Illustration

ashleylusietto.com

“Sharing a dance with another person temporarily merges the souls, as two bodies move as one. Dancers connect hand to hand, cheek to cheek, chest to chest. A shared awareness of one another’s movements is at times so perceptive that it feels like the sharing of a mind. I’ve envisioned Argentine tango, famously a dance for two, as a dance between me and myself. The self portrait of the artist as dancer in various moments of leading and following explores the multiple self theory of personality, which proposes that the individual mind contains different sets of thoughts, desires, feelings, and behaviors organized into different selves. ‘She Herself’ depicts moments of connection, harmonious to dissonant, within a self-relationship.” —Ashley Lusietto

Metal, lightbulbs

rr-studios.com

“We weave together visual arts, architecture, design, landscape and the city. The ambition of our practice is to reclaim, enhance and develop the public dimension of the city. We seek to produce a public architecture that highlights the communal and civic dimension of life and erases boundaries between art and everyday life. We understand our work as experiments in public space, models of possibilities that might imbue the construction of the city with new meaning and emotion.” —R+R Studio

Wood and furniture

heathms.com

“This grouping of materials takes shape as furniture, as sculptural installation and as interior-architecture. Alternating between nesting inside of structures, filling architectural niches or surrounding found objects, I am intrigued by the visual patterns and textures of stacked materials. Over several years I’ve developed the Komíny Series, a body of work that investigates themes of place and identity through the act of stacking firewood. I, like many others, have a very specific and real history with the cutting, splitting and stacking of firewood. Growing up, my family heated with wood and collecting it was a year round family task. The Komíny (Czech for ‘stacks’) that I create, incorporate meaningful objects directly into firewood stacks. The embedded artifacts range from books to chairs to tractors, signifying different places, cultures and histories depending on the chosen objects and locations.” —Heath Matysek-Snyder

Bookends

nikijohnson.com

“As Madison Central Public Library joins other state-of-the-art public libraries, it embraces a demand for digital technology- reducing the number of actual books are onsite. Shelving has evolved into docking ports and a level of on-site stacks has turned into a large children's area with a makers space. The bookend, in many ways, is symbolic of a new history being written today about the future physical landscape of public space.” — Niki Johnson

Willow, steel, upholstery

tomloeser.com chapmandave.com

Tom Loeser has been head of the wood/furniture area at UW-Madison since 1991. Loeser designs and builds one-of-a-kind functional and dysfunctional objects that are often carved and painted and always based on the history of design and object-making as a starting point for developing new form and meaning.

Dave Chapman is a furniture maker based in Spring Green who specializes in one-of-a-kind willow construction.

Each willow pod is unique and invites young readers to curl up in a space conducive to letting the imagination run wild!

Wood

hongtaozhou.com

Hongtao Zhou is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist, he researches, practices and teaches in the areas of Design, Architecture, Exhibition Design, Furniture Design & Fabrication and Contemporary Sculpture & Installation. For “Book Club Bench,” Zhou collected names of book clubs on the edges of individual pieces of wood shaped like a row of tomes, complete with bookends.

Mural

sofia-arnold.com

“Working quickly using a wet-on-wet technique, I create lush, dreamlike scenes of half-remembered places.” — Sofia Arnold

“As a self-described ‘Painter’ I consistently seek out new ways to experiment within the narrow avenues of paint on canvas. Certain marks, signs, scribbles, gestures are repeated by means of projection, stencils, and transfers. A vocabulary of visual chatter celebrates the distortions, interruptions, and interference within the painted surface. These works are very straightforward, taking on subjects like imaginary monsters and fantastic buildings. The blunt, naïve nature of the subjects serves as an easy foil/mask, allowing for a range of rich experimentation with paint chemistry, color, installations, and scale. The physical properties of the medium are constantly stressed, questioned, tweaked, and recalibrated to keep the working visual vocabulary fresh and inventive.” —Derrick Buisch

Mural

Learn more about Aaron Bohrod at UW-Madison

Bohrod’s work shows a Noah's Ark of 17 animals, which originally spanned the width of the children's section in Central Library. Following the renovation in 2013, the mural was preserved in an inset wall.

Bohrod had been an artist with the Works Progress Administration, served as a war correspondent-artist for Life magazine during World War II, and his paintings appeared on the cover of Time and as a series in Look magazine.

The copper sculpture is composed of abstract monolithic forms grouped together to form "walls" that create recesses and niches in which two human figures and an owl are placed. On one side is a female figure emerging from the larger abstract forms with her hair and drapery merging into the abstract forms. On the opposite side an elderly male figure sites further back in the recess. His eyes are closed and his hair and beard flow into the abstract forms. A stylized owl stands with its wings unfolded in the niche below the beard of the elderly man. Hieroglyphs cover all sides of the abstract "walls" of the sculpture.

—Courtesy Madison Arts Commission

Wood and paint

Website

James Spitzer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the year 1936. He studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, earning BS, MA, and MFA degrees under the tutelage of a variety of well-known masters: Alfred Sessler, Dean Meeker and Warrington Colescott. Early in his career, he taught at Colleges and Universities in New York, Arizona, and Wisconsin, but turned to full-time drawing, painting, woodcut, and sculpture.

Parking passes, baseball card protectors, straight pins, jewelry findings, and steel

nikijohnson.com

Local parking passes are individually cut in the silhouette of the Capitol Building and then layered in baseball card protectors to reveal a larger silhouette of the building.

