The Scribe

High on a hill in a tower built of bones, the Scribe etches tales on the boulders themselves. Stella offers a creepy tale for your Halloween pleasure.

A Dem Bones fairy tale

It was known that while the ladies of the court collected rubies and pearls, the Queen was given to collecting…sausages.

Why the Badger bristles

Snug in his underground sett, the Badger couldn’t help but notice the rumbling of thousands of boot-clad feet as they shook the ground above his abode...

A Guy Named Pea

I met him online -- "Pea@pickapea.com." Figuring he’d be just right for a Princess like me, I decided to give it a shot.

A Dem Bones Fairytale

She dared to peek over the edge of the vat and tumble in. A few gulps and she was coated from head to toe. But beneath the chocolate crust, her heart beat on...

The Saga of Rita Sue LaDeux

I alone know who swung that ax. I can see her now … her flaming red hair blowing in the wind.

The continuing tale

Whether or not Tant was ever fingered for copping Slotz -- along with fifty or more innocent citizens --is not a matter of record.

Saga of Slotz Supreme, pt. 1

Neither apple, orange, peach nor pear; the Slotz somewhat resembled a bowling pin, only smaller. But truth tell, they made The Valley famous.

a Dem Bones fairytale

Maybe it wasn’t such a good deal to be inside of Domesville, but it was too late to turn and run.

The Baker and the Mixer

The truth behind this floury tale may never be known. Except to the Cruller clan, and they’re not talking…

The water tower

When Lorene leapt into space, few guessed it was her final fling…

The girl who trod on a meatloaf

Learn from Esmeralda, why don't you. Had you minded your manners and not dishonored the meatloaf, you’d still be up there among the living.

A date to die for

Another Saturday night in Nodaway Valley as Doris plans an evening Rod will never forget.

The prince who despised broccoli

It was known throughout the land that the favorite color of HRH Prince Narcissus Q. VonFabulous was green ... as in a stalk of broccoli. Not that he ate the stuff. It was the color that turned him on.

Bottoms up

Thousands of bare butts turned upward toward the moon. Read on for the truth behind this strange ritual.

Your feet’s too big

The Valley's FootLong proved to Stella and others that you've got to use what you don't want to lose.

Basking in a Batesville

A casket isn’t just a casket anymore, or so says Stella in a letter to her cousin Bitsy.

Farley’s Folly

Stella chronicles the frolic and fluff that led to one man's demise. Whoopie Pies -- to call them pies is to err.

Mean Street USA

Stella lets no grass grow under her feet, even amid the aimlessly stoic.

Body by Ladonna

Ladonna would miss Billy Mays’ black beard, puffy paunch, and his in-her-face sandpaper voice rasping from the television. In Ladonna’s heart his clean, pure flame would burn forever.

Stairway to the Stars

My name is Molly Dooley. Perhaps you remember my Ma, Polly Dooley, the famed Follies Showgirl, one of a dozen who slept their way to fame and fortune in the '20s. Ma told me she was born in Paris, on the altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Of course I have no proof that she was actually born in Paris, and being that there are many cities and towns bearing that name, for all I know, it could have been Paris, Illinois.

Peg O’ My Leg

Valley folks assumed she’d been born with one leg (poor Peg! unfortunate child!). She let them go on thinking so, because a birthing accident was way more glamorous than what really happened when she was three and wandered on two sturdy legs straight into the jaws of her Pa’s yellow and green Deluxe #313 John Deere corn picker. And though it was an event of tragic proportions, she took comfort in knowing far worse had befallen her best friend and playmate, Rolly, who’d lost an eye and all of his dimpled left hand in the same week she emerged from the corn picker minus one leg. As a matter of fact, the kin of the boy who lost both his left eye and his left hand (giving him a distinctly right-slanted view of life thereafter) slaughtered the 2,000-pound prize hog responsible for defiling wee Rolly. Those attending the gala Hogzilla Roast (including poor Peg on her lone leg) would fondly remember the smell of pigs’ tails and pork ribs (big ones!), mixed with the pungent mists hovering o’er the Nodaway River. Rolly’s missing left eye and missing left hand put him at a social disadvantage. This changed, however, when he was fitted with a blue glass eye and a hook. So improved was his mood that he eventually led The Valley Republicans, and by age ninety, was a wealthy preacher preaching righteousness and the inherent evil of hogs. Over the years, his hook came in handy when passing pork during Sunday Nite EverLife Church dinners, though mastering creamed corn was another thing entirely. As fine as Peg’s folks were, they somehow overlooked her need for a second leg. She hinted like crazy around Christmas time, but year after year, she was gifted instead with, not the needed new leg, but instead, a pair of Sonja Heine ice skates. Since she could only use one skate (and use it she did, to perfect the Figure 8, no easy trick), her good Christian parents donated the spare to The Annual Rummage-For-Christ at the EverLife Church. Go there today, and you’ll find (in a box in the church basement), ten skates suitable for right feet only, along with gloves suitable for right hands only, and assorted jackets, each with three sleeves. Valley folks cover all bases just in case. Anyway, eventually her uncle, Ed Splinter (a worker of wood, specializing in gnomes), got around to carving her a black walnut crutch. It carried her through her tender teen years when zits are bad, but missing parts are worse, plus it gave her the gumption to try out for the cheerleading squad. She’d already mastered jitterbugging, hurdle-jumping (but only the low ones) and running the 100 yard dash – barefoot on a cinder track – in three minutes flat, with her crutch. Her big disappointment was being cut from the Annual Water Ballet Ensemble, but without the requisite ten toes, she didn’t have a prayer. She aced the cheerleading tryouts, and tonight was the […]

The Reunion

Travelers in the area often report that upon entering Porkopolis, it is impossible to tell “what is and what isn’t.” Goose didn’t know the cause of this peculiar sense of confusion. It was easy to point fingers at the ever-present mists hovering over Nodaway Valley, the failing eyesight and upside down memories of the locals, or a factor not easily ignored…God’s Everlasting Will, which carried weight in these parts. As he turned left off Hwy. 71, Goose’s Roadmaster found its way to the town square, where his fiftieth class reunion was in full swing. Was he wrong, or was time already beginning to slip and slide? He parked near a curb lined with dusty trucks, wondering what it was that skittered beneath the left wheel and splattered its guts on the Roadmaster’s grille. Polly Dooley, gone but not forgotten Years ago he’d been a genuine part of Porkopolis, so named because of multiple hog farms and the miles of sweet-sour stench rising from the pens. Porkopolis wasn’t a unique name by any means – in fact, Cincinnati laid claim to it sometime around the Civil War – but all in all (and despite the stink), his hometown stuck in his mind as a place filled with perfumed lilacs and bluebirds and generous girls eager to sprawl on the football field under a harvest moon when Homecoming was over. Lucky for him, his sperm had failed to precipitate a hasty marriage at The Valley Church of Life. He gave thanks that the targets of his sweaty efforts weren’t doomed to spend nine months in the farmhouse of a distant cousin. Porkopolis had more than its share of distant cousins. Goose reckoned that peddling bibles was a sure way to repay the Lord who had steered him clear of trouble during his years at PHS. After graduation, he’d have preferred tending bar at the VFW, but bible-selling was profitable and he’d been able to buy the Roadmaster, with change to spare. Not exactly new, it wasn’t exactly old either, and the holes punched in its chromed sides made a fine statement when he kicked up dust in the driveways of farm ladies. His luck held during his bible hawking rounds, and now and then, a few regulars found the means to scrape together enough to purchase a seven-volume set, bound in fake white calfskin stamped in gold. Goose had a soft spot for extending credit to 18-year-old ladies who promised to pay one way or the other, however, he did not accept Master Card or Visa, and in his long career had never accepted a package of pork tenderloins in exchange for his services. The closest he came to selling out was when he accepted a plate of elderberry cobblers from a Hacklebarney lady, in the days when his ribs were poking through his shirt. What was left of the town where Goose stood with others bent over paper plates of slabs of steaming ham and red-eye gravy wasn’t much. Most everything […]

The Reunion, cont’d

As he navigated through the masses of sagging arms and lagging butts and bottle-glass spectacles askew on generic faces assembled for the festivities, Goose felt woozy and disoriented. He was having trouble focusing on folks talking about the house down the road, east a bit, where eight sleeping were felled by an axe. Just across the street from the dusty path leading to the swimming pool, where he once got hopelessly tangled in the lane ropes during a regional swim meet, was where it happened. No one was ever brought to trial, but a few males with darkish skin and squinty eyes were rounded up by bloodhounds trucked in from Omaha. Goose read in the news that whoever did the deed propped a slab of bacon near a bedroom window, an odd detail, to say the least. Memory is tricky though, and Goose’s memory was no exception (yesterday, he actually forgot to wear shoes), so the bacon-slab may have been a misfire. The house, refurbished in the 70s by a well-intentioned farmer obsessed with saving stuff, still offered tours during reunions, and Goose figured he’d be bound to follow the printed schedule of activities, including a tour of the town’s “museum.” Formerly the site of a furniture store and coffin-making venue, it had been converted by the same farmer, and was now a dumping ground for crumbling collections of salt & pepper shakers from state fairs, heaps of cherry pitters and apple-corers, and specimens of wicked barbed-wire mounted on dampish cardboard. He prickled at the thought of going there, though truth tell, he felt a certain fascination in viewing the hide of a bear formerly caged at the Conoco on Route 71. It reminded him of Dooley. Whatever the connection, Dooley-in-the-flesh trumped the pelt. She’d had ample flesh and he’d seen all of it. Getting through this day would be a bitch, especially with the sun beating down on his itchy, almost-real hair. Despite his gel-filled arch supports, his feet throbbed, and the moist crotch of his seersucker pants ripped as he reached for his third helping of ham. The towering elms of his youth had died in the blight of ’55, so there wasn’t an inch of shade anywhere. The lilacs had disappeared, replaced by pots of plastic roses. No birds were in sight, except a crow pecking the remains of whatever was sticking to the wheel of his car. Had he only imagined the lilacs and bluebirds? Come to think of it, when was it he’d floated face up in the Nodaway River, pretending the cool water laced with hog shit runoff would carry him all the way south to New Orleans? He regretted (God damn it to hell!) that he’d never even seen the Big Easy. He and the Roadmaster needed to plan a trip south, soon, before his knees gave way, and he bulged out of his seersucker suit forever. Considering all the woes down South, his bibles would surely sell like hotcakes, and anyway, he’d […]

The Bluebird of Happiness

Stella pens the ultimate poison letter to the love of her life. But does she really mean goodbye this time?

What’s In Your Yard? Part 3: Resting Buns in the Sun

In part two of “What’s In Your Yard?” I included uber-artist Jeff Koons (who once was a guard at Chicago’s Art Institute) and an image of his much-praised “Balloon Dog.” It costs way more (millions more) than a concrete doggie from a garden center, but is it more fun because it’s bigger and heavily hyped by the powers that guide specific artists to stardom? Is it any secret that Koons has an entire staff just to pump his name?

What’s In Your Yard?

Anyway, all of this set me wondering: is a modest pink flamingo less or more interesting than one of the gigantic art sculptures visible along N. Lakeshore Drive? You know … the ones that shout “Look! I’m art!” I can envision a gigantic gnome in a conical hat standing near Wisconsin Ave., can’t you? If you go to Burns Park on Prospect Avenue, there is a Beverly Pepper sculpture some claim resembles a giant spade.

Flamingo Flap

Stella's been up all night wondering why we can't stop decorating our lawns with weird junk. Flamingos are one thing, but the Virgin Mary in a bathtub?

A fairytale of jelly and betrayal

My name is Henry O. Lundstrom, and I regret to say I’m spending my last moments on earth upside down in a big batch of dough.

Fluff Me, Stuff Me

Stella takes on Whoopie Pies, Fluffernutter sandwiches and urban chickens.

Around town with Bones – 4/22/09

Don't miss it: Michelle Grabner’s show wraps up soon at Green Gallery East. It’s entitled “Black Circle Paintings: Metalpoint Drawings and Monoprints”, and is a collaborative piece twixt Ms.Grabner and spouse Brad Killam.

Gallery Night & Day April 2009

There’s no pulling punches when Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy writes his weekly “Murphy’s Law” column. A recent one gave a full and lucid explanation about the Janet Zweig saga, i.e., how ideas for that particular public sculpture evolved and where (more or less) the project is going, if anywhere. I laugh when writers “take ownership” of what they deem to be hot stories, and laugh even more when readers are laboriously reminded that a particular writer developed (you read it here first folks!) a particular story. Murphy was correct when he compared much of today’s journalism with kudzu growing rampant. All surface and no depth, with windbags, bozos (Murphy’s word) and other folks who like to see their name in print checking in! And now, wow! A star is born, courtesy of the Haggerty Museum, which put the eccentric works of Peter Bardy on display in Current Tendencies, running through June 14. Eccentricity isn’t a bad thing. In fact, we have several locals who fit that mold: Bob Watt and Jimmy Von Milwaukee are two, but they’ve been stars for years. Bardy shot himself dead last summer, leaving behind a west side home filled with items he’d fashioned from scavenged stuff, and voilà! The formerly unknown is now known. Is the Haggerty making a run to roust the rather exclusive territory carved out by the Kohler Museum in Sheboygan, the realm of Outsider Art? (But don’t call it that, because actually Outsiders are more Insiders these days.) The curator of the Haggerty exhibit, Lynn Shumow, came to Milwaukee from the vaunted Kohler. Every curator loves a good back story, and Bardy’s is apparently hers. But does that make it “art?” Stella thinks that of more import is the possibility of the green ash borer decimating the green ash grove on the north side of the Haggerty Museum itself. It’s frightening to imagine, but a group of In:Site artists (including Mike Brenner) are preparing to present plans on temporary art for the Park East land, long vacant and more or less a cause for concern. This may be an even bigger boondoggle than the Zweig flap and the Lincoln Park sculpture madness, whose flames were fanned by Pegi Taylor, noted for nay-saying everything and everyone but herself. Shameless self-promotion: Stella has a feature story (“Fleecing”) in the current issue of INFO magazine, about how American taxpayers are getting shorn. It looks pretty cool alongside all those hot shots of babes and studs. The taxpayer is wearing a barrel. And as the grandkid of a major rancher of sheep, she’s an expert on the subject. John Riepenhoff and a host of other young artists and Milwaukee-based gallerists are in Cologne, Germany for an exhibition. Painter Peter Barrickman’s work, installed in a booth, made the trip packed in a big suitcase which Riepenhoff lugged along to its final destination. Meanwhile, Green Gallery East and West remain open for action. My personal pick for this weekender, Gallery Night and Day, is a small […]

Around town with Bones – 4/8

I can’t figure out why any artist in their right mind would complain “there’s nothing new” in Milwaukee. Balls! I just saw two great Peter Barrickman paintings at Green Gallery, plus at GGWest, the most minimalist piece of art I’ve ever seen: a slender slice of wood painted white and propped in a corner of GGW’s third floor space, which also houses Club Nutz, the world’s smallest stand-up comedy club. You know, when I talk to John Riepenhoff  I feel a real burst of hope for the arts. The people around him are smart and young and energetic. What a tonic. It isn’t that I don’t respect artists who are mature (or old like me), but there comes a time when bi-focals have to give way to firm flesh and sharp eyes and keen ideas. Riepenhoff must be like Dean Jensen was in the olden days, and his adventurous mind reminds me much of Jensen, who is, by the way, a big fan of John and company. Deb Brehmer is down-on-her-knees sorting through piles of drawings from various Wisconsin-based artists. My eyes like Paul Caster’s stuff, but you can decide from seven participants when the show (Tender is the Line) opens in the Portrait Gallery (Floor 5) on Gallery Night & Day (April 17-18). Her expanded space now includes TWO galleries, the latter to be known as “Gallery B,” with walls being painted blood red as I write. Down the hall, also on floor five, Catherine Davidson has established a new little office with walls of eggplant hue. Her larger venue is on floor two. Jilan Glynn is curating a GN&D exhibit at Soups On. Does anyone remember Jane Brite, co-founder of Walker’s Point Center for the Arts? Allegedly, she’s the new “art consultant” for the Charles Allis/Villa Terrace Museums. They’ve ground through quite a number of staffers in the last few years, and seem to be very zipped-lipped when it comes to press releases announcing who’s new and who’s not. I’m really saddened that no one has ventured forth with a guess as to who “Pierre Renee” is. His photographs are hanging in the Riverfront Pizza Bat & Grill on Erie St. I guess no one cares but Mr. Renee, hey? Okay, Stella will sweeten the Pierre pot and buy a veggie pizza for the FIRST person who posts the correct answer in the comment section. All the stupefying silly-ness over whether or not alderpersons like the public sculpture proposed for Wisconsin Avenue. It’s sort of a low blow to make comments about Bob Donavan’s missing teeth though. Or is it tooth? It should be even more stupefying when “concerned” artists mass in order to voice their ego-driven agendas about the project’s ix-nayers. Real artists will be home making art, but Pegi Taylor will likely be out and about milling around. Stella says later gator. There’s way more coming …

What Would Jesus Say?

While we’re on the subject of nudes at MAM, and continuing the idea that picking on “Standing Woman” is sexist, here are a few males to consider:  Torso of a Male Athlete: Marble. Missing head, arms, one leg and part of another. Some of the penis is gone missing too, but not all of it.  Male Ancestor Figure: Wood. What’s that between his legs?  The Kiss: Painted plaster cast. No lack of imagination in this one.

Around Town With Bones

Milwaukee’s icon, Bob Watt, is 84! And who deserves it more than this Beat poet and painter/sculptor? I mean, it’s an honor to live long enough to be dissed by Pegi Taylor, local art nay-sayer. Jimmy Von Milwaukee hosted a party at his loft (complete with performance art and poetry) for Watt, and down from Manitowoc drove Johny Shimon & Julie Lindemann to capture a few moments. You can see a few of them at their Flickr site, but being photographed and celebrated by Johny & Julie is a big deal, for J & J are photographers of renown, recently having a great retrospective of their work aired at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Stella herself has been photographed by J & J, memorably so when photographed wearing a Packer helmet while sitting on Watt’s ample lap. The closing of Nicholas Grider’s “Men In Suits” exhibit brought lots of ogglers to floor five of the Marshall Building. Crammed into the Portrait Gallery’s two small rooms, and spilling out into the narrow hall, many of the visitors were subjects in Grider’s ‘Men” photographs, so it wasn’t unusual to see Peter Goldberg standing in front of his portrait, holding his stomach in, just like he did for the photograph. Other celebs included others portrayed: Kyle Cherek, Skip Forest, Joe Pabst, and a host of manly men. Three women agreed to be included in the project wall grid. Deb Brehmer produced a slick mini-catalog for the event, and they sold like hotcakes for $15.00. The gallery is open Friday/Saturdays from 1-4pm. Next up? Tender Is The Line. Seven artists & the art of drawing. Allegedly, Wisconsin Visual Artists (formerly known as Wisconsin Painters & Sculptors), is NOT moving on to floor two of the Marshall Building, but Phylis Toburen is exiting from floor one, just so you know. And isn’t it sweet that Bill Delind Gallery is newly installed at Geo.Watt’s emporium, in the space formerly occupied by pots and pans? As I’ve written in prior posts, I can see Green Gallery East from my condo digs. Michelle Grabner’s silverpoint drawings are newly installed, along with a sensational Guest Mobile. It’s hard to believe that this place was recently a dump of a former defunct pizza joint. The smaller “back room” has two Jose Lerma “paintings”(earth mixed with acrylic base), and a whiz of an installation consisting of (to my mind) something creepy concerning the Spanish Inquisition. It’s brilliant. Lerma gave up law school in Madison to become an artist. Lucky for us.

Pierre Renee

Give Me a Break Wake up all you elitists! While you are enjoying a pizza at Riverfront Pizzeria on Erie Street, look around at the photographs and see if you can figure out who “Pierre Renee” is… ask your waitperson about the work on the walls, most of it in the small rooms adjacent to the bar area. Gee whiz, I’ve never heard of Pierre Renee, have you? Is he a bona-fide photographer or just some chap with a camera who likes to click click? There’s an 800 number attached to the frames so you can call and find out more should you care enough. Here’s a clue or two: In a recent Milwaukee Magazine article, writer Tom Bamberger raised some issues about the Breakwater condo on Prospect Avenue. Shortly thereafter, a “newsletter” began circulating in virtual space, ostensibly sent from the offices of the architect who brought Breakwater to town. It questioned Bamberger’s “credentials,” and slammed Bamberger’s photographs as not “appropriate for the Breakwater.” But that was a bit beside the point. Read on. So gee whiz, you have to ask yourself, would Pierre Renee’s photographs be more appropriate? They’re pretty awful, but well, go to the pizza place and decide for yourself if big blowsy images would best fit with the big blowsy Breakwater designed by ????? If you’re still in the dark, then so be it. Do you know who Renee is? The answer is hilarious, or so says I.

Peepers

So get busy already. You have until Sunday, April 5th to do your Marshmallow Peep Show project and take it to the Sugar Maple smoke-free bar at 441 E. Lincoln Avenue in trendy Bay View. No entry fee; no jury, so hurry. Be there from 2-6pm. No self-respecting serious artists need show their faces, but all others seeking fun can price their peep art, and if it sells, believe it or not Ripley, they won’t have to pay a commission. A suggested donation of $2 at the door will go to the Bay View Community Center and special peep-inspired cocktails will be served by Sugar Maple .Organized by artist Nicole Hauser, a sweet treat herself, she’s back after a two year hiatus with hopes you’ll be inspired by this year’s hatching of those little fowls with beady eyes. And from the artist herself: Hi Friends, As many of you know, I am bringing back the “Peep Show” on Sunday, April 5th from 2-6 pm at the SUGAR MAPLE. However, Cafe Lulu is advertising that they are bringing back the Peep Show – and on the very same day!! They didn’t change the name or make any attempts to contact me first. Please, don’t be fooled by imposters!! Thanks and hope to see you at the ORIGINAL PEEP SHOW – #4. Sincerely, Nicole Reid and Cathrine Friedmann

Blarney Stoned

Oh Bridget where be ye? And who be ye? A Sheehan, Moran, Sullivan? Do you really expect me to find your gravesite with such slim pickins? No birth certificate, only the date (1849) you arrived on these shores, bound from Inch Bridge in Ireland, perhaps married (to John Moriarty, laborer), ten years your senior. A wedding certificate indicates you maybe married John in Massachusetts, but your name is oddly smeared on the document. So many Bridgets, so many Johns, how to know which one belongs to you? It’s said you were buried in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I drove there and couldn’t find you on the plains where sheep once roamed. I’ve searched Iowa gravesites too, near where you bought land in Muscatine County, Iowa, lots of graves, but no you; rows and rows of bones, but no you resting beneath slabs embellished with stuffed teddy bears, strange photographs, sagging crosses and angels with missing parts. Uh oh Bridget, it says here on the yellowing document I unearthed in the Muscatine County courthouse, that you lifted your skirts to neighboring farmer Henry Stoneburner. The document, filed and signed by John Moriarty (with an “X”), points fingers at two October nights, then asks for a divorce AND alimony. The trail petered out, so I’m guessing you refused the divorce, good Catholic be ye. Or were ye? Okay, the Iowa winters were long and hard and Stoneburner was only a stone’s throw away, plus he must have recognized a good plow when he saw one, but shouldn’t ye have known better? Also, I’m given to wondering just how John knew what you were up to. Apparently he drifted away after he addressing the court (leaving you with two kids), but his name, “Wandering John,” is still legendary in 2009. Could be he fled home to Ireland and drank his days away, but in all fairness, he may have been an okay chap saddled with the wrong woman in the wrong place in the wrong time. While grave searching in South Dakota, were you looking up from your pine box and laughing at me, your great granddaughter on a useless mission, combing through the weeds and crumbling slabs to no avail? I mean to say, why should I give a hoot about you? Though named after a saint, you were apparently not one. That said, I do admire your grit. So tell me, how did you manage to get through the Pearly Gates? As a Moran, a Sheehan, a Sullivan, a Moriarty? Things are tough enough up there, what with identity theft and wigs and false noses and plastic surgery, some of it transgender. Unsnarling the heavenly list must be nigh impossible, and whoever was guarding the Gates the day you waltzed through with your skirts held high, was likely snookered grandly. I’m guessing here. Did you know that one of Wandering John’s ancestors (a Maurice Moriarty by name) chased the Earl of Desmond into the Slieve Mish Mountains where he cut off his […]

The New Mar-Ho?

Floor Two in the Marshall Building is getting crowded! Step of the elevator and directly in front of your face is Catherine Davidson’s gallery, and around the corner from that is Gallery 218. Down the hall and to the right is a space Stella hears is going to be the new gallery space for the Wisconsin Visual Artists organization (formerly Wisconsin Painters & Sculptors), the oldest non-profit in the state dedicated to visual artists based in this state. We’re wondering if this place will represent only artists in the southeast chapter, or will it house the works of WVA’s other chapters? Rumors are rumors. We’re just asking. Whatever, a furtive look into the area reveals a large area set behind double glass doors. When we visited in early March, the concrete floor was newly stained and two royal blue chairs were in place. It’s said it will be open for the coming Gallery Night & Day. So Mar-Ho allegedly is the place to be, at least from the standpoint of having a wealth of grazing possibilities. Floor five is alive with the Portrait Gallery and their additional new space directly across the hall, and floor one is home to Grava Gallery and the adjacent Elaine Erickson Gallery, whose owner chirped “the more the merrier.” Of course, it’s only merry if dealers are actually selling art, and what they sell (quality anyone?) should be the primary concern of anyone and everyone seeking something other than the banal. The aforementioned Catherine Davidson also has an office on floor five, with walls painted a great shade of “eggplant” that will do for my purposes. The front entry to the Marshall Building could use a face-lift, as could the lobby which is awash with sandwich boards hyping what’s where. As is, it’s like stepping into a rummage-0-rama. This can be fixed however. Lurking behind various other doors in Mar-Ho are attorneys, masseuse types, party planners, a female detective, the Shepherd Express, and who knows what? Should you desire, Jings serves great Chinese eats, and a reasonably priced cup of joe is available (with cigarettes!) in the wee space on the first floor. Everyone is harping about the big increase in Third Ward parking meter fees, which seems like a duh! move in these problematical times, but then again, perhaps the powers that be figure that anyone shopping in the Third Ward has plenty of change to spare and they are happy to take it.

Stonewalled

John Riepenhoff of Green Gallery fame, kindly send me a folder of jpeg images for a proposal he and his collaborators submitted for the Lincoln Park space. Here is an exact quote from Mr. Riepenhoff: “Attached is our proposal, they didn’t ask for budget and had limited space for description and slides on the first round of submissions, but they were supposed to invite several artists back to give a proposal talk that Soga gave so the committee could decide from the more in depth interview process who they like best, but somehow Soga was the only one the subcommittee allowed to speak.” If you’ve been following the controversy (led my Pegi Taylor of In Site), Ripenhoff’s contribution is one more piece of the puzzle. In the above quote, he says “but somehow,” and now you may ask, “but how some (Soga) and not others?”

An Artist’s Statement (How to Write One)

I was just a little kid when I picked up my first ever crayola and made a mark on paper. Oh, it was exciting to realize I too could be an artist. In kindergarten I won an award for the best drawing of a single line. My family was very poor and so we had only one crayon (a red one!). I’ve been using one color (red) ever since those days. I owe it all to my mother who used one red crayon. My grandma was a big help. Her hair was red. She was a huge influence, though it left a wide scar on my psyche when she died the day before her roots were retouched. It’s moments like that that shape artists and set them on their way. I’m often asked what my paintings “mean.” I dunno. Art is in the eye of the beholder isn’t it? Leastwise, that’s what I hear. People who demand to understand art are off-track, which maybe is why I bombed out during my art education years. My professor told me that I must move on from making a single red line. That seemed unfair and, in many ways, elitist. Stardom isn’t important to me, though sometimes I do feel a bit of envy when I notice art that is made with, say, two lines in green; but then again, we all have our special talents, and one line in red is mine. God works in strange ways. Did I mention that in third grade I won a prize for filling the most sheets of expensive paper with my single red line? The teacher hung it in the room as an example of flat-line thinking. My advice to aspiring artists? Oh dear, well, I guess I’d say stick to your guns and don’t be swayed by choices now that you (perhaps) have an entire box of dazzling Crayolas. After all, it’s up to viewers to decide what my single red line means. It could be a deer peeking out from a forest, or maybe a sunset in the Rockies. Next year I’ve been invited to exhibit my one million drawings, which actually are Xeroxed copies of the piece I did in kindergarten so many years ago. Other artists have begun to steal my ideas, and I say More Power To Them. That said, I like to think I am the one and only original which is why I sign my name (Hortense “Honey” Swartzburger) in big black marker across the front of each piece. Snobs tell me that no respected artist scrawls her names on the front of her work, but that’s their problem. My work is in various collections throughout the globe: SockitTumi Shoe Laces in Hiroshima, Bees & Babes Poster Shoppe in Hackensack (New Jersey), and even in the permanent collection at MOMA (Museum of Maligned Art) in Swampyville, Georgia. Each and every day is spent Xeroxing my mark. It’s a lonely life but I’m not complaining. It’s what I do.

