Historic Concordia Home Tour 2018
Artists as Residence, Past and Present
The Historic Concordia Neighbors, Inc. 28th Annual Home Tour will include nine homes, architectural and gallery spaces, plein air artists at work and live performances.
The tour runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 16, the Saturday before Father’s Day, starting at the Wgettha Building on the Potawatomi Campus at North 33rd Street and West Kilbourn Avenue on Milwaukee’s Near West Side.
ELSA ULBRiCHT
Homes include the residence and studio of painter and stay-at-home dad Michael Westcott, the former home of Elsa Ulbricht, a Depression-era artist whose work is part of the permanent collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum and whose paintings (in a happy coincidence) will be on display at Marquette’s Haggerty Museum at the same time as the tour. Like fellow neighborhood artist Edna Freida Pietsch, Ulbricht grew up in the house and lived there her entire life.
Ulbrecht’s home is now owned by Maxwell and Shelisa Parker. Max grew up in the neighborhood, his parents, Andy and Marie, own Manderley Bed and Breakfast.
Beth and Ed Sahagian-Allsop, owners of Vanguard Sculpture Services, also reside in the neighborhood and their home will feature art from local and nationally-recognized artists. Beth’s sculpture, Acqua Grylli, can be seen along Milwaukee’s Riverwalk.
Also featured will be the home of Donald Haack and Karen Smith, both career musicians with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Don retired as principal trombonist, Karen is a first violinist.
In another nod to Father’s Day, Don’s son Gene’s house will be open for the tour. He and his wife Amy Waldman own the house in which musician Edna Freida Pietsch was born and lived for 88 years. Pietsch, a composer and piano teacher, remembers the oak forest that was razed to build the Ameritech Building on Wisconsin Avenue.
Beth Sahagian -- Acqua Grylli
PLEIN AIR ARTISTS ACROSS HISTORIC CONCORDIA
Other tour sites and activities include the Schuster Mansion Bed and Breakfast, which will feature textile arts in home décor, live jazz at the home of Texas Bufkin, the in-home studio of Ned Hoffman and a Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design student display at the home of Robin Muller, whose daughter is a MIAD student.
A Plein-Air art contest will also be held the day of the tour, providing attendees the opportunity to watch artists at work while roaming the neighborhood. Refreshments will be for sale at the pie and cake social at the registration site; shuttle buses will run to and from tour sites throughout the day.
