Our Gardens Inside & Out

I am included in this very diverse exhibit, with over 75 artists. It runs through October 7. I invite you to check it out. The following is from the museum announcement:

Charles Allis Art Museum

June 29 - October 7, 2012
Opening Reception Friday, June 29

 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. 

A fresh perspective on gardens to intrigue us whether we view them through the eye of an artist, a pane of glass, or surrender ourselves to romantic trysts in their moonlight shadows.

Our Gardens Inside & Out is a group show by artists who interpret flowers and gardens from different perspectives using varied art forms including paintings, prints and sculpture.

Spring ephemeral blooms invite us to enjoy and celebrate the Renaissance Garden of the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum and the English Garden of the Charles Allis Art Museum. Choose your path through Our Gardens Inside and Out to see the melding of creations by the hand of Man and the hand of Nature.

Guest Curator Jane Brite was founding Director of Walker’s Point Center for the Arts and recent recipient of the Wisconsin Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Science & Letters.

Artists included in the exhibit:

Chris Andrews, Hirsh Annette, Dave Aschenbrener, Jill Bedford, Lisa Bigalke, Bill Reid, Julia VanRoo Bresnahan, Anthony Busalacchi, Sandra Byers, Tom Clark, Warrington Colescott, Jean Crane, Joy Czemicki, Eddee Daniel, Virgi Driscoll, Sally Duback, Laura Easey-Jones, Tom Eddington, Joyce Eesley, Lois Ehlert, Lisa Englander, Susan Falkman, Patrick Farrell, Lisa A. Frank, Ruth Grotenrath, Susan Hale, Pat Hidson, Bruce Hustad, Julie Jilek, Karen Gunderman, Helen Klebesadel, Alice Steuck Konkel, K. Tinsley, Bernard G. Lardi, Schomer Lichtner, Truman Lowe, George McCormick, Michael Meilahn, Marie Mellott, Linda Merkel, Lon Michels, Anne Miotke, Jane Moore, Dennis Nechvatal, William Nichols, Mike Nolte, Paul Brnak, JoAnn Poehlman, Mary Pratt, Lynne Railsback, Tom Rauschke, Bernard Roberts, Rudy Rotter, Carol Rowan, Beth Sahagian-Allsopp, Cindy Rust Saiia, John Sayer, Jill Sebastian, David Shafer, Jean D. Sobon, Mark Stall, Jean Stamsta, Kitty Sturrock, Anthony Suminski, Constance Taagen, Tom Uebelherr, Linda Wervey Vitamvas, Lee Weiss, Della Wells, Mike Ringo White, Jeremy Wolf, Peggy Zalucha, and Joan Zingale

AIDS Quilt to be displayed in D.C.

Starting June 27th the AIDS quilt will be displayed in Washington, D. C. The entire quilt has not been displayed since 1994 - when it was far smaller. It will take up 1.3 million square feet and it now honors the deaths of 93,000 people. It is the largest work of folk art in the world.



For more information go to quilt2012.org.

SpeakPeace at War Memorial - Art Museum

Milwaukee’s War Memorial and Art Museum have long been strange bedfellows, sharing space in what has become a mélange of architectural forms at their premier location on the lakefront. But their often disparate missions have found an intersection in a new exhibit with the evocative title SpeakPeace and the cumbersome, though precise, subtitle, American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children’s Paintings Exhibition.

The display includes 34 paintings by Vietnamese children responding to themes of war and peace out of intensely felt personal experiences that those of us fortunate enough to have lived without such experiences can only begin to imagine. Each painting is complemented with prose or poetry written by American children, war veterans, and established poets.

This cheerful seeming oil pastel by 14-year-old Do Nguyen Thanh Tam is titled Agent Orange Infection – I go to school with my friend.