In the Dick of Time

This whole media flap about the ‘Tosa mom who objects to (among other things) MAM’s “Standing Woman” sculpture, weighs in too heavily on the side of tits and ass, i.e. the bodacious breasts and the lusty bottom on the woman standing tall. Odd isn’t it, that no mention has been made of the penises, of which there are a few standing proud in the Folk Art Collection at MAM. I guess you could call them “woodies” as they actually are to be found in carvings from wood. Take your time trying to spot them. Picking on Standing Woman is out and out sexist. Give the dame a break. The outcry from the uber-right reminds me of an incident that occurred when former Milwaukee artist, Carrie Scoczek, had the nerve to display some sculptures of male nudes in a storefront in Walkers Point. Shortly after they were installed, she strolled by the store/gallery and noticed each penis had been covered with band-aids, a twist on the old fig leaf thing. The gallery owner said he covered them because they were offensive. Have we lost our collective memories? I remember when performance artist Karen Findley stripped to the buff at a Walker’s Point gallery, much to the delight of the crowd. I think she then busied herself by slathering on syrup and feathers. Maybe I’m imagining this, but I’m almost sure that in MAM’s heady performance art days, a guy buck naked hung by his ankles in the east wing. And then there was actor John Schneider in the altogether at a Theater-X performance….

Big Decks, Little Decks

You show me yours. I’ll show you mine. Tom Bamberger’s feature article in the February issue of Milwaukee Magazine is posted online via the magazine. Titled “The Peter Principle,” it’s a review of architect Peter Renner’s BreakWater on North Franklin Place. It’s a fair enough article. Renner lost it completely when his office circulated a reply, which can best be described as trash. He lowered himself to actually sending someone out to take photos of Bamberger’s personal residence on National Avenue, then sunk ever deeper by adding snide remarks about Bamberger’s photographic skills (not suitable for The BreakWater!). The bottom of the pissy pit arrived when he added snide comments about Bamberger’s personal life, including his “finances.” Why did Renner sink to this level? Speaking of peters, Renner was responsible for erecting those horrible phallic things that mark various territories in the Third Ward. Maybe that was the first clue about things to come. Who knows why Peter became so unprincipled? It’s a jungle out there folks. Everyone in the building I live in (north of The Breakwater), is talking about the feature in Milwaukee Magazine, so you can bet it will be widely read and widely discussed. You show me your deck. I’ll show you mine. MJS architecture critic, what’s your take?

BreakWater Controversy

This just in: Milwaukee Magazine has put the full text of The Peter Principle online. It can be found: http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/currentIssue/full_feature_story.asp?NewMessageID=24464 Dear Dem Bones readers: Here’s Architect Peter Renner’s response to Tom Bamberger’s article (The Peter Principle/Milwaukee Magazine/February 2009). From Milwaukee Magazine, “The Peter Principle,” February 2009: The BreakWater doesn’t have a sense of itself. It’s a tall building that looks stout. The spacing, lines and volumes that define the four sides have no rhythm or reason. There is no pattern or any kind of visual gravity to hold it together. Its only defining visual feature is stacks of self- supported decks that look like house- boats docked to the building. None of its constituent parts add up, right down to the sign on the front, whose florid calligraphic font seems out of step with the building’s brutish flatness. On first viewing, The Break- Water is unmemorable; with repeated viewing, it sinks into incoherence. Quality is signified rather than realized. There are slabs of granite inside and out. The lobby is intended to create “the feel of a museum in Rome,” Renner’s Web site declares. The goal “is to build Mercedes quality units and sell them at a Chrysler price.” But even a Chrysler has an articulated exterior. Renner is selling high-class amenities in a vertical Wal- Mart box. Many of Renner’s customers come from the suburbs, and The BreakWater is the vertical urban equivalent to the suburban McMansion.These amorphous homes never look like anything in particular because they are turned inward and are merely containers of the requisite amenities. Similarly, Renner’s high-rise satisfies our needs for immense closets, enormous entertainment centers, vast open kitchens, huge master bedrooms, thick walls, spacious heated parking places and massive decks. The outside is an add-on, an afterthought. Renner isn’t even trying to create a beautiful building. He’s not guilty about leaving a void. And you shouldn’t be either. Don’t kid yourself, he’s saying. Well-designed exteriors are for sissies. And Renner’s response: Whether you have or haven’t read the bizarre and critical article in February’s Milwaukee Magazine, you will probably hear about it. The author is obviously being influenced and/or directed by the `intellectual architectural community’ that locally has a religious belief in the concept that any architecture that doesn’t mimic `modern architecture’ is immoral architecture. The concept of modern architecture was by and large created by two Germans, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, who were instructors in the avant guarde Bauhaus School of Architecture located in Eastern Germany and operated in the 1920’s and 1930’s. This cult of modern architecture is like a religion – a religion I don’t subscribe to. I don’t want to live in a cold sterile building and I don’t think most other people want to either. … When we design buildings like the BreakWater our first priority is to design a living space and unit that best accommodates the needs and desires of the people that are going to live there. Our customers like acoustic privacy, they […]

Worlds Beyond

Fare thee well, friend of those seeking something worth reading. Word came today that you departed earth on January 27. Perhaps the essence of you is speeding toward Mars, of which you wrote so eloquently in the December 2008 issue of National Geographic. In describing the various science fiction writers who wondered about Mars, your unfailing humor remained intact, as if you were far below on earth, wryly observing middle class moirés. “Following Burroughs, pulp science fiction, brushing aside possible anatomical differences, frequently mated Earthlings and Martians, the Martian usually the maiden in the match, and the male a virile Aryan aggressor from our own tough planet.” The only thing missing is a round of golf, followed by a dry martini and perhaps a fling or two. In Due Considerations (Essays and Criticism), you wrote in a section titled “This I Believe” that “Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds,” i.e. the scientific, and the religious side of our collective selves, the latter manifested in art and altruism, idealism, and joie de vivre. You wrote this at age 73, three years ago. On my bedside stand is a copy of Due Considerations. When the heaviness of time presses in on me, I read from it before drifting off. Your words comfort. I haven’t yet picked up your final novel, The Widows of Eastwick, but be assured I will. Have a safe trip Mr.Updike.

The Bad & The Beautiful

The orangey-pinkish jpeg in my prior posting, was sent to me by Jimmy Von Milwaukee. That’s him standing in the background looking guilty. Perhaps. The piñata in the foreground is his take on performance artist Pegi Taylor. The two have been firing rubber bullets at each other recently. Some of them have bounced around on Mary Louise Schumacher’s Art City blog, but frankly, little harm has ensued except to artist Bob Watt who got dragged into the flak and took a few unfair hits. Yes, it’s true that a strange odor sometimes wafts from his totemic sculptures of Native Americans, but if they’re displayed outside in alleys (say, in JVM’s River Rat summertime soirees), you’d hardly notice the musty odor. You can read quite a sweet tribute to Watt if you go to Julie Lindemann and John Shimon’s website. One of their portfolios features their 2002 photo (Bob Watt with Telephone) of Milwaukee’s icon, a guy with an interesting past, a guy who once ran for Mayor of Milwaukee. Poet, painter, man-about-town, believe it or not Ripley, Watt graduated with a degree in Economics! Bob Watt with Telephone, photo by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann

This just in…

This just in from Jimmy Von Milwaukee…

Finally.

Finally. You can track down susceptibletoimages.wordpress.com/ Kat Murrell, former co-owner (with Deb Brehmer) of the Portrait Gallery, is flying solo, and if her initial outing is any indication, this is the place to go for well-written info on what’s going on in art. Move over Art City and make room for a smartly designed win-win. Brehmer soldiers on with her Portrait Gallery, and zounds! has added another space (directly across from the PG). It currently features the works of Rudy Rotter. Apparently, Murrell & Brehmer had an amiable parting, as Brehmer says “we’re still art history chick buddies.” Dean Jensen has been attending the Outsider Art Fair in NY for 16 years. And it ain’t cheap. His booth fee alone is over $10,000, and he emailed me that “I don’t think we did enough business to cover even half of the expenses. “Only three have been disappointing,” he says. One after the dot.com bubble burst in the late 90s, one after 9/11, and this recent one. All in all, we’ve mostly had good years there, and a few of the fairs have been gang busters.” The Milwaukee Art Museum isn’t the only venue cutting costs. The prestigious Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City has turned back their thermostats and cut their hours. Their splendid Steven Holl Bloch Building addition (contemporary American art primarily) opened a few months ago and I was privileged to visit it in December. It’s everything and more with plenty of room for exhibitions. You can catch the Southwest Chief out of Chicago and be in K.C. in seven hours. You owe it to yourself, if only to see the Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Court. Trust me. After a stay in my old hometown, I journeyed on the Chief to Arizona and visited the Phoenix Art Museum which also has a sparkling new addition. It was here I saw the best Franz Kline ever, a great Richard Misrach photo and what has to be the best ever Gregory Crewsdon.

Gift Ideas for 2009

Stumped about what to get your fave artist in 2009? Some ideas from Stella…. Nutcrackers: Jimmy Von Milwaukee is hardly ever around these days, but in days past, he’s been notable for his crafty events, which sometimes featured his outrageous nutcrackers, to wit, figures resembling former Mayor Norquist, Marilyn What’s-Her-Name, and uh oh, Mother Teresa. A recent posting from JVM featured piñatas designed to bash Pegi Taylor. Seems the two are running neck-in-neck in the race for media attention. 12-Hour Heated Socks: Perfect for smoking in sub-zero temps. The Carnival Duck Shooting Game: For Colin Mathes, a Nohl Fellowship winner. A Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor: For gallery dealers who are currently monitoring the fall of the art market, speaking of which, Dean Jensen attended the recent Outsider Art exhibit in NYC. Deb Brehmer went along too, with art from Manitowoc-based dentist-turned-artist, Rudy Rotter. She showed his work at her Marshall Building gallery recently, and it was such a hit that she apparently has rented additional space in a wee spot across the hall from her Portrait Gallery. The Men’s Extended Reach Body Hair Groomer: Dick Bacon is dead or I’d get it for him. Memba Dick? Mr. Nude America and a devoted local model who often posed for figure drawing classes. The Classic Donegal Tweed Patchwork Cap: Poet Eddie Kilowatt, more recently known as Ed Makowski, poet & Riverwest dad. The Remote Controlled Tarantula: Anything to inject a little life into Gallery Night & Day. The Wireless Remote Pan & Tilt Surveillance Camera: Milwaukee Magazine’s editor, Bruce Murphy, might find this helpful for fueling Murphy’s Law. The Maui Pocket Saxophone: For newlywed Folliard staffer, Nicole Hauser, who received her engagement ring on an island in the Pacific. The Best Electronic Chess Game: In case MAM exec. Daniel Keegan can’t figure out his next move in a sagging art economy. The Thomas Kinkade Music Box: Local writer/photographer Tom Bamberger will love it. It’s so Tom. Spring-Loaded Insoles: This for Gallery 218’s Judith Hooks who walks everywhere. 1953 Corvette Pedal Car: Racine Sculptor Bill Reid built the Bee Bomb. Maybe he’d dig this. His work will be featured at Folliard Gallery this spring. The Aviator’s Duck Down Hat: Fockin Rockin for Art Kumbalek Comes with a matching Duck Down hip flask. The Upside Down Tomato Garden: Painter Thea Kovac who continues to endure the terrible looking New Land Enterprise parking garage on Downer. The Best Locating & Tracking Telescope: The Shepherd Express’ Boris & Doris. An assortment of Kyle Cherek stickers in case they forget to mention his name one more time. The Biofeedback Stress Relief Coach: Great for all those journalists hanging on by their thumbs. The Continuously Freshening Feline Drinking Fountain: In case former gallery guy Kent Mueller ever opens another gallery with another cat. RIP Fred.

Marcus Aurelius Redux

The first blog I wrote for VS was way back in April of ’08. Titled “Marcus Aurelius Online,” I’ve revived it with new answers to old questions. While ruling Rome, Marcus Aurelius Antonius wrote Meditations, setting down rules for living written in Greek. Stoic to the end (his end came in AD 180), Marcus Aurelius wrote them to himself, and in many ways his twelve books pre-figured the blogs of today. Book 1: “the certainty to ignore the dice of fortune…” Bones: Those who bought tickets on the ill-fated Titanic. Relive the grisly event at our Public Museum with a ticket bearing the name of an original traveler. At journey’s end you get to discover if that traveler survived or died….a gruesome roll of the dice from the world of marketing. Book 2: “Now the flesh you should disdain….blood, bones, a mere fabric and network of nerve, veins, and artifacts. Bones: Okay, cut yourself some slack and disdain the Bronze Fonz, too. Book 3: “Do not waste the remaining part of your life in thoughts about other people, when you are not thinking with reference to some aspect of the common good.” Bones: Advice to sour grapes Republicans and in particular, Mr. William Jefferson Clinton. Book 4: “Remove the judgment and you have removed the thought, ‘I am hurt,’ and the hurt itself is removed.” Bones: Rejects from the 2008 Mary Nohl Fellowship thing. Writers who didn’t make the Cream City Review. Book 5: “If on the other hand harm is done to the city, you should not be angry, but demonstrate to the doer of this harm what he himself has failed to see.” Bones: Developers who insist we need more condos. Book 6: “Some things are hurrying to come into being, others are hurrying to be gone, and part of that which is being born is already extinguished.” Bones: Art galleries, blogs, White House staffers, daily newspapers. Book 7: “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that it stands ready for what comes and is not thrown by the unforeseen.” Bones: Broad Vocabulary, Milwaukee Shakespeare, Milwaukee Fashion Week, etc., etc. Book 8: “Everything has come into being for a purpose….a horse, say, or a vine. Does this surprise you?” Bones: Well yeah. What pray tell, is the purpose of bailouts? Book 9: “Enough of this miserable way of life, enough of grumbling and aping.” Bones: Get on with the plan. Print more money. Book 10: “The healthy eye must look at all there is to be seen, and not say ‘I only want pale colors’….this is a symptom of disease.” Bones: All arts organizations that deem themselves deciders of what goes where. Book 11: “No nature is inferior to art, in fact the arts imitate the variety of natures. If that is so, then the most perfect and comprehensive of all natures could not be surpassed by any artistic invention.” Bones: Museums and galleries will ignore this advice. Book 12: “Practice even what you […]

Stella, Old Broad

I found this image on the AIG website. Posted in the portfolio of former Shepherd Express designer, James Klobier, is a “Portrait of Stella.” I don’t remember wearing pearls, but hey, I’ll take what I can get, old puss and all. Kloiber left for NYC recently to pursue more design opportunities. When first we met, he was working with INFO magazine. In my cabinet drawer is a framed drawing of Stella (by Kloiber). Years ago (well maybe not so many) he designed images for a kiosk on North Avenue, and yeah, once again he included Stella Old Broad. Stella has also been memorialized in a black/white photograph taken by none other than the great departed Jim Herrington who also fled eastward this year. What this means is unclear.

Not Junk

Big Big Bang for Small Small Bucks, well you can’t beat it. Nicholas Frank is one of many artists exhibiting at Dean Jensen Gallery in a show designed to keep art moving when all else seems constipated in today’s art market. December 5th is the be-there date at the Water Street Gallery. Lots of Wisconsin-based artists plus many who aren’t will show, all carefully selected by Mr. Jensen & staff. No junk here; but much to cheer. You can walk away with a Frank ( “Tondo,” one of a trio defining pure minimalism) or an equally minimalist photograph by Kevin Miyazaki. Re-configured ceramics and abstract meanderings abound in this something-for-every-taste-blast. Gentleman Jensen knows his stuff and you can preview some of it at http://www.deanjensengallery.com.

Waswo India

Concerned about my former Milwaukee friends, Waswo X. Waswo and his partner Tommy, I emailed them in India to see if they were safe during the terrorist attacks in their adopted country. The two moved there several years ago and we’ve kept in touch. Waswo has shaped an excellent career as a photographer/writer in India, but now and then he returns with a new series of work, mostly recently seen at Grava Gallery and at the Haggerty Museum of Art where he had a solo exhibition. Woman with a Cow – Udaipur, Waswo X. “Yes, we are quite safe,” was the welcome answer I received on Thanksgiving Day. “I am in Sri Lanka, and Tommy is in Goa. But the Taj on fire is tragic, and Leopold’s is a haunt for not only us, but many of our friends.” Today came the announcement that our military presence in Iraq will soon be greatly reduced, thanks to an agreement with their government. We’ll see. Time will tell. There’s not much to be thankful for this year, but their safety and the news out of Iraq is a good start.

Visual Arts Picks, December 2008

Getting back to nature needn’t mean you’re a tree-hugger determined to save the earth. That said, in this season of ho-ho overkill, perhaps you’re in need of respite in the realm of visual arts. Start with the December 3 lecture (Art, Ecology and Social Change) by New York artist Betsy Damon. Its part of the Wednesday night series in the Arts Center Lecture Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd, and it’s a freebie! From now – December 27, Tory Folliard Gallery offers painters (Dennis Wojtkiewicz and Flora Langlois) whose views on flora and fauna are at opposite poles and from greatly different distances. Dip into Brian Knep’s Healing Pool in MAM’s Baker/Rowland Galleries (now – January 09). The funky “waters” are projected from the ceiling onto vinyl flooring, an ever-changing reminder that no matter where we walk, no matter what we do, we are bound to disturb the biological system. Ever changing too, was the 19th century cultural landscape of Wisconsin, and until January 4, you can explore those changes during The Finest in the Western Country: Wisconsin Decorative Arts, 1820-1900, also at MAM. Items include Crazy Quilt, 1893, a stitched-together-landscape which warmed a long ago Wisconsin bed. At Paper Boat Gallery and Boutique on December 5, witness the bright, other-worldliness of Life in WonderMountain by San Francisco-based mixed-media artist Lisa Congdon. Paper Boat is also a great place to pick up affordable gifts for your friends and family. Grab crocheted purses in gumdrop hues, key chains, pendants, magnets, baby onesies or a copy of Paper Boat owner Faythe Levine’s new book Handmade Nation. For more cheap and wonderful gifts, consult our guide on page 12. And Vital Source has a gift for you: everything you want to know about Act/React at MAM, with a DVD, artist cards, essays and more, all packaged in a clever orange box. The first person to me at <a href=”mailto:art@vitalsourcemag.com”>art@vitalsourcemag.com</a> wins the loot! VS

Roofin’ The Green

That’s a guy named Dieter in the foreground. His buddies are working on the flat white roof of the soon-to-be Green Gallery East at 15th & Farwell. Missed filmmaker/writer Mark Borchardt’s event at Green West (on Center St.).

MIke Brenner & Hair

This just in from Mike, along with a new-ish jpeg of his pate topped in pink. Yes, he’s still working on his MBA and emails that “The Decider” slot in The Onion will be mostly minimal and mostly previews. It’s hard to imagine him being minimal isn’t it, but certainly not hard to imagine him being part of The Onion.

Jimminy Crickets

Some things to consider: Walk. Run. Crawl. Cricket Toes is a new local site with a bit of this and a bit of that, fun and interesting, and so far, devoid of mouthy rants. Go to www.emergeartzine.com, a new quarterly (next issue is January 09) mag showcasing artists from Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana. Hopefully, it won’t be a publication disguised as an advertising vehicle. What’s needed is a clear and concise look at the featured artists which seem to be “emerging.” December 1 is the deadline for artists submissions for the January issue, and well, the hook is they’re charging $12 for 3 –10 submissions. I haven’t seen their October 08 debut issue, but it’s said to be in galleries here and there. Rotating “guest jurors” will decide who makes the cut. Ms. Ketarkus, owner and director of Grace Chosy Gallery in Madison will select for January. The mag is being navigated somewhere in Ft. Atkinson, Wisconsin. There’s been a strange lack of coverage for the Nohl Fellowship exhibit at inova/Kenilworth, and the usual whine about the decline of female contenders for the title of “established,” and/or “emerging.” All in all, it was a decent show, but wouldn’t have been without the addition of the Black Box section for viewing film & video. Is the tail wagging the dog? The newest batch of Fellowship winners are heavy into those disciplines.

Breaking News!

Jimmy Von Milwaukee is, yes he is, hosting his annual Xmas Craft event on December 20th. The site is yet to be announced, but he reveals participants will include the ever-faithful Julie Lindemann & Johny Shimon and perhaps a special showing of Milwaukee’s maker of sculptures fashioned from trash…Mike “Ringo” White. “Ringo was in to recycling years before it became chic,”quipped JVM, who is doing some recycling of his own. He reports that he’s pumping iron these days and morphing flab into abs. Stella will be incognito in Arizona on December 20 and is sorry to miss the gala. One of her fave possessions is a Xmas Craft Shimon & Lindemann photograph of her wearing a Packers’ helmet while perched on the lap of Bob Watt. Just so you know, December 20 is the birthday of Bo Derek, and the anniversary of the Jones Town Massacre. Von Milwaukee likes to build his events around special dates. And isn’t this special? Mike Brenner, artist/writer/former syrup on the cakes at Hotcakes is going to be an art critic for the Onion in their Decider section. If he thinks he had problems running a Riverwest Gallery, just wait until the herds of artists rush forth seeking his attention. Does this mean he’s no longer going to be pursuing a degree in Business Administration at UW-Mil?

Nohl Rap

The gender issue surrounding the annual Nohl Fellowships is a dead issue, but if you must beat it to death, you may as well ask how many racial minorities made the cut? Anyone with disabilities? How about old folks like me? Perhaps fewer women than men applied for the fellowships? You’re chasing your tails folks. Since when should awardees be selected on the basis of anything but what’s in front of the faces of the judges? Get over it. How many of you readers have actually visited the current Nohl event at inova/Kenilworth? I’ve been there three times and never noticed anyone else but the reflection of myself in the windows. Plus a few faces staring at me from the outside of the Prospect Avenue entrance. I even ran out and tried to entice outsiders in, to no avail. But hear tell, the place was packed on opening night, which is party time and schmooze-ville. Nothing wrong with that, but art is more than wine & cheese, or beer & brats. Recently a local gallery dealer sniffed that he didn’t like the show. His nose actually wrinkled as if he was inhaling the scent of Limburger cheese. His lip curled. And while we’re at it, how many gallerists ever visit each others’ exhibits? Can you name three? Two? One? Art sales are at a new low (lower than usual in M’waukee). Auction houses are in a snit. As the scene shrinks, the pressure mounts for more and more coverage of the visual arts. Ad sales plummet, printing costs rise, publications tank in the wake of online coverage. In the 80s, the economy fueled art sales and everything else open to inflationary prices, and then, wow! it all came tumbling down, in a kind of art foreclosure sale. Of course there are still uber-bucks around to purchase the really BIG stuff, and allegedly, “bargain” hunters are swooping in to scoop it u. Vultures.

Stella’s 2008 Awards for Best & Worst Sculpture

Best: Milwaukee has hunks of stuff that pass for “art,” but the east lobby of the historic Shorecrest Hotel shelters a bronze worth considering. “Fisherboy Dancing the Tarantella” (Francisque Joseph Duret) is allegedly the only true copy of the original 1832 beauty enshrined in the Louvre. With his six-pack abs, earrings and elegant torso defining a dance derived from the bite of the tarantula, the smiling chap is (perhaps) considering what art isn’t. Worst: The year was 1989. The National Association of Letter Carriers dedicated a memorial to those who carry forth through rain, sleet and snow. Installed on a small plot at Plankington & Wells, convenient to those out dodging traffic while dog walking, once per year someone stops by to clean the motley trio of figures. No one seems to know who gave us this miserable three, but the budget must have been miniscule. The result is a clutch of pint-sized carriers intent on dashing off in different directions.

Hit by an Opgenorth?

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. An asteroid? No, it’s a piece of art by Harvey Opgenorth. In my office is a hanging light fixture designed by Harvey. Fashioned from an upside down Eames fiberglass chair, it rocks. The light not the chair. So does Harvey. About this sculpture. It will be part of the Armoury Gallery exhibit showcasing Milwaukee’s Own, and Harvey is certainly one of those. A 1999 MIAD grad, he’s part of an event including three other MIAD grads, Kathryn E. Martin (a part time faculty member at both UW-Mil & MIAD), Mary DiBiasio, and lastly but not leastly, Colin Dickson. The grads who stick together seem also to play together. I hope they don’t try to one-up each other. I’ve seen this happen and it isn’t a pretty sight. The show opens at the mighty Fortress on Friday, December 5th (6 – 10pm). The address is 1718 N. 1st St., 3N3. If you’ve never been there, pack a bag lunch. 3N3 isn’t the easiest space to locate. As I re-read the Armoury’s press release, it seems that the aforementioned Harvey sculpture is a “gold” nugget. Okay, so expect a cave by Dickson, clouds of Styrofoam by Martin, and nuggets by Harvey. DiBiasio will check in with “the figure in contour.” For more info go to www.thearmourygallery.com. The press release does not mention the closing date. I don’t know why young gallerists often don’t include closing date info. It drives me bonkers.

A Poem As Lovely As A Tree

The economic crash has hit the world big time, and the world of art is no exception. I found quite a bit of comfort at Dean Jensen Gallery where Joan Backes’ work is on display until November 22. Stroll to the back of the long narrow space and stand in front of her video, “Oak Tree, One Year (2008).” It’s eleven minutes of heaven, as if you were on her property in Massachusetts observing the seasonal changes of a magnificent oak The oak is the state tree of Iowa from whence I hail and there are far fewer now than when I was a kid and sat beneath their leafy confines. For $1,000 the eleven minutes could be mine to take home, just in case the dreaded wilt wipes away the last of the greats. This filmmaking is art at its finest. It marks time, puts the world in perspective, and for delicious moments, made this viewer forget all else. If you are a “tree hugger type,” don’t go to the gallery with expectations of great and grand environmental statements. Her work is subtle; it suggests rather than insists. A trio of trees from 2008 (each referencing New England), are painted on panels, but they are slices of trunks, minutely detailed, and up close the details become wonderful miniature landscapes. Rising 8’ skyward and varying in width, they define the gallery’s entrance and introduce further depictions of trees, including one from this state, “Tree, Wisconsin (2004).” Fifteen photographs make it clear that Backes is multi-talented and determined to explore trees in all their glory. The concept is anything but ordinary. Paper, the by-product of trees, carries her point home, or rather to the “Newspaper House,” a cube for entering. Constructed of diverse folded squares of global newspapers, it is the center piece of the exhibition and is an inside/outside experience, every child-adult’s dream of a magical place perfect for the ultimate escape. I found myself reading the snippets of folded squares (obsessively) plastering the exterior: “the stock market took a beating last week,” “stand-up comedy in America is not, for the most part….,” and (gruesomely), “the deeper sores may have…” The house wears a skin of words (too many to absorb), but inside the sanctum waits another world of tiny dioramas, not unlike those in natural history museums. ”Elm” (light, vellum, laser and hand cut paper 2008), memorializes the elms that were struck down by disease in the 50s & 60s, not only in Milwaukee, but across our nation. They’ve all disappeared in my hometown, but I remember those lofty citadels that shaded our streets, sheltered the birds, and gave substance to each and every day. When they died, time didn’t stop, but it sure did change. The leaves will be gone or clogging our gutters when Jensen Gallery launches their answer to the economic downturn. “Big, Big Bangs/Small, Small Bucks” opens December 5 thru January 24 in the year 2009. Nothing will be priced over $750, and (at this […]

Cheese or Pepperoni?

