At least since Homer’s Iliad, art and military exploits have not been strangers. Box office receipts confirm that the public has yet to tire of the theme. While the sorrow, the pity, the naked and the dead of military conflicts are often immortalized in movies and monuments, it is rare to be shown the individual veteran’s point of view.
In “Service Records: Documenting the Veteran Experience Through Art,” eight men and women turn to art to reflect upon their life in uniform. For some, art is a form of therapy. For others, it is a means of self-expression. Whatever the artist’s intent, these photographs, ceramics, prints and other works are a rare opportunity to get personal insight into the veterans’ experience.
“Service Records: Documenting the Veteran Experience Through Art” opens at the UW-Milwaukee Union Art Gallery with a reception on Friday, Nov. 13 from 5-8 p.m. During the reception, anthropologist Katinka Hooyer will perform a participatory theater piece that aspires to allow audience members to see through the eyes of military personnel on active duty. Tracings of Trauma is informed by Hooyer’s extensive fieldwork with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jewelry at the Domes Gift Show
Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory
524 S. Layton Blvd.
From a bird’s eye point of view, the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory—better known as “The Domes”—must appear like jewels decorating the city of Milwaukee. On Saturday, Nov. 14, from 9 a.m.- 4 p.m., The Domes themselves will house handcrafted jewelry by 30 artists. The pieces for sale utilize bead weaving, bead embroidery, bead braiding, wirework and metalwork. Jewelry at The Domes has been organized by the Loose Bead Society of Greater Milwaukee, a fellowship of bead-obsessed kindred spirits. General admission to Jewelry at The Domes and The Domes themselves is $7.
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‘Festive Wisconsin’
Cedarburg Art Museum
W63 N675 Washington Ave., Cedarburg
Wisconsin is home to hundreds of festivals. Milwaukee alone plays host to Summerfest, the Milwaukee Film Festival and a summer spate of ethnic festivals. The Cedarburg Art Museum’s “Festive Wisconsin” is a statewide, juried exhibition of 65 artworks united in their celebration of Wisconsin festival culture. The artists capture the proletarian pageantry of county fairs, the Dionysian abandon of outdoor music festivals and other celebratory atmospheres in both traditional (watercolor and oil painting, charcoal drawing, pastels and photography) and uncommon artistic mediums (scenography, encaustic collage, punch needle embroidery and basketry). The opening reception for “Festive Wisconsin” takes place from 2-5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14.
