JEFFERSON TWP — Lorraine Thiele doesn't have a lot of opportunities to be an artist.

Living and working on a dairy farm tends to fill up one's days.

But she has found the time and materials on the Thiele Dairy Farm, 753 N. Pike Road, to pursue her own artistic vision.

Using straw bales, spray paint and a skid loader, Thiele has created a series of sculptures at the end of her farm's driveway.

Her latest work, created for the Fourth of July, is a 12-foot-tall Statue of Liberty draped in an American flag.

“That took about a week to paint and cans of spray paint, lots of cans of spray paint,” she said of her version of Lady Liberty.

“I just painted it as I had the time,” she said. “It took several coats of paint, and the white is the worst. It took several coats just to make it stand out,” she said.

Lady Liberty is just the latest of her straw bale creations. In the past, she has used straw bales to make a turkey for Thanksgiving, a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween and a Nativity scene for Christmas.

She estimates she's made 10 bale creations since she started five years ago with a turkey in honor of Thanksgiving.

She said she got the idea when she Googled bale art and thought, “I could do something like that.”

“I'm not artistic. I'm not a painter,” Thiele said. “I like putting a smile on people's faces.”

“I guess you could call me an amateur graffiti artist,” she added.

While she uses cans of spray paint like a graffiti artist, her canvas is 900-pound 4-feet-by-5-feet or 4-feet-by-6-feet bales of straw, not the sides of buildings or subway cars.

Thiele said she works on her creations out of sight, and when finished puts her bales on a farm wagon, drives it to the end of her driveway and sets it up.

She gets help from her husband of 30 years, Edward, and their twin 27-year-old sons, James and William, in the installation, but the conception and execution are all hers.

William Thiele said, “The three of us, my father, my brother and I, help her get it out there, but she's the brain.”

The Statue of Liberty comes complete with a wooden torch.

Her turkey had planks of wood that bolted into the bale to create the bird's tail feathers.

She saves the wooden accessories for reuse in the future.

She isn't saying what her next creation will be.

“There's no major holidays in August,” said her son.

“I have a couple of different ideas,” she said, adding she never tells anybody what her ideas are in case the finished product doesn't turn out the way she wanted.

Local art critics have been enthusiastic, she said.

“Whenever I am out here building, they are honking away,” Thiele said of the traffic passing by on Route 356.

After the creations are displayed for a time, Thiele or her husband will pull the netting off the bale — and with it most of the paint from the bales.

The straw will be repurposed as cattle bedding. There's always a need for that because the Thieles have a milking herd of 40 cows and 80 cattle in total.

Thiele said cows aren't bred until they are 2 years old. Then, they spend nine months pregnant before they are able to give milk.

“They are just like teenagers. They eat you out of house and home, and they don't pay for themselves yet,” she said.