Photography illuminates an Urban Eden in Milwaukee

Pete appeared suddenly, seeming to materialize from nowhere. Perhaps from the street itself, which is where he calls home. He approached the wall cautiously, hesitant. His own face gazed back at him, enormous, calm, composed. Softly, he said, “I can’t believe this is happening.” In the deep shade under the brim of his cap his tired eyes glistened, first with pride, then tears. He repeated, his voice barely audible, “I can’t believe…, this is me.” After a long pause he added, “I’ve been on the streets for….” His thought trailed off, leaving me to wonder how long. He sat on a board that edged one of the planting beds in the community garden. He sat for a long while in silence, watching as the crew of volunteers pasted up face after face alongside his.

When Pete finally got up to leave he reiterated his disbelief. Then he said he was going to go invite all his friends to come see it.

Urban Eden is a photographic mural project named after the community garden that it faces. It was created by Sally Kuzma and John Ruebartsch. Kuzma is an artist and ESL teacher at the International Learning Center (ILC), a program of Neighborhood House of Milwaukee. She acted as project director, seeking out participants and recording their stories. Ruebartsch, a professional photographer, made the portraits. 

The subjects of the portraits all have some relationship to the garden and its neighborhood, which is in one of the city's poorest zip codes. At Urban Eden refugees who attend the ILC grow and harvest food alongside people from two multicultural neighborhood parishes, St. Paul’s Lutheran and Central United Methodist. A group of environmentally active students from Marquette University were instrumental in establishing Urban Eden. Some of them are included in the mural.

That the mural is more than an art installation is almost too obvious to mention. Kuzma shared with me the following stories:

“During the mural installation yesterday, some profound things were happening:

An artist who came to see the mural approached me about renting rooms to ILC refugees; she owns a rooming house in the neighborhood and feels called spiritually to do this.

A Marquette student who had helped initiate the garden came to paste up posters but ended up spending most of her time playing with neighborhood children in the ILC playground.

People from the neighborhood are asking how they can be part of the garden, and learning that the colorful Somali Bantu women they see at the bus stop on 25th St. are coming to school here.

It's almost as if the mural is an incidental thing that is making visible the very real good will that is being generated in this place by a lot of different people. Marking the spot where human beings are being human.”

The project is also much more than a single installation. Urban Eden is part of an international effort “to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.” That effort, called INSIDE OUT, was inspired by the work of JR, an internationally acclaimed artist and winner of the 2011 TED prize. (If you haven’t heard of TED, which awards $100,000 annually to people with ideas that can change the world, check it out: TED prize.)

The portraits that make up the Urban Eden mural, along with the stories, will be archived online with similar projects from around the world at INSIDE OUT: A Global Art Project. The mural is located on 26th St. between Wisconsin Ave. and Michigan St., behind the US Bank building, facing south.

This is not the first collaborative project for Kuzma and Ruebartsch. Here, There and Elsewhere: Refugee Families inMilwaukee, a photo-documentary that debuted at Walker's Point Center for the Arts last summer, is currently touring to several locations around the country.

Here Kuzma and Ruebartsch stand in front of a section of the completed mural. To see more images from the installation, go to my flickr page.

INVERSE opens at the Lynden Sculpture Garden

The latest installment of INSIDE/OUTSIDE, the series of invitational collaborations sponsored by the Lynden Sculpture Garden, is called INVERSE and is by Amy Cropper and Stuart Morris. The opening was yesterday – and they lucked out with a gorgeous day (finally!) They deserved it because the show is wonderful! As billed, they took the theme more literally than previous participants (which – full disclosure – included Phil Krejcarek and me last fall.) On the inside they filled the gallery with a boulder and natural branches. The boulder sits enthroned in the center of the room and the branches arch overhead. The effect is quite magical, like a fairytale ballroom. I imagined a hookah-smoking caterpillar perched atop the boulder.

To complete the INVERSE concept, natural objects (trees and rocks) on the outside were dispersed around the landscape, but painted brightly. The colors of these altered forms were chosen to resonate with some of the painted sculptures in the permanent collection. The bright red, orange, and yellow trees and rocks also contrasted with the “real” trees and rocks around them. These reminded me a little of some of the glass installations that Chihuly has done in landscape settings, but being made from nature and then repurposed as sculptures adds conceptual complexity that I found intriguing. The pictures hardly do them justice, especially the gallery installation. It really must be seen in situ to be appreciated.

INVERSE continues through August 10. To read more about it, go to the Lynden Garden website.

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Lynden Sculpture Gardens: Winter Carnival and Inside/Outside

The weather was perfect yesterday for the Winter Carnival held at the Lynden Sculpture Gardens. The grounds, always lovely, were especially magical in the lightly falling snow. Artists and art aficionados of all ages came to be creative or simply to enjoy the creativity all around.