Just kidding. The former pizza joint on 15th & Farwell (east side of street) will reopen in mid-January ’09, not as another pizza or tattoo parlor, but as Green Gallery East, brought to you steaming hot by gallerist/artist Riepenhoff who knows how to serve up a satisfying slice of art. The debut event will feature the work of David Robbins, described online as “international,” and a former laborer at the Andy Warhol Factory. He’s more than that, so I’m looking forward to his show. The modest modernist structure Green is re-doing had slipped into severe disrepair, so hey, on the street that developer Boris Gokhman (New Land Enterprises) is holding hostage, an art gallery sure trumps a tanning spa and yet another soaring condo. Across Farwell is the Pasta Tree, and to the north, the fab Maharaja eatery, the Beehive Beauty Salon, and well, a few blocks north of that is Brady Street itself, and even further north, the invova/Kenilworth art mecca. Did I mention “Mr. Shoe?” He’s a neighbor of Green East too. I’m hard pressed to think of a better location for an art adventure. Stroll out my front door, round the corner and there it is, in all of its one-story glory. Because it’s a former drive-up place, the parking should be adequate. This is after all, the eastside where tempers rise during the on-going battle of who gets what. Hoof it, bus it, bike it. We’ll be in a new year with a new president when the gallery opens. Suddenly 2009 seems downright hopeful. Galleries come and go, but Riepenhoff & his youthful crew have devoted fans. It will be interesting to see who actually visits the space, set in a diverse area of the well-heeled and down-in-the-heels, and all points in between. Imagining that uber-condo types will experience it, is a bit of a stretch, but perhaps they’ll stretch their minds and consider something other than boring pretty pictures for their walls, put in place by interior designers who don’t have a clue what art is. One Riepenhoff idea that I hope doesn’t go away, is his “Riepenhoff experience,” a wonderful tree-house style small installation. Climbing up the ladder and peering in, is, in a word, sensational.

Here Pussy, Pussy

Gene Evans made the AV section of the Onion’s August 21-27 edition. You may recall he’s the co-proprietor of Luckystar Studio, formerly of Vliet St. Bridget Griffith Evans, the far nicer and more talented of the two, is moving with her grouchy spouse to a new location on Mitchell St., where they will concentrate on their respective careers. In the Q&A Onion interview, Evans says “They (i.e., artists he has to deal with) can be such pussies,” and goes on to grouse that “they can be prima donnas,” and then adds the words “demanding,” and other snippets indicating he hates being in an art kitchen populated with pussies. Well, this is hardly news. Evans is known for his complaints, though at times, he and Mike Brenner seem to be wrestling for media coverage. That said, Brenner takes the hot cakes when it comes to who sez what, besides which, he’s currently working on his MBA at UWM. After getting lots of media space by claiming they’ll never ever run another gallery, Gene & Bridget were open for October Gallery Night @ their Mitchell St. digs. These two have been around town, that’s for sure. Look for their work to pop up almost anywhere.

‘Memba This?

Possibly the last remaining Art Muscle t-shirt in M’waukee? Born at 9th & National in the days when we had a great big beautiful art publication, this shirt is from “Fruit Of The Loom.” At one time, AM’s shirt inventory included long-sleeved versions. Art Muscle also sold pocket protectors, buttons and coffee mugs, and oh yeah, the shirt was available in black with white letters, or white with black letters. Just so you know. Wearing one of these t’s meant you were with it, hip & hot. A fellow blogger wrote that he’d personally order four, if only they were currently available. Actually he bought the last remaining t-shirt before AM closed their doors. “I’d have driven 50 miles to get one,” he admits, though it’s unclear if he still has his. If anyone out there still has an ART MUSCLE shirt, write Stella Cretek pleeze. In the meantime, you might want to consider a Vital Source t. To wear one is to be hip & hot.

You Say Potato, I Say Potatoe

A few years ago when Whole Foods sprung up on the west end of North Avenue, their PR person put out a call for local artists. What this usually means when a new business materializes, is that artists are expected to hang their work for free. It’s a kind of art-as-wallpaper concept. Anyway, Mike Brenner (the former proprietor of Hotcakes Gallery) took the bait and arranged for a bona-fide exhibit of his gallery artists. They failed to pass muster with the powers that be, i.e. Whole Foods deemed the work a bad fit for their particular product. Susceptibletoimages.com picked up on the story and ran with it. What a difference a few years make. Recently, while shopping for things I don’t need, a group of paintings caught my eye as I was about to take the down escalator to the parking garage. Most folks would never know they were there, tucked in a dead-end corner just beyond a display case hawking hemp hats and plastic water bottles. They looked quite a bit like paintings Mike Brenner might have had in his defunct gallery, though of far lesser quality. In any event, they weren’t paintings of organic tomatoes and green peppers. The tag near the grouping identified them as the work of someone in the store, a “Team” member, who perhaps was laboring in the frozen food department. I couldn’t make sense of the artist’s name, but I swear it translated from Spanish into something akin to “Devil Lobster.” I could be wrong. Okay, so I’m near the parking garage downstairs and a pea-green “Call for Artists” poster catches my attention. It promises the artists that thousands of people monthly would view the artwork, that there would be an opening reception catered by Whole Foods’ in-store chef, and that the exhibit would be promoted in the monthly calendar, etc. It didn’t identify the three areas where the artists would have their work displayed, but I’d seen one of the areas and believe me it wasn’t exactly a high-traffic zone. I was the only one there, and that was sheer coincidence. Artists who want to take this bait can pick up an application at the store’s Customer Service desk or online at www.wholefoodsmarket.com. Just imagine how a show at Whole Foods would look on your resume. It’s not everyone that gets to exhibit near bunches of asparagus and heaps of organic fruit. Oh, I forget to mention that the exhibit opportunities include a chance to sell your pieces directly to the customers as they rush by. On the fun side of life: A late October sign on the inside of a door at the downtown M & I Bank advises: For security reasons, please remove your Halloween mask before entering the bank.

Blog Meat

In continuing an explanation about the meat of blogs, I’ve been re-reading the November issue of the Atlantic, specifically, Andrew Sullivan’s “Why I Blog.” There’s more online at www.theatlantic.com/blogging. The secret seems to be links, Duh. I’ve been clueless. The other big deal clue is “if you don’t paddle, you’re dead in the blog waters.” Or something like that. This suggests that genuine bloggers, blog at least once daily, and often twice or more, and whoa! there’s a whole generation running around that have never written anything other than blogs, a frightening thought for one who really actually truly believes that writing is way beyond blogging. That said, I’m including a link to Milwaukee artist Tom Kovacich, http://www.thomaskovacich.com. He exhibits at Gallery 218, is a modernist, and from that standpoint, would seem a nice fit for blogging which Sullivan describes as postmodern communication. In a recent email he commented that he had read Judith Ann Moriarty’s vitalsourcemag.com feature about MAM’s Act/React exhibit, and also Dem Bones take on art critics. He sent me a fruit basket as a reminder.

Artsy

www.artsyschmartsy.com Go there, then pick up the forthcoming (soon!) issue of INFO magazine, for a feature about artsy, a chap who wears cheaters and is learning about art. Interviewed by Judith Ann Moriarty in her digs overlooking splendid Milwaukee, Schmartsy reveals himself fully. Let Stella hear if you like it. As I write, susceptibletoimages.com seems to be down, but by the time you read this, hopefully it will be up. Who’s making paintings these days worth viewing? Tom Kovacich. kovacich@earthlink.net. See them at Gallery 218. Photographs? Kevin Miyazaki at inova/Kenilworth. Sculptures? Bernini, but he’s dead. Should VS have a sex column, or is sex dead? Can’t seem to locate Nikol Knows which was featured online at Milwaukee Magazine .Oh well, great sex usually doesn’t last forever anyway. I’m thinking of running a blog about “condo rules.” Some of them are hilarious. Here’s one:” If your doggie pees or poops on the elevator carpet, perhaps it needs diapers. It is not the job of the concierge to clean up what doggie does.”

Blogging For Naught?

Maybe I don’t get it, don’t quite understand blogging and the point of it. The November Atlantic has a fine feature (Why I Blog), which explains the author’s take on blogging. I still don’t get it, even though he calls it “writing out loud,” and seems to think it beats regular writing with editors breathing down his neck. I’m beginning to think that I’m lost in blog land. It’s been around for a decade and the field is pretty crowded. Is there a secret that successful bloggers use to get attention? Nastier writing? Wildly controversial content? Or does one have to be a star? Should I cut back on my blog postings? Should I escalate my postings? Reinvent my persona? I’ve written hundreds of blogwords, and only received two comments: one was from fellow VS blogger Bobrow and the other you can read about in my “The Big Louse” posting in Dem Bones. I never go to blogs other than the VS blogs. Maybe that’s the problem. IS that the problem? Do successful bloggers spread themselves all over the place? Do they advertise in hardcopy publications? Do I even care? I guess I do, or I wouldn’t be blogging on about it. Frankly, the most fun I have with “Dem Bones” is digging up fun images from Wikimedia. Perhaps people are actually reading my blog and are too busy to comment. Or too lazy. Or too blogged-out. Perhaps the blog craze is reaching the bottom of the word-well.

Shameless Shirt-Tailing

I’m going to be in Kansas City in December and plan to stroll over to the Kansas City Art Institute to see “Political Persuasion” Street Posters for Barack Obama.” The posters are from the private collection of a professor at the Institute. It’s near the splendid Nelson Gallery of Art (with a splendid new addition described by Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker magazine as the best museum addition of this decade). A few blocks away is the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. MAM’s current executive director, Daniel Keegan, was in charge there prior to his California sojourn. Interior, Steven Holl addition, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City People imagine K.C. as a big cow town, and yes, at one time it was home to some impressive stockyards, but it’s way more than that these days. The Missouri river rambles through downtown, a downtown gripped in the condo craze, but also the site of the revival of a number of old venues. I’ll be Amtrak-ing there via the Hiawatha to Chicago and then on to the Southwest Chief for a ride across Iowa and south to Missouri. Seven hours and twenty cups of bad coffee and I’ll be in the grand old Union Station, and directly across from Liberty Memorial Hill where 175,000 Obama fans rallied recently. Like all cities, K.C. has some really bad public art and some awful galleries with awful art: schmoozy florals, cowboys on horses, big eyed kittens, etc. The Nelson will certainly be on my list of places to view art worth viewing, and the new addition features contemporary art, plus a Noguchi sculpture garden. The landscaping surrounding the building was designed by Mr. Kiley, who also designed the gardens at MAM, as well as the Chestnut Grove adjacent to the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. Exterior, Steven Holl addition, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City

The Big Louse (Pl. lice)

I’m not going to give the louse who commented to my “Big Snooze” blog much space except to say thank heavens for the “Details” section that allowed me to track down the perpetrator. The lousy comments had nothing to do with my blog content (about a day at the Milwaukee Ballet), but instead was a rant about drug use. Eureka, I traced it back to a site that sells booklets on “How to Pass A Drug Test.” Oddly, it came from Sand Point, Idaho, where Sarah Palin grew up. I spent a week in that town, enroute to Seattle, on the trail of a louse-lawyer who screwed me out of quite a bit of money. It was a useless trip as the attorney I consulted in Seattle told me it would cost me greatly to chase the creep and get my $$$$ back Ah yes, Stella was a fool back then, but the trip wasn’t a total bust. I did get to visit the Pacific Rim, and (in Montana) was stopped by a cop who advised me not to be hot footing it across the countryside at night. Those were the days when Montana had no speed limit. In the pursuit of art, I’ve included a decent line-drawing of a louse. Just so you know.

November Fifth

Up in the morning; out on the trail. Actually Prospect Avenue was the former route of Sauk Indians, but yesterday, November 4, 2008, it’s treked by people headed to the Charles Allis Museum to vote. By 7:30AM, I turn around and head home because no way am I fighting that line. The sun was splendid, so instead, I sat on the south facing balcony and read the New Yorker’s cartoon issue. R. Crumb & company have a few pages poking fun at their family reunion in Minnesota. One of the drawings shows them waiting for a train in Columbus, Wisconsin. Hey, since when does a train run through Columbus? Below the balcony, a U.S. Navy destroyer has parked on the rim of the lake and cars are unloading people eager to see the latest in weaponry. Bob Barr, a Libertarian, remarked that we live in a cartoon world, and it seems he’s right. Pundits are already busy yapping about whether Obama will swing to the far left when he takes office. He won’t, but it’s a frightening thought. President O will be busy enough trying to unscramble the global mess. Even with a tsunami of Democrats in the Senate, I’m betting it will be a year before anything substantial is accomplished. I’m greatly offended by non-thinkers who rush forward to gush, “never in my lifetime, or even in my kid’s lifetime, did I think a black man would be elected to the office of the President.” This smacks of reverse racism, all schmoozy and woozy. Much to the disgust of my Republican family, I wrote in former Nebraska senator, Chuck Hagel, a friend of McCain’s who is likely to join Obama as Secretary of State. I decided to do so, shortly after reading a feature about him in the New Yorker.

Sometimes A Donut Is Just A Donut

This morning on my way to Schwartz on Downer, I stopped in at the Obama headquarters and helped myself to a plain old unfrosted old-fashioned donut. The workers were busy firing up the troops for the final days of the world’s longest presidential election. On the north wall, a large portrait of Obama (resembling a Chuck Close painting), stood guard over the laptops and walls plastered with directions, instructions, phone numbers, blah, blah. I strolled around eating my donut trying to decide who I was going to cast my vote for on November 4. Earlier in the day, I drove by the Zeidler building in hopes of finding a parking spot to cast an early vote. No luck, but no problem either. On November 4th I have only to walk a few blocks north of where I live, and vote at the lovely Charles Allis Museum. The good news on Downer Avenue, is that the huge Gokhman parking structure has decided to get rid of the puke-green accent on the front of the building. In fact, it looks like the whole paint job has been changed. It’s much better….quieter in understated shades of ivory and white. The bad news is that Lixx is for sale, and well, Downer was spookily quiet, almost deserted. That section needs help big time. A block north, things are much livelier. It was quiet at Schwartz too, but they had my copy of Mishima’s “After the Banquet” ready to take home. There’s an air of tension everywhere this week, or is it just me? When you set your clocks back on November 2, you had a whole extra hour to feel tense. For many voters, the choice of our next president will be clear. Me? I’m still in a fog. The donut I ate weighs heavily as I write.

Pea Green

With apologies to Edward Lear (1812 – 1888), author of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped in a five-pound note… Revised version pre-election 2008: Sarah and John went to sea In a beautiful Republican boat They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped in a stock market quote… I just returned from my second visit to the 2007 Nohl Fellowship exhibit at inova/Kenilworth. Seven artists, each with their slice of the competition’s modest money honey, dance by the light of the moon. The moon, the moon, they dance by the light of the moon. The show closes in January 09 and shortly thereafter our new President will be sworn in. Colin Mathes’ drawings and sculptural forms define America as honky-tonk carnival, and among the various installations, stand out as the most political.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I have three basic rules for reviewing art. They address the content, the craftsmanship, and the consistency of the work. Making art does not involve “magic,” nor does writing about it. What’s needed is an experienced eye, clear thinking, and, unless you are some kind of whiz kid, long hours. Computers are great tools, but I know of none that “think.” We live in a world fraught with “information” rushed to deadline: words mashed and tangled beyond recognition, words spewed from press release re-writes. Angry words, dumb words, and here and there, intelligent words shaped into cohesive thoughts before they are fired into space. I’m a big fan of the latter. All of this chaos makes me ponder the role of the art critic. Those two words, art critic, are attached to responsibilities, and words devoid of thought are zero. It’s easy these days to plunder websites (so many, so diverse) and pack a review with clever asides, so as to create the illusion that the writer has been thinking. Oh well, (you say), the virtual universe has infinite space, so what’s the excuse for not giving as many folks as possible their fifteen minutes of online fame? What’s the harm? Brain dead coverage is the harm. Description without opinion or conclusions well considered. One of the prickly problems in solid coverage of visual art, is that all artists yearn to be loved. They hope that writers covering the arts, will (naturally) rave on about what they’ve produced, and in return, the artist will rave on about the critic, and so goes the lie. Awesome, Astounding, Magnificent, Glorious, Amazing…. words tumble forth, even though it’s clear in almost all “preview” writing, that the writer has not seen the work. The same holds for “reviews” where the words may be pretty, but the writing is vapid. A weak reviewer (in Milwaukee) can not get lost in the crowd. My skin isn’t so thick that I desire running into an artist at an opening, an artist who will snarl that his or her work was not given the accolades he or she absolutely knows it deserves. On the flip side it makes me uncomfortable to meet up with an artist I’ve given a “good” review to. When they smile and pat my shoulder, I suspect it’s just another form of grooming. Consequently, I avoid art openings. I’ve observed that artists who receive lukewarm (or worse) reviews, are unable to separate reviews from their personal selves. I’ve been on the receiving end of a disaster review, written by Tom Strini who was sent to West Bend way back when, to cover an exhibition of my work. My phone didn’t ring for weeks, as friends who read the review were too embarrassed to call. I wrote Strini a note thanking him for his coverage. He told me years later that it was the only thank you he’d ever received for a devastating review. He moved on. I moved on. I continue to be a […]

Stranger in a strange land

By Judith Ann Moriarty Now – January 11, 2009 I’m bound to the past. I approach the very idea of “interactive” art with a wary eye. To view a painting, sculpture or photograph is a personal event shaped by my education in the arts and my philosophy of what art is. I enjoy being pleased by the sublime. Joining the masses headed for the next big thing is not my idea of a great art experience. So I asked myself, “Is interactive art a passing fancy or a fancy pass?” It’s certainly not a new form of expression. It’s been around for at least half of my seven decades on earth. As a kid I touched on it (marginally) when I sat in bed with a flashlight and used my fist and a few digits to cast shadow “animals” on the wall. Maybe that was more generative than interactive, but it came close. Act/React opened in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Baker/Rowland galleries on October 4. The pre-show hype trumpets a 10,000 square-foot installation featuring “talking tables, virtual snowstorms, paths of fluorescent light and glowing pools of organic patterns … all dependent upon and subject to the physical influence of the visitor and groups of visitors in the gallery space” (MAM Insider, Fall 08). The first of its kind, exclusive to MAM, it hasn’t yet been described as a “blockbuster” event, but I couldn’t help fearing it would be eerily similar to a ‘60s disco with weird lights, paisley overkill and total immersion in total funk. And so it was that I spent hours entering and exiting the Baker/Rowland galleries, attending lectures, panels and gallery talks. I studied the online history of the interface. I slogged through virtual games, ‘60s Happenings and video art and learned that the computer-controlled IA idea began in 1969 with Glowflow, a space with pressure-sensitive sensors on its floor, loudspeakers in the four corners of the room and tubes with colored suspensions on the wall. As the movement gained speed, artists Robert Rauschenberg and James Seawright latched on to the moveable sensory feast. The Museum’s Sensory Overload, with Erwin Redl’s mathematical marvel, Matrix XV, 2007, Landsman’s Walk-In Infinity Chamber, 1968 and Sonic II, a wall-hung piece which reacts with noises to the presence of visitors, garnered mixed reviews, but the show set the stage for Act/React, which runs through January 11, 2009. Here’s an excerpt from Katherine Murrell, co-publisher of susceptibletoimages.com. Written for their June 11, 2008 issue, it speaks to at least some of my wariness about IA: “The quest for interactivity is one that seems to be on the mind of many cultural institutions. With a society so accustomed to being entertained, to having sensory experience on-demand and in all forms, whether it be the high definition DVD on the giganto plasma screen or Lawrence of Arabia squashed down to fit your cell phone, we usurp images into our medium of choosing within the informal context of our lives.” Daniel Keegan, the new executive […]

Act on these

Last month a new publication (Alt-) landed on the scene, fueled by a new generation of local artists getting the word out about what they’re up to. The beat continues with a goodly number of small energetic galleries testing their mettle, not the least of which is the Armoury Gallery in the Fortress building. You have until November 15 to see In Contour, showcasing three artists who use strong lines and edges in their work. Two of the participants, Paul Kjelland and Julia Schilling, are MIAD grads; the third, Sonja Peterson, is completing her MFA at the University of Minnesota. The gallery’s website (thearmourygallery.com) is a clutter-free place for a preview. Professional is a key word in their approach. November 15 is also your last chance to immerse yourself in Folliard Gallery’s biennial Open Lands show, depicting the restful scenery of the Midwest. The election is over (whew!), but global concerns grind on. Valerie Christell teaches art at Alverno College, and on November 14 her Contemporary Topics students will install a collaborative, site specific exhibit, on view through December 5 in the college’s Christopher Hall. Last year’s installations included work about genocide. How will you react to this one? Act/React, an interactive art exhibit, is underway in the Baker/Rowland galleries at Milwaukee Art Museum, and in tandem with that, Margot Lovejoy’s November 12 lecture at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design addresses interactivity issues. Lovejoy, the author of Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, speaks at 7 pm. Seven winners of the 2007 Mary Nohl Fellowship awards gather at Inova/Kenilworth (through January 18, 2009) in an exhibit curated by Bruce Knackert, an excellent man. Look for work by Faythe Levine (co-owner of the wildly successful Paper Boat Boutique on Howell), Colin Matthes, Kevin Miyazaki, and others. Controversy surrounds this show, but only because it seems short on females. Two made this year’s cut, the aforementioned Ms. Levine and filmmaker Annie Killelea. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s free Visual Art Lecture Series presents Mads Lynnerup in an event titled “You Are The Artist, You Figure It Out.” Mads is a video artist and sculptor, and he’ll present his latest work along with words about it on November 12 in the Arts Center Lecture Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd, at 7 pm. For more Mads, he’s featured in stop.look listen at the Haggerty Museum now until way into 2009, which is to say February 22. If you get the short end of the turkey wishbone this year, no big deal. Lots of folks got short changed big time. Go sink your teeth into art instead. VS

The Big O

No, not that one. Or the other O’s either. I’m talking here about the O that counts on Tuesday, November 4th. You’ll be setting your watches, clocks, and other timepieces back one hour on November 2, which means you’ll have an extra hour before casting your vote two days later. It’s almost over, all the months of waiting, considering, reading and arguing. I’m beginning to wonder what I’ll do with my time when the die is cast. And what will all those pundits do? The Atlantic has redesigned their magazine in keeping with the times, which is to say, they’re trying to be hip and with it. In the publishing biz for 151 years (1,791 issues), the November issue has a great piece on “China’s Neurosis,” and for the hipsters, a feature by Andrew Sullivan on “Why He Blogs.” Jeffrey Goldberg writes about the “Idiocy of Airline Security,” and there’s more, much more, between the screaming black, gold and red cover. And just so you know, the New Yorker is going to be publishing online (totally dude) in a few months. Yesterday I picked up a copy of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, a novel that set my hair on fire and set me on the track to reading everything he ever wrote. The lone copy of Prayer looked lonely sitting next to Irving’s unimpressive Until I Find You. Over the years I’ve purchased several copies of the former and have given all the copies to friends who I deemed worthy of reading his work. Sadly, it seems when the author went Hollywood, he also slipped into a deep depression and well, his writing hasn’t been the same since. Updike and Oates are still writing, so life isn’t entirely grim, but they’re getting old and soon I need to tap into authors of equal quality. Who are they?

The Big Snooze

It’s Sunday, October 26 (Halloween weekend) and I’m sitting in Box H at the Marcus Center, waiting for the curtain to open and reveal the Milwaukee Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty. My watch says 1:30 pm, which means I’ll be missing my afternoon nap. My seat is so comfy that I could sneak in a few ZZZZs, but then I’d miss out on all the fairies (good & bad), and the likes of the 16-year-old who pricked her finger on a rose and fell into slumber in the days before sleeping pills. It’s likely that most in the audience remember Sleeping Beauty as the honey-haired beauty who slept in the 1959 Disney film, but the tale was writ long before that, in 1697. Tom Strini, Dance Critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, deemed the October 23 performance tepid, particularly the segments prior to intermission. He was right. If it hadn’t been for the wicked Carabosse and her wicked sidekicks, I would have been out like a light. Before the curtain rose I wandered around in the atrium taking notes on the large abstract paintings on loan from the Milwaukee Art Museum. The area was filled with kids and their parents and/or grandparents, and one little girl arrived dressed in a long white satin princess gown. A bartender (Phil Brich) poured me a nice shot of Canadian Club (with a twist of lemon), and then confided that he didn’t like the “Pasquin” 1992 painting by Luis Roldan, who I seem to recall was formerly (in the Way Back Days) married to the lead flute player for the MSO. “Pasquin” reminds me of a bear,” he said. He was right. He then remarked that he’s trying to get press coverage for his poetry and song lyrics, and perhaps because I was taking notes, he thought I was the key to fame. Seeking refuge, I took my notepad and drink and perched on the ledge of a splashing fountain to listen to a player-less piano churning out “As Time Goes By” near a big bronze sculpture, “Leap of Faith,” cast in 2006, number 44 of 50. That was a mistake because the woman next to me, apparently noted my notes. “Oh, I’m a writer. I write job resumes,” she said, adding that business is good these days. Another woman recognized my Iowa drawl and identified herself as a fellow Iowan (but not a writer!), and I’m thinking as I write this that perhaps my conversation with her was the high point of my October 26 ballet foray. Onward and onward, into the churning crowd of kids, my next stop was an area where the ballet was hawking various items, including pen and ink drawings by east-sider, Jason Fricke. 50% off the sign said. If you appreciate delicate line drawings of dancers, Jason’s your guy. Just so you know: don’t expect the ticket takers to rip your ticket in half anymore. The newest ploy is to scan your ticket, so you’re not left holding the raggedy […]

Step Right Up

As one of the 2007 recipients of a Mary Nohl Fellowship, Colin Matthes hit the jackpot. The 30-year-old scored again when the spacious inova/Kenilworth gallery was recently enlarged to accommodate the awardees’ efforts. Though a few of the exhibits are politically understated, Matthes’ War Fair: Occupation Games for Citzens and Non-Combatants scores mightily in this political year. The theme of the nine pieces is war in all of its gory carnival-esque glory. I’d like to say it’s a “fun-house,” but it isn’t, though perhaps it is for those who get a rush out of a chance to “Stone the Prisoner,” “Shoot Into A Crowd,” or play “Afghan Roulette.” Well, you can’t actually shoot or stone, but you get the drift. Step right up folks. Matthes knows quite a bit about carnivals, having worked for sixteen years helping his dad electrify stuff at the county fair in Jefferson, Wisconsin. I remember when the carnival rolled into my rural hometown, because it arrived with a delicious sense of danger involving the chance to win and the greater chance not to take home the fat glittering Kewpie Doll waiting on the shelf behind the sweating barker who knew how to spot suckers big time. Matthes’ installation is a sloppy cobbled-together mess. It succeeds because it’s sloppy, in the way that war is untidy. “Stone The Prisoner,” a towering (142 inches high) painting of a prisoner, wrought slap-dash in appropriate black and white stripes with touches of yellow, introduces the games, and stands opposite “Lucky Catch (Always a Winner).” Among the prizes one can fish for, are U.S. Army helmets, flag pins and FEMA Life Preservers. The chap attaching the prizes to various hooks is ferret-faced and somewhat reminiscent of the characters populating the art of German Dadaist/Expressionist painters. The images, scratched and slapped onto crummy plywood, suggest facism, but thankfully, Matthes avoids swastika clichés. “Fire In The Hole (Grenade Toss),” embellished in circus wagon colors, and canopied in painted canvas strung with industrial-strength lights, occupies the central space in the installation, surrounded by smaller works such as “Afghan Roulette.” Place your bet folks. Take your chances. Are we having fun yet? The day of my second visit to the gallery exhibit, was Sunday, October 19. The only other soul in sight was a gallery sitter busy chatting on a cell phone and working on a laptop. Before I exited, I placed my big round Obama “Fist Bump” pin on the railing surrounding Fire In The Hole. With apologies to Mr. Matthes, it’s my personal grenade, a token of why folks should vote on November 4. VS UPDATE: You’ll actually be able to participate in his “Fire In The Hole (Grenade Toss)” game on November 20th. A note from Polly Morris at UW-Milwaukee urges “Come one, come all,” so do that at 6pm on a Thursday. By then the green graffiti tag left by a wannabe artist (on the red brick exterior of the Prospect Avenue entrance) will likely have been removed. And oh […]

Bee Bomb

Nicole Hauser, the lively staff person at Tory Folliard Gallery searched high and low for the right guy. Last year she married him, “him” being Racine-based sculptor Bill Reid, the focus of a November 2008 feature in Milwaukee Home Magazine. Actually, he was right under her nose all the time….as a regular exhibitor at Folliard Gallery. Their wedding reception at South Shore Park in Bay View was something to behold! Everything was made by the bride and groom, who arrived at the reception in a wildly colorful sculpture on wheels known as the “Bee Bomb,” built by Bill who teaches at the Prairie School in Racine. It gives new meaning to the words “hot rod.” Theirs is a match made in heaven. When Bill exhibits at Folliard in March of 2009, Nicole will (naturally) be part of the crowd.

