Facing Deaccessioning, Woodland Pattern Book Center Preserves Wisconsin Center Installation “Portals and Writings Celebrating Wisconsin Authors”

MILWAUKEE, Wis, – Apr. 4, 2023 – Woodland Pattern Book Center and Milwaukee artist Jill Sebastian collaborated to create and install Portals and Writings Celebrating Wisconsin Authors for the 1998 opening of the then Midwest Express Center. As today’s Wisconsin Center undergoes renovation, the installation has been slated for deaccession by the Wisconsin Center District. The WCD’s plan will erase 400 years of Wisconsin writing displayed as doorway-encircling portals and a 150-foot wall emblazoned with the poetry and prose from 48 writers, that includes literary works dating back to Ojibwe pictograms from the state’s Indigenous peoples.

In an effort to reclaim and preserve both the installation and the collected stories of Wisconsin they feature, Sebastian and Woodland Pattern have completed photography and documentation of the space, and have negotiated a $20,000 grant from the WCD district toward a publication. In the absence of these public art works, the book will collect the photographs and original writings, along with critical essays, celebrating the installation’s 25 year tenure within the Wisconsin Center. Copies will be made available to Wisconsin libraries, literary arts institutions, and to the contributing writers or their estates, as well as for-purchase through Woodland Pattern.

Upon Portals’ commissioning in 1996, Sebastian wrote “a culture tells its story through its writers and artists. People have left their marks in public places throughout human history, from cave walls to public plazas sand buildings, right up to present day,” and as the writing begins to fall from the walls, the group working to preserve its legacy aims to design an insightful tribute that honors Wisconsin’s writers’ contributions to the state’s shared history as well as the installation.

Woodland Pattern et al would like to thank the following contributors, including those who are no longer with us, for their work that has both stood the test of time and will continue to inspire for many years to come: Folami Abiade, Antler, Martha Bergland, Kimberly Blaeser, Black Sparrow Hawk, Mountain Wolf Woman, the Ojibwe tribe, the Potowatomi tribe, Frances Brock Starms, B. J. Buhrow, Daisy Cubias, Susan Engberg, Edna Ferber, Zona Gale, Horace Gregory, James Hazard, Peggy Hong, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ellen Kort, Margery Latimer, Aldo Leopold, Joel Lipman, Ben Logan, Charles McClain, Juliette Magill Kinzie, Anja Malesa, Tom Montag, Lorrie Moore, Kyoko Mori, John Muir, Lorine Niedecker, Louise Phelps Kellogg, Carl Rakosi, R. M. Ryan, Carl Sandburg, Guadalupe Solis, Denise Sweet, Bruce Taylor, Larry Watson, Glenway Wescott, J. D. Whitney, and Karl Young.

About Woodland Pattern Book Center
Woodland Pattern is a poet- and artist-run nonprofit book center, gallery, and performance space supporting the work of writers and other artists from Milwaukee and around the country. Dedicated to the discovery, cultivation, and presentation of poetry, independent literature, and the arts since 1980, the organization is home to a nationally recognized collection of poetry and small-press literature, and presents over 400 programs each year that encourage exchange across the visual, performing, and literary arts.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.