(gentle music) - [Narrator] Two of Milwaukee's great cultural institutions are teaming up for the first time: the Bronzeville Center for the Arts and Sculpture Milwaukee.

Phoenix Brown is the curator for the Bronzeville Center for the Arts.

- Phoenix, this is the first collaboration between the Bronzeville Center for the Arts and Sculpture Milwaukee.

How did it come about?

- So our goal was to like bring artwork, like art objects throughout the North Avenue corridor and share it with folks here that live here.

- [Narrator] And John Riepenhoff is the executive director (hands clapping) of Sculpture Milwaukee.

- Sculpture is a pretty young organization.

We're in our ninth year.

Bronzeville Center for the Arts is even younger (laughing) than us.

So these two new kids in Milwaukee.

- Playmates.

- What they're trying to do here, both be in a community, embedded, and having a meaningful relationship with the Bronzeville community and the neighboring communities around Milwaukee, but also having the ambition to be a unique destination, not only around the nation, but the world.

- [Narrator] Together, they have brought the work or artist Martine Syms to Milwaukee.

- We looked at a handful of different artists, and we came to Martine Syms as a potential.

When we approached her about this project and she said yes, we were super thrilled.

- [Phoenix] So Martine Syms is an LA-based artist who uses a lot of video installation and performance art and some sculpture in her practice.

A lot of the imagery that she uses in her practice kinda reflects some of the visual language that we find here in our community.

Like from like signs to like, you know, quick like poems and quick sayings that people say around here.

- What is it about Martine Syms' artwork that speaks to you?

- You get a lotta artists that, oh, they work in bronze or they work in ceramics.

Martine works with ideas.

(gentle music fades out) (bright music) (bright music continues) - [Narrator] For the installation, Martine created four new works of art in her signature conceptual style.

- [Phoenix] The works are here at our site, here at Gallery 507 in Bronzeville.

There's a piece on the window.

It's titled "Belief Strategy XIII."

Next door, we have like a laundry site.

Like it used to be a former laundry, (laughing) Big Load laundry area, but the artist actually responded to like the architecture of that site, so there is one image that has no title that's embedded in the old Big Laundry sign.

So it's like a photograph of like a sunburst.

It's untitled.

As well as a poem going across the fascia of the building next door.

And down the street on our future museum site, or the 2312 site as we like to say internally, we have like a banner that says, "Find a way."

- [Narrator] Scattered along North Avenue, the four pieces incorporate photography, visual designs, and written phrases for viewers to reflect on.

(cars whooshing) - What is it about each of these locations, why that specific location?

- Our team, within partnership with Sculpture Milwaukee, we sent the artist different locations of potential sites for her to like respond or embed artworks into.

- When we approached her about this project, we showed her a few sites that we thought could be good potential for public sculpture.

And she kind of really kind of absorbed herself into the architecture, the landscape, the community.

- What is Martine Syms' artwork usually about, different themes or messages?

- So Martine's work is very intuitive.

Sometimes, at first when you first approach it, like, this was like the first time I was introduced to Martine's work as like a curator, and it's very cryptic and very personal to the artist.

And like, once you get to know her, you dig deeper.

It's about a lot of her personal narrative, her experiences of going through the world.

- So she saw the opportunity to do public art in Bronzeville not as, "Oh, I can just plop one of my artwork here," but, "I can actually kind of embed, use the context of North Avenue, the context of the community around Bronzeville, as part of the material in the work."

(light music) - [Narrator] For the Bronzeville Center for the Arts, this partnership gives them a better opportunity to display public art from African American creators.

- What does this collaboration really mean to the community here and for the city?

- I think it means a lot.

You know, organizations, we should be coming together and like organizing, you know, collaborations and projects together to just kind of support our community and introduce our community to different ways of like thinking and seeing and talking about artwork.

So it's important just so like, you know, we are like an organized front continuing to put Milwaukee on like a world-class stage for art and having access to it.

- [Narrator] For Sculpture Milwaukee, this partnership gives an opportunity to expand their platform outside of Downtown Milwaukee.

- In the early days of my executive director position at Sculpture, so this is almost two years ago, we started having conversations about, "How can we take the strategies that we've developed with Sculpture Milwaukee, the successes of the projects that we've innovated, investing in Downtown, so putting artists in public spaces, the economic development, the community building, using our city as a platform that actually is drawing international attention for cultural activity, and how do we share that with other communities around Milwaukee?"

- Have you gotten to see any reactions to her art yet from people walking by or stopping to see it?

- Yeah, like, we've had people come in and like ask questions about it.

Like they would show up sometimes specifically to view the Sculpture Milwaukee project here.

So you know, we'll redirect them to like, "Okay, the pieces are here, here, and here."

And then like while we were installing it, somebody was like, "This is great.

Like, I'm so happy to see this in our community."

There has been like small moments of joy that I've experienced with people here in our community responding to the work.

- And what do you really hope that people will experience with Martine Syms' artwork, all the four different pieces?

- I hope they experience like some like symbol of hope, like just some hope, because like, her work is very hopeful.

It's like looking forward into like a better place and a better future.

(light music continues) (no audio) (bright music) - [Narrator] Thanks for watching "The Arts Page."

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