Milwaukee Kitchen Double-Header

A year ago, I wrote a whole series about this Riverwest-based cooking show and discovered in the process that it’s not an easy thing to describe. Words like “experimental” or “conceptual” are the first to come to mind, but don’t help much. It’s the kind of thing you have to see for yourself.

So why not just watch the latest episode, Supply and Demand? It dropped just this Wednesday, the first of a two-part series.

Nature Doesn’t Know About Us with Sculpture Milwaukee

So hear me out on this. I get that Sculpture Milwaukee isn’t the best illustration of the kind of fun-loving, rules-bending, off-the-rails art described above, but I think public art deserves special consideration. And I think Sculpture Milwaukee does too.

Think of this. You can walk out of your front door any time of day, any day of the week, to go stand in front of a 800 5-gallon buckets with weeds growing out of them. Not sold? What about a giant pipe with some wood in it? Actually, I genuinely love both these works, and a lot of what Sculpture Milwaukee does, if only because they’re unexpected.

Not that I’m crazy about everything they add to the city (Why do we need two nearly identical Isamu Noguchi sculptures?) And it’s kind of a bummer that almost all the work lives downtown. But, you know, when you compare their track record to what we normally expect from public art, I think they’re doing alright.

You can check their online map and hunt down the works in their current exhibition," Nature Doesn’t Know About Us.

The Great Hunger Book Sale at All Saints Cathedral

A used book sale is all about the journey. It’s about wading through shelves upon shelves (and in this case, tables and cardboard boxes, over several rooms of a gothic-revival church) in search of nothing in particular. Maybe you’ll find a limited-edition print of a Mark Twain story you never knew existed, or maybe just a clunky copy of Anna Karenina you know you’ll never read. Either way, here you are, testing your carrying capacity before you’ve even glanced at nonfiction.

818 E Juneau Avenue, 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Thu 8/1 to Tues 8/6

Black Arts Fest at Summerfest Grounds

Art/craft fests can be hit-or-miss, and to be honest, mostly miss. I like artisanal honey as much as the next guy, but it’s not something I need to spend money on more than once. At the same time, I’m usually able to find at least one out-of-the-way table with a giant stack of killer watercolors, or hand-carved wood eyeglass frames, and I’m reminded that the great tapestry of life will always have surprises to discover. That second example was made up, by the way.

Black Arts Fest gets double points for being on the Summerfest grounds after the swarms of Goo Goo Dolls fans have left. I have no idea what its stands will offer, but that’s kind of the fun!

Summer Fest Grounds, 200 North Harbor Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202, 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Outdoor Experimental Music and Poetry at Estabrook Park

I gave Joy Engine a hard time last issue, but since they seem to be inescapable, I thought maybe I’d better say something nice. So here it is. If our city’s arts programming is going to be determined by behemoth funding aggregators, then we can be grateful there’s someone working for them who likes weird music.

It might be more fun to just show up without knowing what to expect, but if you want a preview, listen to this track by Wavefiler, one of the headliners. Farads, so says their Bandcamp page, is “a meditative reflection on how energy is stored and released in the realms of electronic components and beyond.” Neat.

Estabrook Park, 4400 Estabrook Pkwy, Shorewood, WI 53211, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM