The Spirit of Milwaukee

The Night Is Nearly Over. Photo courtesy of Var Gallery.

A common theme this month in the art galleries and around town will be how urban and residential design influences an artistic practice and the very spirit of our city. At Hawthorne Contemporary, artist Derrick Velasquez employs materials and techniques that speak to the ways in which a building influences our psychology. At Var Gallery in Walker’s Point, Reginald Baylor borrows shapes and colors from stained glass windows to make the viewer see urban life in a way that is both fractured and dynamic. Finally, the 14th annual Doors Open Milwaukee literally invites you to walk through local history as it exists within significant buildings and sites.

Derrick Velasquez: Cascade and Cadence

September 14 – November 17

Opening reception: September 14, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.

706 S. 5th St.

In this sculptural exhibition, Derrick Velasquez presents works composed of thin and flexible marine vinyl that drape over simple wooden structures mounted to the gallery wall. Each sculpture is a multilayered form of color, as the unaltered strips find definition in contrast and blended tones. The result is a beautiful layering with feathered edging that trails off the compressed form, like heavy pages or fabrics left strewn about an armchair. It is similar to looking at geological layers, or core samples from architectural remains, as Velasquez prods questions of place and time with intentionality and repetition.

Var Gallery on 5th                                             

Reginald Baylor: My Afro’s Future

Open reception: Saturday, September 14,  6 – 9 p.m.

423 W. Pierce St., #1704

Reginald Baylor has not taken a straightforward path to becoming a well-recognized and well-collected Milwaukee visual artist. A former truck driver with an abandoned college degree, Baylor rediscovered his passion for visual art after many moves in his career that eventually landed him back in town. Now represented by Var, this is his first solo exhibition of the large acrylic paintings at the gallery. Baylor’s clean lines and familiar iconography explode into compositions rich with detail and ornamentation. His subjects seem to occupy a simulated reality, augmented through a code written into our modern society. That code resembles the American Dream, and a glitch in the simulation breaks apart at the painting’s edge and bounces, like light on stained glass, off its many-colored surfaces.

Material Muses: Medieval Devotional Culture and its Afterlives

August 23 – December 21

Monday – Saturday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Religious iconography takes the stage throughout Haggerty’s Joan of Arc Chapel, with particular emphasis on Catholicism in the Middle Ages and the ways in which artists have continued to draw inspiration from this era. Birth, rebirth, ritual, and death are popular themes in devotional artwork, and works of art were typically seen as aiding in teaching religious lessons to the illiterate population. They also served as supplemental images to be consulted during devotion, serving as a connective image between personal worship and the eternal divine. As religion has evolved, artists similarly have modified image-making to echo traditions from the past while infusing work with new understandings. In a gallery context, one can contemplate how artists selected techniques and foregrounded certain formal elements to advance a story, a meditation, or significant Biblical event. The most recent piece in this exhibition appears to be from 1999, allowing visitors to this show to become fully steeped in Haggerty’s Medieval collection and reflect how this period in art history has informed similar themes more recently.

Grohmann Museum at MSOE

Gil Reid and Friends: Working on the Railroad

September 6  – December 22

Gallery Night event: October 18, 5 – 9 p.m., featuring a Gallery Talk with Chris Burger at 7 p.m.

Following his service in World War II, Gilmore (Gil) Wiley Reid relocated to Wisconsin and spent his career directing and illustrating for Trains and Model Railroader, magazines published by Kalmbach Publishing in Milwaukee. His watercolors also made up the images in the annual Amtrak calendars in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. After Reid died in 2007, his friends Chris and Rita Burger began archiving their collections of his work, from early concept sketches all the way to fully realized images. While some full color paintings have been lost in time, existing only in black-and-white printed reproductions in old magazines, many of Reid’s images are in good hands and will be on display for the public at the gallery in MSOE. This exhibition is for fans of the Amtrak, model trains, and nostalgic watercolor depictions of mid-century Americana.

September 28 10:00 a.m. – September 29, 5:00 p.m.

Public Ticket Sale: September 11^th at 10 a.m.

The list of open access sites will be available online in early September

This recommendation strays a little from the usual list, but Open Doors Milwaukee is art-adjacent as an architectural tour—and also wildly popular—that it warrants inclusion in the September roundup. The tours will take place the last Saturday and Sunday of the month, and although the sites have not yet been announced as of this writing, past years have included informative and interesting tours through the Milwaukee Alano Club, Frank Lloyd Wright’s System-Built houses, the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, Fiserv Forum, Basilica of St. Josaphat, Woodland Pattern, and many more sites of cultural, historical, and religious note. Participants enjoy entry into over 100 sites, and paid ticket holders can take advantage of more detailed tours and additional access. This is a highly anticipated city-wide event that allows residents a look into the architecture that houses some of Milwaukee’s most interesting history, secrets and initiatives.

Spend some time in and around unique architecture this month, becoming especially tuned in to the way design reflects the purposes of a space, or the cognitive state of the participant. It’s a good month to learn a little about our city’s history and discover a few surprise collections that reach back through the years.

Annie Raab has been writing about art since 2014 for print and online publications. You can find more of her critical and creative writing at www.annieraab.com. She lives in Milwaukee.