Creative MKE

This episode of the pod kicks off with Lindsay, David, and Elisabeth reflecting on how artworks have changed (or reinforced) their perspectives on what art is, and whether or not Elisabeth is really “auditioning” for the role of co-host. Starting at about 9:00, guest Mary Louise Schumacher kicks off the conversation with a reflection about witnessing Milwaukee artist Roy Staab joyfully re-discovering his own artwork while watching it get destroyed in a storm. 

Throughout the conversation, Mary Louise shares about her trajectory from political and technology reporter to art critic, to director of the forthcoming documentary film, Out of the Picture. She reflects on how art critics draw on a much more “embodied” kind of writing than other more objective forms of journalism.  

Out of the Picture arose out of asking the question “what does it mean to write about art today?” Turning her camera on the interesting people in the art world who are writing about art, in the process Mary Louise and her team of collaborators ended up documenting extraordinary changes in visual culture and media. Since the beginning of the film, over the last ten years, 'Art” has evolved to include NFTs, social movements, memes and monuments, (oh my!) and visual culture shapes how we see the world more than ever. Out of the Picture raises questions including: how are power and privilege conferred on voices within the art world? And the question of how precious the work of art criticism actually is.  Mary Louise also reflects on how the simultaneous openness, intimacy, and obscurity of the Milwaukee art scene promotes a special kind of artistic thriving, and periods of richness within our arts ecosystem.  She closes with a fantasy edict to instate an Arts & Culture Administrator for the City of Milwaukee to help Art to be more valued in our community.   

Instagram: @Marylouises 

Due to the unprecedented number of shout-outs contained in this episode, we decided to do our best to represent all of the individuals and entities. Please enjoy the following absurdly long list of links: : 

Out of the Picture  

Sunset Theatre by Sarah Gail Luther  

Open Kitchen 

Nature Bell by Roy Staab 

The Quadracci Pavillion   

Nicholas Lujero  

Cindy Eggert Johnson 

Mark Escribano 

Jonathan Olson 

Corridor the film 

Katie Avila Loughmiller 

Naomi Waxman 

This episode finds David co-hosting with producer, Elisabeth (who is also actively auditioning for the role of third Imagine This Podcast host). They begin by reflecting on pivotal arts teachers and the impact they had in their lives, their favorite Thornton Wilder plays, and the concept of not having a backup plan in life, lest we end up following the path of least resistance or finding a moment to “exit stage left”.

Beginning around 12:00, Sarah reflects on a pivotal art experience at Turner Hall Ballroom in high school and the “art hangover”—and sense of possibility it instilled in her. The group discuss how artists coalesce human experiences as the “antenna” of society. Throughout her artistic journey, Sarah learned to shift her practice out of the confines of the traditional art world, and to create without preconceived notions of how her artwork and creative process will manifest. Sarah is wary of archival artworks, believing that things like paintings that last forever are “not where joy lives,” but rather, joy comes from the spark of communal discovery. Sarah draws a comparison between public art-making and teaching, both of which she sees as avenues of conducting conversations.

Throughout the conversation, Sarah shares philosophical insights about artmaking. Instead of creating art as an experience for herself, Sarah wishes to instill in viewers, students, and neighbors experiences of connection, learning, and reflection and empower them to embrace their role in culture-building. She values how the practices of being a good neighbor and being an artist run parallel-- both of which she draws upon in her work at the Newline Community Café.

Follow Sarah Gail Luther: At Newline Café and get your dog drawn at Dog

Days at Lynden

416 Ephemera

Performing Arts Curriculum Experience

“The Long Christmas Dinner”

“The Skin of our Teeth”

“Pullman Car Hiawatha”

Thornton Wilder: A Wisconsinite, and a fellow Obie

Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts

Andrew Swant

“The Next American Revolution” by Grace Lee Boggs

Mac Antigua grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and came back to the Midwest via Texas and St. Paul. Hackers be damned, Mac has lived in Milwaukee for eleven years, in Shorewood, WI. He started his career in youth development, and has worked for decades as a professional convener and facilitator. Though he is departing, Mac looks forward to a future as a (loving yet disgruntled) listener of the pod. Because SNL didn’t call him to become a writer, he will be leaving Imagine MKE to work at My Brother’s Keeper Alliance within the Obama Foundation. He will also be appearing on Lindsay Sheridan’s “Slap Tour.”  

In the interview, he talks about the formative experience of learning through practicing improv to inhabit a space of love and fullness, instead of a space of “am I good enough”? or wanting to perform perfectly. Because in improv, you deal with failure and ambiguity all the time. 