A Dead Rodent Plus Two Carrots

What’s small and elegant and depicts a rodent, and in another work, two carrots? I first saw these paintings by the late John Wilde (1919-2006), at the Tory Folliard Gallery. Sandwiched between another Wilde (a green pepper), the terrific surrealist trio knocked me out. Let’s start with the painting of the rodent, and beyond that, an obviously dead rodent. It’s one of the finest paintings I’ve ever viewed, bar none. But why depict decay? Why not depict the firmness of living flesh? Wilde seldom settled for the ordinary, which isn’t to say he slacked off while producing his juicy Cucumber Regal, a small Silverpoint and wash. Magic Realism is tricky. It often takes us where angels fear to tread. Wilde wasn’t afraid to go there. Microtus Pennsylvanicus, 2003, Oil on Canvas Mounted on Panel. 6 x 8” So here rests the rodent, memorialized in oil on canvas. Microtus Pennsylvanicus is, at 6 x 8 inches, charmingly small. There’s no trap in sight, no traces of poison, and not a drop of blood anywhere. The bundle of raggedy white fur appears to have dropped in its tracks, weary (I’m imagining here) of living the rodent life, or more properly, the life of a meadow vole, which is what Microtus Pennsylvanicus is. Burrowed under ground, the vole is the food of foxes and fowl. On the other hand, the lowly vole enjoys decimating vegetable gardens. Untitled (Two Carrots), memorializes a duo of carrots entwined. They’ve obviously lost the garden-freshness of their youthful days, the days when their leafy heads poked above the earth while they waited to be snatched and eaten. Now they resemble worn-out lovers lacking the will to go forward, their best days behind them. Untitled (Two Carrots), 2003, Oil on Panel, 6 x 10” Do yourself a favor. Go to Folliard Gallery and ask to see their full selection of Wilde’s work.

Sludge Suckers

Early this morning, the day after the third Presidential debate, my phone rang. On the other end an aggressive recorded voice, informed me that Obama consorts with terrorists, i.e. Bill Ayers. The voice did not identify itself as being aligned with any particular group. I slammed down the phone in disgust. How much lower can we sink into this cesspool of crap? Years ago when I lived in a suburban tri-level, our sewage system consisted of a septic tank dug into the side of our yard. I’d never dealt with one before, but it wasn’t long until I had to, and I soon learned that the Honey Wagon that came around each month didn’t sell honey. No indeed. What it did was suck out the stinking contents filling the concrete receptacle.When the lid was lifted you could smell the shit all over the leafy confines of our block. The guy who serviced the shit removal, inserted a long hose into the tank, flipped a switch, and voila, the gunk disappeared into the bowels of his truck which hauled it off to god knows where. What disemboweled voices spewing shit need, is a long hose stuck down their throats. I envision it as a snake-like device that clamps onto their rotten mouths and then works its way into their intestinal tract. Not once in this arduous political race have I ever received a call from an Obama supporter that was anything less than polite. Don’t try calling me again whoever (or whatever) you are.

The Flip Side of Life

I’m wondering what would be revealed if the small town where I spent (until 1951) the first fifteen years of my life, had its skin peeled off? When I speak of “skin,” I’m talking about churches, schools, farms, and various other signifiers of the good life in rural America. Until we moved to Kansas City at the beginning of the Civil Rights era, I had not a clue that the world wasn’t populated by people like me: fair of skin and blue of eye. Yes, I’d sat through many a news reel at the town’s lone Rialto Theater, where I saw images of “Japs” float by during WWII. Some of those news reels spilled over into the cartoons too…caricatures of foreigners not to be trusted by the likes of Bugs Bunny. Cartoonist Al Capp kept us laughing on Sundays, though little did I suspect that his take on cigar-chomping capitalists, was anything but fun. It was years before I realized Al was an activist in disguise. During WWII, a Jewish family moved to our town to open a butcher shop. “They’re selling horsemeat,” floats through my head to this day. There was a German family who immigrated (foreigners!) to our space and opened a bakery, and although there were numerous Germans, Irish, and Swedes populating the valley, it was those Germans recently arrived who got the shaft. In 1912, the town became the site of the axe murder of eight sleeping on a quiet Sunday. The local paper covered it in gruesome detail, and the event gained national notoriety. It’s informative to flip through the pages of a reproduction of the various Axe Murder issues. The case was never solved, but the suspects were always described as “dark of skin.” During a class reunion, I remarked about this to a local woman, who shot back, “We still have a law on our books which states “all blacks are to be out of town by sundown.” It’s doubtful that her smug statement was true (at least in the 70s & 80s), and well, when she died of a heart attack a few days following the reunion, I can’t say I was among the mourners She also told me that she locked the doors to her home each and every night, because “foreigners” might cause trouble. Yesterday I visited an installation (at inova/Kenilworth’s current exhibit). Standing in front of the superb photographs by Kevin Miyazaki, photographs detailing the internment camp in the United States where his father and his father’s family were sent during WWII, I recalled the news reels at the Rialto. There I sat with my popcorn, a uniformed kid soaking up the undercurrent of racist thinking Anyone who thinks that racism isn’t thriving in America is either a fool or is brain dead. Peel back the skin and take a good look. As we near the election, I find myself fretting that perhaps I’m casting my vote for Obama simply because he’s black. Am I the only person wrestling […]

Chocolate & Wurst

You know things are bad when a small bank coyly titled “Main Street” collapses. It’s almost as if that maudlin flick A Wonderful Life is suddenly and forever no longer available for viewing. You know things are bad when Laura Bush starts shopping for a new house in Big D, perhaps figuring the old shack in Crawford just won’t do. Crawford has gone steadily downhill with the decline of George W. No longer is it filled with SUV’s yearning to draw ever nearer the sacred ranch, and all but two shops hawking Bush trash are closed. Crawford had its 15 minutes of fame. A great article in the New Yorker magazine took a poke at the photo op moments of Bush whacking Texas brush in the heat of August, suggesting that no one in their right mind hacks brush in Texas in August. Except Bush who looks like he’s aged one hundred years since taking office. You know things are bad when McCain chastises his crowds and suddenly begins describing Obama as a nice guy, a fine man, and whoa! Not an Arab, but a genuine American. You know things are bad when Palin sinks deeper into TrooperGate and Bill Clinton zips his lips, and GM’s Janesville plant is set to close. You know things are good when you run across a grizzled ‘Nam vet who owns the Chocolate Tree on Old World Third St. He and the wife have put four daughters through college on the earnings from hawking sweets. They’re currently looking for a larger venue, a place where trucks can load and unload without getting ticketed while trying to run a business. Folks come in to his store complaining about their financial losses and leave with a bag of treats which allegedly gives them comfort. Usingers is north a few buildings, and things seem to be humming there as well. For them, the wurst has always been good.

Astronaut Artist

My son was about six or seven when Alan Bean blasted off in November 1969, piloting the lunar module of Apollo 12: Destination, moon. Bean became the fourth person to trod there. At age 76, he’s alive and well, and recently had an exhibit of his artworks at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. Last year I gave my son a signed print of one of Bean’s original moon-related paintings. The originals are going for great big bucks these days…. astronomical, you could say. He left NASA in 1981, figuring his talents were best put to use as a serious painter. An article at www.msnbc.com described his work as “Monet-like,” but that is a bit of a stretch, and could be applied to any and all artists who sway toward impressionism. While the paintings certainly aren’t hyper-realistic, they do speak of a place we will never visit, at least not me. I’ve looked into the depths of Monet’s Lily Pond painting many times at the Chicago Institute of Art, and while it’s worlds away from the moon, perhaps there is a connection, if only through the “remembering” of a specific place in a specific time. Coincidentally, I think Bean was in a group of astronauts who were touring Peru in the early 70s. I happened to also be in Lima, Peru at the time, dining in a splendid restaurant, when the astronauts and their wives strolled in for dinner. Naturally, I got their autographs, but when my son left for college, the treasure was thrown out. I admit I was the thrower. Anyway, the astronauts’ wives were true to their Texas roots when they entered the eatery. The weather was warm (actually Lima is dry as a dessert), but in they came, wearing mink stoles, their hair piled high, looking every bit like tourists, albeit celebrity tourists. At that moment, I was thrilled to be an American. A few weeks later in my Peruvian adventure, I took a train to Machu Pichu and spent a memorable overnight in a spider-trap of a hotel room. The return flight home was equally memorable, punctuated with an earthquake that rippled the runway as the plane lifted skyward. Two weeks later, Lima was devastated by a really big one. I have to chuckle when I think about Bean blasting to the moon and living to paint his memories. The space age seems light-years away. As we prepare to blast off and elect a new President, I’m almost wishing I was on the moon, viewing earth from a safer place.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

I didn’t watch the second Presidential debate. McCain vs. Obama. Obama vs. McCain. I turned off the latest television report on the bailout fiasco, and tuned instead to the 1967 flick, The Graduate, which was airing on TCM. A few years ago, my son told me it was the movie that defined his era. In many ways, it defines our current crisis. Plastics, son, plastics is where it is. What would you prefer with your bourbon, Benjamin? A splash of Wealth, or a spritz of Idealism? Where are those kids of forty years ago who marched to their own drum? My old friend, so much has changed, and yet nothing has. Obama vs. McCain vs. Obama. William Ayers, Charles Keating, Rev. Wright. War in the middle east. Plastics, son, plastics is where it is. Cancelled credit cards. Cut your hair; get a job. Or is it, your jobs are gone, let your hair grow? The Russian stock market tanks, banks close, savings evaporate. Is the party over, or is it just beginning? Sell the McMansion (but who will buy?), dump the Porsche, scuttle the vacation. We’re all going to be picking lettuce in Salinas, though those who have been picking it for years will leave us in the dust. They know the drill. Heating bills are projected to rise at least 18% this winter, so turn down the heat and stop worrying about the possibility that the Hoan will be torn down to clear up space for more development. The Park East project is dead. Retail sales are headed south. Restaurants are closing. Rome burns while politicians pose for photos. A young UW-Milwaukee student is murdered while trying to sell his car. Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson. Plastics, son, plastics is where it is.

BAAAAAAA!

The American taxpayers are about to be shorn. I’m not entirely unacquainted with the shearing of sheep, having observed the process on my aunt’s sheep ranch in South Dakota, a long time ago, in the days before our government began substituting citizens for sheep. There are a few basic rules for a good shearing: citizens are to have no water for 24 hours prior to shearing; no food for 12 hours prior, and they must be absolutely dry for optimum results. A good shearer knows his/her stuff, having learned the trade on Wall Street and in the hallowed halls of Washington, D.C. A good shearer knows how to get the citizens up and down the chute as fast as possible. This reduces stress on both the shearer and those being shorn. Some citizens show up wearing barrels. They’ve already been shorn by prior administrations and, having lost everything, are not good candidates. While shearing, a good shearer minimizes cuts, as this reduces the quality of what is shorn from the citizens. However, it’s not usually a problem as most citizens have been bled dry by increased taxation and decreased representation. It’s important that the citizens do not discharge their waste on the shearing shed floor, as it screws up the product. Equally important, is keeping the citizens under control. Citizens who stand around wondering what’s going on are not citizens appropriate for shearing. Shearing is highly competitive; in fact, it is a global sport of sorts. Following the shearing in which citizens are fleeced, everyone involved (except the citizens) get to share in a lavish feed, including lamb chops and rack ‘o lamb. Note: Citizens do not want to be wrestled around on a full stomach, just so you know.

Flat Broke and Burned Out

Instead of watching the first presidential debate, I opted to hop into bed with a copy of Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow, the first in his “The Sea of Fertility” cycle of four novels. It takes place in 1912 Tokyo and is basically a tale about two cultures: the traditional vs. the non-traditional. The author is on the side of the traditional, and if you’ve followed his career, he ended his life decades ago by using a traditional samurai sword. A few months ago, I purchased the DVD, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, a great film. And thus was I swept away. Spring Snow is a bit like observing a perfect Japanese scroll painting. The language paints a watercolor scene, lusciously so, but as I read on, I kept thinking how the main character (militant and steeped in tradition) reminded me of John McCain who seems positively determined to stick with the old at all costs. I’ve had it with politics in the past week. Did I miss something by not watching the debate? No, it was reported in minute detail in all of the media outlets. The press tried to pump it up, but frankly, we’ve heard it all by now, and there was nothing to pump in Oxford, Mississippi. Today brought nothing new about Sarah Palin, just a suggestion that she “step aside.” Please God, no more theatrics. I’ve had enough for a political lifetime. I say this even though I don’t believe in God, but I’ve been driven to the wall. November 4 is beginning to seem centuries away and I smell something rotten in Denmark, to wit, the smell emanating from Bill Clinton, ostensibly a devoted Democrat, who oddly has recently been heaping praise on McCain. Is Bill plotting Hillary’s comeback? Or hedging his career bets just in case McCain wins? The more Clinton chatters, the longer and rounder his nose gets. Do any of you readers really believe the average American will ever see any of the monies they’ve lost during the ongoing financial debacle? The United States is allegedly flat broke. Who’s going to pay for all of the campaign promises? Print more money, print more money, print more money.

An Adieu to Delfs

Twelve years ago when Andreas Delfs became Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, I was assigned to interview him. We met at the Performing Arts Center (now the Marcus Center), and my hands were shaking as I set up my trusty recorder. In came Maestro Delfs wearing blue jeans with a baby blue sweater draped over his shoulders. He told me he was just an ordinary chap and there was no reason (he could determine) for my trembling digits. I was unprepared when he said one of his favorite singers was Celine Dion. “She has great pipes,” he smiled. On September 26, 2008 I sat in box M8, waiting for the Sunday matinee to unfurl. The lady sitting next to me said it was her first time ever in a box seat and she felt like she was in heaven. Recalling my first experience in the box seats, I could identify with her thrill. I was there, clad in a formal ball gown and elbow-length white gloves, when the Performing Arts Center opened. Though much has changed in the passing decades (including the interior of Uhlein Hall), the thrill continues. I scanned the stage to see how many of the musicians I’d enjoyed over the years were still around: Roger Ruggeri and Laura Snyder stood beside their bass instruments, Steven Colburn cradled his oboe, and in the horn section, I spyed Bill Barnewitz and Dennis Najoom. Frank Almond, first violinist and Concertmaster, hasn’t been around quite as long, but long enough that I also interviewed him early in his career. The program opened with The Star Spangled Banner, a patriotic moment when folks rise to the occasion and struggle to recall the words to the tune. Next came Festival Fifty, a lively five minutes written by Maurice Winisky (a principal bassist with the orchestra) to celebrate MSO’s 50th anniversary, and the final season for Maestro Delfs. To my ear, the finest part of the program arrived just before intermission, on the elegant wings of Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F Major. The entire event was being recorded for posterity and the forewarned audience (turn off all devices that go beep, bleep and bong) sat rapt in their seats. Fortunately no one was sucking on bottled water, a bad idea that was promoted a few seasons back. My memory returned to Delfs’ debut concert a decade plus ago. It was a moment to remember when the Maestro stopped the music, turned to the crowd and advised them in no uncertain terms to cease and desist their high-tech beeps and bleeps, thus setting the pace for future concerts. Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 73, and Emperor by Ludwig Van Beethoven wrapped up the afternoon. I’ve never liked this work, but with Andre Watts at the ivories, and the orchestra working their way through Allegro, Adagio, and Rhondo, the Maestro brought it to a finish and brought the crowd to their feet. During intermission, I […]

Visual Arts Picks

On Thursday, September 4, a video tribute dedicated to the victims of September 11, 2001 aired at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. It prompted a visibly upset MSNBC commentator, Keith Olbermann, to apologize for its insensitivity. A week later, he was yanked as anchor for the November 4 election coverage. “Razor blades. Pocketknives. Scissors. Corkscrews. Nail clippers. Lighters. Match boxes. Innocent, everyday items, once routinely carried onto planes, took on different meanings after the events of September 11, 2001.” So reads a press release for Michele Pred: (dis) possessions, now through October 12 at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan. Pred’s materials? Personal items (yours, mine) confiscated at airport security checkpoints. A California artist who exhibits globally, her “Fear Culture” features red, white and blue Petri dishes, each containing a seized object. Assembled to resemble an American flag, it challenges the core of American freedom – rather than preaching, it informs in a minimalist manner. It’s a good fit with the October 5 lecture in the Lubar Auditorium at MAM. Listen (for free) to “Monument Men” survivor Harry Ettlinger, who helped rescue artistic and cultural items plundered by the Nazis during World War II. Prints in MAM’s Gallery 13, titled The First World War: Its Horror and Its Aftermath, will prod you forward to November 4. On October 10, the 2007 Mary Nohl Fellowship Award event debuts at inova/Kenilworth. Photographer Kevin Miyazaki’s Camp Home series records the Tule Lake Japanese internment camp where his father and his family were placed during World War II. And on Gallery Night, October 17 the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design’s Media Projects 2008 (curated by artist/ MIAD professor Jason S. Yi) includes the work of Bethany Springer, who explores place and its relationship to biology, terrorism, communication and security; at Dean Jensen Gallery, The Newspaper House unfolds. Peruse the newsy walls, inside and out, while considering the fragility of nature, and further, the fragility of life as the elections loom. Stop.look.listen: an exhibition of video works (from 14 global artists) starts October 23 at the Haggerty Museum of Art. Janet Biggs’ two-channel video installation (Predator and Prey, 2006) will air on huge plasma screens, similar to those displaying the 9-11 video at the Republican Convention. Images: past, present, and future. What is their role in shaping our perceptions in the year 2008 and beyond? VS

Inside McCain’s brain

Hope burns eternal, and in an effort to be unbiased in this election year, I picked up the October Atlantic and began reading a lengthy page 40 feature titled “The Wars of John McCain.” The cover featured a headshot of the Senator from Arizona. Something in his eyes looked “sincere,” but I grew up during World War II, and always was a sucker for a man in uniform. Any man in uniform, though as I recall, I tended to favor celluloid pilots in flight jackets as I recall. So on I read. The text (interspersed with lively photos) seemed to be mostly focused on why McCain supports various wars, including the one in ‘Nam. He thinks that one could have been won, if only the troops had more support, both there and here. He also believes our current war (the one in the Middle East) could be won. If only … Midway through the article, I began to feel for McCain, if only because he seems almost schizophrenic, or at least, greatly confused. At this stage he’s pretty old (my age) to be trying to remember what confused him. Everyday I get more pissed over his choice of Sara Palin as a running mate, though likely it’s because other possible choices recognized the sinking ship and ran for cover, leaving him to fly (almost) solo with the embarrassment from Alaska, where by the way, a huge rally was staged to protest her ideas. I went to Maureen Dowd’s site, a site recommended by fellow blogger Bobrow, and at least had a moment of hilarious respite from the depressing Atlantic article. For the past year, I’ve been writing a weekly column for my old hometown Iowa newspaper, which has been publishing for 150 years. I fear the 1,000 readers (mostly Republican) aren’t quite adjusted to my column. A few weeks ago, I addressed Cindy McCain’s hideously expensive ensemble, trotted out at the Republican National Convention, and asked why her advisors allowed her to trot forth in rich rags when most readers are down to their last barrel. Incoming! Along came an email from a Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. He wasn’t exactly nasty (the volley was signed “Very Respectfully Yours”), but he took strong issue with what he perceived to be an endorsement for the Dems, nevermind that the column included fashionista references to Jackie-O, Bess Truman, Nancy Reagan and Rosalind Carter. I ended the column by saying “considering the number of service people who return from the disastrous middle east war, minus arms and legs, Cindy’s frock seemed of no consequence.” He still didn’t get it, and asked me, “Have you ever even been to Iraq?” And then, “have you ever been thanked by an Iraqi kid who you gave candy to?” Very Respectfully Yours, Dem Bones

Totally unexpected

Urban Outfitters on floor one of the artsy Kenilworth building has the right idea when it comes to marketing. Check out the street art Mao stencils on the exterior of north face, then walk a few steps west and consider Amy M. Scokza’s cut paper display in the window. A few more steps and you can stroll the modernist alley, perhaps the most beautifully designed space in Milwaukee. Keep heading south and you’ll connect with the Oak Leaf trail below.

Moose lodge

This has been a strange year. I’ve started writing a weekly column (City Mouse) for my old Iowa hometown newspaper, The Villisca Review. I grew up there in a berg (population now 1,000) nestled between two branches of the Nodaway River, in the valley known as Nodaway. The paper has been publishing for 150 years, believe it or not Ripley. Once upon a time I asked the editor (back in the 40s) if I could write for the Review. When I couldn’t spell Omaha, he told me to come back later. I’m back. The current editor is a woman who publishes it all out of her home. Mostly what she gets to print are 4-H ribbon winners, basketball and football stuff, and happenings in small town U.S.A. They still print who visited who, which I admit, is sweet and endearing. This week I added a second article to my contributions, a review of a book of superb black and white photographs about Iowa musicians. I found it online and ordered a copy from the Chicago distributor. Anyway, the photographer who produced the beauties is Sandra Dyas, who teaches photography at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Included with the book is a great CD of tunes by mostly Iowa musicians, including Greg Brown, whose name I’ve seen on the Shank Hall marquee near where I live. Turns out that Ms. Dyas is a longtime friend of Julie Lindemann and Johnnie Shimon, and she’s coming to M’waukee to see their show before it closes at MAM. The Review has only one other columnist, a former Villiscan who is also a former farm lobbyist, now living in Virginia. He describes himself as a staunch Republican. Most of the town is made up of staunch Republicans. Which is why I may be in deep doo-doo. Initially, I began writing my column as a way to connect memories of the small town with my life in Milwaukee, but eventually that well begins to run dry. Now that the election is nearing, I decided to step forward with some thoughts about one Mr. Obama. I should add here that prior to moving to Kansas City (when I was 15, around the time of the Civil Rights movement), I actually thought everyone in the world was fair of skin and blue of eye. Just like me and most of Villisca’s residents. Fortunately, my editor is all for freedom of expression. This can’t be easy, as anything she prints is open to attack the moment she steps out and faces her readers in the town square. But she’s given me the go ahead. The other columnist, the staunch Republican, takes issue with my stance and lately has started sending me a volley of emails calling my writing “crap, left-wing, hippie” etc. Yesterday I blocked any future emails from him. He was particularly pissed over a piece I wrote about Cindy McCain’s $300,000 ensemble, and demanded that I verify where I got the “factoid,” never mind that it […]

Humping for Obama

Saturday, September 13: I’ve just returned from the afternoon opening of Obama’s campaign headquarters at 534 West National Avenue in Walker’s Point. It was a homecoming of sorts as I used to live in a funky building adjacent to La Perla at 5th & National and later, worked at Art Muscle Magazine at 10th & National, west of the headquarters. Those were they days my friend, when artists partied hard in Frank Ford’s infamous StudioGalactica, and if not there, equally hard at Carrie Scoczek’s apartment/studio on south 5th. Walker’s Point Center for the Arts was in the space now occupied by La Perla, but it’s still around, currently in a historic building due west, and here and there upstart galleries struggle to hang on. The best part of the opening was being in Nick Topping’s former digs, and if Topping was among the living, he’d likely be thrilled at the turnout. He was a socialist/activist, and his store was plastered with socialist posters. It was a hangout for all kinds of people. If history has it right, it was Topping who brought the Beatles to Milwaukee. The young volunteers circulating in the crowded space had never heard of Topping, but I got at least one of them to write down his name and see if she could round up information about him and put it on the walls, along with sign-up sheets for the many items needed to keep the place running. “Everything we have so far has been donated,” a sweating volunteer said. A lady sat at a table selling Obama stuff, and I went home with a big round “Fist Bump” button dangling from my purse. It was hot and stuffy inside the space and folks were congregating on the sidewalk fronting the building. Mountains of food arrived in huge containers steaming forth smells of beans and rice, along with platters of chips and salsa, and bottled water. A band kicked in later as an assortment of local politicians filtering forth. Kent Mueller, former proprietor of KMArt, dropped in for a plate of food and some conversation about the way back in Walker’s Point. He lives in the neighborhood in a historic home, and is certainly part of the local scene. I remarked that a sheet taped to the wall indicated the headquarters is seeking artists to paint portraits of Obama, so if any of you readers so desire, they can be dropped off at 534 W. National. The walls could use something more than sign-up sheets, and certainly artists could do worse than portray the next president of the United States. There was quite a bit of buzz in the crowd about how tight the race is going to be in Wisconsin, and I overheard snippets about Palin, snippets about Bill supporting Obama, and snippets about “McSame.” From one of the sign-up sheets, it looked like there is a need for volunteers to carry the message forward. EDIT: Sunday, September 21: I’m back for Barack Quite a […]

Mad for Donald Man

I’m in love with Mad Men. It’s my era, the age of nipped in waists, crinoline petticoats and Merry Widow waist-cinchers, and well, yes, rubber girdles that steamed up at the drive-in movies. These were actually pure rubber and they came packaged in long tubes of silver and (I think) pink. Getting out of them was akin to wrestling with a window shade that wouldn’t roll up properly. If you lost control, you could strangle in the thing. Fashions aside, I don’t recall ever having sex in an office, though I too slaved as a secretary, accounts payable person, and switchboard operator. It wasn’t easy walking to work in high heels, pounding forward in the Missouri heat (ice in winter), up the concrete hill, dressed to kill. My job in accounts payable (for a major corporation specializing in baked goods), meant I often opened letters of complaint from persons who found a rat turd or a fingernail, or worse, in their particular slice of bread from the ovens of Patterson Bakeries. My switchboard job involved riding the bus from Detroit to the burbs of all-Polish Hamtramck, where I smiled sweetly for my car dealership boss at Shore Chevrolet. He personified jerkiness, though I never actually saw him having sex in the office, and he didn’t drink, at least not so you’d notice. In those dim days, I paid a babysitter 50 cents per hour to take care of my little girl. The sitter rode the bus in from the dismal bowels of distressed Detroit. Always on time, she never missed a day of sitting, and even dusted my small apartment window sills which were eternally black from the stuff Detroit belched forth. Later on, I lived in a bona-fide housing project where the trashy neighbors let their kid crap on my doorstep, and threatened to slit my throat if I objected. Believe me, I couldn’t make this stuff up. My life back then, except for two shirt-waist dresses that I alternated wearing, wasn’t at all like the fashionable lives of the denizens of Mad Men. Where the guys in this television fluff find enough energy to be constantly performing in the sack, and/or pouring endless streams of booze into crystal glasses, is beyond me. But I love the cast, one and all. The bitchy red-headed head-secretary, Peggy the Catholic mouse and her frumpy family, and all the others sashaying about in tight skirts and tighter sweaters. The retro sets are amazing, almost like I remember things, except for the over-the-top sex and what seems like a bunch of people forever sworn to drink till they drop. In one recent segment, there was actual attention paid to ART, specifically a Mark Rothko painting hanging in the office of the aging boss, who is some kind of great actor. The Milwaukee Art Museum has a Rothko, just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Run Dick Run

Jane: Run Dick Run. Dick: I’m running. Jane: It’s hot! Dick: Arizona isn’t Alaska. Jane: Look Dick Look! Naked people hiding in the sage brush! Dick: Where? Jane: Over there stupid. Dick: No one important. Job seekers I guess. Jane: Run Dick Run. Dick: There’s a big line of soldiers up ahead. Jane: Their arms & legs are missing. Dick: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Jane: Look Dick! A money tree. Let’s rest in the shade. Dick: This is my very favorite tree. I come here a lot. Jane: You do? Dick: There’s Cheney on the top branch holding onto to Dubya. Jane: Who are those two chaps approaching with an axe? Dick: Woodchoppers. Look Jane! They’re chopping my tree down. Jane: Run Dick run!

