The Wisconsin Project: Found: Beautiful Washington Park, Milwaukee, WI

30.1.15

Found: Beautiful Washington Park, Milwaukee, WI

Found: In "Beautiful Washington Park," Milwaukee.
© E. C. Kropp Co. Publishing, Milwaukee No. 4201. Circa 1900.
Handwritten in fountain pen on the frontside: "The lilies in this pound are as big as a plate."

Washington Park in Milwaukee, designed by American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, included a band shell and a zoo. Begun in 1891, the park faced financial challenges throughout the 20th century. The zoo moved away to expand in 1958 but the Urban Ecology Center located in the 135 acre park in 2007. The Center's mission is to carry out Olmsted's vision of municipal parks as respite for people form all walks of life. Olmsted believed that parks could connect city people with nature thus providing "spiritual uplift." Today, volunteers and neighbors work to restore native plants, wetlands, animals, and maintain gardens in the park.

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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.