— Photo Courtesy of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art Grant Wood poses with one of his paintings.

Mulberry Center Church will welcome its final act of the season on Saturday with the portrayal of the iconic Iowa painter Grant Wood.

The actor Tom Milligan will present a one-act play at the church at Wilson Brewer Park, 220 Ohio Street, Webster City.

This free program begins at 1 p.m.

Grant Wood, who lived and worked in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, is best known for his depictions of the rural American Midwest. He is particularly well known for his painting “American Gothic,” which is itself seen as an iconic example of early 20th-century American art.

He was born on February 13, 1891, on a farm near Anamosa, according to his online biography. “After his father’s death in 1901 the family moved to the larger city of Cedar Rapids.”

In 1910 Wood entered the summer term of the Minneapolis School of Design, Handicraft, and Normal Art where he studied with Ernest A. Batchelder, “an advocate of the arts and crafts movement and art nouveau design. Wood also studied life drawing at the University of Iowa and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he moved in 1913. In Chicago he worked as a designer in a silversmith shop and then made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a jewelry design business,” according to his National Gallery of Art biography.

“He returned to Cedar Rapids in 1916 to help support his mother and sister. He built homes for the family to live in together — first a small cottage and then a larger house that he constructed with a friend. Near the end of World War I he joined the army, for which he designed camouflage scenes. When he returned to Cedar Rapids in 1919 Wood taught art at a local high school, a position he held until 1925. During this time his work included small landscape paintings in a loose impressionist style, metalwork, and sculpture crafted out of found materials.”

Wood attained national stature in 1930 with the painting American Gothic. He also illustrated archetypal episodes in American history, as in The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931) and Parson Weems’ Fable (1939).

He died of liver cancer on February 12, 1942. He was 50 years old.

The actor who will portray Wood has spent 45 years as a working theater artist in Iowa. As an actor, director, scenic designer as well as producer, Milligan’s work has been seen throughout Iowa and the Midwest. Beginning in 1973, many remember his work at Iowa’s first dinner theater, Charlie’s Showplace, in Des Moines. He has worked with The Des Moines Playhouse, The Ingersoll Dinner Theater, The Drake Opera, Hoyt Sherman Theater, The Drama Workshop, and many other venues in the Des Moines area. In 2005 he moved to The Amana Colonies, working on multiple productions at The Old Creamery Theater, The Iowa Theater Artists Company, as well as many self-produced productions.