Artful Magazine

Artful
YOU
1

From
The
Editor
Dear Reader,
"I'm not creative" is a phrase I hear far too often. Why do so many of us think we aren't
creative, when creativity is an intrinsic element of daily life? We pick out clothes each
morning to present ourselves to the world, choose and curate the environments in
which we spend our time, and shape our interactions with others through the whirring
creative wheels turning in our minds, yet when the opportunity for explicit creation
arises, many of us shy away from it.
Artful looks to flip this narrative by showing both the subtle and explicit ways
that art operates and shapes our lives. It's in ourselves, our environments and our
communities, impacting your daily decisions in ways you wouldn't expect. It's in the
pieces of a Scrabble board or the masterpieces at an art museum. Through seizing this
creative energy and channeling it into our "ordinary", everyday lives, we can begin to
see benefits of looking a little closer and melding together the ordinary and the creative
into a magnificient artful ordinary.
To Creativity and Beyond,
Nicole Shields
Editor-in-Chief
Contributors
John Hospers Britannica
Ronald Alexander HuffPost
Carl Richards New York Times
Serenity Gibbons Forbes
Cody C. Delistraty The Atlantic
Fred van Leeuwen FStoppers
David Burkus HBR
Patricia Walsh Americans for the Arts
Kylie Compe UW-Madison
Unsplash
All photos attributed to Nicole Shields
unless otherwise noted.
On the cover: Megan Dorsey walks down
the street in Racine, Wisconsin. Photo by
Kylie Compe.

The Art in
6
10
12
YOU
Art as Expression
Sparking Creativity
Dress the Part and It's Easier
to Walk the Walk
YOUR ENVIRONMENT
14
Why You Can't Choose
Between Creativity and Data
18
How Environment Can Boost
Creativity
20
Madison, Wisconsin Art
Venues
22
24
A New Creative Era?
Why You Can Focus in
a Coffee Shop but not
in Your Open Office
28
30
YOUR COMMUNITY
Five Reasons Why Public Art
Matters
A Spin Around Wheelhouse
Studios
34
Rooted in Racine
Contents

The
Art
in
YOU
5

ART AS
Expression
An analysis of art, expression and existence.
By John Hospers
The view that “art is imitation (representation)” has not
only been challenged, it has been moribund in at least
some of the arts since the 19th century. It was subsequently
replaced by the theory that art is expression. Instead
of reflecting states of the external world, art is held to
reflect the inner state of the artist. This, at least, seems to
be implicit in the core meaning of expression: the outer
manifestation of an inner state. Art as a representation
of outer existence (admittedly “seen through a temperament”)
has been replaced by art as an expression of
humans’ inner life.
But the terms express and expression are ambiguous and
do not always denote the same thing. Like so many other
terms, express is subject to the process-product ambiguity:
the same word is used for a process and for the product
that results from that process. “The music expresses
feeling” may mean that the composer expressed human
feeling in writing the music or that the music when heard
is expressive (in some way yet to be defined) of human
feeling. Based on the first sense are theories about the
creation of art. Founded on the second are theories about
the content of art and the completion of its creation.
The creation of a work of art is the bringing about of
a new combination of elements in the medium (tones
in music, words in literature, paints on canvas, and so
on). The elements existed beforehand but not in the same
combination; creation is the re-formation of these pre-existing
materials.
That creation occurs in various art mediums is an obvious
truth. But once this is granted, nothing has yet been
said about expression, and the expressionist would say
that the foregoing statement about creation is too mild to
cover what needs to be said about the process of artistic
creation. The creative process, the expressionist wants to
say, is (or is also) an expressive process, and for expression
something more is necessary than that the artist be
creating something. Great care must be taken at this stage:
some say that the creation of art is (or involves) self-expression;
others say that it is the expression of feeling,
though not necessarily of one’s own feeling (or perhaps
that and something more, such as the feeling of one’s
race, or of one’s nation, or of all humanity); others say that
it is not necessarily limited to feelings but that ideas or
thoughts can be expressed, as they clearly are in essays.
But the distinctively expressionist view of artistic creation
Left: Nicole Shields
looks into the
camera.
Above: Neon
lights glow at the
Wisconsin Union in
Madison, Wis.
6
The Artful Ordinary

Above: Confetti
pieces lay on
the floor of an
apartment in
Madison.
Right: Shields poses
for a photo in her
apartment.
is the product of the Romantic movement, according to
which the expression of feelings constitutes the creation
of art, just as philosophy and other disciplines are the
expression of ideas. It is, at any rate, the theory of art as
the expression of feelings (which here shall be taken to
include emotions and attitudes) that has been historically
significant and developed: art as specially connected with
the life of feeling.
When people are said to be expressing feelings, what
specifically are they doing? In a perfectly ordinary sense,
expressing is “letting go” or “letting off steam”: individuals
may express their anger by throwing things or by
cursing. But, as many writers have pointed out, this kind
of “expressing” has little to do with art; as the American
philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) said, it is more of
a “spilling over” or a “spewing forth” than expression. In
art at least, expression requires a medium, a medium that
is recalcitrant and that artists must bend to their will. In
throwing things to express anger, there is no medium—or,
if one’s body is called the medium, then it is something
one does not have to study to use for that purpose. It
is still necessary to distinguish a “natural release” from
an expression. If poetry were literally “the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings,” as William Wordsworth
(1770–1850) said, it would consist largely of things like
tears and incoherent babblings. If artistic creation can
plausibly be said to be a process of expression, something
different from and more specific than natural release or
discharge must be meant.
One view of emotional expression in art is that it is preceded
by a perturbation or excitement from a vague cause
about which the artist is uncertain and therefore anxious.
The artist then proceeds to express feelings and ideas in
words or paint or stone or the like, clarifying them and
achieving a release of tension. The point of this theory
seems to be that artists, having been perturbed at the inarticulateness
of their “ideas,” now feel relieved because
they have “expressed what they wanted to express.” This
phenomenon, indeed a familiar one (for everyone has felt
relieved when a job is done), must still be examined for
its relevance. Is it the emotion being expressed that counts
or the relief at having expressed it? If the concern here is
with art as therapy or doing art to provide revelations for
a psychiatrist, then the latter is what counts, but the critic
or consumer of the art is surely not concerned with such
details of the artist’s biography. This is an objection to all
YOU
7

