Art

5Q: Five questions for Deb Brehmer
5Q

Five questions for Deb Brehmer

We ask Deb Brehmer five questions. She responds with thoughts on local artists, the importance of nurturing an art-buying community, her fascination with portraiture as a work-a-day art form and the importance of context to art-viewing and appreciating.

Shuffling Priorities: How MARN is Pushing Art to the Top of The List
Shuffling Priorities

How MARN is Pushing Art to the Top of The List

In times of financial duress, priorities are re-structured and during the shuffle, funding for the arts is sent to the bottom of the pile. MARN's Executive Director Melissa Musante wants to make sure that the arts get shuffled back to the top.

THE ARTS OF SUMMER

THE ARTS OF SUMMER

Summer in Milwaukee means more than just tailgating and eating on patios. Enjoy your art outside with this review of the treasures to be found and personalities to be encountered at Lakefront Festival of the Arts, the East Side Green Market, Milwaukee Public Market and across the region: Sheboygan, Madison, Door County and more.

American Originals: A Tale of Two Shows
American Originals

A Tale of Two Shows

American Originals at the Milwaukee Art Museums takes a slice of artistic life at the turn of the twentieth century and puts together a double shot of shows with The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs and The Eight and American Modernisms. It's an interesting marriage of convenience as these exhibitions take up summer residence in the Baker/Rowland Gallery. They are arranged back-to-back, like friendly neighbors, but clearly delineated as separate entities, each with its own catalogue.

Adam Nilson’s Painted Beats

Adam Nilson’s Painted Beats

Photo dispatches from Adam Nilson's one-of-a-kind show of music and large-scale murals at the Beloit Fine Art Incubator...

Closing this week: Current Tendencies and There, There
Closing this week

Current Tendencies and There, There

These exhibitions are a bit like cross-town cousins; common traits link them in the family, but they each have distinctly individual characters. Current Tendencies is calm, composed, strait-laced and solid. There There is the wily one, admittedly more playful and mischevious, the prankster of the two. Both are affiliated with major universities in the city and offer up contemporary work from an array of artists.

PHOTO GALLERY: Nilson Studios at Beloit’s Fine Arts Incubator
PHOTO GALLERY

Nilson Studios at Beloit’s Fine Arts Incubator

Painted Beats reflects the apocalypse of inner city life through smoke and light, huge paintings that swallow the viewer in the dark shades of urban decay, and a soundtrack of beats mixed specifically for each piece. Stereos with several sets of Koss-donated headphones will be installed in front of each art work for take one step further into the landscape. Nilson says his viewer/listeners will be absorbed in "an Artist's Rapture."

See it, believe it: Visual arts happenings, June 3 – 10
See it, believe it

Visual arts happenings, June 3 – 10

Jason Rohlf at Tory Folliard, Charles Rohlf (no relation) and The Eight at Milwaukee Art Museum and the popular Annual Members Show at the Walker's Point Center for the Arts.

Painting for progress: MIAD, AmeriCorps & local youth collaborate
Painting for progress

MIAD, AmeriCorps & local youth collaborate

People who come to the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center on Milwaukee's south side will get a new kind of medicine these days. It's not through prescriptions or preventative treatment, but instead a vision of hope outside the building. It's art.

Dem Bones: What’s In Your Yard?
Dem Bones

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.

Performing, Music and Visual Arts Preview: May 12-18
Performing, Music and Visual Arts Preview

May 12-18

This week in Performance and Visual Arts: live improv comedy, Ko-Thi's 40th anniversary, "Common People" (yep, the Shatner ballet) at Milwaukee Ballet, Paul Cebar and David Greenberger at the Pabst, pajama jamborees, a "no instrument spared" musical event at the WCM, True Skool (sic) at MAM and much, much more.

Performance, Music, and Visual Arts Preview: May 4-12, 2009
Performance, Music, and Visual Arts Preview

May 4-12, 2009

It's a splashy week in Milwaukee performing and visual arts: Marvin Hamlisch, old-time radio, The Great Divorce, Beauty and the Beast, 42nd Street, Willy Wonka, Mad Hot Ballroom, Cirque du Soleil and more.