Bubbler Room Residency
Bubbler Room Residency
TetraPAKMAN
Doing Something!
September 2024 - March 2025
TetraPAKMAN’s art practice focuses on giving climate a voice in the community. He sees the people as a medium and shares his techniques with them to create community-generated social sculptures. Using reclaimed materials (plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, plastic lids) they transform the space around them while exploring big ideas. TetraPAKMAN utilizes art making as a way of doing something about the state of our environment and the world we’re creating as our future.
TetraPAKMAN was one of MPL's first artist-in-residence back in 2013. Tenish years later, his upcoming residency will reflect back on the last ten years and launch us into the next decade. TetraPAKMAN will explore the question of what does your next decade look like?
Who is TetraPAKMAN?
TetraPAKMAN is a Madison-based artist who has long considered concepts around conservation, and often creates using repurposed/recycled materials. TetraPAKMAN’s practice is focused on community-generated social sculpture projects. His work is about the future, and the challenges we face today as a community. He explores the role of art as a mechanism to generate awareness about the climate crisis.
TetraPAKMAN has collaborated with MPL in a number of ways over the last 10+ years including:
The Meadowridge Art Project and permanent piece: Eleven Madison Elements (2014)
An 8-week Making Justice project called ARTinside where he worked with teens in the Juvenile Detention Center to transform their spaces with site-specific installations made from recycled materials in the cafeteria.
Multiple exhibitions Bubbler Made (2014) and Calculations, Abstractions, and Silence (2015) and MUNICIPAL (2017).
You will also see three workshops within the Care & Repair series facilitated by him that are coming up!
“I am committed to creating climate awareness and I focus my actions and work on social justice every day.
When I am working with people, most of the time, the experience becomes full of joy... our presence and the opportunity to share personal experiences and resources to take action just adds significance to our moment together.”
Open Studios
Join TetraPAKMAN by Doing Something!
OPEN STUDIOS from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm - drop in, all ages
Tuesday, January 14 - no registration required
Tuesday, February 25 - no registration required
Friday, March 7 - no registration required
Visitors of all ages are invited to come by the Bubbler Room and work with TetraPAKMAN on engaging, tactile art-making out of recycled materials. Whether we’re building a large-scale, community-generated social sculpture or creating the unthinkable through cardboard construction we need your help!Some of his ongoing projects include painting bedsheets for a upcoming installation, creating messages out of old keyboard keys or using everyday objects like lids, boxes, and twist-ties to make larger than life sculpture forms.
Many of TetraPAKMAN’s projects scale up or down based on age and timeframe — so come by for 5 minutes, an hour, or more and we will be Doing Something. We’d love your creative additions as he works to transform the Bubbler Room at Central Library!
Workshops
Faces for the Future: Mask Making with TetraPAKMAN
CENTRAL LIBRARY
Youth Services area from 2:00 pm - 4:30 pm - drop in, kids and families
Saturday, February 8 - no registration required
Saturday, March 22 - no registration required
Saturday, April 5 - no registration required
Unleash your kid’s creative power! Join us for a fun-filled, creative adventure where imagination meets sustainability! In this program designed and led by artist-in-residence TetraPAKMAN, children will transform everyday cereal boxes into vibrant, one-of-a-kind masks by using a variety of art supplies and materials - familiar and unknown! Participants will learn to cut, shape, fold and decorate household cardboard boxes pulled from the recycling bin into imaginative masks inspired by animals, characters, or anything they dream up.
This open-ended program encourages creative expression, environmental awareness, and hands-on making for all ages. There's no right or wrong way to create—just endless possibilities of self-expression through art with intentional materials.
This gathering will arm grown-ups with tactics, (TetraPAKMAN’s) top tools for creating and permission to try this type of open-ended experimentation and play at home…without leaving your home covered in paint and slime.
Facing the Future Workshop:
Art as a Tool for Protection with TetraPAKMAN
CENTRAL LIBRARY
Bubbler Room, multi-generational, all ages welcome - registration required, spots are limited to 15 per session
Tuesday, January 21 from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm — register here!
Tuesday, February 4 from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm — register here!
Tuesday, March 4 from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm — register here!
So, we’re gathering to make art as the world is on fire? Yes.
Explore firsthand what it feels like to collaborate with an artist who has committed his decades-long art practice to centering our climate crisis and fostering community action and creation as a way to protect our future.
Join artist-in-residence, TetraPAKMAN and a community of like-minded individuals who believe art-making is not just a creative process, but an act of care and protection in these unstable times. Through tactile, hands-on engagement, you will get to add to meaningful projects that reflect a long-term vision for collective well-being. Participants will be invited to paint carbon emissions statistics on bedsheets and build onto layers of 4ft tall sculptures made of familiar household items.
While we believe this work is most impactful in spaces with people of all ages, these workshops in particular will be designed for adults as well as youth ages (8+) who attend with an adult. Feel free to register for one session — or all three!
(2024)
Imagining Our Possible Futures with TetraPAKMAN
August 24, 10am - 12pm at Central Library
September 7, 10am - 12pm at Sequoya Library
November 4, 4:15-6pm at Goodman South Madison Library
Little, medium and big geniuses wanted!
Let’s explore our challenges and discover ways of caring for our environment while we put hands on reclaimed materials to build our biggest dreamed solutions, machines to solve problems or devices that auto repair themselves. Join TetraPAKMAN in this workshop where creativity will follow science (fiction) to imagine and prototype solutions.
This family friendly program is appropriate for all ages. No registration required.
These workshops are a part of the Care & Repair series which will take place for three months across all nine library locations, and will feature a number of artists, speakers, and organizations who will lead or facilitate programs.
Location:
Residencies at Central Library are supported by the Evjue Foundation, Madison Arts Commission, and Scooter Software. TetraPAKMAN’s residency is supported by the Friends of Madison Public Library.
