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Gallery 69 – Brittany Farina

Brittany Farina is an illustrator who creates art for dog lovers. From pet portraits to stickers and magnets and even apparel. Brittany sent a bunch of packs for Gallery 69 that include a variety of stickers and magnets that show her style, and each includes a card so you can find her work online.

Speaking of her work, you can find it at brittanyfarina.com and if you prefer Facebook or Instagram she’s there as well. (Both are a steady stream of pet portraits which show her craft really well.)

Brittany also creates adult coloring books, and if you love dogs (and coloring!) it seems like that might be right up your alley.

She also does coloring books for rescue organizations to help raise funds so they can help more dogs. (I’m a cat-person myself, but I really so appreciate how much Brittany loves dogs and what she does for them and their owners.)

Okay dog lovers, what are you waiting for!? I’ve dropped a few of these stick & magnet packs into the gallery, so come and get them… and if you like what you see, get in touch with Brittany about more!

Gallery 69 is a Free Little Art Gallery located on 69th street just north of Locust street in the Enderis Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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Gallery 69 – Dave Polaschek

Right before I officially opened Gallery 69 I posted the following on Mastodon:

I’m opening a gallery this week. Sure, it’s in my front yard, and it can only handle small art… but the Free Little Art Gallery is (nearly) open!

Let me know if you want to contribute any art.

Woodworker Dave Polaschek said “What’s your address?” and I gave it to him and in no time he shipped a box of objects to me. It was the first to arrive, and I wanted to thank Dave (and congratulate him) for being the first one to send a package to the gallery. Cheers! So what was inside? Well, check the photos! Things from Dave’s woodshop. He also provided info on everything, so I’ll expand below.

The shot glass is birch from Timber Bay Lodge in Babbitt, Minnesota which was stabilized with black-dyed acrylic. (It might not be food-safe though, so don’t drink from it!) You can find more info about it on lumberjocks.com

While I’ve 3D printed a shot glass in the past I don’t think I’ve even seen a wooden shot glass. It’s pretty cool, and I hope someone takes it and appreciates it.

This bird (or “birb” as Dave called it) looks amazing. It was carved from juniper found in Dave’s back yard in New Mexico in September 2022. Hand-carving is one of those things I’m always fascinated by… My own skills lie elsewhere but I always appreciate a nice piece of wood shaped into something beautiful.

Again there’s a bit more info on Dave’s “birbs” on the lumberjocks.com site.

Finally there are two tops which were made in November 2021. One of them is pine and the other is a tropical hardwood (maybe granadillo). Both of them have been figited with in the shop and are a little dinged up. Dave suggested I add some paste wax to them (and I did) so they are nice objects but can also just functions as toys.

Thanks for reading this! You can check out more of Dave’s art at peekachello.art as well as write.as/davepolaschek

Gallery 69 is a Free Little Art Gallery located on 69th street just north of Locust street in the Enderis Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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The Sidewalk Project

I didn’t set out to turn this into a project, but occasionally as time goes by you see things emerge, and then you turn a curiosity into something a bit more solid. Basically, I started walking to get more exercise about two years ago, and as I was walking I would sometimes see an old sidewalk square stamp. I saw a 1956 near my house and thought that was cool. I saw some really beautiful stamps, and some ugly ones (from a design standpoint) and I would share some of them online, mostly on Facebook after returning from my daily walk.

At some point someone asked me about locations, and I realized that since I take all the photos with my mobile phone the location data is embedded in every file. Sadly, the social media platforms typically strip this data, and even if they didn’t I don’t know that they have a good way of showing the data. I use Piwigo for my photo gallery, so I put all the photos there, and was able to add a map. I’d like to show location data on each photo page, but I’m still working on that.

For now though, you can view the photos, download them, see the geo coords in the file, and view the map. (Note that on a mobile device you need to switch to “Desktop” view. (Something else to fix in the future I guess.)

As of this posting date (2023-08-20) this is the list of years I’ve captured (the blue text with a strikethrough). I still have not completed a full decade, though I am close. The great majority of these are within walking distance of my house, though there are a few from Bay View and Downtown, but most are around Enderis Park, Cooper Park, Lenox Heights, and the surrounding areas.

