About the Artist
Terese Agnew began her art career as a public sculptor. Her early work included several temporary installations that engaged hundreds of people from the general public in the art making process. Her permanent works include The Wisconsin Workers Memorial in downtown Milwaukee at Zeidler Union Square (1995), created in collaboration with Mary Zebell: The centerpiece of the memorial is a bandstand made of salvaged gears, tools and iron-cast fixtures of the modern workplace. In the dome of the structure is a huge clock that stands still, a reference to the time given at work. Paths that ring the park are lined with a series of sculptural bollards and chains with panels that tell the stories of working people.
Her most recent public work (completed in 2002) is 35 large concrete sculptures of tree stumps arranged as an informal amphitheater at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in Brookfield, Wisconsin. The work honors the natural history of the site and the way in which people have always used available materials in the landscape to gather around storytellers, musicians, dancers or plays.
In 1990 Agnew began making art quilts in addition to sculpture. Her quilts are intricately detailed and intensely embroidered using a process that she describes as "drawing with thread." Agnew’s quilts are included in permanent collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, The Milwaukee Art Museum and the John M Walsh III Collection of Contemporary Art Quilts. Her quilts are also in several books, most notably The Art Quilt by Robert Shaw. In 2002 she was included in a show at the Milwaukee Art Museum entitled On Nature: Five Wisconsin Artists.
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