tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116432405210844262024-03-13T20:27:16.308-07:00UW-Milwaukee Digital CollectionsA blog dedicated to highlighting the digital holdings of the UW-Milwaukee Libraries UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-17178178734709816232019-12-04T11:50:00.000-08:002019-12-04T11:50:32.502-08:00The Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HI4y1BGD1-g/XZZG9wqknEI/AAAAAAAAAPE/V1ONwhR3zhUvXcnbNNKJNVHoeOrsJpKKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/p17272coll4_35_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1143" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HI4y1BGD1-g/XZZG9wqknEI/AAAAAAAAAPE/V1ONwhR3zhUvXcnbNNKJNVHoeOrsJpKKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/p17272coll4_35_full.jpg" width="285" /></a></div>
The next collection we want to highlight for you is our collection of the Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details. This collection of plates come to us from the <a href="https://uwm.edu/libraries/special/">UWM Libraries Special Collections</a>.The Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details digital collections includes two of the twelve volumes from an original 1890-1913 publication compiled by Colonel S.S.Jacob of the Institution of Civil Engineers. <br />
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The volumes which we currently hold include Volume VII, volume IX, Dados, with a note on the process of fresco paintings in Jeypore and volume X, Parapets. The plates show prints of various architectural designs and motifs as well as brief introductions to the techniques used to create them. Only Volumes 9 and 10 are digitized and both are missing a range of plates from the whole.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ATvszV6B5Fs/XZZJCZ0VmrI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/WgusRBrKFEEhcGCX4PUnxbBHTT1gIvcfACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/p17272coll4_42_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1140" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ATvszV6B5Fs/XZZJCZ0VmrI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/WgusRBrKFEEhcGCX4PUnxbBHTT1gIvcfACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/p17272coll4_42_full.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
The digital images were created using digital photography. They were digitized for use in a project for our <a href="https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/look-here/" target="_blank">Look Here!</a> collaboration. To view the final products of the collaborations you can view our digital exhibition <a href="http://liblamp.uwm.edu/omeka/look-here/exhibits/show/lookhere"><span id="goog_319364264"></span>here<span id="goog_319364265"></span></a>.<br />
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To browse the <a href="https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/jeypore-portfolio/" target="_blank">Jeypore Portfolio</a> check out our digital collection.UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-10366839613043907042019-10-04T10:03:00.001-07:002019-10-04T10:03:06.028-07:00The Eldon Murray Papers<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hello everyone! It has
certainly been a while since we posted. Seventeen months to be more precise and
we are sorry for the radio silence. However, it’s not without good reason - we
have been busy at work on some new collections! In the past year we have
launched several new digital collections. In the next few weeks we’ll be taking
some time to highlight a few of these new collections. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PrURrCeOQTk/XY0N1lGXjLI/AAAAAAAAAOg/VbY8QDyAMM8a28Mkepbl8tVyt92S_rELQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/murray_1256_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1132" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PrURrCeOQTk/XY0N1lGXjLI/AAAAAAAAAOg/VbY8QDyAMM8a28Mkepbl8tVyt92S_rELQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/murray_1256_full.jpg" width="282" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eldon Murray in Korea, 1950-1953</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The first collection we
want to highlight is the Eldon Murray Papers. Eldon Murray was a prominent
activist in the Milwaukee LGBT community. In addition to his work with the Gay
Peoples Union (GPU) and the Milwaukee AIDS Project (MAP), Murray was the
founder of SAGE/Milwaukee, the first organization in Wisconsin dedicated to
serving the needs of older gay, lesbian, and bisexual people through community
building and counseling services. Eldon also served in the United States Army
in Korea. The collection contains photographs, organizational records, a few
publications, and a collection of scrapbooks containing newspaper clipping
dating from the 1940s-1970s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dvqq7lSBblM/XY0Qu-Ftf9I/AAAAAAAAAO4/bxplYWgFTUUDBCHoY8CZgCN_LFwU7GP2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/murray_302_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1156" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dvqq7lSBblM/XY0Qu-Ftf9I/AAAAAAAAAO4/bxplYWgFTUUDBCHoY8CZgCN_LFwU7GP2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/murray_302_full.jpg" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eldon Murray scrapbook page (redacted version)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The scrapbooks presented
us with a unique challenge in terms of providing access to the collection. The pages contained many newspaper articles in their entirety, which made
publishing them online a conundrum. Copyright laws and the sheer amount of
material represented made it unfeasible for us to post them unaltered. In the
end our solution was to run the scrapbooks through an Optical Character
Recognition (OCR) program to generate a transcript. We hid this field from the
public but still made it searchable, this way we can provide the information to
our researchers without infringing upon copyright laws. This is a great example
of one way in which we try to work through issues to provide as much access as we
can to our researchers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For those who would like
to access the unedited versions of these articles and scrapbook pages - come to the UWM Archives reading room where you can page through the physical scrapbooks. In
addition to that you will also have access to the correspondence which has not
been digitized for privacy reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-71755869455670613212018-05-29T06:22:00.000-07:002018-05-29T10:03:13.088-07:00The Look Here! Project: An Audio Interview with Rebecca Holderness<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">This is the eighth installment in our interview series with artists participating in the </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: "EB Garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">Look Here! Project</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">. <a href="http://uwm.edu/arts/directory/holderness-rebecca/" target="_blank">Rebecca Holderness</a> is </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">a director, choreographer, teacher and artistic director who has numerous productions to her credit, and an</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;"> Associate Professor of Acting and Directing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Peck School of the Arts. In this audio interview, she discusses a new work she created for the </span><i style="font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">Look Here! Project</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">, along with </span><a href="http://uwm.edu/arts/directory/miller-andy/" style="font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;" target="_blank">Andy Miller</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">. Rebecca and Andy's installation will be part of the <i>Look Here!</i> exhibit at </span><a href="https://www.villaterrace.org/" style="font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;" target="_blank">Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "eb garamond"; font-size: 17.6px;">, opening June 28th. There will be a public performance of their work at Villa Terrace on September 9, 2018.</span><br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="no" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/448642560&color=%235e5e5c&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe>
The interview was conducted by Ann Hanlon, Head of UWM Libraries Digital Collections and Initiatives, on May 2, 2018 at the UWM Libraries Digital Humanities Lab Audio Studio. UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-44426390145984947412018-05-21T08:08:00.001-07:002018-05-21T12:05:17.037-07:00The Look Here! Project: An Interview with Laj WaghrayThis is the seventh installment in our interview series with artists participating in the <i>Look Here! Project</i>. <a href="https://www.artsinmilwaukee.org/profiles/785/" target="_blank">Laj Waghray</a> is a filmmaker; she is the Director of <a href="http://www.redcranefilms.org/" target="_blank">Red Crane Films</a>, and has numerous documentaries to her credit, including "Sleepovers," a 2012 documentary about four girls growing into young adults; she co-directed the third film in Janet Fitch’s series, "Guns, Grief and Grace in America" (2009); co-produced Ramon Rivera-Moret’s documentary, "On Calloway Street" (2008); and worked as an associate producer for Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini’s "Well-Founded Fear" (2000). Waghray was the 2014 recipient of Kartemquin Films Diverse Voices in Docs fellowship.<br />
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<b>Why were you interested in participating in the <i>Look Here! Project</i>?</b><br />
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I am a filmmaker and we often work in isolation. So when the <i>Look Here! Project </i>came up it was exciting as it presented me with an opportunity to be a part of a University Library and to work with people! This is a very good match for my personality.<br />
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<b>AH</b>: So when you’re talking about the research aspect of things – did you find in working on the <i>Look Here! Project</i> that working with the collections and materials helped to extend a current research project, or did it take you into something entirely new?<br />
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<b>LW</b>: I submitted two ideas when I first started the Look Here! Project. Both were something I had been exploring already. One idea was about the consequences of urbanization on bird habitats. I have been obsessed with that topic for a long time. And I’ve also been working on a short film which is more poetic, about ‘what hands do’. What do makers, or artists or whoever makes something with their hands - what draws them to their work, and why? So I submitted both ideas, thinking that my project with urbanization and birds will be the one that I would find the most material on and really, who was even thinking about hands? Then I come to the library and Max (Yela) is showing me these amazing artist books on similar issues and I realized there was much more material for the hands project. I was just blown away. Each book was part of this broad concept that I was exploring.<br />
So that was an exciting discovery.<br />
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Then we talked about the Wisconsin Arts Project and the Milwaukee Handicrafts Project. What’s exciting is that someone, during the time of the Depression thought that jobs should come back and what did we go back to? Not technology but hands and handicrafts.<br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-6cf1677e-8410-a25a-a799-50a5a4e6c124"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AH:</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s interesting, and that’s the Milwaukee Arts Project? </span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mzryzPBe118/WwLev8ebUyI/AAAAAAAAAMs/KcFl353gZMY_g0Yz6LZD52F3JpDLIyzcACLcBGAs/s1600/wpa_uwmmss59B03F07014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="454" height="222" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mzryzPBe118/WwLev8ebUyI/AAAAAAAAAMs/KcFl353gZMY_g0Yz6LZD52F3JpDLIyzcACLcBGAs/s320/wpa_uwmmss59B03F07014.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
Yes, It was a federally funded program, I am researching the libraries collection of the work of <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/wpa/search/searchterm/Elsa%20Emile%20Ulbricht%20Papers/field/origin/mode/exact/conn/and/order/nosort" target="_blank">Elsa Ulbricht</a>, who devised and oversaw the nationally recognized Milwaukee Handicraft Project, an initiative created after the stock market crash that provided jobs for approximately 5,000 people (mostly poor, unskilled women), to manufacture toys, rugs, and printed fabrics.<br />
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The Idea was to provide employment for Americans affected by the economic crash through projects to improve the country’s infrastructure. Interestingly, it included a smaller project that focused on supporting the arts and involved people that were trained in working with their hands, which dovetailed nicely with my explorations. <br />
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<b>AH</b>: I actually always think of the word "work" with your project, but I don’t think that you are necessarily looking at it as just an issue of "work," in terms of what people are doing with their hands.<br />
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<b>LW</b>: It’s not just work. For some people it is just work -It’s not a choice. For many others though, It’s the making, it’s the process, and it’s the touch that is very satisfying.<br />
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A lot of these discoveries have been pretty exciting. I didn’t ever think manual work and handicrafts was something that a federal government would get involved in. The process is beautiful. It breaks your thinking pattern, it breaks your assumptions and you end up going a whole new direction from what you wanted to prove.<br />
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<b>AH</b>: So the challenges for you come from both the collections in the Library and from live people.<br />
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<b>LW</b>: Yes, It happened in most unexpected ways. There were some good challenges too, It was hard to concentrate at the Special collection library, it was somewhat akin to the being a kid in a candy store --- Everywhere you look there were stories coming at you. I had a hard time focusing but all my distractions and procrastination were tied to the fact that I might have succumbed to the temptation of turning pages of a book which is not related directly to my topic.<br />
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<b>AH</b>: In your previous work had you worked with historical materials very often?<br />
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<b>LW</b>: No, I’ve worked primarily with people. <i>Sleepovers</i> (2012) was about four girls and their journey. I followed them over the period of ten years. Then I worked on a film called <i>On Calloway Street</i> (2004), in New York, where I documented the lives of many immigrants over a period of two years. Later, I worked on a film on gun violence (<i>Changing the Conversation: America’s Gun Violence Epidemic</i>, 2009) and discovered that it’s not just homicide in urban populations which is the problem, but also suicides among white, suburban populations which goes under-reported. This is probably my first experience sitting in a library and digging, and I think I am hooked.<br />
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<b>AH:</b> You’ve talked about using the artist books that Max Yela has up in Special Collections, as well as the Milwaukee Arts Project collections, some of which we’ve digitized and put online. Are there any other collections that you’ve used that we haven’t talked about?<br />
