Dear Diary asked artists to reveal their most confessional works, whether that be journal entries, or pieces left unfinished, or even unwanted. The night itself felt hushed and intimate, with many pieces displaying a brave amount of honesty. For example, Alex Death’s painting, What a Woman, blurs the distinctions between abstract figuration and self portrait. By including strands of her own dyed hair into the piece, she effectively creates a figure worth an empathetic reaction. Cole Lehto’s Washed Poppies are decidedly large, and occupy a decent sized corner of the gallery. Large in their honesty as well, these hanging plaster poppies forcibly represent his relationship to opioids. To take the theme to heart, Patricia Fleming’s Journal Transformations use pages out of their actual journals to make framed origami butterflies, offering old thoughts and feelings the space to react and engage with the present. With these and many more works from talented Milwaukee artists, Dear Diary showcased the kind of honesty that artists strive to achieve through their practice.
1.
Grace Mitchell (she/they)
Lovehold, 2020-2023
Quilt
As a multidisciplinary artist, I construct tapestries out of lyrics, fabric, and footage. These collages of various mediums convey the nonlinear upward spiral of relationships: romantic, platonic, familial, and with the self. Lovehold uses quilting to flatten spans of time into comic-escque depictions of love, addiction, and anxious dreaming.
2.
Maïa Brunel (she/her)
Seriously keep out or else! 2023
Quilting, embroidery, couching, buttons
8” x 9”
I started embroidery and quilting last spring. It reminds me of a mother I never had and a grandma who never taught me. I don’t like to learn anyways, I only like to do. I wasn’t an artist forever’ I wasn’t really an artist until about four years ago. I think about being 19 and I think about growing up and I think about my dad telling me I’m lazy. I tried so hard to be a woman until I realized I don’t have to. I like toys and I like soft things and I like to write down everything I think because if I don’t, I will certainly forget.
3.
Ladasia Bryant (she/her)
Your Voice My Hand I Can Feel Your Words, 2022
Acrylic on canvas and embroidery
12” x 12”
An Ode to my father who I lost in 2022. I wanted to make sure this piece showed his radians, but also showed how I was estranged from him for so much of my life after part of my childhood. We started rebuilding a relationship in high school, which was for the best as that’s when his advice and words helped me the most. I found this picture the day he died. I remember feeling so full of regret about how I’d acted and not appreciated everything my family did for me. I apologized to my mom, and the next day he passed away. The piece says: “I can feel your words like you’re still holding my hand.”
4.
Bucko Crooks (he/him)
Ornytion 2, 2022
Steel
44.5” x 17.5” x 22”
Bucko Crooks is an artist from Milwaukee WI working primarily in steel, noise, and performance art. His sculptural “Ornytion” series are steel abstract works. In ancient myth, Sisyphus’ son was called Ornytion, the linguistic root of which means “to rise”. Each successive numbered piece in the series is slightly larger than the last, with “Ornytion 0” measuring at just over 1 ft in height, to “Ornytion 7”, which clocks in at 6’5”.
5.
Chloe Mae Greene (they/them)
Collection of Memories, 2023
Acrylic, oil pastel, and ribbon on canvas
24” x 30”
This collection of memories is: LOVE. My grandmother’s affinity for ceramic cat figures inspired this piece. I always loved how these cat’s bodies melted into one solid form, their closeness getting confused with oneness. These forms are so tender, their relationships clearly communicated and unapologetic by the way they lean into one another, and their uniformity. I love their love, and I miss my grandma <3
6.
Jojo Brickey (she/her)
Leaning, 2022-2023
Mixed Media
~ 12” x 12”
My artwork began as a huge canvas on my wall in my old apartment. I painted on it for a year and when I moved it took a new form as a book. Working on it has been playful, embarrassing, filling, and a crisis. The book is a gathering of writings, images and materials from over the years. I’m making it for birds and bugs, for breaking into a million pieces and for my coffee table and for changing it and laughing at it, and for what hurts and for what loves. Please look through the pages!
7.
