Construction and the Cardiac Effect

by Matt Foss

As project coordinator for the Woodson Art Museum’s construction and renovation projects, my last job of each day is to check the blood pressure of our Samuels Group field superintendent, Bruce Bradley. As the one who oversees the work, Bruce can get stressed out by the daily happenings of such projects. For those who don’t know Bruce, he is a large, daunting figure, but a self-described “teddy bear.” Bruce wears his heart - as well as his sweat - on his sleeve in his efforts to ensure this project is done under budget, on time, and to our liking. Not an easy job.

To complete my afternoon routine, I keep a sphygmomanometer in my office. The renovation project has been smooth, so I’ve only had to record a few bad readings in my daily log of Bruce’s blood pressure. Here are a few highlights:

• March 28: Subcontractor Stainless Specialists completes mechanical rough-ins two hours ahead of schedule – 120 over 75.

•  April 11: All concrete pours went well, but Bruce saw snow in the forecast – 140 over 80.

•  April 17: Bruce learns the new doors will be delivered three days later than promised – 190 over 100.

•  April 24: A subcontractor uses colorful language to describe his recent honeymoon – 180 over 120.

•  April 30: Museum administrative manager Shari Schroeder brings Bruce and crew big jar of candy – 125 over 80.

•  May 3: Museum director Kathy Foley is the first person to notice one of the new exit lights is installed backwards – 240 over 12.

While some results of the health checks warranted concern, the majority have been good. During the next month or so, Museum visitors won’t use the main entrance as it’s receiving new doors and being reconfigured to serve many needs. When entering the 12th Street entrance, you’ll walk along a brief narrow path leading to the main galleries. Along the way, notice a new and improved room for our docents and a new small gallery for temporary exhibitions. Additionally, if you meander downstairs, you’ll soon see a revamped, expanded, and more colorful Art Park after its latest “landscaping.”

All in all, many positive things are happening at the Woodson, and we thank all of our visitors and volunteers for being patient and understanding during the process. I’m confident the final phase of work will go according to plan. If it doesn’t and you encounter a mountain of a man looking irate or with the weight of the world on his shoulders, give him a hug, a smile, or a Lipitor® if you can spare one.

Party Demystifies Teen Art Council

by Amy Beck, marketing and communications manager

Teens who gathered at the Woodson Art Museum Friday night became bidders at a mock art auction and amateur detectives solving the case of the missing “Magnificent Cube” artwork. The Teen Mystery Party, featuring food, music, and fun, marked the second “who-dun-it?” event planned by the Museum’s Teen Art Council, which meets monthly during the school year to plan fun events for teens at the Museum.

Two TAC members, clad in high heels and black dresses, posed as a gallery owner and director greeting mock-art-auction guests. After signing in, each teen received an auction bidding paddle and a small pouch stuffed with “mad money” for auction purchases.
Throughout the evening, young teens munched on grapes and strawberries, bagel chips and hummus, and cheesecakes and cream puffs, and decided upon which items to bid – from artwork to sketchpads, canvases, and paint brushes.
Alerted that some sort of theft would ensue, participants carefully observed vignettes performed by costumed TAC members and noted potentially suspicious behavior.  An overbearing hipster artist mercilessly ordered his doting assistant around and never strayed far from the case containing his “Magnificent Cube.” An ostentatious couple argued incessantly before the auctioneer started the bidding.
Once the artwork theft was discovered, Detective Solvesitall unveiled from his evidence folder photos of a handkerchief, coffee mug stain, footprint, lipstick smudge, and black button and led participants’ questioning of TAC suspects.
Did the hipster artist steal his own creation to fraudulently collect a hefty insurance claim?
Fed up with mopping her boss’ brow, did the artist’s assistant snap and spitefully destroy his artwork?
Did the auctioneer steal the artwork to make a tidy profit from a private sale?


Once participants matched a black button found inside the display case to one missing from the argumentative husband’s shirtsleeve, the stolen artwork was discovered in his wife’s purse.
With the case closed and suspects handcuffed, participants gathered their auction “purchases” and headed homeward after an evening of successful sleuthing and bidding.
The mystery party, appealing to younger teens, serves as an introduction to TAC-planned events and the possibility of serving on TAC in high school. In addition to planning teen events, TAC members participate in various art-related community events and learn about museum-related careers.

