Paul Druecke | Shoreline Repast | 2017

Milwaukee-based artist Paul Druecke explores the various forms of public inscription that exist in our landscape. From faux National Park service historical markers to poetry-infused welcome mats, his experiments replace “official” language, that fix value and identity, with alternative narratives and cultural structures that allow us to consider how our world is shaped. 

Druecke is interested in all kinds of social gatherings. For example, he documents friends gathering in a kitchen to share their food, which is always at the heart of every community. In these homemade films, the casual atmosphere, low tech aesthetic, and occasional bouts of singing and laughing provide an antidote to modern cooking shows, whose high production value and sophisticated knowledge discourage all but the hearty among us.

Druecke is perhaps best known for his Social Archive project begun in 1997. The artist asked friends, neighbors, and colleagues in Milwaukee to submit one picture from their own family photo album. After 10 years Druecke had 731 pictures, which were shown together at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2017. While this snapshot of Milwaukee does not encompass our broadly diverse community, it does suggest the concentric circles that surround each of us, from home, school, and church to the gym and our other various social groups. These anonymous images counter the money-driven celebrity culture that tries to render meaningless the real relationships that fuel our lives. 

Druecke’s Shoreline Repast, commissioned for the inaugural Sculpture Milwaukee 2017, 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 reconfigures the plaque's perpendicular, upright relation to the earth, magnifies the symbiotic, conditional nature of landmarks and the culture that erects them. Each side has a different style of language, showing the difference between our public and private worlds.