We Planned a Road Trip

A review of Midwest Field Reporters: Field Notes & Roadside Potluck

Photo courtesy of Midwest Field Reporters.

With a potluck and a participatory art station, Midwest Field Reporters: Field Notes & Roadside Potluck has the atmosphere of a family get together in the setting of a gallery. Jenna Knapp, Zack Hill, Kayle Karbowski, and Maeve Jackson collaboratively curated their work in the Northwestern Mutual Gallery at Cardinal Stritch University. As a collective of artist living in Milwaukee, The Midwest Field Reporters aim to explore their homeland through road trips as “amateur researchers.” Set up almost as mini residencies ranging from three hours to three days, the group travels across the Midwest searching for what characterizes the region.

Made up of photo, video, projection, drawing and installation, the work in the show feeds into the Midwest vibe. And isn’t that is what the Midwest Field Reporters striving to achieve, to interrogate what is the Midwest vibe? They do this by investigating the landscape or culture of the Midwest, taking in experiences that they probably had in some fashion before, but it was overlooked because of their familiarity. The work has accomplished this interrogation. In one project, an old school projector, that would sit in the front of your 5^th grade classroom, now sits tucked around the corner of the gallery. The viewer becomes a participant by turning on the projector and choosing through transparent photographs of a Midwestern landscape arraigned together on 8.5”x11” sheets of paper. Another project is made up of four human sized three whole punched sheets of paper that lean against the wall. The Reporters brought their notes to an oversized scale to tell the viewer about their experiences of note taking and map making. Each project is detailing the Midwest Field Reporters own experiences.

Because the opening is early on a Friday night and a bit of a trek north of the city to Cardinal Stritch University, the group of people at the show is small but energetic. A mix of MIAD upperclassmen, recent alumni (Monica Miller) and faculty (Will Pergl) talk to each other and the artists about the work, but mostly people eat food and spend their time at the participatory art station where they can collage and draw their own work to add to the wall.

This area is made of a collection of road signs, maps of the Midwest, paper, markers and a picture of a wood paneled station wagon and allows for the audience to contribute something of their own investigation to the show. It is reminiscent of childhood, sitting around a table making with the objects you have right in front of you, but in the making there is real conversation about what the Reporters are really trying to expose. People are talking about their zip codes in Milwaukee and are shocked by a diversity map of Wisconsin where the only area that the map really changed colors is in Milwaukee. We talk about our own potential road trips, really living in the spirit of the Midwest Field Reporters.

This dynamic of a make-it-yourself area and the potluck separate this exhibition opening from the typical contemporary art opening. The viewer becomes a participant trough the additions that the Reporters include in the opening as well as the work they exhibit. The potluck and participatory art station emphasized the Midwest Field Reporters investigations into the Midwest experience by characterizing elements of our culture, but also asks others join in as well, contributing with their own investigation.

 

Midwest Field Reporters: Field Notes & Roadside Potluck opened Friday, March 27, 2015 and runs until April 19, 2015 at the Northwestern Mutual Gallery at Cardinal Stritch University.