Previous MIAD sculpture graduates work at or own the following companies:

• Adambomb Gallery (owner), Milwaukee, WI
• Circle 1 Network, web site development, research, planning, Milwaukee, WI
• Creative Solutions, product analysis, concept and design, Canton, MA
• Custom Palette LLC (owner), commissioned work; fine arts, restoration, decorative art, paint, design, Elm Grove & Helenville, WI
• Flux Design (owner), custom furniture design, sculpture and interior design, Milwaukee, WI
• H. Mertsching, bronze sculpture, master art molds, Portland, OR
• Jester Studio, various media, sculpture, drawing, graphic design, Milwaukee WI
• Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN), internet resource for area artists, Milwaukee, WI
• Replica Masters, reproductions; 3D design and sculpture, Cedarburg, WI
• Stone Dimensions, granite fabrication, products, Pewaukee, WI
• T6 Sculpture/Design, sculpture, models, props for advertising/film, Milwaukee, WI
• Utilikits Company, clothing-kilts, Seattle, WA
• Vanguard Sculpture Services, specialty foundry, Milwaukee, WI
• Where Magazine, designer, New York, NY
• Women's Studio Workshop, non-profit arts center, New York, NY

RELATED INDUSTRIES:
Industries you might expect

• Advertising and marketing specialties
• Apparel and Fashion Design
• Conservation and Restoration
• Community Centers and Services
• Craft Design
• Custom manufacturing/fabricating
• Furniture Design
• Gallery and Museum
• Landscape Architecture
• Theater and Stage Design
• Retail specialties

Industries you might not expect

• Animation
• Interior Architecture or Design
• Environmental Graphic Design
• Exhibit / Display Design
• Film / Television / Video Design
• Industrial Design
• Transportation Design

Possible with graduate study

• Art Education and Art Therapy

 

Tony Matelli
Reality. Replicated (sort of).

• born in Chicago, IL
• graduated 1993, BFA Sculpture
  1995, MFA Cranbrook Academy of Art
• currently a studio artist in NYC

"...it's just real enough..."

"Tony Matelli is a trickster, a trader in combinatory illusions, a skilled manipulator of the restless mediation between metaphor, meaning and truth."1

After graduating from MIAD as a Sculpture Major, Tony Matelli certainly didn't waste any time establishing himself as one of the world's most significant contemporary artists. He attended graduate school, and soon became a national and international wonder showing work in places such as Sweden, France, Italy, and New York. "I make work that speaks of the need and the frustration of trying to locate oneself in an already set world. My work frequently depicts things finding wayward means of survival."2

Matelli's work has been described as playful, sarcastic, dark, witty, intellectual, even vulgar. His hyper-real sculptures and installations invite viewers to look at slices of life (whether personal, environmental, social, or cultural) that are often overlooked, ignored, or altogether avoided. Through his work Matelli forces us to reexamine ourselves, our humanness, including all our faults, insecurities, and imperfections.

About Sleep Walker:
"Matelli's characters seem to cast about in stories that we can only imagine, inhabiting narrative 'climaxes' -- captured moments with the ruptured quality of a snapshot.... His single figures are uncertain agents, cut loose to implicate their environments and the viewers who encounter them. Sleep Walker [1998], for example, depicts the life-size figure of a somnambulant young man. Vulnerable in his BVDs, he is zombified, maw agape, arms outstretched, caught dumb and sluggish in-between security and disconnection. Wandering beyond the range of enacted subjectivity, eyes closed, the Sleep Walker is unaware of life, even refuses it.3

 

 

About The Hunter:
"In The Hunter [2002], a highly derailed self-portrait, Matelli makes for an improbable huntsman, armed with a single rope and wearing garments that are not quite appropriate.... It's as if camouflage fabric, perfect for hiding among leaves, had been supplanted by a fantastic uniform perfect for roaming about the territory of dreams. The face bears the dumbfounded expression of one who has just smelled a mysterious odor -- midway between repulsion and attraction, between the fear of discovering an unpleasant surprise and the desire to encounter something new. The figure's stance, too, with his hand held up to his face, underlines this medley of feelings....4

 

 

About Abandon:
"Matelli proposed Abandon [1999-2000], his first site-specific gallery commission as an exercise in calculated failure predicated on weeds. Prosaic objects which manage to be 'waste and life at the same time,' weeds lend themselves, perhaps incomparably, to a focused exploration of metaphor and meaning. For Matelli, weeds are 'the horticultural equivalent of a zit,' and 'represent a breakdown, either a failure or refusal to fight the perfunctory battle against entropy. One weed is a forgivable blemish. Overgrowth is hopeless abandon. Overgrowth inside is the cultivation of abandonment, a rewriting of rules. The celebration of failure.' "5

 

 