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<b>LW</b>: Initially, for my urbanization and bird habitat project I found very interesting material like the Nehrling books, the <a href="https://uwi-primoalma-prod.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?query=any,contains,Brehms%20Tierleben&tab=main&search_scope=MIL_ALL&sortby=rank&vid=MIL&facet=local6,include,Special%20Collections$$IMIL&lang=en_US&mode=Basic&offset=0" target="_blank">Brehms Tierleben</a> collection, and <a href="https://uwi-primoalma-prod.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?query=creator,exact,Eddee%20Daniel,AND&tab=main&search_scope=MIL_ALL&sortby=rank&vid=MIL&lang=en_US&mode=advanced&offset=0" target="_blank">Eddee Daniel's artist books</a>, which I hope to revisit later. Staying focused is a challenge when researching in a library like Special Collections.<br />
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<b>AH:</b> Do you save those up somehow for future reference?<br />
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<b>LW:</b> Yes, I do have this ‘idea book’ that I write things in. My challenge is that my work requires a team which requires funding. So if that comes along, I have lots of ideas in that book!<br />
But going back to the challenge of focus, It’s very helpful that the librarians are interested in helping you, because sometimes research can be very overwhelming. I think the collaboration and getting to know the librarians; being able to go behind the scenes in the collections has been tremendous. The discussions with librarians lead you on the right path and they expand your ideas. They would have helped even if I was not part of a project, but this experience has been very rewarding.<br />
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<b>AH</b>: I think framing this as a project changes the relationship and makes it more of a partnership between the artists and the librarians than it might have been before. Which, like you said, the librarians would have always helped you. <i>The Look Here! Project</i> just makes it a more collaborative relationship.<br />
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<b>LW</b>: This time it seems like there’s this collaboration where the excitement is shared. It’s good. And the library has a stake in the work we’re creating.<br />
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<b>AH</b>: I think that’s exactly right. It’s not like you just walk away and show your work and we’re like "Oh that’s interesting. She used our stuff." We’re interested in what you’re doing with our stuff too. Because the other side of it for us is, how is that informing what we collect and what we digitize and how we make this material available so that it’s most useful for artists and others. Having you and other artists who work in a variety of media is contributing to our thinking on these things.<br />
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<b>LW:</b> It has made the experience quite rich, because I would have never thought of how <a href="https://uwmdigitalcollections.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-look-here-project-interview-with.html" target="_blank">Jill (Sebastian) </a>is using the collections in her work, or <a href="https://uwmdigitalcollections.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-look-here-project-interview-with.html" target="_blank">Nirmal’s (Raja)</a> use of the collections, or how <a href="https://uwmdigitalcollections.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-look-here-project-interview-with.html" target="_blank">Marc Tasman</a> is repurposing things. When I’m listening to other artists it’s absolutely exciting.<br />
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<b>AH:</b> It’s been a really rich conversation. How did what you found in the collections influence your work?<br />
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<b>LW:</b> I had already decided when I applied how I was going to incorporate the materials. I did not expect that the collections would find me and change my work. I already knew what I was doing and thought I just needed X, Y, and Z to fulfill this task. Then I found all these artist books and the WPA projects - now I feel as if my project is advocating in some way for bringing the tactile sense back. I don’t know what will change in my journey. I’m on the journey where the work is talking to me. It is saying “Wait, you’re not done yet. You need to add me to your journey and you need to talk about what’s being done historically, too, and how are you going to do that?” That’s the challenge and that’s where I’m at right now, trying to figure that out.<br />
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<b>How has having so much content available digitally affected the work you are creating or has it had any impact?</b><br />
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<b>LW:</b> One of the online collections I used was the <a href="http://uwm.edu/wpa/" target="_blank">Wisconsin Arts Project</a>. While there is a lot of material it’s very nicely organized so it’s a little less overwhelming. Still, because I’m going directly to where I want, there is a fear that I might be missing something else. In the Special Collections library what I wanted was put out on the table for me. I called Max and when I’d arrive it was already set out, so when you go to the library you are looking at your resources and your work – but there is also all the other work that other people are working on around you. Whether they’re there or not, the traces of their work are there. An unopened book there, a closed box with an interesting title. I found a film index from a few years back. There was some collection of encyclopedias from India that were old. I really had to pull myself back and say, “Max put this out for you on the table – there are 15 books out on the table; sit there and look at them.” <br />
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<b>AH</b>: But was it exciting to have that other work sort of radiating around you?<br />
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<b>LW:</b> Yes, it’s like you’re surrounded by the evidence of other people’s ideas. If we are open to be influenced by other people's ideas we can arrive at a balance where their ideas can infiltrate into your curiosity and can unexpectedly elevate your project, making the process dynamic, ever-changing and exciting.<br />
<br />UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-66942586879124260782018-04-23T06:26:00.000-07:002018-04-23T06:26:19.922-07:00The Look Here! Project: An Interview with Jill SebastianThis is the fifth installment in our interview series with artists participating in the <i>Look Here!</i> project. <a href="http://jillsebastian.com/" target="_blank">Jill Sebastian</a> is Professor Emerita at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She has received numerous awards, including an NEA Fellowship, and the City of Milwaukee's Artist of the Year Award (1997). She has completed public art installations in Milwaukee, Madison, and New Orleans, and her work has been exhibited nationally.<br />
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<b>Why were you interested in participating in the <i>Look Here!</i> pilot project?</b><br />
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Much of my work involves a dialectical overlay between physical experience and conceptual subtext. Whereas I may do extensive "needle-in-the-haystack" trolling of cultural context, history, politics to map my ideas, as an object maker I am still riveted by the rare, the firsthand experiencing of things. AGSL (The American Geographical Society Library) and the UWM Special Collections' rich, unique artifacts presented the possibility of adventure, exploring territories rarely visited and holding them to the light of now.<br />
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<b>What collections are using or did you begin to use for your project?</b><br />
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Where I began as an explorer is not where we will arrive in the final work.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L1xTNHL8zU4/WtoPixmnz1I/AAAAAAAAAL0/Z_YKVD9OpZw2YDvcROnnNP8xlbHptA0eQCEwYBhgL/s1600/blog-Die%2BNordamerikanische%2BVogelwelt_plate_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1218" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L1xTNHL8zU4/WtoPixmnz1I/AAAAAAAAAL0/Z_YKVD9OpZw2YDvcROnnNP8xlbHptA0eQCEwYBhgL/s320/blog-Die%2BNordamerikanische%2BVogelwelt_plate_001.jpg" width="243" /></a>My initial proposal was to use the <a href="https://uwi-primoalma-prod.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=UWI71313924440002121&context=L&vid=MIL&search_scope=MIL_ALL&tab=main&lang=en_US" target="_blank">Brumder</a> and the Civil Rights collections to flesh out a children's book in progress - a primer on voting rights. Raking through the archives added a few important details to the project, which I will use, but my overall continuing research would lead me quite afield from the collections. Once <i>Look Here!</i> introduced us to the prospect of exhibiting at <a href="https://www.villaterracemuseum.org/about.html" target="_blank">Villa Terrace</a>, I felt the opportunity would better be used to connect to major ongoing threads within my studio work - the distribution of protectionist propaganda with migration/invasion of plant and wildlife - to the research opportunity.<br />
<br />
The Brumder publishing collection with its emphasis on familiarizing and situating the 19th century, immigrant German population in their new locale, Milwaukee, once gave a widely needed framework of belonging, influence and assumed regional values. I looked at far more than I could ever use but settled on <i>Our native birds of song and beauty</i> by H. Nehring.<br />
<br />
Casting a wide net helped me gather a bounty which I can winnow - eliminating this option or that, focusing to a multi-layered simplicity; considering whether what I envision has been done or not, giving authentic context for my effort and finally being reassured that I am pursuing a new path.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VXPqmxynhuQ/Wto5NK97-zI/AAAAAAAAAMU/L2mhgUrzbF0lfbRWTdbgZFJu614eeWnEwCLcBGAs/s1600/zuber-room.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="1600" height="137" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VXPqmxynhuQ/Wto5NK97-zI/AAAAAAAAAMU/L2mhgUrzbF0lfbRWTdbgZFJu614eeWnEwCLcBGAs/s320/zuber-room.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zuber Gallery at Villa Terrace</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I will be doing an installation in Villa Terrace's Zuber room with its Chinoise wallpaper printed by hand from 500 wood blocks dating back to 1795. I have looked carefully at holdings in original artists' woodcuts. I think <a href="http://uwm.edu/libraries/people/yela-max/" target="_blank">Max Yela</a> (Curator, UWM Special Collections) saw the relevance of my papermaking in the larger context of artists books and works on or about paper before I did.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v4KdEKI3aVU/WtoPNz4uWWI/AAAAAAAAALo/ypis0vwlqmU6NR2r6HhCeSwiHp7D92gSgCLcBGAs/s1600/cl000153_kabul-gardens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="500" height="185" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v4KdEKI3aVU/WtoPNz4uWWI/AAAAAAAAALo/ypis0vwlqmU6NR2r6HhCeSwiHp7D92gSgCLcBGAs/s320/cl000153_kabul-gardens.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Since the Zuber room is centered to overlook an Italian inspired garden, I expanded into meanings of garden design - <i>The Art of Garden Design in Italy</i> by H. Inigo Triggs and <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agsphoto/id/19342/rec/2" target="_blank">ASGL photographs of the Gardens of Babur in Kabul (Bagh-e Babur)</a>. Destroyed in war this Islamic garden was built along a center stepped spine of water in the 1500s as a reminder of paradise and became an influence on Renaissance thought.<br />
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<b>How did what you found in the collections influence your work?</b><br />
<br />
Because I have strong trajectories in my practice, I worked to connect the collection to what I am doing, rather than approaching without a concept looking for inspiration. This means a much longer process of research to find what resonates, what deepens through threads of connections over time. I admit this has been sometimes a struggle with optimistic starts that did not pan out, but the librarians were always excited to suggest, "Have you seen this?" or "Maybe you would find this valuable." Their guidance has been the most valuable asset.<br />
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<b>How does having so much content available digitally affect the work you're creating? Or does it?</b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mY8DV8wMGek/WtoQTAtCZVI/AAAAAAAAAL8/u3KEMAKflSYy5QMHH-hxvL3He7WP_wmXQCLcBGAs/s1600/3%2BBorders-inprogress_detail-JSebastian2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mY8DV8wMGek/WtoQTAtCZVI/AAAAAAAAAL8/u3KEMAKflSYy5QMHH-hxvL3He7WP_wmXQCLcBGAs/s320/3%2BBorders-inprogress_detail-JSebastian2018.jpg" width="240" /></a>I began my research with an exhibition on Brumder Publishing and the actual artifacts. Special Collections offered to digitize any holdings, and scanning Nehring's <i>Birds</i> became a foundation for my project. Perhaps the biggest advantage was in culling through the <a href="https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/" target="_blank">online catalogue of holdings</a> and seeing images there that opened up new avenues of research.<br />
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The high quality of the images meant that I could work directly with information rich files. To pry open the singularity of one-of-a-kind artifacts, books, engravings, to share them broadly. And yet, my work - despite digitally laser cutting woodblocks and several hundred prints - will be synthesized into a fragile, temporary, first-hand physical nature of a site-specific installation. The expansion and contraction of experience is the irony of our digital age.<br />
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<b>What more can you tell us about your experience in this project?</b><br />
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Knowing that the work from <i>Look Here!</i> would be shared in an exhibition in a venue, Villa Terrace, laden with rich history impacted the direction of my project.<br />
<br />
We romanticize nature, and we idealize it in gardens. Right in front of us on a micro level are ongoing lessons of life and death, war and peace, heaven and hell found by closely considering a small plot of earth.<br />
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The Zuber Room at the Villa Terrace is papered with handprinted scenes of an exotic Chinoise paradise. My site-specific installation will inject realities of the garden world outside where drab Wisconsin Sparrows have been harvested for culinary pleasure; Red Wing Blackbirds fiercely defend their territory; Tree of Heaven Sumac, Wild Mustard, Burdock and Thistle invade, threatening the order of a perfect world; and where the continuing war in Afganistan seems remote, unreal.<br />
<br />
======<br />
More about Jill Sebastian's work is here: <a href="http://jillsebastian.com/">http://jillsebastian.com/</a><br />
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UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-28257245029256297222018-04-02T18:34:00.000-07:002018-04-03T04:35:36.492-07:00The Look Here! Project: An interview with Anja SiegerThis is the fifth installment in our interview series with artists participating in the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/look-here/" target="_blank"><i>Look Here!</i> project</a>. <a href="http://www.laprosette.com/" target="_blank">Anja Notanja Sieger</a> is an improv artist and writer who uses multiple media and performance. She is an Artist in Residence at <a href="https://www.redlinemilwaukee.com/" target="_blank">RedLine Milwaukee</a>, and was Resident Narrator at the Pfister Hotel in 2014-2015.<br />
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<b>Why were you interested in participating in this Look Here! pilot project?</b><br />
