Recipro[city]

Michael Carriere, Erin Garber-Pearson, Chris Corkery, Samantha

Barth, J.T. Wehmeier, Robert Pach, James Watson

Milwaukee School of Engineering, 2023

Steel, Soil, Plants, Self Watering System (PVC, Rubber Liner, Styrofoam)

43” x 43” x 30”

Statement From The Artists:

"Recipro[city]" pays homage to the work of Milwaukee’s environmentalists, cultural workers, and urban growers who envision sustainable spaces designed and built to accommodate the natural world, while visualizing the health of a community predicated upon daily access to green spaces and water. This sculpture contains a self watering system where water sits in the bottom of the basin and reaches the plant roots from below, through capillary action. Our team looked at many ideas, from abstract hydroponic sculptures to the more representational soil-based work seen here.

The MSOE students were interested in images that included the industrial character of Milwaukee and responded to ideas that included bridges. Artist Erin Garber-Pearson, wanted to incorporate these ideas into a design that had a sense of the micro to macro, the beneficial insects to towering architecture, agreeing on bridges as a metaphor for unity and change, towards caretaking of plants, animals and water as precious life giving beings in our community.