Homely (Part Two)

The second part of a summer-long project opens Saturday, July 28 from 2 to 5 p.m. with cold beer, wine and snacks as well as a walk-through by Erin Richards and Angela Peterson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Homely (Part Two), July 28 to September 1, presents a series of photographs by photojournalist Angela Peterson of the Journal Sentinel taken for writer Erin Richards’ upcoming series of articles on student turnover in schools and academic performance. Peterson and Richards spent a full year following two Milwaukee families headed by single mothers who struggled to find housing and keep their children in the same schools. Peterson's photos provide an intimate portrait of these families as the eldest sons moved through their senior years toward graduation.

Angela Peterson has been a photo editor and photographer for the Journal Sentinel since 2003. Before coming to Milwaukee, she worked at the Orlando Sentinel as a photographer and photo editor with an emphasis on minority visual reporting. Currently, she's also working on the Journal Sentinel's 50-Year Ache project, a series of stories, visuals and multimedia pieces examining how far Milwaukee has come since the open housing marches in 1967.

Erin Richards has written about education for more than a decade at the Journal Sentinel. After reading Matthew Desmond's book, "Evicted," Erin sought to investigate the link between student turnover in schools and academic success in Wisconsin and specifically Milwaukee, a city where many families hop between different publicly funded school options. The Journal Sentinel series was done in connection with Marquette University's O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism, a program in the Diederich College of Communication. The first installment of the series will be published in the fall.

A second component of Homely (Part Two) presents photographer Lois Bielefeld’s photo series Weeknight Dinners, a project where she traveled around the country photographing people at their dinner tables. Bielefeld crossed geographical, economic, age and race divides as she looked at this shared nightly ritual enacted in innumerable configurations of what might constitute ‘family’. Her work will be presented with grocery store checkout clerk James Hagner’s collection of handwritten shopping lists.