Shimmy like jelly on a plate

Last Saturday evening, September 5, I found myself in the ballroom of the Tripoli Shrine Temple at 3000 W. Wisconsin. It was my first visit to the 1928 structure built to resemble the Taj Mahal, and the parking lot was filling fast when I swung into the guarded space and walked through the south entrance to the wonders beyond. The blaze-orange ticket in my hand said “Jim Boz, Middle Eastern Dance Performance Showcase.” For those not in the know, Boz is a leading figure in the art of belly dancing, and he traveled here from San Diego to pump the evening’s lineup of participants. In the lobby fronting the hall – a lobby dripping with intricate mosaics and entwined tiles – a bar was doing a brisk business near a splashing fountain lit with multi-colored lights. Local photographer John December was busy taking shots of spangled ladies descending the impressive staircase. Here and there, clumps of women arrayed in gauzy somethings drifted by. In the grand ballroom, multiple vendors hawking multiple items necessary for exhibitionism exotica, waited to sell humongous hookahs, glittering headpieces, wild skirts and tops, and well, whatever one needs to shimmy and shake like sister Kate. On with the show. In three segments with three 15 minute intermissions, out came a diverse assortment of smiling dancers, ready to do their thing to the beat of canned music: students led by their teachers and brave dancers prepared to perform solo. All except two were women. One of the two male dancers, Richard Gaeta, is a friend of my sister, and earlier in the evening we had cocktails and eats at the Arts & Crafts home he shares with his partner. Richard confided he was very nervous about the whole thing (and never ever does he eat prior to performing), though he needn’t have fretted as he did just fine during his dance with a woman and the one other male, a veritable snake of a man who has been taking lessons for only four months. I wasn’t able to get a good photograph as I was sitting at the back of the room along with several people who were recording the entire night for posterity. The cheering audience (estimated at several hundred) seemed to be made up of mostly cheering and clapping friends and relatives of the performers. I heard an elderly lady comment, “40 years ago, I took belly dancing lessons.” A woman in a wheelchair with two huge oxygen tanks strapped to the back, clapped and cheered like crazy too, as if she was about ready to leap onto the stage and fling a few. Not all of the evening’s events were strictly mid-east in persuasion – for example, a lovely interpretative dancer gave her interpretation of “Amazing Grace,” dedicated sweetly to her mom and grandmother who were likely sitting upfront. Another performed with a genuine white snake draped around her body, giving rise to my fears that PETA types were lurking somewhere near the room’s […]

Ups & Downs

Mary Louise Schumacher, the art critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, beat everyone to the punch with her announcement of Nick Frank’s appointment as the “permanent” curator of Inova. “Permanent” is a rather risky word to use in the world of art, but after serving for several years as Inova’s “interim” curator, at least it seems Frank is more or less settled in. Inova operates under the banner of UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, and certainly it is no big secret that monies to carry forward will depend on grants, and as Schumacher wrote in a Frank quote, the “cooperation of artists.” It’s hard to believe the Inova galleries won’t be swamped with a tsunami of artists wanting to exhibit in the almost-new space on Kenilworth. In fact, their “cooperation” will likely be overwhelming. Schumacher recently asked in her online space, if the placement of the admission desk in Windhover Hall at MAM is, perhaps, inappropriate for the carefully designed Calatrava addition. Far worse to my mind are the cheesy banners in the hall, the brainchild of former executive director David Gordon, and you can add to that gripe the morphing of the east wing (formerly the space for displaying strong sculptures) to a place to sip strong coffee. The north end of the east wing, a messy entry point to the old museum, resembles a mall kiosk. These are only a few of my unfavorite changes. Of course, it isn’t the job of the museum’s board to micro-manage all the clutter. They have enough to do with keeping the bottom-line stable. During a visit last week, I ran into artist Taffnie Bogart, who is currently employed as a security person at MAM. Her spouse, painter Bruce Dorrow, is recovering from a very serious viral inflammation of his heart, and Taffnie, ever the trouper, jumped in to help with medical bills. The summer 08 Wings newsletter from the Milwaukee Public Museum has a list titled “Body Worlds by the Numbers,” including 20 tons of ice used for fountain drinks sold, 338,593 persons attending the extravaganza, and 200 light bulbs changed in the exhibit. From Tuesday, September 9 through Friday, September 12, the museum will be closed to the public for major cleaning and maintenance. Anyone grousing about the inoperable powwow turntable, will be happy to know a new turntable is being fabricated and will be up and running in the fall of 2009. The Forest County Potawatomi Community Foundation chipped in on the $260,000 project.

Do Rags Make the Woman?

My first dance demanded a special dress…long, lavish, and designed to fit a movie star like Rita Hayworth. It was nowhere near Cindy McCain’s controversial pumped up pumpkin-colored princess ensemble she wore at the Republican convention. Ah no, the dress of my dreams cost nowhere near the estimated $300,000 Cindy frock, but in all fairness, her outfit included a Chanel watch, diamond earrings and real pearls. The result made her look like Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. What was she thinking? As I write, I’m thinking about fashionistas of the political persuasion. I’ve lived long enough to view quite a few, including Bess Truman who looked like a frump, no matter what her spouse, Harry S. said she could spend. My favorite era was Ike’s reign when Mamie-of-the-short bangs was on his arm instead of his mistress. Mamie favored tiny snippets of tiny hats. It’s odd isn’t it how specific items of clothing define life’s route? Now that Mad Men is on the tube, I can identify fully with the nipped-in waist and crinoline thing, though when I was in my late twenties, living in a suburban tri-level, I was given to aping Jackie-O, whose spending must have driven Jack mad. She of the dark eyes and languid limbs made fashion exciting enough that I rushed out and bought two sheath dresses (with matching pumps). Hidden in my bathroom drawer was a “fall,” i.e. fake hair meant to be worn with a wide headband. Jackie did it, so I did too. Dressing to kill extended to nights at the Milwaukee Symphony, where I sat regally in a box seat, gowned in a black and white ball gown with matching elbow-length white gloves. If she could do it, so could I. Pat Nixon (usually out of sight), Betty Ford (a former dancer given to drink), and Ladybird Johnson weren’t exactly runway material, but they weren’t exactly frumps either. Nancy Reagan preferred chic Republican Red, and compared to Nancy, Laura Bush is positively saintly in sensible suits with cropped jackets and slim skirts. Rosalind Carter’s clothes never ever called attention to Rosalind per se, and compared to Cindy, Jimmy shelled out a fairly modest amount of peanuts for R’s rags. Hillary’s traveling pants suits were (and are) reliably hilarious in their diverse hues, and certainly their dull styling sends a message that Hil isn’t given to letting her clothes wear her. Sarah Palin passes muster (barely), even in her moose-hunting ensemble and 70s rock ‘n roll hair. Michele Obama? I recently read that one of her outfits tallied in at over a grand. That said, a simple frock she wore during the run-up was designed by a graduate of Mount Mary College here in Beer Town. Perhaps all female candidates (wives or otherwise), should appear gowned in sackcloth, a crown of thorns on their heads, for who knows when a cub reporter wearing a Target special will leap from the bushes and report each and every fashion detail? […]

Gripe list

I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum today, specifically to re-see Unmasked & Anonymous in the Koss Gallery. As I passed the Gilbert & George show, it was in the process of being taken down. While roaming the galleries I decided to make a mental list of the irritating stuff that is cluttering the glorious Calatrava addition. Note: The September 2, 2008 issue of the New Yorker has a big spread on Santiago Calatrava, a portion of which is devoted to interviews with Russell Bowman (former executive director) and Daniel Keegan (current executive director). The article includes great Robert Polidori photographs of Windhover Hall. In the same issue is a blurb about local filmmaker Chris Smith (American Movie) and Mark Borchardt. The AM film screened recently at the Museum of Modern Art. So anyway: THE LIST. Yes, the current desks in the reception area are dumb, but dumber still are the banners hung hither and yon, as if visitors didn’t have the good sense to figure out what was going on. Flashing television screens belong in the Sensory Overload exhibit, not in the reception hall. On the day I visited, the messy kiosk-like arrangement at the entry to the “old” museum was gone, but probably only temporarily, though I hope otherwise. A clutch of black leather chairs have been clustered at the end of the east wing, but they face a blank wall. Bring back the sculptures that once graced that area, please. Beneath the Laura Owens’ paintings in the contemporary area of the old museum, a barrier of sorts was in place, and I guess it is there to keep children from rushing forth to touch the doggies depicted in Ms. Owens’ works. The former room where Peg Bradley once entertained special guests is still lovely (except for the thick layer of dust on a buffet in her formerly “private” dining room), but as you move nearer to the east facing bank of windows (splashed with the doo-doo of gulls), you’re treated to a big flapping ugly exterior banner touting the coming of the ACT/REACT (interactive art) extravaganza opening October 4. I’ll zip my lips until it opens, but my idea of visiting a museum to view art does not include waving my arms about to “interact.” Before exiting, I passed the lone lady (with a bucket of white paint) whose job it is to forever and ever keep the paint looking spiff. In all of this stuff, there is some good news. MAM is now publishing its Insider series on a quarterly basis. The first issue’s format looks slick and has expanded to include informative articles, interviews, features, etc. Their spin is “by switching to a quarterly print schedule, we have reduced the amount of paper used to produce it.” If the museum really wants to cut costs and be environmentally responsible, they should cease heating and air-conditioning the garage below the addition. The savings would be astronomical. I’m only guessing.

Farwell goes Atomic

Monster Mash

There’s a major battle gathering fury on Prospect Avenue. New Land Enterprises is trying to push through a condo tower on the site of the historic Goll Mansion, which NLE guy, Boris Gokhman, purchased several years ago. One of the area residents said it would include a tall obelisk on the east end, not unlike “Boris Giving Milwaukee The Finger.” The proposed condo will be only slightly more discrete than the Layfayette condo development looming to the north, which residents also tried to stop as did existing residents around Downer Avenue where Boris built the world’s ugliest parking structure which diminished neighboring properties, including the family home of alderman, Nic Kovac. So is Boris giving Milwaukee “the finger?” Is Alderman Bob Bauman, in tandem with Boris, also sticking it to area residents? Do we need yet another condo development? What happens if these mighty monoliths crumble in a sagging economy? On the same once lovely avenue (a former trail for Sauk Indians), the towering “Breakwater” condo is rising under the tutelage of developer Peter Renner, who promises the lobby will rival that of Roman emperors. Driving up Prospect from the south, the Breakwater thing is atrocious when viewed behind and beyond two mansions on the Westside of the avenue. Residents on Prospect have another name for “Breakwater”; they call it “Breakwind.” Everyone is entitled to freedom of expression, even the developers who mash us with these monsters. Anyone reading this blog who is concerned with the relentless march of monoliths on Prospect Avenue is urged by Stella to contact {encode=”rjbauma@milwaukee.gov” title=”Alderman Robert Bauman”} and/or {encode=”nkovac@milwaukee.gov” title=”Alderman Nic Kovac”}. Will they have their fingers in their ears?

Grunt green, pea green, etc.

It isn’t easy being green. Check out the paint job on the parking garage on the east side of Downer Avenue. You know the one we mean. The one that’s big ugly and THERE. The addition of green paint laid on in confusing configurations is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. Further south on Farwell, in the block where dwelleth “Mr. Shoe,” two more buildings are undergoing paint mania. The orange-ish 50’s Atomic design on the building on the west side of the Farwell drag strip is actually fun, but the one across from it is not to be believed … big blocks of color that shout in order to define the property. Not a good idea, plus the developer ripped out the funky awning windows which at least added a former note of interest. The Lafayette Park condos at Prospect & Lafayette are still rising, but whoa! when you stroll the Oak Leaf Trail that runs below them, the noise from the air-exchange system in the looming project is distracting to say the least. At this writing, only one was operating. Stella can’t wait till they fire up the others. Doesn’t Milwaukee have ordinances regulating nuisance noises belching forth from mega structures? The Breakwater Condo on Prospect Avenue (the one overlooking modest Burns Park) is moving along, most recently with the addition of major balconies hanging from the units. Next year they’ll be filled with grills and furniture no one ever sits in.

Beneath The Gold Sticker

September: this is the month when writers, editors and sometimes readers in massive polls are asked to pick winners from the tsunami of venues, programming and promising stars careening toward the shore. I have to say it reminds me of scratching off a gold sticker, a sticker that perhaps conceals THE winning number, which you already know isn’t likely to be yours, or if it is, blame it on dumb luck! If I’ve learned anything about the arts over the years, it’s that sublime moments are seldom hidden beneath gold stickers: in fact, I would venture to say that the more the sticker glitters, the duller the “win.” When swamped by hype, I cast a wary eye. Should I desire the sublime, I stick with civilized, tried and true venues simply because they don’t shout or tout like shills at a circus. And no local gallery fills the bill quite like Dean Jensen, an informed survivor with a logo resembling something stamped from steel. Jensen’s shows rarely disappoint, and the man himself, though a poetic writer at heart, is no-nonsense in his approach to art. Should you care about what art “is,” he’s available to share thoughts. Jensen is cut of the cloth I admire: grey flannel, neatly tailored and forever admirable. On fall Gallery Night – October 16 – stop by for Newspaper House, an installation by former Milwaukeean (and current Brown professor) Joan Backes that is just what it sounds like: a space made from newspapers that visitors can walk through and explore. Tory Folliard Gallery also takes a subtle approach, and the staff doesn’t posture in order to outshine the art. Fat chance that would happen, anyway, with the likes of glorious painters Patrick Farrell, Fred Stonehouse and the many other luminaries who will return in 2008-2009. On September 12, Folliard opens a new exhibition by Milwaukee artist Mark Mulhern, featuring the artist’s abstractly naturalistic and softly-lit works, and come February, Folliard will mount their first-ever Photography Showcase highlighting some top (and up-and-coming) state photographers. Folliard gives generous consideration to Wisconsin-based artists, which in turn gives lie to the myth that artists from our state get screwed when it comes to gallery shows. Come on. Can you think of a single gallery or museum that eschews Wisconsin-based artists just because they’re from Wisconsin? The loudest screamers are probably those artists whose works aren’t yet (and perhaps never will be) up to snuff. Time was when I rarely visited the Charles Allis Art or the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museums; if I did, it was to enjoy the summer gardens and a few moments of quiet contemplation. However, their recent shows have been on the upswing, due at least in part to the efforts of Ms. Laurel Turner, a young curator who will be leaving the institution (dang!) to return to academia. But I look forward to the coming season and their competent ongoing Wisconsin Masters series. While a bit uneven in quality, the series is still a […]

Bag it and ship it back to the sculptor…

…Gerald Sawyer, who maybe is hiding in the bushes considering a career change. We’re talking about the Bronze Fonz. Last year, I did some online research seeking images of this artist’s work and it took only a few minutes to determine he must surely be a graduate of the Hallmark School of Sappy Sculpture. Okay, make that the School of Hideous Sculpture. Whatever. The Journal/Sentinel’s Jim Stingl has a hilarious take on who folks think the Fonz-thing resembles, and from what I’ve perused, it sure isn’t Fonzie. Remarks range from Christopher Walken (quite a few votes), Howdy-Doody, Liberace, and Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan (though Donovan deserves better). I wonder if Fonzie himself was disappointed in what is a laughing-stock attempt? We have worse in town, but not by much. Milwaukee has tons of bad sculpture. Gertie The Duck is one. Any others? Sure, lots of them. I hate to diss Father Marquette, but the bronze sculpture of him standing on Marquette University’s campus makes him look like a 60s hippie blowin’ in the wind. The Betty Brinn museum has a gaggle of sculpted kids on the east side of the building that should also be placed somewhere near the top of the list for wretched art. But, will the Bronzie be a popular place to have your photo snapped? Sure.

Update

Bridget Griffith Evans and Gene Evans move more often than a roofer in a tornado. Honest. Their final exhibit at Luckystar happens August 22 from 6-10pm. It’s appropriately titled the “Monsters of Metal,” and the ever-mobile proprietors claim it’s their final show at the Vliet street address before they hit the road in 2009, traveling hither and yon with art in tow. In 2005-2006, they did something similar in a display of art aggression titled “World Domination Tour.” They’ve shepherded galleries in Riverwest, the Third Ward and have taken up wall space in various venues around town, most recently at VS’s Gallery Night & Day and east a bit at Design Within Reach. Another of their efforts addresses Body Art and is currently at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. Will they return to Milwaukee for more punishment in the future? UPDATE: Actually, they’re not leaving Beer Town. They’ve moved south to the Mitchell St. area, allegedly into a live/workspace. Apparently the deadly duo is scouting out businesses in the Third Ward (and probably elsewhere) to hang their work. When Mike Brenner folded Hotcakes Gallery, he re-surfaced almost immediately to exhibit his personal work around town, and as Mary Louise Schumacher’s poster-boy for sage remarks, he’s yet to be topped. Jimmy Von Milwaukee used to fill that slot, but when his favorite reviewer, MJS’s James Auer died, Jimmy’s notoriety nose dived. August 14 was the opening of Julie Lindemann & Johnie Shimon’s photography exhibit (Unmasked & Anonymous) in the Koss Gallery at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Major pieces from their portraiture trove will dazzle, plus selected photographs from MAM’s permanent collection. You’ll recognize some of the Milwaukee-based names, including Francis Ford, and the charred “punk” photographs of Stanley Ryan Jones, that will be displayed in a vitrine. On Tuesdays (September 9, October 21, and November 18) Cathy Cook will premiere her experimental portrait of Wisconsin poet, Lorine Niedecker. Shimon & Lindemann were visual collaborators for this film titled ”Immortal Cupboard: In Search of Lorine Niedecker.” There’ll be more fine photography to admire during the Stephen Shore exhibit at the Haggerty and the John Heymann exhibit at the Charles Allis Museum of Art. A feature about Mr. Heymann can be found here. The current issue of INFO magazine has a feature on Milwaukee gadfly, Michael Horne, whose career seems to be on fire now that he’s popping up in Milwaukee Magazine and hitting the air waves on Lake Effect. The feature, written by VS’s Judith Ann Moriarty, includes an early drawing of the defunct Milwaukee train station, by none other than a very tender Horne. Who knew he makes art? You can check in on Milwaukee doings via milwaukeeworld.com, written by the more mature Horne who has a way with words.

An Alternative to Grilling Brats

This may be the finest exhibit anywhere. It’s happening NOW in the Koss Gallery at the Milwaukee Art Museum. “Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture,” was previewed by this writer for the Shepherd Express. Adding to the event, are works by various photographers, including Francis Ford and Stanley Ryan Jones of Milwaukee-based fame. If you know about photography, you’ll know about Francis and Stanley. Multiple works from Julie & Johnie are seamlessly hung with many from the museum’s permanent collection, no small thanks to Lisa Hostetler, MAM’s curator of prints, who, over the past two years, gave the show her considerable and undivided attention. The leaves of brown will soon tumble down. What a way to bid adieu to summer and hello to Manitowoc’s finest, a pair of pros. Lucky are those students who fall under J & J’s professorial spell at Lawrence University up Appleton way. Museum members can see it free until it this superb show ends on November 30. Who says Wisconsin-based artists get the short end of the museum’s stick? Love xxxooo, Dem Bones Plus it will likely be a party to end all parties. Edtior’s Note: Read VITAL’s review of Shimon & Lindemann @ The Milwaukee Art Museum here!

Guilt Free Bones

I finally got around to visiting the Gilbert & George show at MAM’s Baker/Rowland Galleries. It was coordinated by Chief Curator Joe Ketner, who will be moving on shortly before G&G moves out on September 1. Anyway, I decided to see the show after visiting with Dean Jensen, who runs a Water Street venue bearing his name. He was sitting alone at his desk, clad in a splendid suit, smart shirt and tie, complaining about computer trouble. Eventually our chatter got around to the G&G event, and Jensen said he was working on an appraisal of a G&G piece owned by a generous local couple who are donating it to the Milwaukee Art Museum. He had attended a lecture, a basic Q & A with the London duo, and commented that G&G had been around for so many years that they’d answered every possible question about their careers. However, I was in Jensen’s gallery not to talk about G&G, but to select a frame for a Laurence Rathsack watercolor (“Skeletal Church”), purchased by my son who is now grown up enough to appreciate what art is. By way of comparison, Rathsack’s work, quiet and unassuming, is the exact opposite of the bodacious work of G&G. One whispers, the other shouts. One is a candle, the other a bottle rocket. Jensen has been around for what seems like forever, and for much of that forever, I’ve been around to view his exhibitions. Like me, he’s getting a bit long in the tooth, but it takes time to develop a great career and a great following, and he’s certainly done that. If anyone is a survivor, he is. In addition to being a fine gallerist, he is a fun interesting writer (perhaps because he cut his writing chops at the Milwaukee Sentinel in the long ago). The work in his various shows is frequently of the narrative kind, a perfect fit for a chap who knows how to spin a tale. Should you doubt me, buy a copy of 2006’s Daisy & Violet Hilton: The True Story of Conjoined Twins. In an earlier blog, I wrote about my “feelings of guilt” and those of the others who hadn’t yet seen the G&G show. You may have been somewhat confused by the image (“Bacon & Eggs for Gilbert & George”) accompanying that particular blog. Stella sez the art (made from Play-Doh) is definitely not for sale, though it may be on eBay someday. For more on G&G, look up www.mam.org/gandg, then go to Cedar Block’s MAM event on August 15 to see what Milwaukee area artists are up to. Inspired by G&G, it’s a one night stand, 8pm – midnight.

Guilt Feelings

Recently I attended an art closing and heard people mention that they hadn’t been to see the Gilbert & George show at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Their voices were tinged with “guilt,” as if the G&G was something they should be interested in, but aren’t. I know the feeling. Years ago (25 more or less), I milled around a really big show when the splashy two hit Milwaukee and the Art Museum. Most people were there to be “shocked,” or at least there to be part of the crowd waiting to be shocked. Was I shocked? I can’t remember. These were the years of Russell Bowman at MAM, who brought in lots of cutting edge contemporary art. Theatre X was still around, performance art was a big deal, and there was a general air of excitement and change at the formerly staid venue. Bacon & Eggs for Gilbert & George Play-Doh/paint The other thing I missed out on was Tom Bamberger’s recent take on curatorial efforts, which aired on Lake Effect. I hear it was great, but I didn’t actually listen as I don’t have my speakers hooked up, nor have I purchased a cheapo gizmo to tune into the world of What’s Going On. I don’t own a cell phone and last year I dumped the recorder on my land line. This makes me feel guilty about not being “with it.” More and more, I find myself picking up The Onion and/or watching MAD T.V. I’ve also been writing a weekly column for my old hometown newspaper in rural Iowa. They’ve been publishing for over 100 years, and the paper has hardly changed at all. The populace (1,000 and shrinking) consists of mostly Republican church-going types. They don’t have any public art–unless you count the fiberglass hog standing at the rim of town. I find this oddly refreshing. They’ve never heard of Gilbert & George, and the closest the town has come to “fame” is when the 1912 axe murders took place and eight were slaughtered in their sleep. They do have the original axe, but that’s about it. You can still buy a house in my hometown for less than $50,000. The house I grew up in recently sold for $35,000.

Photographs by John Heymann

At a Moment’s Notice: Photographs by John Heymann Charles Allis Museum August 6 – September 21 Opening Reception: Wednesday, August 6, 5:30 – 8:30 pm John Heymann, “Lantern, Antelope Canyon, Arizona.” 1999. What a month for admirers of fine photography! The Milwaukee Art Museum unveils a major exhibition August 14 – Unmasked and Anonymous – with a run until November 30. Now through September 28, 100 prints by Stephen Shore will be at the Haggerty Museum of Art, and if that isn’t enough, John Heymann’s show of photographs opens August 6 at the Charles Allis Museum and runs until September 21 as part of their on-going Wisconsin Masters Series. I met with Heymann, who was in town to oversee the installation of his photographs, but the email information he forwarded gave me a generous preview: born in 1947 in our town, he graduated from UW-Madison in 1970 with a degree in comparative literature, intending to shape a career as a poet. A course in photography at UW-Milwaukee set him on a new path. It’s wasn’t long before he departed for Boston to begin an internship with a weekly politically-oriented newspaper. Basically, he learned his craft by hanging out with other photographers, looking at the work of established photographers, and (perhaps most importantly) by “taking photographs every day for years.” Teaching photography in the Boston Community Schools and at shelters for homeless teens heightened his interest in his chosen profession. He keeps that interest fresh by meeting for critiques with two groups of photographers. Decades have passed since his student days. Would the “poet” in him speak through the 50 photographs at the Charles Allis? I already knew that he admired the work of photographers Bresson, Weston, Lange, Winogrand and Friedlander, plus other photographers he knows personally. Heymann’s work has been published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Downbeat Magazine, and various other media venues. He’s certainly not just another chap roaming about with a camera. John Heymann, “Shadows on a Building, New York City.” 1986. John Heymann is as cool and crisp as his elegant photographs. He came in out of the heat of a blast furnace day and walked me through the Great Hall and floor two where his work is displayed. Friendly and open, he talked about his abstractions – none more lovely than the outstanding “Boatjacks,” a lush color slice of a Maine boatyard. It reminded me of a masterful painting by Klimt. He told me he often studies paintings and extracts from them what he wishes to express in his photographs. Indeed, several of his black and white minimalist depictions recalled paintings of Motherwell or Kline, but are distinctly Heymann. On floor two, an 8” x 12” black and white photograph of a skylight blew me away. On Sunday, you can hear him talk about his work (yes, it is poetic) during a gallery walk-around at 2 pm. It will begin in the Great Hall on the first floor, where his larger abstractions are […]

I Went To A Garden Party

Fred Stonehouse has been around town long enough to have gained quite a bit of fame, both local and national. In fact, Madonna, a taste-maker if there ever was one, owns his quirky paintings, and wow, Sheryl Crowe snapped up his entire exhibit at the recent Jazz Festival in the Big Easy. Stoney has a full time teaching position at the UW in Madison, so I was impressed to see his name on the list of artists contributing to a treasure of auction items at the August 2 “Way Beyond the Sea” event in the Mount Mary College Alumnae Dining Room. The last time I was at the college was for a memorial event for a former Mount Mary art teacher and good friend of mine, Karen Olson. Cancer claimed her in the spring just when things were beginning to bloom. I thought about life beyond as I stood under a budding tree on the campus, missing my friend. In 2006, Fred Stonehouse donated a gyclee print to the garden party and will contribute another for the coming soirée. The opening bids hover around $50-$100, and auction items may rise from $200 to $1,400, though the average is around $300-$400. A catalog of auction items, with photographs by Jim Moy, will be available. The fundraiser benefits The Grace Foundation and in fact, has another tag….”Kathy’s Garden Party,” named so, to honor Kathleen Chenoweth Corby, who died of cancer a decade ago. WISN-12 News co-anchor, Kathy Mykleby, will host the event which goes “way beyond” what you’d expect from a less exciting fundraiser. For example, guests will be treated to a runway show with models showcasing unique pieces of art contributed by 35 artists, including Todd Graveline, Chris Poehlmann and Joy Harmon. Choreographed lights, movement, special effects (plus food and drink), will put a spin on what death can’t erase, which is to say, it will be lively, lovely, and loving. If you want to be a part of remembering and renewing, visit www.givinggrace.org (The Grace Foundation was founded in 2002), or call Rose Deutsch at 414-771-1578. Mount Mary itself is a work of art set on broad expansive lawns studded with trees. Parking is a snap and August is perfect for a garden party. When I visit the campus, I usually take Wisconsin Avenue due west for a meander down the beautiful tree lined streets of Wauwatosa. A swing north and I’m at 2900 N. Menomonee River Parkway. North Avenue is almost a straight-line route, and yes, the expressway is even speedier, but time is on your side whichever path you choose. If mosquitoes are on your mind, never fear, they’ll be humming around outside of the building’s dining hall. You’ll be inside considering what you’d like to purchase.