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I really like libraries, research, images, learning, and then with this project, having parameters within which to make artwork so I’m not just inventing everything. I like rules. The <i>Look Here!</i> project has a broad charge but the main restriction is that the inspiration needs to come from the digital collections. And I like that because I feel that I'm magnetically pulled to books – and even though the digital library isn’t per se a book, it has that attraction for me in that it’s access to a bunch of things that you have to wade through to understand; texts, images, documents.<br />
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<b>What collections are using or did you begin to use for your project?</b><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QYz_2DvC9B4/WsLZduteTuI/AAAAAAAAALI/xV3q4DtmUN085I3-QYPJdmfqUhDjr18FwCLcBGAs/s1600/the%2Bwheel%2Bof%2Bfortune.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="940" data-original-width="1600" height="187" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QYz_2DvC9B4/WsLZduteTuI/AAAAAAAAALI/xV3q4DtmUN085I3-QYPJdmfqUhDjr18FwCLcBGAs/s320/the%2Bwheel%2Bof%2Bfortune.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Originally I was very drawn to the <a href="https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/?fwp_subjects=agsl" target="_blank">American Geographical Society Library (AGSL) collections</a> specifically because they could take you anywhere in the world that you wanted to go and you’d never have the same thing going on. But since then I’ve based my work around the tarot deck, and I have new parameters of trying to find anything related to the current tarot card that I’m working on. Tarot cards are an ancient picture system that tell a story of someone going on a journey and having basically a whole life cycle of experiences. Each of the cards has traditionally associated with different meanings. So I try to look into the traditional meaning of that card, and then I try to see if I can find a picture anywhere in the digital archive that meets that parameter. If I can, I want them to be wearing a hat because my whole theme within the tarot deck is hats - so I have to have a hat, I have to have a digital picture, I have to have the theme of the tarot card, and then I have to interpret it in a way where I like the meaning and the way it looks and the composition. So there are about four factors that constrict me and I really like that because before I didn’t have any rules as to what I was finding, and that fizzled out because I didn’t have the rigor with that, that having these four rules provide.<br />
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<b><i>Is rule-making always part of your project/process?</i></b><br />
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It kind of <i>is</i> my process – what I’ve done is always improvisational. So I don’t usually plan things out a lot; so when I am cutting paper I just have a scissors and a piece of paper and that is my rule – I can only do something with scissors and a piece of paper. Or when I’m out typing – which is what most people locally might know me for – I have the person, I have what they want, I have a typewriter, and I have 10 minutes. So I kind of like higher-stakes projects.<br />
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<b><i>Since you’re more well-known for the typing project and that’s machine-oriented, have you thought of that with regard to the digital aspect of this project?</i></b><br />
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No real connection except that there isn’t one. I’ve taken three months off from commissions and working for other people, and checking Facebook a lot, and seeing what happens when I’m not online and if I don’t have previous engagements. And, apparently, using pen and ink, drawing tarot, doing collage, and using Cray-pas thus far is the answer to what happens!<br />
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<b>How did what you found in the collections influence your work?</b><br />
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One of my cards is the wheel of fortune, so I would just type the word "wheel" into the digital collections search engine and find something. Since then I’ve worked with the <a href="http://uwm.edu/mkepolonia/" target="_blank">(Milwaukee) Polonia collections</a>, the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/arcw/" target="_blank">ARCW (AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin) collection</a>, the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/murdoch/" target="_blank">(James Blair) Murdoch photographs</a>, the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/picturing-golda-meir/" target="_blank">Golda Meir collection</a>, and the AGSL photo collections.<br />
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<b><i>You were able to take not just the images in the collection but the construct of the collection – the fact that it’s vast, and just approach it randomly with a keyword search.</i></b><br />
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It’s kind of natural to me because I am of the generation that probably started Googling things when I was in 7th grade, so I’m a Googler – that’s my main way of doing research. Of course I used card catalogs growing up, but Google is the technique I’m most familiar with. It’s efficient. It’s the same process I would use normally if I wanted to find out anything – even though I’m on a social media break, I still retain the knowledge I gained using social media. So searching through the collections, I know these librarians probably used a particular tag to describe an image, for example, and I can use that to find other images.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CbJjsdvSOAY/WsLUTRBu5gI/AAAAAAAAAKU/S0PsgfjGKQUJJ07gHyyk6Iec35DGl707wCLcBGAs/s1600/the%2Bhanged%2Bman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="943" data-original-width="1600" height="188" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CbJjsdvSOAY/WsLUTRBu5gI/AAAAAAAAAKU/S0PsgfjGKQUJJ07gHyyk6Iec35DGl707wCLcBGAs/s320/the%2Bhanged%2Bman.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
When I was interpreting the hanged man card – that subject or image could be very delicate. Do I want to take a picture of lynching and interpret it? Probably not for this project. I had to think about, "what is another way people hang upside down?" I thought of gymnasts – and there are some <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/mke-polonia/search/searchterm/Gymnastics/field/subjec/mode/exact/conn/and" target="_blank">gymnast photos</a> in the Polonia collection. And then I just needed an interpretation of the act of hanging from something, with a tree as part of the image. It’s actually very creepy looking but at the same time I’m not appropriating anything horrible that happened to someone. It makes it a different piece at that point and I don’t think I have the authority to make such a piece. [<i>note</i>: The <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/jbmurdoch/id/322/rec/12" target="_blank">source image</a> for this card ultimately came from the <i>James Blair Murdoch</i> collection]<br />
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<b><i>In this example, when you thought about gymnasts as an alternative, did you think – oh I’ve seen this in Polonia?</i></b><br />
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No, I just typed in "gymnast" and then I limited to just images and the Polonia collection came up. And he wasn’t wearing a hat so I decided to make it a hat that he was actually hanging from. It’s interesting because I feel a certain connection to the <a href="https://uwm.edu/mkepolonia/" target="_blank">Polonia collection</a> because I went to school at 5th and Mitchell from K-8 and I would walk up and down Mitchell Street and I feel like I know that neighborhood pretty well, and I’m Polish so some of these people could be my ancestors. It’s also a vast collection – your chances of finding things that can be used are pretty good. And interesting to see what’s still around in Milwaukee, and what's disappeared.<br />
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<b>How does having so much content available digitally affect the work you're creating?</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agsphoto/id/28347/rec/17" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yIi9sbPv3ow/WsLWHcnGO8I/AAAAAAAAAKg/wodft4DjSj8czD-_8vWDPUFb9MRy5pt2gCLcBGAs/s320/agsphoto_28347_judgement.jpg" width="207" /></a></span></td></tr>
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I’m really having to let go of trying to control the image. I would say the digital collection has the <br />
biggest impact on what the image is going to look like. I don’t do any predesigning of the card. I do some research on the tradition of the card, and then I try and sum up the meaning in images. For example, in the traditional judgment card, it's a picture of a bunch of people rising out of coffins, skies opening up, there’s a big horn – traditionally the interpretation of the card is something like your "true calling," rising up out of your deadened state to become who you're meant to be. So then I thought of what the idea of true calling is, and what does that look like as an image? And then I thought of a phone call. So I started looking for pictures of people on the telephone, and then I found this woman who is on the phone with a calendar behind her, but I still needed to find other images that relate to the original judgement card, so I added gnomes around her and other images of getting ready to go to work, gnomes who can help you get something done.<br />
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I like looking at the cards as archetypes and then I try to replicate that archetype in any way using the digital collections – so I’m really finding archetypes in the digital collections. It’s a new way to use the digital collections – for archetype-finding.<br />
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Even though the digital collections are vast, I’ll do a search and then sometimes nothing pops up that’s related, but it’s still productive. For example, I tried to do a search for "gambling" when I was interpreting the four of pentacles card. All of the pentacle cards are a suit that in your normal playing card deck – which are the same thing but at one point they split off in their history. So four of pentacles are the same as four of diamonds, and this is about money and worldly goods. The four of pentacles is traditionally about being stable with your money but also having enough to be able to do something with it and not hoard it. So who is someone who might hoard money, and I thought of gamblers. When I searched the collection I was hoping for some Las Vegas gambler but what I got were some really interesting images of people in Asia with a wheel of fortune device or elsewhere with wheels, but I was looking for were more like images of money exchange, or those chips. I did find people going to banks, making transactions. So it's a vast collection but not infinite. It means I need to redefine my search or my card and so the digital collection ends up completely defining what my archetype is going to be for the card.<br />
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<b><i>And so you really confined yourself to the digital collection in a way others haven’t necessarily done; you’re doing a project that really is only mediated by the digital collection. You aren’t going in and asking reference questions – you’re working from this as a database and the source for your work. </i></b><br />
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Sometimes I think I’ll want to do another tarot deck where I choose the imagery more, but in doing it this way I really have to think about what is the essence of something, and I’ll have to completely change it because it was getting too complicated. Because tarot cards are from pre-literate society you have to get the whole meaning from looking at it, so you have to keep things simple. I recently drew an entire card and it was beautiful but when I looked at it I didn’t think anyone could tell what it was about so I had to scrap it.<br />
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<b><i>When you’re searching in the digital collection for something, is that similar for you to pulling a card from the deck – where you don’t know what you’re going to get but you’re going to work with it? Is that part of your approach?</i></b><br />
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Yes, it’s almost like divining – an image comes to you from the archive. You do the search, and it sometimes is a random process. A lot of people think of the tarot deck as a conduit of the spirit giving you a message from your unconscious. So I think of the digital archive as a conduit of the spirit or the unconscious.<br />
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<b><i>It’s a mystification of the digital collection that isn’t usually how we think of the deliberate work of creating these digital collections, but that seems entirely appropriate in the context of the project. </i></b><br />
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Any project I work on has to do with divining and letting the unconscious bleed and then seeing what happens when you clean up that mess. It’s interesting to do this with library collections – where the library is all about organizing and cleaning up what might have been a mess, and so this is an interesting process to lay on top of library collections that really resist disorganization; but going ahead and letting it be random. There is an expectation that we respond to a specific collection in the library, but I’m much more interested in what falls out as I shuffle the cards.<br />
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<b>What more can you tell us about your experience in this project?</b><br />
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I think that a lot of people are really freaked out by the tarot, but I’m not. And as I do this work, I think the whole process is really interesting because how often do we get to interact with archetypes in our lives, in a deliberate way? It’s interesting because I’m almost exclusively using photographs as my source materials, so the images I’m drawing are based on real life. It’s like discovering how in any given moment you can be living in an archetype and it calls attention to the archetype of the moment as something you are experiencing and learning from. If anything, this process has more to do with the past and bringing it into the present. This has nothing to do with the future.<br />
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======<br />
More about Anja Notanja Sieger's work is here: <a href="http://www.laprosette.com/">http://www.laprosette.com/</a><br />
<br />UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-47845022497357836282018-02-01T08:12:00.005-08:002018-02-01T08:12:56.702-08:00The Look Here! project: An interview with Madeline Martin<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">This is the fourth installment in our interview series with artists participating in the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/look-here/" style="color: #3d85c6; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Look Here!</a> project. </span></span>Madeline Martin, an MFA candidate at UW-Milwaukee, is a watercolor, paper, and embroidery artist. Her work honors everyday people by commemorating their intimate and familial moments through rich and layered details. Her work has been exhibited across the United States. In addition to raising her three young children, she was an art teacher at the Boys & Girls Club in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park for five years, an artist-in-residence at <a href="https://www.redlinemilwaukee.com/" target="_blank">RedLine Milwaukee</a>, and a teacher for disabled adults in the Twin Cities.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Why were you interested in participating in the Look Here!
