The beginning of the new year brings with it both a cautious optimism regarding the country's change in political administrations and concern about the global economy. Several leaders of Milwaukee's creative community express their thoughts on the state of art in light of these momentous events. Racine Art Museum (RAM) Executive Director Bruce Pepich has more than 30 years of experience in Wisconsin art management. Under his direction RAM has become one of the top Fine Craft museums in America. So we asked him about...

According to the German Expressionist Ernst Kirchner, you could tell a lot about artists from their prints. That's certainly true of Richard Haas. Though best known for his large trompe l'oeil murals grafting the unsightly wounds of postwar expansion in cities like New York and Chicago, it's his prints that serve as a bedrock for his soaring romanticism. A new exhibition at Villa Terrace, "Richard Haas: Thirty Years of Looking at Architecture" (running through Jan. 11, 2009), presents renderings and photographs...

The spirit of giving permeates the city during December. Likewise, the creative spirit of the arts also brightens these cold winter days. In September, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MWA) hosted a "One from Wisconsin" show featuring the collaboration of Bay View artist Charles Dwyer and Milwaukee resident Jerry Pfeil. Dwyer enlisted the help of Pfeil, whom he found outside his door one summer day, homeless and hungry. Through...

In "Milwaukee's Own," the Armoury Gallery's last show of 2008, Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber bring together four emerging local artists, three of whom created site-specific installations. "Milwaukee's Own" is an academic cross-section of sorts: All four artists are or will be MIAD alumni, trained in Milwaukee in the past decade. Aesthetically, the show is tied together by a minimal palette of paper, polystyrene, graphite, and black and gold paint, and, with the exception of some of Mary DiBiasio's works on paper, by coolly detached...

The knot, one of the oldest techniques for joining materials, ties together a variety of artwork in the Racine Art Museum's upcoming exhibition, "All Tied Up: Knitted and Knotted Work in RAM's Collection." The exhibit, which runs from Dec. 21 to March 8, 2009, will present an eclectic array of two- and three-dimensional art that uses the basic knot for its construction. "Knots were used to tether animals, create nets, catch fish and game, or lift heavy weights," says RAM Executive Director Bruce Pepich. "But in this exhibit, this...

Primal psychological and physical elements--including earth, wind, fire and water--converge in a compelling exhibit by Latino Arts Inc. that introduces artist Ramiro Rodriguez to Milwaukee. The exhibition, "Herencia," opened Dec. 5 at the United Community Center (1028 S. Ninth St.). Rodriguez, a member of Consejo Gráfico, an independent network of Latino print workshops, juxtaposes his unusual graphic prints with large-scale oils on canvas in an exhibit that examines "herencia," or the heritage...

A special gift, new acquisitions and premier artists transform two exhibits that illustrate December's spirit of giving. A 1999 Robert Rauschenberg print named Eagle Eye (Ruminations), which the Haggerty Museum of Art received as a special gift, inspired them to invest in 12 additional prints by this modern-art icon. "Whatever Is There Is a Truth: Robert Rauschenberg's Prints" opens Dec. 12 as a tribute to Rauschenberg, who...

Two new exhibitions opening this December at the Walker's Point Center for the ArtsArmoury Gallery showcase art designed for specific environments. and the "Environmental Art," created by the "Hands On" after-school project at the Walker's Point Center for the Arts, opens Dec. 6. This exhibit reflects the idea of respecting nature, which is incorporated into the center's summer programming for children ages 6-12. With the help of Milwaukee artists Roy Staab and Barb Nelson, the...

Rudy Rotter must have been a fine dentist. He never looked into my mouth, but we did look into each other's eyes one day, years after he gave up dentistry and devoted himself entirely to art. What I saw was a warm and kindly man of integrity with no apparent interest in the fuss and pretense of the art world. He must have liked what he saw, too, because he spontaneously presented me with a wood and metal sculpture of a rearing, whimsical, Chagall-like creature. When Rotter died in 2001 at age 88, he left behind...

Magic realism-stepping across the line dividing here from there-turns me on, be it in the novels of Murakami, Marquez, Eco and Mishima, or in the work of Flora Langlois, a Wisconsin artist who hails from Costa Rica. You too can fly unfettered straight to the heart of make-believe, where fantasy reigns from Nov. 21 through Dec. 27 at Tory Folliard Gallery. To my mind, the best fairy tales suggest danger lurking until death comes knocking and (perhaps) resolves our earthly games, which in Langlois' acrylic paintings are played in excruciating detail. Here frolics Truth...