A Slide Show

Three Rivers part 1

google maps

Milwaukee was built at the confluence of three rivers on the shore of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic . At present there are 9 miles navigable by small craft before reaching the protected harbor. There is an additional 27 miles or so accessible by canoe or kayak up the Milwaukee River to the dam at Bridge Street in Grafton, Wisconsin.

The three rivers have been used for commerce and recreation for a long time.

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

When I first saw the three rivers commerce had dominated for enough time to have turned them into something just short of open sewers. This was in the mid 1960’s, when I moved here with my sister to finish high school and live at our father’s house. Buildings along the river fronts had their backs to the rivers, waste was dumped directly into them. The rivers stank much of the time. River front property was less valuable for being on the river.

Around 1967 I took a part time job at the Knickerbocker Hotel Pharmacy, just north of downtown. It was one of those opportunities to experience a very colorful side of Milwaukee. The notorious Sally’s Supper Club shared the ground floor of the hotel with the pharmacy.  Working there cracked open a chink through which I saw a world that was slowly dying and I was  intrigued and scared by its shadows. This was the last of a seamy Milwaukee of cheap hoods, organized crime, systematic exploitation and violence.

It was in this world that my boss, the owner of the pharmacy operated. I cannot remember his name now, so I’ll call him Mr. K. The straits he was in by the time I was hired were never fully known to me. His swollen face,  stooped stance and scurrying gait though were  signals of much that lay unseen. He must have been seriously indebted to someone and he had to hustle to stay afloat.

I felt sympathy for this over worked man. He was fair to his employees and never indulged in the exploitation the milieu he was immersed in would have found natural. As a matter of fact he would often give quiet warnings of traps to gingerly step around, such as gifts that were anything but what they seemed. There were times when it was best not to leave the drugstore counter, at least not until the big Cadillacs  had left the street in front of Sally’s. Men in garrish suits would hang out in the soda fountain area around lunch time or on a lazy Sunday afternoon occasionaly making very sexist remarks about the waitress, sometimes bidding her to sit with them to discuss certain propositions. The drug store filled orders that I often delivered by dropping off inside a screen door, under no circumstances was I to knock. A young women’s residence was around the  corner and on occasion I was told to deliver a couple of six packs of beer and “you don’t need to hurry back [wink, wink]” to one of the dorm rooms there . Mr. K. would get irate though about delivering boxes of condoms to another “apartment” in the neighborhood. Somehow he had a more mellow attitude about the daily delivery of a half pint of cheap brandy and a package of  Depends to a resident of the hotel (that was a very quick delivery).

Maybe he sensed my nascent grasp of his predicament and maybe my  naive sympathy.  Maybe I was just a person that would listen. Whatever the reason he began to tell me about his youth and this reflection distracted him from the trap he was  in. I was amazed to hear about the days he spent swimming in the Milwaukee River, about the majestic swimming pavilions and the boats that would be rowed on the river to lazy picnics along the bank.

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

Mr. K. also told of the farms 1/2 block from where I was living at the time. That land had been “developed” into housing quite awhile earlier and I had never thought of it as farmland. The contrast between that pastoral land and river of his memory and the city I lived in was astounding to me.

I worked at that drugstore a couple of years and moved on. I went to college at UWM and got a degree in independant film making. I travelled some, was part of a travelling film and dance production (1/2 of it to be exact) and eventually wound up living in an old log cabin just north of the city of Milwaukee for a couple of years.

I had always sailed on Lake Michigan. I moved back into the city, right into the heart of downtown, and my girlfriend (soon to be wife) and I bought an old wooden sailboat which we sailed around Lake Michigan, storing it in a boat yard up the Kinnickinnic River over the winters.

Our boat tied up along the KK River

I had never forgotten Mr. K.’s stories about the rivers of his youth though, yet I found it hard to reconcile those stories with the rivers I saw up close from our boat.  The waters were filthy, and even though you would see the occassional musk rat swimming, more often you were likely to see a dead animal floating downstream.

And this wasn’t necesarily the safest place to keep a boat. There were gangs that motored up the river and would steal anything of value from any and all boats tied up along the banks. A group of us boat owners, particularly owners of boats of a certain vintage tended to watch out for each other’s boats and would have small parties and cookouts along our makeshift docks. We were on a part of the river that could be described as a desolate industrial wasteland.

An aside: As a matter fact, it was few years earlier that I used that area as the scene for a series of photographs I took and submitted as a non-written term paper about the Italian film maker Michelangelo Antonioni.  I was particularly interested in his early, neorealist work. You can get idea of what I’m talking about by seeing this screen shot from his film Il deserto rosso (1964).

I have always been an artist, besides dabbling in film and earning a living at furniture design, furniture making and carpentry.  Twenty years ago Milwaukee held a celebration of the rivers that run through it. A celebration that, it was hoped, would change Milwaukee’s view of and attitude toward the rivers. I participated as a sculptor and created a floating sculpture for the event. It was an attempt to add a bit of “jewelry” to the rivers, honor and celebrate what could be. I created a pretty wild looking canoe form.