project?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">I was initially
interested in participating in the <i>Look Here! Project</i> because of the blend of
RedLine Milwaukee artists and UWM faculty.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">I was an artist-in-residence at RedLine from 2011-2013, and I am
currently an MFA candidate at UWM.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
union of both groups felt like a welcome </span>congruence<span style="font-family: inherit;"> in the beginning of my grad
program.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">I also was confident that I
could make something based on the library’s cache of knowledge; an artist
could truly spend an entire career working with the UWM Library’s materials.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What collections are you using or did you begin to use for
your work?</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DyGFJyEE1JM/WnM6oiqdD6I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/h5_XquyrNxkXha5NHxXEKPrkkkIzisj4gCLcBGAs/s1600/wpa_19_civil-war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="227" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DyGFJyEE1JM/WnM6oiqdD6I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/h5_XquyrNxkXha5NHxXEKPrkkkIzisj4gCLcBGAs/s1600/wpa_19_civil-war.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">I initially planned to make work related to the
library’s watercolor period paintings found in the <a href="http://uwm.edu/wpa/" target="_blank">Work Progress Administration Collection</a>.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">Since a lot of my work has
focused on embroidered and watercolor portraits, I was intrigued by the
different names applied to pieces in the library’s collection, such as "<a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/wpa/search/searchterm/european%20peasant/field/all/mode//wpa/conn/and/order/title/ad/asc/cosuppress/0" target="_blank">EuropeanPeasant</a>," or "<a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/wpa/id/19/rec/1" target="_blank">Civil War Child</a>." </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">I thought I could apply those same titles to Milwaukee
community members in a contemporary context. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">As I delved deeper into this project, though,
I concluded that those titles were applicable to theater characters but
somewhat reductive for actual people. That collection was a fruitful origin
point, however, and it served as a stepping stone for later research.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>How did what you found in the collections influence your
work?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">In the <a href="http://uwm.edu/libraries/agsl/" target="_blank">American Geographical Society Library</a>, I
was impressed/overwhelmed by the vast amount of information, but I was most
amazed by the fact that the AGSL staff will print images onto fabric and a
variety of paper for a reasonable price. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">The AGSL is a treasure for artists and
researchers, and I will be utilizing some of its topographical maps and aerial
imagery in this project as a way to connect the people whom I am featuring with
ancestral lands.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I also spent time with the <a href="http://uwm.edu/libraries/archives/" target="_blank">UWM Archive</a>'s <a href="http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mil00231" target="_blank">Vel Phillips collection</a>, which features some of her personal family photo albums
alongside content related to her career and <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/march/search/searchterm/Phillips%2C%20Vel/field/people/mode/all/conn/and/order/title/ad/asc" target="_blank">civil rights history</a>. While I may not use any of the archived images
directly in my work, Vel Phillips’ professionalism and commitment to her family
and community inspired me during this project. The archives contain a photo of Judge Phillips
tying her son’s shoes, and a scanned image of that photo hangs above my desk. That image has kept me company while I work,
reminding me that mothering and parenting, although a common activity, is still
profoundly sacred. Despite its endless
minutiae, parenting has effects we can never fully understand. I am grateful
for the role model of Vel Phillips, a mother who still maintained her
commitment to justice and community. Her
work towards equality could arguably be considered an extension of her role as
a mother, ensuring a better life for her children and grandchildren,
simultaneously weaving together the past and the future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>How does having so much content
available digitally affect the work you're creating? </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pR8RwUrLPp4/WnIze_Ik8sI/AAAAAAAAAJg/8iF7AD3AzYgMqItz4MkgPzcij6KrWxvcACLcBGAs/s1600/tumblr_niwmrldnIK1tg3t3io7_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pR8RwUrLPp4/WnIze_Ik8sI/AAAAAAAAAJg/8iF7AD3AzYgMqItz4MkgPzcij6KrWxvcACLcBGAs/s320/tumblr_niwmrldnIK1tg3t3io7_400.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">Digital
images have immense power and provide a way to continually revisit a piece, but
I still appreciate the physical nature of touching books, maps, and archives in
the library.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">For me, material interactions
usually inspire greater reflection than online viewing.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">In my research, I especially found the books
related to family in the <a href="http://uwm.edu/libraries/special/" target="_blank">Special Collections</a> helpful as I navigate the creation
of work that is often very private but offered to the public sphere. Those
included </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">Argentine artist Silvia Guigon's 2011
homage to her grandmother, </span><a href="https://uwi-primoalma-prod.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=UWI71342655670002121&context=L&vid=MIL&search_scope=MIL_Archives&tab=main&lang=en_US" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: blue;">Amanda (La mujer amada</span></i><span style="color: blue;">)</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">, Roberta Lavadour's 2008 glass book </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><a href="https://uwmspeccoll.tumblr.com/post/109431925095/booknot-book-this-week-we-present-roberta">Relative
Memory II</a></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">, and Milwaukee artist and UWM BFA grad Taylor Easton’s 2011
one-of-a-kind fiber and mixed-media piece </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><a href="https://uwmspeccoll.tumblr.com/post/123567875550/booknot-book-this-week-we-present-milwaukee">A
Self Portrait</a></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What more can you tell us about your experience with the
Look Here! project?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EXJpIfLn7mw/WnIzKCExucI/AAAAAAAAAJc/QM_C6BOb4jESfoaSj4uKcyTgARtHNGeFACLcBGAs/s1600/_MG_1870.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EXJpIfLn7mw/WnIzKCExucI/AAAAAAAAAJc/QM_C6BOb4jESfoaSj4uKcyTgARtHNGeFACLcBGAs/s320/_MG_1870.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">The location of our show at the <a href="https://www.villaterracemuseum.org/" target="_blank">Villa Terrace</a>
helped solidify my ideas.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">When we toured
the space and I learned that the room with the Madonna niche is called "The
Family Room," I instantly knew that my work would have good company, and I
became committed to further exploration of the theme of mothering and
parenting.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span></div>
<div style="height: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">x</span></div>
UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-82730837408801223812018-01-09T07:22:00.000-08:002018-01-10T05:58:48.064-08:00The Look Here! Project: An Interview with Nirmal Raja<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the third installment in our interview series with artists participating in the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/look-here/" target="_blank">Look Here!</a> project. <a href="http://www.nirmalraja.com/" target="_blank">Nirmal Raja</a> is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She was a mentoring resident at <a href="https://www.redlinemilwaukee.com/" target="_blank">RedLine Milwaukee</a>, an urban arts incubator, for over 6 years. Currently, she works out of her studio at <i><a href="http://www.materialstudiosandgallery.com/" target="_blank">Material Studios and Gallery</a></i> in downtown Milwaukee.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
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<b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Why
are you interested in participating in the Look Here! project?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We don’t look at history enough and libraries are
repositories of histories among other things– our relationship with libraries
in general has changed so much because information is available seemingly so
easily. But it’s wonderful being able to wander in an actual physical library
and being able to find things you wouldn’t necessarily find with keywords.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Additionally, to have some guidance is great! I’ve always noticed
that once I start digging into a concept or subject matter for my artwork it
seems to divide its self, as if it’s this never-ending tunnel that you get
into. It’s exhausting in some ways, because then you think that you don’t have
a resolution. But also just incredibly fascinating to see how much information there
is to absorb.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I really started to think of my artwork as a process of research
in graduate school; it’s great to tie that aspect of making with research in
knowledge bases and how those can be intertwined. With this project, I am
referencing or in conversation with the past, and figuring out how to bring the
past to light somehow; processed through my own lens. It seems like any
material can be reframed by who is speaking to it, and we could use that
framing power as an artist to create a space for examination and contemplation.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What collections
are you using or did you begin to use for your project?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ank5Xucrr8g/WlTaFKvrenI/AAAAAAAAAI4/H4Kc10Ntjy4KENy64fYa2N-iykT1QvX7ACLcBGAs/s1600/nirmal-jp_pt-9_1890_047.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1159" data-original-width="1600" height="231" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ank5Xucrr8g/WlTaFKvrenI/AAAAAAAAAI4/H4Kc10Ntjy4KENy64fYa2N-iykT1QvX7ACLcBGAs/s320/nirmal-jp_pt-9_1890_047.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Initially I was really taken by the Jeypore Portfolio in the
<a href="http://uwm.edu/libraries/special/" target="_blank">Special Collections library</a>. I was amazed by the pains someone took to record
architectural details, and the beauty that existed in India at the time; and
the pains that the actual mason or architect took in creating those details in
the first place. This portfolio was my starting point but the project has
expanded since then. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There are certain things that I have tucked away in my
mental notebook to expand on. This project has given me an opportunity to address
a couple of those. One of them is the trope of the screen. In South Asian architecture,
it is called the “Jaali” – it’s been used in South Asian cultures for many,
many centuries as a device for gender segregation, a device for power; so how
do you take something so beautiful and so intricate and decorative and infuse
it with meaning that is relevant to the present, and investigate what’s going
on around us now – that’s what interests me. The screen is also a filtering
mechanism. The person who is surrounded by the screen is looking out on the
world, but also the world is wondering what must be inside. And so I initially
thought that’s what I would be making work about, but it’s expanded. Which is
the condition of research, I guess. Beauty is very much present in my work and
Jaalis are wonderfully intricate and beautiful, but I also seek depth and
meaning in my work. Beauty can be a tool to bring the viewer into the work, but
also to bring the viewer to a different plane, making them think and question. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’re living in a time of anxiety. It took me a long time
to feel like I belong in this country, only to doubt that again this past year.