He reflects on how the arts matter to him, how it has helped him to exist in spaces where there is not a clear answer but instead to see opportunities. And, ask questions, including “why else does this matter?” During his time at Imagine, he has been focused on creating spaces of insight, connection and trust. In the conversation, he reflects on the magical six words. Lindsay asks, “Is it too late for meeting rehearsals?”  

Mac shares highlights and reflections from working with the team at Imagine. The team is grateful to him for modeling the notion of possibility, joyful abundance, and examples of what all great teams have. Hint: it’s not The Whizzer. It might appear in “The American President.” 

Follow Mac @MacArthur31 on Twitter and Instagram and learn more about MBK Alliance, The Obama Foundation 

415 Ephemera 

AI: Artificial Intelligence (Trailer) 

Whose Line is it Anyway (Compilation) 

How Improv Made its Way into Corporate America (VICE) 

“Do Improvise: Less Push. More Pause. Better Results. A New Approach to Work (and Life)” 

E101: Let’s Not Be Perfectionists About It 

Back to the Future: “Marty McFly Fading Out” 

Moneyball: “He Gets on Base” 

The Whizzer, Six Flags 

The American President: “Is the view pretty good from the cheap seats, AJ?”  

Shannon Lay: “Rare to Wake” 

The episode kicks off with banter among the Imagine crew on the very novel topic of COVID. Mac, Lindsay, and David each share reflections on their favorite local parks—including Estabrook Park, a chain of parks along the Milwaukee River’s east side, and Grant Park and golf course.  

Rebecca Stoner, the Milwaukee Parks Foundation’s Executive Director, and Tristen Shorter, the Milwaukee Parks Foundation’s Director of Communications join the Imagine crew around 12:15. In the course of the conversation, they reflect on the similarities between the Park Foundation’s function and Imagine MKE’s role in advocating for “non-mandated services” that enhance the quality of life and contribute to wellness in our city. After decades of disinvestment, the Parks Foundation was created to help support the future of the 150 Milwaukee County parks, trails and beer gardens, with a specific focus on building equity: disinvestment in parks has hit Black and Brown communities disproportionately. They share facts including that the parks’ budget remains the same as it was in 1985, with less than half of the fulltime employees. Stoner also shares the staggering statistic that each of the current Park employees is responsible for maintaining the equivalent of 28 Lambeau Fields of land.  

Despite the challenges, the parks were a lifeline to residents during the pandemic, and they enjoy a robust life as centers of recreation and artistic performances—including as the setting for beloved events like Chill on the Hill, Bastille Days, and China Lights. Milwaukee Parks also have a rich history of commissioning local artists to create sculptures and maps in response to park spaces. Stoner and Shorter both see hope and opportunities to make Milwaukee a healthier, safer, and more vibrant city through fostering more of a sense of belonging in parks for all Milwaukee residents.  

Follow The Milwaukee Parks Foundation 

Facebook and LinkedIn: @milwaukeeparksfoundation Insta: @mkeparksfoundation  

Milwaukee County Parks Foundation 

Milwaukee County Executive Healthy County Challenge 

Milwaukee County Parks 

E414 Ephemera 

What is a Kumite? 

Kadish Park 

Gordon Park 

Estabrook Park 

Warnimont Golf Course 

Grant Park Golf Course 

Milwaukee: 15th Most Greenspace in America 

The Junior Docent Program at The Milwaukee Art Museum 

Comedy Sportz Milwaukee 

Zip Zap Zop (Drama-Based Instruction) 

The episode kicks off with Mac, David and Lindsay discussing their own senses of fashion (or, lack thereof). They raise riveting questions including: does owning cufflinks make one fashionable? Lindsay recounts the way her style has not evolved—and looks back on her first day of Kindergarten, to which she wore a plum power suit.  

Guests Ashley Brooks and Donna Ricco join around 13:40. Ashley Brooks is the chair of the Fashion Department at Mount Mary University. Previously, she led design and art teams for children’s, juniors and women’s clothing at Kohl’s, and worked at Saks Fifth Ave and the VF Corporation. Donna Ricco is an Executive Fellow at Mount Mary, she is also an alum of Mount Mary University, and started and led her own brand: Donna Ricco New York.  