accounts of expression as process: how is any light at all
cast upon the work of art by saying that the artist went
through any expressive process or through any process
whatever in the genesis of it? If the artist was relieved at
the end of it, so much the better, but this fact is as aesthetically
irrelevant as it would be if the artist had committed
suicide at the end of it or taken to drink or composed
another work immediately thereafter.
Another problem should be noted: assuming that artists
do relieve their oppressed states of mind through creating,
what connection has this with the exact words or
score or brushstrokes that they put on paper or canvas?
Feelings are one thing, words and visual shapes and tones
are quite another; it is these latter that constitute the art
medium, and in them that works of art are created. There
is doubtless a causal connection between the feelings
of the artist and the words the artist writes in a poem,
but the expression theory of creation talks only about
the artist’s feelings, while creation occurs within the art
mediums themselves, and to speak only of the former
is not to tell anything about the work of art—anything,
that is, that would be of interest other than to the artist’s
psychiatrist or biographer. Through what paroxysms of
emotion the artist passed does not matter anymore, insofar
as one’s insight into the work is concerned, than knowing
that a given engineer had had a quarrel with a friend the
night before beginning construction on a certain bridge.
To speak of anything revelatory of works of art, it is necessary
to stop talking about the artist’s emotions and talk
about the genesis of words, tones, and so on—items in
the specific art mediums.
The expressionists have indeed brought out and emphasized
one important distinction: between the processes
involved in art and in craft. The activity of building a bridge
from an architect’s blueprint or constructing a brick wall is
a craft and not an art. The craftsperson knows at the beginning
of the processes exactly what sort of end product is
wanted: for example, a chair of specific dimensions made
of particular materials. But the creative artist cannot work
in this manner: “Artists don’t know what they are going
to express until they have expressed it” is a watchword
of the expressionist. They cannot state in advance what
a completed work of art will be like: the poet cannot say
what words will constitute the completed poem or how
many times the word the will occur in it or what the order
of the words will be—that can be known only after the
poem has been created, and until then the poet cannot
say. Nor could the poet set about working with such a
plan: “I shall compose a poem that contains the word
the 563 times, the word rose 47 times,” and so on. What
distinguishes art from craft is that the artist, unlike the
craftsperson, “does not know the end in the beginning.”
The distinction seems valid enough, but whether it supports
the expressionist’s view is more dubious, for it can
be held regardless of the attitude assumed toward the
theory of expression. The open-ended process described
as art rather than craft characterizes all kinds of creation:
of mathematical hypotheses and of scientific theory, as
well as art. What distinguishes creation from all other
things is that it results in a new combination of elements,
and it is not known in advance what this combination will
be. Thus, one may speak of creating a work of sculpture
or creating a new theory, but rarely of creating a bridge
(unless the builder was also the architect who designed it,
and then it is to the genesis of the idea for the bridge, not
to its execution, that the word creation applies). This, then,
is a feature of creation; it is not clear that it is a feature
of expression (whatever is being done in expressing that
is not already being done in creating). Is it necessary to
talk about expression, as opposed to creation, to bring
out the distinction between art and craft?
There does not seem to be any true generalization
about the creative processes of all artists nor
even of great artists. Some follow their
“intuitions,” letting their artistic work
grow “as the spirit moves” and being
comparatively passive in the process
(that is, the conscious mind
is passive, and the unconscious
takes over). Others are consciously
active, knowing very much what
they want in advance and figuring
out exactly how to do it (for example,
the 19th-century U.S. writer Edgar
Allan Poe in his essay “The Philosophy of
Composition”). Some artists go through extended
agonies of creation (the 19th-century German composer
Johannes Brahms, weeping and groaning to give birth to
one of his symphonies), whereas for others it seems to be
comparatively easy (Mozart, who could write an entire
overture in one evening for the next day’s performance).
Some artists create only while having physical contact
"Expression requires
a medium, a medium
that is recalcitrant and
that artists must bend
to their will."
8
The Artful Ordinary

Left: Wall textures
on the Hamel Music
Center in Madison.
Center: Shields
poses for a photo in
her apartment.
Right: A mural of a
face looks out from
the Berlin Wall in
Berlin, Germany.
with the medium (for example, composers who must
compose at the piano, painters who must “play about”
in the medium in order to get painterly ideas), and others
prefer to create in their minds only (Mozart, it is said,
visualized every note in his mind before he wrote the
score). There appears to be no true generalization that
can be made about the process of artistic creation—certainly
not that it is always a process of expression. For
the appreciation of the work of art, no such uniformity,
of course, is necessary, greatly though it may be desired
by theorists of artistic creation.
The main difficulties in the way of accepting conclusions
about the creative process in art are (1) that artists differ
so much from one another in their creative processes that
no generalizations can be arrived at that are both true
and interesting or of any significance and (2) that in the
present stage of psychology and neurology very little is
known about the creative process—it is surely the most
staggeringly complex of all the mental processes in human
beings, and even simpler human mental processes
are shrouded in mystery. In every arena hypotheses are
rife, none of them substantiated sufficiently to compel
assent over other and conflicting hypotheses. Some have
said—for example, Graham Wallas in his book The Art
of Thought (1926)—that in the creation of every work of
art there are four successive stages: preparation, incubation,
inspiration, and elaboration; others have said that
these stages are not successive at all but are going on
throughout the entire creative process, while still others
have produced a different list of stages. Some say that the
artist begins with a state of mental confusion, with a few
fragments of words or melody gradually becoming clear
and the rest starting from there, working gradually toward
clarity and articulation, whereas others hold that the artist
begins with a problem, which is gradually worked out
during the process of creation, but the artist’s vision of
the whole guides the creative process from its inception.
Again, as to psychological theories about the unconscious
motivations of artists during creation, an early Freudian
view is that in creating the artist works out unconscious
wish fulfillments; a later Freudian view is that the artist is
engaged in working out defenses against the dictates of
the superego. Views based on the ideas of the 20th-century
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung reject both these alternatives,
substituting an account of the unconscious symbol-making
process. Until a great deal more is known about the
empirical sciences that bear on the issue, there is little
point in attempting to defend one view of artistic creation
against another.
YOU
9

SPARKING CREATIVITY
Many of the greatest creators tap into a simple method for creativity
By Ronald Alexander
Lights shine from
the ceiling of
the Hamel Music
center in Madison,
Wisconsin.
Most of us were taught that creativity comes from
the thoughts and emotions of the mind. However,
the greatest singers, dancers, painters,
writers and filmmakers recognize that the most original,
and even transformative, ideas actually come from the
core of our being, which is accessed through an "openmind
consciousness."
In ancient traditions, open-mind consciousness was considered
to be a spiritual awakening, the great enlightenment
that dissolves the darkness of confusion and fear and
ushers in peace, happiness, clarity and contentment. Today
the notion that there's one formulaic way to achieve this
spiritual awakening and creative vibrancy has been blown
apart. You don't have to run off to a monastery or practice
meditation for 30 years before attaining a breakthrough.
A few years ago, I had a client, Sarah, who'd completely
given up on psychotherapy until a failed suicide attempt
convinced her to try it one more time. I urged her to begin
a mindfulness practice, and she agreed. After several
months – not years, but months – she had an extremely
powerful experience while meditating. As she described
it, she felt a rush of light and energy infuse her body and
experienced an ineffable sense of the presence of the divine,
the cosmos and a collective consciousness. After this
transcendent experience, Sarah, who'd been overweight
to an unhealthy degree, lost several pounds, became more
engaged in her work and closer to her friends, and was
no longer suicidal. It was a major turning point for her.
What Sarah described has been called not only "openmind
awareness" but also, in the West, a "peak experience,"
"being in the flow" or "being in the zone." I call
it accessing your "core creativity," because I believe that
deep inside every person lies this potential for connecting
with a universal flow of knowledge and creativity that's
boundless and expansive. Our individual thoughts and
memories are a part of this greater, larger resource.
Just as an athlete who's in condition has the muscle tone
to be able to spring into action instantly, someone who
regularly accesses their core creativity becomes creatively
toned. For this person, the faucet to this remarkable flow of
inspiration opens up easily, naturally, and often, allowing
spontaneous and dramatic breakthroughs. When you're
creatively toned, instead of merely dipping your toe in
the water and playing it safe, you're willing to be utterly
daring. Knowing this, you can navigate through a sea of
self-limiting thoughts and transform such unwholesome
beliefs as "I had my chance and blew it," "It's too late; my
time is over," "I'll never be happy again," and "I can't."
Becoming creatively toned can lead to a breakthrough
in parenting or relating to others, or it can make you
feel vitalized and fully engaged in the mundane chores
of the day. The Buddha said that to find enlightenment,
one must chop wood and carry water, meaning that the
deepest, more purposeful life may not be one dedicated to
an extraordinary cause or endeavor, but one that's simply
lived with a deep sense of awareness and openness to both
the known and the unknown. A passion for discovery,
for embracing the new and the unfamiliar can help you
transform your life in ways you never dreamed possible,
as you find the strength to move out of fear and resistance
and into something new.
10
The Artful Ordinary

