Milwaukee rocks on gallery night!

Lake in Catskill Mountains (Woman throws crutches), Joel Meyerowitz

January is a gamble in Milwaukee. We all know that below zero temperatures and blizzard conditions could have killed any desire to go out on a Friday evening. Gallery night also is a bit of a gamble. There are a great many venues from which to choose and wide variability in the types of art being proffered by them. The very success of the venture can lead to crushing crowds in a few of the more popular locations and more of a carnival atmosphere than one conducive to art appreciation.

Last night, however, the stars must have been in alignment. Everything seemed to click, at least for me. I hope it did for you as well, if you went out. Every gallery my wife and I visited had healthy but not bruising crowds along with a wealth of wonderful art from the well established to the unfamiliar. The remarkable 40° temps earlier in the day left a balmy feeling that helped keep my spirits lifted between venues.

If Milwaukee is indeed one of the top 12 “art places” in the U.S., as recently reported, then gallery night was supportive evidence. (I attended a listening session on Monday hosted by ArtPlace, the consortium of foundations, gov’t. agencies, and banks that awarded the designation. The designation specified East Town and the Third Ward rather than Milwaukee as a whole, which neglects the overall fabric of a city that supports those arts districts as well as overlooking other significant places to find art in the area. But, mea culpa, I spent most of gallery night in East Town and the Third Ward!)

I don’t have time to do more than provide a taste of what we saw last night. Almost everything we saw was just opening and is ongoing, so check them out at your leisure.

We started with the trio of new shows at the Haggerty Museumof Art. Dark Blue: The Water as Protagonist sprawls through several of the galleries. As the name indicates, everything in this show of both contemporary and vintage photography relates somehow to water. Like the subject, it is a tenuous, fluid connection that assembles and juxtaposes conceptual with documentary, monumentality with banality. We raised our eyebrows now and then, but agreed that overall it’s a strong show. (And, hey, it includes my favorite Misrach image. How cool is that?! The Meyerowitz image at the top is also from this show.)

Swamp and Pipeline, Richard Misrach

Compressed within the tight space of a side gallery, local photographer Kevin Miyazaki has created a kind of chapel devoted to Lake Michigan. In a two-week period, Miyazaki drove 1,800 miles and circled the lake. One wall features portraits of people he met along the way and the facing wall is a grid of lake views in which the horizons are precisely aligned. The result is a surprising mediation on the not-so-subtle variations in color and texture of the water and sky. The two sides of the room suggest the interconnectedness of the human and natural aspects of the environment. 

Perimeter, Kevin Miyazaki

Gallery M at the Intercontinental Hotel is hosting the finalists in the Pfister Hotel’s artist in residency for the coming year. Once again there are a few surprising choices among the contenders and it will be interesting to see who is selected.

After that we headed to the Third Ward and lucked into one of precious few free parking spaces on the street, not far from Translator, a design firm that is hosting a show called Art in Unexpected Places. The work in this show was all done by participants in the Alzheimer’s Association’s Memories in the Making program. The watercolors are unpretentious and fresh. Each is accompanied by a short story about its creator. It is a fitting reminder not only that life is short and memory unpredictable, but that genuine art doesn’t have to be about marketplace values. 

Although we had other places on our to-see list, we ended up spending the rest of the evening in the Marshall Building, which was humming from top to bottom. Quick hits, descending from the top:

Plaid Tuba, the arts incubator created and led by Reginald Baylor, has moved from its first floor digs to an expanded suite of studios on the sixth floor. If any place can “manufacture creativity” as its motto insists, this is a good candidate.

Every year in January the Portrait Society Gallery commissions a local artist to create a “Winter Chapel.” This year Kevin Giese has installed a grove of hollow birch bark tree trunks culled from the northwoods near Bayfield, stripped and then carefully stitched back together. It provided a magical, quiet interlude in the midst of the clamoring crowds.

Sculptor James Toth has returned to the art scene after a long stint as Director of Exhibits at Betty Brinn Children’s Museum. His evocative abstractions made of polished “cementitious” materials with the appearance of marble grace a pop-up gallery on the third floor.

Along with the regular fare in The Fine Art Gallery and Gallery 218, always worth a peek, Blutstein Brondino Fine Art is hosting artworks by the Grand Avenue Club. The club provides services for adults who have experienced mental illness and displays its members’ art regularly on its own walls at 210 E. Michigan Street. It’s nice to see it acknowledged by a commercial gallery. Kudos to BBFA!