During the conversation, they reflect on fashion design as both a creative and pragmatic enterprise, and an industry with many career paths. They speak about the origins of the MM Fashion Program, which began in the 1960’s under the leadership of Sister Aloyse. Milwaukee’s place in the fashion industry at that time was buoyed by a diversity of manufacturing outlets that were based in the region, and Milwaukee's history as a tanning center and fur trading outpost. The Milwaukee of today does not have the same diversity of manufacturing expertise needed to support a large-scale fashion industry—but the graduates of the program are eking out new niches through creative collaborations, as part of their participation in a wider artistic ecosystem. “Designers can’t cut it on their own,” as Ricco says. Many fashion puns are woven into the conversation.  

Mount Mary will host the CREO Fashion Show: Prismatic Parallel,  at 3pm and 7 pm in Notre Dame Hall on Saturday, May 14.  

Learn more about the Mount Mary’s Creative Campus and the 2022 CREO Fashion Show: Prismatic Parallel on 5/14 

413 Ephemera 

The Mount Mary University Fashion Archive 

Sister Aloyse, Donna and Ashley 

This week’s pod episode kicks off with a discussion between Mac, Lindsay and David in which they discuss Lindsay being in “good COVID company” and dig into memories of negotiating a sense of belonging within new communities. Rhoan Garnett—or “Dr. G” joins Mac and David around 12:00.  

Dr. Rhoan Garnett was most recently the Milwaukee Public Museum’s inaugural Director of Inclusion Diversity, Equity and Accessibility. He has a background in higher education, and recently acted as principal consultant at YXM Consulting, a research-based and higher education-focused consultancy firm. In the conversation, Dr. G shares a poem about his youth, that focuses on experiencing educational choice in the aftermath of witnessing a friend and fellow athlete veering from the path to higher education after an act of violence led to his incarceration.  

In the course of the conversation, Dr. G reflects on how within individuals and communities, a sense of inclusion and belonging are born out of the existence and maintenance of safe spaces where “everyone can be there, and anything can happen.” 

Dr. Garnett cites relationships, and “network mentoring” as crucial to helping young marginalized students today navigate a landscape full of unconscious bias and institutionalized segregation. He finds himself humbled by the youths he engages with, and the ways in which they inspire him and others to “show up listening” and cultivate a “different kind of empathy” towards the end of parsing through the complex layers of social structures to access belonging.

Learn More about Rhoan online at his website 

412 Ephemera 

Luke Matheny’s 2011 Oscar Speech 

Ex Fabula 

The Milwaukee I-Corps Program 

LINK Unlimited Scholars 

Great Questions: The Writings of Judith Snow 

GUEST BIO: 

https://rhoangarnett.com/ 

The pod episode kicks off with the team discussing a possible “font-off” contest, the creative process, David’s reanimation and staged reading of a play from 20 years ago through Milwaukee’s Sunstone Studios, and the triumphant return of the in-person Milwaukee Film Fest in spring of 2022.  

Oscar joins Mac and David around 16:30 to discuss his film, “A Life On The Farm,” which will screen at the MFF on April 30th. The feature length documentary builds upon found footage from a video created by his grandfather’s neighbor, Charles Carson, in the 1980’s on a farm in Somerset, England. Carson was filmmaker and a farmer, an outsider artist, an inventor and a pioneer of “death positivity.” The film centers around the process of uncovering Carson’s creative genius, as Oscar and his filmmaking partners endeavor to learn about this unconventional filmmaker and his work through interviews with neighbors.  

In the conversation, Oscar touches on formative influence of movies and theatre on his young life, and on being drawn to the electricity of the live performance. He details his career trajectory within the film industry, beginning with working to support the critically acclaimed film “Theeb.” Though Oscar now calls Milwaukee home, he is both Irish and British, and shares insights about state-funded arts and film funding access abroad, and reflects on how Ireland far exceeds the U.K. and U.S. in these opportunities. He remarks about how environments with limited funding end up proliferating elitism in the arts, and have the consequence of sidelining the voices of filmmakers of marginalized communities and diverse identities. Oscar reflects on his own journey from working on narrative film, to letting the footage of Carson inspire him to work in the realm of documentary film, in order to tell his story. 

