When Life Gives You Milwaukee, Make Lemonade

I’ve grown up a handful of times across Milwaukee’s cultural contexts, first as a child and a few times again working as a professional. So this conversation is, in many ways, home turf. If I’d sat down to write in March 2020, prior to the pandemic and ensuing tumult, the words would have flowed. While my hometown’s cultural context is complex, it’s the cloth from which I’m cut. But it’s the summer of 2024 and I am disoriented. The change unfolding in post-pandemic Milwaukee has muddled my perspective on my hometown.

There’s an idea I heard expressed so frequently coming up, it was practically gospel: “Resources can feel scarce, but Milwaukee works for working artists because rent is cheap and the cost of living is reasonable.” We lean into all kinds of bromides to keep ourselves together, but that one always felt real. In action, it meant less overhead for creative and cultural producers, which meant more time for other things, like creative production and growing connections. Making work, making community. This hasn’t been true for artists exclusively, also extending into a range of community work and professional fields.

During the pandemic, competition in Milwaukee’s housing market intensified and inflation means our cost of living isn’t the advantage it once was. Rents in duplexes and menus at neighborhood spots have crept towards Chicago prices. Additionally, recent years have brought shifts in the landscapes of resources, opportunity and arts organizations in the city. Not to mention the tumultuous political and social background. What was once comfortable and possible in Milwaukee now feels squeezed.

I’m currently 39 and I’m sure my near two decades of my working life would have unfolded much differently in this Milwaukee.

Of course, this could be a narrow perspective, limited by my path through this stretch. Or maybe this is a harsh but temporary moment in time and the Milwaukee I’ve known will return in full force.

To keep myself honest, I’ve compared notes on these observations within my art community and beyond. When asking peers how things are going, we inevitably commiserate about the unpredictability and mounting headwinds. While Milwaukee continues to be a cultural context where vital and meaningful work is produced, I do not feel alone in feeling a shift.

What’s In A Recipe?

When the title of this piece first crossed my mind, I smirked a patently Milwaukee smirk. And while the idea began whimsically, I’ve been able to squeeze some unexpected hope from it, including reflections on Milwaukee’s ways of making lemonade.

In this moment, I’m especially drawn to lessons from our elder lemonade makers — those who have created recipes to keep a creative life moving through the decades, regardless of the ingredients Milwaukee offers. And it just so happens, I recently found myself at a transcendent Milwaukee lemonade stand.

This winter at Milwaukee High School of the Arts, the Milwaukee Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority held an arts town hall asking the question: “What is the state of Black Arts in Milwaukee?” The panelists were top notch, including Ferne Caulker, Executive Director and Founder of KO-THI Dance Company, self-taught artist Della Wells, filmmaker Portia Cobb and theater artist Sheri Williams Pannell.

As folks filed into the auditorium, I saw many familiar faces from the arts community for the first time since the pandemic. It felt like a family reunion.

Ferne Caulker opened the panel with a list of Black arts organizations no longer with us. The list was long and foreboding, a testament to the fragility of arts in Milwaukee and how rare sustainable support can be, especially for BIPOC artists. I also heard another reality in this list — a shifting cultural context is not new here. And the organizations that shuttered did not disappear. The people that comprised them continue, recombining or creating new efforts.

Lesson: To be creative here has always required both creativity in product and creativity in business model.

When the event occurred, Della Wells was in the midst of a career ascendency. But her road there has been long, and along it, I’ve witnessed and felt Della’s generous spirit. For years, Della was a staple at art markets, selling small works, dolls, drawings, cards and other artworks. In 2016, my now-wife and I were moving into our first apartment when we bumped into Della. She handed me a small piece and said: “This is for your apartment.” To be seen in this way by an artist I revered was special.

Lesson: Younger artists coming up in Milwaukee have access to established artists, and the shared relationships are invaluable.

It wouldn’t be an art event in Milwaukee if there weren’t major artists sitting in the front row, and like clockwork, artist Evelyn Patricia Terry was there to support and celebrate her peers. Seeing her, I was transported to a memory in her home, which also serves as an art gallery. In this particular memory, Evelyn noticed me shuffling around her house gingerly. I’ve long struggled with chronic back pain, and when she learned about it, Evelyn had something for me. She’d beaten a similar ailment earlier in her life, so she printed me an illustrated sequence of stretches. In no time, there we were in her dining room, bent over at the waist, torsos parallel to the ground, winding our arms like helicopters. It worked — in fact, I was helicoptering earlier today.

Lesson: Creatives in Milwaukee often share freely what they have, whether it’s what’s asked for or what’s needed.

The final event I went to before the pandemic shutdown was an artist talk by Portia Cobb, where she shared the remarkable work she’s created in Milwaukee and beyond. And while I love her artistic output, I think of her first as Amaker’s mom — I went to grade school with her daughter, the kind of connection that isn’t uncommon growing up here. That’s led Portia and I to connect beyond solely talking shop, meandering into conversations about her past as a reggae DJ in Berkeley and the value of a walk in the park.

I’ve been an admirer of Sheri Williams Pannell throughout my adulthood, especially her work foregrounding the stories of Milwaukee’s Bronzeville. But only recently have we connected more deeply. Through a series of conversations, I learned that my mother (art therapist Janet Carr) worked with her in the 90s and that we’d met when I was a child. Sheri has also been a source of needed support through recent deaths in the arts community that we both felt deeply. In her last text message to me, she sent love to my mother and expressed gratitude for the familyship we’ve found together.

Lesson: Bonds of familial kinship run deep in Milwaukee’s creative community, as do the bonds of kinship found in shared purpose and history.

My sincere gratitude to Ferne, Della, Evelyn, Portia, Sheri and the event’s organizers for providing perspective and wisdom in a moment of uncertainty.

To close, I raise a glass to these elders and the many others who show us the way forward by making it this far.

May our recipes continue to transform the sour and strive towards the sweet.

In anticipation of the opening of ​our new space in September 2024, we ​invited active participants and longtime contributors to the artistic communities in Wisconsin to write about the cultural context of this region​. While we recognize​d the impossibility of capturing ​this state in its entirety through this one endeavour, ​the goal was to gather a range of perspectives to provide a fuller and more complex understanding of the artistic production of this ​region. ​We welcomed thoughtful, critical pieces that allow readers to see the artistic milieu, or t​his place, in a new light, reflections on ​Wisconsin's histories that have defined its present, or future-facing pieces that guide us towards new directions.​