All posts filed under: publication

Oct 6: Artists Kirsten Leenaars and Fo Wilson in conversation + catalog presentation at Haggerty Museum

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  Image from Kirsten Leenaars: (Re)Housing the American Dream  Photo Credit: Clare Britt House/Home: Artists Kirsten Leenaars and Fo Wilson in Conversation Moderated by Dr. Jasmine Alinder Thursday, October 6, 3 p.m. Haggerty Museum of Art Join us for a public conversation with artists Kirsten Leenaars and Fo Wilson, moderated by Director of UWM’s Urban Studies Programs Dr. Jasmine Alinder. This program is presented in collaboration with Imagining America’s 16th Annual National Conference, themed At the Crossroads. Kirsten Leenaars: (Re)Housing the American Dream, is a three-channel video installation on view at the Haggerty Museum of Art, and is the result of Leenaars’ year-long exploration of the notions of home, belonging and happiness in context of the American Dream in Milwaukee’s Near West Side. Leenaars created this piece in collaboration with students from two neighborhood schools—Highland Community School and the International Newcomer Center at the Milwaukee Academy of Chinese Language. Personal stories from the students serve as metaphors to explore the real and imagined reality of this Dream. Delving into the complex notions of place, person, community, family, country, origin, land, or a moment of time …

(Re)Housing the American Dream Exhibition Catalog

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   VIEW: Exhibiton Catalog (Re)Housing the American Dream Design: Sonia Yoon Essay by Steven L. Bridges Release Date: October 6, 2016 This catalog was published on the occasion of the exhibition Kirsten Leenaars: (Re)Housing the American Dream. Chicago-based performance and video artist Kirsten Leenaars has created participatory works of art that explore a quintessential American ideal: the pursuit of happiness. (Re)Housing the American Dream is an extension of Leenaars’ earlier investigations. Commissioned by the Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee, WI), this latest work is the result of Leenaars’ year-long exploration of the relationship between home and happiness in Milwaukee’s Near West Side. Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University Learn more »

“Public Art: Given a Chance, Can It Work for You?”

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Critical Inquiry http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/info/, “Public Art: Given a Chance, Can It Work for You?”by Amy M. Mooney, Ph.D., Columbia College Chicago Not In Another Place, But This Place… (Happiness), 2014. Photo by Clare Britt.   The Federal Government in suddenly becoming the greatest patron in the world has contributed incalculably to the rise of American Art….Not only has the project itself expanded in many useful social directions, knitting itself more and more into the life of Chicago, but under it, individual talents have developed and grown into maturity. Given a chance to work for you, the Chicago artist has emerged from his isolation and is in the process of creating a typical and vital art. [1] My quoting of Daniel Catton Rich, then-director of the Federal Art Project, is not intended to cast nostalgia for the Works Progress Administration, though a guaranteed living wage for artists would be much appreciated. Instead, I mean to use Rich’s words as a historic foil for contemporary discourse on public art, reminding us of previous aspirations and goals. The idea of …

Composite >> Still Life

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No. 15 Still Life Spring 2014 To the casual viewer, still life painting has never been the exciting character of the art world. While Cezanne may be responsible for our collective subconscious visual archetype of what fruit should look like,  but he doesn’t always get the praise of the Impressionist’s color palette, or to the Abstract Expressionist’s massive scale and freedom. Images of life post-mortem are not likely to draw the same crowds as Adams’ images of Half Dome, or Arbus’ portraits of streetwalkers. Hundreds will be passed over on a daily basis en route to a tiny painting of an average looking woman in the Louvre. The still life, on the surface, seems ordinary and plain. You could argue they are little more than fruit on a table, flowers in a vase, trophies from the hunt, or last representations of a loved one. For anyone who has ever taken an art class, still lifes almost certainly have been the first two, three, or ten assignments. They are the standard for practical art training, but …