Festive Dioramas Part of ‘Harbor Holidays’ Celebration

Carol Wuollett-Pinkalla with her festive diorama in the Baileys Harbor Visitor Center & Historical Society.

Carol Wuollett-Pinkalla may not remember exactly what the Christmas window displays at Marshall Field’s looked like when she saw them as a child in the 1940s in Chicago, but she does remember the fascination they created.

“Marshall Field’s had animated windows, lots of them, the whole store and the adults were more crowded around the windows than the kids,” Wuollett-Pinkalla recalled. “You had to push your way between the big people to get to see them. We didn’t live in Chicago at that time when I was little but we would go down to see the windows every Christmas. You’d walk along the block with everybody and stop to look, and they were all family themed: people having a Christmas morning or a Christmas evening. I don’t remember many of the exact scenes, other than that I was fascinated with them.”

Decades later, Wuollett-Pinkalla is the one hoping to spur holiday cheer with her handcrafted dioramas, which will be unveiled at the Baileys Harbor Visitor Center and Historical Society during the Harbor Holidays festival this weekend.

Santa’s workshop holds a prominent place in Carol Wuollett-Pinkalla’s Christmas display at the Baileys Harbor Visitor Center.

There are gingerbread homes lined with gumdrops and candy canes, Santa’s workshop of toys and tools, and jolly dancers celebrating a newly decorated Christmas tree. Each of the dolls (there are close to a couple dozen in the display) was handcrafted by Wuollett-Pinkalla.

“I made their faces, hands and feet and then their bodies are wired together, covered with cotton batting, and then I sew their clothes for them,” she said.

One of the highlights of this particular exhibit is the interactive The Christmas Wish display, in which Wuollett-Pinkalla crafted scenes to accompany the bestselling children’s book by Lori Evert, which will be available for parents to read to their children. The story follows a brave young girl named Anja, who wanted to become one of Santa’s elves. Several winter animals, including a horse, deer and polar bear, help her make her way to Santa. These, too, Wuollett-Pinkalla has created using fur and cardboard.

Her passion for decking the halls is also a lesson in thriftiness – if an item hasn’t been handcrafted by the artist, it has been purchased for close to nothing at a thrift store or comes from her own collection of decorations. Her old fiddle ornaments became Santa’s instrument of choice and a strand of gum drop candies on sale at Menard’s completed the look of a large gingerbread style dollhouse.

Carol Wuollett-Pinkalla created a display to match ‘The Christmas Wish’ children’s book, by Lori Evert.

“Years ago they had neat Christmas decorations and a lot of these things were things I collected for my own tree and now when I needed them, I put them here,” Pinkalla said. “It seemed like anything I did need something for, I happened to find it at the thrift store.”

Pinkalla began displaying her creations for public consumption just a few years ago, first at the Country Walk Shops and then moving to the Sister Bay/Liberty Grove Library until her granddaughter, Brynn Swanson, offered up some space at the old Toft House (now the visitor center and historical society) on Highway 57.

“She’s had these on display at her house for years so we grew up with them,” Swanson said. “When we moved into this building, we had all this space and figured that it was a good place for them to go because it’s a partnership with the historical society. It kind of gives a look into what life used to be like.”