The Rita Tallent Picken Regional Center for Arts and Humanities

In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten, and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised, and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

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In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten, and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised, and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

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In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten, and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised, and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten, and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised, and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

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In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten, and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised, and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

Buy Tickets

In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten, and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised, and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

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Rafael Francisco Salas is a Wisconsin based artist.  Salas is also an arts writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Newcity Art Chicago, The Isthmus Magazine and Urban Milwaukee. In 2022, Governor Tony Evers appointed Rafael Francisco Salas to the Wisconsin Arts Board, the state agency responsible for the support and development of the arts throughout Wisconsin. He also serves on the Executive Board of the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Salas is a Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Ripon College in Ripon, WI.

Lois Bielefeld is a queer series-based artist working in photography, audio, video, and performance. Currently settled in Milwaukee, Lois has lived on both coasts with a graduate degree from the California Institute of the Arts. Besides photography, they feel passionate about traveling, hiking, eating, and gardening adventures with their wife.  

Their work is in the permanent collections of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Saint Kate Arts Hotel, the Warehouse Museum and the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin. Bielefeld has shown at The International Center of Photography in New York City, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, de Young Museum in San Francisco, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and Dom Wein in Vienna.

I AM HERE, AND YOU ARE WHERE YOU ARE

RAFAEL FRANCISCO SALAS

My artwork reflects on American tradition and identity. It speaks to an indignant desire for a dream continually just beyond reach. It is a strange, rural poetry of aspiration and poignant reality, a striver’s endeavor of high and low culture, situated between the elevated and the abject.

Country music is the appropriate soundtrack.

Presented in alliance with The Laramie Project.

New Domesticity

Lois Bielefeld

Presented in alliance with The Laramie Project.

The Emile H. Mathis Gallery
Upper Gallery

Sep 6-Nov 17, 2023
Artist Talk   Wed, Oct 18  |  2:20 pm
Reception   Wed, Oct 18  |     4-6 pm

In New Domesticity, Bielefeld digs into how home and our roles within them are culturally constructed. Mainstream advertising, television, and movies contribute to the creation of heteronormative ideas about home that Bielefeld actively seeks to disrupt. Bielefeld photographs people from a wide range of identities, while making a point of queering the photographic canon. She spotlights the intentional and deliberate choice of domestic roles within the queer home, and thus draws an explicit contrast to traditional gender-identity formation that is often assumed unthinkingly. She depicts individuals and families, including her own queer family, as they relate to home and domesticity. In so doing, Bielefeld expands on the long history of the private space of the home providing both refuge and safety to people, but especially within queer communities. 

The home is a space for potential where our most inner beings are nurtured, developed, examined, and satisfied.            
-Lois Bielefeld

Lois Bielefeld is a queer series-based artist working in photography, audio, video, and performance. Currently settled in Milwaukee, Lois has lived on both coasts with a graduate degree from the California Institute of the Arts. Besides photography, they feel passionate about traveling, hiking, eating, and gardening adventures with their wife.  

Their work is in the permanent collections of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Saint Kate Arts Hotel, the Warehouse Museum and the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin. Bielefeld has shown at The International Center of Photography in New York City, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, de Young Museum in San Francisco, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and Dom Wein in Vienna.

Fredrickson worked for the Kenosha News, Racine Journal Times, Waukegan News-Sun, Waukesha Freeman newspaper and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Most significantly, he served for a decade as a special Photo Correspondent for the British- based Reuters international news agency. He also contributed work to the Associated Press (AP) and Universal Press International (UPI).

He also served in the U.S. Army as a military police officer (MP) in the early 1970s. Born on August 23, 1951, Al Fredrickson passed away on April 9, 2021 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. We welcome you to discover his unique and inspiring photos.

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