Photo Courtesy of MOWA
Accessibility and contemporary art are terms rarely uttered in the same sentence anymore. It’s a shame, but many approach contemporary museum shows in 2019 like they would a plate of vegetables offering sustenance rather than satisfaction. However, an ambitious exhibition titled “Handmade for Home: The Craft of Contemporary Design” at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) through May 19 offers both in an extraordinary display of handmade objects from artisanal shower curtains to flatware.
A home is a very different thing than a house, defined not by its physical characteristics but by how it spins inanimate living material into the gold of personal place and history. One lives inside a house; one inhabits a home. This material-immaterial schism raises the bar for the curators of “Handmade for Home,” who bring a diverse bag of works by 29 artists into a single location, betting that the show’s experiential whole would exceed the sum of its physical parts. Graeme Reid and Laurie Winters have done their curatorial homework, creating niches, platforms, vignettes and subtle thematic arrangements that bathe the show in a unifying atmosphere of domesticity.
One of the most satisfying arrangements in the exhibition unfolds appropriately in front of a fireplace at the east end of the Hyde Gallery. In front of a wall of gray and green vegetal-patterned wallpaper lies a handmade rug of interconnected felt lake stones by Emily Graf and a sinuous, wrought iron fireplace screen by Michael Route. You can almost feel the heat and hear the crackle. The elements evoke a warm and cozy den-like setting that also showcases several extraordinary examples of handmade furniture. The pieces of furniture are thematically organized by their aim to modify and embellish existing forms.
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Reid Eric Anderson’s Torus Chair parodies the sleek linearity of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Barrel Chair, pinching his version so the risers are bent into a horizontal ring of exquisitely crafted semi-circles. It’s cheeky, clever and still strikingly handsome. Maggie Jo Sanderson offers a skewed contemporary take on the traditional mid-century school desk. Her wonderful interpretation of the old standard is designed for today’s electrified students, with spaces for cords and digital devices. In the absence of the technology for which it’s designed, one sees only a deceptively spare object that somehow merges 19th-century utility, mid-century modularity and contemporary ergonomics in a splendid piece of handmade walnut furniture. Would it be impertinent to hope that a MacBook Pro never graces its surface?
The aforementioned wallpaper—designed by the studio of Michael and Elizabeth Rees and produced under the studio name “Chasing Paper”—does a lot of the subtlest and yet most significant work in “Handmade for Home.” Their contribution is by nature in the background; because it is the background. And kind of like a good party planner, the less one notices their contribution, the better they’re doing. Chasing Paper’s gunmetal blue wallpaper provides an alluring backdrop for a table and chairs from La Lune, the furniture studio of Cathy and Mario Costantini that combines finished elegance and kitschy woodsiness in a truly Wisconsin kind of way. The table and four chairs at MOWA feature supporting sections of raw willow along with finished poplar and upholstery. The setup on its shapely raised platform against the patterned backdrop might compel a group to grab a seat and make a night of their day at the museum.
We rarely have the opportunity to view something in a museum as mundane as bathroom accessories. Milwaukeeans Reggie Baylor and Kelly Frederick Mizer contribute, among other things, hand-designed shower curtains. The normally intimate waterproof screens have never been so exposed as they are in the long corridor gallery along the west windows. The contextual disruption sheds light on them as designed objects, where one might not otherwise notice.
Baylor’s are especially compelling because of how he merges charged personal subject matter, decorative pattern and the functional object. Known to many as a painter of canvases, he employs images of watermelons and basketballs in these designs with a cartoon-like graphic style. Mizer’s patterned curtains are derived from her own drawings of animals and abstract shapes and are equally unexpected as content for patterned shower curtains.
There are, finally, just too many wonderful touches and fine original works in this show to mention here, including John Holzwart’s brooms, Brandon and Dave Jacoby’s inlaid pool cues and Dona Look’s baskets. What must be mentioned, though, is how this show captures a very particular love of craft, labor, detail and appreciation for natural material as it intersects with domestic purpose and function. This productive ethic went into the cabins and crude houses built by settlers in Wisconsin centuries ago and laid the foundations for all its future residences. “Handmade for Home” represents that history through the rich tradition of handmade objects that transformed so many of those Wisconsin houses into Wisconsin homes.