Patricia Fleming (she/they)
Journal Transformations, 2009-2013
Old journal pages, papier-mache, & velvet
Varying sizes
A prolific filler of notebooks, journals, and post it notes, Fleming pulled pages from their teenage journals to create these origami butterflies in 2016, transforming painful points of their own mind into a collection of wing delights. In 2018, while residing in a studio in Indianapolis, Fleming returned the butterflies, creating coffins as homes for the set of six. Fleming creates, destroys, and remakes in an ever-changing context. Their poetry and art practices are outlets for their ever evolving self-mythology.
8.
Keyarah Peppel (she/they)
Mixed Feelings, 2022
Pastels pencil on rice paper
14” x 17”
These drawings act as a personal, visual journal, where I meditate on unaddressed emotions through drawing. As you look at the work, I hope you go on your own Neptunian journey into your dreams, psychic powers, and creative pursuits.
9.
Keyarah Peppel (she/they)
Untitled, 2023
Pastel pencil on rice paper
19” x 27”
10.
Marie Helser (she/they)
AN ORANGE SOMEONE RIPPED THE SKIN OFF OF, 2023
Ink on Paper
9” x 12”
Art is a huge hobby and passion of mine, one which I can usually pour my many unresolved emotions into. This piece is no different as it references the feeling of being forgotten by someone you think about every day. I love LOVE to draw/illustrate hands in different mediums, and I’m excited to continue exploring the human body in my art.
11.
Carolann Cohen Grzybowski (she/her)
For the Price of One, 2021
Runtime 9:42
Inspired by the concept that we perceive stars as they appeared years ago, this project became an exploration of hereditary trauma from mother to child. Constructed to view the past as present by use of screen capture, resurfaced voicemails, my mother’s journal entries from when I was a child and the diaries I kept as a teenager. The first flickering film slides are all works of art from my mother’s sister who died in her 20s.
12.
Sea Green (they/them)
Coward, 2023
Sculpture
13” x 9”
I am in my found object, repurposing era. Going on long walks around my city to unearth the discarded treasures, each accompanied by my own daydreams and fantasy world building to display visuals of things I am unable to express fully with words.
13.
Claudia Carlson (she/her)
Tête-à-Tête, 2022
Acrylic on Canvas
36” x 48”
While making these works, I was interested in tying together the Greek myth of narcissus with my passion for self-reflection. These paintings are personal, achy, and improvisational meditations on relationships while at a crossroads in my emerging adulthood.
14.
Claudia Carlson (she/her)
Untitled, 2022
Ink Paper
8” x 12”
15.
Cole Lehto (he/him)
Washed Poppies, 2023
Plaster and foam
Varying sizes
Washed Poppies was an expression of my feelings around opiates at the time of making. Dear Diary- While I don’t feel the compulsion like I did before, the feelings still linger occasionally quite loudly. Painlessness is empty but blissful. I made this with punching bag balloons and carved foam flower tops wrapped in plaster bandages and covered with more plaster.
16.
Ash Metz (they/he)
But I Showed You My Guts, 2023
Acrylic on Canvas
18” x 24”
I’ve never been very good at creating self portraits as I struggle with self image - but when I create personal art, I find it’s much easier to paint personal experiences (or about them) when I create otherworldly beings to take my place. “But I Showed U My Guts” is about bearing yourself to someone and still being left to stitch yourself back up.
17.
Alex Death (she/it)
What A Woman! 2023
Acrylic and hair on canvas
10” x 10”
“What a Woman!” was made in a lonely and objectified period over the summer where I was hyper-aware of being transgender. The figure is out of place amongst other women, frightened and panicked, looking for something to latch onto. The piece was made with my actual hair. Disassociated and disillusioned, I ripped out clumps and added them between the layers of globby acrylic paint. I feel bad for the freak bird girl.
18.
Jennavieve Growel (she/her)
MY INABILITY TO FORM A DEEP CONNECTION WITH ANYONE CONCERNS MY MOTHER GREATLY, 2023
Digital design, zine excerpts
8.5” X 11”
Offering a unique perspective, merging tragedy and comedy through a deeply personal lens. The graphics invite you to flip through a narrative that explores the complicities of connection. If you find yourself feeling alienated or disturbed, rest assured that the zine has accomplished its purpose. To those who resonate with its themes, I offer my sincerest sympathies.
19.
Max Stern (he/him)
The Knot, 2022
Letter to Neighbor Regarding the Three Bright Lights Outside my Bathroom Window. 2022
