The Greater Milwaukee Foundation Mary Nohl Fund for Individual Artists 2022 Exhibition

×

Expand

Image: Haggerty Museum of Art

Mary Nohl Fund for Individual Artists 2022

The Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists have been supporting individuals in the Greater Milwaukee area since 2003, offering local practitioners grants as well as an exhibition that showcases their work for a national audience. The most recent crop of Mary L. Nohl Fellows was announced in January, and the accompanying exhibition featuring two established and three emerging artists from the Greater Milwaukee community opened last week, and we finally got to see what we’ve been waiting for. The exhibit runs through Aug. 6.

From the outset, the work impressively fills the cavernous galleries in the Haggerty Museum. Established artists Jason Yi and Valeria Tatera do much of the heavy lifting. Fallout, Yi’s ambitious installation of white plaster casts of logs anchors the interior. The timbers were inspired by a visit to Japan’s Osaka castle, and what appeared to be wood railings that turned out to be concrete facsimiles. The barrier between the natural and the artificial reminded him of the arbitrariness of barriers in general, and the demilitarized zone in his native Korea in particular. But words and narratives fail to capture the emotional resonance of the work, rather, the ideas are communicated metaphorically, in the ghostly ambiguity of the forms, arrangements and presence of the work.

Tatera’s two pieces, Blood Memory and Healing, elegantly frame the interior space around Yi’s dreamy sculpture. Though each work alludes to a history of minimalist, formal object making—namely Donald Judd and Fred Sanback respectively—they add a layer of the personal that removes them from that distant utopian history. Blood Memory, despite its precise arrangement of seven red, vertical, reflective Plexiglas boxes, speaks to the flesh and blood of its maker, an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Likewise, her ceiling-to-floor array of crimson threads carves the space like minimalist architecture but is itself broken up by rolled tin jingles made from tobacco tin tops that recalls Native American prayer dances.

Sprawling Diversity

Flanking the dramatic arrangement of significant objects in the central gallery is work by the developing contingent. The contributions of JW Balsley, Inna Dmitrieva and Molly Hassler reflect the sprawling diversity of the contemporary art landscape. One might safely assume that diversity—formal, conceptual, cultural, personal and otherwise—was an integral portion of the criteria for the three-member jury team of Jade Powers, Victoria Sung and Toccarra A. H. Thomas. Even so, the range of perspectives at the Haggerty on the idea of art is exceptional. Balsley’s work is born from the world of underground comics, illustration and character design. A vitrine features open examples of his zines and comics, above which are framed examples of individual character drawings. Whether such interests have a place in the world of so-called “high-art” have raged for decades, and it seems that point-of-view and intent have finally won the day over petty classifications and class distinctions.

Still, such variability in media and morphology tend to add to the subjectivity of an already subjective set of practices. Balsey’s work is almost impossible to compare in any meaningful way to the work of the other two emerging artists. Hassler’s production revolves around issues of objecthood, relational esthetics, social practice, queer theory and Milwaukee’s storied tavern culture. Her She was a Public House features a functioning homemade bar that was heavily used at the opening. Generous, thoughtful and interactive, her work mixes the personal and the social across four-dimensions.

Dmitrieva’s work veers even further into hard reality with a video installation titled Voices Behind Silence featuring accounts of the war in Ukraine, and now her native Russia. The accounts are by turns touching and horrifying. The cold truth is partially interrupted by an extraordinary video called Language Familythat centers around the communicative slippages between generations. It’s a sobering counterpoint to the playful characters that reside just on the other side of the wall.

It’s almost impossible to imagine how one approaches the task of selecting five individuals across various art practices in 2022, in a town with such divergent sensibilities. Especially in an expanded art world situated inside a civilization that’s looking more and more like a funhouse each day. Plaudits to the curators that took on the task. Along with the curatorial staff at the Haggerty, they managed to put together a survey exhibition that offers a peek into the kaleidoscopically fractured range of visions, forms and materials inspiring today’s artists … without losing their way or making us dizzy.

Openings June 11–June 17

Lynden Sculpture Garden

• Birding with Chuck Stebelton 
• Sunday, June 11, 8:30-10 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-in Art Making
• In Person
• Sunday, June 11, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-in Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• In Person
• Sunday, June 11, 2-3 p.m.

VAR Gallery

• Screening of Triangulation and Artist Talk with Jill Sebastian and Debra Loewen
• RSVP on website (vargallery.com)
• Sunday, June 11, 3-5 p.m.

Lynden Sculpture Garden

• Home 2023: Stories as We Move 
• Virtual
• Tuesday, June 13, 2–3 p.m.

Racine Art Museum and Mahogany Gallery 

• Opening Reception of Futures Reimagined: RAM Community Art Show
• Wednesday, June 14, 6–8 p.m.

Scout Gallery

• “Ode to the Apple” Exhibition Viewing Party at Cache Cider 
• Thursday, June 15, 5–8 p.m.

Warehouse Art Museum

• Bruce and John: Talk Dirt and Reveal Inside Secrets
• Thursday, June 15, 4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Lakefront Festival of Art: VIP Member First Look
• Friday, June 16, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.

Racine Art Museum (at the Wustum)

• Kids Day: Time Capsules!
• Friday, June 16, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Lynden Sculpture Garden

• Daniel Minter: In the Healing Language of Trees (Unveiling)
• Saturday, June 17
• 10:30 am-12:30 pm: Workshops
• 2 pm: Procession and Installation

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-in Art Making
• In Person
• Saturday, June 17, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Lakefront Festival of Art
• In Person
• Entry fee required

Saturday, June 17, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Story Time in the Galleries
• In Person
• Saturday, June 17, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tours: Friends of Art: Highlights from the Collection
• Saturday, June 17, 2–3 p.m.

Museum of Wisconsin Art

• Collection Highlights Tour
• Saturday, June 17, 10–11 a.m.

Museum of Wisconsin Art

• Ten Talks: Michelle Grabner
• Saturday, June 17, 11 a.m.

Museum of Wisconsin Art

• Collection Highlights Tour
• Saturday, June 17, 10–11 a.m.