Episode 919: Kohler, Throckmorton, and Grabner

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This week, Bad at Sports hits the road and heads north to Sheboygan and Kohler, Wisconsin — where art, industry, and community collide. We drop into the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) and the Kohler Arts/Industry Residency program to see how a small Midwestern town sustains one of the most ambitious intersections of art and manufacturing in the country. Michelle Grabner and Jodi Throckmorton.

From toilets to terracotta, brass casting to bathroom design, Kohler has been quietly incubating radical artistic practice for decades, embedding artists in its factories while JMKAC builds a civic platform for art environments, vernacular traditions, and contemporary experimentation. We talk with artists, administrators, and community members about what makes this ecosystem work — and why Sheboygan might just be the weirdest, most wonderful art town in America.

John Michael Kohler Arts Center
@jmkac
Kohler Arts/Industry Residency
Kohler Co.
@kohler

Name-Drop

• Jodi Throckmorton  – https://curatorsintl.org/about/collaborators/7932-jodi-throckmorton
• Michelle Grabner – https://www.michellegrabner.com/
• John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) — https://www.jmkac.org/
• Kohler Arts/Industry Residency — https://www.jmkac.org/arts-industry/
• Kohler Co. — https://www.kohlercompany.com/
• Art Preserve (JMKAC’s satellite museum) — https://www.jmkac.org/art-preserve/
• Arts/Industry Alumni (sampled in conversation):
  • Beth Lipman — https://www.bethlipman.com/ | @beth_lipman
  • Ann Agee — https://www.annageestudio.com/
  • Jeffrey Clancy — https://jeffreyclancy.com/home.html
  • Ashwini Bhat — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/ashwini-bhat-reverberating-self/
  • Pao Houa — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/pao-houa-her-the-imaginative-landscape/
  • Lily Cox-Richard  — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/water-sprouts-and-remains-an-unfolding/
• Sheboygan community — https://www.townofsheboyganwi.gov/

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Christopher Hudgens

Operations Manager at Bad at Sports

Christopher Hudgens is the Operations Manager for BaS and works in various other capacities for other organizations in the Chicago Art & Culture scene. Most recently as Business Operations Manager for the Bridge Art Fair and currently an advocate for all things art & technology.

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