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Tag Archives: milwaukee


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the portholes. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

there was this knot-hole in this tree on this trail. i used to stop there each time we hiked – to gaze through it…stand and take in what i could see through the tiny porthole in the woods. always, it was a reminder of the fluidity of time, of ever-present change, of nothing standing still.

the porthole i found in the milwaukee art museum – through one of barbara hepworth’s sculptural pieces – had the same impact on me. bending down, i focused only on what i could see through that porthole. on a different day, at a different time of day, in a different month or season, never static. even minutes from my peeking-through, the wind picked up and the lake’s surface roiled a bit and all from before was erased.

late-late on sunday nights – into the wee hours – we stay awake to listen and watch our son livestream mixes from a club in chicago. he was away for a couple weeks and we missed these late dj nights. they are our porthole – our tree-knot-hole – into what he is creating, producing, learning, feeling. every midnight-hour-sunday we see the changes in the new seasons of his work, his growth, his zeal, his poise at tech controls that evoke curves of mood, layers of sound, textures of music we may not have accessed otherwise. we see his joy.

it’s the same reason i took my first snowboard lesson. at that time, it was a porthole view into our daughter’s life – a peeking window that allowed us to feel the smallest smidge of her professional work. watching her fly down mountains, picking up speed and agility and ever-more skill through our tree-knot-hole on the sidelines and touching her joy-magic with our own feet on a snowboard on a hill.

we can assume things about others. humans do it all the time. broad sweeping generalizations about people and peoples – different because of race or color or gender identity or ethnicity or country of origin or age or disability or socioeconomic status or politics or religion or whatever the prejudice-de-jour might be. we glance over at “them” and form opinions; we claim to be “open and affirming” yet we slam closed the porthole that might give us a true look into their life. we scrub away the transparency of truth and apply the balm of our agenda – totally missing perspective, the possibility of commonality, the gift of community, the connectedness of us all as a species attempting to just keep on keeping on.

were we – perhaps – to notice, to step forward and take a closer look, to shield ourselves from inevitable human failings of assumption and instead to breathe deeply and gaze – we might have a view into the sameness of us all, the things that unite us, the things we need honor and hold in high regard….that we are all one under the sun. that while we cannot walk in another’s shoes, we might learn by looking through any and every tree-knot-hole we can find. that new eyes, new focus may also mean new learnings and new appreciation and new grace. that we should stop and peer through portholes whenever we can. there’s no time to waste.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY


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the softer side of selfies. [two artists tuesday]

it’s the softer side of selfie.

i take many photographs of us in shadow. it lowers the how-do-i-look bar to practically zero. though it does leave me a tad bit curious about why my head always looks bigger than his. i think it’s my hair poofing out; his is pulled back neatly, while mine is helter-skelter flying in the wind. nevertheless, whether we are smiling or not, whether our eyes are open or closed, whether we have a funny look on our faces – none of this matters.

some of my favorite shots of us are in shadow. we are on the dock at northport harbor. we are on trail in breckenridge. we are at the john denver sanctuary in aspen. we are on a frozen lake up-north. we are walking barefoot in florida, carrying our flipflops. we are in the sun on our back patio.

i know i might be accused of over-documenting. so many photos. “1.81 trillion photos are taken worldwide every year, which equals 57,246 per second, or 5.0 billion per day,” according to photutorial.com. at least they are not all mine.

yet i know that it takes many, many shots to get the right one. my dear friend scott is a world-class photographer with a compositional eye to die for. he shoots thousands of shots at a-list events. which makes me feel justified in my overshooting. i have loved being behind a camera since my parents gifted me my first 35mm when i graduated high school. crunch and i would go out and about for hours on end, on escapades, taking pictures and dreaming of what they would look like developed. the advent of cellphone cameras – as they are today – makes it infinitely easier to snap, snap and over-snap. and, though i can confess to that, i will not stop.

because every now and then, when i go through all the photographs i’ve taken on a hike or at home or traveling or with one of my children, i find a jewel. like the lyrics that are tucked into notebooks-upon-notebooks, scraps of paper of melodies, pa pads with ideas for smackdab cartoons and blogposts, sometimes something special turns up. “practice makes perfect,” my sweet poppo would always quip.

so, the other day, while we were hanging out with richard diebenkorn, i thought i would document our time together. not a gem of a shot, but – truly – they aren’t always gems. sometimes they are just reminders of time spent, thready mementos of moments, scraps of lyrics or color samples or heart rocks. they are a diary of time, back and forward, threaded clockwise and reverse.

despite the vast ponderings of art critics and pedantic curators, it would seem that richard might just be trying to create mood, evoke emotion. this ocean park painting – like the whole series – depicting shimmering light and air, his extended time in santa monica sun. he painted and re-painted 145 canvases in this series. a diary of time.

