This is one way to make our neighborhood more welcoming

What makes a neighborhood great? 

There are lots of people out there writing and thinking about that question. One important thing shows up on the lists from think-tanks and civic engineers: Neighborhoods are great when they are shaped by, and an inspiration to, the people who live there.

Bottom-up rather than top-down strategies tend to work best. That is because the people who live in a neighborhood are the world's experts on that particular place. Any project to improve things should be guided at least in part by community wisdom.

And that is why Tenney-Lapham neighborhood will not be ordering a professionally produced 'wayfinding' sign from a company like called something like "Signature Street Signs." Our new neighborhood sign will be designed by us!

Anne Katz is helping to organize the effort. She is an arts advocate professionally and a neighbor whose energy and inspiration over the years has contributed to making Tenney-Lapham neighborhood a wonderful place. I asked her to tell me why she believes this sign matters. 

Anne: I grew up in the New York City suburbs and although our family was friendly with many of our neighbors, we didn't know most of them very well.  I've lived in the Tenney-Lapham neighborhood since I moved to Madison in 1984.  In those 34 years, I've lived in three different houses within a ten-house radius on North Few and Jean Streets. We know many of our neighbors very well. Our son had a community watching over him as he grew up and we get to watch over our neighbors' kids now.  We are so happy to help keep the neighborhood vibrant and welcoming. A welcome sign does just that...it welcomes friends, family, visitors, and neighbors to the community.  It helps strengthen the sense of place that makes this a special place to live. The design contest gives people a chance to share their ideas about the community in a creative way.  The sign lets people know where they are and opens the door to our special place.

Send your ideas! Due date = August 10th, 2018

You can submit up to three designs for consideration. Send a jpeg of the design, as well a description of yourself and the materials you envision using, to annedave@chorus.net. The winning design will be unveiled on September 9th and the winner will receive $100. Learn more about what your friendly neighborhood judges are hoping to see in the full Call For Proposals.

A conversation about Makeshift festival

Olbrich Park became a bright spot on the city's map of experiments in placemaking when the new Biergarten opened this summer. With soft pretzels bigger than your head and an oversized Jenga set, I find the Biergarten playful and fresh. 

There are 237 parks listed on the City of Madison's website. That is about one park per 1,000 people. Of those parks, I think Olbrich is one of our crown jewels.

This weekend Olbrich Park will be host to another experiment in placemaking, the Makeshift art and food festival. This fundraiser for our city parks is the brainchild of several Tenney-Lapham neighbors, including folks from Underground Food Collective, Cork N Bottle, and FlakPhoto. 

Alongside temporary installations from artists from around the world will be food. Really special food. The organizers call it "ambitious, affordable dishes in a family-friendly, engaging and immersive experience. A one-day-only happening, Makeshift is Sunday, August 20th from 3-8PM rain or shine.

One of these food experiences is a collaboration between Underground Food Collective and REAP, served from REAP's new food truck.  REAP's mission is to support small family farms and local businesses in southern Wisconsin and increase access to fresh, healthy food for everyone. This pairs well with Underground's seasonal menus highlighting farm fresh produce and locally sourced products.

The Director of REAP, Helen Sarakinos, is a good friend of mine. We've come together around food and art many times--everything from canning beets to curating an installation of five artists work along the Yahara River--so this weekend we biked over to the Biergarten with our daughters and talked. 

Helen says, "Hats off to all the organizers. I really appreciate how they are getting people excited about the possibilities and the future of food in the Midwest. It's so inspiring to be in this city with such a rich food system and see how this could extend to the food our schools are serving children. I have loved working with these visionaries." 

ME: You are a fan of outdoor temporary art experiences like Eaux Claires and Fermentation Fest. You and I collaborated on a project called Yahara Reflections that had a very similar mission to Makeshift: to spark the joy of discovery in familiar places and remind us all of the natural beauty we have right here in our city parks. Are there any particular artists you are really excited to have exhibiting at Makeshift this year?

HELEN: I love the idea of this festival on so many levels, it’s the a fundraiser for public parks, it’s free for everyone, and it’s there and then its gone - placemaking at its best! I have always been drawn to guerrilla art, forcing me to see the same things I look at daily in a radically different way. So I am looking forward to seeing what Michael Duffy does for this event since I’ve always enjoyed his other installations. But so many of the artists are new to me so I’m showing up ready to be surprised, delighted and moved!

