H & S: Building on Water

A Virtual Walk

Walk virtually through the harbor district with Artist Sarah Gail Luther and Historian/Designer Stephen Servais as they explore the relationships between humans and the land - how culture has shaped the landscape and how the landscape has driven our culture.

Their virtual tour will ponder the drive and innovation that transformed a marsh and a sandbar into industry, transportation, and infrastructure that propelled the growth of our city. They’ll also take a closer look at the current restoration and reshaping of this area (of what is now mostly vacant industrial land) that hopes to draw people back to the area and invite a deeper connection to the landscape and our city’s most cherished resource, its waterways.

Sarah Gail Luther is a practicing public artist working in Milwaukee. Her work explores and documents the familiar, the average, or the forgotten. She strives, not to elevate but, simply find understanding and humanity in her subjects through her work. The results of these inquiries manifest in drawings, performances, public events, and distributable objects.

Stephen Servais is a designer and builder of sustainable housing, and a part-time historian interested in exploring Milwaukee’s pre-industrial past. These passions coalesce in both a study of the urban environment--the interplay of humans and the landscape over time--and in creating physical artifacts that take into account the energy, water and other resources that go into their construction and lifecycle.

*During the height of the coronavirus pandemic walks were conducted virtually. There were two walks for the cluster of four markers along E. Greenfield Avenue. This walk connects with the easternmost marker sites: H & S.