Canoe Form by Todd Fillingham 1989

I set up a small display describing the project then floated up and down the Milwaukee River during the celebration in this canoe. It was a small effort, more of a gesture I guess, but it was part of the beginning of a major change in Milwaukee.

More to come in this series.

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Viewing some of my art work

I have a hard time shooting pictures of some of my art work. The pictures never quite show what I see. I suppose that’s a common complaint among amature photographers. Just the other day I discovered a way to shoot some of my work in a way that I really like.

I realized that I don’t interact with my work from a distance and see the work in a static view. No, I walk around or past each piece. Sometimes my eye catches one or two elements. Sometimes I get drawn into fragments. So I started shooting details of some of my pieces, isolating parts from the whole. For some pieces it works nicely.

Detail from painted table base by Todd Fillingham.

Detail from paper table by Todd Fillingham

This last image is a little off-putting I think. It is really not out of focus, this is how the print looks on the table base.

Another way that seems to work for me to shoot some of my work is to include some of the context or enviroment that the piece is in. Sometimes I like the environment to be a little undefined. Here’s a sketch for a carving.

Drawing by Todd Fillingham for a carving done in mahogany.

Resin nude on Paper Base Table, both by Todd Fililngham

And sometimes just shooting the piece in room it is shown in when the light is just right is OK.

Boy With Kite by Todd Fillingham

And this last piece I had to “photoshop” the background.

Resin, wire and cloth figure by Todd Fillingham

I’ll get back to that post about the next table I’m working on soon.

Oops, I wanted to add this painting as well.

Carving/ Sculpture

Two views of another type of carving I do. This is a figure I carved as a gift for a very dear friend. My previous post got me thinking about my wood carvings. Now I really need to get back to work in the shop.

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Surf Board Table III -iii

The legs are cut to fit up against the center arc at a 30 degree angle and mortises or slots are cut on that beveled face to receive the tenons that fit through the arc. I use the arc pattern to locate the slots in the arc.

After cutting those I do the final shaping on the arc. The convex curve is shaped on the belt sander table.

And the concave curve is shaped by hand using a spoke shave.

A test assembly of two of the legs to the arc reveals an interesting form.

I often take a little time to consider the forms created by accident when assembling furniture elements. To some degree there is not that much “accident” involved as I intentionally created the parts with the goal of creating an interesting or compelling shape.

I use to whip out an old Polaroid camera and take a few shots. Then I’d pin them to my office wall. I still study them for ideas.

Now I use one of digital cameras and my hard drive has become the studio wall. I actually like the studio wall better.

Adding the second set of legs makes it easier to see how this could turn into a coffee table.

Next I’ll shape the top, add some cross pieces and I can glue up the base.

Intrepid

My Microtek 4850 scanner has an attachment for scanning slides. It does a pretty good job on slides that are not very dark, but on dark slides it adds a lot of noise that is hard to edit out. In working on my new web site I’ve been going through a lot of old slides and a lot of old digital images. I found a few slides of a piece I did some time ago as a commission for a fund raiser. It was auctioned off and I’ve lost track of it now so these slides are all I have of it.

I think you can get idea of the piece even with all the image noise.

Here’s a scan of slide I did in the same session. It’s of one of my 3 legged stools. This was sold through a gallery.

You can see the difference in image quality between the two scans. It must be that the stool slide had a lot of light.

Over the years I’ve done quite of few of these three legged stools all based on the stools of Wharton Esherick. As a matter of fact here’s a set of 3 I recently made on a commission basis.

OK, why am I posting stools and mobiles? Maybe it’s because I think of the stools as sculpture. I really like the carved seats, each one is unique and they are a sculptural element that you interact with. Also, I like the contrast between the sensuous carved stool seats and the flat, metal elements in primary colors of the the mobile.

Sitter2, Fall

Sometimes, especially as winter approaches, it seems like you get very tired.

This is the same model as in Sitter. My drawing instructor at the time said that a lot of figurative artists will try hard to avoid drawing or painting the hands and feet of their model. They’re not easy, this was as good as I could ever get, at least back when I was taking class.

Fall leaves and a cast concrete piece I have yet to name.

Here’s a little Miles Davis to go with this post.

sitting mobile

Here’s a small, self standing mobile I did several years ago. It’s an abstracted figure in 3D. At one point I replaced the little wire “S” curve connectors between the moving elements with brass ball chain, I’m going to go back to the “S” curves. I wanted to get a 360 degree turn on the elements but it looks a little clunky.

This piece is one of my metal sculptures in which I try and create something of an abstracted narrative within the piece.

-Todd

Folding screen

Here’s an image of a screen I made quite a few years ago. By folding the panels in different ways the reclining figure takes on slightly different look, sometimes aloof, sometimes embracing. I had intended this screen to be the first of a series, however I haven’t yet continued the series. I still would like to work on these and will…eventually.