 

ME: Tell me about the food people can find at the new REAP foodcart at Makeshift. I understand it will be showing off your vision for school lunches of the future?

HELEN: REAP is so excited to be part of Makeshift and to feature our sweet new food truck, an incredible donation from Emmi Roth Cheese! One of the ways we hope to put it to use is as a food truck at Madison high schools - since the schools all have open campuses, kids can get their lunch to go, rather than choose between eating a proper meal or joining their friends. The lunch recipes are being developed specifically for the food truck - featuring local produce, and made to go. A few school districts around the country have incorporated food trucks and they’ve been really popular with students.

In partnership with Underground Foods, the kids’ meal at Makeshift will showcase the kinds of lunches we hope to be serving out of the food truck in the coming year. These lunches are good for your body, really delicious and full of seasonal and locally-sourced foods. The Makeshift kids meal will be a rice bowl.

REAP has been working to reform school lunch in Madison for over a decade. This is our vision for the future of school meals: 

• We will view healthy, fresh food in schools as a vital component to academic achievement. 
• Every child will have access to high quality, delicious and healthy food so they are ready to learn. 
• Schoolchildren will know and love the taste of fresh fruits and vegetables - the stigma of “kids hate veggies” will be a thing of the past.
• It will be normal for all children to know at least some of the farmers who grow their meals. 
• More of the money spent on food for schools will stay local and help elevate our robust food economy. 

ME: If people reading this, or attending Makeshift, want to help make this a reality for our local schoolkids, what can they do?

HELEN: MMSD Food Services has made some real progress with school meals in the last few years. Did you know they buy almost 100 000 pounds annually of locally-grown fruits and veg for school meals? 

The single best thing we can do as parents is support those efforts. Madison elementary schools this fall will be featuring a weekly locally-sourced lunch. Buy your kids the local lunch! As a community, if we talk about wanting change, we need to support the change. We have to walk the walk. If the District sees interest in local lunches featuring fruits and vegetables, they’ll be willing to grow those options. 

To keep up with plans for local school lunches starting this fall, follow REAP on Facebook or sign up for the newsletter at reapfoodgroup.org.

Makeshift Festival

Sunday, August 20th, 2017

3-8PM at Olbrich Park 

Lapham Buildementary: Outdoor Sculptures by Kids

Lapham Buildementary is a twelve-week after school club for 20 first and second grade students. It's free for the Lapham Elementary students, thanks to a ton of support from the city and the community. 

The kids are busy this spring learning the who, what, and how of public art and sculpture. They have also begun plotting their own large, 3-dimensional pieces to build. This kid-made art will be installed in the parkway along the Yahara River this summer.

The artist-in-residence is Amy Mietzel, a former elementary-school art teacher who now teaches a full range of courses for adults and kids from her funky little space on Winnebago Avenue called Bare Knuckles Arts. 

About a year ago, I approached Amy with the idea for Lapham Buildementary. I was thinking of a follow-up to Yahara Reflections, a temporary installation of five artists' work in 2014. I barely knew her then, but had a feeling she was the person who could pull it off. 

When you walk in Bare Knuckles Arts, it's obvious that the workspace is the brain-child and baby of someone who delights in creative freedom, is open to trying new things, and has an eye for detail and a skill for organization. Watching her work on an art project with my daughters, I was impressed by how respectful, encouraging, relaxed and real she is with young people. 

Luckily, the Lapham principal was incredibly excited about the idea and Amy was on board.  I wrote a grant proposal to the Madison Arts Commission for the project and additionally received generous support from the Lapham-Marquette Parent Teacher Group, the Marquette and Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Associations, and local businesses Robin Room and Underground Meats. Amy started working immediately, sketching and networking and making things happen. She connected with UW-Madison and found two students to volunteer during class. Together we worked out the details with the school and got the blessing of the parks department. 

Lapham Buildementary kicked off in February

Over dinner after the first class, my six year old daughter told us about Andy Goldworthy. "He didn't get permission," she wanted to make clear to me. He just collected a whole bunch of snow and made huge snowballs, "like, bigger than me," she emphasized, stretching her arms over her head. He stored the snowballs in a freezer. Then in the summer, she continued, he put the snowballs in a park and watched as people discovered them. "They took over a week to melt!" she told us in awe. 