6 Tips to Increase Creative
Stimulation from Author
Ronald Alexander
2
Our culture's overemphasis on fame and great success often
turns people away from their creative inclinations, because they
feel that if they can't reach a professional goal with their writing,
singing or painting endeavors, they shouldn't bother. What they
don't realize is that simply dabbling in the fine arts, with no
specific goals or intentions, awakens our ability to approach
life with greater openness and curiosity. In the same way that
mindfulness practice jogs the areas of the brain associated with
well-being, optimism and compassion for yourself and others,
so, too, does immersing yourself in any artistic exploration or
enjoyment jog your creativity.
4
Dabbling in the Arts
Entering Sacred Space
In ancient times, sacred spaces, such as churches, temples and
sites for group rituals, were built on land whose features evoked
a sense of spirituality. Treks to places like Machu Picchu, the
temples of India, and Stonehenge have become more popular for
Westerners who yearn for a sense of connection to their divine
nature. Yet sacred spaces can exist wherever you feel a sense of
spaciousness and connection to the creative, life-supporting forces
of the universe. Arranging the space in your home or office to bring
in light and nature will help you feel expansive and access your core
creativity as you open up to your important role in all of creation.
6Many forms of physical movement can be an entrée into openmind
consciousness. Somatic therapy or somatic disciplines such
as martial arts, tai chi and yoga are the most well-known ways
of quieting the rational mind and opening up to the intuitive mind
and its connection to the numinous creative force. Any physical
activity that involves discipline and a slowing down of thoughts,
from skiing to dance, actually creates new neural pathways in
your brain that become roads to innovation.
Mindful Movement
1
One of the most effective ways to become creatively toned and
start accessing core creativity is through a mindfulness meditation
practice. Mindfulness allows us to listen and pay attention to what
we might otherwise overlook, whether it's a fresh idea or a new
way of perceiving a situation, enhancing our creativity and letting
go of our obstacles to innovation. Many people are intimidated
by the idea of meditating, with excuses of not having the time or
ability to quiet the mind. Really, all you need is five to 20 minutes
a day, and there are many mediation CDs that can help guide you
through the process.
Mindfulness and Meditation
3Experiencing nature can awaken in you a sense of vitality and
infinity, which becomes a path to your core creativity. Without
conscious thought, you can look up at the astonishing number
of stars in the sky or leaves on a single tree in a forest and
feel a sense of vastness and spaciousness. As you gaze at the
heavens the ancients observed, knowing that humanity throughout
history and across continents has pondered these very stars, you
experience being a part of something larger than yourself that
feels as if it has always existed and always will.
Immersion in Nature
5When the Irish band U2 wanted to reinvent their music, they
traveled to Berlin, a bustling, gritty city unfamiliar to them, and
soaked in the atmosphere, allowing its energy to infuse their
songwriting and sound. Similarly, a famous actor I once spotted
in an art museum stood before a painting for a good 10 minutes
before throwing his arms out and his head back, and standing for
many more minutes, as if opening his heart to a beam of creative
energy emanating from that painting. We all have this capacity
to open to the vital forces around us and allow ourselves to take
them in, mingling them with our own passions.
Creative Stimulation
YOU
11

DRESS THE PART
to
Walk
the
Walk
12
The Artful Ordinary

Enclothed cognition and its impact on your actions and success
By Carl Richards
The way we dress affects the
way we feel. And the way
we feel affects our ability to
get stuff done and influence people.
Call it superficial if you want, but researchers
have a different name for
the link between what we wear and
how we feel: enclothed cognition.
Let me explain with a story.
On a recent trip to New York, I wore
my favorite pair of boots. I wear these
boots everywhere, and for the last
few years, I neglected them.
So when I got to La Guardia
Airport a bit early for my
flight, I decided it was
time to show my trusty
boots some love.
I found the shoeshine
stand and sat down.
The man took one
look at my boots and
said, “This will be the
hardest project of the day.”
He got to work, and a short time
later it looked like I was wearing
new boots. But as nice as my boots
appeared, what really surprised me
was how much better I felt.
Now, I usually don’t care all that
much about what I wear. Just ask my
wife. So it sounds silly that a simple
shoeshine changed my mood. But
it did. The simple act of getting my
boots polished made me feel better.
It turns out my experience matches
the results of a study published in
Left: Clarissa Keller,
nursing student at
UW-Madison, poses
in her white coat.
Students who wore a
doctor’s white coat to
perform different tasks
made half as many errors
as students who wore
regular clothes.
2012 by Professor Adam D. Galinsky
and Hajo Adam. They conducted
three experiments to determine
how what we wear impacts the way
we feel. They used a well known
piece of clothing to test their theory:
a doctor’s white lab coat.
In one of the experiments, students
who wore a doctor’s white coat to
perform different tasks made half as
many errors as students who wore
regular clothes. That’s right. Students
who dressed like doctors were less
likely to make an error — even
though the tasks assigned
in the study had nothing
to do with medicine.
The other two experiments
showed similar
results, and we now
have what’s known as
enclothed cognition.
For anyone who sees
people as part of the job
or wants to influence the
behavior of others, the way we
dress does matter. So let’s not kid
ourselves. First, people judge us, at
least in part, by how we dress. Second,
what we wear affects how we
feel about ourselves.
It reminds me of another story, one
from my early career as a financial
adviser. I asked a good friend of
mine, a doctor, how I should dress.
He said, “You should dress sharply.
Wear a jacket and tie at the very
least, and preferably a suit.”
I thought, “That’s so lame. If people
need a suit and tie to trust me, I
don’t want those kinds of people as
clients.” My doctor friend then told
me, “Can you imagine if I showed
up in my running clothes at the lab?
People are expecting someone in a
white lab coat, so why give them
one more hurdle to jump through
before they trust me?”
One other reason for dressing the
part: When we’re getting ready to
perform a task, a good deal of the
work starts with putting ourselves
in the right place mentally. For instance,
when I dress up to give a talk,
it reminds me that I’m there to perform
an important function. People
have paid money to see me in person,
and I need to “show up,” both
physically and mentally, to show respect.
Dressing nicely matches their
expectations and it makes me feel
good. Both things help me perform
better as a speaker.
It would be easy to dismiss this as
shallow or silly. But for the next
week, try giving yourself permission
to think about what you wear and
how it makes you feel, so you’re putting
your best foot (or boot) forward
at all times. We even have a fancy
name for it now. It’s science!
YOU
13

WHY YOU
CAN'T CHOOSE BETWEEN
Creativity and Data
Many of the greatest creators tap into a simple method for creativity
By Serenity Gibbons
The advertising industry has
changed dramatically. Brand
CMOs have become responsible
for business objectives in addition
to brand goals — and that impacts
everyone in a leadership role,
big brand or not. In today’s C-suite,
data makes the rules, which is why
executives have increasingly turned
to tech-enabled consultancies for
marketing advice over the past several
years. But in general, consultancies
haven’t been able to muster the creativity
required to supplant traditional
agencies completely.
Accenture’s creative arm, Accenture
Interactive, recently took a big step
toward remedying that with its agreement
to purchase independent creative
shop Droga5. Opinions vary as
to what the deal means for everyone
else in the advertising and consulting
worlds, but one thing is certain: Creativity
and data cannot be isolated
in marketing. A recent report from
Walker Sands found that 56 percent
of marketers believe that creativity
and technology will be equally vital
to developing effective marketing
strategies five years from now, and
41 percent feel today’s strategies are
driven by an equal mixture of both.
Lights illuminate
a staircase at
Dimension Data
in Sandton, South
Africa. Photo by
Ashley Jurius from
Unsplash.
There are still plenty of questions
about how companies can achieve
that perfect mixture, but the benefits
of doing so are clear. According to
McKinsey, businesses that have successfully
integrated creativity and
analytics have grown twice as fast
as those that haven’t. Companies like
The Shipyard assert that the answer
lies in pairing creative talent with
data scientists in an approach it dubs
“marketing engineering,” while others
have developed their own ways
of marrying the two.
Justin Thomas-Copeland, president
and CEO of RAPP New York, believes
that the key lies in remembering that
marketing is all about consumer engagement.
Creativity is the only way
to engage the modern consumer, and
data analysis is the best way to direct
your creative efforts. “Creativity can
be helped, guided, and validated by
data and analytics. And the reverse
is also true, with data led with our
soul and, seeing what the data tells
us, pivoting as we go,” writes Thomas-Copeland.
“This should be a perpetual,
dynamic yin and yang for the
modern marketer.”
Marketers seeking to integrate creativity
and analytics should keep
these three tactics in mind:
14
The Artful Ordinary