selfies and shadows, smiles and light. all stuff that counts on the way to 1.81 trillion.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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the icing on the cake. [merely-a-thought monday]

it’s 925 miles from the corner of sixth avenue and west 55th street, but it displaced me in an instant. there i was – back sometime in the 70’s, in new york city, seeing robert indiana’s love sculpture for the first time. i loved love then. i love love now. (could that be any more redundant?!)

a part of sculpture milwaukee in 2018, this sculpture has returned and was permanently installed at the milwaukee art museum in 2019. we saw it for the first time last week. life and covid interrupted our visits to mam. we were really happy to be back. seeing love out the window facing lake michigan’s lakefront was the icing on the cake.

there are nearly fifty of these sculptures around the world. people travel far and wide to have their photographs taken next to the iconic stacked word. it became a u.s. postal stamp in 1973. it has big history. its artist has big history.

the success of this giant – yet simple – sculpture begs questions for me: what musical gesture might be equivalent to this sculpture? what rhythmic or melodic motif has this kind of powerful impact? googling these questions produces a plethora of suggested lists – everything from classical to motown to the beatles and beyond. i suppose it’s a truly personal thing.

any listener of albinoni’s adagio in g minor or j.s. bach’s air on the g string or arvo pärt’s spiegel im spiegel or ennio morricone’s gabriel’s oboe or john denver’s annie song or leonard cohen’s hallelujah or carole king’s you’ve got a friend or aretha’s r-e-s-p-e-c-t or the beatles’ here comes the sun or, for that matter, eldar kedem’s you and i or any piece composed and played or sung by giant artists or tiny independent artists …. any listener of anything arrives at the place of listening – the dropped-down-out-of-the-universe of their own world – individually. we tote along with us our lives-at-the-moment, our busy schedules, our worries, our longings, color and breath and heart, a distinctively different set of ears. we hear and we listen and we are transported by music to worlds away, places and times stored up, a chorus of commentators in us telling silent stories in viewmaster snippets, our hearts grasping the filmy tails of memories. impact. giant impact.

the love sculpture means something different to everyone who poses in front of it; every person’s story has different details, a different emotional spectrum. how we connect to this emotive piece depends largely on where we are when we visit with it, what we bring to it, how open we are to its energy.

the love sculpture stands outside the museum and i know that each time we now visit, it will demand our time as well. we will stand and gaze and visit with it. and we’ll keep loving it. it’s simple. it’s that kind of piece.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY


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initiative. [flawed wednesday]

(sign on the door of the milwaukee institute of art & design)

a year and a half.

jen told me yesterday that the 1918 pandemic, though most often referred to as a two-year pandemic, actually lasted two and a half years.

two and a half years.

i shudder to think of the toll this pandemic will have taken if it lasts yet another year or more. we have learned so much; we have learned so little. the pandemic has been like a kaleidoscope and like a microscope, both. it has scattered us into constantly changing patterns and it has brought everything into minute focus. yet i wonder where this will take us.

artists aren’t typically conservative in-the-boxers. we take risks, live gig lifestyles, put ourselves out there, are vulnerable and push back against things we consider inequities, ironic double-talk, disinterest in humanitarianism, opacity where transparency is touted. we aren’t quiet, for it is our job to speak – in whatever medium our talent. we are, as artists, there to raise questions, to promote pondering, communicate ideas, tell stories, express emotion, encourage engagement, inspire connection and collaboration, reiterate interdependence of all people.

though this burden does not remain singly on the shoulders of artists, even banksy has participated in making statements about safety and guidelines in this pandemic. i’m not sure how much more blatant it needs to be. encouraging covid-19 responsibility, his work in the london tube in july 2020 was titled, “if you don’t mask, you don’t get.” he spray-paints the words, “i get lockdown, but i get up again” at the end of the video featuring his rats on the tube.

though attendees were 100% vaccinated, the invitation read, “masks required at all times unless actively eating or drinking.” they provided masks, sweet ones with the initials of the wedding couple and a heart. the venues had high high ceilings, exposed rafters and ductwork. the wedding was outside, cocktail hour was outside, dancing was outside.

when the rain came, we all kept dancing. outside, twinkling lights all around, we breathed in fresh air. even with masks on.

“a lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.” (banksy)

initiative (noun): the ability to assess and initiate things independently; the power or opportunity to act or take charge before others do.

the milwaukee institute of art and design has posted signs on all their doors. they have taken a stance.

wearing a mask in public spaces – and vaccination – have been scientifically proven to lower the rate of transmission, sickness and death of a deadly global pandemic. already a year and a half.

exactly what additional kind of initiative do you need?