Earning Chops

Back in the heady days when “outsider” (a term I dislike) art was hot, painter Fred Stonehouse was a big star, particularly at the Dean Jensen Gallery, and later, at the Tory Folliard Gallery. Gee whiz, Madonna bought at least one of his quirky paintings! Stonehouse just kept doing his thing and never let it go to his head. Frankly, he earned every inch of his success, so it is great to learn that he recently was hired to teach at UW-Madison, which means he’s going to spend lots of time commuting from here to there and back again. I know I’m years behind, but I just finished reading Love In The Time of Cholera, the 1988 masterful magic-realism novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and was delighted to learn that Stonehouse’s work is heavily influenced by the writings of Marquez. To my mind, there is no such thing as great art without great thought. What’s lacking in so much of what’s passed off as “art” is the ability to integrate one’s personal experiences and all that one learns from either those experiences (or the study of the experiences of others) into moments of sublime understanding. Stonehouse earned his chops by paying attention. Vox, Acrylic on Canvas, 36″ x 48″ Fred Stonehouse Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery – Milwaukee Two others who pay attention are Tom Bamberger, a local photographer and frequent contributor to Milwaukee Magazine, who is teaching at UW-Milwaukee, and Debra Brehmer, another frequent contributor to Milwaukee Magazine and the co-owner of the Portrait Gallery, who has been teaching for about five years at MIAD. It’s no big surprise that both are fans of Stonehouse. Quality attracts quality. All three earned their chops by paying attention.

Twombly Tale

Cy Twombly, “Untitled” (1967) There it hangs in Gallery 18 at the Milwaukee Art Museum: Cy Twombly’s “Untitled” (1967). I first saw it three decades ago, and it’s still a thrill. It’s been moved here and there over the years, most recently during the re-hanging of the contemporary galleries. I had a moment of panic when I found it missing from the east wall of the Flagg Gallery, replaced by a really bad painting. “How could they?” I wondered. Was “Untitled” stored in the bowels of the museum? In 1968, the museum purchased this particular Twombly from the great abstract painter’s first solo retrospective at MAM. In those days, I had yet to visit the museum because I was busy raising three kids, studying for a degree in Art Education, and trying out French and Greek recipes on my suburban friends. Years later, around 1980, I decided to leave my tri-level and work as a museum volunteer. Russell Bowman was chief curator, and my assigned space at MAM was in the Cudahy Gallery of Wisconsin Art, tucked into a small room on the first floor of what I now call “the old museum.” I must have discovered “Untitled” during a lunch break. My Art Education training was just getting started and most of the images I’d experienced were in my History of Art book and/or slides projected on a screen in a stuffy lecture room at Carroll College, where I frequently fell asleep wondering if I’d made a mistake in career choices. Only one piece of art hung in my tri-level: a big blue moonscape which I purchased at an art fair. The artist delivered it to my home and together we hung it over my gold brocade couch, a room full of faux Country French furniture and windows draped in fussy brocade drapes. I wonder what ever happened to that painting. The artist died a few years ago, but what I remember about him isn’t the moonscape, but rather the fact that he strolled around summertime art fairs wearing a leopard skin bikini. His work was the total opposite of Twombly’s. By the mid-80s, I had divorced and moved to an 800-sq-ft. home on some Kettle Moraine acreage. I started trying my hand at making paintings and took a modest job as an art teacher in Pewaukee, where the idea of “art” was to give the kids something to take home to hang on the family fridge. When I suggested to the confused administrator that art could be taught to elementary kids, not as a brief cut-and-paste session, but rather by teaching them how to “see” at an early age, he turned pale and replied, “Oh, the parents wouldn’t like it if the kids didn’t bring something home.” “Untitled” was, and still is, the best teacher I ever had. No fuss, no nonsense, no glued-on artifacts dangling, or gold leaf applied to bring on some dazzle. I doubt if there are many viewers who would tap Twombly as their […]

Great Architecture

In 2005, the eight-story 1927 Ambassador Hotel at 2308 W. Wisconsin Avenue had a twelve-million dollar fix, a “lift” inside and out. The Art Deco building certainly deserved help. In fact, prior to the sensitive re-do, it had become infamous as a hangout for serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who allegedly murdered one of his victims there. That’s in the past, as are the nearby Oxford Apartments where Dahmer lived. They’ve been demolished. Today, the Ambassador, and the area surrounding it, speak about an era when making whoopee didn’t signal total chaos, unless of course you were in a gin mill toting a sidearm. In 1925 Paris, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Moderns was unveiled. WWI was over and people were ready to embrace an architectural movement whose primary thrust was to meld industrial technology with the “primitive” arts of Africa, Egypt, and/or Aztec Mexico. Aluminum, stainless steel, lacquer, exotic woods and in some cases, exotic animal skins (such as zebra), were bonded in a muscular mix suggesting “deluxe, first class, and forward thinking.” All of these lush elements were firmly in place long before the term “Art Deco” really caught fire back in the 1960’s. If you’ve thrilled to the films of New York artist Matthew Barney, you know he wasn’t exactly high on the idea of architecture which seemed, because of its monumental scale, to crush and demean Homo-sapiens. In his 2002 “Cremaster 3” film, he blasted architect William Van Alen’s 1928-1930 Chrysler Building, which he considered the most excessive Art Deco architecture on our shores. To Barney’s mind, it is a hideous, stainless steel icon dripping with the corrupt power of politics and big money, a kind of mausoleum of madness, built on the backs of immigrant labor. Some critics thought the Crysler was an omen signaling the 1928 stock market plunge. Comparing The Ambassador Hotel with the Chrysler Building is rather like comparing a rowboat with the Titanic, but it is fair to say that Milwaukee’s Deco jewel shelters, rather than diminishes, persons entering its doors. Six steps up from the canopied and glassy east entrance and you’re in the intimate lobby, where no splashing fountains, jungles of potted plants, relentless music, and/or way too much art, confuse rather than soothe. The lobby chairs, upholstered in fabrics replicating “nature’s forms abstracted,” a popular Art Deco motif, are so discrete as to be barely there. The tables near the seating are small and utilitarian. The décor is refreshingly uncomplicated, even with the deco details inviting you to linger awhile: sconces of frosted glass embellished with metal ferns unfolding, pillars rising to meet a ceiling punctuated with Deco chandeliers, and sunburst motifs proclaiming a “new day is coming.” Gentle curves (less fussy than those of Art Nouveau) harmonize with chevrons, diamond shapes and triangles. Peachy beige, muted browns and grays, enliven the marble and terrazzo floors winding through the area, some leading to the modest Envoy dining room, where tuned-down jazz and rosy-dawn pink walls signal […]

Freedom Fighters

I’m glad I held off visiting Gilbert & George. The perfect moment to see it at the Milwaukee Art Museum arrived on a splendid July 3. Driving south on Lincoln Memorial Drive, I noticed how every inch of green space was packed with folks waiting for the Big Bang. Words flooded my mind as I cruised past at reasonable 25 miles per: campers, families, balloons, flags, barbeques … “good” words for the day before our day of Independence. George Carlin died in June, and the New York Times wrote a strange obituary, referencing – without listing – the seven forbidden words made famous by the man who took the cause for freedom of speech all the way to the Supreme Court. I found them via a Yahoo search: s**t, p**s, f**k, c**t, c**ksucker, motherf**ker, and t*ts. Bleep, bleep. What nonsense! Carlin added a few more before he expired. What a freedom fighter. I hope he died happy. So here I am outside of the bright yellow portal to the show, wondering if what’s on the other side in the Baker/Rowland galleries will be worth the visit or just another freak show designed to rouse the apathetic. A sign outside the portal cautions that parents with kids better check out the content before entering. “Brace Yourself” is part of the show’s public relations spin. I’m in. My first impression? BIG! But at this point I’m a blind person feeling the trunk of an elephant. My second impression? Why have I let myself get sucked into this s**t? A feeling creeps over me, a feeling akin to waiting for a cold speculum to be introduced into my c**t during a series of gynecological examinations. “This won’t hurt a bit,” the doctor lies. A half dozen other gawkers meander around the galleries, necks craned upward. The place is dead silent. The word “awestruck” comes to mind. I do a quickie tour, buy a catalog, and then settle down to consider what’s in my face – and I do mean in my face. My nose has been rubbed in something nasty and the sting of something – soap? – tingles my mouth. It’s oddly refreshing. What’s this? The title says Dusty Corners No. 13. It’s a 16-panel piece centered with four mirror images of black and white photographs of G&G. The boys (the year is 1975) are conservatively clad in impeccable suits. Their demeanor is oddly Victorian and the effect is that of a “memorial.” Nothing about it is big, bold or brassy. It whispers innocence. The twelve panels surrounding them suggest either the beginning of a long journey or memories of a journey already lost in time. It’s beautiful. Gorgeous. Sublime. This would be the one I’d like to take home. The gift shop has a smaller version for sale, but no, it won’t do. Only this one will do. The Penis, a 1978 work bordered on the bottom edge with a graffiti-like drawing of a c**k spurting j*zz reminds me that t*ts […]

Twenty Five Tons of Nothing

When California artist David Middlebrook’s 25 ton sculpture, “Tip”, was installed in Gordon Park several years ago, the reception for the clumsy white thing was underwhelming. When “Stratiformis” was installed in Catalano Park, the reception was underwhelming. Of course, the folks responsible for bringing this stuff to Milwaukee took issue with the barrage of criticism. They defended what wasn’t, and still isn’t, worth defending. Things haven’t improved in the realm of public art; in fact, the situation has worsened with the coming of Fonzie in bronze, though I hestitate to put that work in any “art” category. It is, however, public. Making a long list of our public art mistakes is growing ever tedious, so I’ll skip the list. If it’s a short list you’re wanting, then it’s a better idea to start with good public art in our city. Listing ten would be a stretch. Five would be reasonable. Most folks don’t care about public art, let alone think about it. It’s something they may notice now and then, but it doesn’t impact their lives, so what’s the big deal? The same people comment over and over again, so much so, that their comments eventually become as tiresome as the public art mess. A few stout hearts have been trying for years to make sense of why we’re stuck with so much crap. But, well, the scrap heap continues to grow.

Deep Doo-doo

Until this year, it never occurred to me that, as a journalist who writes about art, I should also be a journalist who never ever collects art. The opinions about the rights and/or wrongs seem to whirl around the possibility that some art critics expect to be gifted with art from the persons they have reviewed, or are about to review. I found this in an article (Critical Mess) written for a Seattle newspaper, The Stranger: “As a journalist who critiques things, you’re in a position of power, and if you accept gifts from people whom you hold power over, it’s almost impossible to figure out if they’re giving those gifts of their own goodwill, or if they feel obligated to do it, because the power distorts the relationship.” (Poynter Institute, a school of journalism) The New York Times follows the same lines, but adds this: “An arts writer or editor who owns art of exhibition quality (and thus has a financial stake in the reputation of the artist) may inspire questions about the impartiality of his or her critical judgments or editing decisions. Thus members of the culture staff who collect valuable objects in the visual arts (paintings, photographs, sculpture, crafts, and the like) must annually submit a list of their acquisitions and sales to the associate managing editor for news administration.” Yeah, no doubt about it. The doo could get really deep. I’ve been either making my own art or purchasing the art of others for three decades. I began writing about the visual arts over a decade ago, and I can’t recall ever being approached by an artist wanting to give me a freebie in exchange for a possible review. Certainly there are desperate measures taken in the art world, but the closest I’ve come to the intrigue of it all, is going home from an opening with my pockets laden with slides from various artists who hoped I would consider their art. I’ve also noticed that I’m sometimes offered a “discount” when I buy a piece of art. I never accept discounts. If I want those, I buy art at a rummage sale. Or look in a dumpster. An acquaintance got lucky when she found a John Colt watercolor in a trash can; another located a superb Mike “Ringo” White sculpture. There’s another side to this coin. I’m wondering how many gallery owners across the land are “gifted” with art from an artist featured in an exhibition at their gallery? Imagine what a treasure trove (providing the gallerist has a keen eye) might be amassed. It would seem to be “unethical,” but who is checking the particulars? Okay, so let’s say a gallery owner or an art critic has a birthday celebration, and artists come forth with various gifts for the special day? Is that yet another tar pit of possibilities? The Village Voice critic collects only thrift-store paintings and ceramics and says “the rule here is nothing over $10, no clowns, and no dogs”). He […]

Public Not

The small Iowa town I grew up in had not one piece of public art. And still doesn’t, unless you count the town square’s small granite memorial dedicated to Veterans, and a black and white fiberglass porker standing proud on the rim of town. It’s refreshing to go back for reunions and not have public art in my sight-lines. I doubt if any local folks (population 1,000 and shrinking) have ever thought about the possibility of art that is “public.” Omaha, the home of Warren Buffet, is only 70 miles west, so if they should absolutely have to experience art, I guess that’s where they’d head. Image: Public Sculpture Winter 08 On the route west, there are plenty of stately silos to consider. Stanton, Iowa is only minutes away as the crow reckons, and they do have what I guess is a form of public sculpture: a huge elaborately painted coffee cup mounted on their water tower. Being entirely populated by Swedes who all dwell in small white houses, the town appreciates a good cup of java. Prior to the coffee cup water tower, they had a coffee pot water tower to honor one of their hometown products, Virginia Christine, a.k.a. “Mrs. Olson,” the kindly Swedish lady who became a spokesperson on teevee for Folger’s coffee. When the pot ceased functioning, the good folks shifted gears and went with the cup motif, likely because they didn’t have anyone other than Swedes to consider. When the “Blue Shirt” sculpture proposed for Mitchell International was hung out to dry a few years ago, Milwaukee reached a new low in art appreciation. Our County Executive, Scott Walker, led the charge against the work, along with other misinformed persons who claimed to “know what art is.” Is it worth noting that Walker spent his formative years in Fairfield, Iowa?

Half-Baked (Why presidential candidates should clean their plates)

When Barack Obama exited a Pennsylvania diner, he left behind a plate with a half-eaten waffle and a bit of sausage. Too bad he didn’t clean his plate by stuffing his face, as a waitperson snapped up the detritus and bagged the contents (including the silverware), the result being that it showed up on Ebay, alas to no avail, as it was yanked shortly thereafter. But that didn’t stop the masses calling themselves “artists.” As of late April, an enterprising type had sallied forth on Ebay with a small oil painting, “Memories of Barack Obama”, billed as a one-of-a-kind. Down in Kansas City, artist Sonja Shaffer unveiled paintings of Obama at the Unity Temple, a cozy place I’ve eaten (not waffles) at frequently. It was billed as an Obama fundraiser, with 10% of the sales going to the Obama campaign. The bad news is the Temple limited reservations to no more than twenty five. This would seem to be a losing proposition for everyone. Down in Florida, the Department of Transportation was blasted with gripes that a painting of Barack was a shill for votes, the result being that the Miami-based artist had to paint over BO’s face on the mural, which originally was to be part of a beautification project. The artist, one Serge Toussaint, used white primer in the work, and further griped he is now being accused of “whitewashing” Obama. Isn’t it amazing what artists will do for a shred of publicity? Or could it be that Obama’s people are fueling the mania for things Obama? Would they dare? For your perusal, I’ve included some suspect images by artists vying for fifteen minutes of fame. It’s only going to get worse as we grind on to November. In retrospect, the small painting of the waffle/sausage remains reminds me of the foodie paintings of Wayne Thiebaud, whose slices of eats can be seen at the Milwaukee Art Museum. At least it shows possibilities, and of all of the many Obama images to be found online, it’s only half-bad. It must be hell being a presidential candidate, or the Bronze Fonz, which is on the move again, this time to a more “visible” site on the former Tula’s patio on the Riverwalk.

Born to be free

Free the Galazan 5! Inova/Kenilworth June 13 – July 27 Opening reception: Friday, June 13, 6 – 9pm Gene Galazan left Milwaukee years ago and fled to Arizona. I remember him from the way back days when he and his artist spouse were active participants in Milwaukee art events, so I was intrigued to learn that Inova/Kenilworth will be exhibiting five of his Cor-ten steel sculptures in an exhibit titled Free the Galazan 5! (June 13 – July 27). I found images of the 5! online at the antique and art site of Gary Gresl, who owns the sculptures and is offering them for sale. The spin surrounding the exhibit is pinned to the “story” behind the sculptures: that they were left to languish in a warehouse when deemed to be too “dangerous” and too “abstract” for public consumption. The sculptures, fabricated in 1980 for CETA, a federally funded jobs program, were shot out of the saddle. Here’s an excerpt from an article written by Dean Jensen (yes, that Dean Jensen), in the Milwaukee Sentinel March 2, 1982: “The pieces, fabricated from Cor-ten steel and weighing 200 to 250 lbs. each….are gathering dust in storerooms in the old Town of Lake water tower on S. 6th St., and in a Public Works Department structure in the Menomonee Valley.” The article goes on to note that Galazan was planning a demonstration outside of City Hall, “seeking to free the sculptures he claimed were being held by the city.” A friend of mine who attended UW-Milwaukee recalls Galazan’s parents as being “civic-minded trendy art junkies with a big house on Lake Drive.” They were active in Jewish Vocational Services (his mom ran the JVS pottery department) and were as “sweet as can be,” or so remembers my friend. Of course, most artists have tales to tell, particularly those with bones to pick, and Galazan was (like other artists of his era) highly theatrical. That said, Inova/Kenilworth decided these sculptures and their colorful history would be useful in enlightening viewers about the problems of making art for the “public.” A good example of things gone awry is the current flap surrounding the proposed sculpture memorializing the sinking of the Lady Elgin. Most people involved in the arts will also recall when Dennis Oppenheim’s proposal for the Blue Shirt sculpture was hung out to dry. However, the basic question remains: are these five sculptures worth the effort of pondering, let alone building an exhibit around? Inova curator, Nick Frank, first saw the Galazan 5 during a visit to Gresl’s home, where they sat among weeds and high grasses. He listened to the back story and decided to have all five hauled by truck and placed in Inova/Kenilworth’s vast gallery space. The largest sculpture is priced at $2,000. You can view it and the others at www.greslartmarket.com. It’s a shame that the five are being sold separately. They clearly belong together. Prior to writing this and visiting the gallery, I went online to see what […]

Gotcha!

You’ve got to love folks who get “snookered.” Even those who get snookered into buying fake works of art. Who would have thought that the thousands of visitors flooding the Art Institute of Chicago to worship Paul Gauguin’s “The Faun” were actually adoring a fake made by a family of fakes (the Greenhalgh family) holed-up in England? The Dec. 17/07 issue of the New Yorker details the catastrophe surrounding Marion True, a former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, who got caught in a web of intrigue when she bought an “Aphrodite” (of dubious origin) to the Getty. The courts have unsnarled the web, and Aphrodite is returning to Italy, but wouldn’t it be fun if True’s acquisition turned out to be not only of dubious origin, but also a fake? An earlier New Yorker feature unearthed a scam behind the sale of “vintage” wines, wines which were blends blended recently. If you have enough money, and don’t mind playing the game, well, it’s real easy being snookered these days. Such was the case at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, the brainchild of R.Crosby Kemper, Jr. He launched the museum by purchasing “Canyon Suite” for five million. Alleged to be the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, it turned out they weren’t, but before that was discovered, the 28 watercolors went on tour. The Kansas City Star broke the story, Kemper got his money back, and the fakes were sent packing. The Milwaukee Art Museum’s new Executive Director, Daniel Keegan, was the Kemper’s Executive Director at the time, but according to extremely reliable sources, he had absolutely nothing to do with their purchase or their promotion. Actually, there is a bona-fide game known as “Snookers,” and I should know, as my dad was a Snooker champ at the University of Iowa. Played with a cue and assorted balls, the game was said to have come into being when British officers stationed in India grew bored with gin and each other. Colonialism itself is snookering on a grand scale. When I refer to snookering, I am using the slang definition akin to “inexperienced, greenhorn, dumb, etc.” It somewhat resembles “snipe-hunting,” another Midwestern sport, wherein the snookered is left holding a bag while others go out to beat the bushes for the elusive snipe. Well, you get the picture. In the long ago, I was left holding a bag. But only once. To be on the short-end of the cue, or left holding the bag, isn’t a new phenomenon. It is as old as mankind. Take for instance the Atomic Bomb sent to blow people to smithereens. Sub-primes have snookered us and YouTube snookered us big time in the debate debacle, when a virtual face asked the politicians “What Would Jesus Say?” I feel personally snookered when Oprah endorses Obama, when Huckabee comes off as a regular guy, when John Edwards lays on a honeyed “southern” accent dripping with biscuits and red-eye gravy, when […]

A stitch in time

Woodland Pattern Book Center Devotion to Thread 720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee Now – June 13 Reception: Saturday May 31, 5-9pm, with a Gallery Talk at 7 pm Photos by Faythe Levine Woodland Pattern has long been a mainstay of the Riverwest neighborhood, and over the years, it has extended its reach to include the greater Milwaukee area with programming ranging from music to workshops to art exhibits and beyond. The venerable non-profit venue is a mix of hippie, uber-hip and points between. A mural fronting the building reads “28 years of power to the people.” Frankly though, some of that power should have been used to quell the endless, booming chatter of the 20-something woman whose loud mindlessness invaded the quiet gallery where I was trying to concentrate on writing this review. Apparently, she’d just dropped by to chat up the worker behind the desk. Quiet Please! Reviewing the work of 15 artists is all but impossible, and I felt myself pulling away from examining each of the approximately 40 pieces. That changed as I circled the room. The lone work I gave a zero rating was “We Other Victorians” (Xander Marro), primarily because it was a bad fit with the other works. A quilt of sorts, with an edgy motif, the colors were heavy, and, well, depressing among the mostly pastel threads used in the balance of the work. That said, I understand it satirizes the dark creepy era of Queen Victoria, so perhaps it was included in the exhibit to add a note of contrast. Jenny Hart’s 23”x36” wall-hung wonder “Pink Forrest (Flattery plus Charm)” is, even at the lofty price of $2,300, what I most wanted to take home. Ms. Hart hails from Austin, Texas and her exquisite naughty threads stitched on sleazy orange-pink satin fabric conjure the balls-out flavor of Western kitsch. If your grandma has a really awful tourist pillow from 1940’s Texas, you’ll get my drift. Kristin Loffer Theiss from out Washington way stitched three lovely heads (perhaps family members?) in black on white material. They reminded me of loose line drawings, or threads unspooling from a bobbin gone wild. Faultless to a tee, they are marvelous in the way that Jean Cocteau’s line drawings are marvelous. Orly Cogan contributed five works, one priced sky-high at $10,000. But what a piece it and her four others are. Surely she must know the work of self-taught Chicago artist Henry Darger (you can see his scroll drawings in the Milwaukee Art Museum folk collection); if not, it’s a real coincidence that her figures resemble Mr. Darger’s “Vivians,” sweet little girls with less than sweet attitudes who now and then sprout penises. Look here at this one: a lady, quite naked, playing ring toss with her naked partner, the object being to toss the ring over his waiting penis. These are delicate sensational works, none more so than “Bittersweet Obsession” where girls snort blow and, wearing nothing but fishnets, crouch while eating cupcakes. The thread work […]

Fest me

Fest Me Milwaukee is in the grips of “Festivalism,” a word coined by Peter Schjeldahl (art critic for the New Yorker magazine) after surviving the Venice Biennale in 1999. “The drill is ambulatory consumption,” he quips, “a little of this, a little of that.” As I write, Memorial Day weekend’s Kite Fest unfolds below my balcony, and we’re off and running in the art fair race, where the most asked question is, “Where are the restrooms?” The Milwaukee International Art Fair has come and gone in a bowling alley event; it wasn’t on the lake, though it did feature water spouting from a can encased in plexiglass fronting the General Store booth. Of course Milwaukee isn’t Venice, but we do have Lake Michigan and organizers of art fairs get as close to it as possible (the most notable being the Lakefront Festival of the Arts), or if that’s not feasible, they hug as many inland lakes as possible. The media publishes long lists of where to go and what to peruse (Google on) though one needn’t travel far from one’s neighborhood these days because art fairs are everywhere, some resembling rummage sales for the culturally challenged. It’s almost required that shoppers come home with something, and it might even be a decent piece of art. In the corner of my office is a wooden sculpture purchased twenty years ago at the aforementioned Lakefront Festival of the Arts. It’s a female figure resembling a Marisol sculpture. It has multiple drawers and the head lifts off to reveal a secret chamber. I’m giving it to my grandson who is busy re-decorating his bedroom in “Indiana Jones” style. She was with me when I lived out in the country and the day my small house caught fire, I fled with one thing … her. When the firemen arrived, she greeted them on my front lawn. The first painting I ever purchased (in the late ‘60s) came from an art fair in Oconomowoc, and I think I may have bought it because the artist was lolling around the grounds in a leopard-skin bikini, accompanied by an exotic dog. It’s was a pretty bad painting and eventually I donated it to an auction even though it matched the couch in my suburban tri-level. Actually, art fairs aren’t a terrible way to start collecting stuff, because there’s plenty to choose from. The things you bring home may eventually teach you a thing or two, and at the very least you can say years down the line, “I bought that at an art fair years ago.” They become grist for your memory mill, but it’s doubtful they’ll teach you what art is. That takes years, and art fair viewers don’t have time. A few hours outing on a sunny day is really what they’re about, so go ahead, have some fun. This isn’t to say that whopper fairs like the Venice Biennale will teach you what art is either. I’ve never attended an uber-whopper, but I imagine […]

The truth of the matter

As a kid I believed everything I read was true, especially the Bible (the Old Testament was particularly frightening), and odd as it may seem, tales from True Confessions magazine, a publication forbidden in my Midwestern childhood home. Fortunately, my best friend lived across the street in the shadow of the Presbyterian Church, and when her mom was away, we two would smoke her mom’s Lucky Strikes and dive into what was forbidden in my home. I confess, those were exciting times. Recently, I received a yellowing copy of True Confessions: Sixty Years of Sin, Suffering & Sorrow (1919-1979). It was a time-warp packed with familiar ads: Adola brassieres (“flatters where it matters”), Tayton’s Cake Make-Up (“a Hollywood favorite”), Marchand’s Golden Hair Wash (“don’t let time darken your hair”), and Yours-Truly nylon hosiery, which urged me to send for a FREE sample stocking. Tempting? Yes, but even I realized that a single stocking was useless. Balancing the ads promising full-throttle beauty were many hinting at the disaster of scaly skin blemishes, bad breath, and for one on the cusp of young womanhood … underarm perspiration, which could be fixed with a dab of Odo-Ro-No. The publication was aimed at females, ages 20-35, 75% of who were married. The confessions had sizzling titles: “Shakedown Marriage” (When a showgirl down on her luck meets a naïve lad in khaki on a 36-hour leave, a lot can happen … and does!), “Interrupted Elopement” (But Lester was impatient with anything that thwarted his desires), or this from “My G.I. Joe” (He leaned forward and his big hands covered mine), and “The Girl They Called BAD” (All her sorry, pitiful life, Ivy longed for someone to care, anyone!). Shadow-filled black and white photos of real people in fake situations hinted at Film Noir, another of my early obsessions enjoyed at our town’s Rialto Theater. I never tried Marchand’s Golden Hair Wash, but seven decades have left me with a mop of natural silver. Recently, I learned on Wikipedia (another benefit of age) that confession magazines gave way to comic books in 1949 before staggering forth in condensed form in Reader’s Digest. My computer also revealed that a 1981 movie (True Confessions) starred two Roberts (De Niro and Duvall), as priest vs. gangster. In 1985, television made a stab at a series culled from the pages of True Confessions, but even the show’s host, Bill (“My Favorite Martian”) Bixby, couldn’t keep it from expiring. In 2006, Dorchester Media linked with Leisure Enterprises to launch paperback anthologies titled True Confessions, True Romance, and True Story. Believe it, True Confessions is alive and kicking via subscriptions. Magazine Values.com touts it as a “glimpse into the forbidden!” An image of the magazine’s cover carries headlines titled “Toxic Love,” “My Son Shot His Best Friend,” “Talk Show Terror” and “Why I Married a Gay Man.” Given our current world of “confessions,” a world where celebs mea culpa daily and Jerry Springer is a hero, the True Confessions of my pre-teen […]

