Kohler Arts Dispatch

 On my final day in Sheboygan I was treated to a Hmong Festival, hosted by the Kohler Arts Center. The Festival featured the traditional storytelling, crafts, costume, food, music and dance of the Hmong culture. Through an epic pageant performed by local children (see video clip above), I learned about the exploitation and eventual […]

Kohler Arts Dispatch

Between meetings I strolled down from the Kohler Arts Center to the lakefront for some fresh air and was happy to find a handful of surfers negotiating the lumpy break of an offshore blow. I look forward to having the students of Ecole School investigate the surf culture of the region as part of our […]

Kohler Arts Dispatch

To help research content for our project as artists in residence at Kohler Arts Center, one of the students at Etude School in Sheboygan has created a website to document and archive all things related to the culture of non-motorized transportation in the region. Working collaboratively under the direction of wowhaus, a team of high […]

Kohler Arts Dispatch

Beginning around the middle of the nineteenth century and thriving until about a generation ago, Sheboygan has a rich history as the epicenter of Midwestern circus production, dominated by a handful of family dynasties, many of whose descendants remain in the area. As I continue to explore opportunities and resources for our project as artists […]

Kohler Arts Dispatch

a morning commuter braves the November chill in Sheboygan, Wisconsin Sheboygan is easily one of the coolest towns I’ve experienced. The people here exude a pragmatic optimism and can-do eagerness that conjure another time, a friendlier America of the past that in many ways has never left this small city on the lake. Clearly, Sheboygan […]

Kohler Arts Dispatch

looking E. over Sheboygan Reef, a geological oddity along Lake Michigan’s shores A gentle westerly breeze rolls tiny breakers over Sheboygan Reef, a rare protrusion of limestone bedrock extending to Niagra Falls, as I walk along the lakefront bike path before an afternoon of meetings with Kohler Arts Center. I’ll be here for the week, […]

The Kohler Legacy

Introduction page from a 1930 Kohler catalog Between innings of last night’s final game of the World Series, I was telling my friend Richard Ernst about my upcoming trip to Wisconsin at the invitation of the Kohler Art Center (more info here). Before the game resumed, Richard had fetched a hard bound catalog of Kohler […]