Driving home from an emergency trip to the grocery store (the thermostat was hungry for new batteries), I noticed a chalkboard sign at the intersection of Humboldt and Center St. advertising a short-lived exhibition-cum-sale of vintage art. A quick jerk of the wheel landed me outside 825 E. Center St (across from Fuel Café).
Inside the usually unoccupied space are three walls covered with striking and diverse artistic offerings by students and faculty of Milwaukee’s Layton School of Art from between the 1930s and 1960s. But as striking as the art is the man behind the happening - a welcoming, knowledgeable, loquacious, even manic local named Paul Fingers.
After Paul had fixed me up with a substantial slosh of fine whiskey, he set to work describing the art and his mission. This “champion of positive provinciality” calls no gallery home, preferring instead to “alight but never land” as he preserves and proffers “relics from the height of the Milwaukee empire.”
But listen friends, local historians, art lovers and holiday shoppers - this “floating exhibition” is pulling up roots on Sunday! If eclectic, high quality, highly historically interesting works of art priced between $35 and $95 strike your fancy, stop by 825 E. Center St. Friday, Saturday or Sunday between noon and 8:00 p.m.!