GUEST BIO: 

Web: Sonderbar Pictures 

Facebook: @ALOTFdoc   

Twitter: @ALifeOnTheFarm  

Insta: @SonderbarPics 

Get Tickets for “A Life On The Farm” 

“A Life On The Farm” Trailer 

411 Ephemera 

Font Psychology (Design Mondo) 

“Evolution of Sunday” at Sunstone Studios, Online Program 

About Justina Walford 

Chant Clair, Spring Concert 4/29 

2022 Milwaukee Film Festival 

Have you ever fired your gun in the air and gone, “ARGH?” (Hot Fuzz) 

Hott Fuzz & Point Break scenes 

Death Positive Movement 

This week, the whole gang is reunited to speak with artist Molly Hassler. Mac, Lindsay and David kick off the episode reflecting on the witches of Salem, Lindsay’s experience of relating to Milwaukee from afar while visiting other cities on the East coast, and The Office Season Four. They also discuss the afterglow of this year’s 414 Day video, which features a poem by Dasha Kelly Hamilton, and was directed by Samer Ghani.  

Molly joins the group around 16:00. Molly is a queer interdisciplinary artist who was the recipient of a Mary L. Nohl Fund Emerging Artist grant in 2022. Molly’s work is “often embracing collaboration and primarily using drawing and fibers techniques to mine the complex relation between representation and identity as a queer person in the Midwest.” During the conversation, they reflect on how as an artist, their role is about “enhancing a community’s ability to care for itself.” They speak about the role of play in their practice, the influential experience of being a working artist at East Castle Assisted Living, and how they’ve persistently applied to opportunities despite receiving rejections. Molly reflects on the working-class communities that have shaped them, as well as artists’ unique capacities for looking and physically manifesting ideas into the world. They speak to the quandary of being advised early on to pursue either community art or fine art—and resolves that instead of choosing, each artist must instead “just do what they want” and carve their own path.  

Follow Molly @MollyHassler on all of the socials and online at www.MollyHassler.com  

410 Ephemera 

“Here for the Imaginable” by Meg Zany 

Season 4 of The Office 

414 Day 2022: Fire Light 

The show kicks off with Mac and David bantering about Moonlighting and Bruce Willis, followed by a discussion about the forthcoming third iteration of Imagine MKE’s 414 Day Video featuring an original poem by Dasha Kelly Hamilton and created by filmmaker Samer Ghani, which will be released through Imagine MKE’s social channels on 4/14.  

Grammy Award-winning musician and entrepreneur Grace Weber, a Wauwatosa native, joins the crew around 16:00 to discuss her 414 Day release, “414” (feat. Mudy). The work is a “love song for the city,” and speaks to her sense of Milwaukee hometown pride. In the conversation, Grace shares her impression of the authenticity that is characteristic of the city, and speaks about her current experience living in the “213”—and the synchronicity of frequently crossing paths with other Milwaukeeans within the Los Angeles music scene. Grace reflects on her own journey to stardom, and a sense that Milwaukee’s own music community is about to have “a moment,” and come into its own as a national music destination.  

Personal website: https://www.graceweber.com/  

Follow Grace Weber online and on all of the social media @GraceWeber. Pre-Save “414” on Spotify 

409 Ephemera 

Season 4 of Moonlighting, Opening Theme by Al Jarreau 

“Concerns about Bruce Willis’ declining cognitive state swirled around sets in recent years” (LA Times) 

2020: Life in Motion 

2021: 414 (New) Day 

“Joyful Joyful” from Sister Act 2 

This week on the pod, we welcome the CEO of Arts @ Large, Sean Kiebzak.  

In the intro, as Lindsay is on vacation, David and Mac indirectly discuss the Oscar’s slap by way of discussing the context of acts of violence. They reflect on fights they recall, as well as moments of tender male camaraderie from their formative years.  

Around 21:30, (the legendary) Sean Kiebzak joins the Imagine team and speaks about his progressive trajectory from artist to arts educator, to arts administrator, to becoming the CEO of Arts @ Large. In the conversation, Sean reflects on his diverse background in music, which includes experience as a drummer in a SKA band, a roadie for a touring band in the UK, and a member of a family band that was heavily drawn upon in the local Yoga Studio circuit. The group discusses the ways in which creativity is central to leadership development and problem-solving. Sean reflects on how Arts @ Large serves artists, students, teachers, and the whole community through a myriad of intersectional educational programs, and speaks about its physical expansion and programmatic pivots during the pandemic. On behalf of Milwaukee, Sean challenges Indianapolis to an arm wrestling contest for the right to host future Drumcore events.  

Follow Sean and Arts At Large on Facebook and Insta: @ArtsAtLarge  

408 Ephemera 

The Slap Bet Saga (How I Met Your Mother) 

Nolan Ryan x Robin Ventura: A Jomboy Breakdown 

Malice in the Palace: A Secret Base Deep Rewind 

Lawmaker Brawls from Around the World (Time)