The Wisconsin Project: Found: Taliesin, Spring Green, WI

3.2.14

Found: Taliesin, Spring Green, WI

Found: Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin. Wisconsin office of Taliesin Associated Architects, and campus of the
Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, established in 1932 by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright.
Copyright Taliesin® The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
Photograph by (Taliesin apprentice) John Amarantides. Circa 1970s

Found: WINGSPREAD, Racine, Wisconsin. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Pub. by Joboul Publishing Co., Inc., Evanston, Illinois.
Made by Dexter Press, West Nyack, New York. Circa 1970s.

Sometimes hidden in the trees, buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright haunt the landscape of Wisconsin. Taliesin holds forth in Spring Green offering guided tours while the Annuciation Greek Orthodox Church hovers in Milwaukee offering a futuristic spiritual retreat. Racine is graced with the Johnson Wax headquarters and Wingspread both commissioned by Herbert Fisk Johnson, Jr. about 1938-39. Family continues to run the company, but Johnson's house, Wingspread, was donated to the The Johnson Foundation twenty years later in 1959 for use as an international conference center emphasizing causes related to water, health, and community.

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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.