Belleville’s Library Park

by Jeanne Engle

Currently, the Badger State Trail crosses Library Park. “The trail brings people into Belleville,” says Rhea McGee, Belleville’s village clerk. “Many stop for lunch as they’re biking the trail.”

Ten Junk Miles Racing will be using the trail for six races July 29 and 30 ranging in length from a half-marathon to a 100-mile race between Belleville and Orangeville, Illinois. “In fact,” says Scott Kummer, CEO, “ultramarathons have put Belleville on the map. No one had run a race on the trail until we started in 2019. I wanted to show it off. Runners from all 50 states and from countries as far away as Thailand have run the Badger Trail Race. When they fly in and pass through customs, the usual response they get from agents is ‘Where is Belleville?’ Now they know!

“We encourage race participants and spectators to spend money in Belleville. We leave a big footprint in the village with donations to Friends of the Badger State Trail and Shop with a Cop (where economically disadvantaged kids can purchase family Christmas presents with a Belleville police officer).”

From its founding, Belleville served farmers in northern Green and southern Dane Counties. Early settlers raised wheat for the first 25 or so years following Belleville’s founding. However, once wheat farming depleted the soil’s nutrients and an outbreak of chinch bugs destroyed the wheat crop, dairy farming became popular. For a community of less than 400 people at the time of its incorporation, 1892, Belleville had a bustling commercial sector. One of the first public libraries in Wisconsin opened in Belleville prior to its even becoming a village. various community groups and private individuals use the meeting room.

As Belleville grew, it became apparent that a village hall was needed, and consequently, a 30-foot-square, twostory cube building was erected on Library Park in the middle of the block. The cream bricks for the building were manufactured in Watertown, Wisconsin. A bell tower, open on all sides, is positioned at the top of the building in the middle. Decorative brackets enhance the perimeter of the roofline. Small arched dormers are centered on each side of the building’s sloping mansard roof. Initially, the roof was covered with cedar shingles.

A jail and firehouse were originally housed on the first floor of the building. The village hall and library occupied the second floor. The story goes that the village constable allowed wandering laborers to spend the night in the jail portion of the building. Bands of Romani also camped on the grounds, according to early newspaper accounts.

In the past, village residents gathered in the park for holiday celebrations, fairs, political rallies, free summer movies, high school graduation ceremonies, and concerts. The music tradition has not changed, and for the 10th year, Belleville Public Library is sponsoring these events. Residents and visitors to Belleville can enjoy free concerts in the park on Tuesday evenings from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. through July. From 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. a block away at Park and Church Streets, the Belleville Farmers Market is open for the season.

More music is on tap for Sunday, July 16, when the Belleville Community Club hosts the Brother Love Music Festival. Six bands will be featured beginning at 11:00 a.m. Food and beer will be available for purchase, and visitors can bring camp or folding chairs or just spread a blanket on the grass.

The Belleville Village offices and the firehouse in the Library Park building were relocated in the 1920s. The library remained until 1979. In March 2021, a brand-new Belleville Public Library and Community Center opened across the street from Library Park. Fittingly, the library hosts events throughout the summer at Library Park. A volunteer fair will coincide with music in the park on June 27. A picnic in the park is scheduled for July 27 at 6:00 p.m.

Public Safety Night, a free event with activities for the entire family, is hosted by the Belleville Police Department with the Fire Department and EMS. Food and drinks are provided. A Christmas tree lighting ceremony takes place in December.

The livability of the Village of Belleville has been enhanced by the presence of Library Park in its midst. Within this peaceful environment, Belleville residents can come together, enjoy the community activities, and just relax in the outdoors.

Over the years, several other structures were built on the park grounds. A bandstand and fountain were added in the early 1900s and were rebuilt in the 1980s. Today, there are benches and picnic tables in the park. The building and park grounds are maintained by Belleville’s Public Works Department. “The park is well used,” says Rhea. The building’s first floor was refurbished into a museum and meeting room. The Belleville Area Historical Society maintains exhibits in the museum, and Jeanne

The activities at Library Park extend beyond the summer season. In October,

Jeanne Engle is a freelance writer.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water.

from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Upon entering the dimly lit gallery at Chazen Museum of Art, one encounters postapocalyptic remnants in an elaborate display: a cabinet of curiosities titled, somewhat paradoxically, My Arcadia , constructed of rich, dark mahogany supporting a large glass case. Inside reside three variously sized bell jars, each housing tortured and desiccated treelike forms rooted in a ground littered with the detritus of conflict and conflagration. The lower cabinet features drawers on opposing sides containing what appear to be fragments of bone; skeletal bird skulls; parchment documents, which are photoetched copper plates; and, in the most shocking revelation, the dried and hollowed remains of a cat cast in what seems to be pewter or lead, adding to the dread and solemnity of its presentation

(the actual process is more direct and proprietorial, involving polyurethane and graphite powder pigment).

This hugely ambitious work, now on permanent display at Chazen and most Madisonians’ first encounter with Martha Glowacki, provides a select glimpse into the discipline of natural philosophy, the forerunner of today’s modern science. The cornerstone of that philosophy is careful and recorded observation married to a thoughtful effort to order and explain the meaning and mechanisms that support those observations. Wealthy persons collected specimens from the natural world, art objects, and even fictional marvels masquerading as examples of the biological world and displayed them in rooms or cabinets specifically designed for that purpose. In a sense, these collections were an attempt to reconcile the two magisterium of science and the arts or, as legendary paleontologist Steven Jay Gould would have, science and the humanities.

