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Although he’d moved from Pennsylvania a few years prior to the pandemic’s isolating rigors, Mike Bennett appeared to spring from the height of lockdown as a public joy creator delighting young and old with an eye-popping series of alphabetical cryptids sprouting suddenly from the artist’s own lawn. Bennett, the illustrator and event designer behind recent haute cartoon miniature golf course (7410 N Chicago Ave., wonderwoodsprings.com), effectively introduced himself to his COVID-plagued adopted city through that early jolt of educational whimsy and learned an important lesson about the dangers of blending immersive space with living space. “As much fun as that was, that meant a huge amount of people were outside of my home staring,” Bennett laughs. “I decided after that to continue along the same path but, you know, inside buildings.”
Flash forward to his new project—imagineering a sword-and-sorcery realm as a mini golf course adjoining his similarly stylized Wonderwood Cafe.
Though the former Bank of America bears little trace of its former masters, the limitations forced on fitting nine holes within 7,000 square feet alongside the literal hurdles demanded by immovable teller cages inspired an ingenious course. Moreover, tweaking the novelty sport’s customary rules of play and allowing only the vaguest hints about how to approach, say, a shoulder-high tee atop Plinko-styled latticework—use the putter’s grip as a pool cue!—genuinely levels the playing field. (After septuple-bogeying the par–3 fifth hole, your humble BOP correspondent stopped keeping score entirely.)
However impressive the mechanical wizardry, none of this would matter at all if the wall-spanning artwork wasn’t quite so accomplished. Steeped in the bold lines of ‘90s animation (The Angry Beavers, Doug, Hey Arnold!), Bennett has developed a masterful technique comfortably familiar and instantly iconic—a larger-than-life portrait of Wonderwood ruler Rat King splits the difference between Don Bluth and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth yet remains distinct. The sheer amount of visual backdrop plastered throughout the facility would seem to tease an eventual comic or cartoon, but although he’s considered an open-world tabletop game, Bennett’s restless muse has already set him dreaming about the futuristic truck stop currently planned for construction once the Wonderwood crowds finally dim.
“It’s funny—I know I’m an artist, but I like building things,” Bennett insists. “Characters are fun to make, but standing next to them really gets me excited. That’s why I love plywood so much.”
See the rest of Willamette Week’s Best of Portland 2024 here!