There was snow painting, using watering cans filled with food coloring.

Jade used a sprayer to zig zag up a hill.

Local environmental artist Roy Staab led a team who created a sculpture on the frozen pond.

Roy in front of the finished piece.

UWM students Sam, Katie, and Tina, made use of a pair of trees to create a Goldsworthy style artistic intervention.

The latest installation in the Inside/Outside series of invitational collaborations got underway during the Carnival. Here Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, dressed in period costume, dig a "foundation" trench and fill it with charcoal.

The process is being meticulously documented in both video and still photography. Later in the day the completed charcoal foundation was to be lit and burned. I was sorry to have to leave before that happened. I think it's a wonderful concept. For more about this installation and Inside/Outside, go to the Lynden Gardens website.

The permanent collection is always on display, of course, and today's snowfall made for interesting new views of the familiar works. This is a detail of one by John Henry.

Linda Vitamas's installation for Inside/Outside is still holding up and is also made interesting with an encrusting of snow.

"Under Construction" was the collaboration that Phil Krejcarek and I did for Inside/Outside. Three of the sites where we erected construction fences and sculptural ladders remain for now. The weather is taking its toll on the fences, as expected. For more pictures of our collaboration, go to my flickr page.

Lynden Sculpture Garden in snow – and illumination!

Good news! The Outside portions of Inside/Outside at the Lynden Sculpture Garden have been transformed by the recent snowfall and are worth a second glance (well, in my opinion!) But, there are other reasons galore to visit the gardens. The Lynden has a program this Sunday called Light Up the Garden that sounds marvelous. I plan to be there.

Oh, and Inside/Outside has been extended through January 5, so if you can’t make it this Sunday there is still time.

Click here for my previous post describing Inside/Outside.

Since I was out of town when it snowed last weekend (see my latest post on 100 Acres in Indianapolis) I had to rely on my collaborator, Phil Krejcarek, for these images.

New photos from the Lynden Sculpture Garden

Inside/Outside at the Lynden Sculpture Garden continues through Dec. 12. I visited yesterday and got a few more shots of the installations outside. These are just a sample. To see more, go to my flickr page.

Magic happens at the Lynden Sculpture Garden

Anyone who has been following Arts Without Borders knows of my fondness for sculpture parks, places with that delightful dual personality so appealing to my own dual predilections: art and the wilderness. You will also have heard of Milwaukee’s lovely example, the Lynden Sculpture Garden, which opened to the public in May. (If not, see previous post.) Well, today I learned that the Lynden Garden is not simply delightful; it is magical.

The air was fresh and the lawn soggy with last night’s rain. The brown-eyed susans and goldenrod were resplendent in that slanted glow of early morning light that is soon to be dimmed by an approaching storm. As I strolled along the edge of the pond, volley after volley of tiny frogs erupted from its grassy verge, hundreds of them plopping with tiny splashes into the water. A flock of geese flew over, circled round, and fled, for once without a sound. All the while I walked along, enchanted by the contrast of motionless sculptures and restless scenery. And that was marvelous enough, but when I reached Linda Vitamas’s installation I almost felt like I’d entered a fairy tale. (OK, now if you didn’t read my earlier review of Linda’s piece, catch up by clicking here.)

When last seen . . . (imagine a low register organ in hushed tones), meager remnants of the diminutive unfired earthenware bowls lay crumbled and slowly dissolving into the rusting steel beam on which they had been so lovingly placed. But, lo and behold…(crescendo!), they have miraculously reappeared!

If you missed the original installation—as I did—now you can see the piece as it was intended to be seen when installed. Except that there is a significant difference: the current iteration of the piece combines the new little pots—sprung up on the steel bar like mushrooms after a rain—with the last residual crumbs of the old. Most of the original pottery has returned to its earthen nature, some has washed entirely away. The new little bowls, in casual stacks, contain puddles of yesterday’s rain, the beginnings of the next cycle of decay and dissolution. “And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from,” in T.S. Eliot’s famous words.

Lovely. The artist as Tinkerbell, waves her wand and up sprout new little art forms. I’m enthralled.



But—full disclosure—I am not a dispassionate observer. (Passionate, definitely passionate!) I was on the grounds today to do my own bit of conjuring. As I reported earlier, Vitamas and Kevin Giese collaborated in an on-going project of the Garden called Inside/Outside. I am honored to have been invited to do the next installation in the series. My collaborator is Phil Krejcarek, professor of art at Carroll University, which hosted my installation last year called Accidental Art: construction fences in the landscape. Stay tuned for more details to follow, but the show, which opens Oct. 24, will involve fences and sculptures.

To see examples from Accidental Art, go to my website.