The Wisconsin Project: Found: The Great White Way, Appleton, WI

27.12.13

Found: The Great White Way, Appleton, WI

Found: The Great White Way, Appleton, Wisconsin. Postmarked Appleton, Wis. May 1, 1909.
Written in fountain pen on backside and addressed to a recipient in Oconto Falls, Wisconsin:
"How do you like the weather? It snowed here yesterday and last night about
5 inches on the level and today it is getting colder. What will come next?
I would like to be home this morning for a hunt. It ought to be great today.
It must be great farming. Tomorrow evening the recital of the Girls Glee Club comes off."

What was once obvious becomes an enigma over time. Could "The Great White Way" caption on this lithographed postcard refer to the first electric Christmas lights installed on College Avenue in 1908 illuminating the December snow? Appleton is the home of a several electrical firsts. It's the site of the first hydro-electric station in 1882, the first electric streetcar in 1886, and the first electric street lights outside the east coast replacing the earlier gaslights in 1912. The postcard illustrates the culmination and evolution of these technologies in one graphic shot.

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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.