I’m trying to figure out how I fit into this dynamic of power, but also what is
my role as an immigrant artist who considers herself American but also from elsewhere.
I think as a culture, we’re becoming very unidimensional. But art can be a
place where we can find richness and complexity, and also where we can possibly
place the viewer in a situation where they have a choice to look reality in the
face or to look past it. I want to use the screen as a place where the viewer
is confronted with this choice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I will be printing a list of recent hate crimes on vinyl
and having patterns sourced from the Jeypore portfolio cut into this vinyl and
this will be pasted onto the glass panes at the <a href="https://www.villaterracemuseum.org/about.html" target="_blank">Villa Terrace</a> around one of the
sleeping porches. When the viewer enters this space they are surrounded by a
beautifully intricate screen; with light streaming through it, shadows being
cast. But when they look closely they can read a whole list of recent hate
crimes on the vinyl. This screen will become a frame for some of the artifacts
that I will be curating from the AGSL and the Special Collections library. (<i>note: the Look Here! project will culminate in an exhibit at the <a href="https://www.villaterracemuseum.org/about.html" target="_blank">Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum</a>, opening June 28, 2018</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Max Yela, (Head of Special Collections) has been pulling
out early books by travelers in the 16<sup>th</sup> century, to the Far East
and South Asia. They are mostly travelogues, but also children’s books – from
the turn of the century to 1930s. It’s interesting to see what kids were being
taught about the rest of the world. The things you are taught as a kid before
you know how to be critical. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Marcy Bidney at AGSL (<a href="http://uwm.edu/libraries/agsl/" target="_blank">American Geographical Society Library</a>) has been pulling maps of South </span></span></div>
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</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Asia from as early as the 1500s and <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agdm/id/14284/rec/1" target="_blank">into the 19th century</a>; in addition to
travelogues by early explorers of the East. The commentary and the </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WIgecIB_U-U/WlTaQ7zV53I/AAAAAAAAAI8/ZLWtDLR9RgMRPSy-Gbl-syYWacZjT2QDQCEwYBhgL/s1600/nirmal_agsl-map.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="1334" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WIgecIB_U-U/WlTaQ7zV53I/AAAAAAAAAI8/ZLWtDLR9RgMRPSy-Gbl-syYWacZjT2QDQCEwYBhgL/s320/nirmal_agsl-map.png" width="312" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
images in
these books are fascinating peeks into what caught the eye of Western
explorers. There is a first edition travelogue by American painter Edwin Lord
Weeks who focused on painting the people and places of Afghanistan and India.
All the material I’ve been looking at so far is what we would now call
“Orientalist.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve been interested lately in the gaze and how that could
possibly be expressed or represented. Orientalism in a sense is an expression
of the gaze, so you’re looking at the East and this certain notion that it’s exotic
or savage and there is an implied power play that cannot be ignored.
Representation or even looking is an act of power, and if a certain way of
representing becomes the only way, then the subject loses their power to
represent themselves. My effort to dig into some of these older publications
and objects is to understand how the East has been represented and understood in
the West over the centuries and how that might influence perceptions of those
cultures now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But then what do I do with this information? This knowledge
base is so large, so much has been written about it; there is the sheer number
of books that have been written about the East, but also scholarly works about
Orientalism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I decided to facilitate an experience through an installation
of curated objects framed by the screen in a specific way. I am using the
screen as a tool for gazing and placing the curated objects in the context of the
present. The viewers are left to decide for themselves what they want to look
at. That’s my idea… so let’s hope it succeeds! You never know with artwork –
but in general it seems like once I have a direction, the work seems to make
itself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How
does having so much content available digitally affect the work you're
creating? Or does it?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve been browsing photographs in the digital collections,
especially the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/?fwp_subjects=agsl%2Cimages" target="_blank">AGSL photo portals</a>; and <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/agsl-digital-map-collection/" target="_blank">some of the maps are digitized</a> as well.
I think for me this project itself has a lot of potential digitally. You’ll be
creating a digital database based on this exhibition and that’s kind of
fascinating to see how my work will eventually exist in a digital space. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Having the Jeypore portfolio digitized makes it possible for
me to create the screen, create the vinyl; it’s not possible otherwise to make
this work. Some of this almost seems like a given now; the digital lies
underneath the work, it enables the work but it’s sort of the unseen labor
maybe. And the archiving capacity – for example, the whole content of the hate
crime list that I am using is on </span><a href="http://www.saalt.org/"><span style="line-height: 107%;">www.saalt.org</span></a><span style="line-height: 107%;">. That
would not have been possible before the digital – the network enables this kind
of sourcing and documentation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nU8X7ZDY9QM/WlTahlOrU1I/AAAAAAAAAJA/Y8zdvbOMLyci-xRK2G27qzmbqn8jSdXHwCLcBGAs/s1600/nirmal_ling-digitization.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1310" data-original-width="1318" height="318" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nU8X7ZDY9QM/WlTahlOrU1I/AAAAAAAAAJA/Y8zdvbOMLyci-xRK2G27qzmbqn8jSdXHwCLcBGAs/s320/nirmal_ling-digitization.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The other thing that’s digital is the music – converting my
great uncle’s records from the 1940s to the digital was an interesting process
to watch. Because the music has to be played on its original medium, it has to
be captured in a way where the digital is forced back into the analog world.
Sticking the digital microphone right in the horn is the perfect juxtaposition.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A: Would you say that what you're doing is an act of curation as opposed to an act of hand-making, perhaps?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The work is very much in process, in a research stage. I
haven’t really made anything yet. The making will really just be a culmination
of this whole project. This is the first project where I am not really creating
with my own hands – Which is really
strange for me. I’m working from a digital copy of the portfolio, a machine
does the printing, and the cutting is done by yet another machine. It’s like
being the director/producer. It’s interesting... <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> =========================</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">More about Nirmal Raja's work can be found at her site, </span></span><a href="http://www.nirmalraja.com/">http://www.nirmalraja.com/</a> and at her Instagram site: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nirmal.raja/">https://www.instagram.com/nirmal.raja/</a></div>
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UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-64965953266037972032017-11-07T08:58:00.002-08:002017-11-07T10:45:04.410-08:00The Look Here! Project: An Interview with Melissa Wagner-Lawler<h2>
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This is the second installment in our interview series with artists participating in the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/look-here/" target="_blank">Look Here!</a> project. <a href="http://uwm.edu/arts/directory/wagner-lawler-melissa/" target="_blank">Melissa Wagner-Lawler</a> is an interdisciplinary artist and Associate Lecturer in the Print & Narrative Forms department and the First Year Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Peck School of the Arts.<br />
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<h3>
Why were you interested in participating in this Look Here! pilot project? </h3>
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I was introduced to the project by Max Yela and was curious about creating an artist book project that relied heavily on research from existing digitized collections. After I applied to be a part of the project, I realized that I didn't have a strong connection to the collection that I chose. Through conversations with Max and discussing my prior work, he brought out several books in Special Collections to help get me back on track. The current text that I'm using was introduced to me through this conversation.<br />
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What collections are using or did you begin to use for your project?</h3>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4FKmoPBV1JI/WgHYvLoks2I/AAAAAAAAAIc/sftW95T8hUU8OLhf5W3FLDlcE9WQSi2HQCLcBGAs/s1600/GOO_byzantine-no-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1006" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4FKmoPBV1JI/WgHYvLoks2I/AAAAAAAAAIc/sftW95T8hUU8OLhf5W3FLDlcE9WQSi2HQCLcBGAs/s320/GOO_byzantine-no-3.jpg" width="201" /></a>For my project, I am using a work held in UWM's Special Collections entitled <i>The Grammar of Ornament </i>by Owen Jones published in 1856 and the <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/agsl-digital-map-collection/" target="_blank">AGSL Digital Map collections</a>. By researching map images of the land boundaries of the areas and ornamentation covered in <i>The Grammar of Ornament</i>, I will be constructing new visual landscapes using the decorative ornaments from the book. The artist book will take a small sampling of ornaments from each of the 20 sections of the text and place them into a landscape created out of the reinterpreted boundaries of each country or region. This artist book will then be letterpress printed, hand-bound and editioned.<br />
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How did what you found in the collections influence your work?</h3>
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My more recent work has been investigating abstract landscapes using found imagery so finding a historical work that I can manipulate and that serves as a starting point for investigation is always of interest to me. Also, the ornaments that are presented in the text are unlike anything I have used in my work before, so this will be a welcomed challenge to integrate it into the visual landscapes that I've already been exploring.<br />
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How does having so much content available digitally affect the work you're creating? Or does it?</h3>
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The accessibility of the content is great, but also overwhelming. There are so many great collections to use! This is part of the reason it took me so long to decide and finalize my work for this project. Once I decide on the main text, I limited myself to plate page per section to give myself parameters to keep me focused.<br />
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At this stage, I'm still planning and designing the book pages. Although the pages are digitized, I still need to manipulate them heavily in design programs to get the images and designs 'press-ready'. Once the page designs are completed, I will be having plates of some of the pages made and hand carving others. The pages are scheduled to be printed in the next few months to allow enough time to bind the books before the exhibition.<br />
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What more can you tell us about your experience in this project?</h3>
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The experience has been rewarding! Hearing everyone's different approaches to the project and seeing how those ideas evolve has been quite interesting. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the final works turn out and also relating them back to their original digital collections.<br />
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More about Melissa Wagner-Lawler's work can be found at her site, <a href="http://redthreadletterpress.com/home.html">http://redthreadletterpress.com/home.html</a>UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-69843992786284654142017-09-26T07:01:00.002-07:002017-10-03T06:41:48.851-07:00The Look Here! Project: An Interview with Marc Tasman and Clayton Haggarty<div class="MsoNormal">
The <a href="http://uwm.edu/lib-collections/look-here/" target="_blank">Look Here!project</a> is an experiment initiated by the UWM Libraries and aimed at
encouraging artists from the community and the UWM Peck School of the Arts to work
with and create art from our <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/" target="_blank">digitized cultural heritage holdings</a> –
archival materials, photographs, maps, prints, rare books and other objects. <i>Look Here!</i> asks artists to propose projects that reimagine,
transform, and engage with these objects in ways that were unimagined before
the digital turn. The project will culminate in a panel discussion at UWM
Libraries in spring 2018, and an exhibit at <a href="https://www.villaterracemuseum.org/exhibitions.html" target="_blank">Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum</a> in summer 2018.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://marctasman.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Marc Tasman</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/claytonhaggartyartist/" target="_blank">Clayton Haggarty</a> are working together on a
piece for <i>Look Here!</i> Theirs is the
first in a series of interviews with the artists participating in <i>Look Here!</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
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<h2>
What collections are you using or did you begin to use for your project?</h2>
<h2>
<o:p></o:p></h2>
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We visited the archives shortly after the project began, and
then had a visit with Abbi Nye, Head of Archives, at the <a href="http://dhlab.uwm.edu/" target="_blank">DH Lab</a>. We were really
taken by some of the images in the <a href="http://uwm.edu/mkepolonia/" target="_blank">online Polonia collection</a> – the crash images
specifically.<o:p></o:p></div>
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How did what you found in the collections influence your work?<o:p></o:p></h2>
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We agreed that those crash photos are captivating – seeing