Milwaukee sinks

Milwaukee has some awful public art (revolting!), and some successful public art. (sublime!) Well, we aren’t the only cities suffering from bad public art. Google “Bad Public Art” and you’ll get my drift. The Art Newspaper reports that “statues in Britain are Revolting – and so are we.” They call it an “epidemic of Frankenstein Monster Memorials.” One such monster was tagged with the suggestion, “remove this tin can.” A colossal sculpture of a couple embracing is described as “a couple who have just been refused a mortgage.” Another, depicting Nelson Mandella with outstretched arms, is quipped as “ Mandella describing the size of a fish he may have caught in his angling days.” You’ve got to hand it to the Brits’ wits. It’s no laughing matter when these disasters are parked on our front lawns, which is to say our public spaces – though if you pay attention, there are some disasters on private lawns. Bad art is viral in nature. It spreads and multiplies and divides. We’re stuck with it until it rusts, crumbles, is carted off, or hidden from sight. Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin is being bombarded by a federal arts panel who object to the depiction of Martin Luther King Jr., the model of which will become a 28-foot-tall statue. “Too confrontational,” wailed the panel. An image of the clay model was posted on AOL in May, and since everyone out there claims to be an art critic, it was put up to a vote. Milwaukee has a MLK sculpture on MLK Drive. In 2003, an 8’ x 16’ painting depicting Mr. King and various black leaders was removed from the County Courthouse’s public rotunda to a less public area. County Executive Scott Walker led the charge on the removal, causing the (then) director of the Haggerty Museum to snipe, “It’s not the job of lawyers and judges and police officers to be censuring public art.” The Haggerty had loaned the Courthouse the painting, which maybe proves it’s unwise to look a gift horse in the mouth. The flip side is that Marquette has a really bad sculpture memorializing Pere Marquette. It’s near their glorious, perfectly proportioned chapel on the west end of the campus. In the wake of Mary Louise Schumacher’s (MJS art critic) article about the proposed two-story bronze disaster memorializing lives lost in the sinking of the Lady Elgin, numerous comments, pro and con, have washed up on the media shore. A few argue for a public arts administrator to oversee what stuff goes where; others argue against that tactic and cry out for public input across the board. But who is the “public,” and why would masses of people with varying tastes be more effective? I vote for a public art administrator who knows what art is. There’s another question involved in this flap, a very basic question … what’s the point of memorializing folks who went down with the ship? Why are we looking back and wringing our hands instead of […]

Southwestern Chief

There is nothing finer than riding snug in the belly of Amtrak’s Southwest Chief as it slices a wedge near Ft. Madison, Iowa, crosses the glittering Mississippi, and begins its crawl through Illinois, where the land is mostly flat. The Chief, bound for Chicago, often gives way to freight trains, but that’s okay. It gives me time enough to study the lay of the fields dotted with clusters of modest farm houses and out-buildings. From where I sit in my tiny “roomette,” the geometric clusters resemble bleached and blank-faced pieces from Monopoly games. The land embracing Mendota, Illinois (home of the Sweetcorn Festival and the Union Railroad Museum) is scattered with farm buildings that exist to serve the land. They are the last remnants of what I like to call “The Real McCoy School of Architecture.” Stripped of frou-frou, and devoid of “isms,” you betcha farmers would laugh if their buildings were referenced as “architecture.” For many years, modernist architects such as R.M. Schindler and Louis Kahn tried to re-invent simplicity by assembling squares and triangles, cubes and wedges, and yes, the finest of their efforts are beautiful in the way that a simple outbuilding on a farm is beautiful. It seems though, that when an “ism” is attached to architecture, the particular movement (for example, modernism), becomes a thing unto itself. It becomes fashionable. Certainly it may be naïve to compare the farm house squares and triangles, cubes and wedges, with the works of talented mid-century modernist architects, but on the trip north to Chicago, it occurred to me that maybe the kudos for modernism should be heaped on farmers and not architects. The plain and simple buildings they built for their families, their livestock, and their machinery, are years removed from the concept of modernist designs birthed by architects to please clients, and themselves. Entering Chicago on a train is a trip through time, and wow! Chicago, glorious Chicago, has a wealth of modernist architecture, much of which can be seen by taking a tour boat ride on the Chicago River. Or you can sit by the bronze lions fronting the Art Institute soak up the diverse wash of humanity toting Nordstrom and Ikea bags while chatting on their cell phones. Smart folks heading to Milwaukee catch The Hiawatha out of Chicago’s Union Station. Along the route is the compact and smartly designed Prairie-style building (MARS), which serves as a stylish connection to nearby Mitchell International Airport. Milwaukee’s Amtrak Station on St. Paul Avenue is currently undergoing a major re-do, complete with a glassy façade that references the 6th St. Bridge to the west, perhaps too much so, as it tends to detract from the wonderful structure, however the new station is a big leap beyond the dismal wreck it replaced. The building I live in is defined as “modernist,” and the street I live on, Prospect Avenue, was once a Sauk Indian trail. On a clear day I have a view of the pitched roofs of houses […]

Before da show

Milwaukee International Polish Falcons Beer Hall 801 E. Clarke Street, Riverwest Friday May 16 (5-9pm) Saturday May 17 (Noon-9pm) It’s Thursday, 1 pm, May 15. Tomorrow at 5 pm, the doors open to reveal the Milwaukee International art fair. I’m standing in the middle of the chaos at the Polish Falcons Beer Hall at 801 E. Clarke Street, deep in the soul of Riverwest, here to give you a taste of what it takes to ready 28 art spaces for exhibitors from as far flung as San Juan (Puerto Rico, not Capistrano), Tokyo, Glasgow, and yes, even M’waukee. Bowling will rumble from the Falcon Bowl in the building’s bowels. It’s the fourth oldest bowling alley in America; Liberace would love it. A distinct air of beer wafts through the hall on the first floor. Groups of volunteers hump booth walls to and fro, a few sporting white hoodies emblazoned with the art fair’s logo. You can purchase a hoodie or a tee for $24 and/or $10 respectively, and they come in really big or really small sizes. A visiting artist from Glasgow made them. “Somebody from Ralph Lauren called me to ask if they could buy some,” says Tyson Reeder, who operates The General Store art venue. “I’m not kidding,” he adds. A huge tray of food arrives from their neighbor across the way (The Riverwest Co-op). It’s almost time to chow down and take a break. Last year the walls were donated for no charge. This year, there may be a slight charge if the fair turns a profit. Booths for non-profit venues rent for $200; for-profits pay $400. All things considered, it’s a deal. So far the group has taken in $4,000 for this year’s extravaganza. Last year they took in $2,000. But they’ll be lucky to clear a grand, and if they do, it rolls over into their next project. No one is getting rich. Everyone is getting happy. From the editor: The walls were paid for, NOT donated, as the organizers of Milwaukee International have made clear in the comment posted below. The generous sponsorship of Thomas Blackman Associates in Chicago assists with the walls, but the are paid for, and nearly all of the booth rental fees charged by MKE INTL go toward wall rental and lighting fees. We regret the error. VS The volunteers and those who donate supplies seem to take pride in being “emotionally invested” in the Fair. Green Gallery proprietor John Riepenhoff lectures at UW-Milwaukee. His subject? How to start an art gallery. He should know. Nick Frank dashes by in a red hoodie. He’s sporting a “new” and rather elaborate growth of facial hair. I remark that he looks like a fugitive from a Goya painting. We move to a corner near the long dark bar where a guy from Cuba show his art. “We almost got a fellow (first name “Valentino”), a taxidermist, but he changed his mind,” said Frank. I asked him about the accusation that local galleries […]

Body Heat

The Milwaukee Public Museum opened Body Worlds on January 18, positioning it as a limited engagement. According to their website, it’s the most highly attended touring exhibition in the world, and promises, in a P.T. Barnum kind of pitch, that you’ll “see the human body like never before.” Before visiting the 200 authentic organs, systems and whole-body displays, I determine not to be sucked in to the show-biz hype. On April 23, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Body Worlds had surpassed expected sales and might net the Museum as much as $2 million in revenue, which would make it the Museum’s most successful and highly attended show of all time. As a grand finale, the exhibition will stay open for 63 hours straight before closing on midnight June 1. Depending on whose side you’re on, the MPM extravaganza is either a marketer’s dream or a marketer’s worst nightmare. In any event, the many incarnations of Body Worlds and its imitators are cranking heat. The temperature rose when ABC’s 20/20 aired an investigative report on the source of the touring cadavers. The New York State Attorney General’s Office has opened an investigation (and issued subpoenas), as has the Chinese government, following an allegation by someone said to be part of a bodies black market that sold Chinese corpses, including executed prisoners, for $300. Dr. Gunther Von Hagens, Body Worlds head honcho and the inventor of the plastination process which sucks out fat and body fluids and replaces them with liquid plastic, tried to soften things by saying he “had to destroy some bodies” as he suspected they were execution victims. Apparently folks are packing an Ohio exhibition (Bodies: The Exhibition) entombed at the Cincinnati Museum Center, where museum officials claim everything is above board. My sister writes from Kansas City that a similar exhibition (another rival of Body Worlds) is installed in a small museum space in the historic Union Station. She isn’t going to see the stuff because to her mind, “it is voyeuristic.” I too hoped that the MPM exhibition wouldn’t trigger any peep-show tendencies. My father was a forensic pathologist, and by the time I was a young adult, I’d had it with his dinner table discussions of organs. He was generous with his body, though; when he died he willed it to the University of Kansas for medical research and spent time floating around in a brine tank with a numbered tag attached to his toe. Hopefully a medical student benefited when they hooked Father with a long pole and pulled forth their personal cadaver. But the science of medical dissections as practiced today, thanks to Von Hagens’ ongoing development of plastination, may soon disappear. As I write, I’m reminded of a former Wisconsin physician who, when last sighted, was working for a Cryogenics firm in Arizona. His job was to sever the heads from the corpses of those wishing to find everlasting life via a process similar to freeze-drying. The late baseball player Ted Williams […]

What’s going on?

Michael H. Lord is back in business, or at least it looks that way as the doors to his sort-of gallery space were open during spring Gallery Night and Day. Not that you need reminding, but Lord was sent packing to prison for various mistakes. Poet John Tyson is still incarcerated and will be for awhile, but his poems are posted by a friend via Old Man Prison Poet. Marilyn Karos, the Whitefish Bay matron and art dealer who went to Club Fed is out and about. What’s going on with our art institutions? No less than four new executive directors have filled the holes at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Haggerty Museum of Art, the Charles Allis/Villa Terrace, and UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts. Money is tight now and institutions are vying with many venues trying to raise dollars, so you have to know it’s a major headache. Elly Pick is the new executive director at the Allis/Villa pairing, and she came to our town from West Bend where she helped jump start the building program for the yet-to-be-realized expanded Museum of Wisconsin Art. That was a surprise, as she was a lynch-pin in their organization. Two hopeful galleries closed recently, Brooks Barrow in the Third Ward and Mike Brenner’s snappy Hotcakes, though the latter is forging ahead to spearhead MARN, the Milwaukee Artists Resource Network. I swung by the assemblage-of-rust-sculpture in Catalano Park near MIAD recently, thinking perhaps I’d like it instead of hating it. If anything, it looks worse than ever. Speaking of bad, the New Land Enterprises parking garage on Downer is another disaster worth noting. It’s big, ugly and there. Deal with it.

Five on three

The Armoury Gallery 1718 N. lst St. (3N3) Gallery hours: Fridays & Saturdays 1 – 5 Opening Reception: Friday, May 9, 7 – 10pm info@thearmourygallery.com Two decades have passed since I had a studio on floor five at the Fortress. I was painting BIG back then and recall lugging the results up and down the ancient freight elevator on the west side of the red brick building. The place was crawling with artists, some sneakily living in tandem with their work (one place even had a shower!), and though it was “illegal” to hunker down, it was more or less overlooked. Sax Arts & Crafts was on the street level fronting The Fortress at 1st and Pleasant. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end. Five artists entrenched on floor three have only just begun. 3N3 designates their place in time: that’s third floor north, slot three. The building, however venerable, is a maze of four wings of possibilities, so be advised that you can reach the third floor via a creaky freight elevator or creaky stairs. Take the stairs. Warning: don’t confuse the south building with the north building. I was assured by one of the artists that multiple signs would be posted to direct visitors, but just to ease the way, be sure to enter on the west side of the building (the 1st St. side), where three doors await. Enter the one marked 1718 and follow the signs! If you’re still confused, phone 414-265-2806. Don’t call me. Eduardo J. Villanueva, Emily Siegel Belknap, Karin Haas, Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber: from May 9 – June 6, you can see what they’re up to. Their formal education in art is diverse: MIAD, UW-Milwaukee and Mount Mary College. They share a 1,000 sq.-ft-area centered by a furnace. Artist Jessica Steeber observed that a furnace in the middle of the floor actually gives them more wall space. Artists Villanueva, Belknap and Haas will exhibit until June 20th when they’ll give way to artists from Milwaukee, Chicago and Philadelphia. Smith and Steeber (co-owners of the gallery) are exhibiting for the grand opening, but Steeber says it’s likely they won’t exhibit their work in the future. This is a wise strategy if you run a gallery, because frankly, invited artists sometimes feel upstaged. On my way to visit The Armoury, I was thinking that so much wall space is not necessarily a good thing for young artists accustomed to cramped spaces. It could lead to art that sprawls – but if it sprawls and it’s also interesting, that’s another thing entirely. Of the five exhibitors, co-owner Steeber takes up the least amount of space with her discrete installations presented on traditional shelving unearthed at the Salvation Army, Michael’s Craft Store, and yes, her parents’ basement. The objects on the shelving consist of props (dollhouse furniture, tiny fake trees) and photographs designed to compare and contrast the artist’s shrunken world with our expanded universe. The claustrophobic boxes of Joseph Cornell […]

The Herd

For many years there’s been a bull (okay, it’s a herd) loose in Milwaukee. The herd snorts mightily, charges at those it deems “powerful,” — i.e. those with money, position, and/or those it views as snubbing art produced in Wisconsin. The allegations frequently target the prestigious Milwaukee Art Museum. It’s a wearisome tale that began when the museum closed the small gallery (Cudahy Gallery of Wisconsin Art) housing the works of state artists. The herd continues to tote a chip despite the fact that the gallery closed over a decade ago. One could even say the herd charges at any and every red flag that gets in the way: curators, art critics, editors, executive directors of museums, gallerists, and all others who dare offer opinions or make decisions on what is or isn’t worth writing about, adding to a museum collection, or curating a show around. The snorters would have us believe that all art (made in Wisconsin) is worth writing about, adding to a museum collection, or curating a show around. The herd enjoys licking wounds. The herd prefers grazing fields of green, the greener the better. When not grazing elysian fields, they raise their collective heads and try to fool us into believing that artists who make art in Wisconsin are given the short end of the art stick. But MAM is only one local venue purported to stonewall art made in Wisconsin. Dem Bones investigated other local venues: The Haggerty Museum of Art, the Charles Allis/Villa Terrace Museums and UW- Milwaukee’s Inova, and they all included generous portions of art produced by Wisconsinites. Dem Bones then searched hither and yon for local galleries that have a hidden mission to exclude Wisconsin-made art, but found none, which isn’t to say that the venues include the work of all Wisconsin artists seeking affirmation. Given what’s out there, that would be a disaster. In effect, the persons in charge of decisions, make decisions. It’s their job for better or for worse. Ideally, persons defined as “art critics” make their living by setting the art bar as high as possible, for what good is it to set it so low that anyone and everyone gets a gold star on their resume? Self-esteem is an earned process fueled by a solid education in the arts, hard work, discipline, and the ability to integrate various experiences into the moment of art making. Great art (who cares where it’s “made?”) happens when artists think, not when they sulk and blow smoke because they feel marginalized. Bring on the artists from the east and west coasts; bring on the best from north and south and all points in-between. Scour the globe for artists who bring us diverse ways of “seeing.” Of course someone will have to decide what’s worth considering in a world where much isn’t worth considering. Check out The Milwaukee International Art Fair, coming soon to the Polish Falcon in Riverwest. Former UW-Milwaukee art professor Laurence Rathsack died recently. James Auer, the Journal […]

Marcus Aurelius Online

While ruling Rome, Marcus Aurelius Antonius (b. AD 121-D. AD 180) wrote Meditations. In the twelve books he set down rules written in Greek, rules for living. A Stoic among Stoics, actually he wrote them to himself. In the year 2008, I’m wondering how these famous admonitions and aphorisms would best serve the art community in 2008. Book 1: “the certainty to ignore the dice of fortune….” Dem Bones: Certainly applies to any and all artists who enter the race for grant monies. Book 2: “Now the flesh you should disdain …. blood, bones, a mere fabric and network of nerve, veins, and artifacts. DB: “Body Worlds” is at the Milwaukee Public Museum until June 1/2008. But is it art? Book 3: “Do not waste the remaining part of your life in thoughts about other people, when you are not thinking with reference to some aspect of the common good.” DB: Does the common good include thinking about bad public art? Book 4: “Remove the judgment, and you have removed the thought, ‘I am hurt,’ and the hurt itself is removed.” DB: This pleases any and all artists who receive rotten reviews, are cut from the Mary Nohl Fellowship race, or have yet to be mentioned by local art critics. Book 5: “If on the other hand harm is done to the city, you should not be angry, but demonstrate to the doer of this harm what he has failed to see himself.” DB: A useless rule when applied to the coming of the Bronze Fonz. Book 6: “Some things are hurrying to come into being, others are hurrying to be gone, and part of that which is being born is already extinguished. DB: True enough, but locals are still stuck with Gertie The Duck and the hunk of strange sculpture in Catalano Park. Book 7: “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that it stands ready for what comes and is not thrown by the unforeseen.” DB: So what do we do with bad art that has us in a headlock? Book 8: “Everything has come into being for a purpose … a horse, say, or a vine. Does this surprise you? DB: Sort of, because it’s hard to reconcile that with much of the art I see. Book 9: “Enough of this miserable way of life, enough of grumbling and aping.” DB: If you are an artist, go ahead and push that rock up the hill, but don’t grumble about it. Book 10: “The healthy eye must look at all there is to be seen, and not say ‘I only want pale colors’…this is a symptom of disease.” DB: There is truth here. Book 11: “No nature is inferior to art, in fact the arts imitate the variety of natures. If that is so, then the most perfect and comprehensive of all natures could not be surpassed by any artistic invention.” DB: So why bother? Book 12: “Practice even what you have despaired of […]

Kevin Miyazki and the Whitney Biennial

The March 24, 2008 issue of The New Yorker Magazine has a cover illustration depicting a mug shot of a guy caught with his pants down. His jacket is brown, his tie is striped in red and white, and even though the image ends at his shoulders and ankles, just enough is revealed so you get the drift. The biggest clue is the blue boxer shorts emblazoned with multiple images of “The Great Seal Of The State Of NewYork.” The guy’s legs are hairy, his knees are knobby and his black and white socks are held in place by black garters. It’s all the crafty work of artist Mark Ulriksen, a regular contributor to the magazine, who will be part of a group exhibition opening March 29th in San Francisco. Another regular, artist Bruce McCall, focuses on images of Americans and their mania for automobiles. His work will open on April 1, with an exhibition at the James Goodman gallery in New York. The magazine’s sensational art critic, Peter Schjeldahl, will launch a collection of art criticism in May, aptly titled “Let’s See.” If you want to read his take on the 2008 Whitney Biennial, visit The New Yorker online. My friend, photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki, jump-started his career by taking assignments from Milwaukee Magazine. He was at the Whitney Biennial, but found it lacking and instead took a great photograph of a ceiling fixture in the building. His new website gives rise to hope for website design. It’s sparse and elegant as the work of Miyazaki is sparse and elegant. You can visit him online, too. Recently, he won a Nohl Fellowship award in the “emerging” artists category. What a laugh. From a standpoint of competence, he’s way beyond “emerging,” but I guess because he’s still relatively young, he was more or less pigeon-holed. That said, $5,000 is no small potatoes, though he should have been bumped up to the “established” artist slot and the $15,000 bonanza. You’ll be able to view more of his work in the Fall of 2008 when Inova showcases the work of the award recipients. Miyazaki’s work will shine.

Setting the stage

Jeffrey M. Kenney is an employee of Katie Gingrass Gallery, and even though his artist statement reads “Jeffrey M. Kenney,” you can just call him “Jeff.” I saw two of his photographs recently when I stopped in to write a Shepherd Express review of an exhibition at Gingrass Gallery. They were not part of the show, but I ended up standing in front of them anyway. He handed me the March 2008 issue of Vital Source – he did the cover art – then he toured me through the gallery. You can view a broader sampling of his work when Urban Perspectives opens on May 2. When I phoned him to set up an interview, he told me he’d just moved from Bremen Street to “more shrunken” third floor quarters in a majestic house on Humboldt. We agree to meet on a Monday, late in the afternoon – Mondays mean freedom for Jeff, and freedom means time to develop ideas in his new space. I warn him to not rush around and tidy up before my arrival. “I doubt if that’s even possible at this point,” he replies. March 31: Rain with fog. I brace myself for a climb to the third floor. Jeff leads the way up the narrow stairs to his apartment. Plaster walls, elegant coved ceiling, deep window sills, original radiators, three rooms and a spacious bath, all recently updated with new appliances. The red light on the oven indicates it’s baking something – a miniature papier-mâché sculpture he intends to incorporate in his art. Jeff is a twin (his brother is a musician living in Austin, Texas), born in Viroqua, Wisconsin on January 20, 1981 – the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as President of the United States. He doesn’t have cable, so he haunts Peoples Bookstore and Riverwest Film & Video. He’s currently reading works by French writer Paul Virilio, who studies war and the speed of our current society. One of his favorite films is The Magician by George Melies, who shaped early cinema from the late 1890s through the 1920s. “They resemble one-minute magic tricks,” Jeff observes. Illusion interests this artist, who once had a summer job in the Dells as a videographer for a magician. “I also mowed his lawn,” he says. His father is a pilot and his mom is helping with an environmental clean-up at former site used to produce ammunition during the Second World War. If you’ve ever visited the fantastic acres of Dr. Evermore’s “Forevertron” sculptures near New Freedom, Wisconsin, it’s directly across the road. He graduated from MIAD in 2003, with a BFA in Sculpture. Back then, he was just beginning to explore and develop his current arsenal of ideas. Before graduating, he studied at S.A.C.I. in Florence, Italy, and labored there as a teaching assistant. We chat about the problems young artists encounter when trying to price their work for specific markets. I remind him that $50 seems to be the going price around here, and […]

Wisconsin art and artists

From March 27 – August 2008, the work of Milwaukee-based artist Santiago Cucullu will be installed in the Schroeder Galleria at the Milwaukee Art Museum. This is a long narrow space flooded with light from the west, and should work well with the large wall drawings constructed of sculptures, contact paper and watercolors. Please note that I refer to Mr. Cucullu as “Milwaukee-based,” and I do so with a specific goal in mind, i.e. to quiet the thrum of those who paw the ground whenever MAM dares to feature the work of artists not born in Wisconsin, raised in Wisconsin or shaped their careers in Wisconsin. Cucullu was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (in 1969) and art-educated in Minneapolis and Connecticut. He’s exhibited on both coasts and at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. His is a global vision. Regional art isn’t being deep-sixed, in fact, it has found a home at the Museum of Wisconsin Arts (MWA) in West Bend, a venue that has ambitious plans for expansion. It’s a bit unclear at this point if MWA will also include artists with no ties to Wisconsin, but I venture to guess they will. I can think of no good reason why they shouldn’t if the quality is high and their mission is to educate and illuminate. The Milwaukee Art Museum’s mission is quality work, no matter where that work is produced. Nothing is ever perfect, but their position strikes me as reasonable rather than confrontational. It’s ridiculous to imagine they base their curatorial decisions on where artists hail from. From April 17-July 20, MAM features A Revolutionary in Milwaukee: The Designs of George Mann Niedecken. He’s said to have given dreary Milwaukee interiors a new slant, a fresh perspective culled from his years in Europe. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for a list of “Wisconsin” artists who are part of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s permanent collection. I’m wondering myself who will turn up on the list. MAM just purchased their 8th piece of work by former Milwaukeean, Michelle Grabner. That’s good for starters.

Welcome to Dem Bones

Hello — Stella Cretek here. You’ve landed at Dem Bones. Don’t let my upswept blonde ‘do and drooping cig fool you. It’s only a jpeg of a painting by a friend who is an exceptionally bad painter. Because this blog will attend primarily to art, I figured I’d start off with an example of what art isn’t. Look around and you’ll see plenty of it in our town. Milwaukee is filled with artists tagged as “emerging,” “mature,” “promising,” “interesting,” etc. They paint, sculpt, exhibit their photography, produce assemblages, dabble in metal and clay, and generally vie for attention of local art critics who are also vying for attention. There is some hope out there however. Tom Bamberger, a local writer/photographer, enlivens Milwaukee Magazine, along with art historian Deb Brehmer, who manages to teach at MIAD and maintain the Portrait Gallery in the Third Ward, plus runSusceptible to Images. Over at the Shepherd Express, Aisha Motlani is developing attitude about reviewing art and architecture. Attitude is a good thing, and thinking persons need not fear it. Non-thinkers are the ones who need to worry.

