MIAD Gallery at The Ave presents an exhibition featuring handmade, screen-printed posters by our Communication Design students. Each student used their unique creativity to capture the essence of Milwaukee in a limited-edition, signed, and numbered poster priced at $25 each. Celebrate the city’s character through these vibrant works, with a portion of sales supporting the student artists. Don’t miss this opportunity to see Milwaukee in a whole new light! This exhibition will run concurrently with the historic Doors Open Milwaukee weekend on 9/28-9/29, which is free and open to public.

Visitors can decorate a vanity with stickers, explore a shoppable display, and participate in interactive activities like writing on a giant CD wall. This immersive experience aims to evoke nostalgia, foster creativity, and encourage personal connections in a welcoming and inclusive environment. “Safe To Cry Here” is an interactive gallery exhibit and shop by Charity Ekpo, Dusty Pete’s, and Peach Beast, celebrating the intimate, analog methods of communication, self-expression, and friendship before the digital age. The exhibit features key installations such as a giant friendship bracelet for visitor contributions, school lockers for note-passing, and a cozy “Diary/Crying Corner” with nostalgic prompts.

The pandemic dramatically halted the world as we knew it, and creatives within the art, design, and cultural production field were no exception to this phenomena. During the lockdown, the talents and gifts that creatives bring to the world were pushed in new ways that both strained and flourished under such intense conditions. For many, this period of time had a profound effect on our relationship between new technologies and an emergence or return to homesteading. And for creatives, this period of time had a profound effect on the development of their talents: using technology and the digital world and a return to analogue practices with a focus on the handmade. Challenges can create complex opportunities to make something new or unimagined, and for creatives, the pandemic has been a time of ingenuity in a time of chaos. 

What happens to the creative practice when forced to incubate, grow, and mature in close quarters? “Culture Starters” asks to consider culture, from sourdough starter to new social cues grown from the emergence of virtual meetings, and creative ideas that bubbled and grew inside of the lock down through the pandemic, inspiring new ways that creatives adapted to approach making.

Vouga created the artistic All-Star poster for Brook Lopez, while her colleagues, Alexa Lesinski and Chris Vitek, created posters for the two other All-Star contenders: Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Vouga says, “Working on the All-Star Campaign has been … a surreal experience. It’s my first large-scale project outside of college, and it’s been beyond rewarding. Vouga also commented on the collaborative nature of her colleagues, who “guided me through my first year … and had large creative voices throughout this whole project.”

Vouga and her colleagues also created smaller player posters for the team, many of which are displayed here. 

Voting is open online through January 20 for the 2024 NBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis. To vote for a 2024 Bucks All-Star, scan the QR code or visit bucks.com/allstar.

Zines themselves have emerged from the scraps, providing a platform for marginalized voices, their role in fostering creativity and community, their capacity to challenge mainstream narratives, and their unique, tangible nature. They provide an accessible, easy to distribute medium for artists, writers, and people interested in enacting social change. Zines are a testament to the power of grassroots media and self-expression in a world that often prioritizes commercialized and homogenized forms of communication.

In a world often defined by boundaries and categories, “Punks, Geeks, and Lovers” invites you to explore the intersections of these seemingly distinct communities. Explore the pages and spreads filled with untamed ideas that challenge convention. Discover the common threads that connect these seemingly disparate groups and recognize the shared human experiences that unite us all. “Punks, Geeks, and Lovers” celebrates the voices that have been marginalized, the passions that have been misunderstood, and the love that transcends boundaries. It is an invitation to embrace the beauty in the unconventional, to question the status quo, and to celebrate the myriad forms of love that enrich our lives.

After Hours showcases the work of MIAD staff members in a first-ever exhibition dedicated to staff creativity. Staff, identified as individuals holding administrative and technical roles at the college, are often creative in their own right, working to support the needs of the MIAD community. Their expertise in these roles adds value to daily college operations, where we thrive together in a creative ecology of workers, colleagues, and collaborators. Practices held by staff are often honed and explored before or after work, or on weekends, speaking to the labor of love that is a creative practice.

Sharon Louden, editor of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists, offers this unique perspective:

“What’s most important is that an artist is an artist, no matter if they hold down another job, choose to follow an untraditional path, remain relatively obscure throughout life, or are represented by a gallery. The power of creativity does not just live in an artist’s work, but also in how they continue to create regardless of the obstacles life places in the way.”

The exhibiting creatives in After Hours are not an exhaustive list of staff who pursue this practice, but they are a glimmer of the talent that comprises our vibrant ecosystem at MIAD. Works on view, coincidentally, explore nighttime themes, the expression of the day-to-day, or comment on various cultural phenomena through an individualized lens of interpretation presented by the creative. After Hours challenges our understanding of the roles creatives play in our lives, and the importance of preserving creative pursuits.

Marie Couture
Director of Facilities & Logistics

Marie Couture graduated with an Industrial Design degree in 1998 from the MIlwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD). Couture has worked for MIAD since 1999, and currently serves as the Director of Facilities & Logistics. In personal work, Couture focuses on sculpture, drawing, painting, and the design of everyday objects.

Bryan Jerabek
Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator

Bryan is a knife maker based in Milwaukee, WI. Originally from Michigan, Bryan relocated to Wisconsin in 2000 to attend Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He has 3 daughters and a wonderful supportive partner with 3 beautiful children as well. He currently works at MIAD as the Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator.