the city the way it was and the crazy <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5jsrcLUk3A/Wcpc7y7JhzI/AAAAAAAAAH0/JjFaIKbYs48SWBwb1Ch-d_wtwUhAz4r4wCLcBGAs/s1600/mke-polonia_37674_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1136" data-original-width="1600" height="227" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5jsrcLUk3A/Wcpc7y7JhzI/AAAAAAAAAH0/JjFaIKbYs48SWBwb1Ch-d_wtwUhAz4r4wCLcBGAs/s320/mke-polonia_37674_full.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/mke-polonia/id/37674/rec/4" target="_blank">Undated street view of truck crashed into building</a></td></tr>
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situation of the wreck and its
documentation. It’s an opportunity to rubberneck, to slow down and see the
accident. But there are also the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/mke-polonia/search/searchterm/injured" target="_blank">wounded, battered people</a>, who were also
probably in car accidents, because these images were taken/collected for
insurance purposes. <br />
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So we want to look at what it means to be wrecked, and then
to be documented. It’s also fairly personal – I don’t know if they are still
dressed from the accident or dressed up for the insurance photograph. But it’s
an airing of personal, intimate, vulnerable moments. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And then this ends up in an Archive where others can find
you years later. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The project is in part about society today and how civilized
or uncivilized we’ve become; we’re looking at issues of immigration and
acceptance and community. Part of what we’re interested in is the trauma of the
journey of the immigrant. In Oscar Handlin’s book, <i>The Uprooted</i>, he details how bad life must have been in the old
country to endure the really unpleasant voyage here; people taking advantage of
you, seasickness – we see it today with the Syrian refugees risking everything
to get here. And then they get here and have these new traumas happen. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We’d like to connect the experience to the neighborhood
itself, too. We went back to see the actual building and location where this
car crashed. It hasn’t really recovered – there is still some kind of wreckage,
coming undone there, even for the current occupants it seems. We’re also potentially interested in mapping
connections between the Polonia crash images and other parts of the city, and
institutions – to here at <a href="https://www.redlinemilwaukee.com/" target="_blank">RedLine</a>, the UWM connection, to Villa Terrace. The
<a href="http://uwm.edu/marchonmilwaukee" target="_blank">March on Milwaukee</a> collection is another collection to potentially explore now,
given the marchers relationship to the south side, over the 16<sup>th</sup>
Street Bridge, to Kosciusko Park (<i>note</i>:
these are the neighborhoods documented in the Milwaukee Polonia collection).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<h2>
How does having so much content available digitally affect the work you're
creating? <o:p></o:p></h2>
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Having access to the digital image lowers the bar for
creating art with it – there are a lot of steps that are already taken. It’s an
interpretation thing, too – in this case, working with negatives. There is some
work of interpretation done already through the digitization process – it’s
like translation when it’s converted to positive digitally. It was an opaque
object before and you can’t read expressions as well in negative as positive. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Also, the crashes aren’t something we might have discovered
by going and searching through the boxes of glass plates. It’s not just that it
was easier, but it *is* about access – these insurance photos are not a form of
documentation we might otherwise have encountered or known we were interested
in. The documentation itself, that it occurred, allows us to access this. You
know, the invention of photography got a boost from the French government who
wanted to use it for mugshots, for surveillance – so another kind of archive;
another database to do with wreckage, incidents, and pummeled faces. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And now that we know there are insurance photographs – can
we track down the files, the insurance company? It raises new questions, or
possible paths. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And materially, these images are glass plate negatives, so
coming in off the street to see them could be a big deal. The entire collection
weighs 1.5 tons, we’re told. So I could only look at what I could carry. Using
both hands. It really wouldn’t have otherwise occurred to us to look at these
if they hadn’t been digitized. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It also deformalizes the relationship to the object and
takes away some of that preciousness. It’s easy to get the image, so the work
becomes locating the actual physical place where the event in the image took
place. Having the digital image encouraged industriousness because it meant we
could put the legwork elsewhere. We can feel free to remix the digital files
because it’s reproducible by its nature. Being digital has to encourage reuse
and transformation. It’s part of the nature of the digital medium. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The digital image is also not in the real world in the same
way that a monument (for example) is – it needs to be excavated in a different
way. We could have a more visceral reaction to the image and begin to create a
body of work that inhabits a physical space. The image provides evidence that
this thing really happened. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One question the digital raises for us as artists is, why
hasn’t a new form of art emerged from this? In the 60s and 70s the new thing
was experience – that the experience was the form of expression, and it was
tangible but ephemeral. We’re in a shift from the previous information epoch –
what are the new codes that will transform the way we make art? We’re in an age
of distraction – one image leads to another and another; what kind of discipline
does an artist need…? <o:p></o:p></div>
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And ultimately, when will creative media and art – work that
encourages remix – when will that stop being just an analogue of the old art –
rectangular, in a frame – and when will we truly transform that work the same
way the digital has transformed these cultural objects?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our project is ultimately transformative – we’re converting
the digital to experience by bringing it into the Villa Terrace space, where
we’re also reusing and reimagining that space. And in it, looking at how things
have and haven’t changed over time. As artists, we’re still stuck to some
extent on this idea that art is objects, but we’ll get to that point where
artists will be curators of experience because we can’t keep making stuff.
That’s what digitization has taught us to do – we can let go of some of these
things. Not that we’re happy to give away all of our books or records. But
what’s meaningful isn’t the paper, it’s the experience. But that includes the
smells, the way you have to place the stylus on the record. So those kinds of
things are different. But with the wreck, we want to say, “look!” – these are
the things we cared about 20, 30, 80 and more years ago. These are familiar
concerns. Let’s not remake human civilization by not being empathetic, being callous
to the way people feel when you tear down buildings or push people out. So it’s
not anachronistic, because we can have that empathy across time. Is it really
out of place – that wrecked car in this beautiful mansion? It will be
interesting to work out how to make the piece so the wreck isn’t just jarring
and strange, but to say that we’ve all been in wrecks and we’ve all been
wrecked, so it’s a shared experience across time. We aren’t alone in being
alone. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<b>Marc Tasman</b> is an Intermedia artist focusing his research on the strength of social technologies to create meaning in culture. He is currently director of the Digital Arts and Culture Program and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Tasman is also co-director of the Jewish Artists’ Lab, a consortium of six Midwestern cities founded in Milwaukee, and senior artist member of the residency program at RedLine Milwaukee. Tasman has screened work at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and published photographs in the <i>New York Times</i> Digital Edition, <i>Huffington Post</i>, <i>Mother Jones</i>, and <i>Tablet Magazine</i>. The first edition of his electronic, interactive book, <i>Internet Culture</i> was published by Great River Learning press in 2017.<br />
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<b>Clayton Haggarty</b> is a Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist who earned his BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2015. His work, which ranges from painting on canvas, to non-traditional forms of printmaking and public art, focuses on issues of social justice, climate change and the relationship between human beings and technology. Haggarty was the recipient of both the Laurence Rathsack Art Scholarship as well as the Elsa Ulbricht Memorial Scholarship for his work in the field of painting and drawing. His paintings have been included in multiple group exhibitions in the Milwaukee area at venues such as The UWM Union Art Gallery and Kenilworth Square East. Additionally, he briefly studied in Florence, Italy at the Santa Reparata International School for Art where his work was exhibited at the SRISA Gallery of Contemporary Art.<br />
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UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-21862908562304796132017-07-17T08:00:00.000-07:002017-07-17T08:00:39.926-07:00Announcing The New Photography Studio!After months of hard work, collecting resources, and trial and error we are happy to finally announce that our new photography studio is in full swing! Taking advantage of space near our offices, which offered a little more room and controllable light, we slowly began to piece together a studio equipped for our growing digitization needs. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OdvPWs5FQHs/WWjNScnYpOI/AAAAAAAAAG4/hDZnB72qE0Uad1g3sGXQ27ALjJN5VQNBACLcBGAs/s1600/img06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OdvPWs5FQHs/WWjNScnYpOI/AAAAAAAAAG4/hDZnB72qE0Uad1g3sGXQ27ALjJN5VQNBACLcBGAs/s400/img06.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Camera set-up for oversize newspaper digitization </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jBLRXTs3R5I/WWjQygnOlNI/AAAAAAAAAHA/lwR3XowfFqYSBT7Q6SJQuvpm-8GpeBv7gCLcBGAs/s1600/_MG_4051.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jBLRXTs3R5I/WWjQygnOlNI/AAAAAAAAAHA/lwR3XowfFqYSBT7Q6SJQuvpm-8GpeBv7gCLcBGAs/s400/_MG_4051.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A student employee labeling slides before digitization</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
With a range of different set-ups and accessories including macro lenses, softbox lights, anti-reflective
glass, and a rail mount we are now able to digitize just about
anything! In the past few months, during which we have been working to streamline our photography process, we have already digitized an oversized newspaper collection, a set of almost 200 artist books, and over 6,000 slides from AGSL's Harrison Forman and Eugene Harris Collections. Utilizing our 50 megapixel camera, a camera-to-computer
tethering system, and real time live view controls we are now able to
digitize collections with better quality and speed than ever before. The number of possibilities this studio can offer have just begun to be explored. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HODoak_ZHZw/WWj4JsgeimI/AAAAAAAAAHU/CwzIj7LFhA0PR_M34Hdk9KVyiOdMzlSxQCLcBGAs/s1600/_MG_4056.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HODoak_ZHZw/WWj4JsgeimI/AAAAAAAAAHU/CwzIj7LFhA0PR_M34Hdk9KVyiOdMzlSxQCLcBGAs/s400/_MG_4056.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Digitizing a slide using a light box and our rail mount system</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3X82ZksJNQw/WWjSgha8IJI/AAAAAAAAAHE/LM63fOXo4IQ8AKOio_wwSmfeHCDAsowSACLcBGAs/s1600/_CI_4024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3X82ZksJNQw/WWjSgha8IJI/AAAAAAAAAHE/LM63fOXo4IQ8AKOio_wwSmfeHCDAsowSACLcBGAs/s400/_CI_4024.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Backdrop set-up for digitizing artist book</td></tr>
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UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-82455042009819948612017-07-10T12:49:00.001-07:002017-07-10T12:54:06.308-07:00New images added to Polar Exploration CollectionWe have recently added almost 200 new images to the American Geographical Society Library's <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/polar" target="_blank">Polar Exploration collection</a>. These images include photographs from eighteen different expeditions to both the Arctic and the Antarctic and range in date from 1869 to 1948. Check out images from the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/polar/searchterm/Ernest%20Shackleton%20Trans-Antarctica%20Expedition,%201914-1917/mode/exact" target="_blank">Ernest Shackleton Trans-Antarctica Expedition, 1914-1917</a>, including images of the ship, <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/polar/id/621" target="_blank">Endurance</a>, surrounded by the ice that would eventually crush it; images from the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/polar/searchterm/SS%20Panther%20Expedition%201869/mode/exact" target="_blank">SS Panther Expedition of 1869</a> in the Arctic, over 50 images from explorer <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/polar/searchterm/Louise%20A.%20Boyd%20Expedition%20to%20East%20Greenland,%201931-1933/mode/exact" target="_blank">Louise Boyd's expeditions to Greenland and Norway in the 1930's</a>, and lots more!<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/polar/id/621" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="313" data-original-width="481" height="208" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BedGHCXgA8Q/WWPWgdHMS9I/AAAAAAAAAGY/fY82R8NvKdAhuHHa0KWNymD5hfqDdZjDwCLcBGAs/s320/Antarctic_region_Ernest_Shackleton_TransAntarctica_Expedition_19141917_South_Pole.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/polar/id/621" target="_blank">Shackleton Expedition, 1914-1917</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/polar/id/534" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="487" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7TbFSRBVNvk/WWPWmJaYTwI/AAAAAAAAAGc/P4tMJ26-x0QevXIto_Jaypt3XoylNv2QwCLcBGAs/s320/Arctic_region_SS_Panther_Expedition_1869_Greenland.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/polar/id/534" target="_blank">SS Panther Expedition, 1869</a></td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/polar/id/678" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="444" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B3mTgabsQmA/WWPY-akHRlI/AAAAAAAAAGg/L8DQe-nkEpYf6SRaRUIWRRhnf8jz14bCwCLcBGAs/s320/Norway_Louise_A_Boyd_Expedition_to_East_Greenland_1931_Tabular_iceberg.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/polar/id/678" target="_blank">Louise Boyd Norway Expedition, 1931</a></td></tr>
