MILWAUKEE — Recently, I discovered I've somehow been missing a piece of public art I've walked past - or actually on - for half a decade.
I've been living near Brady Street in Milwaukee for more than five years. I've walked down the street hundreds of times. One day as I'm walking, I look down and see something I've never paid any attention to before - a green sidewalk.
I thought to myself - why are there so many green pieces of concrete, who put them there, and is anyone going to give them a touch-up because some are in rough shape? So I did some digging to get to the bottom of it all.
Watch The history and future of Brady Street’s green sidewalk art...
The green slabs of concrete are pictographs called the Green Flow. They were installed 28 years ago in 1996. At the time, green was used because it matched the top of St. Hedwig's Church on Brady Street. The church has since painted the spire brown. The flower represents how Brady Street connects the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan.
“So the symbolism of the memories floating in the flow of time, and the flow of the river between - and what happened between the two big bodies of water," Julilly Kohler, who came up with the idea, said.
In the 1990s, Kohler became more interested in public art as a way of creating an identity for a city and neighborhood. That's when she came up with the idea of the Green Flow.
Each image is a literal walk down memory lane of Brady Street that honors its history, people, businesses, and events. There are pictographs honoring the Olympic torch heading down Brady Street in 1996, the Brady Street Festival, old horse stables that used to be on the street, an old bowling alley, the original home of the Italian Community Center, an ode to the many immigrants who came to Wisconsin in the 1800s, an old shoe repair shop, Peter Sciortino bakery, an old luthier's shop, and many more. In total, there are 86 pictographs that take up about 10 blocks. Neighbors contributed design ideas during community brainstorming sessions. Pamela Scesniak was the artist who made it come to life.
Since people couldn’t see the art display while driving, the Green Flow was an invitation to walk down the street, look at the pictographs, and create new memories.
“In order to have memories you had to have a good time to be here in the first place. So our first thing was you walk your walk on Brady Street where the ethnic and eclectic meet.”
However, the display has begun to change. Twenty-eight years later, those designs are fading. About 34 of the pictographs are deteriorating due to rough Wisconsin weather, construction, and plants growing in the cracks. Some slabs have minor cracks while others are missing entire chunks of concrete. So what’s going to happen to this public art?
“Look for funding possibly. Do we cut out the pieces that are the actual art pieces and do we affix them to buildings so people can talk about them? I’ve thought about QR codes on each one so maybe it’s a walking tour," Michael Sander, the executive director of the Brady Street Improvement District, said.
Or maybe they could replace the cracked concrete with new designs to reflect the Brady Street of today. I like the idea of using the Japanese style of art called kintsugi. It's the process of using gold to fix cracked pottery. However, I admit that would be expensive, and one of the main issues the BID has right now is funding.
“How do we preserve this? It's public art, you know? Public art is very important in our city," Sander said.
There isn’t a concrete plan to preserve the Green Flow yet. You can go tobradystreet.org to offer ideas or funding.
And don't be like me - ignorant of what was below my feet. Take a look down at the sidewalk, admire the art beneath you, talk to business owners, and make new memories on Brady Street. After all, that was the point of The Green Display in the first place.
"The point was to have the memories in front of the buildings that it happened in, so the people could go into our merchants and have the conversation, 'What is that doing out there? What does that mean? What does that stand for?'" Julilly Kohler said.
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