Last but not least, Elaine Erickson has anointed two long time members of CoPA (Coalition of Photographic Arts) with her first ever show of photography, called Eye of the Beholder. George Sanquist and Yong-ran Zhu are an appropriate match, each following the tradition of classic black and white silver gelatin printing process, which has become far from common in this digital age.

ArtChicago: the “Artropolis” has shrunk!

The good news: small is beautiful.

I am among those who remember when ArtChicago was held on Navy Pier and had a well-deserved reputation as one of the premier showcases for fine art galleries anywhere. It took me many years to return to it after it left there. Last year when I finally saw the show again, it was disappointing. Although it sprawled throughout two floors of the mammoth Merchandise Mart, with some exceptions the work was tepid, timid, commercially slick, or conceptual vacuous.

This year the scaled-down show took up a single floor and, although nothing like its former Navy Pier incarnation, I found it much more stimulating than last year. In fact, I enjoyed it very much. As with any large art show, there were galleries to slip past with a quick glance. But I found myself lingering in them more often than not. The mood also was upbeat with gallery owners saying that they were making sales.

I would have loved to bring home a beautiful 20”x16” Wayne Thiebaud painting for my wife, who is fond of his work. The card said, “price upon request,” so I did. “Just under a million,” was the reply. Nuts. Over my budget. Then I came across a slightly off-sized print of Ansel Adams’s iconic “Moonrise over Hernandez,” measuring a curious 19½”x23¼” also labeled “price upon request.” I had to wonder how large the 20”x24” edition was and the price on the last one of it. This one was “almost a quarter million.” For a print! Later I came across a similarly sized Nevelson sculpture for $125,000, which seemed a great deal by comparison.

It was nice to see good work by a few big names like those and others, but the contemporary art was especially engaging. As I chatted with the dealers about one artist or another, I was asked numerous times if I was a collector. Ever hopeful, I’m sure. I would love to be. Of all the work I saw there my first pick would have been a photographer named Soi Park who had a series called “Buscar Trabajo” (looking for work.) Park photographed Latinos in situations that appeared dangerous, as if they were running or hiding from immigration officers.

What follows is a selection of things that caught my eye – and held it for more than a moment or two. There were many more.

 

The show began on the sidewalk outside the Merchandise Mart. This is a detail of "Vertical Vegetation" by Jason Verbeek, Cor-ten steel and sedum.

 A giant print by Shepard Fairey hung like a banner across the entrance to the elevator lobby. (Detail)

"Unblinking," Shin Young An, oil on newspaper.

"All you need is Love," Joshua Hagler, oil on canvas.

Two photographic works by Michal Macku.

Sadly topical the day of the fair, "Offenes Gelande" (open terrain), Ulf Puder, oil on linen.

"Eternal Eye," Lucy Slivinski, found objects, steel wire, electric light (detail).

I didn't see individual titles on these translations of urban graffiti into precious Huichol-style pieces made by gluing together colored threads with natural wax. Laura Ortiz Vega.

"Meditative Mermaid," Cecelia Paredes, photograph

"Quaver," Rachel Nee, smoke and aquacryl on board

"The mess of emotion, no. 12," Rim Lee, oil on canvas (detail)

"Billboards, NY: Houston and Lafayette Streets," Wouter Deruytter, gelatin silver on dibond

As usual, the "Next" portion of the fair included edgier work and some off-beat installations like these ironing boards set up to resemble fair-goers ambling down the aisles.

Despite its diminished size, I still didn’t make it to all the galleries. But I did make a point to visit the three who came down from Milwaukee.

Debra Brehmer, Portrait Society Gallery

Tory and Christine Anderson, Tory Folliard Gallery

Claudia Mooney, The Green Gallery

And one former Milwaukeean, Russell Bowman at his eponymous Chicago gallery

Being Arts Without Borders, I loved that the Chicago Poetry Center had a booth at the fair. They had a series of broadsides that combine artworks with poems. A collaboration between Lawrence Ferlingetti and Ed Paschke was quite stunning, but my favorite was this piece. The text of the marvelous poem by Ana Castillo follows.

I Ask the Impossible

I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single-mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,
and all that you hold sacred, advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to your job tires you—
love me; and from job to home again.