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<br />UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-49200451761355068552017-06-20T09:23:00.000-07:002017-06-20T09:23:51.507-07:00Celebrate LGBT Pride Month with UWM Libraries Digital Collections!A growing number of LGBT collections from the UWM Archives are available online and help tell the story of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. Check out oral history collections that provide insights into the experience and contributions of members of the local LGBT community (the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/lgbt" target="_blank">Milwaukee LGBT Oral History Project</a> and the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/transhist" target="_blank">Milwaukee Transgender Oral History Project</a>) and an oral history and photography collection that documents a history of gay marriage in the state, <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/snbr" target="_blank">Shall Not Be Recognized</a>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0jErGUy9-fQ/WUlK_g8SFGI/AAAAAAAAAE4/m7VqECzgwbE_xOJvRqhkIMhQMNaB4owkACEwYBhgL/s1600/AIDS_Walk_Wisconsin_Walkers_with_a_rainbow_flag_waving_among_them.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="430" height="205" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0jErGUy9-fQ/WUlK_g8SFGI/AAAAAAAAAE4/m7VqECzgwbE_xOJvRqhkIMhQMNaB4owkACEwYBhgL/s320/AIDS_Walk_Wisconsin_Walkers_with_a_rainbow_flag_waving_among_them.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">AIDS Walk Wisconsin, undated</td></tr>
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The <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/actup" target="_blank">ACT-UP Milwaukee</a> collection, the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/arcw" target="_blank">AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin Records</a>, and the <a href="http://liblamp.uwm.edu/omeka/arcw/exhibits/show/arcw30" target="_blank">ARCW and AIDS in Wisconsin digital exhibit</a> focus on the history of HIV-AIDS in the region. And the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/mglcn" target="_blank">Milwaukee Gay/Lesbian Cable Network Programs</a> provide a window into prominent topics and personalities during the late 1980s and early 1990s.<br />
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<br />UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-67283312262599507822017-01-31T07:16:00.001-08:002017-01-31T08:17:52.716-08:00The Wisconsin Arts Project Digital Collection Recently published in 2016, <a href="http://uwm.edu/wpa/" target="_blank">The Wisconsin Arts Project</a> Digital Collection focuses on Wisconsin arts organizations that were part of the Works Project Administration from 1935-1943. The digital collection provides access to primary sources related to both the artists and administrators of the WPA arts projects in Wisconsin, including the Milwaukee Handicraft Project (MHP). The collection includes over 500 items ranging from original artworks, historical photographs, text documents, and audio recordings. Published along side the collection is an interactive <a href="http://uwm.edu/wpa/wpa-organization-time-line/" target="_blank">timeline</a> of various WPA organizations as well as a <a href="http://uwm.edu/wpa/printmaking-techniques-definitions/" target="_blank">guide</a> to the print methods used by the MHP artists.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=1703&action=2&DMSCALE=20&DMWIDTH=512&DMHEIGHT=439&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=Uwmmss59_B02_F09_P018_a&DMROTATE=0" height="273" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Children and Instructors in Classroom </i></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=1648&action=2&DMSCALE=15&DMWIDTH=347&DMHEIGHT=441&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=Uwmmss59_B02_F10_P008_c&DMROTATE=0" height="320" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="251" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Elsa Ulbricht at Loom</i></td></tr>
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Spanning the years of the Great Depression, several arts organizations were created as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal Agencies to employ artists in public sector positions. These organizations included The Treasury Relief Project, The Federal Art Project, The Section of Painting and Sculpture, and The Milwaukee Handicrafts Project. The artists were put to work creating public exhibitions and restoring government buildings and schools with artistic decorations. In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Handicrafts Project, led by Elsa Ulbricht, engaged unskilled woman in the creation of printed books, textiles, draperies, and toys. See gallery below for examples. <br />
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<div style="height: 500px; position: relative;">
<ul id="image-gallery">
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/255/rec/8" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>Border Designs, Blockprinted Textile, 1935-1936</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=255&action=2&DMSCALE=10&DMWIDTH=361&DMHEIGHT=482&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/71/rec/23" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>Character, Merry Widow, King Lear, Richard III: Peasant Girl #1,1935-1939</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=71&action=2&DMSCALE=5&DMWIDTH=327&DMHEIGHT=449&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/124/rec/155" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>Motif, Blockprinted Textile, 1935-1936</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=124&action=2&DMSCALE=10&DMWIDTH=490&DMHEIGHT=433&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/333/rec/209" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>Motif, Blockprinted Textile, 1935-1936</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=333&action=2&DMSCALE=10&DMWIDTH=487&DMHEIGHT=512&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/51/rec/232" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>On Fish Trap, Etched Print on Paper, 1942</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=51&action=2&DMSCALE=5&DMWIDTH=445&DMHEIGHT=350&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/147/rec/321" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>Surface Pattern, Blockprinted Textile, 1935-1936</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=147&action=2&DMSCALE=5&DMWIDTH=280&DMHEIGHT=279&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/264/rec/401" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>Surface Pattern, Blockprinted Textile, 1935-1936</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=264&action=2&DMSCALE=5&DMWIDTH=268&DMHEIGHT=352&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/wpa/id/55/rec/293" target="_blank"><img alt="<i>Skunk Cabbage, Lithograth</i>" src="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=wpa&CISOPTR=55&action=2&DMSCALE=5&DMWIDTH=183&DMHEIGHT=280&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" /></a></li>
</ul>
<div id="gallery-caption">
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This project was made possible by the generous support of The Chipstone Foundation and the UWM Libraries.<br />
<br />UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-37427593751240918452016-02-05T12:42:00.000-08:002017-01-31T08:17:31.638-08:00March on Milwaukee Relaunched! The award-winning March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project was relaunched this week. The updated digital collection, which provides online access to primary sources telling the story of the Milwaukee civil rights movement, has been entirely redesigned.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="milwmssex000013" src="https://uwmdigitalcollections.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/milwmssex000013.jpg?w=240&h=300" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>NAACP Youth Council Commandos</i></td></tr>
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New content includes over 500 pages from the papers of Vel Phillips, the first woman and first African-American to serve on the Common Council, recently donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Papers shed light on Phillips’ political career, her role in the open housing campaigns, and Common Council debates. The digital collection also includes nearly two hours of WTMJ-TV news footage; twenty-eight hours of oral history interviews; and over 2,000 documents and photographs.<br />
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As context for the primary sources, the digital collection includes a full-length essay by Margaret Rozga, a participant in the 1960s civil rights movement and professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha; a list of over 60 key terms providing detailed information about significant people, places, and events; an illustrated timeline; and an interactive map showing important sites and march routes.<br />
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The digital collection supports historical understanding of civil rights movements in the North and beyond the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March and passage of the Voting Rights Bill. In the late 1960s, Milwaukee was known as the “Selma of the North” due to its hyper-segregation by race and violent attacks by counterdemonstrators against individuals fighting for social justice in employment, housing, and education.<br />
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The March on Milwaukee digital collection is a collaborative effort of the UWM Archives, the UWM Digital Collections & Initiatives, and the Wisconsin Historical Society, which owns many of the physical collections related to the civil rights movement.UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-14668723049742455872015-12-01T12:39:00.000-08:002017-01-31T08:17:02.204-08:00AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW) Digital Collection Launches Today In recognition of World AIDS Day, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives and Digital Collections announce the launch of the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW) digital collection. The digital collection includes posters, photographs and selected audio-visual materials documenting ARCW’s pioneering work to eradicate HIV/AIDS in Wisconsin. The digitized items represent a small portion of a much larger collection of ARCW records that were donated to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives in 2014-2015. ARCW is the largest HIV healthcare provider in Wisconsin and one the nation’s most comprehensive AIDS service organizations. Through its efforts, people in Wisconsin afflicted with HIV can look forward to receiving a full array of assistance, from medical, dental, social and behavioral health professionals.UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-71201029712651365952015-11-13T12:34:00.000-08:002017-01-31T08:16:36.080-08:00Milwaukee Polonia Receives an Award“Milwaukee Polonia: The Roman Kwasniewski Photographs” collection was awarded the Polish American Congress-Wisconsin Division’s Congressman Clement J. Zablocki “Civic Achievement Award” at an event on Nov. 8, 2015.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Thanksgiving party, 1933" src="https://uwmdigitalcollections.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/celebrations__holidays.jpg?w=300&h=245" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Thanksgiving Party, 1933</i></td></tr>
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The award is given to to individuals and organizations that are making a major difference within the Polish community both here in the Milwaukee area and throughout the state of Wisconsin. It is an honor to be recognized by the community.<br />
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Milwaukee Polonia includes over 32,000 images – an extraordinary visual document of Milwaukee’s Polonia from the 1900s to 1940s. This image of a Thanksgiving party is just one tiny slice of what you can find in the collection. Check it out!UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-35151404716576800262015-09-25T12:23:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:15:26.208-08:00Wisconsin Joins the Digital Public Library of America<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://recollectionwisconsin.org/wisconsin-joins-dpla" target="_blank">Source</a><img alt="DPLA_infographic-1" src="http://recollectionwisconsin.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/DPLA_infographic-1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-38327351950944751792015-09-22T12:19:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:14:35.549-08:00UWM Post: Volume One OnlineThe fall of 1956 was an exciting time in Milwaukee. Not only was it the start of the fall semester, but there was a new school, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a new student newspaper, the UWM Post.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Click here for an explanation of why UWM students called their newspaper the UWM Post..." src="https://uwmdigitalcollections.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/page_4_uwm_post_volume_1_number_2-cropped.jpg?w=300&h=232" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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This fall, the UWM Archives and Digital Collections are excited to announce something new as well—the first volume of the UWM Post is now <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/uwmpost" target="_blank">digitized and fully searchable online</a>. We will add content to the UWM Post digital collection throughout this academic year. We plan to post all 57 volumes spanning 1956 to 2012 in time for the UWM Post’s 60th anniversary in fall 2016.<br />
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See UWM through its students’ eyes—a university where the mascot was the (less than fearsome) Cardinal, where the library was located in Mellencamp Hall, and where tuition for Wisconsin residents was $90 per semester. Today, the UWM Post is published in digital form only, but at its peak, the Post produced editions with press runs of 10,000 to 15,000 copies each Monday and Thursday during the fall and spring semesters, plus summer issues. Seventy-five percent of the newspapers were distributed on the UWM campus, with the remaining newspapers disseminated to locations throughout many Milwaukee neighborhoods. The UWM Post printed its last paper issue in November 2012.<br />
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– Abigail NyeUWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-69871506653503088612014-10-15T12:14:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:14:00.370-08:00The Full Run of Kaleidoscope is OnlineIn 1967, Vietnam, the Beatles, and interracial marriages graced the covers of Time magazine. The Velvet Underground released their first album. So did Jimi Hendrix. Psychedelia bloomed. 1967 was also the year of the long hot summer when many cities, including Milwaukee, experienced rioting and civil unrest.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="kaleidoscope-eyeballcover" src="https://uwmdigitalcollections.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/kaleidoscope-eyeballcover.jpg?w=203&h=300" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Kaleidoscope Cover, July 1968</i></td></tr>
