Peter Kohlmoos was finishing his art degree from Concordia Teachers College in 1976 when Harold “Budd” Davisson was looking for things to put into the World’s Largest Time Capsule.
At Concordia, the San Francisco Bay area native had focused on sculpture, particularly stone carving, welding and small castings. In his last semester, he took a ceramics class.
There he created a plaster mold of his face by putting straws in his nose, smearing petroleum jelly on his eyebrows and not moving a muscle while his friend poured plaster over his face.
Several ceramic masks were made. The one in the time capsule was forgotten and he is not sure where others ended up.
But one of those castings still hangs on his kitchen wall.
“I get senses and feelings from the things I keep,” Kohlmoos said of his artwork and, specifically, the mask.
It reminds him of where he has been, the skills and knowledge he has acquired.
“I see a young man who actually did not know the depth of what he was diving into,” he said. “It reminds me of what got me started on this journey in life.”
He has achieved living free and making art, but isolated himself from the art world as he raised a family.
“I do not even know if I could have done it and had the family because of the amount of time it would take. My children are very dear to me. I have no regrets about being a dad,” Kohlmoos said.
After leaving Seward, Kohlmoos did graduate study in the University of Wyoming’s stone-carving department. After that, he spent three years in a fellowship with renowned sculptor Robert Russin, who among other sculptures, created the 13-foot-tall Abraham Lincoln bust mounted on a 35-foot granite base on a summit overlooking Interstate 80 between Laramie and Cheyenne.
While Kohlmoos was passionate about his art, he placed priority on his family. He worked in plastic extrusion for some time then for over 20 years with bicycle repair and ski shop work in Wisconsin.
He took an 18-month break from full-time work in the 1990s to create a set of 14 sculptures which he exhibited. Then he got back to his other work.
Now 71 and retired, Kohlmoos has followed his “unrelenting curiosity” to make stained glass pieces.
Nearly every window in his house features his stained glass, and his is shifting to a smaller, 24-inch square format that is easier to transport.
People comment that the windows are “like fireworks,” which is different from his sculptures he describes as having “a brooding nature.”
He lives in Waussau, Wisconsin, where there is a good balance between nature and people, saying he prefers being in less-populated environments. He and his former wife raised their kids in northern Wisconsin, where he still has a log cabin and 20 acres of forest.
Two of his five children live in similar environments in Maine and Alaska. One remains in Wisconsin, one lives a more urban life in Boston and another passed away in 2022.
“It is not that I hate people, I just do not need very many of them to sustain my social side,” Kohlmoos said.
He was surprised when Trish Johnson reached out online about his mask.
“I think I had forgotten that package,” Kohlmoos said in a recent interview.
Johnson said she and Juanita Hill were surprised and mystified by the shoebox he had submitted.
Lifting the lid to the box, they saw something wrapped in paper with what appeared to be a nose jutting out.
“We have been staring at it all the time, really curious,” Johnson said.
Kohlmoos said it is like he was frozen in amber and “it has been brought back to light.”
His box included a letter reflecting fondness for his time at Concordia and his high school and a list of around 30 people—some of them friends he remains in contact with – who contributed to his life and development, specifically Prof. Don Dynneson.
“Some of those people I had forgotten about, but seeing their names again brought up some memories,” he said.
But the then 21-year-old was not as optimistic about the state of the country during the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial, writing that things would begin to show decay.
“There seem to no longer be collective goals. Many people have like or similar goals, but they are not social, cultural or for posterity,” Kohlmoos wrote.
“I thought ‘my goodness, I still think like that’,” he said. “I have not changed much. That was really quite interesting to me.”
But the world did change since 1976.
“That face of mine was underground for 50 years,” Kohlmoos said. “I think that is the main thing that we can count on. Everything is going to keep changing.”
Johnson said her brief interactions with Kohlmoos and his face mask show the range of relationships built around the time capsule.
“I am adjusting to the idea that Peter and I know each other intimately without knowing anything about each other,” she said.
Kohlmoos’s 21-year-old face mask is among the artifacts Johnson will display from the World’s Largest Time Capsule that was opened in the summer of 2025.