If you know area high-school students interested in joining TAC this fall, encourage them to call education curator Jayna Hintz at 715.845.7010 to learn more.

It’s no mystery that high-school students (and their resumes!) benefit from volunteer community involvement, and the Museum’s Teen Art Council provides a fun, multifaceted opportunity.

Just Another Manic Monday

by Jane Weinke, curator of collections

Monday I had the pleasure of looking at nearly a thousand digital images. Most people probably wouldn’t covet sitting in a dark room for eight hours, but for the three guests and four staff members coordinating and participating in the Birds in Art jury it was a remarkable day filled with “ahhhs,” laughter, light-hearted banter, and serious discussion.

Historically, Birds in Art is juried the first Monday of May. It is eagerly anticipated by staff but especially by artists. Facebook generated a bit of chatter from those wondering about the progress and eager to hear if their entry was selected for the 2013 exhibition.

This year’s jurors were: Tom Davis (author and editor, Green Bay, Wisconsin), Duane H. King (executive director, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma), and Cameron M. Shay (director, Graham Gallery, New York City). The three viewed 974 images by 605 artists, ultimately choosing the most creative and artistically rendered paintings, graphics, and sculptures to comprise the exhibition.

The process is simple – or so we think. First round, look at all the entries. This is a fairly quick look – a few seconds to view each work (artists can submit one or two works created in 2011, 2012, or 2013).

The task of round two is winnowing down the number of entries. Jurors slowly view all the artworks again to determine if they want to consider the artist in the final, voting round. Jurors are encouraged to discuss the images and ask questions to make thoughtful decisions. During the second round, staff provide the following basics: title, medium, and dimensions; artists’ names are withheld.

We keep the jurors well nourished with snacks and beverages throughout the day, and at the conclusion of round two, a late restaurant lunch provided a much-needed rest. It also allows staff time to prepare for the final round – voting.

For the final voting round, each juror assigns a score between 1 and 5 (one being low) to each artwork. The votes are tabulated and combined to get an overall score for each work. This viewing and voting sequence determines the approximately ninety works that will comprise the 2013 Birds in Art exhibition along with the work of past Master Artists and Terry Miller, the 2013 Master.

Email notifications are sent as soon as the final artwork inventory is complete; we know artists are eager to know if their work has been selected. While there will be cheers and tears, hopefully everyone will be proud to have had their artwork seriously considered.

Making the Cut

By Jayna Hintz, curator of education

Tuesday evening the Woodson Art Museum’s classroom was filled with laughter. Hearing students and parents say “this was a lot of fun,” "I love the sticky ink,” “I love this stuff,” “Mom I got my hands dirty (with a big smile)!” Nothing fills this museum educator’s heart more than the sounds of happy, busy, young artists immersed in a process. In this case, the printing process.

Relief printmaker Sherrie York is the artist in residence this week at the Woodson Art Museum. She’s introducing students and visitors to relief printmaking processes: creating a block, inking the block, and printing it. Sherri uses linoleum blocks and woodblocks as her primary “supports” and hand prints most of her work. She has many years of experience and is a wealth of information on the ins and outs of relief printmaking and “tricks” of the trade.

Student visits begin with an introduction to Beguiled by the Wild, an exhibition featuring Charley Harper’s screenprints. Minimal realism is Harper’s signature style; the simple shapes he utilizes in his work inspire students as they set out to carve their own designs into linoleum blocks.



Sherrie’s residency is made possible by a Community Arts Grant with funds from the Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the B.A. & Esther Greenheck Foundation . . . and we’re grateful.
 





Plan a Night Out @ the Woodson Art Museum this Thursday, May 2, 5:30 – 7pm for Art History 101/Hands-on Art, when Sherrie shares her techniques and process for creating linocuts. She’ll lead visitors in the creation of Styrofoam prints and also make some of her linocut and woodcut blocks available to participants to help them learn the printing process.

