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kenzie swinford
kenzie swinford
My research project focused on how art and design can be incorporated into the memorial to make it interactive, inviting, and informational, while also being respectful of the community and the history. To conduct this research, I reached out to three artists, two from the Milwaukee area and one from out of state to gain their perspective on how to start a project, where their inspiration comes from, and the general process they go through when deciding on designs for public pieces. The interviews can be found below:
The artists are referred to as "Artist 1", "Artist 2", and "Artist 3" for the time being since they have not yet given permission to be featured on the website. The interviews are not directly quoted, and are paraphrases of the original interviews.
ARTIST 1
ARTIST 1
Do you have any advice on what kind of emotions we want portrayed through the memorial?
When he thinks Underground Railroad, he thinks of hope
They were escaping horrible lives, and were driven by the hope of a better life
Don’t shy away from being political and edgy
Artists have an obligation to tell the truth
How did Milwaukee offer these people the hope?
Other Notes
The memorials that he has seen/photographed
Created from a mundane piece of land
Out of grief and love
Becomes their own
No permission
No art backgrounds
No one curates them
Eventually fall apart
His role has been to document these sites
Beliefs that it is a social movement in how America handles grief
Personal to the individual / unique to that person
Weren’t made to be the prettiest, but instead just to honor those they lost
Bring up African American opinion
Reach out to the African American community
Don’t want white kids telling the black story
Cultural Appropriation
Possibly make the memorial so that community members can add to it
Have to be careful though about people turning it into something that we don’t want it to be
Find out who owns the land
Bring the city into it
Where have you found inspiration for your previous projects?
Inspired by everything and anything
Talked about painting at a camp in Baja(?) – organic stone
Watches fruit desiccate
Open spirit, open eyes, willing to accept ideas from anywhere
Finds inspiration in things kids say, ideas from friends, everywhere
Varied works
Loves new medium
Are there any certain aspects that you would say are necessary in creating a memorial, or just general stuff that we should include?
Important to tell the truth
What is the truth?
Be respectful to others’ opinions
Think about the opinions of other people because there will be some that differ from ours
In the memorials that he’s documented:
Extremely personal
Can’t always figure out why things are there
Don’t always know the full story
Extremely personal connection
Some use crosses even though they aren’t religious because they are considered sacred
Include personal memorabilia
Lesson for us: consider personal nature
Shoes
Would you suggest incorporating art from the time of the Underground Railroad, or create new art, or merge them both?
The latter
He is jealous that he didn’t come up with this idea, but if it would have been his idea:
Likes the idea of everyone being able to add to this memorial
Invite people to participate and include their understanding of the Underground Railroad
Self-curated design by those that want to participate
Let this happen for a couple of years
Watch it age – aging can be beautiful
Document how the memorial evolves using a GoPro
Process:
Allow people to add their own stuff
Set up a takedown date
Take some of the memorabilia from the temporary memorial and incorporate it into a permanent memorial
Build the permanent memorial
During this process, allow for community participation
Hold events, vigils, readings, poetry, etc.
Not 100% on board with his own idea, however
What is the role of an artist in society / what effect should an artists’ work have on society? What effect should our work have on society?
Simply want to portray a sense of awe
Can come as a surprise
Do that through telling the truth
Use beauty to attract people or some sort of design
His personal goal has always been awe
artist 2
artist 2
Where have you found inspiration for your previous projects?
Environment – what he sees in nature then combined with his imagination
Thinks about what he wants for the result for the viewer and what would bring them in to his artwork
The external world and landscape
His own intuition
What types of art should we look at using to create the memorial? Mural, sculpture, combination, etc.?
Create a proper meeting place
Places to sit
Beautify it
Landscape
Custom benches
Rocks
Utilize the whole area
Some type of sculpture
Need to make people want to go there
Some type of sculpture – metal or stone worthy of the history
“Think of the whole are as the sculpture”
Don’t think of it as a memorial
Maintain it – possibly some irrigation
In your art pieces, do you generally do a lot of planning, or is it more go with an idea and see what happens?
Completely makes it up as he goes
Absolutely no planning
Hand cuts paper
Drawing with a knife
Just begins cutting paper
No planning
Emergence through process
Rarely plans
Figured out his own niche
What is the role of an artist in society / what effect do you think an artists’ work should have on society?
They have no specific role or role to play
Make art for its own sake
Let art become what it wants
Art doesn’t have to be anything but itself, but if it wants to, it can have a big impact
Would you say bringing the public into the decision making, or even letting them contribute in some way, would be a good or a bad idea?