Track back

Inova/Kenilworth Gallery 2155 N. Prospect Avenue Adelheid Mers & Indexical Frontiers Now – May 11, 2008 I almost decided not to review the new Inova/Kenilworth exhibition (now – May 11, 2008). The lengthy press release was exhausting, and I was somewhat confused by the information surrounding Chicago-based artist Adelheid Mers. According to the press release, her “Organogram,” a mapping of the people, positions, procedures, foundations and economic conditions that make up a functioning university arts program (specifically the Peck School of the Arts), produces not a critique, but a projection. But it also claims that the Organogram “reveals the artist’s bias as she gives shape to a visual report of what she has observed.” I had to ask myself, if the work “reveals a bias,” how then can it not be a critique? Of course, perhaps the artist was protecting herself from possibly offending the Peck School, which commissioned the project. The exhibition, curated by Nicholas Frank, also includes the work of Michael Banicki, Annabel Daou and Renato Umali, all participating in Indexical Frontiers. I visited the Kenilworth Building shortly after the March 28 opening. The alleged point of Mers’ project and process is to help people find “new ways of thinking about their institutions.” Eight questions were included in an online survey, with the anonymous replies to be no more than 2,000 words. Those wishing to schedule an interview with the artist were asked to provide an email address. The gallery-sitter that day was a 23-year-old pursuing an Arts Education degree with a double major in painting and drawing. She told me her favorite works in the exhibition were Umali’s, who earned his Master of Fine Arts if Film and Video Performance from UW-Milwaukee and presently teaches in their Film Department. I agree with the young woman. His repertoire is a meticulously crafted presentation of personal data he’s recorded over an eight-year span. You might say this slice of his life is one big spreadsheet – with a twist. Umali has good days and bad days and in-between days, and you can locate his ups and downs by studying his richly detailed, colorfully designed graphs. A bad day is a black day. When his mood lightens, the squares morph to sunny shades of yellow. It’s all very prim and proper in the way that math is prim and proper; it’s easy to imagine Umali as a busy accountant, ticking off his life’s moments and making sure that everything balances. He maintains a piano studio for private instruction somewhere in the Kenilworth building, likely with not one but two metronomes. The gallery-sitter/art student remarked that Umali’s work “is something I would never have thought of.” Across from Umali’s offerings is a wall of obsessive notations on white paper, so tiny and fragile-looking that I feared they might disappear from sight. Born and raised in Beirut, the artist, Annabel Daou, moved to New York in 1999, which may explain why her feathery notations seem to cling to the paper, as if […]

A trail well-traveled

A Survey: Drawings & Paintings by John Wickenberg March 19 – May 18 Charles Allis Art Museum 1801 N. Prospect Avenue John Wickenberg studied under the guidance of another John (Wisconsin’s own John Wilde); the ghost of his late teacher, who died in 2006, lingers in A Survey: Drawings & Paintings by John Wickenberg (now – May 18 at the Charles Allis Art Museum). Laurel Turner, the curator of exhibitions and collections at both the Charles Allis and Villa Terrace, surely had her hands full dealing with the proliferation of various art mediums in the show: watercolor/gouache, watercolor/pencil, silverpoint/acrylic, silverpoint/oil. In preparing for this review, I visited the Print, Drawing, and Photography Study Center at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and was told by a helpful staffer that the Center had none of Wisconsin-based Wickenberg’s works. For his part, John Wilde has been variously defined as a magic realist, a surrealistic and a fantasy painter, but Wickenberg doesn’t exactly fit into these niches. It’s doubtful that he’d appreciate being pigeon-holed. “The basis of my technique is a strong commitment to the craft of drawing,” he says. Period. Wickenberg (who earned his Bachelor’s and Master of Fine Arts degree from UW-Madison, and later taught at UW-Whitewater) depicts everyday objects, so I was pleased to locate a mixed-media Joseph Cornell box (“Celestial Navigations by Birds, 1958”) in MAM’s Gallery 18, and upstairs, Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1936 “Mule Skull with Turkey Feather.” Her pretty paintings bore me in the way that Milton Avery’s work bores me, but at least her skull and feather painting is a still-life statement about life and death, and it thrust me forward to further explore. In the Education Gallery on the main level, I paused to see what they had to offer, and it turned out to be what I was seeking: a nice selection of graphite drawings with watercolor by Wisconsin-based artist Joanna Poehlmann. Her beautifully drawn “Nest Egg VI” (2006) echoes both Wickenberg and Wilde, who accomplish the extraordinary via the ordinary. I don’t stand around at exhibitions counting pieces of art, but my pre-show Charles Allis list indicated some 52 by Wickenberg from various years, in various sizes, variously titled “Avalanche,” “Frisbee and Other Obsessions” and “Horn of Plenty” (Homage to 20th Century Art), which I recall from a 2001 exhibition at the Rahr-West in Manitowoc. To clear my head, I had to remind myself that all art starts with a blank and goes (successfully or unsuccessfully) from there. Prior “understanding” of particular works tends to muddy the field, which ideally should be level and clear of pre-conceived notions, so I leave it to art historians to trace the art of the still-life back to the efforts of Renaissance masters. “All art,” John Wilde wrote, “comes from sex and the awareness of death.” On floor two of the Allis, in the main gallery space, are seven watercolor and gouache paintings depicting nests: empty nests, nests with feathers, nests with eggs (albeit “abandoned”). Despite the richness of detail, […]

Knock out

The Powerful Hand of George Bellows: Drawings from the Boston Public Library Milwaukee Art Museum Koss Gallery Now – March 23 The Milwaukee Art Museum’s spin for the George Bellows exhibition (now- March 23) goes like this: special rare drawings and lithographs, important chronicler of American life in the early twentieth century, highlights include scenes of boxing, racetracks and the glory of rabble-rousing preacher Billy Sunday. I was intrigued enough to visit the Koss Gallery, but not because of any touted aspects of the exhibition: in the ‘40s, I watched my dad enjoy boxing matches on television, and later, when we moved to Kansas City, he invited me out to watch the regional Golden Gloves boxing matches. I guess he thought it was a good way to bond (plus the Moriarty clan lays claim to John L. Sullivan, a shirt-tail relative from our Irish past). It was surreal to watch the sweat fly and blood splat near our ringside seats in a smoke-filled arena mostly populated by men. As years passed, I found myself fascinated by Body and Soul and Raging Bull. When Joyce Carol Oates, one of my favorite American writers, penned On Boxing in 1994, I learned that she and her dad had attended a 1950s Golden Gloves match, too. I’m also fascinated with old-time evangelical preachers, having seen them scream and shout in tents set up in my small Iowa hometown. Elmer Gantry, a movie I re-visit at least once a year, is based on preacher Billy Sunday, who is prominently figured in the works of George Bellows. Bellows’ (1882-1925) focus is primarily power, be it religious, political or athletic in nature. Prior to studying art, he was a star athlete in college where his discipline likely gave him a competitive edge in the art world. In this dark and gritty, near-hysterical political year of 2008, his change! change! change! artist/anarchist message rings familiar. I have a sneaking suspicion that the artist deemed the American masses as sheep in need of a shepherd and figured he might as well be it. The Koss Gallery is crowded with the artist’s work (smartly coordinated at MAM by Mary Weaver Chapin, assistant curator of prints and drawings), but the intimate space helps viewers focus on the cramped turbulence of the American city. The detailed drawings and lithographs remind me of pages in a historical novel punctuated with black and white images, though there is one colorful oil painting from 1916, “The Sawdust Trail.” It is the “star” of the Koss’ central gallery, but it is certainly not the prime example of images depicting Billy Sunday. Compared with the seven images surrounding it, the oil seems ham-fisted and blowsy. Bellows considered Sunday, an athlete who played with the Chicago White Stockings, the “worst thing that ever happened to America,” so perhaps the artist saw himself as a kind of “art evangelist.” Late in his career, he turned to lucrative portrait work (some of it is included in the exhibition) and seascapes; […]

The ultimate trip

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy, all for the love of you. (from “A Bicycle Built for Two”) Recently I watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for the umpteenth time, and it’s as fascinating as it was 40 years ago — perhaps more so after the 2001 unveiling of the Calatrava addition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It’s remarkable how the architect echoes the film’s images of whiteness, light, spiraling forms, tunnel-like views and vaulted spaces punctuating long narrow halls. Kubrick’s icon arrived in the age of space exploration when the young Spanish architect was seventeen and likely exploring his own version of space. On a cloudless day when the sun floods Windhover Hall, it creates a field of blinding white, but from the first day I stepped into the area, it seemed oddly familiar. I was drifting through the film. All of this pondering about an exceptional filmmaker and equally exceptional architect made me wonder if Sensory Overload (now – October 2009) would be better if installed in the addition’s marbled halls rather than in the severe contemporary galleries in the “old section.” Perhaps, though, all the light, motion, sound and optics would battle with the Calatrava; maybe overloaded art is best sensed where there are no additional distractions. As I write at my EV730 computer, the words of HAL, a 9000 computer, bother my head the way that Stanley Landsman’s “The Magic Theatre (Walk-in Infinity Chamber)” haunted me after I sat in it in 1968 when it was first exhibited at MAM. In 1967, Stephan Antonakos shaped “White Hanging Neon,” and a decade earlier, as the United States entered the space age, Josef Albers painted “Study – Homage to the Square (Lighted from Within).” It speaks of alienation, the expansion of time, and certainly the orange-brown square centering the painting (the source of “light”) suggests something beyond the sun as it must have seemed in the era when prehistoric man both wondered about sunrise and feared the dark. Fast forward to the evolution of the tool (where would artists be without it?) and future trips into space where gravity demands Homo sapiens must learn to walk again. I re-visited Sensory Overload on a marrow-freezing February 10, passing by “Alfred Leslie” (1970), a portrait of the artist looking like Neanderthal Man. He was holding a hammer. In order to thoroughly explore Sensory Overload, visitors may need to learn to walk again, if only to view “Sir-Ris, 1957” by op artist Victor Vasarely. Two globes, suspended in time (one black, one white) defy gravity and confuse the eye. Are we being tricked by the artist, sucked into a void that defies reason? Is man the “tool” rather than the force controlling the tool? Kubrick’s film emphasizes this dilemma, as do many great works of art incorporating a push-pull of tension, but where do we fit in a global culture that’s going to need more than a screwdriver to set it right? Open the pod […]

Saturday & Sunday

It’s Saturday, February 2 – Groundhog Day – and I’m at the Milwaukee Art Museum to cruise the newly configured contemporary galleries, where MAM’s Chief Curator Joe Ketner has shaped a fresh path to “seeing.” The elevator carries me upward from the heated garage (what a waste of energy!) to Windhover Hall, where preparations are underway for a late afternoon wedding. Visiting groups gather in clusters around the pretentious Dale Chihuly glass sculpture. The Calatrava addition speaks for itself and doesn’t need doo-dads, but go ahead, smile for the camera. Art Lives Here. I’m looking for Cy Twombly’s “Untitled,” missing from its regular spot on the east wall of the Flagg Gallery with another “Untitled,” a 2007 oil and acrylic painting by Jose Lerma, in its place. My first thought is, “these whirls of pastel blobs belong on a cupcake.” I hope Lerma moved on to become a pastry chef. Prior to receiving a 2001 MFA in Painting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he studied law. The security guards chat about their personal choices and offer some tidbits. One chap admires Lichtenstein’s “Imperfect Diptych, 1983,” a 2007 gift from Rockwell Automation, and another tells me that the large Philip Pearlstein paintings (from 1966 and 1969) have switched places in the Marcus Gallery. The girl in the chair currently sits on the left; her nude friend reclines on the right. And the Twombly? Perhaps on loan to a distant place, maybe with Robert Gober’s “Untitled,” a bottomless suitcase set above a tableau under the floor. Or are the two consigned to a storage area in the bowels of MAM? The Selig Gallery now has four works by Andy Warhol on loan from the collection of Mark and Debbie Attanasio, owners of the Milwaukee Brewers. They’re mediocre examples, like underdone leftovers – a body builder, several hamburgers, and a black and white “Campbell’s Soup (Tomato, 1985)” – although they do serve as links to the artist’s fascination with the world of advertising. Two far more accomplished Warhol Soup Can paintings from the Museum’s permanent collection score. If your favorite in this gallery is Jasper Johns 1984 “Untitled,” fear not; it still reigns supreme. I return to MAM on Super Bowl Sunday yearning for the Twombly. I enter section 16, which announces “The Transition of Modern Art,” a particular interest of Joe Ketner, who used to have one of the three Manierre Dawson (1887-1969) paintings in his office, along with a great Fernand Leger. In an earlier interview he told me that having them near helped him consider the transition problem, which is not the transition to contemporary art, or even post-modern art, but, as Ketner explained in an email, the emergence of European modernism in the United States. He adds that the capital of the art world at the time was not New York but Paris, and that it was the International Exhibition of Modern Art (the Armory Show), held in New York in 1913, that brought European modernism to the nation’s […]

Less is more

The Grandeur of God: Photographs by Don Doll, S.J. Haggerty Museum of Art (Marquette University) – 13th & Clybourn January 31 – April 13, 2008 The Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art on the campus of Marquette University is an old friend. I was there when it opened in 1984, and each spring and summer I often trek to 13th & Clybourn to review exhibitions and soak up the serenity of the Green Ash Grove on the north side of the museum. Despite the ongoing construction of the Marquette Interchange project, there’s handy free parking and a few moments of peace to be had. The Kahler-designed Haggerty has been described (endlessly) as a “jewel,” and though it lacks lake views, wings rising and falling on cue, vast marbled halls or a café, it’s a beauty. The Haggerty and the Milwaukee Art Museum both announced the hire of executive directors recently: Walter Mason and Daniel Keegan, respectively. Mason will fill the void left by Dr. Curtis Carter, who resigned in 2006 after guiding the Haggerty for over twenty years. Dr. Carter is currently entrenched in Marquette’s Department of Philosophy, but a 2007 oil portrait of him remains at the Haggerty. He’s smiling. I approached The Grandeur of God, a photography exhibition (now – April 13), with a load of baggage, for I don’t believe in a “higher power,” only in the ability of humans to overcome problems. Additionally, I feared being snookered into sentimentality by photographer and educator Don Doll, S.J., who has lived and worked at Creighton University in Omaha since 1969. The exhibition includes photographs of his work with Native Americans, plus panoramas along the Lewis and Clark trail, which he retraced in a 2003 trip from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. And more. Much more. As I headed west on Wisconsin Avenue toward the Haggerty, I thought about other images included in the show. Would they prove to be a promo for the Jesuits’ global mission, which is also a part of Marquette University’s overall mission? Doll’s photographs have been featured in National Geographic; his book, Vision Quest, was published by Random House’s Crowns Publisher in 1994, and even though he was born in 1937 and for many decades has been sheltered by Creighton University where he is professor of photojournalism, an image on his website shows him dressed like a guy straight out of GQ. He joined the video revolution a decade ago, and in 2006 was named Nebraska Artist of the Year by that state’s Arts Council. His work hangs in the prestigious Joslyn Museum in Omaha, a museum where I had my first “art experience” at age eight. A local photographer told me recently that the best way to understand art is to have “no understanding” of it prior to viewing. I was already on overload. A few years back, museums everywhere were in the throes of honoring Lewis and Clark’s bicentennial. An article in The New York Times (January 23, 2005) went […]

The line forms here

The line: the beginning of possibilities, the basis of all art, begins at Inova/Kenilworth in an adventurous and well-balanced exhibit, which I reviewed in two prior features this week (Read part one and part two). If this prelude to spring forecasts what’s on the Kenilworth horizon, those who moan about our “dismal” art scene are perhaps looking in all the wrong places. It wasn’t too long ago that if you yearned to view art, the choices were narrow: museums and a few privately owned galleries, plus exhibitions at universities. Now that we have a tide of technology, a tsunami of art experience is readily available via the internet. Locals can peruse Susceptible to Images, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art critic Mary Louise Schumacher’s varied offerings, MKE, OnMilwaukee and any number of blogs and logs encouraging virtual space wanderers. There are seductive sites with excellent hi-res images and mountains of information, so why leave your cave when you can tour plopped in front of a computer, maybe with some wine and cheese? Parking space abounds, and you can Google and YouTube forever in your underwear. In effect, your home becomes your gallery, devoid of overzealous gallerists rushing forth to gush, “Isn’t this gorgeous!” Online touring makes me anxious and a nagging fear lurks, neurotic perhaps, that eventually the hi-tech will white-out the experience of standing in front of a work of art and exercising the brain. The Inova/Kenilworth show is a reminder of everything computer content lacks. Yes, the irony is that you are reading this at vitalsourcemag.com. It’s my hope that it will prod you into action. During my third and final visit, I duly noted that 160 souls attended the opening reception, and I spoke at length with a 21-year-old UWM senior, Nicholas Teeple. He just started as a “gallery guard” and is enrolled in DIVAS, the university’s digital imaging, video, animation and sound program. He hasn’t taken any courses in drawing, and remarked that the computer “doesn’t lend itself to drawing and perhaps makes it less relevant, I guess.” I asked him how he intended to use a degree from a program he believes is challenging, rewarding and “full of potential.” He is particularly interested in time-based media, in the “blossoming” video and mash-up culture, and down the road may get into performance and installation art. We talked about the anxiety/paranoia content of the exhibition. “By the way,” he asked, “just who are you writing this for?” For a moment, I thought maybe he was paranoid. “Fear-mongering is just another form of control,” he said as we discussed the show’s overall theme. “It’s a form of control embraced by the media.” Claire Pentecost, one of the two artists I was there to review, has 14 pieces in the exhibition, ranging in size from 64” x 52” unframed giclee prints to framed 10”x 8” palladium prints. She teaches drawing, critical theory and interdisciplinary seminars and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and refers to her photographs as “extracted;” […]

Further Considerations

In part one of my look at the Inova/Kenilworth exhibition (now – March 14), I signed off with a few questions for the exhibit’s curator, Nicholas Frank. Because there has been controversy about the balance of men vs. women receiving Mary L. Nohl Fellowships, and because the current Inova/Kenilworth event features four women and one man, I thought this might be his way of smoothing things out. Here’s his reply: My programming isn’t a direct response to the Nohl Fellowship situation, because the problem is not with the Nohl program; it exists in the art world at large. I don’t think it’s difficult to program excellent exhibitions that reflect the actual gender balance among practicing artists. He continued his comments with some thoughts on shaping shows: I curate to reflect what artists are doing. The shows need to be relevant to the general art-going public, and also to the university audience, because we want Inova to be a curricular resource within the Peck School of the Arts. The drawing show illustrates the rise of drawing and narrative strategies among contemporary artists, and is useful for visual art faculty and students in that it expands notions of what drawing is and can be. There are sculptural, photographic and conceptual elements at play in this show, too. In an earlier conversation, Frank told me he considered 10 artists; he may possibly include the five who didn’t make the cut in a future show. I assume that they were all good choices, simply because Frank has a great eye for what works and what doesn’t. Curators must deal with all kinds of problems: availability of work, space and scheduling, which may conflict with artists’ other jobs. It’s a lot to consider, and Inova/Kenilworth is only one venue under the Peck banner; Frank also curates Inova/Arts Center and Inova/Zelazo (Mary L. Nohl Galleries). To give you an idea of how interwoven it all is, on February 6, Claire Pentecost, who is participating in the current Kenilworth show, will consider the “great tradition of drawing and its current place as a mediator between self and the social” at the Arts Center lecture hall. As Frank noted in his statement, the show includes “sculptural, photographic, and conceptual elements.” As a unit, the entire exhibit is provocative, but not over-the-top, and from my standpoint the drawing theme holds true while conveying social anxieties. This is no easy trick, for how does a fine artist use words like “flatulence” and “poop” (and other arguably vulgar words) in a way that makes you want to keep reading? Deb Sokolow does it via story-telling. Her choice is freedom of expression; she almost dares you to hang in there, to see if the text and images (attached to several walls with push pins and tape) will lead you to a satisfactory end. But don’t expect her tale to necessarily end well. Unless you are a true fan of the wild, it takes time to explore her work (she’s a fan of […]

Drawing Conclusions

Deb Sokolow: The Trouble with People You Don’t Know The Flight of Fake Tears: Large-Scale Narrative Drawing: Dominic McGill, Robyn O’Neil, Claire Pentecost, Amy Ruffo Peck School Of The Arts Institute of Visual Arts Inova/Kenilworth 2155 N. Prospect Ave. The Institute of Visual Arts in the splendid Inova/Kenilworth building welcomes their spring season with politics, pop culture and drawings (and photographs of drawings, plus a funky tent) of anxieties – to my mind, quite appropriate in a year already laden with political back-stabbing, crashing global markets and the continuing war. I left my condo on Prospect (I can see the Kenilworth from my north windows) armed with reams of print-outs detailing the heavy credentials of the participants. Curator Nicholas Frank is reason enough to pay attention to this show, though I figured if boredom set in I could duck into Urban Outfitters next door and peruse crazy in-your-face retail items. Reviewing group exhibitions often (unless the work is wretched) demands several visits and careful consideration. James Auer, the late Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art critic, solved this problem by listing some of the artists in group shows he reviewed as “others,” thus eliminating names and lengthy text with a stroke of his powerful pen. Any artist who’s ever been identified as an “other” knows that it stings like a bee. The Inova/Kenilworth event is divided into The Trouble with People You Don’t Know – works by Chicago-based artist Deb Sokolow – and The Flight of Fake Tears, which includes the talents of Dominic McGill, Robyn O’Neil, Claire Pentecost and Amy Ruffo. Ms. Sokolow will launch the Department of Visual Arts’ guest lecture series (“Artists Now!”) on January 30 at 7pm. This is the first of a three-part series to explore more fully the works of each artist. Curator Frank was on site when I visited (two days prior to the opening), and Bruce Knackert, Director of Galleries, was busy hammering and helping the artists with the installation process. At one point, Frank dashed out for latte and healthy stuff from Beans & Barley for artist Deb Sokolow, who had forgotten to eat! Dominic McGill’s canvas tent waited to be unpacked from its small cardboard box, while Claire Pentecost waited for some framed pieces to arrive. Propped on the north wall in a space Frank describes as a “cathedral space,” Robyn O’Neil’s graphite drawing had been freed from bubble wrap, but not yet installed. Amy Ruffo was due in at any moment, likely en route from Sheboygan where she is the special projects coordinator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Sokolow spent much of her time down on her knees, cutting and preparing her narrative drawing, which snakes around a generous space and invites the viewer to keep going, reading and thinking and making choices. She’s a storyteller for sure. “I re-read lots of Nancy Drew books to prepare for this,” she remarked, adding that she’s in her studio so much that she doesn’t get much time to read things not […]

Romancing the seed?

Seed Cycles: Works by Sally Kuzma Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum 2220 N. Terrace Avenue January 23 – April 6, 2008 Artist’s Talk: Sunday, February 24, 2 p.m. One would guess that the majority of visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens, in Kew (near London), likely have little scientific interest in The Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP), entrenched on 300 acres. The venerable Botanic Gardens are no doubt gardens of earthly delights, but the Seed Bank Project is decidedly unromantic, in that its vision is to conserve seeds from the world’s wild plant species by the end of the decade. So far they’ve banked 10% of the rarest, “most threatened and most useful species known to man.” They are also scanning their massive herb collection with something called the HerbCat. Nearer to home, at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, an elaborate Italianate showplace on a high bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, Milwaukee-based artist Sally Kuzma exhibits Seed Cycles, January 23-April 6. Her work is rooted in direct experiences with the natural world, specifically in the five years she spent in Iowa before moving to Milwaukee. The ongoing series (images of plant specimens scanned onto her computer and variously altered) is said to explore “the relationships people have with the natural world.” A preview is available at the artist’s website. As I write, I can’t help but thinking of photographer Tom Bamberger’s magnificent works which opened the gallery in the Inova/Kenilworth building, most particularly “Spring Corn,” a bleached-out, drained-of-emotion digitally altered photograph. As a former Iowan, I initially ogled the work through nostalgic eyes, even though the stark image was taken near Mequon. Coldly elegant and impersonal, the result was uncontrived, and it’s my guess that it took some doing to make it so. Frankly, I often need to remind myself that “nature is uncaring.” Of course Homo sapiens has forever altered the natural world, and artists of that species also alter it to fit their personal needs (and the demands of curators and text-panel writers), but beyond that, I think the “relationship” slant is a big ball of nothing. When I visit the Milwaukee Art Museum and stand before a painting by the 19th-century American landscape painter Thomas Moran (who is also represented in the collection of the Charles Allis Museum, a partner of Villa Terrace), I know I’m in a romantic space with romantic paintings, but what do they really reveal about the relationship between people and the natural world? To drive the point home, go online and take a look at New Orleans After The Flood, a series of photographs by Robert Polidori, stunning images about the Big Easy right after Katrina. Does nature give a hoot about “relationships?” I don’t think so. Kuzma somewhat clarified the relationship boondoggle in an email: “I don’t know if I’d claim to investigate the relationship people have with the natural world. The scanner and the computer are just a way to get a closer look at them. Like a scientist, I’m […]

The riches of Ruin

It’s impossible to ignore “Ruin,” an assemblage of 32 antique TV cabinets, stacked against the north wall on the main level of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The installation, by Nam June Paik, is part of Sensory Overload, a reinstallation of the contemporary art galleries which opens on January 24 and runs until 2009. Overload promises light, motion, sound and the optical in art since 1945, but I advise the wise to absorb it bit by bit, as if spearing peas from a TV dinner. I followed my own counsel and spent two hours sitting in front of “Ruin” watching 2-channel video flash and wink from the cabinets, mostly turned upside down so that their pedestals would serve as supports for the towering, pyramidal installation. This artist’s world is upside down; should you care to compare, Marquette University’s Haggerty Museum of Art has a Paik installation. “Ruin” would have been a perfect fit for the creepy otherworld of Blade Runner. It’s strangely robotic and detached, but the idea of television and all that the word implies remains highly personal. I grew up in a small town in rural Iowa, and I distinctly recall standing outside our local appliance store in the late 1940s, peering through the plate glass window with other folks who had gathered to see a genuine television set in action. It wasn’t long before we had one in our living room. The image on the screen was small, fuzzy and gray, which gave rise to much fiddling and twiddling with dials when we gathered as a family to watch one of the program. Was it Milton Berle? Show of Shows? It didn’t matter; television had come to our town and our house. It seemed important. Astounding! Even miraculous! Over the years, television became a fixture in homes everywhere – first just one, then maybe two or more. The bigger and flashier the television sets became, it seemed the content worth watching began to shrink. We scraped bottom when a recent televised political “debate” involved YouTube, a Bible and a question about Jesus. But I suppose I stuffed myself on As The World Turns, so who am I to criticize drek? While plopped in front of “Ruin 2001,” I engaged a trio of students from St. Louis who paused to peruse the blinking installation. They said they don’t watch television, but gave a good explanation of the intricacies of the 2-channel video system and moved closer to see if there was anything “familiar” in the loopy colorful images. “I think I just saw a Star of David flash by,” one of them remarked as he checked for messages on his cell phone. A group of chattering elementary school students led by a docent drifted in, barely giving Paik’s work a nod. I heard one of them ask what it was about, but before due consideration of the work was given, the herd moved on to the next dazzling thing. Perhaps one needs to be at least 40 years old […]

Peep Show

Peep Show Brooks Barrow Gallery Marshall Building (lower level) 207 E. Buffalo Jan. 11 – Jan. 16 414-331-8635 brooksbarrowgallery.com When the invitation arrived to attend Peep Show, an exhibit of photographs by ten students of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee adjunct professor of photography Tom Bamberger, whose career includes impressive exhibits of his own work, plus a former position as adjunct curator of photography at the Milwaukee Art Museum, I was intrigued by the fact that he’s now a college professor. “Lucky kids,” was my first thought. Bamberger is a fully mature artist, and in many ways his teaching position is a hard won homecoming. After attending Boston University, he extended his credentials at UWM’s graduate school, where he pondered philosophy and taught mathematical logic. He writes thoughtfully about public art and architecture for Milwaukee Magazine and continues his career as a photographer (when Renatured opened the splendid Inova/Kenilworth building, Bamberger’s work enlivened the walls). Over the past 30 years, he’s proven beyond a doubt that he gets what art is. Of course, it’s one thing to know what it is, and another thing to teach what it is; credentials do not necessarily a good teacher make. But the note Bamberger attached to the Brooks Barrow invitation speaks volumes about his interaction with the photography students he guided during the fall semester: I asked them to make an interesting picture. They took pictures of the moonrise over the Calatrava. All we learned is what is NOT an interesting picture. Hundreds of pictures later they finally asked, “So what is a good picture?” There is no answer to that question. I told them that an “interesting” picture would have to be interesting to you before it would be interesting to anyone else, including me. Finally a breakthrough happened after they told their bossy inner voice to shut up. Everything they were telling themselves might be a good picture was wrong. All of their teachers were wrong. The books are wrong. They were looking with everyone else’s eye but their own. It takes some guts to see the world uniquely and be a student at the same time. I tried to rattle their brains. The students did the rest. It was fun. They taught each other. Saw each other see for the first time. Another great teacher, John Updike, wrote recently in The New Yorker about “visual trophies” – snapshots, and his connection to them throughout the years. An obvious fan of Susan Sontag, he quotes from an essay included in her 1977 book “On Photography.” “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability … a photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence.” I visited the exhibit the day before the January 11 opening. The space was buzzing with excitement and a distinct air of cooperation. In the middle of it all was Bamberger, offering a suggestion here, an encouraging word there. Known for his strong opinions, which raise […]

A refreshing change

Images courtesy Milwaukee Art Museum Chicago. Metzker, Ray K. American, b. 1931. 1958. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert A. Fine When I finally visited the Ramirez exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Baker-Rowland Galleries were jammed with students, oldsters and in-betweeners. I managed to snag MAM’s Executive Director David Gordon and ask him why the glorious Windhover Hall was plastered with cheesy banners touting upcoming shows. After all, can’t people get information from the “information” desks? Apparently not. Gordon thinks folks want information fast and quick, so I guess cheesy banners are currently arty junk food. Anyway, Mr.Gordon said the banners were his idea, and that was that. One can only hope we don’t go into “banner overload,” though in my mind, we already have. The best part of my visit was a trip up to the Mezzanine area to view the Museum’s collection of photographs, which were formerly (and disgracefully) installed on an alley-like wall on the main floor. I always thought it was an insult to have them exhibited in such an out-of-the-way space, as if they didn’t deserve better. Now that they are on the north wall of the Mezzanine, I can more fully appreciate the collection that has been gathering strength for fifty years. Lisa Hostetler, associate curator of photographs, shepherds the rotating displays, and her snug office is appropriately beyond the wooden doors leading to the Print Room. Ms. Hostetler took time to chat with me about how works are acquired for the collection; basically, she considers many and selects a few she feels are best suited for acquisition. Her selections are then presented to a core group of devoted individuals who support the art of photography at the museum, among them the Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation, which has contributed to the purchase of hundreds of photographs dating from the nineteenth century to the present. We took a stroll, albeit too brief, with Hostetler pointing out a lovely work by Wisconsin artist, Ray Metzker, one of many beauties (but not too many, as photographs, like all forms of fine art, demand room to breathe) which will be up until February 20. It’s a plus to view them in a serene space away from the fray of sensory stimulation directly below, and if you are a student of photography, or perhaps someone curious about the art of the daguerreotype, the area has several glass cases with artifacts and explanations about the 19th century process. Another nearby case held an exquisite 1850’s photograph, “Young Girl.” By way of contrast, be sure and take a look at “Nancy,” an amazing Chuck Close painting, very like a huge photograph, crooked teeth and all, on the first floor. There’s more. On February 9, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945, opens in the Baker-Rowland Gallery. Organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and coordinated at MAM by Ms. Hostetler, these 160 photographs should knock your socks off. The show runs through May 4. […]