Surprised by Art

Isthmus; Madison, Wis. › August 22, 2009

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Summary

The Madison Arts Commission didn't plan on highlighting temporary art in January and February, but that's how the first months of the new year are shaping up. Local artists Christint Olson, Timothy Browning, Jeremy Wineberg and William Turnbull will each install public pieces funded by the city's Blink grant program. Locations include Monona Bay, Lake Monona proper and a plaza at the UW Humanities Building. The Blink-funded works will join Brenda Baker's "When Water Was Here," a skeletal piece constructed from dogwood and willow boughs, which debuted suspended above the Vilas Park path on the winter solstice.

Although Baker has done temporary installation work for years, both on her own and as a member of the local collective Fieldwork, "When Water Was Here" is the first one she's installed in her own neighborhood. She says the suggestive, site-specific installation (on the Vilas Park walking path between Grant Street and Edgewood Avenue) is meant to focus viewers' attention on the area's landscape prior to the arrival of European settlers, when the Vilas Park path was a waterway and formed a link between groups of Indian mounds located at what are now Edgewood College and Bear Mound Park.

While the Blink pieces will be up for only a short time, "When Water Was Here" won't come down until the summer solstice. "It'll change and be more hidden in the spring," says Baker, who's looked on with delight this month as thick fog, fresh snow and ice have already modified her work. "And as the context around it changes, that will change the way the piece will be read or seen. I think that's what's fun about having a piece that's up for six months, a year."

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Surprised by Art

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