Jan Serr has been creating art in Milwaukee for nearly 60 years. In that time, she’s built a monumental career as both an artist and supporter of the arts. Alongside her husband, Serr co-founded the Warehouse Art Museum and Guardian Fine Art Services, an organization that helps protect art collections.
Now, she’s looking back at decades of her work with a new art exhibit at Milwaukee’s Villa Terrace. The exhibit, “Summer Paintings,” opened Monday and runs through Nov. 30. It explores Serr’s work and features people alongside one of her enduring inspirations: Lake Michigan. Serr joined Lake Effect’s Joy Powers at the Villa as the exhibit was being installed.
Joy Powers: What has it been like putting together this exhibition of your work?
Jan Serr: It's been an interesting process because I have a history of doing figurative work, from the first painting I ever did. That first painting was done at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, just a few blocks west of Lake Michigan and Bradford Beach. And my history with painting begins with music. At 22, I was a music major at Carroll College and had begun composing original things on the piano. And when I decided to transfer to UWM, I was forced to take a drawing and painting course as part of my degree. That class was held by Schomer Lichtner, who was a well-known artist in Wisconsin. And the only reason he was teaching was that someone had gone on sabbatical. So everything was serendipity. But the fact is Schomer opened a door, a window for me, into a world that I really hadn't explored at that point.
I painted my first painting, and it was a self-portrait. It was figurative. Even though abstract expressionism was what was being done in New York, I had really very little knowledge of the world of the visual arts. What I did have knowledge of, though, was composition, line, color, shading. Everything in music is in the visual arts. So all that music training prepared me for immediately being able to do drawings and paintings that were quite strong. So I went on, and I painted my father. I made all these family members sit for me, painting from life. And when I ran out of family members to paint, at some point I realized painting from life could be limiting, in a sense. So I started asking people for snapshots of family or themselves or people on the beach. The lake was always there, being so close.
"I'm just so thrilled to see all these pieces come together from so many decades, living in different places. But the common thread of the great Lake Michigan persists throughout.”Jan Serr
JP: As you mentioned, your first painting was made not too far from here, right on the lake. So much of your work has involved Lake Michigan in general, either directly or indirectly. What does it mean to you to have this exhibition here at Villa Terrace in this historic space that holds a lot of meaning for so many Milwaukeeans?
JS: Really, I've spent many, many hours on Wahl Street — which is just a little north of the Terrace — on the bluff, looking down. And many times I've been here at Villa Terrace looking down through the gardens, through the trees, at the wall of water and the beach and the very tiny people down below on the beach. And quite frankly, that has been my most recent fascination with the lake and with the view that Villa Terrace provides. People are reduced to a very small element, almost like punctuation marks between trees and in front of the blue of the water and the sand. I spent many, many hours photographing up on the bluff, exactly where Villa Terrace is. It's really the most recent interest and fascination, the view of the beach and the lake and the people and everything that happens down there is the view of Villa Terrace.
JP: This is an exhibit that, as you say, goes through a lot of decades of work. We're looking back at things that are from the 1960s at the earliest. What has it been like going through these pieces and figuring out what you're going to put out, what you going to have people view in this really large collection that spans a lifetime?
JS: It's been a lot of fun. And I do get a lot of help — intelligent, knowledgeable help — from John Shannon, my husband, who has an excellent eye and is wonderful to work with. But I think the amazing thing was to get work from each decade together. There's work, significant work, related to Bradford Beach or the lakefront or the view from Villa Terrace.
There is significant work in the show from each decade. The '60s would have been the large figures, going off the edges, larger than life. And then the '70s would be an old man with a beach bag. Lake Ontario, when we were in Canada. And young men on a lifeguard tower and Prince Edward Island are also '70s. In the '80s, we returned to southeastern Wisconsin — actually Racine, Wisconsin, where again we were right on the lake. The '80s became a period where I worked with a master lithographer, a master printer, Cream City Graphics. John Gruenwald was the master printer. I did mostly figurative work, at a time when I had been doing almost only landscapes. I did large-scale landscapes — or I should say waterscapes, because everything involved water, whether it was Lake Ontario or the Mississippi River or Lake Michigan.
But the figure persisted. In the '90s, I actually worked from the live figure. But in 2008, we moved back to Milwaukee, just a couple of blocks from Lake Michigan. So here I am again. I have spent really all of the 2000s developing a field for different ways to see what is happening down below. There's no end of the possibilities, and I'm just so thrilled to see all these pieces come together from so many decades, living in different places. But the common thread of the great Lake Michigan persists throughout.
JP: When you think about people coming to see this exhibition, what do you hope they see in your work and what do they hope they take away from it?
JS: That's a very good question. I think, for me, it will be a great deal of fun to talk with them about how my vision changed and developed. I mean, I was 22 or in my early-to-mid-20s when I did huge figures, larger than life. But hanging right next to a painting of four bathers is one of the most recent paintings, where the figures are less than an inch tall. So you can see how the vision developed and changed. And I started working in a very removed place, really. Villa Terrace is very removed. There's a full scene to be seen down there, but it's very removed from the noise and the sweat and the volleyball players. It's very cool and beautiful. And thank goodness we're restoring it and keeping it as it was meant to be: to sit on the terrace and be cool, but be able to observe from above.
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