Wisconsin love: Milwaukee art museum (the modern stuff)

My five-year-old commented "If it is a museum for art it makes sense that the building is art too."
Be still, my heart! Architect for this portion is Santiago Calatrava.

If you follow me on Instagram (@amandabridle) you know I have a real love for what I call "weird art." If something is completely out there and strange and unlike anything I've seen before, well, that's just my favorite. I like unique explorations. I was delighted to find that my visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum featured plenty of the strange and modern. As a bonus, some of the artists are still living and currently working and I've added them to my Instagram feed so I can keep up with their work.

Edge of England by Cornelia Parker
Yes, this does make me want to hang strings of objects in my house. 

I came around the corner and saw this scene and my heart beat a little faster. For real!

Bluffs by Tara Donovan
 Made entirely of buttons and glue. For real.
I saw her work at the Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C. as well.

High Rise by Claire Zeisler

terraform 02 by Jason S. Yi
This piece is made of metal folding chairs, plastic stretch wrap, and plastic ties.

Detail of a large wall-sized piece Remember Me, Katrina by Susie Ganch.
Made of plastic coffee cup lids.

Soundsuit by Nick Cave
This was my all-time favorite!

Wisconsin love: Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum

Modern use of old-style type: layers and playful letterforms topped with white ink (fun!)

Friends, I have been on the email list for Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum for years. Once I realized we were going to be in town seeing their museum was on my "must" list! My peoples did not agree and spent the same hours at the laundromat and the library. Hee. I was happy to go by myself anyway.

A set of woodtype

This image is GIANT! Like 4 feet tall and it was carved in one huge piece of wood.

For someone like myself with a background in graphic design, an education in typography, an interest in history, and a delight in visual inspiration this place was a playground! I was so pleased to have time to wander and study at my leisure. The only thing that would have made it better was if the timing had been right for me to take part in one of their day-long workshops. I hope to make it to one someday!

This display gives you a rough idea how printing works.
There is a plate for each individual ink color. In this case, they are carved out of wood.
Printed one at a time on top of each other results in the final image.

Not only has the museum done an amazing job of showcasing, documenting, and preserving the history of Hamilton (check out the videos on YouTube!) but they've taken steps to be quite forward thinking as well. They host workshops, they have on-site artists and interns, and they continue to expand their collection of wood type as they accept and slowly organize enormous donations of wood type from other locations (one such donation was 6 semi-truck loads full!). There is some amazing work being done by some very passionate people.

I have multiple photos of these images displaying available border designs. I am a bit obsessed.
I can't wait to sit down with my sketchbook and play with these.

First off – the giant number 5! Awesome. Second, metallic ink – ooh la la!

I am a fan of Elizabeth Brandt!

I saw one of Elizabeth Brandt's quilts at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Absolutely love it! Please follow the link so you can see what I am talking about! I absolutely want to try my hand at something abstract and free-form like this. It is in my quilting future!

Adventures in art

In May my husband and I headed off on a weekend away to celebrate our anniversary. He always surprises me and makes all the plans himself. This year he very generously planned our trip around a huge craft show and art show that happen simultaneously in East Lansing. I should mention that of the two of us I am the one with interest in art. He doesn't really share it but like a good spouse he'll share the experience of it with me. So like I said, very generous.

Besides the weekend event, there is a new(ish) art museum on the campus of Michigan State University that I have been talking about seeing for a year or so now. So that, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, was actually our first stop. The architecture alone is worth a visit. It is awesome and angular and so very foreign among the more traditional brick buildings. I loved it!

The interior gallery space reminds me a lot of Grand Rapids' own UICA – odd shaped, cement walls, an interesting challenge to any artist showing site-specific works there.

I do want to point you to this article (with pics) on artist Imran Qureshi. His work was very interesting and somewhat disturbing but from a marketing standpoint it was kind of neat to come across it painted on sidewalks throughout town.

My very favorite piece was Border Unseen by Mithu Sen. It is made of fake teeth and something pink that looks like your gums. It stretched through a long narrow space like a dinosaur's spine. The walls were painted the same shade of pink. And if you looked carefully there were tiny little figurines perched amongst the teeth. Was it strange? Absolutely! Disturbing? Absolutely! Awesome? Absolutely! I love weird modern art that looks absolutely nothing like anything I've ever seen before. What a challenge and an inspiration to my own visual dictionary.

There was also an exhibit of quilts from Pakistan and East India that I appreciated. The level of skill was astounding.