Teejop Community Art Project reception

media release: The Madison Arts Commission (MAC) is pleased to announce the opening of the Teejop Community Art Project. 

Seven Indigenous artists were commissioned to develop art installations that honor and illuminate the rich cultural history of Madison as part of the area known as Teejop (pronounced day-JOPE), which means Four Lakes. The project aims to create public art that will engage with themes developed by Teejop-area Ho-Chunk community members who met for many years to carefully consider the locations and values included in this project. 

The selected artists include Gene Delcourt, Lightning the Earth New Rider, Chloris Lowe, Dakota Mace, Melanie Tallmadge Sainz, Christopher Sweet, and June Whitehorse.  

This project was generously funded by the Madison Community Foundation with additional support from the City of Madison, the Evjue Foundation, Friends of the Madison Arts Commission, and American Family Insurance and is being administered by the Madison Arts Commission.  

Events

Opening Celebration: Sunday, August 9, 2-4 p.m., UW Arboretum, 1207 Seminole Highway, Madison, WI 53711

Indigenous People's Day Celebration, Thursday, October 8,  5-8 p.m., Madison Children's Museum, 100 N. Hamilton St., Madison, WI 53703

Closing Celebration: Friday, November 6, 5-7 p.m., Edgewood University in the Stream Art Building, 1000 Edgewood College Drive, Madison, WI 53711

"The art in this project sits on land steeped in history. These are the places where your children go to school, where you gather at parks and beaches, where you meet to make decisions that shape our future. The exhibition is temporary, as most things are. The invitation to deepen your relationship with this place is not. I hope visitors to this outdoor exhibition leave with a stronger appreciation for Teejop and all it gives us. This is a good opportunity to enjoy the natural beauty of the land, mounds, springs, and lakes, and to commit to their care so they can continue to provide for those who come after us." — Ho-Chunk Nation President Jon Greendeer

"Madison is home to many Ho-Chunk people, who have been stewards of this land since time immemorial. The Teejop Community Art Project is a collaboration, many years in the making, on themes chosen by the Ho-Chunk community. This is a unique opportunity to see place-based art installations by Indigenous artists, and to appreciate and celebrate the vitality of their work." —  Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway

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." 

Artist: 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." 

Artist: 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." 

Artist: 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." 

Artist: 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." 

Artists: Melanie Tallmadge Sainz (Hoocąk) and Lightning the Earth New Rider (Hoocąk), 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.  

Artist: 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.