Journeys, Landscapes and Bob Dylan at Museum of Wisconsin Art

×

Expand

Skye's "Shakespeare's in the Alley: A Tribute to Bob Dylan"

Skye’s “Shakespeare’s in the Alley: A Tribute to Bob Dylan," Shane McAdams’ “The Accidental Landscape" and Charles Thwaites’ “An American Journey" are currently on exhibit at the Museum of Wisconsin Art. They are three on a journey of discovery. Though separated by generations, they are linked by adventure.

Begin your trek in the museum’s light-filled atrium. Stroll among grey banners fallen from heaven or are they levitating? Designed by Skye and stenciled with the lyrics of Bob Dylan, these “silent songs" ring raw in this season of political chaos as “The Times They Are A-Changin.’"

Adjacent to the atrium, in the State Gallery, are the wild works of McAdams, who graduated with an Master of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute and currently teaches art at Marian University in Fond du Lac. Experimental in nature, they explore the edge where reality meets fantasy, and I couldn’t help but think of the crazed, psychedelic final scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey . He spent his early years traveling with his “hippie" parents (his words, not mine), and at age 44 seems to be energetically seeking the exciting edge of things where the lightning strikes.

On floor two, the Hyde Gallery hosts the many works of Thwaites, who, throughout his lengthy career, used his time wisely. As a keen observer of the human condition, he preferred to move forward, absorbing along his multiple routes, those styles and quirks of his fellow artists. That is certainly not to say he was a copycat. Ranging from lovely studies of flesh and bones to rural landscapes to tasseled corn and beyond, Thwaites didn’t get stuck in a rut. His life eventually took him from Wisconsin to New Mexico, and in making the move, he settled primarily on a fascination with black-and-white abstractions. His days as a student of engineering at UW-Madison (he left to pursue art) come full circle in the abstractions, perhaps because his was the mind of a very precise mathematician. The Museum’s Curator of Collections, Graeme Reid, calls the late works “distillations."

Skye’s “Shakespeare in the Alley: A Tribute to Bob Dylan" runs through March 5; and Shane McAdams’ “The Accidental Landscape" and Charles Thwaites’ “An American Journey" through March 12 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend.