English Poet Tom Pickard & Artist Steve Wellman Travel To Milwaukee @ Events April 14, 15, 16.

VIP EVENTS FOR SPRING GALLERY WEEKEND

Woodland Pattern Book Center brings an acclaimed artist to Milwaukee this Thursday evening, April 14. English author, film maker, lyricist, photographer, poet and political activist Tom Pickard comes to the Locust Street art center for the opening of his photography exhibition: “The Photography of Tom Pickard & Chuck Stebelton.” While the reception begins on April 14 at 6:00 p.m., Tom Pickard offers readings from his vast poetry collection or his recently published More Pricks Than Prizes, based on his memoir, at 7:00 p.m.

Pickard (b: 1946) developed his career through his important initiation and involvement with the British Poetry Revival. During the early 1970's he moved to London where  his documentary films and a television series with the BBC brought him recognition in this media, including the production of his play titled Squire. Throughout his distinguished and long career, Pickard wrote eight poetry books, the latest the Ballad of Jaime Allan, a finalist for a recent National Book Circle Award. While banned from certain poetry festivals and places throughout England, Pickard now lives in the North Pennine Hills near a Scottish border. Be sure to attend this once in a lifetime event, visit Pickard's photography exhibition through May 31, or attend the performance An Evening of Sound Poetry Voicing Through Saussure: Jacques Demierre and Vincent Barras on Sunday, April 17, at 7:00 p.m. for a small entrance fee.

In the Kunzelmann Esser Lofts Gallery on Historic Mitchell Street, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Art History and Museum Studies graduate student Susan Barnett invites artist Steve Wellman for the Gallery Night and Day closing reception for her master thesis “Layers and Sediment: Steve Wellman Retrospective.” The exhibition covers the relative outsider artist, Wellman, who moved from the vibrant metropolitan Houston area to the retiring, rural Butte, Montana in 1990. Barnett’s retrospective on Wellman features his work from 1990-2010 in an attempt to critique and categorize his art through the contemporary art history, and on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon Wellman visits the exhibition. 

Over 100 artworks by Wellman appear in the galleries%u23AFthe lobby, second floor hall, and extensive, high ceiling gallery space outlined by apartments, also on the second floor accessible by an elevator. The open spaces offer a bright, clean expanse to view the variety to Wellman’s work, and the “layers and sediments’ from the Butte landscape that he incorporates into his processes including assemblage collage, found object sculpture, grinding compact disks, and reverse glass painting.

This seemingly eclectic art mixture uncovers a central theme through Butte’s history, a mining town gone bust and left with the toxic debris and remnants from the area’s previous profitability. Over 97 percent of Wellman’s art incorporates recyclable materials that rearticulates his low relief sculpture. Barnett’s retrospective title aptly defines Wellman’s prolific work that borrows from the Dada, Modernist, and Surrealist canon of Duchamp, Kandinsky, Mondrian and Rauschenberg. He reclaims detritus, refuses and throw-aways, sediment from Butte’s mining culture and industry, transforming these objects into unique, seminal artworks.

Wellman’s Toys for Toughs, apparent wordplay from the annual holiday campaign “Toys for Tots,” creates motorized or moving art that resembles bewildering sculptures that faintly give a nod to playthings made as or from tools. The ‘tough’ engenders their slightly twisted and malevolent attitude often accompanied by a remote control, uncertain to their intended purpose.  Exhibitied on pedestals in the main gallery, or atop the gallery walls themselves, Barnett invites the visitors to try their hand at controlling them.

The exhibition provides a worthy stop on Gallery Night and Day for the closing reception when Wellman will be there to answer any questions regarding his art. Barnett, who moved to Milwaukee from Butte to complete her graduate degree, chatted about Wellman’s retrospective, a familiar artist from when she owned an art gallery in Butte. 

How did you become acquainted with Steve Wellman?

I owned an art gallery I named Friend Galerie and had an annual show of his work. I collect his art and really wanted to put on a retrospective of his work all these years. The exhibition spans quite a bit of time, and upstairs [on the second level] is his work from the last two years.

What in Wellman’s work embodies the Butte history?

Butte speaks to postindustrial decay. A booming mining town that in the late 1930’s became economically depressed and an ecological disaster from the effects of copper strip mining and smelting. Butte used to be the biggest city west of Denver and was connected to Milwaukee by the Milwaukee Road in the late 19th century. I think Wellman’s work encompasses the unintentional grace of this time, and he layers his pictures and pours over them with resin to contain time and these found materials. When Steve turned 50, he tore up a fence and used this in one of his series, layering them with modernist imagery. The art reflects modernism using artifacts and relics.

What else do you think influenced Wellman’s career?

He graduated from the University of Houston with a BFA in Fine Arts and is mainly self-taught. After moving to Butte he worked primarily in isolation and recycling these objects he found scattered around him. I think there’s a specific statement here that reflects on postindustrial culture. Robert Frank called Butte “a microcosm of America, mine ‘em and abandon them [or use the for personal gain and profit and then throw it all away].” Yet, Butte has the pristine mountains and crystalline light surrounding the abandoned strip mines filled with toxic wastes. This creates a duality, a juxtaposition of memory. It’s interesting to bring him to Milwaukee. I love his work, and love to see it all together, and bring his work to a new audience.