Real Time dances with the Concrete River at Alfons Gallery

If you're following my work I expect you know that I and my collaborator Melanie Ariens have a major exhibit currently on display at the Alfons Gallery, called "Concrete River: Memorial and Promise on the Kinnickinnic." (If you missed my earlier description of it, click here.)

I am excited to announce that Daniel and Andrea Burkholder are planning to perform a dance that they've created especially for the installation. The performance is on July 1 at 7 PM.

Alfons Gallery is located at 1501 S. Layton Blvd.

"Real Time" is a regular feature held on the first Friday of each month.

This is how they describe the program:
-->
July’s Real Time performance will draw inspiration from Eddee Daniel’s photography exhibit, Concrete River: Memorial and Promise on the Kinnickinnic, installed at Alfons Gallery, by exploring the inherent tension within the exhibit’s photographs of “urban wilderness.” Real Time will engage these photographs and gallery installation through their subject matter, the beauty of form found in them, as well as the absurdity.

As a 30-minute performance which will repeat, non-stop, three times, the audience is invited to enter and exit the event at their pleasure or whim.

Integrated throughout the performance will be opportunities for the audience to discuss with the performers, Andrea and Daniel Burkholder, as well as photographer Eddee Daniel and environmental artist Melanie Ariens about the art work, the performance, and ecological issues.

Wine and seltzer water will be available, without charge, as part of the discussion with the artists. 

The performance series is completely funded by its open-priced ticket structure. The cash-only tickets go on sale beginning at 6:45pm and are available pay-what-you-will, where the audience puts it’s own value on the live art it comes to see. While NOT a donation format- everyone must pay- the payment is meant to reflect what each individual can afford.

Real Time is curated by Andrea Chastant Burkholder and Daniel Burkholder. It has featured aerial dance from Andrea Chastant Burkholder, improvisational dance from Daniel Burkholder, duets from the two of them, as well as solos and collaborative work with guest artists from Milwaukee and elsewhere in the United States. All shows in the series offer a new insight into the performance form of dance and what it can encompass. With each show lasting one hour or under, there is always time for drinks and conversation at the end of the night.

“We are working to meet our community where it’s at as far as seeing the arts, and from there, we hope to develop together as performers, audience, and as a larger community.” says Andrea Chastant Burkholder one of the creators of Real Time.

Full disclosure: This is not my first collaboration with the Burkholders. In April Andrea invited me to collaborate on her program, Bayou's State, at Danceworks. And in May I was an enchanted witness to their tribute to nature in the open-air and traveling performance of Scenic Route MKE. It has been a great pleasure to be a part of their creative endeavors.

Nothing Kills A River Like Concrete: Exhibit invitation

-->

Concrete River: 

Memorial and Promise on the Kinnickinnic River

Photography by Eddee Daniel

Collaborative shrine and installation with Melanie Ariens

Alfons Gallery

1501 S. Layton Blvd., Milwaukee, WI

Opening reception: May 22, 1 - 3 pm. 

Artist's remarks: 2 pm.

I hope you'll join me and Melanie for this event. This will not be an ordinary photo exhibit. We plan an installation that will make the gallery feel like the concrete channel.

Exhibit runs through July 31

Gallery hours:

Wed, Thu, Fri, Sun 12 - 3 pm

and by appointment.

For more information: Alfons Gallery website.

Artist's Statement:

Nothing kills a river like concrete. How we treat rivers is suggestive of how we relate to the natural world in general.

Historically, rivers have been central to the growth of human civilization. This was as true at the founding of Milwaukee as it was in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates. Somehow, though, in the late twentieth century, our modern society lost sight of this vital truth. Milwaukee’s three rivers suffered many abuses, including habitat loss, pollution and dams.

But there’s nothing like pouring concrete into it, essentially transforming it into a drainage ditch, to signal the destruction of a river. Sections of other rivers and creeks in the Milwaukee River watershed were subject to this debasement, but the Kinnickinnic River suffered the most.

In the 1960s the KK, as it is still affectionately known, was straightened and lined with concrete in order to mitigate flooding problems in the surrounding neighborhood. Although at the time this dramatic action did provide some relief from the risk of flooding, it also compromised the river in significant ways. The concrete channel destroyed aquatic and riparian habitats, degraded water quality, and increased the risk of drowning during high water flows. Ironically, today even the original intent of the channelization has become outdated and ineffective for flood control.

Fortunately, for the river and for the community, attitudes have once again shifted. Caring for and revitalizing rivers has captured the public imagination. On the KK the current solution is a project to remove the concrete channel and restore the river to a more natural condition. When I was invited by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District to document the project area I jumped at the opportunity. It’s exactly the kind of subject to which I am drawn.

 

The KK River Project, officially known as the Kinnickinnic River Corridor Neighborhood Plan, is a joint endeavor by the MMSD and the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center. The project area is located between 6^th Street and 27^th Street. (An earlier phase of the project, completed in 2012, removed the concrete channel downstream from 6^th St.) The 50-ft. wide concrete channel is to be removed and a 200 ft.-wide rock-lined river channel created. This has necessitated the acquisition and deconstruction of 83 homes in order to accommodate the wider river. Although most of those houses had already been removed, I witnessed and documented the deconstruction of several of the few remaining.

