Playing with mud: Nature inspires Langhus’s art

By Audrey Posten

Jim Langhus likes playing with mud. No, not the sticky, brown substance that results from mixing earth and water. But a white glaze containing little glass beads that can be brushed onto surfaces to create intricate patterns.

He uses the mud to make art—ornaments, pendants, lighted wine bottles—that are now sold at The Collective in Elkader, The Left Bank Shop and Gallery in McGregor, Vesterheim Museum in Decorah and the Monona Holiday Craft Fair.

“The mud has a little grit to it. I stick it mainly to glass,” Langhus described, “but it can be put on clay pots, wood, all sorts of materials.”

Langhus discovered the art form around a decade ago, when a friend saw it in a woodcarving magazine. They bought mud from an artist named Margot Clark in Florida and started experimenting on plywood blocks and wooden dominoes.

Langhus eventually moved to other shapes and materials, and began creating his own designs, often inspired by nature—butterflies and dragonflies, flowers and hummingbirds. It’s a “natural” fit for the retired MFL MarMac science teacher and long-time volunteer at Monona’s Butterfly Garden and Trails.

“There’s a lot of variety, and every year I produce some new designs,” he said.

One doesn’t just start painting directly on an object, though, especially something round like an ornament.

“I’ve got pictures, drawings. Here’s the butterflies, here’s a flower. Look at how many butterflies there were until you get something you like,” Langhus said as he flips through a nearly full sketch book. 

“I start putting it onto a flat surface,” he continued. “Once I get a flat surface figured out, then I go to a round surface. You also work from large to getting smaller so it can fit on what I want to get it on.”

Repetition helps Langhus prepare too.

“That way, you get it into your mind what’s going on, how it’s set up. I don’t just grab my paints and there it is,” he said.

Once Langhus feels good about a design, it’s time to paint. Like a baker icing a cookie, he applies mud with a pastry bag. 

“You make either a dot or line, then you pull it with a brush. That gives you the texture you see in flower petals or leaves,” he shared. 

Like the mud is specially made by artist Margot Clark, so are the brushes Langhus uses. When dampened, one brush offers a chisel edge for forming a line for a leaf or to texture petals. Another brush is pointed, perfect for small details.

One piece of equipment, which can be adjusted based on the size of the object, can hold a round ornament in place. Langhus can rotate the ball without having to touch it with his fingers, as well as paint any part without the risk of dragging his hand through the design. There are even guide marks which help him space his design.

“I can look at it and see where I put my designs, because they’re going to be all the way around. I never do anything on just one side,” he said.

Once Langhus squirts the mud onto an object, he has to work quickly. It can dry in 30 seconds. 

He forms background details first, then works toward the front. 

Describing the process of making a rose, Langhus said: “We’ll put on a couple of petals. There’s the center, and now I’m going to wrap it around. Everything comes to a point with all of our lines. Then we will bring in some other stuff from around the outside of it. There’s a petal on that side and another petal on this side. Then we’ll bring one up on the bottom side to make a complete rose. Then you give it a leaf. Every rose needs a leaf.”

“Sometimes, as you do it, you create something new. ‘Oh, let’s try this,’” he quipped.

No design is the same on all sides of an ornament or wine bottle.

“There’s no point in making everything perfect,” said Langhus, “because nature is not that way.”

A simple design can take a half hour to 45 minutes to complete. 

“If it’s got a little bit more going on—like the butterflies, some flowers, some lines that give it a nice, artistic flow—that makes it a little bit more. It might be an hour,” he said.

Wine bottles range from an hour and a half to three or four hours.

Langhus creates much of his art in late summer into fall, ahead of the Christmas season. Ornaments often don’t sell until Thanksgiving, he said.

He’s not ready to make it a job. He wants art to continue to be fun.

“I want it to look free. I want it to look happy,” he reflected.

Langhus appreciates that this hobby is so different than his career and volunteer work.

“I enjoy the peace of just sitting down to sketch something, trying to get your ideas onto a piece of paper, getting it to follow some type of form you can then put on a piece of artwork,” he said.

There’s a physical end product other endeavors don’t have.

“When you teach, you never see your end product. Here, I’ve got it and I can sell it,” he noted, “and I sell it because I’ve got a lot and don’t want it cluttering up my house.”

Selling his art at local venues also allows Langhus to connect with the people who buy it. While working at The Collective in August, he met a woman who previously went home with an ornament. 

“That is really special,” Langhus said. “You get to have a feeling for the people who buy your art, why they buy your art. You get to show them how it’s created. That’s interesting.”