I would prefer to have stamps that are in Milwaukee, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. I’ve been avoiding stamps that say Wauwatosa, which is difficult because I live near the edge of Tosa and walk there all the time. I also don’t limit it to one of each year, and I’ll grab the same year if it’s a different stamp or really unique (or well designed) stamp. (I definitely still want to get all the missing years!)

I’ve also heard from others who say “I keep looking at the stamps when I walk around!” or people will send me photos of stamps (or plates!) they’ve come across. One friend asked if I need to get the photo, and I said that while I really love people sharing with me, I do want to actually see a sidewalk stamp in person and capture the photo. I also encourage others to create their own record.

So, yeah… that’s the thing that has become The Sidewalk Project which is a name I just came up with while writing this post. Let me know what you think.

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Gallery 69 – Day One

By now you probably know we launched Gallery 69 a Free Little Art Gallery (or FLAG) and I was a little worried that it would just be me putting my silly (little) prints in there. Well, it’s just been on day (going on two) but things are looking up!

So first, the day before we opened, I came home from work and checked the gallery (mainly for leaks, we had a ton of rain!) and found a large ceramic piece. So yeah, someone left it there. I don’t know who. I asked the local ceramics guy and it wasn’t him, so either someone saw a post and knew about it, or wandered by, or maybe a neighbor put it there. I’m not sure, but I’m thankful for the first contribution! (If you recognize the signature, let me know.)

Next up, a small painting from Julie Weber. Julie also lives on 69th street, and may be assisting with some of the gallery maintenance in the future. (She was very excited when I told her about it months ago.)

You can find more of Julie’s work at jworiginalart.com, Instagram, Facebook, or Etsy. If you see something you like, consider supporting an artist by purchasing something!

I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting real paintings on real canvases… I really thought it would just be my cheapo garbage prints in there (on cheap) paper, so Julie has really raised the bar for contributions!

Finally, Madeline Prodoehl (UWM PSOA) added two experimental enamel pieces. While Maddy has a long history in photography, she’s also done illustration, printmaking, painting, and in recent years she’s been learning jewelry & metalsmithing. (You may remember the Mother’s Day card we collaborated on a few months ago.)

This is great! And I’m going to take a minute to talk about curation. I want to amass a good amount of art, and hope that people actually take things. Based on the other two galleries in the area, some things might sit in there a while. If that happens, I may rotate them out for a bit so visitors can see new things. Once they’ve been out of the gallery for a while, we’ll add them back in.

I’m already getting contributions via mail, and if you want to send something, please get in touch. I may even take digital works if artists are okay with me printing them on heavy/glossy paper.

Gallery 69 is a Free Little Art Gallery located on 69th street just north of Locust street in the Enderis Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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Falk Hammer

You may remember the Falk Corporation (they were a “good name industry” and part of what made Milwaukee the “machine shop of the world” many years ago.) My father (and my grandfather) also worked there. Anyway, I’ve got this hammer, see…

I must have got this from my dad’s old workshop after he passed away, and it was sitting in my basement in a state of disrepair for many years. Sometimes it’s just difficult to deal with old things, but we can’t just dispose of them, because of sentiment and feelings and memories…

So the handle and head sat around for years untouched, until I decided to do something. I took the head and polished it up on the buffing wheel (which also once belonged to my father) and then I sanded the handle down to bare wood and coated it in shellac to give it a nice surface and shine.

Finally, I cut a wedge of wood and used the band saw (also one of my dad’s old tools to clear out the old wedge so I could pound in the new one. With that, the hammer was cleaned up, repaired, and ready for use.

And it’s sort of beautiful, but not too beautiful to use. It’s a tool, and tools should be used. I honestly don’t know if my father ever used it, though I imagine it did see some use years ago. It’s probably 40 years old or more… maybe 50? I don’t know. Tools well care for can last a long time.

I hope one of my children keeps this hammer after I’m gone. They could use it, or display it, or just leave it in the basement for years, untouched…