For an artist like Martha who seeks, through poetic juxtaposition, to find an emotional truth through her collection and manufacture of objects, it’s her interest in the history of science that led to her career making art that is both dependent upon and a simulacrum of scientific method and explication. Martha received her MFA in art metal from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1978, where she studied under Fred Fenster and Eleanor Moty, a pioneer in developing photoetching for art metalwork, a technique now essential to Martha’s work.

Traditionally, artists in the metalworking arena are drawn to producing decorative objects and body adornment. But Martha, having worked in the Wisconsin Historical Museum, became intrigued with aspects of material culture, agricultural implements, and narrative. She felt the need to expand her work into areas of inquiry not traditionally associated with the fine arts. At the same time, she began to explore ways to include found objects into her work. Reflecting back on her early childhood experiences in the Milwaukee Public

Museum, which is designed to encourage interactive exploration, she started to expand the ambition of her work to include more sculptural elements accompanied by constituent remnants of scientific tools and specimens. Her inquiries led her to further examine the work of artist/scientists like Frederik Ruysch (1638‒1731), a dedicated anatomical illustrator from Amsterdam.

As the scale of Martha’s interests and research expanded, so too did the scale of her work. There’s a current vogue in the art world for displays of art referred to as installations. Often, these can appear to be virtually random assemblages of found and manipulated materials loosely associated by theme or title. Martha’s installations, by contrast, are elaborately constructed, deeply researched, and meticulously crafted opportunities to reflect upon and resonate with areas of scientific investigation and development. Her work eschews the sometimestedious didacticism of many museum displays, choosing to engage the viewer’s observational devotion and feed their intellectual engagement. Rather than providing an explicit roadmap that might lead to a reductive truth, as with so much science, Martha provides the viewer with a multiplicity of visual stimuli designed to evoke a different and subjective response from each observer.

In 2004, Martha created an experimental grouping of work at the Washburn Observatory on the UW–Madison campus titled Starry Transit. The overarching theme was the migrational tactic of birds to use the celestial markers of the night sky to assure their safe navigation. One of the most impressive elements is the Starry Transit cabinet, intrigued with aspects of material culture , agricultural implements , and narrative a six-foot-high nickel display cabinet holding an asymmetrical arrangement of black graphited birds accompanied by three-dimensional models of the constellations used by the birds on their travels. In the cabinet drawers are etched copper plates showing maps of spring and fall constellations.

In 2017, as part of a larger Chazen installation entitled Martha Glowacki’s Natural History: Observations and Reflections, Martha created a set of pieces called Deconstructing Flight: An Homage to Etienne-Jules Marey. Marey (1830-1904) was a French physiologist, scientist, and chronophotographer who used sequenced and often overlapping photos to reveal and understand animal locomotion. Martha devised an ingenious bolero jacket fitted with skeletal wings constructed of piano action components arching out in the silhouette of wing shapes. Renowned photographer Gregory Vershbow photographed art historian Shira Brisman wearing this apparel using a gun camera, taking a series of photos that animate the motion in a threeminute loop reminiscent of Marey’s experiments with contemporaneous overlapped sequential images.

In the same show, Martha exhibited an intricate piece reminiscent of 17th century Dutch perspective boxes. Titled Lacuna , a cavity or depression, it’s composed of cast iron, bronze, wood, mirrors, marbleized paper, animal bones, and pigments. Inside of a hexagonal case sits a blasted landscape of scarred and ashy remains surrounding a conicalshaped drumlin revealing a tarry abyss from which blackened bumblebees emerge. Mirrors placed on the inside of the case extend the landscape into an infinity of loss.

Currently, Martha is working to restore a 19th century Venetian display cabinet featuring gilded figures and inlaid stone (pietra dura), which will house her imaginings of a Wisconsin garden illuminated by oculi delivering natural light to her constructed interiors. Like all of Martha’s work, an elaborate and baroque mystery to be contemplated and reflected upon.

To see more of Martha’s work, visit marthaglowackiartist.com.

Chris Gargan is a landscape artist and freelance writer working from his farm southwest of Verona. You can find his work at Abel Contemporary Gallery in Stoughton. He is seen here with his dog Tycho Brahe.

Abel Contemporary Gallery

Contest

Win a $50 Gift Card!

question:

“Who first looked at Austin, Boulder, and Seattle before selecting Madison as home for his new food cart business?”

Enter by submitting your answer to the above question online at madisonlocallysourced.com or by email or mail. With your answer, include your name, mailing address, phone number, and email to mls@madisonlocallysourced.com or Madison Locally Sourced c/o ASJ Publishing LLC PO Box 559 McFarland, WI 53558

All entries with the correct answer will be entered into a drawing. Contest deadline is July 31, 2023.

good luck! winners

Thank you to everyone who entered our previous contest. The answer to the question “What is the name of Wisconsin’s only Indonesian restaurant?” is Bandung. A Nitty Gritty gift card was sent to our winner, Gerald Henrich of Sun Prairie, WI.

e meticulously restored

Opera House is one of Wisconsin’s premier music theaters featuring legendary performers and cutting-edge contemporary musicians in the intimate atmosphere of an era gone by.