Paul Druecke | Shoreline Repast | 2017

Milwaukee-based artist Paul Druecke’s Shoreline Repast borrows the visual form of a public, commemorative plaque to celebrate Lake Michigan, the most important site of Milwaukee’s public rituals. The plaque appears to sink into the ground. The shift in orientation, which configures the plaque's perpendicular, upright relation to the earth, magnifies the symbiotic, conditional nature of landmarks and the culture that erects them. 

Shoreline Repast continues Druecke's exploration of the ways in which culture inscribes itself into the landscape, what Druecke refers to as “public inscription.” The project commemorates the long legacy, across generations and cultures, of sharing a meal near water's calming presence. The plaque's two texts blur the distinction between public and private, inviting the audience to consider their own relationship to the land and the lake, poetry and pronouncement, and past, present and future.