These are the works commissioned for the Milwaukee Bucks Art Collection for the new Fiserv Forum, Bucks arena curated by Sports And The Arts.
I am honored to be one of the 32 artists chosen to be a part of this collection.
THE STORY
I’ve recently been working on “Lighter Than MKE,” a series of lighter-than-air concepts featuring bits and pieces of Milwaukee brands, city and landscape, and architecture from vintage to modern day. I deconstruct these elements as well as machines and engines and reconstruct them into new yet familiar structures that appear as if they are floating or could function. Typically floating over maps or cityscapes of Milwaukee new and old allowing these pieces to transcend time and space.
Essentially that concept is what inspired my work for the Milwaukee Buck’s collection. I wanted to celebrate the rich industrious history in this city that made way for such things as this arena. I took the same deconstructed approach and applied it to the basketball court design. With a love for basketball myself, I’ve spent many hours on the basketball court, the majority of which are in the paint so it seemed an obvious choice to use that area of the court. With different physical layers that hint at the history under the court and gears and chains and mechanisms, frozen, as if these pieces are a snapshot of the court coming together. I have a fascination with machines and how things work and I want this work to look like they were evolving and constructing themselves at one point, that they could function at any moment with the turn of a key.
“From the Arc”
The left piece of the diptych is inspired by motorcycles (Harley-Davidson) and how huge that manufacturing has been to Milwaukee to this day. I have a shelf full of miscellaneous gears, pulleys, chains and just stuff when I started concepting for this project I quickly realized that I didn’t have enough stuff. Putting in a phone call to a team of pickers I’ve worked with in the past I was in Oshkosh, WI, shortly after crawling around in a barn and through several semi-trailers hunting for the perfect elements to set this artwork off. I hit the jackpot, little did I know that my picker friends were really into motorcycles and had some really fun and unique pieces for me. Although, he would only sell me certain things saying, “…I can’t let you waste that on art, I can resell sell that for good money.”
The right piece of the diptych is inspired by the big four breweries (Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, Blatz) of Milwaukee’s past that really put Milwaukee on the map. There’s an incredible number of industries that developed out of the brewing process and distribution of beer. Ice harvesting, various modes of transportation, and even banking to name a few. You’ll see the first 2nd National Saving Bank in the cityscape collages where they made the largest monetary transfer for the time. These collages were a lot of fun and making mistakes is sometimes the best way to learn a new technic. The multi-colored shellac finish on these was a happy accident. I didn’t realize that the thinned shellac was going to react with the polyacrylic I was using to glue the collage pieces down, causing the great aged look. With the theme of the piece revolving around beer, having friends that homebrew and/or own breweries themselves really helps keep a piece of art like this true to its intent. They helped me make sure that it wasn’t just visually appealing but also relatively accurate in terms of the way the mash ton kettle was represented.
DESIGN/BUILD
sketches
gathering found objects like gauges, chains, motorcycle parts etc.
sample frame for approval
CNC backer board for the other panels to fasten to
hand bend flat stock edge banding
reclaimed Wisconsin high school basketball court strip off the backing and shaped to fit in the design
applying finishes
so many rivets