Because the project is in its early phases, most of the images in this exhibit depict the river’s current state as a concrete channel. Furthermore, the installation itself is intended to reinforce the claustrophobic and treacherous conditions that exist. In order to represent the more hopeful future of the KK, I have invited environmental artist Melanie Ariens to collaborate with me on a water shrine to signify the restored vitality that is envisioned in the KK River Project.

See more of my KK River photos in my Flickr album. 

Ofrendas: Art and offering

-->

We all die. I was reminded of that in church today. As undeniable as that truism is, it isn’t a popular message in our culture in or out of a religious setting. Other cultures don’t have the same aversion to death, however. We are reminded of this each autumn around this time when the over-commercialized holiday of Halloween is accompanied, as it increasingly is, by the Day of the Dead.

Alverno College Ofrenda, detail (UCC)

The traditional Mexican observance of Día de los Muertos was a family affair held in the home or at a cemetery where ancestors were buried. Altars called Ofrendas ("offerings" in Spanish) often were lovingly created to honor the dead. Over the years this reverential folk tradition has been expanded and Ofrendas have become more diverse. Today in Milwaukee you can find contemporary versions of Ofrendas in several local art galleries. Many of them hew closely to the time-honored conventions that feature skull motifs, skeletal figures, flower arrangements and foodstuffs, along with photographs and other images of the deceased.

Others take the themes of the occasion as a point of departure to make artistic, societal and even political statements. Over the past week I visited three galleries that have chosen to recognize the Day of the Dead by inviting artists and others to create Ofrendas on site in their spaces. I’ve taken some photographs (which should be no surprise.) In most cases I didn’t capture the whole Ofrenda, choosing instead to focus in on a detail that caught my attention.

My hope is to encourage you to visit these places and spend some time with the Ofrendas in their intended context. Their meanings cannot be taken in at a glance in any case and they deserve to be experienced in the reverential spirit with which they were created.

Thoughtful descriptions or artists’ statements accompany many of the Ofrendas. I have included excerpts from some of them.

Alfons Gallery

The Alfons Gallery is a bit off the beaten track, located on the second floor of the imposing main building of the School Sisters of St. Francis campus on South 27^th St. The gallery invited artists, interns, staff, and volunteers at Redline Milwaukee to collaborate in a single large altar. I particularly enjoyed seeing this Ofrenda within its religious context, among the permanent collection of sacred artworks.

Walker’s Point Center for the Arts

Leann Wooten: “It was very healing for me to work on this piece with my father in mind. I felt a spiritual connection to him on this artistic journey….” 

-->

Sue Vliet: “Beautiful, laughing brown eyes, my paternal grandmother had kind eyes, always full of mirth and mischief. My memories of her are clear and happy…. She allowed me to eat cake for breakfast, kept an can of ‘spray’ whipped cream in her refrigerator for special snacks, took walks with me, listened to my stories, and laughed at my jokes.”

Gary Niebuhr: “I am not comfortable…thinking about my own mortality. I would rather think about someone else’s mortality…. I never practiced the witchcraft of art until after the passing of my father. I often wonder if his death was a freeing experience or if it is the shadow of guilt that follows me. “

Sally Kuzma: “This ofrenda is in memory of my mother Ellie….  The word for bellybutton—a tangible connection to our mothers—hangs in the air, contributed by friends, colleagues, and students of mine who have ties to dozens of different languages.”

Latino Arts Gallery

United Community Center

“Remembrance Altar” (detail) by the UCC’s art therapist and selected clients in honor the memories of loved ones who have passed away.

Jeanette Arellano: “This altar is dedicated to our loved ones who have lived with mental illness…. I wanted to make this piece interactive because all of us have at some point in our lives lived with a mental illness or know someone who has, however we keep it hidden as though it doesn’t exist, which is something I can personally attest to.” [Visitors are invited to inflate balloons in remembrance of loved ones with mental illnesses and to think about moments they share with them.]

Ximena Soza: “Nidos Vacíos is dedicated to the sons and daughters that have been lost to violence. Whether it is in Palestine, Ferguson, Milwaukee, or Mapuche land in Chile, the loss of sons or daughters speaks the same language of pain…. My ofrenda is a piece of fabric with a dress and a nest in the center representing the grieving process of mothers and families, the emptiness of death lives in those who are alive.”

Clay relief sculptures with acrylic paint by second grade students at Bruce-Guadalupe Elementary School based on discussions about community wishes.

-->

What do George Washington and Vince Lombardi have in common? How are these and other well known historical and pop cultural figures related to deceased parents, grandparents, and family pets? They are all well represented in the wall-sized, multidisciplinary and collaborative ofrenda created by fifth graders at University School of Milwaukee.

detail

This was a lovely experience, clearly a crowd favorite at the opening reception Friday evening. I witnessed many people carefully viewing each of what seemed like hundreds of tiny individual memorials that make up this ofrenda. 

detail

detail

On Saturday, November 1 there was a Día de los Muertos parade in Milwaukee. If you missed my earlier post and photo essay about that, click here to see it.