This example really spoke to my daughters, who have some icicles and a few chunks of snow in our freezer. 

Goldworthy is one of my favorite artists, too. He creates ephemeral works using natural materials. I really love that this can be done by anyone with materials that cost nothing, are readily accessible, and are naturally mesmerizing. It is what kids do with creative flair all the time, like when they make piles of rocks on the beach or build a fort from sticks in the woods.   

Amy started the first two classes with slides and stories. The focus during the second week was specifically on local sculptures, many of which were familiar to students. I watched the hands go up each time a new slide came on the screen, the kids eager to share their own ways of connecting with the artwork. After class, my children and I ran errands around the east side. We were so excited to point out many pieces we'd just been talking about.

Over the coming months, three additional local artists will come to meet and work with the students. The idea is to present a range of materials and give the children the chance to try out different techniques.

Eventually, working in pairs or teams, the kids will make their own unique designs into real sculptures. Sturdy bases for the sculptures have been welded by a friend of Amy's to meet Madison Parks' specifications. An exhibition of all the sculptures will be in the parkway along the Yahara River this summer. 

You can follow along with the project on the Bare Knuckles Arts website, where Amy posts a little story and pictures after each week's class. And check out the kids' designs on view at Bare Knuckles Arts during Gallery Night on Friday, May 5th from 5-9 PM. 

Winter in a Model City

This morning, the birds were singing. I've been listening. Listening and looking around. As a photographer and an aesthetic thinker, really seeing is a kind of listening for me.

It is February. The light outside is often beautiful, though the palette is subdued. Inside, my desk is covered in piles. I'm catching up after the holidays while gearing up for the next round of birthdays and celebrations. On the floor next to my bed is the book I got for Christmas from my Mother-in-Law. The handmade bookmark from my daughter in there points to the fact that since that leisurely stretch of unstructured days, when I read on the sofa full of zeal and interest, I've gotten distracted. But I keep thinking of the ideas in the book.

Because they keep coming up in different ways.

In the introduction of Erika Janik's Madison: History of a Model City, Madison is described as a place that "took full advantage of its natural assets." As a place, it was "as pleasing to the eye as it was to live and work."

This was the "aspirational vision" of the landscape architect John Nolan in 1911!

For me, it is true and aspirational still today, one hundred years later. 

What does the city want to be in 2016?

Also while lying on the couch over break, I read an interview in the Public Art Review with a modern planner named Mark VanderSchaaf. He says that "people throughout the world and throughout the ages have always thought of places as having personalities." In cities where he works, like the Twin Cities (which I personally consider model cities), he engages in 'deep' listening. Instead of asking people "What do we want the city to be?" he tries to listen for an answer to the question "What does the city want to be?"

In Madison, city planners are in first phase of what I'm sensing is an important round of modern planning. It is set to culminate with a plan for "growth and development" in 2020. Back in December, my neighborhood listserv alerted me to a survey developed to inform this plan, called A Greater Madison Vision: A Shared Regional Vision and Strategy. (I'm really sorry I'm mentioning it now, too late for you to take the survey. Like I said, my desk is covered in piles...)

The website explains that the survey was to help them learn people's core values. 

"Survey results tell us the common shared values across the region and how they relate to our experiences and feelings about our communities....[which] will inform the design of a handful of alternative growth scenarios. Extensive community polling will be used to select the most preferred scenario and craft a strategy to achieve it."

But what does Madison, as a place, want to be?

In January, I had the honor of attending the Madison Arts Commission event "celebrating the collective impact we make on our community through art and culture." 

Mayor Paul Soglin spoke. He reminisced about transitioning State Street into the pedestrian mall we know today during his early days as mayor. He explained that the City put out a call to city planners for proposals. The planner who was chosen, and who is credited with bringing out the essence of State Street, emphasized listening 'to let the place express itself.'

I was among an impressive group of artists, visionaries, and community leaders. I had the sense that these were people who hear the vibe of this place. Or maybe they create it? 


I wonder, are people and place so distinct?

