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Arts + Literature Laboratory and The Bubbler have put together a final itinerary of gallery visits before the snow flies, taking in exhibits downtown at Union South, Overture Center and Central Library before a short trip east to writing incubator 702WI, and finishing with a season-closing party at ALL.

press release: Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) and The Bubbler at Madison Public Library are pleased to announce the October Bike the Art tour schedule. Bike the Art is a monthly curated bicycle tour of Madison’s arts offerings. Organized by ALL, The Bubbler, VEA Events and Madison Community Discourse, in collaboration with local artists, arts organizations and businesses, Bike the Art encourages participation in the arts via sustainable transportation and promotes the richness of arts resources available in the Madison area.

The October tour will take place on Saturday, October 28, 2017, beginning at 1:30pm at Union South in Gallery 1308 to view the Art En Route exhibition. The first 50 participants will receive a free reusable Bike the Art bag with informational materials about local arts organizations and some small gifts. Participants are welcome to join the tour at any stage; please refer to the schedule below as a guide for where and when to meet with the group. It’s free to join the tour – all ages welcome. Those who cannot bike are invited to walk, bus or carpool to join in at each exhibition.

OCTOBER SCHEDULE & EXHIBITION DESCRIPTIONS: 



1:30-1:50pm: Art En Route, Gallery 1308 (First Floor), Union South: Art En Route pairs creative writers with visual artists to create uniquely commissioned works of art. The final, collaborative works are photographed and installed on the exterior bus wraps of various Madison Metro Transit buses running throughout Madison from October 1^st, 2017–January 20^th, 2018. The original artwork is presented in the 1308 Gallery. The gallery is located on the first floor of Union South (1308 W Dayton St.).

2:00-2:20pm: Writing in Stone, James Watrous Gallery (Third Floor), Overture Center for the Arts: Created by Terese Agnew with a team of artists, writers, and other collaborators, Writing in Stone is an evocative, theatrical installation of monuments to transformative ideas and events from Wisconsin’s past. It invokes Wisconsin’s legacy of civic engagement, action, and legislation to further education, civil liberties, and social justice. Wandering among the towering monuments, visitors will encounter an inspiring range of movements, people, and events, from Ezekiel Gillespie’s 1866 Wisconsin Supreme Court case giving African-Americans the right to the rise of environmental ethics, the moral impetus behind the birth of the Grand Old Party, the migrant farmworkers’ movement, the 1982 bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, and much more. A grove of “Speaking Trees” is given life with a sound work by Rob Danielson, weaving together oral histories by Walter Bresette (Ojibwe) and the Menominee Forest Keepers, poetry, and sounds recorded in nature. James Watrous Gallery is located on the third floor of Overture Center for the Arts (201 State St.).

 2:25-2:55pm: The Understory, MMoCA: Artist Chele Isaac will give an artist talk introducing her new installation, The understory, a seven-channel installation projected in the round, explores interstitial moments, overlooked details, and tenuous connections that investigate the indifference of nature and one's relationship to our changing environment. Chele Isaac is a Madison-based artist who combines moving images and sound to create fully immersive, multimedia environments. Through a careful balance of texture, tone, and repetition, Isaac weaves together elliptical cinematic narratives that eschew traditional storylines and function instead to elicit feelings of the uncanny. The accompanying score was composed by Jack Kellogg. The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) is located at 227 State St.

3:00-3:30pm: Lovey Town, The Bubbler, Central Library: Founded in 2013 by the artist Michael Velliquette, Lovey Town is a miniature, mobile project space dedicated to the exhibition of small original artworks. Artists participate in the exhibition with their works, and in the form of paper cutouts made from their photographs. Lovey Town exists in multiple formats—through online photographic documentation, in print publications, as a physical exhibition space, and as a social practice where artists and audiences participate in the creation of a sculptural community. During Lovey Town’s residency library patrons and the public will be invited to collaborate on a communal exhibition by creating small-scale works of art to fill a custom made miniature gallery space inside the Bubbler Room. Bike the Art participants will have the opportunity to have their pictures taken and be made into small photographic paper dolls to populate the gallery space as the viewing audience. The Bubbler room is located at Madison Central Library (201 W Mifflin St, Madison).

3:30-3:50pm: Mike Rebhol; Keven Brunett & Kristin Thielking, 702WI: 702WI (WI = writing incubator) is a co-creative workspace for writers, creators and designers to write, design, and create. The space provides a comfortable, quiet, and inspiring atmosphere, and a place to work among and connect with other writers, designers, web warriors, and creators. Artwork exhibited at 702WI includes writing and words, or work by artists who are also writers, and is displayed for appreciation and purchase. 702WI is located at 702 E Johnson St.

4:00 pm+: Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Sun; Unknown Game Series  (End-of-Season Celebration will follow), Arts + Literature Laboratory: Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Sun: Synthetic hair woven with wire, gold leaf and pony beads, neon and wool. Nafis White creates her work from objects commonly found in beauty supply stores, industrial and irrigation components and the seemingly limitless horizons of our global and political landscapes. Through sculpture, installation, photography and weaving she centers the uncanny audacity of self-affirmation and love by means of repetition as a form of change.

Unknown Game Series: This is an exhibition of works resulting from Mie Kongo’s ongoing search for diversity in sculptural materials and processes. Although the core of her research has been in ceramics, she experimentally engages in mixing materials and processes to discover the unexpected. While investigating sculptural relationships of volume, proportion, surface, color, balance, and tension, she contemplates the notion of natural balance, the unification of opposites and the interdependence of all things.

Arts + Literature Laboratory (2021 Winnebago St.) will host an end-of-season celebration with refreshments.

Bike the Art tours take place once a month from May through October. Most stops feature special activities or receptions, including artist/curator talks, food art, video screenings, performances, hands-on experiences and more. Expect more information about the next bike tour in the spring. Refer to www.facebook.com/biketheart for details as they become available.

Bike the Art is sponsored by Dane Arts and endorsed by the Madison Arts Commission. Additional support has been provided by: Artist & Craftsman, Cadence Coffee, Cafe Domestique, Humble Pie, Machinery Row Bicycles, Promega Corporation, Old Sugar Distillery, Underground Food Collective, and other partners.