Selected solo exhibitions

• Leo Koenig Inc. NYC [2005/02/01]
• Emmanuel Perrotin France [2005]
• Kunsthalle Wien Austria [2004]
• Kunstraum Dornbin Austria [2004]
• Galerie Andrehn Schiptjenko Sweden [2003/99]
• Sies+Hocke Gallery Dusseldorf [2003/00]
• Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery France [2002]
• Gian Enzo Sperone Italy [2002]
• Bailey Fine Art Toronto [2002]
• Art Dealers Invitational France [2001]
• Ten in One Gallery NYC [2000]
• Torch Gallery Amsterdam [2000]
• Gallery du Triangle France [2000]
• University of Buffalo Art Gallery NY [1999]
• Basilico Fine Arts NYC [1999/97]
• Ten in One Gallery Chicago, IL [1997]

Selected group exhibitions

• 'The Most Splendid Apocalypse' PPOW Gallery NYC [2005]
• Gary Tatintsian Gallery Moscow, Russia [2005]
• 'The Ten Commandments' Hygeine Museum Dreden, Germany [2004]
• 'The Uncanny' Tate, Liverpool England [2004]
• 'The Fourth Sex' MOCA Chicago, IL [2003]
• 'Small World' MOCA San Diego, CA [2000]

 

1,3,5 Fischman, Lisa. Tony Matelli. New York: Leo Koenig, Inc., 2003.
2 http://www.ps1.org/cut/Gny/tmatelli.html
4 Romeo, Filippo. "Tony Matelli -- Reviews: Rome." ArtForum. 11.2002. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_3_41/ai_94122726

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Shamrowicz
An Urban Innovator.

• graduated 1998, BFA double-major, Industrial Design + Sculpture, minored in Illustration
• currently President + Co-Owner of Flux Design www.thinkflux.com

"Everybody comes to MIAD for the same reason, they've got a passion for creativity. We've simply found a way to keep that experience alive."

"When I was a child, all I wanted to do was grow up; now that I'm an adult, all I want to do is be a child." An avid Star Wars and Lord of the Rings collector and outdoorsman, Jeremy Shamrowicz completed his MIAD degree with a double-major in Industrial Design and Sculpture. When asked how his MIAD education affected where he is today, Shamrowicz replied, "What I've gleaned from MIAD has been invaluable: the teachers, the students, the challenge and the competition."

• download this and other success stories in pdf form

 

 

After graduation, "I committed myself to becoming self-employed. I was determined to spend night and day building my own life -- my living, my business, my family and friends."

Shamrowicz signed a lease on a gallery space on North Water Street in the Historic Third Ward of Milwaukee. Jesse Meyer, a MIAD graduate and good friend of Shamrowicz, left his special-effects job in California, returning to Milwaukee to work with Shamrowicz on Gallery 326. For several months, they built an entirely new interior for the space while creating artwork and furniture for the gallery's opening. Shamrowicz says, "In fact, the very first table we made used materials left over from some of my MIAD sculpture projects." From this, Flux Design was born, and the company has continued to grow, gaining notoriety around the world.

Flux Design concepts, designs, fabricates, and installs interior and exterior elements for commercial and residential clients. In the five years since the company began, it has grown to over fifteen employees, with over half who are MIAD graduates. The company also employs several MIAD student interns on a regular basis. Recently, Flux moved into a 20,000 square-foot fabrication facility in the Riverworks Business Park in Milwaukee, WI.

 

 

When asked how he would like to change culture, Shamrowicz responded, "I would love to get people to understand that art is not something on a wall or on a pedestal. Art is everywhere. I would like to get everyone to take five minutes per day to recognize it; to see it all around them; to appreciate the little things."

Places to see the work of Flux Design:

• Vucciria Restaurant, Milwaukee, WI
• Terrace Bar, Milwaukee, WI
• Vivo Urban Grill, Milwaukee, WI
• Velvet Room, Milwaukee, WI
• Roots, restaurant, Milwaukee, WI
• Sauce, restaurant, Milwaukee, WI
• Crave, restaurant, Madison, WI
• Pizza Shuttle, Milwaukee, WI
• Ducati Cafe, Saukville, WI
• Twisted Fork, restaurant, Milwaukee, WI
• Eve, restaurant/nightclub, Milwaukee, WI
• The Social, restaurant, Milwaukee, WI

Select businesses that Flux Design has worked or collaborated with:

• Starbucks
• Masterlock
• Laughlin-Constable marketing firm
• Zimmerman Design Group
• Ducati Motorcycles
• Boelter & Lincoln marketing firm
• BOP clothing store
• Cramer-Krasselt advertising/marketing firm

 

 

Melissa Dorn Richards
Opportunity.

• attended West Bend East High School, West Bend, WI
• graduated 1996, BFA Sculpture
• currently Executive Director of the Milwaukee Artists Resource Network [MARN]

Melissa Dorn Richards knows the meaning of community. Since graduating from MIAD, she has spent a considerable amount of her life supporting and engaging in the arts. From creating murals with children in their neighborhoods and schools to helping professional artists succeed and network through the Milwaukee Artists Resource Network [MARN], Dorn Richards understands the value and power in bringing a community together through the arts.

Q. What did you think you wanted to be when you grew up?

A. As a child I wanted to be a teacher or a lawyer. At that point I don't think I knew what an artist was or that it was a career. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I started to think seriously about being an artist or having a career in the arts.

