- Hello, everyone, I'm Derrick Cainion.

I am the founder of Art Intersection Milwaukee, and I'm also a professional sign language interpreter, founder of DJC Interpreting Service.

Today I'm on "The Arts Page" with Milwaukee PBS telling you more about Art Intersection Milwaukee, and I will be interpreting that in American Sign Language, so please enjoy.

(traffic humming) (horn honking) (tires clacking) Art Intersection MKE is all about bringing community together.

Living in the neighborhood like this or other neighborhoods, we're seen as being like unsafe, but when we have community, it makes things all better, and people feel better, and people stay connected, and everyone looks out after each other.

So the idea of using public art in this space to bring people together I thought would be the most amazing thing to do.

(relaxing upbeat music) I started work on this project in 2020.

2021 I acquired the space.

It came from the point of wanting to have roots here in the city of Milwaukee.

The ribbon cutting was September 26th, which happens to be my son's birthday, who is the person that inspired this whole project.

The feeling was great, but at the same time, there's still so much work to be done.

The first phase of this project is building the outdoor gallery, working with international artists to local artists to show their work on the space, giving exposure to their work to the community here so people in the community can see themselves represented but also have something to aspire to.

(relaxing upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) The next part of the project that I'm looking at building out is our solar array.

This area here will be where the solar canopy will be.

So this space is about 70 by 30, and just imagine standing underneath the canopy.

That kind of is transparent a little bit, but it also provides shade.

The idea of not being connected to the grid at all and also being able to provide support for individuals in the community if all the lights go out if there's a crisis.

We could use our space to charge durable medical equipment and power wheelchairs and oxygen tanks and all that for people in the community to get through those hard times.

The cool thing is on the south side of this pavilion, it kind of pitches up on an eight-degree pitch where we're gonna be able to take rainwater that falls on this roof and then feed it into the almost 8,000-gallon rainwater cistern.

That idea of being able to stop water from going into our fresh water system can help reduce flooding within people's basements or even flooding the system.

(water babbling) The themes of all the work on this space is all focused on community, environment, identity, and history.

For example, the rainwater harvesting cistern, we have an artist from Tunisia.

His name is Karim Jabari, and he's a prolific Arabic calligraphy artist.

And his wife, Jaime Brown, who is local to Wisconsin, they have a mural there that each panel is Arabic for one of the four elements.

So it's really great being able to have a space or have work that people from Northern Africa, Middle East can see themselves in our community.

We have our sensory sculptures here that were created by Jesse Meyer, a local artist.

This is made out of brass and mixed metals.

(metal clanging) And then also we have this chime here that's made out of repurposed flag poles.

So, as the wind blows, they make sound.

You can touch them.

We're looking at pulling these plants out and putting raised garden beds here in order to have other chimes and all that and other plants in the space.

This mural here is really special to me.

It's one of the first permanent murals that we've had on the space.

This is called "Mother Nature in Motherhood," the idea that this is a green space right in the middle of the city in the hood in which I'm from.

And it's the idea of a portrait of Mother Nature looking upon the space.

The thing that's really special to me about this project is the representation of Mother Nature happens to be my mom.

So if you look over her right shoulder, you'll see a silhouette of a guitar there to honor my late father.

He passed away a few years ago.

He was a really important person in my life and my family's life, so I just had that piece to honor my mom and my dad.

(elegant upbeat music) We have a lot of partners in this project.

It wouldn't be possible without our partners or individuals that believe in my vision, from the different departments in the city of Milwaukee, like DCD and the commissioner there, Lafayette Crump, the alderman, the Neighborhood Improvement District, Greenprint Partners, who are the administrators of Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District in green infrastructure, Milwaukee NIDC, Joy Engine, Harley-Davidson Foundation, Greater Milwaukee Foundation.

It's been a whole coalition.

(elegant upbeat music continues) People in this neighborhood, they deserve to have some really nice stuff just like everyone else.

Everyone deserves to have access to public art or arts in general.

The whole point of Art Intersection is that art is intersecting with everything we do as humans.

People from all over the world can connect to art.

Thank you, everyone, for watching this episode of "The Arts Page" here with Milwaukee PBS.

Again, if you'd like to learn more about Art Intersection Milwaukee, please go to our website, artintersectionmke.com.

(gentle upbeat music)