Arts

Inside Black Cat Alley, the East Side’s new “street art destination”

September 18, 2016

On Sunday, September 18, the East Side's new "street art destination," Black Cat Alley, celebrated its grand opening. The two-block alley, located between Kenilworth Blvd. and Ivanhoe Place between the Orie...

Positive momentum: Above The Clouds celebrates 15 years

Joshua Miller

September 15, 2016

Lindsey Kelly has loved dancing since she was a teenager. Growing up just off of 32nd and Silver Spring, she has kept a budding fascination with the art form. At first, her family's financial situation made...

Blyth Renate Meier greets a changing city in “Good Morning, Milwaukee”

Matt Wild

September 7, 2016

Blyth Renate Meier was born in Milwaukee but raised in North Dakota. After returning to Milwaukee and earning a master's degrees in art and film at the UWM, she took a job at Milwaukee Film. It was during t...

Back to school: Milwaukee Record reads a poem about a “giant masturbating machine” at UWM

Matt Wild

September 6, 2016

Let's take a moment to remember Bob Watt: poet, artist, self-styled "dirty old man." After moving to Milwaukee in 1951, Watt established himself as a counterculture poet and outsider artist, focusing on "so bad...

Sex, drugs, and vaudeville: All In Productions throws a really ‘Wild Party’

Jeff Grygny

August 31, 2016

Queenie was a blonde and her age stood still, And she danced twice a day in vaudeville. The Wild Party, by Joseph Moncure March From ancient Rome to today’s hip-hop, vibrant cultures have always come wi...

‘Breaking Bad’ star-turned-author Bryan Cranston coming to Pabst Theater

Tyler Maas

August 19, 2016

//Following a long, steady, workmanlike career as character actor who had occasional appearances in sitcoms like Seinfeld and The King Of Queens, and a regular supporting role in Malcolm In The Middle, Bry...

Michail Takach documents city’s gay past in ‘LGBT Milwaukee’

Tyler Maas

August 18, 2016

//With monumental events like marriage equality, the growth of the city's PrideFest, and an exponential increase in acceptance and understanding from all sections of society, Milwaukee's LGBT community has...

Stairway to hell: ‘No Exit’ descends to Off The Wall Theatre

Jeff Grygny

August 9, 2016

//Anyone who has been in a toxic relationship—or even just stuck with a bad roommate—knows that it doesn't take rivers of fire or swarms of grinning demons to make you feel damned. No Exit, the classic exi...

‘Lobotomy: The Musical!’ drills to the core of mental health issues

Tyler Maas

August 5, 2016

//After last winter's run of Spread The Nudes shows, it didn't take long for inspiration to strike writer Chris Holoyda again. Following one of the performances, a conversation with friends during a post-s...

Latino Arts announces fall/winter exhibitions, performances

Tyler Maas

August 4, 2016

//Last year marked Latino Arts Inc.'s 30-year anniversary. Despite being around since 1985 (and formally taking root in Walker's Point in 1997), the invaluable outlet for showcasing the work of Hispanic ar...

People’s Books is closing

Matt Wild

August 4, 2016

//For the past 42 (!) years, People's Books Cooperative has been a breath of fresh, progressive-minded air in Milwaukee's ever-consolidating bookstore scene. Chris Chiu opened the shop in 1974 near the cor...

Counter-Craft Night Market prepares to light up Riverwest

Matt Wild

July 13, 2016

//Milwaukee's past and present are stuffed with maker-friendly arts-and-crafts extravaganzas. Influential events like Art Vs. Craft and Gallery Night And Day have laid the handmade groundwork for the Urban...

“American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood” gets its close-up at MAM

Matt Wild

June 30, 2016

//There's a scene in the Coen brothers' underrated 2016 film Hail, Caesar! when brassy 1950s starlet DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is shooting a synchronized swimming film. She rises from the water, c...

My layover at Mitchell Gallery of Flight, that museum in the airport

Monica Reida

June 29, 2016

//I had never really noticed Mitchell Gallery of Flight when flying in and out of General Mitchell International Airport. My normal pre-flight pattern usually includes checking in for my flight, checking m...

Model-turned-poet Elyse Cizek bares her soul in ‘NUDITY’

Tyler Maas

June 24, 2016

//Lots of people want to write a book. For Los Angeles (by way of Milwaukee) model Elyse Cizek, it became nothing short of a need. During a particularly depressing Milwaukee winter, she applied her raw emo...

Here’s the 2016 Lakefront Festival Of Art lineup

Tyler Maas

May 16, 2016

//Milwaukee Art Museum’s Lakefront Festival Of Art has always been one of the city’s classier summer festivals—no beer runs or zany street performers here! Still, per Milwaukee summer festival regulations,...

Milwaukee’s National Diorama Month goes big by going small

Matt Wild

March 15, 2016

//Among its many oddities—beer, the Bronze Fonz, Bob Uecker—Milwaukee is home to the world's first museum diorama. In 1890, Carl Akeley, a.k.a. the "father of modern taxidermy," created a muskrat colony di...

Help make Rob Wieland’s new comic book, ‘Girls’ Heist Out,’ a kickass reality

Matt Wild

March 1, 2016

//Throw a rock and you'll hit at least 8,000 local crowdfunding campaigns hoping to save a bar, save some domes, or finally get some men's underwear with waterproof pockets to market. There's an almost end...

Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Dead Man’ resurrected as grade school play ‘The Bully, The Liar & The Thief’

Matt Wild

February 29, 2016

//In Jim Jarmusch's 1995 "psychedelic Western" Dead Man, William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels to the dystopian town of Machine for a new job. Things don't go as planned, unfortunately, and Blake ends up sho...

Reading Carrie Schneider’s “Reading Women”

Marielle Allschwang

February 26, 2016

Last week, I was shown a photograph of Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce's Ulysses. She is near the end, seemingly lost in Molly Bloom's punctuation-less, sensual reverie, immersed in the flows and throes ...