I am guessing they are not. A place draws people. The values of the people drawn-in ultimately shape the place. But it is winter, a time when people are a notch quieter, and I have been listening to the places I frequent with new eyes. 

The personality of these waters, shores, mounds, plants, and animals have value. As a resident and neighbor, my values are shaped by their value.

All photos by Jessica Becker.

PS: The Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association is sponsoring a photo contest from now through October 2016. There are three themes: Faces, Places, & Action. Post a photo to the TLNA Facebook page to enter. More information is here.

Eaux Claires Music Fest: The Art of Inspiring 22,000 Beating Hearts

Mark and I just got home from a kid-free weekend at the Eaux Claires Music Fest (pronounced Oh Claire, see below). We camped deep in the woods with thousands of other people from all over the country. We all survived the storms that roared through on Friday night. We rode on school buses orchestrated magnificently so that we simply had to hop on at point A, then hop off at point B, no heavy thinking necessary. We talked to friendly and glowingly happy people about shoemaking, neighborhood development, yoga, and how great and beautiful it all was. We wandered the grounds, finding secret trails through the woods and to the river, where we swam naked while nobody noticed under a blazing hot sun. We used the Art Installation Legend in the guidebook sometimes, but mostly just experienced. We ate the best BBQ ribs I've ever had, twice. And we danced our asses off. The music was so good, but it was just the excuse. 

The charming little 5.5" x 3.5" bound event booklet included grounding local information alongside esoteric aesthetic indulgences, like these glyphs on the right: Each circle includes the first letters of the names of the bands that played, in the order they appeared on stage over the two days, from Aero Flynn to YMusic.

* * * * *

The gathering is the project of Justin Vernon, who grew up in Eau Claire, WI, and got famous with two excellent Bon Iver albums (for pronunciation, see above). He told Spin Magazine that the Eaux Claires festival was

...planned to be something like a hometown block party, just with 20,000 people. “I’ve always wanted to throw a big party with everything I would want at a place, and assumed other people want the same people there,” said the 35-year-old of the lineup. “It’s self-centered, but at the same time we got the opportunity to do it, so here we are.”

I love that! I can't help but think about The Party in the Park, a block party I just helped produce with some other visionary and neighborhood-loving types. We aimed to turn Reynolds Park into a lovely place where people wanted to hang out, and we trusted the neighborhood to shine in its unique way. Granted, our little event was a one-porta-potty-affair, but still, I think the instincts and indulgences were similar.

Coming down from an event like Eaux Claires, a time and space away from regular life, gives pause for reflection. Along with others, I am grasping for a way to describe the effect the complex experience had on me. It was profound. 

I'm curious about other people's experiences, so I've been searching via hashtags. [I'm somewhere in the middle of the general populace when it comes to hashtags:  I know what they are! But I know I don't use them to their potential. Trying, though].  

These individual comments create the collective sense of the thing. With the #eauxclaires and #eauxclaireswi indexes, I'm noticing the commentary is not so much about the music. For example:

every day i wake up to the fact that any given experience can completely change the way i see this life i'm given. 

- @christiangideon reflecting on #eauxclaires 

* * * * *

Vision + Potential + Collaboration = A Transformative/Uplifting/Inspiring Experience.   

It didn't feel contrived.

In the poetic phrasing of Michael Perry, another local hero known for his many books, his own band, and his deeply resonant voice, there was "a confluence of 22,000 beating hearts" on the banks of the Chippewa and Eau Claire Rivers July 17-18. 

Justin Vernon curated the confluence, but again and again the Creative Director Michael Brown was thanked. I love the way Brown explains what he does:

I am a storyteller - a creative director of experiences, a design director of environments.

It was so clearly a gorgeously ambitious vision realized. Down to every detail...the carved wood signs throughout the campground; the light installations set deep in the woods; the open-air coffee bar with a vase of wild flowers atop an old-timey piano, available for the playing; etc... 

It is so modern, this idea to design the experience so fully, to make all 22,000 of us stars in a grand and beautifully staged production. 

The art of it is to send those 22,000 beating hearts back into their separate lives feeling that it was done for the good.  

I feel good. I think I'm better for having been there. My cup is filled up. I am more confident in my own creative ambitions, and more clear about the power of creative collaboration. 