Beneath it is Orange Crayons, Orange Sun by Texas poet Michael Mars:

when I was young, I would refuse to use the color orange

I would remove it from my box of crayons, wondering to myself

why all the other crayons in all the other boxes

in all the other countries, stood muted, at attention

refusing to at least lament its use, question its usefulness,

refusing to scream against the untold horrors it left behind

 when it rained down its orange tears on my countryside

why would you ever tolerate any orange

that wilted the leaves on trees, left vines

shriveled to the ground, farmlands barren

maybe you didn’t think you’d live long enough to see

a drawing of me with my friend on our way to school

maybe I didn’t think I’d live long enough

to want to grasp at a crayon once again

long enough to want to color the center of my sun orange

 The opening reception, held Monday evening, was a multidisciplinary affair that included music and a participatory drumming circle led by Jaymes Finlayson and David Stocker of One Drum.

A presentation by the Homeless Veteran Initiative of Veterans for Peace was an eye-opening peek into the plight of homeless veterans in Milwaukee, estimated at 300-400 per day. Poetry was recited, including a passionate one by a “Gold Star Mother” who had lost a son in Afghanistan. Members of the OCA-WI Youth Dancers performed a Chinese fan dance. 

The exhibit is fittingly located in the recently renovated north lobby to the building shared by the War Memorial and Art Museum. This makes it out of the way for visitors using the main entrance. I hope that signage in the main lobby will direct people to the exhibit. Unfortunately, the collaboration implied by the use of this shared space doesn’t seem to have extended to the sharing of information. The museum’s education director, Barbara Brown Lee, who was enticed to the opening by the sound of drumming, told me that she hadn’t known about it beforehand and didn’t think others on staff did either.

Perhaps that oversight can be corrected while there still is plenty of time. The exhibit runs through July 6.

SpeakPeace was created by Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center and School of Art Galleries in collaboration with Soldier’s Heart, a veterans’ return and healing organization. It’s stop here in Milwaukee is part of an international tour. A local group, Speak Peace MKE, has organized a companion project and exhibit of 6x6-inch paintings that is on display at Danceworks, 1661 No. Water St.

More information about the exhibit and a calendar of upcoming events are available on the Speak Peace MKE website.

My Feelings About the War, from SpeakPeace

My Feelings About the War

It’s always two: black war,

red and yellow peace, one

beside the other. Bombs on

the war side, people fallen,

bleeding from the neck.

Balloons on the peace side,

green grass and children

in bright new clothes.

Their faces are always two

Because of what they have seen.

- Maggie Anderson

Farewell to The Illustrated Man

Ray Bradbury died Tuesday. The announcement came today. I guess it's a good time to dust off one of the many volumes of his works that have filled my bookshelves for decades - literally, having survived a move from New York when I was still in college as well as many subsequent moves.

I haven't read one of his books in a long time, but the fact that they remain in place on my bookshelf is a testament to the importance they once held for me. I have forgotten a lot of things over the years but vivid memories of some of the images his words placed in my head persist to this day. The Illustrated Man has illustrated the map of my memories. Such is the power of good literature.

Of his major works, The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes were always my favorites. (I never cared for his most famous book, Fahrenheit 451, though I recognized its significance relative to the cold war era in which it was created.) But really I enjoyed his short stories best of all. Short, but intense, they packed a wallop. There was a time in my impressionable youth and young adulthood when Bradbury was my favorite author. And hardly a summer has gone by since then that hasn't been infused with his vision of Dandelion Wine.

I would suggest that Bradbury deserves to rest in peace now, but I suspect that he himself would inject something unsettling into this final chapter of his story if it were his to tell. With the body gone, his work will continue to sing the mind electric.

The Chicago Project at Edelman Gallery

The prestigious Catherine Edelman Gallery has an online presence called The Chicago Project, which is devoted to new and established photographers in the Chicago area who they feel deserve recognition. I am happy to report that I am now among them. I'm also glad that Milwaukee is considered to be in the Chicago area!

Live Oaks

On May 29 the announcement was posted on the Edelman Gallery blog that five new artists were added to the project. To see all of the artists in the Chicago Project, click here.


To see my page on the Chicago Project website, click here.


The pieces posted in the Chicago Project are all from my recent, and on-going, series called Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole. Two are reproduced here. You can see more from the series on my website.

Twist