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This was the scene at the time of <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/kal" target="_blank">Kaleidoscope</a>‘s premiere in October of that year. Milwaukee’s underground newspaper sparked to life via its founders, editor John Kois, radio DJ Bob Reitman, and designer and rock musician John Sahli, and at the hands of its writers and the tinder of a borrowed $250. It published to instant notoriety—and excellent sales. A first issue of 3,500 sold out in two days. Articles were written on the whim of the staff and ranged across a multitude of topics, giving an alternative liberal voice to national politics, civil rights, gender and sexuality, city crime and police action, as well as the more standard fare of art, music, and literature.<br />
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The writing was unrepentant, explicit, and readers couldn’t get enough — unless they loathed it, of course. Censorship dogged the newspaper from its birth until after its end in 1971, going as far as the Supreme Court over obscenity charges (where the Court ruled in favor of <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/kal" target="_blank">Kaleidoscope</a> and the First Amendment, much to the chagrin of the publication’s challengers). By the time the newspaper folded it had published 105 biweekly issues, of which a complete run was donated to UWM Special Collections in 2014, forming the basis of this digital collection.<br />
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<a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/kal" target="_blank">Kaleidoscope</a> offers a wealth of information about life and culture in Milwaukee during the late sixties and early seventies that is already being utilized by researchers in Special Collections on a regular basis. We are excited to be able to put this material online and to see the research that comes from making it widely available.<br />
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-Hailey StrickonUWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-34245180842058252712014-06-04T12:10:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:13:28.744-08:00Milwaukee Polonia Digital Collection is LiveToday we launch Milwaukee Polonia, a digital collection of nearly 32,000 historic photographs of our city’s historic Polish-American community. The launch is just in time for Milwaukee’s annual Polish Fest celebration, June 13-15, 2014. We’ve been blogging about our progress here since last year; and if you’ve been following along, you know that today represents a significant accomplishment. Today’s launch isn’t just photographs: our online collection also includes historic maps along with scholarly entries for many of the significant places, organizations, and traditions on display in the photos. The collection is now accessible <a href="http://uwm.edu/mkepolonia" target="_blank">online</a>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Mitchell Street Business District" src="https://uwmdigitalcollections.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/kw030632-blog.jpg?w=300&h=178" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
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The photographs that make up Milwaukee Polonia are the life’s work of Roman B. J. Kwasniewski, a studio photographer who worked on Milwaukee’s South Side from the 1910s through the 1940s. His portrait photography documented the important life events of the neighborhood: weddings, First Communions, Confirmations, and graduation ceremonies, including many portraits of nuns, priests, and altar boys. He also captured the neighborhood and the city itself, documenting work and family parties, picnics, parades, visits by dignitaries, street scenes, sports scenes, and even (for insurance purposes) car crashes and fire-damaged buildings.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="kw001227-blog" src="https://uwmdigitalcollections.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/kw001227-blog.jpg?w=300&h=214" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
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Milwaukee Polonia is an unusually complete document of an urban ethnic community in early-to-mid twentieth century America, and is now openly available in its entirety online. We are eager to see how this nationally significant collection will be used by scholars, genealogists, students, and others interested in the history of Milwaukee, immigration, Polish-Americans, or numerous other topics that might be discovered in an image collection of this size. So let us know what you think, and how you might use Milwaukee Polonia for your own research and edification! UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-73168278997079230442014-05-21T12:05:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:12:26.737-08:00Milwaukee Gay/Lesbian Cable Network Videos Available OnlineThe UWM Libraries recently published the video archives of the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/mglcn" target="_blank">Milwaukee Gay/Lesbian Cable Network (MGLCN)</a>, an important media collection relating to local LGBT history. MGLCN was a volunteer group that produced regular and special programming on gay and lesbian issues for Milwaukee’s public access channel from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Its most significant programs were Tri-Cable Tonight and New Tri-Cable. When the first episode of Tri-Cable Tonight aired on October 27, 1987, Milwaukee joined the ranks of only ten other cities in the United States with regular gay/lesbian programming. The 30-minute programs were produced monthly (with a few exceptions), and each show broadcast about three times a month on Warner Cable Channel 14. Programs combined in-studio news presentations, interviews, and discussions with on-location coverage of community events. Regular features included a discussion of homosexuality in history, guest editorials, legal advice, and film reviews. In addition to covering local news, the program covered events of statewide and national significance, such as the National March on Washington D.C. for Lesbian/Gay Rights on October 11, 1987; the Democratic National Convention in 1988; efforts by the Rawhide Boys Ranch to exempt itself from Wisconsin’s civil rights law; and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The program concluded in December 1989. During its two-year run, Tri-Cable Tonight earned many awards, including first place in the 1989 Hometown USA Video competition, several MATA awards, and the Cream City Business Association’s President’s Award.<br />
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The New Tri-Cable consisted of moderated panel discussions on a specific issue. Topics included racism, homophobia, safer sex, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The program lasted from November 1990 through March/April of 1992 and consisted of 28 episodes. Both Tri-Cable Tonight and New Tri-Cable aired during a historical period marked by the AIDS crisis and rising political opposition from the Religious Right.<br />
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These programs can now be found online as the <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/mglcn" target="_blank">Milwaukee Gay/Lesbian Cable Network Programs</a>. Digitization of the collection was supported by an endowment for the Archives and Special Collections established by Joseph R. Pabst and the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Johnson and Pabst LGBT Humanity Fund.<br />
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-Emma CobbUWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-86253575842590376972014-05-16T11:49:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:11:36.426-08:00The Canons of Kosciuszko ParkThe Roman Kwasniewski photograph collection includes many photographs of the Tadeusz Kosciuszko monument at Kosciuszko Park on Milwaukee’s south side. Most of the photographs were taken in the 1920s when the monument was located in its original location on the north side of the park. Those photographs all include two cannons flanking the mounted general. I frequently pass the park these days, and there are no cannons next to the monument anymore. Naturally I thought, “What happened to the cannons?”<br />
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While conducting research on a set of parade photographs that were taken around 1937, I found the key to the cannon mystery. Using the Google News database I found a Milwaukee Journal article from April 26, 1976. The article reported on a tribute the Old South Side was having for two of its famous monuments, that of Kosciuszko and another for Casimir Pulaski, two Polish heroes of the American Revolutionary War. The article quoted Kosciusko Park supervisor James Filut, who noted that the heavy cast iron cannons had been disassembled and melted down to supply armaments for the war effort in 1943.<br />
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It seems fitting that even as late as World War II, the spirit of Kosciuszko was still fighting for the United States when the cannons were melted.UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-64733169822823195742014-03-24T11:40:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:11:15.572-08:00Following Clues from Vietnam to Freeport, IL to Madison, WI - Harrison Forman CollectionThe beauty of the Harrison Forman Collection is evident in his images taken from all over the world. What isn’t evident sometimes is the time, place or context of the images, which makes it difficult to describe them so users can find them online. Occasionally, our metadata creators refer to Forman’s notes, which may be incredibly detailed or sadly, very vague. In which case, they look for clues in the images themselves, hoping to cull as much information as possible to help users find relevant images for their research.<br />
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One such image of a man carrying a crate, as seen below, was simply labeled ‘Indo-China.’<br />
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Our metadata creators were up to the challenge! Luckily, Forman wrote a diary while in Vietnam in November, 1950, so we were able to verify a time and place. The man was serving in Vietnam during the First Indochina War (1946 – 1954) on the French side. The context was a little more difficult, but a subtle clue was stamped right before our eyes. The label on the crate in the shape of a shield with the stars and stripes of the American flag says ‘From U.S.A. for Mutual Defense.’ Our research uncovered that the crate contained supplies from the United States through the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949, legislation that provided non-military foreign aid to North Atlantic Treaty partners including France. The U.S. sent supplies to the French in Vietnam to support their fight against communism and the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War.<br />
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But the clues didn’t end there. We could just make out a stamp on the side of a crate that says ‘Burgess Battery Co. Freeport, IL.” A quick search uncovered that the Burgess Battery Co. was founded by Charles F. Burgess, founder of the University of Wisconsin – Madison Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Burgess also founded the Madison-based Rayovac Corporation (formerly French Battery Company), one of the country’s largest battery producers. Burgess developed flashlight and radio batteries in the early 1900s, with which, under military contract, he supplied the troops during World War I, suggesting that Burgess possibly continued military contracts in the future. Burgess left UW-Madison in 1913 and founded Burgess Battery Company in 1917, which he eventually moved from Madison to Freeport, Illinois in 1925 to start a new division.<br />
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Suddenly, an image of a man carrying a crate in Indochina became a much more complex story – one with Wisconsin ties!<br />
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To see the full record for the image, visit our Digital Collections <a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/agsphoto/id/24922" target="_blank">Asia and Middle East</a> portal<br />
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Sources:<br />
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Harry S. Truman: “Statement by the President Upon Issuing Order Providing for the Administration of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act.,” January 27, 1950. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13590" target="_blank">The American Presidency Project.</a><br />
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University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering. (1996). ChE Funder also helped spur battery industry, <a href="http://www.engr.wisc.edu/alumni/perspective/23.1/rayovac.html" target="_blank">Perspective, Vol. 23</a>.<br />
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-Susan DykesUWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311643240521084426.post-29059558396162882972014-03-18T11:28:00.000-07:002017-01-31T08:10:42.889-08:00Scanning Large Formats: 1861 Map of KoreaThe UW Milwaukee Digital Collections hosts the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection featuring nearly 2,000 maps. Everything from everyday local maps to historic treasures are included. One map, the Daedong yeojido or “Territorial Map of the Great East,” was added in 2009.<br />
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The map was part of a larger purchase by the American Geographical Society (AGS) of New York in 1895. Several maps, an atlas, and forty-three photographs were acquired from the father of American diplomat George C. Foulk. For more than one hundred years, the significance of those materials went largely unrecognized until 2008 when the map was recognized as a National Treasure in Korea.<br />
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In preparation for a 2009 symposium, scanning the map became a priority. The map is a wood block print on twenty-two folded sheets which presented a new scanning challenge to staff. When displayed open, the map measures nearly thirteen feet wide and twenty feet in length. The long sheets were designed to be folded accordion style making this large map easier to use.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Map spread out in the AGS Library to the full 13x22 feet in size</i></td></tr>
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The map was scanned using a sheet feed Colortrak 4280 Color Scanner at a 300 dpi resolution. Images were saved as tiffs ranging in size from 24 MB to 95 MB with the composite image coming in at a walloping 213 MB.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Majority of maps are scanned using the sheet heed Colortrak 4280 Color Scanner</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The composite image was plotted for the event using a 60" wide Hewlett Packard 5500ps plotter</i></td></tr>
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The map is now available for viewing at the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection where you can see details of each sheet, the manuscript index sheet and the composite view<a href="http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/agdm/id/829" target="_blank"> here</a>.<br />
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More information about the symposium and the map can be found <a href="http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/AGSL/korean_maps.cfm" target="_blank">here</a>.UWM Digital Collectionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11712750668833864997noreply@blogger.com1