Placemaker: Wisconsin Avenue

In the main, my proposal involves going to ten schools or so and working with young artists and poets creating a figure flower trellis sculpture for each. There is also an overnight tent opening on West Wisconsin Avenue, and I am interested in creating another sculpture during that opening, that invites the public to participate as well.

I am very excited to have a shot at being a part of an art outreach in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA created by an organization called Art Milwaukee and Creational Trails. They are doing their best to come up with ideas to rejuvinate downtown Milwaukee through art along West Wisconsin Avenue. Above and below you will find images of my mockup for a kinetic flower trellils sculpture that I call: Dream People, as well as a few images of my sketches and other sculptural work.

The idea here, is to create a locus of various nearby schools students, participating in something that brings a piece of themselves to the very public space of West Wisconsin Avenue. I will work to bring repurposed aluminum and/or steel sculptural work pieces to a small group of young artists and poets at each school. Each student will get to paint their dream, in the form of art or poetry on an individual piece. I have used hearts as the repeated motif on my mockup, and I will encourage students to stay near this idea, but they will be able to divert from it as well, making each Dream Person sculpture unique. Below you can see an image of a mockup of a piece I made from an old Wisconsin license plate. I am interested in using more of these, the reflective quality of diotomaceous earth is excellent!

I've created a brief youtube video explaing my vision, and to show some dimension to the mock up. I tried several experiments over the summer, using morning glories and volunteers tomatoes. I like the idea of using some free food in the art as some altruistic element. Any type of climbing vine could be used to flesh out the living sculpture, that would grow throughout the summer.

I see this as a great opportunity to get young people to own a little more of their city. Milwaukee has a lot to offer, and as the organizers of this opportunity have mentioned, Wisconsin Avenue is in it's way, the quintessential Wisconsin main street. Artful connections are all that are missing, dreams and visions of future generations of Wisconsinites combined with the experience of everyone in the state. I believe these Dream People will be a source of pride for all. Watching the vision grow, and watching the vines grow throughout the summer.

I am thankful that you have taken the time to read through my proposal and ideas. I have run this up the flag pole with a former Milwaukee Public School Principal as well as a couple teachers and they all gave me positive feedback saying they thought it was a great idea. I have been working on it for months, and hope I get my shot at redeeming my hardwork with great art!

• Artist Ben Zoltak has completed one permanent concrete, ceramic and stained glass sculpture on display at the wonderful Stevens Point Sculpture Park located in Portage County Wisconsin. It was awarded by the city of Stevens Point and the Aldo Leopold Audubon Society and it is called: Swift Nesting Wing. You can see some images of it below.
• Swift Nesting Wing also doubles as a nesting habitat for Chimney Swifts birds. It is hollow just like an actual chimney.
• While working on Swift Nesting Wing Artist Ben Zoltak worked with volunteers of the Stevens Point Sculpture Park as well as students from several area schools who gleefully got their hands dirty with mortar placing some stained glass and ceramic tesserae pieces on it's exterior.
• Their are hundreds of tesserae glass and ceramic pieces on the outside of Swift Nesting Wing
• Artist Ben Zoltak has currently entered an Art on Mainstreet competition in Chattanooga, Tennessee entering his sculpture entitled: Gruntled Morphous.
• The sculpture Gruntled Morphous is just over eight feet tall and made out of recylced car and truck tires.

Sorry to say I found out today my proposal was not picked by the judges as a finalist. Ah well, such is a competitive art career! I wish Milwaukee well, they are great people and deserve excellent art.Hopefully someday soon Wisconsin's leaders will reopen the state public art market and there will be more opportunities and outreach in my home state. In the meantime, anyone else from any other community (anywhere!!!) who is interested in this proposal please contact me! I would love to see Dream People realized somewhere! The fastest way to do that would be through my Facebook page:

Ben Zoltak Artist & Author

Thanks everybody for your support!

Art is for everyone!