Use data as
your storytelling
springboard
Rather than relegate technology and
automation to back-end functions of
marketing campaigns, start with data
as a guide. That might mean conducting
new surveys or commissioning
new analyses of data you already
have. Consider Kellogg’s, which
asked its social media followers to
describe their favorite bowl of Corn
Flakes; this approach enabled new
data collection to drive creative campaigns
forward.
Creativity and data both play a big
role in boosting brand awareness.
Crucial to that campaign was nostalgia,
an intangible feeling that
goes beyond the data. Reflecting on
three decades spent at the Walt Disney
Company, Duncan Wardle, the
company’s former head of creativity
and innovation, notes that not once
did he witness technology beat out
human ingenuity. Instead, his teams
relied on data to confirm human intuition
and to catalyze creative thinking
in human workers.
Wardle recalls working to devise a
way to get more British tourists to
Disneyland Paris, arguing that data
allowed the team to understand who
its ideal customers were. Only people,
however, could understand the
human fears and desires that motivated
those customers. Ultimately, the
solution required appealing to their
human nature, and in that task, writes
Wardle, “Big data was no match for
finely tuned human intuition.”
Collaborate based on
enhanced customer
awareness
Data can help creatives understand
their target audience in a way that
seems almost magical, yet some
view this additional information as
mere noise or a barrier to creative
freedom. But more information isn’t
a bad thing. With the right mindset,
companies can use data to do
work that doesn’t just get the
attention of customers, but
captures it, holds it, and
keeps them wanting
more. That’s marketing
in its highest form.
At Adidas, marketers
armed with consumer
insights are able to create
more relevant stories
and more consistent customer
experiences
Each marketing meeting begins with
a close look at consumer data, which
focuses the team's brainstorming on
what customers want.
When data showed that the combination
of brand and product-focused
ad creative was 102 percent
more likely to convert Ultraboost X
buyers than the product ad alone,
the Adidas brand and e-commerce
teams worked together to strengthen
both ads. Rather than view data as a
box of limitations, Adidas uses it to
launch fresh creative collaborations
among all teams with the power to
impact the numbers.
According to McKinsey,
businesses that have
successfully integrated
creativity and analytics
have grown twice as fast
as those that haven’t.
Think agility in
campaign execution
In McKinsey’s study, data and creativity
integrators excelled within the
agile operating model, carrying out
marketing campaigns in just weeks
or days. For integrators, it’s critical
that marketing, IT, legal, and finance
teams collaborate to enable quick
campaign approvals and execution.
Spotify, for instance, has built
a reputation for using data
to create highly personalized
consumer experiences.
Backed by
an in-house creative
team nearly a hundred
strong — as well
as vast amounts of data
on customer listening
habits — the company
cranks out national advertising
campaigns that are flexible
and fast enough to incorporate
current events and always-changing
musical tastes.
Agility, flexibility, and the willingness
to be wrong are in Spotify’s DNA.
“We have a leadership team that gives
us tremendous runway and a culture
that enables not just creativity but the
ability to move quickly,” says former
VP of brand creative Jackie Jantos.
Take your cue from these marketing
leaders. Find the combination of
data and creativity that allows your
company to provide your customers
with the most engaging experience
possible. While industry insiders may
disagree on which is more important,
brands will need a lot of both to
reach consumers in an increasingly
cluttered landscape.
YOU
15

The
Art
in
YOUR ENVIRONMENT 17

HOW
CAN BOOST
Dim lighting and ambient noise may lead to
more out-of-the-box ideas
By Cody C. Delistraty
Creativity
It took F. Scott Fitzgerald nearly a decade to finish Tender
is the Night, his semi-autobiographical novel about
the physical, financial, and moral decline of a man
with nearly limitless potential. While working on the novel,
Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, moved between France,
Switzerland, and the United States, eventually spending
eighteen months at La Paix, an old country house north of
Baltimore that he rented while Zelda was treated for schizophrenia
at a nearby clinic. The Turnbull family owned the
estate, and Andrew Turnbull, who was 11 at the time, later
recounted Fitzgerald’s stay in his biography, Scott Fitzgerald.
While at La Paix, Fitzgerald worked in dark, disheveled
rooms with a bottle of gin in a nearby drawer. He took
short walks and came back to hand-write his ideas on
notepads scattered on his desk. He also loved to sneak
the Turnbulls’ homemade wine.
“Dazed and wan, he shuffled about the shut-in, unwholesome
house in bathrobe and pajamas, pondering his next
move,” Turnbull recalls in the book. “Returning to his
study, he penciled [his thoughts] down in his rounded,
decorous hand on yellow legal-sized paper. Interrupting
him at work, I remember the illumination of his eye, the
sensitive pull around the mouth, the wistful liquor-ridden
thing about him.”
Part of the reason it took Fitzgerald so long to finish Tender
is the Night was Zelda’s worsening condition. But you’d
think that his haphazard, alcohol-fueled creative process
wasn’t doing him any favors, either.
Yet recent research has shown that messy, dark, noisy,
booze-filled environments like the one Fitzgerald cultivated
at La Paix can, in fact, help stimulate creativity.
Two sofas welome
customers at
Long Shot Vinyl in
Racine, Wisconsin.
Photo by Kylie
Compe.
18
The Artful Ordinary

Darkness and dim lighting can encourage freedom of
thought, which leads to a more prolific generation of
ideas, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Environmental
Psychology. Specifically, dim lighting downplays
a room’s distractions, promoting focus on internal
reflection and the work at hand.
The next question is whether to keep that work on a tidy
or a messy desk. While a writer in a time crunch might
prefer a clean desk (reducing clutter can help people
focus), one small study found that working amid disorder
helped people come up with more creative ideas.
Kathleen D. Vohs, a professor at the University of Minnesota
Carlson School of Management and the lead researcher
of the study, writes, “Being creative is aided by
breaking away from tradition, order, and convention and a
disorderly environment seems to help people do just that.”
Evidence also supports the habits of people who eschew
a desk altogether, instead opting to work in a coffee shop.
A little bit of ambient noise (between 50 and 70 decibels—the
average noise level of a coffee shop) slightly
disrupts the mental process, which one study showed to
help people engage in more abstract thinking during a
word-association task. A high level of noise, however,
around 80 decibels—the sound of a dishwasher or garbage
disposal, for instance—becomes so disruptive to
information processing that it becomes hard to think at all.
improves problem solving and leads to what participants
in the Consciousness and Cognition study referred to as
“sudden insights,” which the sober participants reported
significantly less often. That’s not a blanket license to get
drunk on deadline, though. In a December 1934 letter
to his Scribner editor, Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald wrote
about the necessity to moderate his own drinking: “A
short story can be written on a bottle, but for a novel
you need the mental speed that enables you to keep the
whole pattern in your head.”
Fitzgerald completed Tender is the Night while at La Paix
in the autumn of 1933 just before his 37th birthday. By
that time, he had seen his wife fall deeper into mental
illness, his father passed away, and he suffered a tubercular
hemorrhage that left him bedridden and unable to
work for weeks. Having seen his own star slowly fade
after reaching his pinnacle of fame so early on with This
Side of Paradise when he was only 23, with Tender is the
Night, he strove to regain the faith of the public and his
faith in himself.
He used his own feelings of professional failure for the
tragic character of Dick Diver; he used his disappointment
with his parents for Dick and Nicole’s failed relationship;
he used his affair with Lois Moran for Dick’s affair with
Rosemary Hoyt; and he used the stinging reality of his
wife’s illness and the memory of her affair with Edouard
Jozan for Nicole’s illness and affair with Tommy Barban.
Like a few notable modern creatives, such as Donna
Tartt, Quentin Tarantino, George R.R. Martin, and Neil
Gaiman, Fitzgerald also wrote by hand, only moving to
his typewriter for final drafts. Though few people actually
do it anymore, writing by hand can
help with idea generation, learning,
and memorization.
“Being creative is
aided by breaking
away from
tradition, order, and
convention"
Other studies have shown
that taking walks, or working
in rooms with high
ceilings, can promote divergent
or abstract thinking.
Another tip: Get a little tipsy.
Moderate intoxication—a blood
alcohol content of about 0.075—
In a letter dated November 9, 1938, Fitzgerald wrote to
Andrew Turnbull’s sister, Frances, who was a sophomore
at Radcliffe College, and had sent him one of her first
attempts at writing fiction.
“You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not
the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little
experiences that you might tell at dinner,” wrote Fitzgerald.
This is what Fitzgerald believed was the key to a meaningful
creative project. Perhaps all these little “life hacks”—
the lighting, the noise levels, the alcohol—can help, but
your environment can’t sell your heart for you. As Fitzgerald
concluded his letter to Frances, “[Writing] is one
of those professions that wants the ‘works.’ You wouldn't
be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave.”
YOUR ENVIRONMENT 19

