Thomas Ferrella
Thomas Ferrella found this shrine on 63rd Street in Milwaukee.
A fatal east-side car accident in 1991 activated a local artist’s connection to the stories told by roadside memorials.
Thomas Ferrella, a former emergency room doctor, treated one of the two girls killed by a motor vehicle crossing East Washington at Fourth Street, near East High School. Soon after, he watched as a memorial took shape along the chain link fence that stood where a median sits now. Its balloons and streamers moved in the wind and as cars passed. Teddy bears and photos became weathered reminders of what the girls meant to the community.
“I never took any photos of that site, but the next one I came across, I really started looking at,” says Ferrella, an artist who has exhibited paintings, sculptures and outdoor installations around the city.
Ferrella has been photographing roadside memorials, many of them rural, throughout the state for more than 20 years. His series of more than 120 photographs of 90 memorials are presented in the exhibition “Not Forgotten: Wisconsin Roadside Memorials,” opening May 5 at the Arts + Literature Lab.
“I was really attracted to these sites because of the beauty,” Ferrella says. “These are really personal, very powerful, and somebody has declared this specific spot as being sacred.”
Often, he stumbles upon a cross erected at an exact spot where someone lost a life. They are sometimes painted with names or marked with poems and personal effects of the deceased. In addition to the photography, Ferrella tracks down information through neighbors and obituaries, and conducts interviews with families. The memorialization continues digitally through his site wisconsinroadsidememorials.com with space for family and friends to add to the remembrance with a post.
“It’s a way of processing the death and healing,” Ferrella says.
The personal nature of the articles left at these makeshift shrines can trigger empathy in passersby. Photos with friends and meaningful personal articles, like scorecards from golf games, are common. Ferrella remembers a memorial that read “Dad,” which was surrounded by plastic toys that were likely left by children of the deceased.
“It’s those kinds of things that just rip at your heart,” he says. “It’s not just these pretty photographs; it’s the stories that make them really poignant and powerful. This had to be told.”
“Not Forgotten: Wisconsin Roadside Memorials” opens 5-9 p.m. May 5 at the Arts + Literature Laboratory and will be on view through May 27. The Lake Effects Poets will present “Poems of Loss and Remembrance” at 7 p.m. on May 25 in response to this exhibition.