And so proud of all the things going on around us, in spite of all the shit. Bon Iver played the final, closing set of the event and Justin Vernon said something to that effect, and then:  

“It's good to be humbled by things. It's good to be inspired by things. Holy cow. We'll see what happens after this.”-quoted in The Leader-Telegram

So what next? Look around. There is a lot happening! And also, ignore most of it so you still have the sense to swim (in the river), watch the sun set (over the lake), and listen to the music.

Calling All Fools: Sunday, June 14th

Coming up this Sunday is the best party on water I know about! The kids want to dress as pirates this year and we've been practicing our pirate accents for weeks.

Everyone is invited! It is organized by my buddy Helen and her fabulous organization, River Alliance of Wisconsin, and it is a ton of fun.  

You have two choices: Get in a boat or stand on the shore smiling while the parade paddles past.

 

To join the parade: dress up your boat, your kids and the dog, too. Or not. Just come. You might bring an instrument and play along with the floating band. Or just drum on the side of your boat! 

We meet at 9:30 AM at Tenney Park, near the parking lot between Sherman and Johnson Streets (across from the tennis courts) to get decorated and set up.  We'll start putting in the water around 10 AM and float under all those bridges, past all the admiring and cheering on-lookers, to the Yahara Place Park on Lake Monona, site of the Marquette Waterfront Festival. 

Need more encouragement? I wrote four reasons Why the Fools Flotilla Matters last year. I still believe.

Come down to the River!

Sunday, June 14th

Boats hit the water around 10 AM

Spinning the Globe to Bring Home the Best Souvenirs

People say that travel opens your eyes to see more clearly where you come from. People say that we need to teach our children global competency. People say that the internet is changing everything and the First Global generation is poised to produce new kinds of leaders.

When my daughter lost Marge, her beloved doll, at age three, she told us the doll had gone on a trip to India for a while. Marge did not remember to take a camera, so we have no images of her adventures.

Both my kids, not yet school-age, have stamps in their passports. I am a well-traveled 40-year-old, but I didn't get my first passport until I was six. The kids are beating me already at one of my most-valued life pursuits. 

We just spent a week at a resort south of Cancun, so nothing particularly exotic. There are better ways to raise a culturally conscious kid. However, since returning, I cannot stop thinking about the world, and how to experience more of it. So for the past week I've been surfing the web for inspiration from around the globe.

With just a few clicks, I'm connected to both the amazing (and atrocious) stories of what is happening on this planet. We can all, so easily, follow along, help fund, and learn lessons from these innovative projects.

Can bring these ideas, like souvenirs, home to Madison?

In Santiago, Chile, a dull plaza was transformed by a Shanghai-based group called 100architects. They say "You used to play in the street: Try it." Who paid for this, got the permits, invited this to happen? I don't know. But I think the idea is easy to copy and know of several 'dull plazas' in my landscape that could use some jazz hands.

In the Netherlands, it is common for people to have benches in front of their homes. They are on the sidewalk but are privately owned. It is accepted that anyone can use the bench and that no special permission is needed from the city to put the bench there. And, of course, there are no concerns about lawsuits or homeless campers. Ah, the Netherlands, land of loveliness, right? BenchesCollective riffs off the Restaurant Week model: For one day, folks offer something to the public using the benches for the setting. 

Here in Madison, we have porches...

Markets are universal. The world over, you can count on the fact that people have to sell and buy food. When traveling, markets are the best places to visit. Our Farmers Markets are wonderful, but I'm so hopeful that soon, we'll (once again) also have covered public markets. 

If you haven't yet heard, East-Sider Meghan Blake-Horst is attending the International Public Markets Conference in Barcelona, Spain. She is the power-house visionary behind MadCity Bazaar, which will be popping-up on the corner of E. Wash and 1st Ave two weekends a month from May through September. 

I'm so excited that it is her style, and sensibility, that will help shape the Madison market scene of the future. 

I'd like to see Madison swapping spit around the world a bit more. 

What are your global inspirations? How would they look, and work, here?

Ice Henge, in Honor of Adam

A year ago I wrote "Twenty things I love about Adam Green" for him as a birthday present. His birthday is today, and now it has been over a year since he killed himself. Many people on the east side of Madison know him as a a jovial character who frequented St. Vinnies and made artwork out of found objects. His collection of Zeppelin paintings were distributed after his death and now hang in homes all over the city and beyond.

