John Michael Kohler Art Center Exhibits - Barbara Schneider

 I recently visited the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI. I wanted to see the exhibit celebrating their 50th Anniversary of the Arts/Industry internship program that they run. This program now has 12 interns per year that come and work for  between 1 and 3 months with the staff at Kohler Pottery to create artwork outside their own field of expertise. It was amazing to see the variety of ways people used the techniques from ceramics in new and innovative ways. Some of those art experiments end up getting incorporated into new ideas for Kohler products. The link below takes you to a description of the program and to see some of the work in progress.

https://www.jmkac.org/arts-industry/ 

As part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration they took an entire part of the building and recreated what it is like to work in the foundry complete with molds for sinks, forms, tools, etc. This space is being used during the exhibit to have by a resident artist to work with the public on an installation while they are there.

Another of the exhibits I saw was by Willie Cole. Below is a description of that exhibit. I was very taken with all the ways an iron can be used to create imagery.   Many of us who have managed to burn cloth will enjoy the images created! The sculptures made of old shoes are also quite fascinating. Until you get up close you have no idea that these angular pieces are shoes.

This solo exhibition of work by Willie Cole, who was an Arts/Industry resident in the Kohler Co. Pottery in 2000, features newly commissioned sculptures alongside a selection of works spanning over three decades.

Cole visualizes the reality that domestic spaces are often tangled with histories of enslaved labor. He uses the visual vocabulary of the domestic sphere—shoes, tools, furniture, for example—to bring forward the grief and intimacy that linger within private spaces.

 

Home Assembly highlights Cole’s refiguring of familiar and frequently discarded objects to confront and demand attention from his audience. His assemblages and prints convey intricate histories and messages, demonstrating the complexities and the commonalities shared in the cultivation of homes and the lives they shelter. Cole frequently uses the iron —burn marks, the ironing board, and the iron itself—as parts of human figures, as protective shields, as the shape of ships that transported enslaved Africans to the Americas, and to commemorate the work of women. Each of the ironing boards are named after the woman who owned them.

Home Assembly honors Cole’s impact on the fields of labor and methodical craft, which are at the core of the Arts/ Industry program.

Although it is a long drive I am never disappointed with the exhibits at Kohler. They are wide ranging and often they devote whole areas of the building to installations of one person's work. They have now built a second location named the Art Preserve that features all of the Outsider Art that they have collected over the years so that it can remain on permanent display.

More about some of the other art on display in another upcoming blog!