milwaukee convention center
Three series of sculptural portals were integrated into the architecture through a tight working relationship with the architects Ventulett, Thompson & Stainback and Engberg Anderson Design. Aspects of life in Wisconsin are given expression in form – landscape, industry and urban life – treating the doorways as significant passages. Collaborating with Woodland Pattern Book Center and a panel of seven experts, passages from fifty Wisconsin writers spanning a 200-year history are grouped thematically.
Ballroom Portals cherry, maple, stainless steel, acrylic letters, one of five 25’ x 24’ x 6’6” portals 1998
Ballroom Portals cherry, maple, stainless steel, acrylic letters, 25’ x 24’ x 6’6” each of five portals into ballroom 1998
5 BALLROOM PORTALS
Early Milwaukee architecture features European inspired archways which I re-interpreted for city based stories. The finned arches sift light creating a shadow play along the monochrome letters. Focusing on urban life, the ten texts include Carl Sandberg and Daisy Cubias. The grand scale becomes a facade opening into the grand ballroom.
Meeting Room Portals cherry, maple, stainless steel, aluminum letters, 12’ x 19’ x 2’ each of eighteen 1998
Meeting Room Portal detail of writing by John Muir, 3” aluminum letters on cherry 1998
18 MEETING ROOM PORTALS
Grouped in sets of three as entrances to meeting rooms, the texts are arranged along themes such as work, weather and immigration with authors such as John Muir and Laura Engels Wilder. Repeated eighteen times, these canted arches meld abstracted reference to both the mechanisms of industry and the regionally common hillocks of glacial formations.
Ballroom Lobby cherry, maple, stainless steel, acrylic letters, 35’ x 120 x’ 10’ curved wall with two portals 1998
BALLROOM LOBBY
Issues of the land are reflected with text becoming texture in a wall nearly a third of a city block long. The words of Black Hawk, Loraine Neidecker and Aldo Leopold, among others, sweep into one’s peripheral vision along the ridge and craggy wall.