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this FLAWED WEDNESDAY


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a smidge away. [two artists tuesday]

it felt like we were away. we had never explored this area of milwaukee and, with time on our hands on a stunningly beautiful day, we walked. we decided it didn’t matter if we knew our way around or not, our phones and gps would get us back. so we left the airbnb in walker point and started north. knowing the lake was east of us, it was a natural turn to the right, the water drawing us.

the architecture of cream city brick and old warehouses is charming and i kept thinking how we needed to return to take photographs when we had more time to linger. we turned east at a warehouse that had been converted to condo living, industrial balconies lining the river with colorful bistro tables and teak adirondack chairs and strands and strands of strung lights. the evenings must be beautiful walking along the river toward lake michigan.

we could see the hoan bridge arching into the sky and headed toward it. we passed a guy on the sidewalk with a shirt that said “light the hoan” and i looked it up. “light is swiftly becoming one of the most powerful tools to breathe new life into cities,” the website promotes. i remember a beautiful suspension bridge lit across the river in east boston when our son lived there. the light changed everything and was stunning. you can purchase a bulb on the hoan, be a beacon in the night and know that people are sitting on balconies gazing and dreaming, much like staring into a bonfire. the bridge and its design drew my iphone camera toward it.

we wound our way through outdoor dining seating and along the docks, multiple times mentioning to each other that we would “come back” and explore more. it amazed me that, such a short distance away from home, we felt like we were away and adventure was simply waiting. an early evening wedding stopped us short of much exploration, but there’s always the next time.

we walked out to the lighthouse where the milwaukee river met lake michigan and stood for a few minutes before turning around. the art museum beckoned from up the lakefront; beyond that we know there are beaches and a favorite coffee house in an historic water treatment plant.

we walked back some of the way we came, sticking to the river as much as possible. flowers and shadows and railings and vintage glass finials, textures and surprises, restoration and beautiful intention our companions.

passing the docked boats, though no salt in this air, i got a whiff of the past. i could imagine i was at northport harbor, watching the comings and goings of boaters and fishermen. it made me have a taste for baked clams and buffalo calamari from skippers pub, a hop, skip and a jump away in my mind as the scent of waterfront and moored boats surrounded me.

though the pandemic and travel warnings might preclude a trip to long island, we, aloud, promised each other we would return to this walkway, to stroll along the river chatting and snapping pictures, to immerse in a sculpture walk, to find the perfect bistro table on the dock sidewalks, to dine al fresco in the swirl of memories and new adventures.

getting away just a smidge away.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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contrail pondering. [two artists tuesday]

contrail

on island we rarely heard airplanes overhead.  if we did, they were small cessnas and pipers, low-wing and high-wing single engine airplanes, buzzing over the shoreline heading for the small grass strip airport.  otherwise, it was quiet. very.

lately, here, we have noticed that it is quieter than normal.  we are in what is generally an approach for the milwaukee airport and we often see airplanes overhead heading north or airplanes coming across the lake in line for o’hare, south of us.  it seems more of a rarity now to hear a jet overhead.  it makes us pay attention.  it makes us look up.  it makes us ponder.

we wonder where it is coming from, where its final destination.  we wonder how many passengers are on board.  in these times of no-travel, the contrail seems a contradiction of this time, a plane leaving its mark on the day.

in my previous life i had some time at the controls of both small airplanes and helicopters.  the jargon was language i was accustomed to.  there are languages of career.  we all have them, words, expressions, theories specific to our chosen work; we learn our spouse’s language, even just enough to understand just enough.

i’m better at the controls than in the passenger seat of a small airplane; motion sickness rules less if you are ‘driving’.  i never got near the point of solo-ing on any flying machine.  there was much to learn in ground school and hours rented on an airplane or a helicopter were expensive for an already-stretched budget.  but, stick in hand, flying a helicopter over the woods of new hampshire while employed at an aviation college there, brilliant new england fall colors beneath us, i could see how the flying-bug could bite.

and now it is quiet.  a few moments ago, while writing this, a jet flew overhead.  i stopped typing to pay attention and looked out the window.  i wondered:  where is that plane going?  who is on that plane?  do they feel safe?  are they wearing masks?  did they turn their blower off?  are they sitting six feet apart?

and i pondered:  what state might that plane be flying here from?  what are the covid-19-numbers in that state?  are people staying safe-at-home?  are there protests in that state, people who are placing everyone in their ever-widening concentric circles at risk for contagion?  are there people who are laissez-faire-individualizing this global-everyone-is-affected-pandemic, rejecting commonsense social distancing and simple respectful preventative measures? are there people making homemade masks, like here, because there isn’t enough PPE to go around?  are they wondering why the federal government of fifty states and five territories is hostage-taking necessary supplies, pitting governors against each other, encouraging a competition for lifesaving devices, blaspheming good works, eliminating knowledgeable workers, warping what is important vs not important, encouraging bracing and dangerous practices?  are they shocked and dismayed at the ever-widening inequity, the gross partisanship?  are they stunned into disbelief at the absolute lack of sane and measured leadership?  are they embarrassed and profoundly saddened?

and i wondered:  when will we go on an airplane next?  where will we go? when will we feel safe?  will everyone wear a mask?  will everyone sit six feet apart?

and i thought, as we are apt to do after-the-fact:  i should have gotten my pilot’s license.

