LOCATION: Outside West Door TIME: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm TIME: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm TIME: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm TIME: 10:00 am - 11:30 am TIME: 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Makers
AlisaToninato
Alisa Toninato
Artist Statement
Alisa is a 2005 Sculpture graduate at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and the creator behind FeLion Studios and American Skillet Company LLC. Both businesses specialize in making custom cast iron cookware for artistic & commercial means.
Initially utilizing cookware as a vehicle for profound social intervention inside performative events and metaphoric artworks early in her career, the process of iron casting quickly dominated her perversion for innately difficult technical challenges, and she took to building the FeLion Foundry as a means to an ends with making her artworks.
She has since exploited the lessons learned from her fellow iron tribe and uses both industrial practice and artistic sensibilities to help improve the metal casting industry through the unconventional cookware designs created with the American Skillet Company, while also running FeLion Studios as a way to express new ideas and invite the community in to experience the process through participation and public demonstration.
FeLion Studios was honored as one of ten selected businesses for the inaugural Martha Stewart American Made Awards in 2012, and has since received National exposure through publications such as the New York Times, Food & Wine Magazine, Duluth Trading Company and features on TV shows such as the TODAY show, (2016), The Chew (2015), Wisconsin Foodie (2014), The Martha Stewart Show (2012), Handcrafted American (2017), Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine documentary, (2018), and most recently on ABC World News with David Muir, (2018).
Daniel Dricken grew up long ago in the early 1980s in the far away land of West Bend, Wisconsin. Much of his youth was spent turning cardboard boxes into rocket ships and castles, making forts, and disappearing into the nearby forests for afternoons on end.
Later, in an attempt to eventually become an adult, Daniel attended UW Milwaukee. There, the cardboard appliance boxes, blankets, and carefully stacked couch cushions of the past were replaced with blast furnaces, kilns, and welders. Eventually, Dan earned a bachelors of fine arts in sculpture and ceramics without causing very much irreparable structural damage to the UW campus.
Today, Dan is the owner of a modest home improvement business in Milwaukee, WI. In his spare time he wandered the midwest and beyond, playing with fire with his friends, occasionally convincing passers by to give him money in exchange for the trinkets he creates. Also, occasionally, he still makes forts.