Discover the fine art at the Brisbane House! Take a self-guided art tour during your stay.
We’ve loaded the house with museum-caliber fine art prints by artists of color to honor William Henry Brisbane and his work as a human rights advocate.
Most prominent are the works by Sam Gilliam (1933-2022). Sam was a frequent visitor to Brisbane House’s neighbors, Sue Steinmann and the late Bill Weege, art professor and founder of Tandem Press. Sam and Bill collaborated annually and as Bruce Crownover (co-owner of Brisbane) was also frequently involved. Right here, in Arena is where beautiful and long-lasting friendships developed!
Sam was a member of the Washington Color School (late 1950s through mid-70s) and was one the foremost Black modern and contemporary artists associated with the Abstract Expressionists. He was an internationally acclaimed abstract painter who tested the boundaries of color, form, texture, and the canvas. Ever the innovator, he took his color-stained canvases off of the stretcher in the late 1960s and draped them across walls and hung them from the ceiling in generous, folding layers (also worked in set design). His work has been seen in and collected by major art institutions all over the world.
In the living room and kitchen, you will find Lilly’s Print, a relief print triptych named for our daughter, Lillian Crownover. The color palette is deep and rich in these late works of his. The geometric forms are minimal yet bold and you can make out the raised woodgrain of the blocks. Bruce collaborated with Sam as printer for this project at Tandem Press, where Crownover was master printer for over 25 years.
The third floor relief prints, a diptych called Union Pacific from 2002, are also by Sam Gilliam.
The star of the living room is Abraham Lincoln by ROMANO JOHNSON. A relatively young artist, “Mano” works out of the non-profit studio in Madison called Artworking, Inc, a non-profit that provides career development and support for artists and entrepreneurs with disabilities. He is also represented by the Milwaukee Portrait Society. Mano’s large, acrylic and glitter paintings are packed with pattern, color ,and musical rhythms creating an exuberance that matches his larger-than-life subject matter. His complex compositions feature pop culture icons, political figures, racing cars, and spaceships. With their flat forms, vibrating patterns, and explosions of color, Johnson’s paintings can be linked to the venerable American tradition of self-taught art and seem to fall into the regional lineage of a Madison predecessor, Simon Sparrow.
His full-length portrait of Abraham Lincoln, from 2021, hangs in the living room. Here’s what he has to say about the piece, “It means the world to me that people love the art I’ve created for them. I love for you to enjoy the painting. The birds and the butterflies are about happiness and love. The colors I put there, I want them to be bright colors so people could enjoy it.” This is co-owner Samantha Crownover’s favorite piece in the house. She loves its sparkle and promise of hope.
You will find two works by ALISON SAAR (b. 1956) in the den. These works may challenge you! Alison grew up in an artistic environment as her mother is the acclaimed collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar and her father, Richard Saar, was a painter and art conservator. Through her sculpture, drawings, and prints, Alison Saar explores the subjects of racism, sexism, ageism and the specific challenges of being bi-racial in America. Saar’s style encompasses a multitude of personal, artistic, and cultural references that reflect the plurality of her own experiences. Her sculptures, installations, and prints incorporate found objects including vintage fabrics, rough-hewn wood, old tin ceiling panels, nails, shards of pottery, glass, and urban detritus. The resulting figures and objects become powerful totems exploring issues of gender, race, heritage, and history. Alison Saar has been awarded many distinguished honors and work can be found in numerous museum collections around the country.
Saar’s Stanch and Breach, woodcuts on vintage linen seed sacks, made in 2017, hang in the den. They speak to the limits of human endurance. They were made at Tandem Press.
JAMES ROLL is a prolific artist and a master of gestural drawing, primarily working in pen and ink. His interests range from cuddly critters to terrifying monsters, and he enjoys drawing them all. James has recently captured a wide range of animals in a new alphabet series. James states, “Animals represent something in each individual person. Some are courageous like the powerful lion and some are shy like the turtle. Each animal is unique with its pattern, from reptile scales to a kitten’s soft fur. Each one of us has the spirit of an animal inside us that we are drawn to, such as something powerful like a grizzly bear. Drawing makes me feel escaped from all the troubles from the real world and I like that my work makes other people feel happy.”
Midwestern Crew hangs in the summer kitchen bedroom. They’re the animals you would find in and around Wisconsin. How many of them will you see during your stay at Brisbane? Hot tip: Peck’s Farm Market on Highway 14 just west of Brisbane has a petting zoo where you’ll find more animals. Jame also works at Artworking, a Madison area non-profit program that provides career development and support for artists and entrepreneurs with disabilities.
Another star piece at Brisbane is by MICKALINE THOMAS (b. 1971). Her artworks brim with color, line, patterns, and multimedia elements, often highlighting vivid environments as still lives, or female figures with poses and personalities that challenge, welcome, or look past the viewer. Drawing from art history and popular culture, Mickaline’s work creates a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power. Blurring the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary, she constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interior spaces in order to examine how identity, gender, and sense-of-self are informed by the ways women and “feminine spaces” are represented in art and popular culture. Mickalene’s practice is multi-disciplinary and expansive, as she consistently works within painting, collage, photography, printmaking, video, and installation. She also creates sculptures, enacts performances, curates exhibitions, delivers lectures, participates in residencies, and is featured in prestigious publications and catalogues worldwide. Her work is included in many prestigious public and private collections around the U.S.
In the second floor bedroom, you sleep under Interior: Zebra with Two Chairs and Funky Fur, which is a relief, intaglio, lithography, and archival inkjet print with collage, wood veneer, handmade paper, enamel paint, gold leaf, and colored pencil from 2014. It was made at Tandem Press.
Look closely at this challenging KARA WALKER (b. 1969) lithograph. She is best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures.
Hanging in the third floor hall, Untitled, from 1998, Kara engages the silhouette form to explore issues of race, slavery, and memory, manipulating historical aspects of the medium to disturbing effect and interrogating our social structures in the process. To make this work, she used lithography to simulate the qualities of a traditional silhouette. Upon first glance, the innocuous images of clouds that occupy the bulk of the composition distract from the gruesome and unnerving scene that plays out below. She has described the historical silhouette tradition as coming “from a sort of polite middle-class society to some extent. [A silhouette is] not as haughty or aristocratic as a full-fledged oil painting portrait. Everyone could get one for a few pennies—and you had an image, you had connection with physiognomy.” (Some text from the Metropolitan Museum.)
There are many other items of note at the Brisbane House. Book a stay to discover all of them!
