Waukesha mayor wants to paint '67 artwork

Waukesha — As part of his effort to freshen up City Hall with a new coat of paint, Mayor Jeff Scrima thinks a massive concrete wall sculpture in the building's main foyer by renowned artist Franklin Boggs could stand a little color, too.
The two-story concrete relief sculpture - called "Waukesha Wall" - was commissioned for the new City Hall in 1967 when Boggs was a successful international artist and chairman of the Beloit College art department.
Boggs, who died last November at age 95, created a two-story abstract structure filled with symbols representative of nfl jerseys Waukesha's make-up.
Scrima threw the question about painting the piece to the Public Arts Committee this week, without resolution. He also outlined his goal to have Waukesha "the number one arts city in America in eight years."
"We need to dream big," he told the committee.
While committee members were non-committal about painting Boggs' sculpture, Scrima's suggestion about coloring the sculpture is a nightmare to Betty Hoff, the local artist who brought 185 history-related pieces of art to the building hallways between 1998 and 2006.
"He asked me the same thing," Hoff said about Scrima's idea. "I said, 'Whaaaaat?' You do not paint over Van Gogh's painting to improve him. I was just appalled."
She added, "It would be sacrilegious to do that."
The artist's widow, Sondra Boggs, reached by telephone at her Beloit home Thursday, was asked what she thought her husband would think.
"I know Frank would not try to dictate anything specific about his work after it left his hands," she said. "It's sort of like letting a child go into the world."
She said any decision about a commissioned piece by her husband should be left up to the owners.
"If they have any respect for artwork, they should know what they're doing, I would hope," she said.
Jeff Seymour, whom Scrima appointed to the nfl jersey shop Public Arts Committee, told members he saw no problem with painting a work it owned.
"I think it could be updated," he said. "Have fun with it."
In a later interview, however, Seymour said that since the meeting he'd researched Boggs, whose work he was unfamiliar with.
"After doing research about him, I would be less for touching the integrity of the piece," he said. "Removing it might be more appropriate than painting it."
Boggs was a combat artist during World War II whose paintings have appeared in major art museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
One of his murals was installed at Marquette University in 1953 - a work in the former Brooks Memorial Union that has since been demolished. He earned an international reputation as a muralist and innovator of large-scale concrete wall sculptures like that in Waukesha.
Scrima said his main goal is to get City Hall corridors painted - a job he says will be done by volunteers during two weekends in September with paint provided out of the city budget. He called the committee together to decide what should happen to the existing art collection that Hoff organized and what should happen to Boggs' and other sculptures in the foyer.
Seymour said the committee wants to retain some of authentic nfl jersey the existing historic works that Hoff introduced through donations while making room for rotating local artists' works on the government building's hallways.
Scrima told the Public Arts Committee he hoped it would take up other topics in the future. In addition to making Waukesha the No. 1 art city for its size, he encouraged the committee to discuss branding Waukesha as an "arts city," creating a new city slogan, finding a new city logo and establishing new city entrance monuments.