Art in MKE: Bill Reid 'steels' the show with whimsical, painted metal sculptures

Bill Reid

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- His eye-catching work is well-known throughout Wisconsin and beyond. You can find it on display in museums, mounted atop buildings, hanging from ceilings, even traveling down parade routes -- and each piece has a unique story to tell. 

Bill Reid is both a master of his craft and a master of wordplay, often deriving entire scenes and storylines from puns he's conjured up. 

And those on Milwaukee's lower east side are lucky enough to live close to a few products of his vivid imagination. Reid's "Brady Street Beasts," a blue deer and red river rat, have called the old lift station across from the Milwaukee River home for decades. 

These colorful creatures, perched in the sky off Brady and Holton, add a touch of whimsy to a building with a less than glamorous history, having previously been used to move wastewater to higher elevation. The beasts' third companion, a dragonfly, has been taken down for touch-ups, its shiny finish worn from years under the sun.

Reid was personally asked to design the critters some 20 years ago by the Brady Street Association as part of an effort to rejuvenate the area. 

"You know, Brady Street was always a cool place," Reid said. "But the idea was to get people across the river to Brady Street…and you know, things weren't happening. Now it's changed dramatically."

Reid says back then, the neighborhood looked different than it does now. "It was a different time, and it was the Brady Street Association trying to make the neighborhood a cooler place to be... which they succeeded in, I think."

The "Cavorting Critters," dubbed "Dragon Spy," "Eau Deer" and "Water Rat," according to an accompanying plaque, are made of steel, solder, plastic and enamel paint.

"Kind of went with that theme of lift station," Reid said. "Basically the water theme, which, you know, Milwaukee is pretty much all about, right?"

He used an oxyacetylene torch -- "which is basically really serious heat, so you're melting the steel together," Reid said. "I didn't really start doing that 'til maybe 15 years after art school. That’s when I kind of developed my little weird language of animals and stories and stuff."

Animals and stories and stuff

The beasts are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Reid's creative endeavors.

He's made everything from mechanical sculptures to musical instruments, lamps, even pedal-operated and motorized cars. Over the course of time, Reid estimates he's made more than 5,000 pieces - somewhere around 100 a year.

His designs are aptly named, with clever plays on words. "In a pickle?" Reid writes alongside one piece. "Life is full of small dillamas."

We asked him to share some of his favorite works involving wordplay.

"I'm gonna send some of my more out-there pun things," he said, sharing examples from a quirky project he embarked on for each of the 50 states.

More often than not, animals take center stage in Reid's pieces, but he won't be making your run-of-the-mill porcupine or bumblebee. He'll make a "porcupiano" or a "beehicle." 

"My mom and dad, of course, were real nature lovers," Reid said. "We learned a lot about birding, birds, when I was young, and just, I think, really appreciated going on trips to hike and look at nature. It became engrained in me at an early age."

You'd be hard-pressed to name a critter Reid hasn't incorporated into his projects. You'll find everything from whales to mice, owls and manta rays, just to name a few.

"I make a wire skeleton - especially on those bigger animals - and then wherever you see a seam on them, that's where it's welded together," Reid says.  

He then paints the steel with enamel. "I like steel because it's really friendly as far as bending it, heating it, shaping it."

And while he makes a lot of sculptures, he says "it's nice to go different directions sometimes."

Sometimes that involves sound. "You know, I haven't made an instrument for a while," Reid said. "That might be kind of fun to make again."

Other times it involves light. "They shoot a really cool light out the holes in the lights."

Some particularly ambitious endeavors he's undertaken have been his projects on four wheels. 

Reid has a history of participating in parades, riding along in pedal cars he's built and painted. He says during Covid, he stopped, but he's hoping to get back into it, noting a pink flamingo car he's been eager to take out.

And then there's the "Beebomb."

"That's a legit car, that - it runs…I somehow didn't screw it up," Reid laughed. "It's actually built on a 1988 Ford Escort, and I totally tore it apart. And it was a year project, for sure...the car's legit to drive on the road now, which is wacky…the car was definitely the most ambitious thing, just the mechanics, not messing up the electric and everything," he said. 

Bill's beginnings

Bill was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in a small town in Ohio.

"Kinda knew I wanted to do it in high school," Bill said. "I like working with my hands, and maybe the boy thing with fire, you know. I liked casting and welding from the beginning."

He moved to Wisconsin in the summer of '68. 

"So, since summer of '68 we've been in Wisconsin residence, except for art school and other things."

Bill went to Lawrence University for a year before going to Kansas City Art Institute and then Cranbrook. "It was all a lot of foundry aluminum casting and then in getting into the welding things," he said. 

These days, you'll find him working out of Prairie School in Racine, the city he calls home.

"I've been there more than 40 years and it's been great," Reid says. "I work in a room - the big art room - and I'm in the corner, so the kids, when they come in the art classroom, often will check out what I'm up to, what I'm doing, and I put the new things in the hallway. So, it's a really kind of weird, but beautiful, symbiotic thing," he said.

When asked what he's working on currently, Reid said, "I'm just finishing up a piece - it's summer, it's like road construction season starting, so I just made a "safety cone in bloom." So it's a safety cone and it's flowering, cause that's kind of what we're gonna deal with right now. That's what I'm just finishing up now and I think that's a funny idea."

You can find Reid's art on display locally at the Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee, in the Racine Art Museum and at Edgewood Orchard Gallery in Door County. 

To check out more of his work and find more information on public installations and exhibits, click here. 

"I think public art really makes the streets more fun to walk down," Reid said. "It just makes it a more fulfilling place to be."