Meet the Makers – Margie Criner

Tell us about yourself.
I am a Chicago artist making sculpture within sculpture. I use a variety of textiles in my work such as wood, wool, vintage toys, and found objects. Exteriors of my work are abstract but are informed by real objects. I like to mix science with design and play.

What are you presenting at Maker Faire Milwaukee?
Sculpture within sculpture. I build abstract exteriors that house miniature narrative interiors. The secondary sculptures are lit with LEDs and can be seen through a viewing portal.

Why is making important to you?
I am a serial expressionist. I have always made art, whether 2D, 3D, or music. I am a serial expressionist. I make things because I have to.

What was the first thing you remember making?
I remember making a walkie talkie out of a block of pine and a nail when I was about five or six years old. That was the first object I made in my dad’s wood shop.

What have you made that you are most proud of?
I guess I am most proud of whatever I just completed. I just finished what, from the outside, looks like a box camera made out of a variety of woods (zebra, walnut, oak, poplar, and cherry). The exterior has a magnifying lens. The interior has a scene about climate change. You can only see the interior if you lean in close to the lens portal.

Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?
I would make a series of combination kinetic zoetrope+mutoscope, where the viewer turns a crank, looks through the viewing portal that has a reducing lens, to viewing a ‘movie.’

Meet the Makers – Jenie Gao

Tell us about yourself.
I’m an artist specializing in woodcuts, ink drawings, and allegorical storytelling. The purpose of my work is to challenge existing perspectives, to understand how the things we may not immediately see impact and shape the things we do see.

I also have a work background in commercial printing, education, and lean manufacturing (eliminating waste in business). My experiences across industries and in both “traditionally” creative vs logical roles has made me a firm believer in different disciplines working together to inform and help one another.

I spent the beginning of 2015 traveling to do two art residencies in Argentina and Chile. I’m now back in Madison with new work and new stories that challenge the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

What are you presenting at Maker Faire Milwaukee?
I will be making prints with the print clubs of UWM and MIAD in the Printmaking area! I will likely have a large woodblock with me.

Why is making important to you?
To me, the process of making is a way of giving back. Any time we create something new, we also take something away from somewhere else, so the making of something meaningful is always an act of reciprocity. As an artist, I believe that art is nothing without dialogue. Stories do not exist without context. Making is a way of processing and understanding the world around us. It is because we can observe and learn from the world around us that we can conceptualize and realize something new.

What was the first thing you remember making?
A drawing of a cat with chunky legs. I was three years old. I decided that stick figures sucked, because real animals and people aren’t stick figures.

Clearly, XKCD has since proven me wrong, at least about the sucking part.

What have you made that you are most proud of?
That’s always changing, but most recently I am proudest of the illustrated woodcut book I made in Buenos Aires earlier this year. My work has always been based in stories. This one specifically is about a homing pigeon who leaves what he knows (the all-too-familiar pigeonhole) in the pursuit of some greater purpose and what he ends up learning along the way.

I love this project for several reasons, but perhaps the most important isn’t so much the work itself but the dialogues I was able to have around it. I carried a draft copy with me during my travels through Patagonia in Argentina and Chile. I didn’t speak Spanish before my trip and was slogging through the highs and very low lows of learning a new language as I explored this region. Luckily, I’m stubborn as hell and forced myself to think in Spanish, only read Spanish books, and talk to lots of people who were thankfully patient with my toddler-speak. I was in a city called Bariloche almost 2 months into my trip and told a new friend whom I’d been hiking with that I’d show her my book at the hostel. It so happened that when I did bring out the book that night, we were sitting at a packed table, where some people only spoke English and others only spoke Spanish and only a few understood both. I didn’t want to exclude anybody, so I had to tell the story in both languages as I turned page by page. I think I about gave myself a migraine, but it was a moment when I deeply felt the power of language either to exclude or include and the joy of finally being able to accommodate for others when so many other people had made that effort to include me when I didn’t understand.

You can read more about the book project on my blog.

Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?
I would put together the best dream team I could to build a school of creativity and hands-on workshops that teaches business principles; creative problem solving; the beauty of process (through art and other creative means); and the importance of questioning the purpose and value of what we do, in work or otherwise. I’m an idealistic person at heart, but I hate seeing how often well meaning initiatives and organizations fail because they lack the pragmatism to support their intended vision. I don’t believe that creativity only happens in chaos, or that logic is only for the linear thinker. And while it sounds cheesy, I do believe it’s possible for organizations of any sort to be beautiful inside and out. I also believe that business sense is something anyone would benefit from, whether they choose to work for themselves or for someone else. It starts with the kinds of dialogues and mindsets we encourage. It starts with how we teach and invest in the people in our communities. It starts with making information not only physically available but also mentally accessible, which means not perpetuating the archetypes of starving artists, useless degrees, getting a job just to have one, or that keeping busy–whether for the right reasons or not–is a virtue.

And since it’s an unlimited budget, I would further distribute it to people who equally love lifelong learning, have better ideas and stronger skillsets than I have, and the perseverance needed to champion their ideas and build dream teams both to grow and sustain these kinds of beautiful businesses.

