Door County Contemporary Art Fair with The Plan
Fish Creek, WI
Solo, June 5 - June 8, 2025
The Door County Contemporary Art Fair was be held at the Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek, Wisconsin from June 5 to June 8, 2025. The three-day program introduced art to art enthusiasts in an event yet unseen in Wisconsin. It was born from the desire to address a lack of contemporary art in an otherwise culturally enriched and dynamic destination. And to do it with an enthusiasm that embraces the energy, vision, and welcoming spirit of the region. DCC hosted 20 art galleries from Wisconsin and beyond while welcoming thousands of art lovers from around the United States. It also featured a wealth of site-specific art works and projects, plenty of Wisconsin-centric food and drink, and curated events and art-related projects.
Press:
Sub-Rural #49.5, Door County Contemporary Art Fair
by Paul Krainak | Jun 15, 2025 | Bad at Sports
Milwaukee artists and entrepreneurs Shane McAdams and Shane Walsh began planning last week’s Door County Contemporary Art Fair some four years ago while teaching at the Peninsula School of Art, the eventual site of the fair. McAdams recalled, “We ran it by the school…and when they agreed we started building a plan.” The selection process first involved exploring a Milwaukee cohort of galleries where they discussed their ideas further. Gradually, they had an organization, staff and team of advisors that promoted the plan to galleries and project spaces in Chicago, Minneapolis, Nashville, Kansas City, etc. “The idea was to create a fair that was a breezy Up-Northy getaway and all-around Midwest DIY art gallery convening place. Everything exceeded expectations.” The final event reflected an ease and buoyancy of the galleries and artists.
McAdams added “We worked with a number of other organizations, from Kohler to Gener8or to Madison MoCA to Bridgework…but next year we will flesh out the programming even more. This whole thing was a wild moonshot of an idea and by all accounts it worked….that it worked gives me hope in art and culture and how it integrates with our lives.”
McAdams and his group of artist/curators produced a celebration of art that emphasized place and history, in this case the iconic “round barn” Guenzel Gallery and the utopian Madeline Tourtelot Studio Buildings of the school, along with the surrounding beauty of Fish Creek, the bay, and Door County. For the most part the gallery participants shared a commitment to art of the region, to cosmopolitanism and rurality. The result was a production that was opposite of the market-driven, doctrinal spectacle of large art fairs whose competitiveness and exclusivity precludes place and congeniality, opting instead for “arcade frenzy.” The following deferential, occasionally waggish, notes attempt to mirror a pleasurable, turned-out, three-day culture drive.
“The Plan,” a Chicago-based artist run Gallery known for assembling post-conceptual mind-probing exhibitions on subjects like “pata-physics,” internal emotional landscapes, and performative interventions, was one of the non-traditional, post-material project spaces welcomed at the fair. The space’s deftly fragmented installation by Chicago sculptor Ari Norris which included masking tape and “Pink Pearl” eraser sculptures constructed of wood and paint, was among other things a “fruitful” Mauritzi Cattelan/Claes Oldenburg wisecrack.
Cont.
https://badatsports.com/2025/sub-rural-49-5-door-county-contemporary-art-fair/