Out in Sunderland, the Mona Lisa, King Tut and Albert Einstein have all taken a turn staring up at the sky, each one grown from rows of corn. A WCVB look back at the Pioneer Valley's giant cornfield portraits resurfaced this week, and the tradition behind them is still very much alive.
The segment, which WCVB presents as a 2006 Classic Chronicle journey, shows artist Will Sillin using a neighbor's cornfield as a canvas for faces including the Mona Lisa, King Tut and Einstein. Property owner Mike Weissman helps maintain the designs and opens the field to visitors for a few weeks each fall. The program's narration describes the portraits as a way to turn agriculture into an unusual form of entertainment.
A New Design in Warner Farm's Eight Acres Every Year
The field belongs to Warner Farm, home of Mike's Maze. WBUR reports that since 2000, the team behind the maze has painstakingly come up with a new design, visible from a bird's-eye view, to carve into the eight-acre cornfield. The maze's own site says that every year it concocts a brand new maze, along with themed games.
Not every design has been a face. According to MassLive, the 2012 maze was a green re-creation of The Sower, the painting by French artist Jean-François Millet.
How a Cornfield Becomes a Portrait
Turning a field into a portrait is a math problem before it is an art project. WGBH explains that the process involves breaking the field into squares on paper or computer, each holding a piece of the picture, and scaling up to get a blueprint. The station adds that in 2000 the tools were graph paper and a not-very-accurate GPS-equipped ATV, while today a GPS-equipped mower can zoom in on a single stalk within an inch.
The corn itself is practical, too. The same report notes that the Wissemanns use non-GMO seed corn, which is used to feed animals.
From Sillin's Brush to a Family Business
Sillin's tenure was a long one. His own website credits him with 15 corn mazes created for Mike Wisseman at Warner Farm from 2000 through 2014. Mike's Maze says he stepped down as its resident corn artist after the 2014 season.
Since 2015, Wired reports, the designs have come from Mike's daughter-in-law, Jess Marsh Wissemann. The article calls Sillin a landscape artist who designed the farm's images for many years before that handoff.
Art That Pays the Farm's Bills
The maze is serious business for the farm. WGBH reports that it supplies about a third of the farm's income. On attendance, accounts differ: NPR quotes a figure of more than 25,000 people every year, while the Greenfield Recorder said in 2016 that the maze draws up to 30,000.
The Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism calls Mike's Maze a Western Massachusetts tradition that celebrated 25 years in 2025. The maze's website lists this season as running September 11 through November 8, 2026, which leaves a little time left on the calendar.