Jeffrey Morin
President

Jeff Morin is a writer, artist, and educator. He brings 35 years of higher education experience to the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Originally from Madawaska, Maine, Morin’s undergraduate degree is from Tyler School of Art and his graduate degrees are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His works are in roughly 125 public collections.

Ben Yacavone
3D Lab Supervisor

Ben Yacavone is a visual artist living and working in Milwaukee, WI. Yacavone works primarily in sculpture, using industrial building materials, video, textiles, and found objects to explore the relationships between material, craft, and cultural perception of the industrial world.

Melissa Dorn
Sculpture ’96

Melissa Dorn lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and holds a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. A practicing artist for 25 years, she most recently had the great fortune to be an artist in residence at the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts. Her work can be found in many corporate collections including Littler Mendelson, Mandel Group, Marcus Corporation’s Saint Kate Arts Hotel, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Northwestern Mutual, Tax-Air and West Bend Mutual Insurance Company.

Select exhibitions include: Pulling at Strands: History, Feminism & the Everyday, Arts@Large Gallery; Mobile Home, Var Gallery; Body of Work, Brooks Stevens Gallery; The Everyday Feminist: Fine China, Plock Art Gallery; The Everyday Feminist: Doing the Dishes, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mopping Up, Frank Juarez Gallery; The Jump Off, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art; Detroit Biennale, Museum of New Art; Wisconsin Artists Biennial, Museum of Wisconsin Art; Preservatif, Stockholm Gallery; Forward 2014, Charles Allis Art Museum; Up, Down!, River Edge Gallery; Moving Mountains, Frank Juarez Gallery; Schematic, UW-Sheboygan; Eight Counties, John Michael Kohler Arts Center; Art Chicago and Aqua Art Miami, Hotcakes Gallery.

Rachel Hausmann Schall
Integrated Studio Arts ’15

Rachel Hausmann Schall is a born and raised midwestern artist, writer, and educator living and working in central Wisconsin. She received her BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) in 2015 and became co-founder and co-director of the artist collective After School Special (2015-2018). She exhibits work regularly at gallery spaces in Milwaukee, including solo exhibitions at Chamber (2016) and the Real Tinsel (2021). Rachel has also shown nationally at Little Berlin (Philadelphia, PA), Project 1612 (Peoria, IL), Woman Made Gallery (Chicago, IL), the DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University (Marquette, MI) and Lease Agreement (Lubbock, TX) for the Terrain Biennial 2019. She was recognized as an emerging artist finalist for the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship in 2016, received the Nohl Suitcase Export Grant in 2018, and completed an artist residency in 2019 at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Her work takes shape in many forms, although currently, she is interested in exploring text, language, and mark-making through written and visual mediums like collage, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Hausmann Schall is one of the co-organizers of the emerging artist grant and exhibition program The Grilled Cheese Grant. In addition to her practice as an artist, Rachel is a contributing writer for both the Chicago-based arts publication Sixty Inches From Center and the Wisconsin-based publication Artdose Magazine. Her written pieces highlight the work of underrepresented artists, galleries, and arts-related projects in the midwest.

Rachel Hausmann Schall works as a Curator of Education at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI.

Nirmal Raja
Painting ’08

Nirmal Raja is an interdisciplinary artist living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She had lived in India, South Korea and Hong Kong before immigrating to the United States thirty years ago. She holds a BA in English Literature from St. Francis College in Hyderabad, India; a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She has participated in solo and group shows in the Midwest, nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of several awards including “Graduate of The Decade” from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Raja received the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for individual artists for the year 2020-21. She collaborates with other artists and strongly believes in investing energy into her immediate community while also considering the global. She curates exhibitions that bring people from different cultures and backgrounds together. She was a mentor at RedLine Milwaukee, a community arts incubator for six years and is now a mentor for the Milwaukee Artists Resource Network.

Christian Sis
Drawing ’12

Christian Sis was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He graduated from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) in 2012 with a BFA in Drawing. While at MIAD Christian gravitated toward figurative work and the power of narratives conveyed through the human form. He currently lives in West Allis, with his wife and young daughter, where he works as an artist.

Cassie Tompkins
Photography ’01

Cassie Tompkins is a Chicago-based artist working between the media of print-making, textiles, and ceramics. In 2001 she graduated with a BFA in photography from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and in 2010 received a BFA with a concentration in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was the Lillstreet Art Center’s artist-in-residence in Textiles from 2019–21. In 2018 she was an award recipient of the Cleve Carney Art Gallery’s “One: Annual Emerging Artist” exhibition and an open studio resident at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME. She completed the inaugural FIELD/WORK Residency at the Chicago Artist Coalition and attended ACRE residency in Steuben, WI in 2017. She has exhibited throughout the Chicago area at Mana Contemporary, the Comfort Station, the Annex Gallery at Spudnik Press, Lillstreet Art Center, ACRE Projects, Cleve Carney Art Gallery, and Co-Prosperity Sphere; and beyond at the Center for Book Arts, New York, NY, Eckert Gallery, Millersville University, Millersville, PA, and Gallery for Contemporary Art, Indiana University Northwest, Gary, IN.