Madison, Wisconsin
Creative spaces in Madison, Wisconsin
By Nicole Shields
The Wisconsin
Captiol Building
illuminates the
night. Photo by
Michael75 from
Unsplash.
Often the most difficult step of creativity is getting started.
Many of us are plagued by expectations of perfection,
or we feel lost because we don't have the supplies
we think we need, or we're not sure where the right environment
is to get started.
What many people do not realize is that the arts community
is vast and constantly looking to engage with more
people. Particularly here in Madison, Wisconsin, there
is a large community of creators looking for others to
collaborate with, share new ideas and see what they can
create together.
There are spaces accomodating all audiences — from
beginners with more guided projects to more experienced
artists. Additionally, most of the spaces designated
for making art sell supplies or even have them free for
use, like at Wheelhouse Studios in Memorial Union for
students. This also creates the opportunity for creators of
all levels to intersect in these creative spaces, with unexpected
and innovative results as creators collaborate
across boundaries like age and material
If you like to roll solo creatively, Madison also has a variety
of places to buy supplies. And lastly, museums are a
key element of Madison's arts community.
20
The Artful Ordinary

To shop for supplies
Madison has a variety of options for finding art materials. Some
options in the downtown area include Artist and Craftsmen, the
University Book Store and Wheelhouse Studios. However, art
supplies aren't always found in conventional places — other good
places to look include second-hand stores for used materials,
such as Dig'n'Save or Paul's Bookstore.
Paints lay on
the floor of an
apartment in
Madison, Wisconsin.
To create art
While many people build creative spaces in their own homes,
public studio spaces allow the creativity and productivity of others
to influence your work. Ideal studio environments in downtown
Madison include the Arts Lofts and George L. Moss Humanities
building for students. More community-oriented options include
Revel, PaintBar and Wheelhouse Studios.
Paintbrushes are
used for a project
at Wheelhouse
Studios.
To view art
Full of students and educators, Madison regularly has a wealth
of refreshing art exhibitions. While there are more well-known
museums such as the Chazen Museum of Art and Madison
Museum of Contemporary Art, there are also a variety of student
galleries in Memorial Union, George L. Moss Humanities and the
Art Lofts.
Students walk
around a neon
exhibit at the
Chazen Museum of
Art in Madison.
YOUR ENVIRONMENT 21

A New Creative Era?
Or the death of creativity? How does social media impact creation?
By Fred van Leeuwen
22
The Artful Ordinary

Neon signs depict
symbols and games
from social media.
Photos from left to
right by Jon Tyson,
Pete Pedroza and
Prateek Katyal from
Unsplash.
I often think back to what it must've been like being a
photographer before the birth of the Internet, the social
media craze, and the hunt for likes, shares, and follows.
Photography was less convoluted before the dawn of the
digital age, with specialist magazines and museum and
art gallery submissions showcasing only the cream of the
crop. Browsing through old magazines and reading the
articles, it's clear that the top-tier photographers stood
out amongst the rest of the crowd for their raw skill in
their art form. Their images meant something to many of
those who took the time to stop and look at it for longer
than two seconds.
In modern days, things are quite different when looking
at the multitude of platforms available to freely publish
your own work. With the seemingly slow death of the
magazine industry and the huge number of people using
online image platforms, it's almost as if the images we
post online have become lacking in substance. Is it because
we're just exposed to so much more?
I can't remember any of the images I just liked on Instagram
about an hour ago, yet I seem to recall images I saw
in books when I was younger that have managed to stand
the test of time. Was I exposed to less imagery back then?
Is it all becoming so convoluted now because of the digital
age shoving images in our faces every chance it gets
While we desensitize ourselves due to the sensory overload
in the form of a million of images per day, the modern-day
digital age has also given everyone with access
to a computer or mobile phone a voice. And while it's a
great form of communication, it's mirrored by what can
be seen by some as an almost narcissistic need to be
heard. Are the days of studying and constructively criticizing
photography as an art form truly gone and replaced
by some 14-year-old kid with bad acne, endlessly
trolling Instagram and Facebook pages?
What has this done to our favorite art form? While the
world is moving toward an ever-growing "PC" way of
life, are photographers getting scared of posting images
of a possible controversial nature online? If images of
Viet Cong prisoners being shot in the head at point blank
range or self-immolating monks were posted online
today, the image would be spammed with a thousand
comments on how this isn't right and how dare this photographer
post images of this nature, before ultimately
being reported and taken down. After that, no one would
bat an eye. But remember what an impact those images
had when you first saw them years ago? Nobody back
then gathered their pitchforks and torches before heading
off to go lynch the photographer.
And while I don't believe we'll ever see legendary photographers
such as Annie Leibovitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson,
or Ansel Adams again, I do believe we will witness
an evolution of our on-screen aliases trending across
the globe for a few hours or days before another photographer
creates something different or slightly more
controversial (these days, controversy seems to only be
measured by the amount of Photoshop being used on
magazine covers). Are all of us perhaps becoming as disposable
as the cameras we once shot with?
Yet somehow, something inside me still clings on to the
belief that photography as an art form will prevail as it
has over so many decades.
As somber and negative as this article may sound, it's not
without a glimmer of light; the access to social media
has also given everyone access to showcase their images
to the world. No longer are we exposed to just a few
amazing photographers around the globe, but we now
have a choice to follow a few million photographers and
their photographs, giving us the opportunity to learn faster
from the photographers we view online and share our
knowledge to those eager to learn. It helps us connect
with like-minded creative individuals in order to share
ideas quicker, work together, and source new clients. It's
basically become the modern day word-of-mouth. Thus,
you won't see many photographers packing their gear
away to gather dust in a basement cabinet somewhere
and take up accounting. Instead, we all learn to adapt to
our ever-evolving world.
So as I'm finishing this article, I'm preparing to head out
to the coast for a little holiday. My camera's batteries
are charged, lenses cleaned, and sensor dust-free. My
camera and I are ready for another adventure ready to be
posted on my Instagram profile.
YOUR ENVIRONMENT 23

