Maggie Sasso appreciates the artistic potential of concepts, questions and hypotheses. This eagerness to engage viewers’ minds as much as their senses is evident in her past work. For example, Sasso’s “Vacuum Cleaner” from 2009 proposes that a “vacuum cleaner is not designed to get ‘rid’ of [dirt, hair, dust and other detritus], but rather to create an object of it.” She proves her thesis by dissecting a glutted vacuum bag and exhibiting the dust bunnies within.
But it is the languages and equipment of the life aquatic that are Sasso’s primary subject matter. In “Haul Away Home,” at Gallery 2622 from April 3-30, Sasso continues her celebration of the relics of maritime culture with hand-sewn replicas of life preservers, oars, buoys, signal flares and other seafaring staples. For all their beauty, out on the waves these “oars” would be of as much use as a paintbrush. Perhaps a preliminary interpretation of “Haul Away Home” is as an impishly self-critical statement about the practical uselessness of art in matters of life and death. It would certainly be in keeping with the subversive daring of a conceptual artist.
“First Year Experience: Collaboration”
Union Art Gallery
2200 E. Kenwood Blvd., Room W199
“No man is an island,” mused 17th-century metaphysical poet John Donne. No artist creates in isolation either. The collaborative essence of the creative process is writ large in a new exhibition at UW-Milwaukee’s Union Art Gallery. The raw talent of first-year students and the maturity of vision of established faculty prove a potent artistic combination, as well as a valuable exercise in diplomacy and compromise. This short-lived show is on display from April 3-10, with a closing reception on Friday, April 10, from 5-8 p.m.
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“What’s Happening” in Theater at Kenilworth Open Studios
Kenilworth Square East
1925 E. Kenilworth Place
In Shakespeare’s time, the division between actors and audience was not so strict as these days. Heckling was an accepted occupational hazard of the theater, which must have been no less vexatious than the smell emanating from “the groundlings” who stood shoulder to shoulder crammed toward the front of the stage. Interacting with the characters of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost will never be so appropriate and fragrant as at the Kenilworth Open Studios event, Saturday, April 18. UW-Milwaukee Department of Theatre students will greet the public in costume and character at this family friendly event. With six floors and more than 100 artists, there will be much more to keep visitors busy from 11 a.m.-2 p.m.