Love me when you’re bored—
when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:
not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.

Love me as you relish your loneliness,
the anticipation of your death,
mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory—
and if there is none to recall—
imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.

Love me as if I were forever—
and I will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do.

 

Gallery night rains supreme!

Ever more popular when the weather is nice, you know Milwaukee’s quarterly gallery night has reached critical mass when galleries are packed despite miserable weather, as happened last Friday. I made out a list of places not to miss and got so caught up at some of them, I had to miss a few anyway!

 
Tipped off by Sara Mulloy at Art City, I started my evening at Dean Jensen Gallery where a delightful and engaging little house inhabits the space. From a distance the exterior appears to be glowing fur. Moving closer one finds gently waving strands of shredded paper painstakingly attached to the surface, which is backlit. One enters as if into a tiny but brightly illuminated country chapel. Numerous small niches, like reliquaries, contain diverse images and remnants of trees. It manages to harmonize a spiritual connection to nature with intellectually stimulating scientific concepts – no mean feat!

Murmurs in the Trees by Joan Backes

I had to check out the annual Coalition of Photographic Arts membership show, which is that five-year-old organization’s largest ever. I couldn’t do it justice in a single visit, however, so I’ll be back with a more thorough review.

April is the cruelest month (as T.S. Eliot poetically opined – and he didn’t even live in Wisconsin!) It’s really true on gallery night though, because April is when the MIAD senior show is unveiled. Just try getting in and out of there in time to see a few other shows! I can only highlight a tiny fraction of the installations created by 135 eager seniors, whose energy I find infectious.    

I had my portrait taken by Carly Huibregtse and added to her clever Arnolfini Photo Booth wall.

 

E. “Marshie” Marshall’s installation is a witty amalgam of references to Johns, Warhol, Rauschenberg, and other pop iconography.

In a far corner of the fourth floor, a dark, but cozy room appointed with mundane family treasures evokes a nostalgic past. The simply framed images scattered randomly around the walls contradict the illusion, depicting only an immaterial fog. Identified as a photographer, Rose Tarman admitted that she wasn’t certain how to categorize her work – more art without borders!

 

My two personal favorites have one thing in common: larger than life portraiture.

KT Schramm draws us into a sobering expression of interior darkness. Her personal hell is expressed through enlargements of simple college ID portraits that have been violated, vandalized with intimate, diaristic ramblings about her struggle to remain whole in the face of a relationship stained by drug addiction.

Deb Leal’s enormous faces force viewers into an uncomfortable confrontation with calm but ambiguous expressions that suggest a conflation of sexuality and violence. The MIAD thesis shows (which include graphic design, illustration, interior design, and many other disciplines) will remain on view through May 15. You can go see them without the crowds.

I made it out of MIAD with barely enough time to make a quick trip to the Marshall Building, anxious to catch Kevin Miyazaki’s work at the Portrait Society Gallery. Like so many artists, Kevin spent a lot of time in Madison during the recent weeks of protest against Governor Walker’s budget proposal. He took along his discerning eye and his camera and returned with a compelling and occasionally wryly humorous series of portraits of the people he met there.

Finally, my anxiety peaked in the appropriately sepulchral installation at Merge Gallery dealing with … anxiety. Bookending my gallery night pilgrimage was another confined space reminiscent of a chapel, this time a more somber one rife with psychological pain. Typically, gallery owner Val Christell combines imagery and text with great facility. A participatory element encourages visitors to leave their own reflections among those of famous authors – and those spontaneous expressions are as powerful as the prepared ones. I will close with one of the quotes:

“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.” – Andre Berthiaume

Milwaukee's gallery night does not disappoint

After several hours of gallery hopping my friend Karen exclaimed that it was "exhilarating." I agree. The art varied considerably, as expected - as it should! But overall it did not disappoint. Creativity lives in Milwaukee!

Before I describe a few highlights, what did disappoint, now and then, was the result of gallery night's success: the mobs were so thick in places that we found ourselves squeezed into overtaxed elevators and following, single file, long lines of slow moving crowds down narrow flights of stairs and through hallways. Claustrophobia threatened to quelch the exhilaration. At times I found myself thinking that this is no way to see art. Then (about every ten feet it seemed) I would run into a friend or acquaintance and it would feel great again. (Last night was particularly rich in these experiences. In one evening I ran into, not only dozens of people I've known varying lengths of time, but a statistically remarkable number of the people I first met when I moved to Milwaukee over 30 years ago, some of whom I see infrequently at best.) Ya gotta love arts - and arts events - that bring people together!

