Sculpture professor and public art expert Jill Sebastian received a 2010 Woman of Influence Award from the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. The newspaper believes she is the first artist to receive the highly selective award.
Sebastian was honored in the Innovation category as a leading state expert on integrated public art, educational innovator and multi-media artist whose “collaborative, selfless yet bold vision is seen throughout the city’s and state’s landscapes, buildings, classrooms, museums and performance venues.”
In addition to receiving the commission for the Midwest, now Frontier, Airlines Center, site of the June awards luncheon, Sebastian’s current works include a curricular project with MIAD students for the Milwaukee Housing Authority to benefit four public residences, and the New South Union Campus at UW-Madison, the largest public art project currently in the U.S.
Marsha Sehler, director of business development at Uihlein Wilson Architects and arts advocate, said, “Anything that’s happened in the city in the realm of public art, Jill’s been involved in.”
Integrated public art is a process through which the artist both facilitates input from key stakeholders in a project and innovatively integrates multidisciplinary media to express the physical, social and cultural context of the project.
- Read the Business Journal story
- View Sebastian’s completed works
- View ongoing work at UW-Madison, which integrates two themes – “The Environment” and “Art, Science and Technology.”
