On Saturday April 13, UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts will open the doors of Kenilworth Studios to the public. More than 100 faculty and student artists will welcome the public to the studios for performances, exhibitions, screenings and art-making.
While the main UWM campus is home to most undergraduate programming, the Kenilworth location is home to faculty and staff studios for art and design and film, including graduate student studios. The building also includes most of the university’s guitar program, performance spaces and work studios for theater and dance. “Kenilworth Open Studios (KOS) is a great way to showcase art-making and to bring back alumni to see work of their peers and students,” said Scott Emmons, dean of the Peck School of the Arts. With performances and examples of works in progress scattered throughout the building, KOS offers visitors a rare chance to peer behind the curtain and engage with artists.
Associate lecturer Owen Klatte brings real world experience to teaching with a résumé that includes animation work on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 1 and The Nightmare Before Christmas. “We’ll have two sets available for guests to try their hands at stop motion, which has always been popular. We’ll also have one or two people animating throughout the day, so guests who don’t want to do it themselves can watch someone else animate and get a feel for the process,” Klatte said. “Also on a big screen in the room, we’ll be running a loop of some of the best work done by students over the last couple of years to show the range of creative work they’ve done.”
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UWM’s Film, Video, Animation and New Genres program earned recognition as one of the Hollywood Reporter’s “Top 20 Film Programs in the World” and Variety’s “Best Film Schools” in both 2017 and 2018.
Master of fine arts student Angela Swan works in participatory art. A pair of vintage typewriters and rolodexes will archive what people are currently thinking about. “Typewriters naturally slow the pace of communication,” Swan said. “In the land of free speech, we don’t talk about the hard things. The piece opens up a space for us to encounter each other. Participants are asked to answer a question and then ask a question by typing their responses on rolodex cards. The rolodex of these cards becomes a collaborative artist book. Artist books are not books filled with images of art, but a piece of art in itself.”
A Rebirth for the Kenilworth Building
The six-floor Kenilworth building itself is also part of the story. Originally built as a Ford Motor Company factory, it utilized a vertical assembly line where cars were built starting on the top floor and moved along by an elevator. By the time they were on the ground floor, they were ready to roll. During World Wars I and II, the building was used as a munitions factory.
According to Emmons, the building eventually served as a car pool space for university-owned vehicles. “When I first came to the building to pick up timpani drums, I saw grad students and faculty had built plywood and cardboard studios throughout the building. There was an old Mercedes-Benz here that was owned by a faculty member which was used for film shoots. It was an amazing collection of stuff.”
The Kenilworth Building was extensively remodeled in 2006-’07 to what it is today. “This all started in Spring 2007 with ‘Passport for the Arts,’ which was connected to the ‘Grand Viennese Ball.’ In 2009, it turned into the open house and was re-branded as Kenilworth Open Studios, so this is the 10th year,” Emmons said.
Molly Hassler is the program manager for the Student Artist-in-Residence (SAIR) program, which embeds students in senior living centers, providing room and board in exchange for guiding art-making at the facility. “The SAIR program is designed to give students time and space to learn about their community and help both it and them to grow and change through art-making,” Hassle said. “SAIRs are paired with a retirement community where they live and work for an entire year. They work with the UWM Center for Community-based Learning, an on-site mentor and a SAIR class instructor to identify a goal for the year and then create a series of creative engagement workshops toward that goal.” At KOS, SAIRs will be screen printing posters and T-shirts with residents from the retirement communities.
Kim Cosier is professor of art education as well as the Peck School’s director of the Community Engagement Initiative—a grant-funded effort to support faculty and staff-led arts projects that are in partnership with community groups. According to Cosier, “the Brico Fund is our main funder this year. Our mission with the Community Engagement Initiative is to activate the main gallery space on the first floor of the building to become a laboratory for collaboration on projects that seek to make Milwaukee stronger and more just. At KOS, we will be hosting a community art build that was proposed by senior lecturer Nicolas Lampert in partnership with Voces de la Frontera.”
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Guests can join artists in tracing and painting banners and screen printing signs, patches and pennants in support of the work of Voces. “We anticipate hosting hundreds of volunteers over the entire weekend for this project in addition to folks who stop in as part of KOS,” she said.
Among the many reasons to attend, Professor Emeritus Dick Blau will screen his 730 Project, which has been documenting his neighborhood on Plankinton Avenue between Wisconsin Avenue and Wells Street since 2009.