I saw too much good art to comment on even a significant fraction. I'll be very selective and choose the highlights:

The stylized but highly expressive portraits of artists and writers by Carri Skoczek at the  Portrait Society Gallery were stunning. Several times during the evening I found myself coveting some work of art or another, but here the temptation was strongest. This piece of Frida Kahlo was up for silent auction, so I made a bid. (I didn't stay late enough to find out if I was overbid.) It wasn't my favorite piece, either. In fact, this ranked as the strongest, most cohesive body of work I saw all evening. It would be hard to pick a best from the lot. Fred Bell's diminutive paintings of similar subjects were also lovely, especially his endearing take on Emily Dickinson (which, unsurprisingly, had a red sticker next to it early in the evening.)

The other major highligh, as usual, was the MIAD senior thesis show. There were many strong portfolios in all of the varied disciplines taught at the school. We got there late and couldn't see it all. A few personal favorites from my random wanderings:

Just inside the front door I was immediately drawn to Anna Maund's bold photographic portraits of cabbages that emerge out of inky blackness and then to Mary Sievert's illustrations. Upstairs, Sara Patzke's sensitive and evocative bone drawings reminded me of the less refined renderings of the same subject I did when I was her age. Jillian Duckwitz managed to convey what I imagine the chaos of an insect's perspective could be by layering silkscreen prints onto sheets of plexiglas. Beata Krezalek created a powerful statement with her floor to ceiling installation of mostly drawings depicting tangled nude bodies. The lyrical line drawings were strongly punctuated by a sculptural component of hanging fabric sacks that could be taken for a flowing cave formation, but which in context look more like a grotesque collection of human scrota. A strong contingent of young photographers included Maggie Salvine, with collages of landscapes in urban park settings (which anyone who knows my work might recognize as appealing to my interest in "urban wilderness"); Theresa'Beth Whitfield's compelling images of ordinary interiors with scratched narratives suggesting impending violence that used slashed surfaces to express in no uncertain terms the outcome of the narratives; and Justin Bacon's delightful series that transports us from a traditional religious setting in a church interior to a sublime spiritual awakening in a jungle setting awash with light.

But my (ArtsWithoutBorders!) vote for best of show is unequivocal: Sarah Omen turned her artwork into a plea and, more important, a practical interactive project, for the audience to engage in productive change to help the environment. She calls it Project E.A.R.T.H.: Environmental Activism Reaching Toward Humanity. Her exhibit of colorful mixed media collages gradually disappeared from the wall as the audience traded a commitment to do something good for the earth in exchange for one of her pieces. Signed commitment cards replaced the work on the walls, mine among them.

Art that makes a difference is something I can live with.

Milwaukee gallery night: my picks

from Terrible Beauties, by Rebecca Schoeneker


Here is at least a partial list of galleries I hope to visit this evening for Milwaukee's spring gallery night. There's a lot going on including many shows that involve one or more of my friends. It's not going to be easy to get to them all!

(Unfortunately, I for one can't do the gallery day thing tomorrow because I'll be out cleaning rivers for the annual Earth Day river clean up sponsored by Milwaukee Riverkeeper. Arts without borders, life without borders, metaphors without borders: one does have to draw a line sometimes!)

Sonja Thomsen at Dean Jensen.
In the Balance at Walker's Pt Center for the Arts. (WPCA has moved! Check the link for the address.)
Terrible Beauties at Redline.
Big Star at the Portrait Society.
Taking it to the Streets at Light Ideas Gallery.
Sweeping The Pool of Light by the Parachute Project. Check the link for details.
I always try to make it to MIAD for the senior thesis exhibitions.

And artswithoutborders would be remiss not to include the younger generation's creative output: Student work facilitated by Troy Freund's artis-in-residency at Story School.

Of course I will have to show up at the annual CoPA show, not only because of the vast range of work that will be on display in one place, but because I have four pieces of my own there.

Then there's the MARN Treasure Hunt. Too complicated to explain. Check out the facebook page at Treasure Hunt. This would take all night and more to do it justice. Fortunately, there is more time. This event continues next weekend at the West Side Art Walk. More on that later.