Milwaukee, WI

Milwaukee fiber artist turns dive bar bathrooms into art

Published

5 months ago

December 31, 2024

Milwaukee fiber artist turns dive bar bathrooms into art

MILWAUKEE — I’ve done stories on tons of different artists—abstract painters, wood artists, musicians. You name it, I’ve done it. But one day, I was in the depths of the internet, and something caught my eye. I found a person who sews images of dive bar bathrooms, and I just had to learn more.

It started with the Roman Coin bathroom in Milwaukee. Then she did a Summerfest bathroom, Paddy’s Pub, High Dive, and a few others. The next thing Ella Clemons knew, her dive bar images were being featured at the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee.

“I feel like everyone was kind of rocking with it here in Milwaukee,” Clemons, a fiber artist, said.

James Groh

High Dive’s bathroom made by Ella Clemons.

The 23-year-old, who is also a bartender, works out of a Bay View studio. It’s an old cream city brick building that has turned into artist’s workspaces.

“I couldn’t imagine myself doing a 9-to-5 or something like that. I just don’t think I’m built that way. I don’t know. I want to create,” she said.

It takes Clemons about 10 hours to sew a bathroom. She does commissions. Prices start around $200. That got me thinking – what bathroom would I want? I’m thinking of Hosed on Brady or the bathrooms at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan which are super artistic.

So you may be thinking: dive bar bathrooms? It’s a little strange. It’s a little dirty. But there’s a beauty in the mundane. Clemons is forcing us to look at something we’ve seen before but in a new way.

Ella Clemons works on a new dive bar bathroom design in her Bay View studio.

“I like people to see something and be like, ‘I definitely know what that is.’ And I think people think it’s kind of funny to see it in fabric form, and I like it too. And it brings—I don’t know—it brings a whimsy to it, I guess,” she said.

She also made a series on highway billboards—you know, personal injury lawyers, religious billboards, fireworks advertisements, and adult store signs. Clemons is inspired by, “mundane day-to-day things that I feel I want to create.”

Billboard Design — Ella Clemons’ billboard designs on display at the VAR Gallery in Milwaukee.

The UW-Milwaukee graduate has been featured in two galleries. She has a good idea for her next series too – sewing strange Facebook Marketplace listings. Beyond that, she has big dreams.

“I would love to make art full-time. That’s a huge goal of mine.”

That is why in 2025, you can find her at her studio sewing dive bar bathrooms, highway signs, Facebook Marketplace listings, or something else just as fun and weird.

“It’s something I could be happy doing, like, forever. I could keep doing it. There’s always going to be more stuff to create,” Clemons said.

To see more of her work or request a commission, send her a message on Instagram.

Watch Ella Clemons’ story here…

Milwaukee fiber artist turns dive bar bathrooms into art

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Milwaukee, WI

Erin Shirreff photography at Milwaukee Art Museum

Published

15 hours ago

May 18, 2025

Press Room

Erin Shirreff photography at Milwaukee Art Museum

The Milwaukee Art Museum presents the most comprehensive exhibition in a decade of works by Erin Shirreff, a highly regarded contemporary artist at the forefront of sculpture, photography, and video. Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts showcases over 40 recent works, including installations specific to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and will be on view May 30 through August 31, 2025, in the Museum’s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts.

Erin Shirreff (b. 1975) creates boundary-crossing art exploring the gap between images and the things they picture. Trained as a sculptor, Shirreff understands photography as a significant, but imperfect means of conveying three-dimensional objects. Her work focuses on the reproductions through which we often access art, inviting audiences to consider how each of us sees and interprets the world around us. Shifting across time, material, and dimension, her art rewards in-person engagement and slow, close looking.

“While photographs increasingly lose trust as conveyors of knowledge, Erin Shirreff’s work, which dwells in the place between image and object, has only become more relevant,” the exhibition’s curator Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, said. “I have long admired her thoughtful approach to the generative potential of representation, and it has been a joy to collaborate with her in bringing this wide-ranging presentation of her recent work to Milwaukee.”

The exhibition will be installed in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts, the Museum’s dynamic space dedicated to photography, film, video, and light installations. Since 2015, when it was established, the Herzfeld Center has been home to cutting-edge exhibitions that feature artists who shape, push the boundaries of, and expand photography and media arts.

“Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts continues the Museum’s exploration into the expansive world of photography, beyond the traditional print to the medium’s larger role in art and society,” Elizabeth Siegel, Chief of Curatorial Affairs, said.

Hear from the artist herself on Thursday, August 7, when Erin Shirreff will present an artist talk in Lubar Auditorium, and engage with Milwaukee experts on Thursday, August 28, at the Haberman Local Luminaries program taking place in the Herzfeld Center.

About Erin Shirreff

Erin Shirreff’s work has been featured in recent solo exhibitions at SITE Santa Fe (2024); Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2021–22); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019); and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2016). A survey exhibition of her photography, sculpture, and video was co-organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the Buffalo AKG Museum, New York, in 2015–16. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; among others.

Shirreff was born in 1975 and lives and works in Montreal.

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Milwaukee, WI

Milwaukee man critically missing, last seen near 12th and Lapham

Published

1 day ago

May 17, 2025

Press Room

Milwaukee man critically missing, last seen near 12th and Lapham

article

MILWAUKEE – The Milwaukee Police Department requested the public’s help to find critically missing 29-year-old Saddai Azamar Pena. He was last seen near 12th and Lapham on Friday afternoon, May 16.

Police described Azamar Pena as 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds with brown eyes and a shaved head. He was driving a black Honda CR-V with Wisconsin license plates: ARC-9791.

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Anyone with information on Azamar Pena’s whereabouts is asked to call Milwaukee Police District 2 at 414-935-7222.

The Source: Information in this report is from the Milwaukee Police Department.

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Milwaukee, WI

Milwaukee residents recall wild overnight storms as DPW crews work to clear debris

Published

2 days ago

May 17, 2025

Press Room

Milwaukee residents recall wild overnight storms as DPW crews work to clear debris

MILWAUKEE — Thursday night’s storm sparked more than 250 emergency storm response calls in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Department of Public Works.

Most of the calls, 70 percent, stemmed from the city’s south side.

DPW crews spent hours clearing a downed tree at West Arthur Avenue and South 16th Street on Friday.

TMJ4

Forestry crews worked through the night. DPW states that additional resources are being dedicated to the south side due to the high impact.

In the Riverwest neighborhood, a massive tree toppled between homes near Locust and Humboldt. The downed tree forced a deck out of the ground and damaged part of The Tracks Tavern and Grill.

“Surprised I didn’t hear it,” Joey White told TMJ4.

White lives in the home where the deck was lifted out of the ground. He says the storm seemed loud but did not suspect the damage it was causing locally.

White did not know the tree behind his place was uprooted until the landlord contacted him. Both are grateful no one was hurt.

WATCH: Milwaukee residents recall wild overnight storms as DPW crews work to clear debris

Milwaukee DPW: Thursday storm sparked 250+ emergency storm response calls

“I just went inside, and all of a sudden massive wind and rain, and a little hail came down,” neighbor Robert Koconis said. “Like 20 minutes it was gone. The sky started to clear. It was pretty wild.”

In Greendale, Ethan Schenzel shared photos of a tree by his home that shattered after he said it was hit by lightning. Schenzel said that some debris flew over the house and landed in the backyard.