Art Murals in Milwaukee
On the side of a century-old chicken coop and a skateboard shop, at major intersections and tucked away alcoves, on blighted buildings and venerable ones – flowers bloom, giants walk, deer dance and justice is proclaimed in Milwaukee.
Murals have bannered our city for generations, but it took an ill-behaved politician to get this art critic to really take a look at them.
I always thought of community murals as more about people than art. Don’t get me wrong, as grassroots projects aimed at revitalization or community pride, I thought they were great. But as art? I tend to dismiss them as overly literal and optimistic to a fault.
In other words, I’ve been a bit of a snob.
But, after Ald. Bob Donovan recently condemned an entire style of mural making as “crap” I thought it time to take a closer look.
I asked readers via my blog, Facebook and Twitter which murals they’d recommend I see. I quickly learned how important this populist art form is to many, as I was pleasantly inundated by tips and tales.
What I found were genuine expressions of the human spirit, some new, others old, and most suffering more from sun damage than vandalism.
One of my favorites was by Alyssa Schulte on the side of Sky High skate board shop, 2501 S. Howell Ave., where filmmaker and Art City contributor Faythe Levine is now running an art gallery and temporary mural project.
Don’t let Schulte’s free flowing, whimsical style fool you. There is a wonderfully complex set of interlocking vignettes in the mural, from the tent-shaped mountain consuming a hamburger, to the glorious orange flowers that remind me of 1970s wallpaper to the magical dance of the deer and bear around a tree.
Schulte let some of the plywood show through, incorporating it into the piece and reminding us of the humble materials at play here. Artists who will make murals at Sky High in the coming months include Sophia Arnold, Kimberly Weiss, Colin Mathis and Vanessa Devaki Andrew.
Then there’s the exuberant garage on Maple Street, between 10th and 11th streets, brought to my attention by artist Harvey Opgenorth, who admires the murals from his back windows. Once routinely tagged, the graffiti-style murals that pay homage to Dr. Seuss, among other things, have been mostly left alone.
The mural on the side of the long defunct Inner City Arts Council, 624 W. North Ave., by well-known muralist Reynaldo Hernandez, depicts culture in the minority community and was painted in the 1980s with the help of local gang members.
It is just the kind of visual montage, with its arching rainbow and heroic figures representing the different arts, that I’ve thought of as corny, if beautifully executed. But now that a developer is planning to renovate the building into offices and may paint over the mural, I confess I’d hate to see it go. It’s become part of the urban landscape, a touchstone for people who’ve driven by the nearby entrance to I-43 for decades. And it’s hard to argue with that gorgeous black woman’s face.
I was also completely taken by the murals painted as part of the Art in the Alleys project in Riverwest. More homeowners came forward to have their garages transformed than artists to paint them, said Sura Fataj, one of the organizers.
Artist Juliet Jaeger’s mural at 3029 N. Booth St. is the only one that’s been tagged, and she’s repairing it now. Blacksmith slag was found in the backyard, so she was inspired to create a volcano with plumes of smoke to honor that past. The mural of a Bodhi tree, the sacred fig tree where the Buddha found enlightenment, on the garage at 617 E. Burleigh St. by Jessica Laub can be seen from the far end of the alley. The sweet and mural of chickens, sunflowers and a cat at 3032 N. Holton St. by Pacia Sallomi and Elizabeth Sawyer not only reminds us of the garage’s former life as a chicken coop but the new interest in urban farming, too.
Radio Milwaukee producer and Art City contributor Adam Carr told me about the “Black Cowboy” mural, which he goes out of his way to drive by on his way to work. Painted by George Gist in 1993 on the side of Steele Professional Welding, N. 31st and W. Brown Sts., the mural’s images are aging rather beautifully against the fire engine red exterior.
The mural of a phoenix rising at Highland Ave. and N. 27th St. by Kate Madigan was done as part of the effort to revitalize the SoHi (South of Highland) district. The symbolism of this victorious bird, in its blue and purple splendor, rising from the fiery flames of ruin, is hard to miss.
There is something powerful about putting paint to a wall and making a large, somewhat permanent and public expression that often is meant to exemplify the aspirations of an entire swath of the community. Many of these artworks are grassroots, do-it-yourself acts of generosity that are about pushing back – against urban decay, misunderstanding and hopelessness.
And they are too often taken for granted.
There has been a great tradition of mural making in our region, from the Works Progress Administration artists who created murals in our post offices and even the panorama painters before them to the murals we've celebrated here and in our photo gallery.
Looking forward, and putting my critical art critic cap back on for a moment, it seems that Milwaukee could be fertile ground for an even richer exploration of public murals, artworks that are more connected to the global exchange of visual expression that is burgeoning in cities from Philadelphia to Sao Paulo.