Art in MKE: Tom Fruin creates dazzling mosaic sculptures out of salvaged materials
Nate Vomhof and Tom Fruin MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Perched high atop the Coakley Brothers building in Walker's Point, a kaleidoscopic water tower illuminates the Milwaukee neighborhood.
It's one of just 10 in the world, and the largest of anything Tom Fruin has ever made. The Brooklyn-based artist calls the endeavor "monumental" - one that required a lot of trust and support, and the help of a team.
"It does have a special place for me, because it was kind of a Herculean effort," Fruin said.
"We raised it by a crane from the parking lot. We built it there over the course of a week and then raised it as one monolithical piece to attach to the existing base, which was, you know, historically there from the olden days."
Fruin's water tower on top of the Coakley Brothers building in Walker's Point
The concept came to Fruin while working on a series of large-scale, architecturally inspired pieces that vary from city to city across the globe.
The project, known as his Icon series, began with a sculpture in Copenhagen, Denmark in the form of a Kolonihavehus - a garden house made from roughly 1,000 scraps of multicolored Plexiglas collected locally. Fruin says while working on the series, his wife asked him what kind of piece he'd make for New York.
"I said, well of course I have to do a water tower," Fruin said. And he delivered, constructing one on the roof of his studio building. "I was able to spend a lot of time up there, and it was also on my route - like when I would ride home to my apartment, I could see it from the bridge," Fruin said.
He was later contacted by Peggy Coakley, of Coakley Brothers Moving and Storage.
"Her building, you know, had a huge water tower on it originally...as she was renovating, she realized it was kind of missing its crowning moment," Fruin said. "We came together and actually looked at historical photos and were able to make that water tower what we believe is the size of the water tower that used to stand on the building."
Fruin says the tower located off 5th Street is about 23-feet tall by 19-feet in diameter, with a base around 75-feet high.
"Feels like you could put a small house in there," he says. "It's really spacious and sort of a precious experience in there."
A look inside the Kolonihavehus
Environmental impact
Fruin creates his pieces using reclaimed materials, namely colorful pieces of Plexiglas and steel.
"I like to use salvaged material that kind of reflects the surroundings, or the city environment," Fruin said. "A lot of it came from sign shops. Now I'm sort of integrating more salvaged or discarded signage."
He says a recent water tower project in Beppu, Japan utilized a lot of this material. "I said, well, I like to use found materials, and they said, 'well, we'll start collecting,'" Fruin said. "They did find a lot of signage...it looked very unique, and I thought that was a successful collaboration."
Fruin's penchant for repurposing discarded items stems from the early days of his art practice in New York. When he first moved to the city, he started collecting garbage - things like candy wrappers and drug bags - and making quilts out of them.
Quilt made from materials collected at Cooper Houses in Brooklyn
"I thought it was gonna be a very abject, or you know, objectionable kind of commentary on the human condition," Fruin says. "As it turns out, they were really beautiful and they did sort of speak about our humanity - and in a weird way, almost became like a celebration of it, through, you know, really vibrant color and taking these little scraps and making something whole."
"That was almost like a sort of a personal journey for me," he said. "When I, you know, first moved to the city and I was kind of making maps that were documenting what I was discovering…sort of a way for me to remember my experience as I was exploring things, and in a way, I wanted to bring that message into the public realm. Make something...kind of bright and celebrating humanity."
Fruin carried this sentiment with him as he began his Icon series, continuing to repurpose old materials and transform them into mosaics - this time, three-dimensionally.
"Just kind of keeps that, you know, quality from the quilts I was making before. It's meant to sort of carry over the same ethos."
He says now that he's made a name for himself as the Plexiglas, or stained glass guy, people often bring him materials to use. "Which is fun," he says. "It keeps sort of an interesting palate... I don't often choose what I'm getting, but then I have to make things with what I have."
He's also experimented with using solar power or alternative powers within his pieces.
"If I'm putting things out there in the world, I want to, you know, make sure I'm doing it semi-responsibly," Fruin says.
"There's a windmill that's in Fort Worth, Texas, that - the rotation of the blades powers the lights at night to illuminate it."
"So it's always kind of a concern of mine to try and get these things to not be, you know, ploth art, but actually responding to the surroundings, and do it sort of responsibly, or so they can stand alone and not, you know, have to be literally plugged in."
He says a project of this scale can take up to six months. But he's currently working on a smaller, abstract series that has yet to be named.
"I've been playing with these starburst structures that are just kind of…it's like a burst of action or something," Fruin said. "For a while I was thinking if, you know, the occupant of one of these house sculptures had a sculpture in their front yard, what it would be, and so they're that size. They're more human scale…like six-feet tall."
Community impact
Citing the energy of the city as a source of his inspiration, it isn't surprising that Fruin advocates for public accessibility to his art.
"Definitely it's an intention of mine to take it out of the private realm," he said. "There's nothing precious about it, you don't have to like pay to go to a museum. It should be something that enhances your daily experience, it enhances everybody's daily experience. And that's kind of a reason why it's not, you know, super obvious…there's not a big arrow pointing at it saying, 'this is art,' it's just something that's kind of meant to blend into the surroundings and just become a special moment when you experience it."
"I hope it sort of alters your perception of your surroundings," Fruin said. "It sort of turns something that is ordinarily mundane or commonplace and kind of makes it fantastical. And I hope that that would allow people to sort of see their surroundings in a new light, and maybe, you know, see the potential or something in just everything, in the mundaneness around them."
Of his Walker's Point water tower, Fruin says he spent a lot of time considering its design, taking into account the way it would appear when viewing it from the back or from the side, and making sure it also read differently from a distance.
"I love Milwaukee," Fruin says. "It's such a great town and I feel very honored to have a place there, you know, to be interacting with such a cool community."