Bronze

Edward Berge

Wildflower was acquired in 1916 by Professor and Mrs. Moses S. Slaughter at a Madison Art Association sculpture show. The sculptor, Edward Berge, had studied in Baltimore and eventually in the studio of the famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

In 1917, the Slaughters wrote to the library asking permission to donate the piece in memory of their young daughters, Gertrude and Elizabeth. Madison architect Frank Riley helped plan a pool and garden setting for Wildflower on the Dayton Street lawn outside the original 1906 Carnegie-funded Madison Free Library.

In 1963, the library began planning its move to what would be the current location on Mifflin and Fairchild Streets. The Friends of the Library received a donation from Robert Taylor of Princeton, New Jersey, the nephew of Mrs. Slaughter. This donation provided the funds to move the sculpture to its new home on the second floor of the new Central Library.

Wildflower remained in its indoor garden location until 2011, when the Central Library closed for remodeling. In 2015, Wildflower was relocated to the children’s room of the new Central Library. Wildflower’s engaging presence has delighted generations of library visitors for a century.

Carrara White Marble

antoniotestolin.com

Cotton floss on linen canvas

yeonheecheong.com

The inspiration for the piece is the Wisconsin prairie, depicted entirely by hand-embroidered stitches, emphasizing the vastness and wavy texture of the prairie. Cheong firmly believes that public spaces in everyday life should be given the greatest care, especially now, when people have less chances to meet in person due to the development of online social infrastructure.

“Pinney Library was the place to go when my child was a toddler. Right before my child turned one, we moved to Madison...we did not know anyone in Madison, and we did not have many resources for childcare. As a new mom and an immigrant, I did not know what to do with my child, particularly in a foreign country. Free library programs offered some chances for my child and I to get out of the house, get to know the U.S. culture, and meet friends in the neighborhood. Unlimited access to the library made my child very comfortable with books and the space. Plus, walking to the library is always a pleasant event, where we expect serendipity to strike.” —Yeonhee Cheong

Powder-coated aluminum

velliquette.com

This piece is a sculptural mural about collective inter-connectivity. It is the visual formulation of the moments that difference and sameness morph into and out of one another. It speaks to the way all phenomena are in flux and represents the powerful currents and flows of life.

“Our libraries provide a physical space where individuals spanning Madison’s diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds can come together and engage with their neighbors. The artwork is designed to celebrate the public library’s multiple roles as a nexus for community-building, as well as a space for self-enrichment and reflection. This piece will fundamentally explore the theme of inter-connectivity. It will assemble differently colored, shaped and patterned components into a larger unified whole.” —Michael Velliquette

Digital illustration

emilybalsley.com

Inspired by creativity, play, and movement, “Cattywampus” plays with shape and color in a way that invites library visitors of all ages to unlock their curiosity and challenge the notion of what is possible.

“From my childhood, one of my favorite summer activities was reading for the Summer Reading Program. I especially loved the end-of-summer party at the library, which always took place outside in the little park next to the building. We even had a frog-jumping contest one year!” —Emily Balsley

Local ash, birch, cherry, and paint

tomloeser.com

The seating area was constructed from reclaimed local ash trees infested by the emerald ash borer and birch plywood, with spun cherry legs and paint. The functional, quirky seating allows visitors to interact with one another and their surrounding in unexpected ways. Design and fabrication of this piece was made possible with the help of Jason Pascoe.

“(These are) interesting seating situations that are flexible and allow people to sit in different ways, and as they sit, to explore the textures and feel of the wood, especially the ‘live edge.’” —Tom Loeser

Handmade paper and embroidery

mariaamalia.com

This artwork was created during Maria Amalia's art residency at Pinney Library. Maria Amalia invited the Madison community to make handmade paper inspired by life journeys, sunsets, and the migration of monarch butterflies. Latina immigrants were invited to embroider the handmade paper while they shared their life stories. Itzayana Miranda-Pesina and Noa Delgado-Lopez, the Pinney art studio assistants, led papermaking workshops with Maria Amalia and also participated in the embroidery process.

“As a Latina immigrant born and raised in Honduras, I am interested in making space for exploration of others’ immigration journeys throughout my community art projects. I wanted to make a collaborative art piece informed by our life journeys, sunsets, and the migration of monarch butterflies, which have become a symbol for the Latinx community. Like the monarch butterfly’s journey, immigrants dream of having a sanctuary they can call home.” —Maria Amalia Wood

TetraPaks and paint, Meadowridge Library

Funded by a Public Arts Project grant from the Madison Arts Commission, artist Victor Castro created a sculpture in collaboration with the Madison community that was installed in the Meadowridge Library as part of the 2014 rebuild process. Victor created and installed what he called a “community-generated sculpture” in the walkway of the new library, which was made out of used TetraPak boxes -- the material used for cartons of liquid foods like broth or shelf stable milk. Victor hosted workshops with local residents to gather materials, collaborate, and plan the design.

Glass, installed at Monroe Street Library

lisa-koch.com

Paper, installed at Goodman South Library

velliquette.com

Fabric and thread, installed at Hawthorne Library

350 Hawthorne Elementary school children designed and created pieces for the quilt depicting their eastside neighborhoods in Madison. Funded by Friends of Hawthorne Branch Library and coordinated by volunteer quilters, Hawthorne Elementary School and Hawthorne Branch Library Staff.

Acrylic paint on panel, installed at Goodman South Library

A total of three panels were made by local residents in bright acrylic paint and installed in the library.