Teejop Community Art Project Opens August 9

Temporary Public Art Details

Site #1: Capitol Square

100-200 Blocks of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd

Teejop Community History Theme: Resistance & Removals

"Our ancestors defied repeated removals and endured unimaginable hardships to ensure that we are still living in our homeland."

Chloris Lowe (Hoocąk), We Still Dance (Hegųregi Paašiwi)

This piece utilizes lamp pole banners with imagery depicting stylized representations of traditional designs found on craftwork and pow wow regalia. The colorful procession of banners will include text with phrases such as "Heart Beat Drum Beat", We Still Dance", "We Still Sing", "Long Return", as well as other banners emblazoned with significant dates of treaties and removals concerning the Ho-Chunk (formerly Winnebago) throughout the conception of the Wisconsin Territory and its eventual statehood.

With its procession of color and movement lining the boulevard, the artwork will be visually uplifting yet present some of the harder truths concerning the history of Wisconsin. The goal is to have viewers ask deeper questions concerning the text. Why still? What happened in 1832? Returned from where? Etc. In asking those questions, it creates starting points for a deeper conversation, further inquiries and the possibility of better understanding the history of Indigenous peoples during the creation of the City of Madison and greater area as the 30th state.

Site #2: Tenney Park

Teejop Community History Theme: Values

"Our values of love and respect are interwoven in every aspect of our culture."

Christopher Sweet, (Hoocąk | White Earth Ojibwe), Sisters Interwoven

Sisters Interwoven is a 3-piece sculpture inspired by the Legend of the Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash, a self-sustaining Indigenous companion planting method. These crops are planted together to lift, nurture and support one another. The learning location of Tenney Park was chosen for this installation to showcase the relationship of all living beings - humanity, plants, animals, land and water - and their interdependence on one another. Raising Our Sisters humanizes each sister as a visualization to remind us to treat all living things like our relatives.

"This piece is dedicated to uplifting our sisters and life givers. It encompasses our values of love and respect and how those values are interwoven into our culture. These values are shared within our culture through oral traditions like storytelling, songs and teachings that shape our cultural identity and preserve historical knowledge."

- Christopher Sweet, Artist

Site #3: Olbrich & Hudson Parks

Teejop Community History Theme: Mounds

"Teejop was once home to a flourishing community that created thousands of mounds, and we are the caretakers of those that remain."

June Whitehorse (Hoocąk), Greeting the Land

The artist created a large, circular map of Lake Monona, inlaid on an oak wood tabletop, with raised effigy mounds carved out of wood and placed in their respective locations. This facilitates a community learning experience where people, particularly kids, can gather around the table, view the mounds on the Madison area landscape, and touch the raised mounds. The project, which will be located at Olbrich Park, will include information about the mounds, outlining the history, significance, and sacredness of the burial mounds to the Ho-Chunk people.

Site #4: Merrill Springs

Teejop Community History Theme: Water

"Like our ancestors, we cherish and respect the springs, lakes, and rivers as living beings."

Gene Delcourt (Abenaki, French and Filipino), Dugout at Merrill Spring

Delcourt's Dugout at Merrill Spring, depicts a Ho-Chunk man crafting a dugout canoe along the shore of Lake Mendota. The artist selected the Merrill Spring site because canoe-making was essential to travel, trade, and fishing, all central to daily life for the Ho-Chunk people. The work invites viewers to imagine the Ho-Chunk world before contact, and to witness a moment suspended in time as a craftsman shapes a canoe from a single log. The sculpture will be life-sized, with a canoe approximately 15 feet long, half-carved from its original form.

Site #5: UW Arboretum

Teejop Community History Theme: Land

"This land is sacred. Its energy and abundance have sustained Wąąkšikra from time immemorial. It sings to our community and transforms all who listen."

Melanie Tallmadge Sainz (Hoocąk) and Lightning the Earth New Rider (Hoocąk), Hazac Mąą

Hazac Mąą (English translation: Earth Shelter)

Hazac Mąą is a three-dimensional temporary mixed media sculpture designed with cultural and historical connections to the land and legacy of the Arboretum site in Teejop. This project represents a collaboration of Ho-Chunk artists Melanie Tallmadge Sainz (founding Director of Little Eagle Arts Foundation - LEAF) and her son (in the Ho-Chunk way) Lightning the Earth New Rider. Lightning is a new and emerging visual artist and a skilled maker of ciipodoke (also known as a wigwam form) and hazac (temporary shade or ramada form) frames made with tamarack or maple saplings. Lighting created the hazac frame of foraged saplings. The frame is covered with bark and hand-made cattail mats woven by Melanie Tallmadge Sainz, Lightning, and invited community members who want to learn the process. Inside of the form is a variety of images created on small mats constructed of cattail and/or bulrush along or paper made from cattail.

Dakota Mace (Diné), Tsé' Bahane' (installation delayed until 8/15)

Dakota Mace's artwork is created to possess multiple incarnations, one of which is an auditory piece activated by natural elements and its audience. It comprises a series of twenty copper plates, each measuring twelve inches by twelve inches. These plates illustrate narratives about stars, creation, and personal recollections, functioning as idiophones; each perforation emits a distinct ringing tone. The plates also depict the mapping of significant constellations from various nations, as well as stone stories collected from different lakes across the United States. Furthermore, the plates will incorporate drawings of these "seeing stones," which will fragment over time as the sound plates weather, reflecting the way Indigenous stories gradually become integrated into the land.

Additional Events and Learning Opportunities

The Teejop Community Art Project is envisioned as a community-wide opportunity to:

• Allow contemporary Native perspectives and experiences to be encountered and heard
• Provide representations of the established Ho-Chunk presence in the region
• Encourage listening to the land and being sensitive to land as a living being
• Provide awareness regarding changes in the physical landscape and lakeshores
• Grow and explore personal connections and feelings towards the land and region
• Create new perspectives for seeing and relating to the land
• Engage neighborhoods with history of place and continued significance
• Foster personal connections for responsibility to the land and community
• Encourage ongoing reflection that becomes a natural part of our community's identity

As such, residents and visitors are encouraged to engage with art as well as participate in learning opportunities, special programs, and events being developed in collaboration with our educational partners, which include the Madison Metropolitan School District; Edgewood University; the Madison Children's Museum; Children, Nature, & Us; the UW-Madison Arboretum; UW-Madison School of Education faculty; UW-Madison Office of the Provost's Indigenous Education Coordinator; and the UW-Madison First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour Program.

The Teejop.org website will be updated throughout August with additional activities, lesson plans, videos, film screenings, tours, and event listings.

Events

Opening Celebration

• Sunday, August 9, 2-4 p.m.
• UW Arboretum, 1207 Seminole Highway, Madison, WI 53711
• Free admission

Indigenous People's Day Celebration

• Thursday, October 8, 5-8 p.m.
• Madison Children's Museum, 100 N. Hamilton St., Madison, WI 53703
• Free admission

Closing Celebration

• Friday, November 6, 5-7 p.m.
• Edgewood University in the Stream Art Building, 1000 Edgewood College Drive, Madison, WI 53711
• Free admission

About the Madison Arts Commission

The Madison Arts Commission works to encourage artistic activities and performances throughout the city, supporting both emerging and established artists while enhancing the cultural landscape of Madison through public art initiatives.