Q. What is your first memorable experience with art and design?

A. I didn't have an art class until I was in third grade, and I remember sitting across from my best friend watching her draw a lollipop tree (you know the kind, a brown rectangle with a big green circle on top), and thinking that's not what a tree looks like and mine won't look like that either.
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Q. How did your MIAD education affect where you are today?

A. EVERY opportunity I've had since graduating from MIAD can be traced back to either the connections I made at MIAD or the incredible Career Services office. I still receive the Opportunities Bulletin via email, and I have my resume on file with Career Services. At MIAD, I learned the tools to practice art and make a living at it. It wasn't until I graduated that I learned that not all colleges taught the business side of art.

 

Q. What would you tell a high school student who is considering attending MIAD now that you have experienced life after graduation?

 

A. Take advantage of every opportunity and resource that MIAD has to offer including the facility, your peers, and Career Services. Learn everything that you can about your major and the tools you need to practice your art.

Q. If you had to sum up your job in a single sentence, what would it be?

A. I've created a career out of a variety of interests; it includes being the Executive Director of Milwaukee Artists Resource Network [MARN], a working artist, and teaching art through various nonprofit groups.

Q. What are your goals for the future, in art and design and in life?

A. I've been focusing on painting, and plan to get back into sculpture, which was my major at MIAD.

 

 

Selected Exhibitions

• Michael Lord Gallery, Milwaukee, WI [2004]
• Franklin Woods Gallery + Studio, Baileys Harbor, WI [2004]
• KM Art, Milwaukee, WI [2004]
• Frank Allen Gallery, Glendale, WI [2004]
• Chicago Arts Festival, Chicago, IL [2003-04]

Selected Teaching Experience + Arts Administration

• MARN Executive Director, WI [2005]
• MARN Board Member, WI [2004]
• Riverwest Artists Association ArtWalk Coordinator + Board Member, WI [1996-2001]
• La Escuela Fratney Resident Artist, WI [2004]
• ArtWorks for Milwaukee, Lead Artist, WI [2004]
• Badger Association of the Blind + Visually Impaired, Resident Artist, WI [2002-03]

 

kathryn e. martin
Compulsion + Control.

• attended Saucon Valley High School
• Hellertown, PA/Valparaiso High School, Valparaiso, IN
• graduated 2001, BFA Sculpture
• currently MFA Candidate, InterMedia, University of WI-Milwaukee

"MIAD completely helped to shape me into who I am today...."

Q. What did you want to be when you grew up?

A. A motorcyclist and animal psychologist.

Q. What was your first memorable experience with art and design?

A. Lego's.

Q. How did your MIAD education affect where you are today?

A. It completely helped to shape me into who I am today...it gave me the tools to manage time, problem solve, and have confidence.

Q. What was the most valuable thing you learned at MIAD?

A. What makes me happy.

Q. What's the one thing you would tell a high school student who is considering attending MIAD now that you've experienced life after graduation?

A. Work harder than you ever have, and enjoy it (the process and success) more than you ever could.

Q. What are your goals for the future, in art/design and in life?

A. Never stop making...

Q. What are some of your hobbies/interests?

A. Reading, in the sun, for hours on end.

Q. Are there any specific parts of your resume that you'd like to share?

A. I was a visiting artist in Kansas, and that was great. And the travel to New York and Vietnam.

ArtChicago, The Stray Show, and GardenFresh were all fun, fun shows that I participated in. The Rust Spot shows were, perhaps, my most memorable shows, with other MIAD grads such as Nate Pate, Harvey Opgenorth, Nick Holbus, Aaron Reiner, Betsy Walton, Amy Lapke, and so many more....

Q. Please define how you saw your major while in school, and how that definition has changed over the years.

A. I loved Sculpture because we could, and did, get into whatever area/media we wanted to work in. We weren't restricted to a defined discipline -- of course, we used space, and volume, and shape, form, etc., etc., but out products took the form of functional objects, or formal pieces, or video, paintings, bronze ingots -- whatever! And as far as I can tell, the Sculpture department is still rockin' the kasba...

Selected solo exhibitions

• The Airplane Project. GARDENfresh, Chicago, IL [2006]
• Plane on Plane. Logan Gallery, Wright Museum of Art, Beloit, WI [2005]
• Unicorn Cloud. Hotcakes Gallery, Milwaukee, WI [2005]
• Flight Path. Hotcakes Gallery, Milwaukee, WI [2004]

Selected group exhibitions

• InSite: Temporary Public Art. North Avenue, Milwaukee, WI [2006]
• The Stray Show w/Hotcakes Gallery, Chicago, IL [2004]
• Rust Spot * Dye House. The Dye House, Milwaukee, WI [2002]
• Apocalypse, No! New York Studio Program, New York, NY [2000]

Selected professional experience

• Visiting Artist. Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS [2006]
• Instructor. 3D Concepts. UWM, Milwaukee, WI [2006/05]
• Artist's Assistant. Santiago Cucullu. Milwaukee, WI [2005]
• Exhibition Designer. Can You Sit on It? Brook Stevens Gallery, Milwaukee, WI [2005]
• Artist's Assistant. Lee Boroson, New York, NY [2000]