Once all that was off the ground, in the hands of smarter people than myself who continuously teach others to be able to sustain and to grow as well, I would spend the rest of my life writing and illustrating lots of books. And baking pies and inviting friends over to eat these pies. And probably adopting lots of stray animals and playing matchmaker for them and my friends. So in the end, I would use an unlimited budget to make a sanctuary/matchmaking service for animals and people who like pies and books.

Meet the Makers – Jim Plaxco

Tell us about yourself.
I am a digital artist and the creator of a variety of digital art programs, including algorithmic and generative art programs. I am also an advocate for new media art and give public presentations on a variety of digital art topics – with one of my favorite venues for such programs being science fiction conventions.

What are you presenting at Maker Faire Milwaukee?
I will be running a workshop on the Processing programming language, a programming language created specifically for artists, musicians, and other creatives who do not have a background in computer programming. Specifically I will be teaching about how to use Processing to create digital spirographs and harmonographs and will be providing students with several model programs that I have written. There is some additional information in this presentation.

Why is making important to you?
It’s all about the process and the challenge of creating something new. As an artist, it’s about creating new visual experiences but for me it neither starts nor ends there. As a software engineer it’s about being able to create new digital tools that I can then use to create art that is uniquely my own. I derive far more satisfaction creating art using tools that I have created than in creating art using tools that someone else created.

What was the first thing you remember making?
As a child I think I specialized in making messes. But speaking with respect to digital art, it was an animation I created as a part of a graduate level class on computer graphics offered by my university’s art department. It was my first taste of using the computer to create art and it is truly amazing how quickly the field has advanced in the intervening years.

What have you made that you are most proud of?
Again speaking with respect to my digital art activities, one example would be the creation of software that I call gestural algorithmics which made it possible for me to dynamically interact with what would have otherwise been a straight forward algorithmic process. An example of a work of art created using this procedure is a work titled “Finding My Center of Gravity” which you can see online.

Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?
A wall-sized electronic artwork that was interactive with and responsive to its environment – with the additional capability of being tunable to the particular type of atmosphere the collaborator(s) wanted to create.

Meet the Makers – Ashley Town

Tell us about yourself.
My name is Ashley Town and I’m the owner of Bay View Printing Co. Bay View Printing Co will be 100 years old in 2018 and I’m only the 4th owner (first female!). The shop has been run as a commercial print shop in the past, but since I became the owner in October of 2014 I’ve been working to transition it into a community print shop. In addition to making our own art prints to sell and printing custom posters, wedding invitations, business cards and various other jobs for folks, we also offer letterpress workshops, drink&ink nights, open studio time and memberships to the shop.

What are you presenting at Maker Faire Milwaukee?
At Maker Faire Milwaukee we’re presenting a variety of letterpress printed artistic prints that we’ve made at the shop exclusively using our antique wood and metal type. We’ll also have a small handpress and some wood type on hand for folks to set up and print their own 8×10 creations right at our booth! A little taste of what we do every day and what people could expect if they visit the shop for a class or become members.

Why is making important to you?
I think it’s important to make something every day. It feeds my soul. Some days that is a beautiful print, other days an omelette – but regardless of what I’m making, the process of doing so is what’s important. The creative problem solving, the using of my hands, the collaboration with others – this is what makes me feel human.

What have you made that you are most proud of?
The work I’ve made that I’m most proud of is actually not work that I make myself, but the work that I watch others make in my classrooms and at the print shop. Teaching someone how to make something that uses materials and a process that most folks have never done before and then watching their faces light up when they see what they’ve made are the most rewarding and proud moments of my making career thus far.

Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?
Ah! That’s tough. Given an unlimited budget – I’d make a Bay View Printing Co that is a giant, beautiful, sunlit space full of people making their own creations day in and day out. Maybe there would be studio spaces and artists in residence and walls covered in work from folks throughout the community…I guess what I’m trying to make right now at the shop, but bigger!

Meet the Makers – Kevin Zirkelbach

Tell us about yourself.
My name is Kevin Zirkelbach and I am a Graphic Designer and Illustrator. I have been a huge Star Wars fan since the I saw the original movie in 1977. As a kid, I loved building plastic models and drawing and I have been fortunate to do some model and prototype building for my work. About 4 years ago, I discovered the R2-D2 Builder’s Group online. After reading through the group forums and researching the plans, I decided to build a full-sized R2-D2 mostly from styrene plastic, wood and some 3D printed parts.

What are you presenting at Maker Faire Milwaukee?
My radio-controlled R2-D2, information on the group, sample blueprints and parts. I will also be demonstrating the Dremel Ideabuilder 3D printer.

Why is making important to you?
I enjoy the process of making something with my hands and the satisfaction in completing a project or a piece of artwork. I enjoy the technical challenges of making and learning new things.

What was the first thing you remember making?
I remember having a box of plastic model parts when I was 5 or 6 and I enjoyed putting the parts together to make my own creations.

What have you made that you are most proud of?
My R2-D2. He definitely was a labor of love.

Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?
A larger workshop!