WHY YOU CAN FOCUS
But
Not in
Your
Open
Office
A
few years ago, during a
media interview for one
of my books, my interviewer
said something
I still ponder often. Ranting about
the level of distraction in his open
office, he said, “That’s why I have a
membership at the coworking space
across the street — so I can focus.”
While I fully support the backlash
against open offices, the comment
struck me as odd. After all, coworking
spaces also typically use an open
office layout.
But I recently came across a series
of studies examining the effect of
sound on the brain that reveals why
his strategy works.
From previous research, we know
that workers’ primary problem with
open or cubicle-filled offices is the
unwanted noise.
But new research shows that it may
not be the sound itself that distracts
us…it may be who is making it. In
fact, some level of office banter in
the background might actually benefit
our ability to do creative tasks,
provided we don’t get drawn into
the conversation. Instead of total silence,
the ideal work environment
for creative work has a little bit of
background noise. That’s why you
might focus really well in a noisy
coffee shop, but barely be able to
concentrate in a noisy office.
One study, published in the Journal
of Consumer Research, found that the
right level of ambient noise triggers
our minds to think more creatively.
The researchers, led by Ravi Mehta
of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
examined various
levels of noise on participants as they
completed tests of creative thinking.
Participants were randomized into
four groups and everyone was asked
to complete a Remote Associates Test
(a commonly used measurement that
judges creative thinking by asking
Ambient noise may be ideal
for creative tasks
By David Burkus
24
The Artful Ordinary

test-takers to find the relationship
between a series of words that, as
first glance, appear unrelated). Depending
on the group, participants
were exposed to various noise levels
in the background, from total silence
to 50 decibels, 70 decibels, and 85
decibels. The differences between
most of the groups were statistically
insignificant; however, the participants
in the 70 decibels group (those
exposed to a level of noise similar to
background chatter in a coffee shop)
significantly outperformed the other
groups. Since the effects were small,
this may suggest that our creative
thinking doesn’t differ that much
in response to total silence and 85
decibels of background noise — the
equivalent of a loud garbage disposal
or a quiet motorcycle. Since none of
us presumably want to work next to
a garbage disposal or motorcycle, I
found this surprising.
But since the results at 70 decibels
were significant, the study also suggests
that the right level of background
noise — not too loud and
not total silence — may actually
boost one’s creative thinking ability.
The right level of background noise
may disrupt our normal patterns of
thinking just enough to allow our
imaginations to wander, without
making it impossible to focus. This
type of “distracted focus” appears
to be the optimal state for working
on creative tasks. As the authors
write, “Getting into a relatively
noisy environment may trigger
the brain to think abstractly,
and thus generate
creative ideas.”
In another study, researchers
used frontal lobe electroencephalographic
(EEG) machines
to study the brain waves of participants
as they completed tests of
creativity while exposed to various
sound environments. The researchers
found statistically significant changes
in creativity scores and a connection
between those scores and certain
brain waves. As in the previous
study, a certain level of white noise
proved the ideal background sound
for creative tasks.
So why do so many of us hate our
open offices? The quiet chatter of
colleagues and the gentle thrum of
the HVAC should help us focus. The
“Getting into a
relatively noisy
environment may
trigger the brain to
think abstractly"
Customers eat
lunch at the Sky
Garden in London,
England. Photo by
Daria Shevstova
from Unsplash.
problem may be that, in our offices,
we can’t stop ourselves from getting
drawn into others’ conversations or
from being interrupted while we’re
trying to focus. Indeed, the EEG researchers
found that face-to-face
interactions, conversations, and
other disruptions negatively affect
the creative process. By
contrast, a coworking space
or a coffee shop provides
a certain level of ambient
noise while also providing
freedom from interruptions.
Taken together, the lesson here
is that the ideal space for focused
work is not about freedom from
noise, but about freedom from interruption.
Finding a space you can
hide away in, regardless of how
noisy it is, may be the best strategy
for making sure you get the important
work done.
YOUR ENVIRONMENT 25

The
Art
in
YOUR COMMUNITY 27

Public Art Matters
The role of public art in history, culture and democracy
By Patricia Walsh
Public art matters to me because I see
it as a platform for civic dialogue and
as the most democratic of art forms.
When done well, a public artwork
engages citizens in conversation
that can vary from understanding
historical and cultural backgrounds,
to driving attachment to place and
social cohesion. In a world struggling
with new ways to connect, public
art can make public spaces more
approachable.
Nationally, I have the honor to see
how public art can drive cultural
understanding, as in the ongoing
discussion surrounding confederate
memorials and monuments; and locally,
how it can reinforce civic pride
in residents. From this perspective,
I also see that there is a continued
need to provide tools for those
making public art happen in their
communities—tools that can help
advocate for why public art matters.
In June of this year, Americans for
the Arts worked in collaboration with
the 2018 Public Art Network (PAN)
Advisory Council to launch Why
Public Art Matters (2018). Based on
a green paper of the same name,
we wanted to provide the field with
a tool to help educate community
members, local decision makers,
and other stakeholders on the value
that public art can bring to cities
and towns. “Why Public Art Matters”
A public art
installation lines the
Old Clock Square
in Aix-en-Provence,
France.
provides talking points, reasons, data,
and examples of how public art can
positively impact a community in five
specific areas.
Art in public spaces plays a distinguishing
role in our country’s history
and culture. It reflects and reveals our
society, enhances meaning in our civic
spaces, and adds uniqueness to our
communities. Public art humanizes
the built environment. It provides an
intersection between past, present,
and future; between disciplines and
ideas. Public art matters because
our communities gain cultural, social,
and economic value through
public art.
28
The Artful Ordinary

Economic Growth
and Sustainability
1
By engaging in public art as a tool for
growth and sustainability, communities
can thrive economically. Seventy percent
of Americans believe that the “arts
improve the image and identity” of their
community
Attachment and
Cultural Identity
2
Public art directly influences how people
see and connect with a place, providing
access to aesthetics that support its
identity and making residents feel
appreciated and valued. Aesthetics is
one of the top three characteristics
why residents attach themselves to a
community.
Artists as
Contributors
3
Providing a public art ecosystem
supports artists and other creatives by
validating them as important contributors
to the community. Artists are highly
entrepreneurial. They are 3.5 times more
likely than the total U.S. work force to be
self-employed.
Social Cohesion
and Cultural
Understanding
4
Public art provides a visual mechanism
for understanding other cultures
and perspectives, reinforcing social
connectivity with others. Seventy-three
percent of Americans agree that the arts
“helps me understand other cultures
better.”
Public Health
and Belonging
5
Public art addresses public health and
personal illness by reducing stress,
providing a sense of belonging, and
addressing stigmas towards those with
mental health issues. Public art is noted
as slowing pedestrians down to enjoy their
space and providing a positive impact on
mood.
YOUR COMMUNITY 29

A SPIN AROUND
Wheelhouse Studios
Art studio is hub for community impact through
creativity and cost-effective resources
By Nicole Shields
30
The Artful Ordinary

Sam Landowski wandered around Memorial
Union with his dad in August 2015 in preparation
for his freshman year of college at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. While many
incoming freshman at this time of year were likely on the
lookout for textbooks or a new comforter, Landowski had
something else on his mind: his on-campus dream job.
Studios’ Community Hope Flag project, which focused
on political and social expression.
Additionally, during the 2015-2016 school year, the
studio gave Artist-in-Residence Tiffany Ike an opportunity
to speak out to the campus community about how
UW-Madison students approach dialogue on racism.
Left: A student
paints in Studio
G at Wheelhouse
Studios.
After seeing Wheelhouse Studios for the first time, arts-oriented
Landowski returned to the studio upon moving to
school and landed a job interview the day after moving
into his residence hall. Days later, he wasn’t attending the
“Night at the Overture” freshman welcome event—he was
working his first shift for Wheelhouse Studios.
Now a junior, Landowski continues to work at Wheelhouse
Studios, and has countless stories of the unexpected
benefits of working at an art studio, such as interaction
with “regulars”.
“It’s a big part of their week, or their month, to come
here. It’s something they look forward to, and I look forward
to seeing them,” Landowski said. “There’s kind of a
sense of community here.”
For Landowski, regulars, and community and student
users who spend time in Wheelhouse Studios, the space
acts as a resourceful pathway to community impact,
personal solutions, and stress relief. Its cost-effective
resources and calming environment make the space
attractive to artistically-inclined students and students
attempting to make a difference.
Wheelhouse Studios Director Jay Ekleberry is the driving
force behind the community-oriented mindset of the studio,
who emphasizes the importance of dialogue created
through artmaking. This concept shows through in the
studio’s programming, partially composed of community
connections and individual community-oriented projects.
Wheelhouse Studios is a venue for collaboration with
other local groups. Living Our Visions, Inc. works with
the studio to establish a sense of community through artmaking
with individuals with disabilities, according to
Landowski. The Latino Youth Summit, an annual set of
workshops for Latino middle school-aged teens, came to
the studio in spring 2017 to participate in Wheelhouse
Ike’s project used installations, public responses and
spoken-word poetry performances to generate awareness
about what is—and isn’t—said about racism on
campus, through the metaphor of the water cycle. Now
in her senior year, Ike continues to create art, and her
latest work is a play entitled Ball and Chain, premiering
at the Fredric March Play Circle Theater in Memorial
Union on Nov. 10.
For Ike, the studio is both a venue for generating awareness
and a personal solution instilling in her a newfound confidence
to pursue different pathways of communication.
“I started doing a lot of different types of art forms, and
Wheelhouse definitely opened me up to thinking that
way, just working with them, because I was like ‘I could
do anything? Whaaat?’”, Ike said.
Another individual student utilizing Wheelhouse Studios
as a resource to make a broader community impact
is Tyler Didier, a UW-Madison sophomore who has a
background in pottery. Didier also has an affinity for coffee,
and is making 50 to 100 mugs in Wheelhouse Studios’
ceramic studio for “A Just Brew”, a volunteer-run,
non-profit local coffee shop. “A Just Brew” donates
to the International Justice Mission,
an organization aiming to help victims
of violence and slavery around the
globe.
“I’m hoping to do something
different for each mug, just as
an avid coffee drinker, I think
one of the biggest parts is the
mug that you use; it has a whole
story in itself,” Didier said.
Didier reiterated that without the
cost-effective prices of Wheelhouse Stu-
“To focus on just
making something,
and then immediately
seeing the fruits
of your labor, it’s
comforting.”
YOUR COMMUNITY 31

