des Moines Register.
August 23, 1914.

Des Moines sculptor Florence Sprague studied for two years at the Chicago Art Institute. Previous to that, she spent two years studying with Professor Charles A. Cuming. According to the Des Moines Register she spent the summer of 1914 creating candlesticks, bookends, and other knick-knacks to sell in local craft shops.

Click here to read a longer biography of Florence Sprague Smith.

Stone City: The Art Movement That Almost Worked

Instructors at the Stone City Art Colony. (left to right) Grant Wood,
Dave McCosh, Edward B. Rowan, Arnold Pyle, Adrian Dornbush,
and Marvin Cone. Not pictured Florence Sprague Smith

The road to Stone City curved through corn and limestone, pale as bone. The air buzzed with heat. You could smell the river before you saw it.

Then — laughter. Wild, unfiltered laughter bouncing off the quarry walls. That’s how you knew you’d found it.

It was 1932. The country was broke. So were most of the people who came here. They brought brushes, bedrolls, debts. Hope too, the kind that doesn’t last long but burns bright.

Grant Wood was on the porch when they arrived. Round glasses, overalls, a grin that could mean anything. “Don’t just stand there,” he shouted. “Grab a brush or grab a beer!”

Someone did both. Someone else tripped on a paint bucket. It began like that.

The Stone City Art Colony. Fifty bucks for the summer — if you had it. If you didn’t, nobody asked.