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

wiwi plane website box


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west of the i. [d.r. thursday]

county sketch copy

one of the cool things about living in kenosha is the ability to easily get to two major cities – milwaukee and chicago.  we drive up to milwaukee to putter around, go to the art museum, walk along the river in the third ward, go to antique shoppes.  we usually take the train to chicago, driving south a couple towns for more frequent schedule choices.  we walk the streets of the city, find places for coffee or glasses of wine, attend national geographic live events or a play or concert, visit with friends.

but we are actually less city people than we are outdoors people.  and so, more often, we will head out – west of the i – and take a drive out in the county.  in next-to-nothing we are surrounded by farmland, breathing in the scent of rich dirt in fields that are turned over for planting, some yielding early croplings*.

in also next-to-nothing time, david whips out his sketchbook and pencils to capture the really gorgeous patterns in these fields of green.  (these words make me think of the stunningly beautiful song fields of gold.  if you haven’t ever heard it, please take a few minutes right now and click HERE.  you will be glad you did.)

just a sketch, but a reminder of the moments we passed these fields, talking or listening to music, singing along or simply silence in the car.  a breath of fresh air, a drive to rejuvenate, maybe a hike on a trail to restore us – all west of the i.

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

browse david’s gallery – a breath of fresh air, a few moments to rejuvenate or restore you

drc website header copy 2

coffee cups in scion website box

©️ 2019 david robinson & kerri sherwood

*yes.  technically, ‘croplings’ is not a word.  but i could not resist it.  this stems from my love of the word ‘seedlings’.

 

 


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chicken marsala monday

thismomentunique WITH EYES jpeg copy 2late yesterday afternoon, after a day spent working on computers and designs, with technology sluggishness taking over our souls, we headed to the woods to take a hike.  any time we feel tired or ‘stuck’ we walk.  around the ‘hood, along the lake, or to the starbucks about 2 and a half miles away.  any time we feel exuberant or elated we walk.  sometimes in the mountains (ahh!!) or in chicago or the third ward in milwaukee.  any time we need a ‘business meeting’ we walk.  mostly in the woods, in a county or state park.  walking and breathing in fresh air brings us back to the moment.  it re-centers us.

we hiked up the small rise in the woods, the light was waning and behind us the sky was deep deep orange.  in the clearing beyond the stand of trees stood, very still, a deer.  it was clearly the ‘lookout’ as way back in the field were six more deer, easy to count in the almost-dark as their white tails bobbed when the lookout gave the alert.  we stood perfectly still watching this beauty, a magic moment in the woods.  neither of us wanted to leave the spot.  i took a picture, not because you can see the deer in it, but because it preserved the moment for me.  i didn’t want to forget.  because, as you already know, i am thready like that.

around me, every rock or feather or piece of wood or ticket stub or scrap of notepaper carries with it a specific moment – preserved in time.  i could not necessarily tell the story of each of those moments – there are far too many for my synapse-challenged-brain to remember.  but i know that each one had meaning for me.  each one defined yet another piece of me, my relationship with someone i love, a time i shared with another being, a learning, a moment of sheer bliss, a moment of deep sadness.  each moment renewed me and brought me to my next moment of living.

as i have moved through life one thing has become certain.  that everything changes.  nothing stays the same.  life is in flux, always fluid.  what more do we have than each moment as it arrives for us?  i ask myself, “how do i want to spend this moment?  what do i want to feel about this moment?”  for i can never get it back.  i can never re-do it.  time has moved on.  and so i must keep moving.  i write about moments, i compose about moments, i tell stories about moments.  for me, those details count.   attempting to put succinctly (ha!) into words my philosophy-of-what-moments-mean is impossible; it is the umbrella that skies over everything else i believe, everything else i think.

when The Boy was little, he called the rearview mirror in cars the “review” mirror.  particularly poignant i think.  i have seen it written “don’t stare into the rearview mirror.  that’s not the direction you are going.”  instead i try (read: TRY) to review the past moments, learn from them, find grace in them, save the memory threads.  and wholeheartedly embrace the ones to come.  the moments.  unique.  in every way.   i love this chicken marsala image.

THIS MOMENT…UNIQUE…IN EVERY WAY MERCHANDISE

     ThisMomentUnique clock copy

ThisMomentUnique iphone case

ThisMomentUnique mug copy

CHICKEN MARSALA MONDAY

melange button jpeg

check out DAVID’S thoughts on this CHICKEN MARSALA

this moment…unique…in every way ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood