The Wisconsin Project: C.E. Wheelock

9.11.14

Found: Sheboygan River, Sheboygan, WI

Found: Sheboygan River, Wood Scene, Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Made in Germany for C.E. Wheelock & Co., Peoria, Illinois & Leipzig. Circa 1907.

The trees reflecting in the water depicted on this postcard bring to mind Edward Steichen's The Pond - Moonrise. Steichen lived in Milwaukee, from age 10 until age 20, where his interests in photography and painting began. Though working as a lithographer's apprentice, he left for Paris then New York where he met Alfred Stieglitz and helped found the Photo-secessionist group and by 1903 began contributing to Camera Work. Steichen's The Pond, from the same era as this postcard, does not include women posing along the water nor does it include text to associate the scene with a specific place. If Steichen had stayed in Milwaukee to work as lithographer, is this postcard image what his work would have become?

The Pond - Moonrise, 1904, by Edward J. Steichen
Platinum Print with Applied Color (from The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection)

The Pond - Moonlight 1904, by Edward Steichen

3.9.12

Found: Human Activity on the Lake Front

Found: "Lake Front, Pier and Breakwater, Sheboygan, Wisconsin" by C.E. Wheelock &Co., Peoria & Leipzig, circa 1908

Found: "Bathing Scene, North Beach, Racine, Wisconsin" by E.A. Bishop, Racine, circa 1910

Found: "Lake Winnebago, North Park, Oshkosh, Wisconsin" by E.C. Kropp Co. Publishing, Milwaukee, circa 1910

Found: "Bathing Beach at Night,Lake Geneva, Wisconsin" by E.A. Bishop, Racine, Wisconsin circa 1930

Found: "Condensing Factory, New London, Wisconsin" by John T. Faber, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, circa 1907

Found: "Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, (Lake Pepin) "The romantic interest is the spot from which the beautiful indian maiden, Winona, daughter of the mighty Red Wing, Chief of the Dakota's took her famous "Lover's Leap" along the burlington's Missisippi River Sceneic Line between Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis" by Burlington Route, circa 1928

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.