The Wisconsin Project: Budweiser Tower, Manitowoc, WI

1.7.12

Budweiser Tower, Manitowoc, WI

Budweiser Tower, Washington Street, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, November 8, 2009
© J. Shimon & J. Lindemann

Found: Busch Agricultural Resources, Inc. Manitowoc Malt Plant, circa 1970

Making the RPPC of the "Bud Tower" November 8, 2009
© J. Shimon & J. Lindemann

If the Busch Malt Plant wasn't there, the view at the end of the main street into downtown Manitowoc would be Lake Michigan. A surreal oddity, the tower exuded the warm aroma of roasting barley and the roar of its machinery lent an industrial ambiance to downtown. A work of "hand painted pop", the giant bottle and two cans of Budweiser ("3 Buds short of a 6-pack" wrote Jeff Felshman in the Chicago Reader in 1992) depicted were so much a part of the landscape that the natives didn't see it. An oddity of the town, it appeared on postcards sold at drugstores and shops until recently when corporate shufflings and alcohol awareness made it perhaps too complex an image to stock at the Walgreens. Despite being covered with an updated vinyl photographic mural about a decade ago, it remains a Manitowoc icon obliterated in 2012 due to a City Ordinance according to an article in the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter published November 7, 2012. We made a photograph "Trish & Matt Downtown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 1995" to record life in its shadow.

4 comments:

Sad to see it go22:02
Thanks for recording this for posterity.
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Tina Kugler23:10
Fight! http://www.change.org/petitions/city-of-manitowoc-preserve-the-iconic-budweiser-mural-as-significant-manitowoc-history?utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&utm_term=33653148
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brad05:01
i think this is one of the coolest things the two of you have done. while people ended up being focused on saving the original mural, you were documenting the one they took down to almost no complaint. the three bottles. is the old ad art just because it is old? does that make it any more valid than the 3 bottles design that took its place for the entire lives of thousands of manitowoc citizens, that was discarded almost without thought?
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johnie09:44
The hand-painted sign has come to be a sign of a craft and skill now virtually lost. The digital banner may be the same as technology continues to evolve. It is what it is.
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THE WISCONSIN PROJECT

Our research-driven Wisconsin Project contemplates the rooted-ness and state-of-mind resulting from inhabiting a single place, our native Wisconsin, for a long time. Through critiquing postcard views both made and found, we learn a great deal about past and present Wisconsin. We began making postcard views of the places immediately around our studio and on our drives around Wisconsin in about 2008. We use the vintage postcard film format and print the cards in palladium and cyanotype. By communicating details of a specific place, seeming to register only marginally on the national radar, the project seeks to bring audiences into a Wisconsin mental space. Some in the art world would argue that the Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, makes for banal “fly over” subject matter. Our project challenges that by finding meaning in the ordinary and inviting audiences to examine, dialog, and reflect on the particular emotional quality of the idiosyncrasies of place and the perceptions of those both inside and outside of it. Sometimes distant memories are involved and a longing for a time now gone. Wisconsin’s glacier inflected landscape and proximity to the Great Lakes creates an exotic arena for living that informs our project. The life cycle plays out and rural and urban ruins serve as monuments to existences as people, places, and ideas surface then vanish. Ultimately, we aim to grapple with complex perceptions of Wisconsin ranging from nostalgic, romantic, and idealized--as depicted on myriad real photo postcard and standard tourist postcards--to mysterious, dark, and Gothic as conveyed in works of art and literature such as Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip" book and Werner Herzog's "Stroszek" film. The project culminated in a residency with workshops and community collaborations and the installation "We Go From Where We Know" at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center 10.13.2013-3.7.2014 and later the Harvestore Bandshell for Fermentation Fest in 10.2014. The blog continues the exploration of postcards.