Sherrie is in residence at the Museum throughout the week and will oversee the steamroller printing event on Saturday, May 4, Noon – 5pm. Join us then to witness the printing of twenty large-scale (3 x 4 feet) wood blocks created by teams of area high school students from Wausau East, DC Everest, and Mosinee. We’ll be easy to find: look for the steamroller in the Museum’s parking lot. If it’s rainy and wet, we’ll print beneath the shelter of a tent.

Rain or shine, we’ll “Let the Good Times Steamroll!”

PS. The Urban Street Bistro food truck will be on the scene on Saturday, too, providing yummy food for purchase. Check out their fabulous menu.

Gallery Layout and Design with a Twist

By Andy McGivern, curator of exhibitions

If you haven’t visited the Woodson Art Museum recently, you might not know that portions of the Museum currently are being renovated. Last year, while the new addition was being built, the daily operation of the Museum was, for the most part, unaffected by construction. The addition was constructed outside and separate from exhibition galleries and visitors. Toward the end of the project, doorways leading into the new addition were installed behind temporary walls with a smooth, almost seamless transition.

Current construction is taking place in the area leading into our changing exhibition galleries, which alters visitors’ usual route to see these artworks. For now, rerouting takes visitors through the new addition and the Owen Gromme exhibition. This presented a challenge for curator Jane Weinke and me when designing our current exhibition, Torqued & Twisted: Bentwood Today; in effect we had to reverse the layout for the traffic pattern of our visitors.

To create a “wow” factor as you enter the gallery, we chose to install a large hanging ribbon-of-wood sculpture by Jeremy Holmes flanked by Frank Gehry’s Power Play Chair on one side and Clifton Monteith's willow Carlton Chair on the other.

To extend the “wow” into the adjacent gallery, we placed large Yuri Kobayashi sculptures along one wall balanced by sculptures by Matthias Pliessnig and Michael Cooper’s Big Bang Theory sculpture in the center. At the end of the gallery are two Mike Jarvi benches and a video installation showing Jarvi making one of these works out of a single piece of oak.

In a few weeks the main entrance will be closed for further renovation and gallery access will change once again. Visitors will come through the Museum’s Twelfth Street entrance and enter Torqued & Twisted via a temporary “hall” into the gallery featuring work by UW-Madison woodworking instructor Jason Ramey. Ramey’s artist residency during the opening weekend offered an adult wood-bending program, a gallery walk, and demonstrations of steam-bending techniques.

If you haven’t checked out these current exhibitions, stop in and take a look. You’ll see how Jane and I were challenged by the installations. When the dust settles and construction is completed this summer, I’m certain you’ll enjoy the new spaces and  enhanced flow even more!

Adventures in Travel

By Kathy Kelsey Foley, director

I thoroughly enjoy travel – every aspect, even with today’s sometimes erratic airline schedules. I enjoy the planning, too – the attention to details as well as the responsibilities that go along with group travel.

And, it’s a good thing . . . because this week I’m exploring Seattle and environs with twenty-six Woodson Art Museum members.

A trip many months in the making, the robust – truly packed-full – itinerary is the result of research, initial question-asking, more poking around, and the best possible logistics partner.

The Woodson Art Museum has developed a dynamic travel program over the past dozen years and since the midway point we’ve worked with Academic Travel Abroad, based in Washington, D.C.

Thanks to ATA’s expertise and guidance, Woodson members have traveled to The Netherlands, Charleston and Savannah, Philadelphia, Tulsa and Bentonville, and Cuba.
Each trip has provided unparalleled experiences.

Seattle will raise the bar!

Seattle Art Museum

  From museum visits – Seattle Art Museum, Frye Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum and the Museum of Glass – to artists’ studio visits – Sueellen Ross, Ross Matteson, Bart Rulon, and Tony Angell – we’ll be kept more than busy. The culinary arts play a prominent role, too, with lunches at SAM’s TASTE, the Hotel Murano, and Salty’s, and dinners at Maximilien – Max’s to locals – Wild Ginger, and FIVE.

