
Photo Courtesy of Museum of Wisconsin Art
Adolph Rosenblatt, Michael Lord, 2000
Fans of art and those who go gallery hopping sometimes find their likenesses reflected in various artists’ work. It’s not their literal image, of course, so much as it is the reflection of the viewers’ ideas and personality captured in the gleam of an eye or physical posturing of the work’s subject. When this happens, the viewers generally become more engaged and appreciative of the art.
In My Balcony, a complex clay sculpture by the late Milwaukee artist and educator Adolph Rosenblatt, that reality operates a little differently. Designed to represent a full house of patrons in the balcony of Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre, the 81 figures depict actual friends, neighbors and family members of the artist, who prior to his death in 2017 spent 50-plus years living and working on the city’s East Side.
My Balcony is the cornerstone of “Impressions in Clay: The Sculpted World of Adolph Rosenblatt,” a 10-piece exhibit that opened January 29 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. It’s also a fitting tribute to a man of the people who created art that reflected his community, says Thomas Szolwinski, MOWA’s Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, who curated this exhibit.
“He was a unique character full of life, and he left impressions on the people around him,” says Szolwinski, who at one time worked for the former Shorewood resident. “He was an art educator for 33 years at UWM as well as being a vibrant part of the East Side scene.”
Hand-modeled Sculpture
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Born in New Haven, Conn., and a graduate of the Yale School of Art and Architecture, Rosenblatt started out as a painter whose work was Impressionistic in nature. After moving to Milwaukee for the UWM position in 1966, he began to migrate into clay courtesy of his children, who introduced him to Play-Doh and other forms of modeling clay. Rosenblatt hand-modeled all his sculptures including My Balcony, a method Szolwinski says is unusual when it comes figure sculpting.
The word “impressions” was carefully chosen for the exhibit, the curator explains, because of its broad reach in all aspects of Rosenblatt’s work. His paintings, and later his sculpture, were done in an abstract-impressionistic style, and it was the impressions he made into the clay that informed his art. But, Szolwinski adds, it was the impressions Rosenblatt made on the people he knew and crossed paths with every day that cemented the sculptor’s place in the Milwaukee art community.
“He lived a real artist’s life,” Szolwinski remembers of Rosenblatt, who lived in Shorewood. “He took the bus, he walked the East Side and went to the same diner for lunch every day. He had vibrant energy and sometimes seemed bombastic. But he was also very observant, all of which contributed to both his life and his art.
“He was a great character, and at the time I didn’t realize how important it was to know him,” the curator adds. “I am very happy to have had that opportunity.”
Impressions in Clay: The Sculpted World of Adolph Rosenblatt runs through April 13 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend. For more information visit wisconsinart.org.