Elements, Milwaukee, Baird Convention Center
The design brief for this project – which was designed by Ed Marquand and the staff of Tieton Mosaic – was clear. The Milwaukee Convention Art Committee wanted ideas that were inspired by the city’s history, setting, natural beauty, flora, fauna, industry, cultural diversity, and celebrations.
Milwaukee is known as the City of Festivals, represented here by fireworks bursts. Made traditional smalti and flat glass, this quadrant represents this point of pride and distinction. Milwaukee is famous for its many breweries, represented in the bottom strip. The middle top panel captures the remarkable graphic quality of the local Woodland Duck in detail. Fracturing ice is represented by stacked shards of clear glass. The gears represent Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s long history of industrial innovation and manufacturing. Strong, bold, functional, and cooperative.
QWERTY represents the invention of the typewriter and the keyboard layout by Christopher Latham Sholes in Milwaukee, first patented in 1868. The QWERTY letters are cut from hardwood, and are a nod to the Hamilton Manufacturing Company in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, where most wooden type in the 19th century was manufactured. The flowers are Royal Catch-flies, native to Wisconsin. The background tiles are variegated green glass.