Museum of Glass

No trip to Seattle would be complete without a Chihuly encounter, and we’ll have that with a private, before-public-hours tour of the Chihuly Garden and Glass, followed by a trip to the Space Needle observation deck.

Chihuly Garden and Glass

Music is also part of the experience. We’ll sample the Seattle Symphony on Thursday evening, with a program that includes Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite.”

I know these six days will fly by and in the blink of an eye we’ll be traveling home. What fun it will be to hear the impressions of our travelers: what surprised them, how we did in meeting their expectations, and what did they enjoy most.

Of course, I’ll also want to know where they want to travel next. It’s never too soon to begin planning another Woodson Art Museum trip.

Have you considered joining a Woodson trip? Where would you like to go?

Artists' Voices in My Head

By Catie Anderson, curator of education

Woodson Art Museum staff is feeling the heat as we gear up for Friday’s opening of three exciting new exhibitions: Torqued & Twisted: Bentwood Today, Functional & Abstract: New Work by Jason Ramey, and Beguiled by the Wild: The Art of Charley Harper. While the galleries are busy being transformed from one exhibition to the next, the offices upstairs are high energy as well. Everyone has preparations to make before the galleries open and the new programming begins.



One of my duties is the development of the audio tour for the new exhibitions. Sometimes this means scripting an audio tour – selecting artworks and attempting to write engaging but succinct nuggets of interpretative copy. Other times, ideally, it means inviting artists to narrate their own artwork on view. Through email exchanges, phone calls, and many trips to Dropbox artists provide me with audio files of self-conducted interviews, created with the guidance of prompts like:

• Speak clearly and not too quickly

• It’s fine to ramble a bit – I will edit your audio files down to one or two minutes

• Please begin with “Hello, my name is _____ and I’m from . . .

• Act as though you are in the gallery, standing next to your work and you are introducing it to someone who has just approached it.

• Share tidbits of information: insights, anecdotes about creating the work, process, etc…

For many artists, recording themselves for an audio tour interview, which typically would be conducted in person by me or other Museum staff, is a new experience. Other artists are experienced with technology and giving audiences a behind-the-scenes look into their studios, tools, and techniques. No matter the experience level, the results are always worth the effort.

Writing about someone else’s artwork is “the norm” and can yield incredibly insightful and informative catalogue essays, articles, or in this case, sound bytes. Hearing directly from the creator, though, is my preference. Hearing the voice, personality, and story-telling abilities of an artist colors the viewing of their artwork. I love receiving the audio files and giving them a first listen. After reading about an artist and his or her work, especially works that I am drawn to most, I have some idea of what the artist will sound like or what their personality may be. It’s like meeting someone you’ve been emailing with for a long time or like picking up an artist-in-residence up at the airport after months of phone calls and exchanges.

Torqued & Twisted: Bentwood Today features the work of nine contemporary artists who use the process of bending wood to create a range of artwork – from abstract sculptures to stylish furniture pieces and everything in between. Five of the nine artists (so far) will share their stories and voices with visitors in the galleries via the audio tour. One of the exhibition’s curators, artist and UW-Madison Art Department Chair, Tom Loeser, will be filmed by curator of exhibitions Andy McGivern and me on Friday afternoon, just hours before the exhibition opening, for a “virtual gallery walk.” One of the many benefits to having an audio tour app available to visitors through iPod touches is video capabilities. Loeser’s popularity as an artist and prowess as a curator make him an ideal video addition to the audio tour.

Jason Ramey demos his steam box for Museum staff

Jason Ramey explores his Functional & Abstract gallery

Artist Jason Ramey also will lend his voice for an audio tour complementing his exhibition, Functional & Abstract. In addition to his assistance with in-gallery interpretation through the Museum’s audio tour, Ramey is offering opening weekend programs for the public, including a gallery walk through the bentwood exhibitions followed by a wood-bending demonstration with his steam box.

I can’t imagine my work at the Woodson Art Museum without “relying on the kindness of strangers” – a.k.a. artists – who graciously provide insights that welcome us into their worlds.

What would you like to learn from bentwood artists?