Photo courtesy the Grohmann Museum
Grohmann Museum's The Art of Industry
Grohmann Museum's “Patterns of Meaning: The Art of Industry by Cory Bonnet”
The great steel mills in places like Pittsburgh were considered the cathedrals of modernity by their builders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And like the towering structures that once dominated European skylines, America’s mills were vast representations of their society’s values—and were built to last.
Pittsburgh painter and preservationist Cory Bonnet points to the Carnegie mill in Braddock, PA, built in 1875 and still working today. “For the past 20 years industry has been viewed through a negative lens, which I think is a distorted view—just as viewing industry as entirely positive is a distortion,” Bonnet says. He’s expressing some thoughts behind the new exhibition at the Grohmann Museum, “Patterns of Meaning: The Art of Industry by Cory Bonnet.”
The exhibit is a group project based on pieces from Bonnet’s enormous collection of wooden casting patterns produced for the steel mills and other factories during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “Patterns of Meaning” brings together art together with industry in several ways. Bonnet’s large oil painting of a foundry worker ladling molten steel is mounted on the huge wooden cast from which such ladles were made. Other mammoth canvases by Bonnet hang from gallery walls, depicting Pittsburgh’s industrial colossus. Those mills are painted from a different perspective in Mia Tarducci’s contributions to “Patterns of Meaning.” She presents the mills’ interiors through abstract daubs of paint that catch the fierce heat and colors from molten steel and the light refracted on flecks of steel in the air.
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Photo courtesy of the Grohmann Museum
Grohmann Museum - The Art of Industry casting patterns
Casting patterns for steel
Sculptor Nate Lucas uses the wooden patterns gathered by Bonnet as the raw material for his art. He marvels at the precision handiwork by the anonymous industrial craftsmen of an earlier epoch. “Many of those guys were more skilled than today’s ‘master woodworkers,’” he says. Lucas hand-machines patterned repetitions onto some of the wooden casting patterns and paints linear designs on others, always respecting the integrity of the original objects. “We don’t want to ruin them,” he says. While admiring their craft, he embellishes them with his art. “You have to react to accidents in the creative process. An accident can make it more dynamic than it might have been,” he says. Accidents in art can be admirable; accidents in industry are often deadly.
In addition to painting and sculpture, “Patterns of Meaning” includes new objects (some with potential for mass production) produced from Bonnet’s cast patterns by Brian Engel (glass), AJ Collins (ceramics), Angela Neira (visual design) and Andrew Moschetta (light).
Photo courtesy the Grohmann Museum
Grohmann Museum's “Patterns of Meaning: The Art of Industry by Cory Bonnet”
Grohmann Museum's “Patterns of Meaning: The Art of Industry by Cory Bonnet”
Bonnet’s collection began when Pittsburgh’s Whemo Steel gave him the disused contents from one of their warehouses. Then came thousands of casting patterns from Youngstown Sheet & Tube, stored by a collector since the ‘70s. “He built a barn and packed them away, always hoping to exhibit them before he passed away,” says Bonnet. The casting patterns he hauled from that barn filled 10 26-foot box trucks and occupy much of Bonnet’s studio on the fifth floor of Pittsburgh’s Energy Innovation Center.
The handmade casting patterns, executed from hand drawn blueprints, made the machine age possible. And the steel that resulted is still being used in high-tech manufacturing, including solar energy and wind turbines. “My job is to mythologize this, to get young people to understand that the story isn’t finished,” Bonnet says. “If we could get a resurgence of the human spirit and intelligence that went into these things, we could solve the greatest problems.”
“Patterns of Meaning: The Art of Industry by Cory Bonnet” runs Jan. 19 through April 28 at the Grohmann Museum, 1000 N. Broadway. The exhibit opens with a gallery talk, 6:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 19.
Event Listings
January 21– January 27, 2024
Milwaukee Art Museum
Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
Sunday January 21, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Film Screening: Martha Liebermann: A Stolen Life
Sunday, January 21, 12:30–3 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Drop-In Tours: Architecture and Collection Highlights
Sunday, January 21, 2–3 p.m.
Schlitz Audubon Center
Art Club
Sunday, January 21, 2–3:30 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Curator Conversation and Reception: “Art, Life, Legacy”
Wednesday, January 24, 5:30–8 p.m.
Villa Terrace Decorative Art Museum
Guided Tour of the Villa
Thursday, January 25, 3–4 p.m.
MIAD Gallery at the Ave
Closing Reception: “Punks, Geeks, and Lovers, a MIAD Zine Exhibition”
Thursday, January 25, 5–8 p.m.
MIAD Brooks Stevens Gallery
Opening Reception: Old Type, New Ways: Work from the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum
Thursday, January 25, 5–8 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
Saturday, January 27, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Story Time in the Galleries
Saturday, January 27, 10:30–11 a.m.
Hawthorn Contemporary
Artist Talk: Diane Christiansen and Jessie Mott
Saturday, January 27, 1–2 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Gallery Talk: “Art, Life, Legacy”
Saturday, January 27, 1–2 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Drop-In Tours: Architecture and Collection Highlights
Saturday, January 27, 2–3 p.m.
Union Art Gallery at UWM
Opening Reception: “Seeing the Unseen: Reflections on Patriarchy”
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Saturday, January 26, 5–8 p.m.
House of Rad
hRAD grillin' & chillin'
Saturday, January 26th 5:30–9 p.m.
Union Art Gallery at UWM
Artist Talks: “Seeing the Unseen: Reflections on Patriarchy”
Saturday, January 26, 6:00 p.m.
Saint Kate, the Arts Hotel
AIR Time, Art & Studio Tour with AIR Anwar Floyd-Pruitt
Saturday, January 27, 6:30 p.m.
Charles Allis Art Museum
Music in the Mansion: Hip Hop Art and Sip
Saturday, January 27, 7–10 p.m.
