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Take a ride to nearby Sheboygan/Kohler to experience the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) and its renowned Arts/Industry program. JMKAC is a nationally acclaimed visual and performing arts complex that encourages and supports innovative explorations in the arts and fosters an exchange between a national community of artists and a broad public. The Arts/Industry program makes industrial technologies and facilities available to artists through long-term residencies, short-term workshops, tours, and other programming. Our exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the pottery, foundry, and enamel shops of the program at Kohler Co.; artists’ studio spaces; and works in progress will demonstrate why Arts/Industry is one of the most unusual and desired artist residency programs in the country.

Please Note: This trip is limited to the first 240 participants who register for the preconference.

A box lunch will be available at the hotel and busses will depart from the hotel.

11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Bus to Sheboygan

Sheboygan, WI

All participants will experience the sessions and facilities in small-group tours of approximately 20 hosted and lead by staff from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and volunteers from Kohler.

Session #1: Collecting and Preserving

• John Michael Kohler Arts Center
  The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is a 38-year-old, nationally acclaimed visual and performing arts complex. Its mission is to encourage and support innovative explorations in the arts and to foster an exchange between a national community of artists and a broad public that will help realize the power of the arts to inspire and transform our world. Its exhibitions focus on a wide range of art forms, with particular emphasis on sculpture, photography, crafts, new genres, installation art, ongoing folk traditions, and the work of self-taught artists.
• Permanent Collection
  The John Michael Kohler Arts Center features an internationally renowned permanent collection of works by folk, self-taught, and vernacular artists. This collection comprises several thousand works by relatively few artists, offering viewers and scholars a comprehensive view of an artist’s oeuvre to rather than taking a traditional museum approach of encyclopedic collecting.
  
  The collection’s most prominent feature is a one-of-a-kind collection of work by vernacular environment builders—artists who transformed their homes, yards, clothes, and other daily surroundings into cohesive, multifaceted works of art. The Arts Center works in tandem with preservation partners to ensure the best long-term goals for each such collection of objects from art environments.
• Exhibitions
  The Arts Center’s exhibitions question traditional thinking about art, challenging the mind as well as the eye. They are designed to give a broad public—adults and children—fascinating and lively experiences. Exhibitions focus primarily on contemporary American art—craft, paintings, photographs, sculpture, installation works, and complex computer-generated works that have received little exposure in the Midwest or nationally. Few institutions in the country focus on such a breadth of contemporary work. As a result, the exhibitions are acclaimed by critics and public alike.
• Exhibitions on View – June 2006
• Enrique Chagoya (CA): Reverse Anthropology—Interested in how cultures classify and understand their own histories, Chagoya creates prints and multipanel codices that blend images, texts, and phrases in new contexts in order to draw attention to and question their meaning.
• Richard Cleaver (MD): Gatherings (working title)—Minutely detailed sculptures carved in clay and adorned with oil paint, gold leaf, seed pearls, and other media installed in groupings that tell stories about the artist’s experiences and personal memories.
• Miniature Mysteries: Bottle Whimseys from the Collections of Susan Jones and Mike Williams—Focuses on the fascinating folk tradition of creating narrative tableaux within the confines of a bottle, the most famous example being the “ship in a bottle.”
• Utopia (Group)—Contemporary artists addressing the notion of utopia—an idea of the “perfect” society—through riveting paintings, drawings, and sculpture.

Session #2: Public Art Commissions/Arts Center Programs

• Overview on the Arts Center
  Housed in a welcoming, light-filled complex of 100,000 square feet, the Arts Center combines handsome contemporary design with three historic structures, including the original 1882 Italianate home built by the nineteenth-century founder of Kohler Co., John Michael Kohler. With surrounding gardens, the Arts Center brings together an entire city block of art highlighted by the exterior walls of a 200-year-old Carnegie Library serving as the perimeter of an outdoor sculpture garden and concert stage.
• Artist-Created Washrooms
  One of the most unusual aspects of the Arts Center's facility is its six public washrooms, each of which was created by an outstanding American artist in the Arts Center's Arts/Industry program. Because the Arts Center focuses on ever-changing exhibitions and performances, the galleries and most other spaces have to serve as a "blank canvas" for both the visual and performing works that are presented. Thus the washrooms are the only public spaces where permanently installed works of art could be considered. In addition, the washroom commissions are particularly fitting because of the Arts Center's focus on the support of new work and on involving artists and the public together in the creative process.
• Connecting Communities
  Connecting Communities is an ongoing program whose purpose is to involve superb artists with a broad spectrum of adults and children in the creation of powerful works of art through community-based commissions and, in doing so, to unite and strengthen the region. In the nine years of the program, 15 commissions have been created, each actively involving community members in the creation through realization of the pieces. The projects range from original performances that include dance, music, and visual aspects to large-scale installations. Three of the projects to date have had a significant emphasis on public art, from Keepsake, a commission by artist Patrick Dougherty, to dozens of individual “monuments” being placed throughout the community under the direction of artist Michael Bishop. 2006 will showcase one of the largest Public Art commissions undertaken by Connection Communities, the creation of M.I.K.E.
  
  M.I.K.E., a Music Integrated Kiosk Exchange, is an interactive public art project that functions as an architectural sculpture, a public performance space, and a community-based music program. Embracing the tradition of regionalism in the Midwest, adults and children will collaborate with artists Richard Saxton of the municipalWORKSHOP and Stuart Hyatt of Team Records to fabricate the work at Lakeshore Technical College by altering common vernacular forms—a grain bin and flatbed trailer. In August, interested musicians, singers, and storytellers of all ages will participate in the music composition workshops and/or sessions on recording technologies, in addition to recording sessions in the mobile structure at the Arts Center.

Kohler Co. Factory

Arts/Industry
Conceived and administered by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the program makes industrial technologies and facilities available to artists through long-term residencies, short-term workshops, tours, and other programming so that they may further their artistic explorations. Experience for yourself what makes Arts/Industry one of the most unusual and desired residency programs in the country. Take part in a behind-the-scenes tour in the pottery, foundry, and enamel shops of the program at Kohler Co., and see the artists’ studio spaces and their work.

A/I Public Art Work
The Arts/Industry permanent collection consists of works of art made while in residence at Kohler Co.’s pottery and foundry.  The Arts Center and the artist mutually agree upon the gifted works, which are as diverse and provocative as the residents themselves.

In addition, numerous Arts/Industry residents use the residency to fabricate parts for their public art, such as Alex Schweder, Stuart Keeler, Kim Dickey, or Aris Georgiades. Arts/Industry has facilitated public commissions such as Smith College’s washrooms by Sandy Skoglund and Helen Driscoll and, in 2006, is facilitating a public commission for a Los Angeles Metro station by Wisconsin artist Rob Neilson.