In conjunction with Labor Day weekend, the fourth annual Third Ward Art Festival presents the labors of more than 140 artists; 36 of the jury-selected artists hail from Wisconsin. The mediums vary widely, including ceramics, fiber and photography as well as furniture, printmaking and glass jewelry. Among the displaying artists are Madison jewelers John and Christine Strobel, who form such engaging shapes from gold, platinum and precious stones that the pieces would be comparably stunning in pedestrian materials. The glasswork of Third Ward-based artist Lisa Mote combines brilliant colors with striking shapes and hints at what the result could have been had Wassily Kandinsky been commissioned to create a stained-glass window. Many schlepped from far and wide and it gets lonely in those booths, so the artists are liable to be eager to chat.
The Third Ward Art Festival sets up shop in Downtown along Broadway between St. Paul and Menomonee streets on Sept. 5-6 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. each day. Both admission and street parking are free.
“Exquisite Corpse: Head-to-Toe & End-to-End”
The Hardy Gallery
3083 Anderson Lane, Ephraim
Inspired by Freud’s research on the unconscious, the Surrealists delighted in handing the reigns over to automaticity and chance. One such exercise was “Exquisite Corpse,” a collaborative art-making parlor game in which a separate artist draws the head, torso and legs of a body without knowing what her collaborators have drawn. For the exhibition, the Hardy Gallery commissioned local printmakers to create seven such exquisite corpses, each comprised of four individual print sections per figure, representing a total of 28 unique styles. The show opens Friday, Sept. 4 with a reception from 5:30-7 p.m. and runs through Oct. 13.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
“Art of the Relief Print”
Cedarburg Art Museum
W63 N675 Washington Ave., Cedarburg
Despite the name, making relief prints is anything but relieving; it takes precision and patience, after all, to painstakingly remove splinters from a wood block. The three Wisconsin artists in the Cedarburg Art Museum’s “Art of the Relief Print” demonstrate varied approaches to the process. With stunning detail and a caricaturist’s humor, Raymond Gloeckler often takes human folly as the subject of his prints; Linda Kelen interprets the deeply carved river valleys of the Midwest’s Driftless Area in her deeply carved, traditional, black-inked woodcuts and colorful white-line woodcuts; and S.V. Medaris’ portraits of farm animals often exceed life-size and fairly come to life with color. “Art of the Relief Print” features an artists’ reception from 7-9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12 and is displayed through Nov. 8.
