Watershed: Art, Activism, and Community Engagement

Watershed: Art, Activism, and Community Engagement
January 28 - February 25
Opening Reception, Friday, January 28th, 5-8pm
Artist Talk: Betsy Damon, February 3rd, 7pm
Guest Presenters: Every Thursday in February at 7pm

From Lane Hall:
The Union Art Gallery is having it's first show of the semester, Watershed: Art, Activism, and Community Engagement which opens the first Friday of school, January 28th, at 5 pm. I hope you can make it to the opening. I have a number of collaborative pieces in the exhibition: an intervention at Sweetwater Organics filmed this last summer (Hall/Moline), a projection of micro/macro water life (Moline/Strickler/Hall) and an 18 x 20 foot chalkboard piece, titled "Basin" where I developed my ongoing graphical notation responses into a large flow diagram of water related issues, from privatization to invasive species: a new collaboration (Hall/Deal/Lampert) that I am really excited about. The show also includes a terrific installation by Visual Art prof Colleen Ludwig, and an elegantly functional aquaponic unit developed by Sweetwater, as well as a rich variety of documented educational and artistic public interventions.

From Colleen Ludwig about her project in the show:
Shiver is an immersive, interactive environment. The title refers to the chill or slight tickle felt on the skin if activated by light touch or closeness. Upon entering the artwork, visitors initiate trickling flows of water. These cling to, and seek paths along, the walls’ minor topographies. A sensor matrix tracks the direction and speed of people’s movement in the room. The information is used to move the curvy, crawling water rivulets along the wall’s surface. The reaction of the water flows gently bring visitors into a conversation with the artwork, encouraging them to move slowly and change perspectives in order to cause the room to react.
Shiver is supported by a Research Growth Initiative Grant and a fellowship from the Center for 21st Century Studies UWM.


About Watershed Exhibition:
Water is the most critical resource on earth. It has traditionally been held in the public commons, but is now being privatized by multinational corporations at a frightening pace. Water has become big business and the struggle over who controls water -- corporations or communities -- will likely define many of the social justice movements, political decisions, and wars of the 21st Century. Watershed: Art, Activism, and Community Engagement, organized by Nicolas Lampert and Raoul Deal, addresses the shifting ecological and political dimensions of water in Milwaukee and the Great Lakes Basin, and relates them to similar issues around the world.

Watershed features installations by Sweet Water Organics, Colleen Ludwig, Lane Hall and Lisa Moline, Raoul Deal, and Nicolas Lampert; Prints by students at the Bruce Guadalupe Middle School and the Walnut Way Conservation Corp in Milwaukee; Films by Laura Klein that document public intervention projects by Nance Klehm, Jesse Graves, Sarah Lewison, Amy Mall and Sherwin Ovid, Tiffany Holmes, Maria Cristina Tavera and Xavier Tavera, Katie Martin Meurer, Jenny Plevin and Al Westbrook, Ximena Sosa and Cristian Muñoz, Deal, and Lampert.

Watershed also features a series of Thursday night presentations in February by Milwaukee-based artists, scientists, and community activists, and a presentation by the Brooklyn-based environmental artist Betsy Damon.