Requests For Expression

by 3rd Way



Even after taking my love for the tuning fork proposal into account I am still pleased with the stance Chris Abele is taking against the fat sculpture commission the county was contemplating. Awarding a three quarter of a million dollar commission to a small team for a single work is a terrible idea during tough times for local labor. I love a government that makes grand expenditures on artistic amenities, but such amenities should be utilitarian and targeted to employ local labor and talent.

The county should spend the sculpture money by accepting proposals from local artists and designers and awarding commissions based on proposals artistic merits, benefit to community and ability to employee local labor and talent.

A series of artfully designed benches sprinkled along the lakefront that could serve as both playthings for skateboarders and resting spots for walkers would be great. A series of inspired bus shelters aligned down one of the city's busy thoroughfares could greatly enhance a neighborhood. A multi-flight urban exercise/observation stair tower with an awesome long slide down would be a landmark worth erecting. A cleverly designed renovation project to a County Park owned structure converting it to leasable space able to house a small establishment like the Alterra by the lake or the Northpoint burger place could turn a building maintenance liability into a revenue generating asset. Carving up a parking lot sea of asphalt with imaginative ribbons of runoff absorbing plantings would be a good thing.

Giving out seven $100K projects to local teams of aspiring artists would be far more beneficial to the city than one big chunk going to a single team of established art professionals. Seven $100K creative construction projects would help keep locals employed and make our community a more desirable place to reside.

I am sure that if the county sent out a “Request For Artistic Expression” other hungry locals would come up with better ideas for projects that would improve Milwaukee while providing a little boost to local construction firms and the art/design communities. Abele could probably even find donors willing to put up matching funds. Turn the thing into a yearly competition à la the Marcus Prize and within a few years Milwaukee would be a more interesting and vibrant place.

This makes my brain hurt

by folkbum

But it is so cool.

(Found in my inbox this morning.)

Milwaukee in the Bronze Age: The Fonzie Controversy

by bert
An enemy of the Fonz, Mike Brenner, says he is closing his Hotcakes Gallery in protest.

It is with great sadness that I announce that on July 3rd, Hotcakes Gallery will close it's [sic]doors for good. I cannot see running a contemporary art gallery in a city who's [sic] "leadership" is so eager to invest it's [sic] limited resources in garbage instead of fostering it's [sic] burgeoning arts community.

Call me wishy-washy on this burning issue, but I'd like to see more of all kinds of art.

Give me both Happy Days characters in bronze and a Hotcakes Gallery.

You see, I am grateful to my wife, a sculptor, for my personal evolution from a small-town Midwestern meathead -- who once in college hung one of those carpet tapestries of an elk on my wall -- to a lover of good art.

I like ballsy, challenging art, most of it beyond the Third Ward galleries: Walkers Point Center for the Arts, Inova at UWM, the Kohler Arts Center. At the Milwaukee museum I love their big, honking Anselm Kiefer and the recently death-defying GUY WITH THE CHAIR ON HIS HEAD.

Blue Shirt? Heck ya.

I predict that what Mike Brenner considers the city's small-town cretinism will show itself more, not in paying for Jerry Sawyer's lifelike bronze Fonzie sculpture, but in the tone of the comments on air and in blogs by our conservative cretin pundits. They will gloat and celebrate and use the word "elite" as they note that Brenner's gallery is closing.

Howl Against Censorship, Howl, 50 Years Later

As we fight in this period of American repression, it's nice to mark a victory 50 years of ago when Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg won their victory to publish Howl, a passionate, good-humored, angry cry for love and justice.

Via Pacifica radio:

Fifty years ago, on October 3, Judge Clayton Horn ruled that Allen Ginsberg's great epic Beat-era poem HOWL was not obscene but instead, a work of literary and social merit. This ruling allowed for the publication of HOWL and exonerated the
poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who faced jail time and a fine 50 years ago for publishing "HOWL."

This is great program; following is an audio link to the special Pacifica special: Howl, 50 Years Later (includes Jan. 1959 reading by Ginsberg) and a conversation with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among other wonderful people.

- HOWL (link to text)

HOWL
For Carl Solomon

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