He is in the middle of public based art
Our project is sort of like his
He studies the people who will experience his art
Held meetings with people
Critical to identify who the stakeholders are
Meet with the stakeholders
Identify who will be affected or have connections
Need to study the community
When creating a piece of art that you want people to learn from or be inspired by, how have you gone about doing that, or how have you been able to find a specific theme or message to do so? We want our memorial to make a lasting impression. How have you been able to do that in your previous works?
He offered to send a proposal he did for a public piece
Think about what the end viewers want
Think about what they want to see
Reverse engineering
Other Notes
Spent last few years doing public / interactive pieces
Need to find real people who have an interest in this
Integrate the residents
He is integrating the silhouettes of real people into his current work
artist 3
artist 3
He started out by talking about two people who have done memorials for the Underground Railroad before
After the interview he sent a follow up email with links that discuss the two memorials
The design element all depends on what you’re most interested in doing
Many aspects to the Underground Railroad
Focus on one
One of the artists he mentioned earlier had done a physical sculpture / visual using maps and symbols
Local landscape stuff
Used words and songs
Set up a path to follow – the idea of you are here, the next station is over here
The other artist made a sculpture by repurposing slavery artifacts such as chains
Narrow it down to what we’re interested in / what we want to tell / what we want to expand upon
Could use quilts or more visual art
Mentioned Vandalea(?) in Michigan
Slaves were able to stop and live there
Collect stories
Makes these places more interesting
Makes them come alive
Find out what specifically happened in the area that we are building in
Would help to bring other visualizations into it
Make it unique and more interesting
Don’t stick with the clichés
additional research
additional research
In addition to conducting interviews, I attended a few community events related to art to gain more of an understanding of how others have used creativity to portray emotion or tell a story. An overview of all my research conducted, including the interviews, what I took from the interviews, the events, and what I took from the events, can be found below:
hunting moon pow wow
hunting moon pow wow
The first event I attended was the 2019 Hunting Moon Pow Wow which was held at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee. Andrew and I arrived at the Pow Wow while venders were still setting up, however it still provided good insight for my project. We went to one booth that appeared to sell a variety of colorful beaded jewelry. The Native American man spent some time explaining his jewelry to us and went in depth on how the jewelry he made were symbolic to specific people and had different meanings within Native American tribes. He also shared with us that making the jewelry was very personal to him because it is what helped him regain his sobriety. Being able to just sit and make the jewelry while letting his mind wander has resulted in him being sober for ten years. I felt that this experience correlated with our project because I was able to experience another culture’s art. Along with this though, was the idea that the Pow Wow we attended expected to see a variety of people from different cultures, not just Native Americans. In our project, the goal is to inform the general public about Milwaukee’s influence, not just those whose ancestors were forced into slavery. Additionally, I was able to experience the power that art and symbolism can have on people.
alice's garden artwork
alice's garden artwork
While visiting our community partners, Emma, Andrew, Anna, and I saw numerous pieces of artwork, a lot of which had to do with African Americans in Milwaukee. One that I found intriguing at Alice’s Garden, displays uncuffed handcuffs and hands held together with the words, “The unfinished work of the ancestors.” I take this to mean that people, especially African Americans whose ancestry was tortured by America, are breaking free from society’s expectations and living the life that their ancestors envisioned for them – the life that their ancestors worked and fought to create. The overall theme I gather from this piece is empowerment and determination. I believe it would be impactful to incorporate that feeling of empowerment into our memorial. Another piece of art at Alice’s Garden shows plants growing out of a heart with the words, “Tried to bury us. We were seeds.” This painting demonstrates how society tries to shut out African Americans, however, that it is their decision on whether they will stay, and that this kind of environment is allowing them to do great works. Society will not decide when they can stay and when they can go, they will always find a way, even if it is not the easiest. This piece again demonstrates that determination and will to succeed.
PHOTOGRAPHIC REFLECTIONS
PHOTOGRAPHIC REFLECTIONS
The second event I attended was the “Photographic Reflections: Documenting Community” photography exhibit at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Multiple artists were represented in the exhibit, however, only one truly captured my attention, Darcy Padilla. Her displayed photographs were a collection of black and white pictures taken in a hotel that had been used to house patients with AIDS during the 1990’s AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. The reason these photos struck me was because they were all very truthful; Nothing was censored or sugar coated, instead they were raw and real. When examining them, it felt as if I was walking through the hotel. When interviewing "Artist 1", he described how the one job of an artist was to tell the truth. He repeated this idea multiple times during both of our phone conversations, and after experiencing Padilla’s work, I knew exactly what he meant. Not only did Padilla’s photographs tell the truth, but they also told the story of the people who lived through that horrific experience. I felt that this exhibit related to our project because our goal is to do as Padilla had been able to do. We can learn from Padilla and incorporate that feeling of “wow, this is what actually happened,” into our project.
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