dios, this wouldn’t be possible. Other studio users, particularly
students, highlighted the capability to use studio
supplies for free as a key resource for their continuation
of art as a hobby, or a place to create reasonably-priced
gifts for friends.
While the scheduled classes provided by Wheelhouse-
Studios are often too expensive and time-consuming for
a student’s schedule, the studio’s Free Art Friday program
once a month provides a regular opportunity for free artmaking.
Senior Jennifer Shutter has attended Free Art Friday
semi-regularly since her freshman year. Free Art Friday is
a popular event, and on Friday, Nov. 4, hardly any table
space remained as Wheelhouse Studios and the Rathskeller
in Memorial Union filled with crafters like Shutter celebrating
the Day of the Dead with painting and sewing.
She described how spending time at Wheelhouse Studios
connects to her major while helping her relieve stress.
“They’ve helped mental health-wise, because it’s sort of
a way to relax and unwind, once every single month and
it’s helpful,” Shutter said. “To focus on just making something,
and then immediately seeing the fruits of your labor,
it’s comforting.”
A look around
Another senior, Tess Lo, seconded this stress relief aspect
of Wheelhouse, despite the busy scene.
“It’s nice because you can see a lot of different people
and it’s not just students, it’s like people from the community,”
Lo said.
Next to Lo sat Diane Nolte, a Madison community member
and retiree who comes to Wheelhouse Studios to
continue manipulating objects. For Nolte, Wheelhouse
Studios is a personal solution and stress reliever for how
to stay busy. She’s also able to revive art skills from when
she was younger.
Landowski values personal stories similar to those of
Nolte, Lo, Shutter and Didier as the highlights of his employment.
He struggled to choose which stories to describe,
as there were so many.
“We’re really trying to engage people who might not otherwise
have found us, or wouldn’t think to find us. Or
people who say like “I’m not an artist, I’m not good at
art”, we’re trying to say like ‘No, come in, give it a try.’”
Landowski looks forward to remaining employed at
Wheelhouse Studios for the rest of his collegiate career.
Artwork in progress
at Wheelhouse
Studios. Supplies
are free to use for
students.
32
Artwork in progress
at Wheelhouse
Studios. Supplies
are free to use for
students.
The Artful Ordinary
Clay artwork waits
to be fired in the
kiln at Wheelhouse
Studios.

History
Established in 2014, Wheelhouse Studios is the result of an evolution of
Wisconsin Union art spaces
1929
1930
The Union Workshop opens, an art-oriented space in the
Wisconsin Union where students worked on bookbinding, figure
drawing, painting, camera work and more. Sally Owen Marshall is
its first student director, and around 50 students use the space.
1933
The Craftshop holds its first exhibition of art made by student users.
Sally Owen Marshall's UW-Madison Art Department senior thesis
explored the idea of an inclusive art space on campus. Porter
Butts, the Wisconsin Union Director at the time, agreed to create
an art space, and in turn charged Marshall with starting it.
1932
In its third year, the Union Workshop's student usage has doubled
to over 100 students. It is renamed the College Craftshop, later
nicknamed "the Craftshop".
1960s
The Craftshop welcomes Vietnam War protesters to silkscreen
their posters.
1984
Wheelhouse's director from 1984-2018, Jay Ekleberry, becomes
the director of the Craftshop and Mini Courses.
2014
Wheelhouse Studios open on the lower level of the Memorial
Unio as the reimagined version of the Craftshop, complete with a
ceramic studio space.
1934
An article in the American Magazine of Art is dedicated to
the Craftshop, written by UW-Madison graduate F.A. Gutheim.
Gutheim would go on to become a distinguished writer and urban
planner.
1970
The Wisconsin Union's Board of Trustees establish the Sally Owen
Marshall Award, a financial award given to the "Best of Show" in
the annual Student Art Show.
2012
The Craftshop, located on the fourth floor at this time, shuts down
temporarily due to the renovations to the west wing of Memorial
Union.
2017
Wheelhouse Studios hosts its largest-ever paint night, with 827
people painting on the Terrace at sunset.

Tackling brain drain
through the revitalization of
community, arts and culture
By Nicole Shields
Paige Weslaski goes for a three-mile run every
day during her lunch break at work, right
alongside the waves of Lake Michigan.
“I think it’s the most beautiful place in the whole
wide world when I'm running. I think it’s even
more beautiful than Malibu, really,” Weslaski says,
describing the lakefront in Racine. “And it’s like,
wow, no one’s here, no one’s utilizing this beauty.”
The 27-year-old Racine native, entrepreneur, published
author and 2015 Young Professional of the
Year in Racine has lived in New York, Guatemala
and on the coast of California in Malibu, and traveled
throughout Europe. Something, though, has
her hooked on Racine, Wisconsin, near her roots
— in fact, the city’s name comes from the French
translation of “root.”
After leaving Racine for five years to pursue her college
degree and travel and work abroad, Weslaski
turned down a full scholarship to earn her master’s
degree at her alma mater, Pepperdine University in
Malibu, California, to return to Racine.
“I knew in my heart of hearts, no, I’m going back to
Racine,” she says.
Weslaski isn’t alone in leaving for her education,
then returning to the Racine community. The median
age in Racine is about 34 years old, according
to the U.S. Census Bureau, and residents between
the ages of 20 to 34 outnumber those from ages
35 to 49. The population has grown, albeit slowly,
since 2010, yet Racine is a puzzle piece of a larger
movement at work in Wisconsin, where young professionals
tend to flock to larger cities in surrounding
states. As young professionals face the decision
of where to plant their roots after completing their
education, community members in mid-sized Wis-
34
The Artful Ordinary

