Sculptor Siara Berry at Haggerty Museum of Art

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Sculptor Siara Berry is one of five artists selected to receive the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists in 2023. She was selected as one of the three emerging artists represented in the fellowship cohort, whose practice has elevated the Milwaukee arts community and contributed to the growing movement to retain and attract artists to the city. The exhibition of work from all the 2023 Nohl Fund fellows is on display at the Haggerty Museum of Art until August 4, 2024. I met with Berry on a recent afternoon to discuss her current body of work, where her practice is headed, and what receiving this support means to her.

Can you talk a little about your artistic practice up until this point in your career?

My practice has always been concerned with investigating dynamics in domestic life, whether that be within the home or outside the home. I’m interested in the interpersonal relationships that we have with each other, our neighbors, with the objects in our houses, and how these dynamics shape our understanding of space, functionality, place, and community. In the last three to four years, I’ve been really cognizant of the front lawn as a performative space—as a space that is activated with signs of value and belief and care and neglect. Lawn and window signs that are meant to face the public are also indicative of what is happening inside the home. 

This body of work deals a lot with privacy, boundaries, and warnings in a way that you present as both hostile and fearful ways to engage. How does the concept and practice of individual and community surveillance make its way into your work?

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The front lawn is a unique space in that it is the most public extension of your private home, so it can inspire conflicting feelings of privacy and the need to signal your values. There is a desire to be welcoming and open, but also to protect the space and discourage intrusion. Anytime you drive through a neighborhood, you form perceptions about who lives there based on the surroundings and types of signs and signals outside those homes. With this body of work, I’m playing with the nuances between feeling safe, wanting security, and participating in neighborhood values. There are themes in this work about perception and the idea of being watched, of watching others, participating in an exchange of the gaze. All those subtle nods and interactions occur through signage and objects that create a narrative. 

I’ve recently become hyperaware of signage now that I own my own place. The amount of signage and cameras in other people’s homes has made me more aware of the passings and goings around the neighborhood. I’m so struck by stories of people getting killed for cutting through yards, or similar transgressions that would be meaningless without the emphasis Americans place on property and on what they perceive of as a disregard for their values. It’s such disturbing behavior. All of these conflicting messages and signs, like welcome mats and Blue Lives Matter flags and Beware of Dog signs make it hard to know how to behave around homes. It becomes a balance between figuring out where you are accepted and where you are in danger. 

What are you noticing about the social or cultural moment that you see reflected in your sculptures?

After the pandemic, and now that we’re in an election year, everyone seems to have become hyper aware of each other and hyper focused on their own lives in a way that feels defensive and counterproductive to community building. Another major theme in this work is how we have become so controlling over nature. I think this was emphasized after COVID-19, when we became accustomed to controlling our own movements and interactions, this bled over even more to controlling our environments and spaces. For example, the lawn is not a natural space. We see signs in lawns that co-opt animal behavior, that warn the whomever approaches of a dog, or like the owls, which are intended to control smaller creatures and invasive birds. We have a strong desire to make the natural into something that we can control. I see this impulse as a stand-in for human behavior, which we unconsciously wish we could control to suit our values and needs. Since we can’t do that, we use our homes and lawns to signal our control over the natural world, which lends to our sense of safety and security.

You use a lot of familiar materials, like sod and turf, stained glass and wall studs, but in a way that elevates the materials to new heights. This creates a really interesting balance between high and low. When did you become interested in exploring that tension?

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This material investigation started when I was working on the exhibition for the Charles Allis Museum in 2023. The grass and the dirt pieces are cheeky interpretations of boundaries and ownership. These boundaries mean something to somebody, but not to everybody, yet everybody is expected to honor these imaginary lines. I like to think about extracting the earth, like a core sample, and moving boundaries around to shift the imaginary lines we rely on to coexist. It’s important for me to use materials and forms that feel familiar, but that introduce a level of discomfort, or suggest that the material I am bringing into the work is somehow not of this reality. With the stained glass in particular, I’m thinking about how these materials have been engrained so deeply into the architecture of the American suburbs. I’m thinking about what would happen if we built our signs and warnings within the home, incorporated them into the architecture for all to see. I want to explore this as a means to elevate the absurdity of our signs and boundaries.

How have the particular architectures and sensibilities of the Midwest influenced your execution? 

I am working from a place way back in childhood. Growing up, our neighborhood was doing the dinner parties and other formal events, but there was often conflict and misbehavior, mischief and deceit. These subversive behaviors conflicted with the suburban romanticization of family life and community participation. 

The Midwest is such an interesting space. It’s not your stereotypical Americana. The landscape and seasonality play a part in our culture. This work would feel very different if I were to work from Arizona or the Pacific Northwest, with all the different architectural considerations of those regions, the foliage, the landscaping. The front lawn is the prototypical identity of American domestic life, which you can find in abundance in the Midwest. But the irony is that none of it is natural. The way we understand grass is so far off from what it naturally is. 

What is it now?

Well, it’s not a native plant, but it’s ubiquitous. It is also a sign of ability, health, wealth, and prosperity. In places like the American south, where grass doesn’t grow and front lawns do not exist in the same manner as they do here, the lack of grass contributes to the perception that people there are not as stable. But the lawn as we know it would never naturally survive in so many places. There are all these ways of interpreting regions based on how we have set the status quo of domestic landscapes. I think the Midwest encapsulates and perpetuates those standards in many ways that are quite visible. 

How will the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists support the next phase of your practice?

As a sculptor in particular, I’m so grateful. Sculpture requires time and materials in way that is different from other disciplines. This unrestricted time and funding allowa me to push myself, scale wise and process wise. It’s a gift you cannot quantify. This body of work and this exhibition in particular feels really cohesive and feels like a direction I will pursue more going forward. 

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists in 2023 exhibition at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University (1234 W. Tory Hill St.) will be on display until August 4, 2024. 

Event Listings

June 30–July 6, 2024

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Sunday, June 30, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

VAR Gallery and Studios

Summer Art Sale Event

Sunday, June 30, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.  

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Tours: Architecture and Collection Highlights

June 30, 2–3: p.m.

Lynden Sculpture Garden

Tuesday in the Garden with Parents and Very Small Children

Tuesday, July 2, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA)

Art+Wellness | Igniting the Spark of Joy

Wednesday, July 3, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Racine Art Museum

First Friday at RAM

Friday, July 5, 10 a.m.–8: p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Saturday, July 6, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Story Time in the Galleries

Saturday, July 6, 10:30–11 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Tours: American Art

Saturday, July 6, 2–3 p.m.

Pfister Hotel

Champagne Art and Studio Tour with AIR Heidi Parkes

Saturday, July 6, 4–5 p.m.  

Saint Kate, the Arts Hotel

AIR Time, Art & Studio Tour with Anwar Floyd-Pruitt

Saturday, July 6, 6:30 p.m.