Adam was a huge inspiration to me. He lived life artfully and encouraged others to do the same.

#2 on my list of things I appreciate about him is this: I love Adam Green for fascinating on wild ideas. Ideas that are possible but unlikely to be realized, ideas that bust open the fixed sensibility of things.

The photos below of a temporary art piece are for him, because I know he would have appreciated both the ice sculpture and the photos I took. And because I wish I could have a conversation with him about it. We would talk about what made those five guys from Lake Mills do it? And we'd talk about exactly how they made the sculpture, and other things they could do to play more with the concept. 

It is a beautiful and fun piece of winter wonder, and now it, too, is gone.

I've read that it took two days to build after years of thinking, learning to cut ice, and surely many encounters with doubters who questioned the sanity of building something so ephemeral, so useless, so difficult. And then, after a couple weeks of glory, it was taken down. Some worried the heavy blocks of ice would crash down when the weather warmed and possibly hurt someone. 

Because, it turns out, people were flocking to see the thing. When I went, there was a heavy stream of cars parking and people marching on the icy path to snap pictures. My own pictures were taken carefully so they hide the fact that it was so crowded.  

But truly, what I love most about the whole thing is that it was so crowded. Those five guys went to the trouble to put their big idea out there, and people loved it. People flocked to see what they created. Adam would have appreciated that.

I also really want to tell Adam about what I've been working on. It is an exciting collaborative effort for all of us to enjoy this summer. More on this to come over the months, but the end products will include an enhanced landscape on East Johnson Street, a chalk mural I'm designing, and several invitations to hang out with your neighbors in Reynolds Park this summer. Imagining picnics in the park and planters full of flowers is a perfect distraction when outside the weather is starting to get tiresome. 

The project is a collaboration between the Friends of Reynolds Park, the Cap East Business Association, and the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association. 

The Friends of Reynolds Park is the group I represent and I'm getting to know the other two groups better as we go along. We really all have the same goal: to make the neighborhood a bit nicer through community involvement. 

I'm so impressed by the character of the people involved and marvel at how much each of these individuals gives freely of his or her time and energy. I'm learning from these hardworking, visionary people, many of whom have lived here much longer than I have and whose commitment to the neighborhood has made it all it is today. 

And today, there are many pressures on the neighborhood, in the state of Wisconsin, and in the world, frankly. Still, people impress me. Oh, plenty disappoint me, too. But I learn so much from the ones who have an internal compass pointing them toward community, a generosity with which they share their gifts, and a light-heartedness about it all. 

I look forward to sharing more about the collaboration, and summer fun in the neighborhood, in the next couple months!

How I transformed this space, just a little bit

I have reworked this digital space a bit recently. I wanted to make it more beautiful, but am limited by the restrictions of the blogger geography and my own capabilities. So, I just added some pages to help organize my ideas.

It is not unlike the art I've been doing this winter: simple embellishments to the familiar landscape.

Years ago, when my husband and I were still dating, we stopped for a hike at a little patch of woods off the highway on the outskirts of Madison. My memory of that hike feels like a dream. We left the main trail to follow a little 'deer path' that led us into a world of sculpted vines and created space. The stones and logs were placed to create small coves beneath dense canopies. It was both totally natural and utterly magical.

We never figured out if the space was created by artists or by area children.

I was reminded of that artful installation within the woods today when I looked at some pictures a friend shared with me.

I added a section that I hope answers the questions I often ask myself, like Why do I enjoy creating this digital space for myself so much? And what is it for?

I've also made it easier to subscribe (see the right sidebar) and added some local sponsors. Thanks for looking around here, and outside, and exploring with me. Keep sending me links, too, I love that!

This installation of frozen color was short-lived. 

I was the only lucky soul out there for a few minutes on Monday, in the bright sunshine, just after a big snow. I saw a bald eagle flying low over the open water of the Yahara River. I've not seen one here before.

Another few inches of snow came down on Tuesday. Now the orbs of frozen color are covered in an icy blanket. But I suspect a few people will wander out onto Lake Mendota, near the Tenney locks, and wonder about those dots of color, peeking through like a little sprinkle of something magical.