Racine

Megan Dorsey sits
in front of one of
eight new murals
in Uptown in
downtown Racine.
Photo by Kylie
Compe.
From page 35:
Wright and Dorsey
walk outside of the
restaurant where
they first met in
Racine, Wisconsin.
Photo by Kylie
Compe.
consin cities like Eau Claire, La Crosse and particularly
Racine, work to redefine their city’s narrative
to attract and engage young professionals to further
grow their communities.
Racine and other cities throughout Wisconsin face
the challenge known as the “brain drain.” According
to a 2019 study by the Wisconsin Policy Forum,
a nonpartisan policy research organization focused
on analyzing critical Wisconsin policy issues,
neighboring states outpace Wisconsin in attracting
individuals with a bachelor’s degree or above.
The study found that 20 percent of 31 to 41-yearolds
born in Wisconsin who had moved away from
the state were considered “highly educated.” Only
10 percent of people in this age group who were
born elsewhere and moved to Wisconsin had a
bachelor’s degree or higher, however, resulting in a
net brain drain of 10.7 percentage points. In comparison,
Wisconsin’s neighbors experienced the
opposite effect: Illinois had a “brain gain” of 10
percentage points and Minnesota had a net gain
of 1 percentage point. Since 1990, Wisconsin remains
one of the five states in the U.S. with the
largest “brain drain” gaps.
“Wisconsin faces the challenge of having two of
the Midwest’s most dynamic metro areas — Chicago
and Minneapolis — near its borders, which
draw highly educated people away from the state,”
the Wisconsin Policy Forum report says.
“Wisconsin faces the
challenge of having two of
the Midwest’s most dynamic
metro areas — Chicago
and Minneapolis — near its
borders, which draw highly
educated people away from
the state."
The disparity, especially in
incoming migration, captures
the attention of
lawmakers, who
have proposed and
initiated several
policy solutions
toward the issue
within recent
years. In September
2018,
then Gov. Scott
Walker proposed
“The New Graduate
Tax Credit” offering
tax incentives for college graduates who stay or
move back to Wisconsin. Additionally, from January
to June 2018, the Wisconsin Economic Development
Corporation launched a state-funded marketing
campaign in the Chicago area to “draw Wisconsin
expatriates scattered across the country to their
home state,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
Many elements factor into a young professional’s
decision on where to move after finishing their
degree, but as the Wisconsin government’s policy
measures suggest, one key motivation is economic:
Young professionals follow job opportunities.
In Racine, the city’s Area Manufacturers and Commerce
organization and their group, the Young Professionals
of Racine, aim to quickly connect these
newcomers with active community members to
welcome and integrate them into the community,
according to Anna Clementi, the organization’s
vice president of operations and coordinator of the
Young Professionals of Racine.
These organizations work with human resources
staff in businesses throughout Racine to connect
newly-employed community members with their
Young Professionals organization, which is based
on three key initiatives: connect, grow and engage.
Throughout Clementi's six years facilitating the
Young Professionals, they’ve maintained a base of
60 to 80 members, mostly between the ages of 25
and 35 years old. Working with this group, Clementi
has noticed the positive change of perception
that occurs for people when they become more involved
in the community.
“There’s a strange perception that’s stuck out there,
that I think deters people from coming,” Clementi
says. “But then the people that do come realize
very quickly, ‘Oh, wow, things I heard are totally
opposite of what I am seeing or experiencing.’”
Weslaski is part of the Young Professionals, and although
she is a Racine native, her own perception
of Racine changed once she moved back and took
steps to become more involved. When she graduated
from Case High School in 2010, she hadn’t
intended to return. But since feeling called back
to Racine, Weslaski has grown deeper roots by im-
YOUR COMMUNITY 37

mersing herself in a variety of community-oriented
initiatives. She works as a marketing executive
at Image Management in downtown Racine and
wrote a weekly column entitled “Millennial Musings”
for the Journal Times in 2017 and 2018, and
she volunteers on several local boards such as St.
Monica’s Senior Living and previously for SAFE Haven
of Racine shelter.
Being immersed in life in Racine, Weslaski also
works to shape and change the perception of the
community like Clementi. Weslaski noted that she
is often asked why she came back to Racine.
“I feel like that is such a sad question,” she says.
“And my answer is always that you can make the
sun shine anywhere that you’re at, and there’s
beauty anywhere that you’re at. And so I feel like
Racine is the perfect place to be able to serve and
to find the little crooks and crannies of its beauty.”
Weslaski and Clementi are not alone in acknowledging
this narrative and trying to change it. At an
event sponsored by the Racine Area Manufacturers
and Commerce, the organization helped connect
Weslaski with another service-oriented community
member, Pastor Melvin Hargrove. He has lived in
Racine for nearly 53 years, running his own religious
ministry while also sitting on the Racine Unified
School District Board of Education from 2007 to
2015. Like Weslaski, Hargrove feels called to his Racine
roots, and the two have developed a friendship.
Originally, though, Hargrove helped Weslaski to
get connected with the right people when she was
starting to become more active in the community.
As a more established community member, he often
works to connect new individuals with the right
people to pursue their goals.
“And so we began just kind of talking, she was
talking about coming back to Racine, and so all I
did there was try to kind of help introduce her to different
areas of different people that would help her
along,” Hargrove explained about meeting Weslaski.
“So that was more of, ‘Hey, you might want to
talk to this person…’ I’ve always tried to build myself
to anyone or any young person that's actually
trying to build relationships in the
community professionally, so
that they can all have different
options as they grow in their
professional selves.”
As people such as Clementi,
Weslaski and Hargrove focus
on serving within the community,
the question remains as
to how they can spread the word
about the attractive qualities of Racine
to young professionals outside of the community
and, perhaps, combat “brain drain.”
Megan Dorsey found herself inspired by the same
perceptions of Racine that Clementi and Weslaski
saw. Dorsey was 25 years old when she moved to
Racine with her fiancé and was looking to make
new friends, so she made a Facebook page to try to
figure out what young people were doing in their
spare time.
In essence, she asked: What’s Up Racine?
Intrigued by Dorsey’s idea, Brianna Wright responded
immediately. She was 24 at the time and
working as a freelance graphic designer. They soon
planned their first event which they called a “Big
Ideas Mixer,” where they asked the diverse attendees,
“What do you see for the future of Racine? Or
what do you want this group to stand for?” Almost
three years later, many of these people are still involved.
The newfound What’s Up Racine-leading duo also
developed a mission statement, defining themselves
as “a social rebranding initiative with the
end goal of making Racine a destination city for
young professionals, students, creatives and entrepreneurs.”
Through the efforts of Dorsey and Wright, What’s
Up Racine has become a connecting force, both
between different community groups and the
greater Wisconsin community of millennials and
young professionals. Their social media presence
on Facebook and Instagram (@WhatsUpRacine)
"You can make
the sun shine
anywhere you're at,
and there's beauty
anywhere that
you're at."
38
The Artful Ordinary

Brianna Wright
points to a mural
she contributed to
in Uptown. Photo
by Kylie Compe.
creates a virtual conversation, amplifying the positive
community perception that Weslaski, Clementi
and Hargrove work toward. The What’s Up Racine
community also expands the audience of active
community members, going beyond the realm of
only young professionals.
“Starting it wasn’t like necessarily a business plan
or anything like that. But just giving a shout out
to people, kind of that come-as-you-are mentality,”
Wright says. “In the words of Megan… ‘You don’t
have to be a big baller to be here.’”
What’s Up Racine aims to host monthly events related
to art, music and culture, especially in downtown
Racine. With Racine Area Manufacturers and
Commerce, they hosted the city’s Young Professionals
Week in 2019, making it the third-largest
Young Professionals Week in the state. They’re also
working to redefine an area of downtown Racine
as an arts district called “Uptown,” where they’ve
installed eight new murals this year. Ultimately,
Wright describes Racine as in its “Renaissance period,”
referencing that the downtown area opened
up 22 new businesses in the last year.
While having their hands in so many projects,
What’s Up Racine is completely grassroots-based
and operates without a budget. While they’d like
to recruit more young people through print materials
and more, that’s a project that’s still in development.
“It’s a passion project,” Wright says of What’s Up
Racine. “And we love every minute of it. And we
just want to keep it afloat. But it's definitely one of
those feelings of, it takes a village.”
Fortunately, Wright and Dorsey’s work coincides
with that of Weslaski, Clementi, Hargrove and
many others, who refuse to stand by as they recognize
holes or problems that might detract from
the community and its perception to young people.
They are staying in Racine — and they’re establishing
the community roots to make it a better place.
“I want to be a really good steward with the time
that I’ve been given and the city that I’m living in,
and better it,” Weslaski says. “Something that someone
once told me is that we should always leave
a place — even if it's something small as a bathroom,
or a city, or whatever, or a conversation —
we should leave things better off than when we first
got there… to leave it brighter than it was prior.”
YOUR COMMUNITY 39

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The Artful Ordinary
Artful