Crane is a professor of the practice in metals at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her unique take on sgraffito lends her work a meticulous level of detail and a mesmerizing clarity in design that, along with her pedagogy, earned her a 2024 United States Artists Fellowship.

Sgraffito is a fitting technique for an artist whose body of work chronicles memories and the passage of time. As a sharp tool gradually reveals a concealed layer and, eventually, a complete design, the stories embedded in Crane’s art slowly come into focus.

“I’m really interested in the stories [of the Great Migration] and particularly my family’s story,” she says. “I’m also interested in these old buildings that surround me [in Boston]: the remnants of the textile industry and the detritus that they’ve left behind.”

Crane’s work chronicles memory and the passage of time. Greta Rybus

Her work also considers the concept of home. Crane currently resides in Rhode Island, the latest stop in her own sgraffito-like movement across the country that started with an artistic childhood in Los Angeles and took her to Seattle, New York, Wisconsin, and now New England, her path gradually revealing itself.

Here are just a few of the stories she’s soldered into museum-worthy memory.

Statement Piece

The word jewelry often brings to mind wedding rings, dainty necklaces, and other precious ornaments that fall into the category of “fine jewelry.” The pieces that Crane creates are notably bolder than these delicate objects.

“When you go to a university to learn jewelry, you’re going because you want to make small sculpture,” she says. “Everything I make is a sculpture … and all the sculptures speak about the body. They speak about adornment, about being worn, and about the viewership of jewelry.”

As a graduate student under the mentorship of UW art professor Lisa Gralnick, Crane crafted statement pieces: necklaces that are intentionally large and attention-grabbing. Perhaps none makes a bigger statement than Big Pimpin’ (2014), a pendant comprising five 24-karat-gold-plated, enameled medallions suspended on a thick, gold-plated chain. The medallions are coated in black-over-white enamel, and each is etched with a unique sgraffito design. Crane notes that the piece was inspired by both the adornment of ancient African kings and the necklaces, or “bling bling,” worn by contemporary celebrities to connote wealth and status.

“That is maybe the most pivotal piece in my oeuvre,” Crane says. “It encompasses my history, it encompasses my research, and it encompasses the lineage of my journey through making.”

Cocktail Hour

Crane’s work often involves etching, but not all her stories are concealed beneath an outer layer. Growing up as a mixed-race child in the 1970s and 1980s, Crane split her time between her mother’s home in a predominantly white Los Angeles suburb and visits with her father in the city’s more diverse neighborhoods. The divide was obvious, but her place in it was not.

“You always feel like you’re not Black enough or you’re not white enough,” Crane says. “You’re told that.”

In her work, she captures these stark contrasts and the liminal space in which she exists by pairing natural materials, like stones, with handmade ones, like her enameled forms.

“Elementally, these materials are the same,” Crane says. “Enamel is glass. There’s glass in stone, so there’s crossover, but when you look at the surface of these two items, they look totally different.”

This juxtaposition is evident in pieces like Crème de Violette (2020) and The Pink Squirrel (2020), brooches that combine cholla bark and driftwood, respectively, with a tapered, enameled tube.

“I like to pair things to kind of ask, how do we exist?” she says. “Where are the similarities? Where are the differences?”

As for the cocktail-oriented naming conventions for these brooches: “I’m thinking of them as works that could bring people together,” she says, “and we come together over drinks.”

Miguel’s Story

A rare departure from her focus on jewelry, Crane’s most personal piece is a vessel that captures a personal history.

Miguel’s Story (2023) is a copper bowl coated in black-over-white enamel. The outside of the bowl features a series of tally marks; the inside bears the text of an interview conducted with her father’s brother, Miguel, which she transcribed in sgraffito.

Miguel’s Story (2023) includes the text of an interview Crane conducted with her father’s brother, which she transcribed in sgraffito. Courtesy of Tanya Crane

“My father passed away in the ’80s — he had ALS — and I was born in the ’70s, so I only know little snippets of his story,” Crane says. By interviewing his brother and sister — some of his last living relatives — Crane evokes a more complete picture of a man she didn’t get a chance to know. She hopes to tie her family’s stories to those of the Second Great Migration, the period from the 1940s through the 1970s that brought so many Black settlers to the American West and that influences the region to this day.

Miguel’s Story is part of the Enamel Arts Foundation Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (Crane gifted the proceeds to Miguel when the piece was purchased.) But perhaps her most intimate piece — and her most unconventional — has yet to be put on public display.

What’s His Worth (2023) is a vintage men’s urinal coated with black-on-white enamel and a gold-leafed interior. The enameled surface features the same sgraffito tally-mark design as Miguel’s Story.

What’s His Worth (2023) is Crane’s most intimate and unconventional piece. Courtesy of Tanya Crane

“Because my dad had ALS, I knew him as being paralyzed,” Crane says. “He had needed assistance with everything, and until maybe the ’80s, all the things in hospitals were made out of enamel.”

When Crane found the urinal in a Wisconsin antique store, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, but as her family’s story has revealed itself over time, it became an appropriate artifact on which to preserve a history that she continues to uncover. •

Through each of those experiences, Obma has come to understand that making one’s way in Hollywood requires diligence, tenacity, and a winning attitude. He may not be famous quite yet, but he’s been a gainfully employed actor for 15 years. With optimism intact, Obma continues pursuing his big break. And he has real-world role models in actors like Steve Carell, Kathy Bates, Bryan Cranston, Viola Davis, and Morgan Freeman, who were all in their 40s when they made it big.

Now, with a new series project he’s put together himself, he’s that much closer to joining their ranks.

ACT ONE: BACKSTORY

One of four children, Obma — who grew up in La Crosse and Fond du Lac, Wisconsin — felt early on that he didn’t have much to offer, leading to a fair amount of self-doubt.

“All of my siblings were more successful athletes than I was, which is quite revered in small towns,” he says. “I also come from a family of rather exceptional people — my brother is an orthopedic surgeon, my younger sister is an anesthesiologist, and my older sister is an immigration attorney. I just didn’t relate to being the perfect doctor or lawyer. Instead, my throughline for how I can understand the characters that I’ve so naturally been able to play is if the characters are quite flawed.”

Though Obma’s talents weren’t necessarily valued where he grew up, things began to shift when his high school Spanish teacher, Julie Proffitt, recognized that he had a gift for languages. “The fact that Mrs. Proffitt so openly shared her belief in me encouraged me to apply myself in a whole new way, and now I fluently speak a variety of languages,” he says. He not only speaks flawless Spanish, but he also knows French, Russian, German, and his most recent challenge — Welsh. He found Russian and Welsh the most difficult to learn.

His aptitude for accents rises to the level of a superpower. “Accents are something I really enjoy — they bring me to life,” Obma says. “When putting together an accent, I find that I change the way my mouth is shaped, which then causes me to carry myself differently — it’s all connected.”

Obma’s talent for languages and accents has boosted his career. “You’ve got to find out what your essence is and give that to the world,” he says. Courtesy of Hans Obma

Zeroing in on what one wants in a career can be an arduous venture. Despite his own ups and downs, Obma recognizes that not everyone gets the opportunity to go after the life that they’d always wanted. “Early on, I heard someone say that you’ve got to figure out what your essence is and give that to the world,” he says. “More and more, sharing the core of who I am is central to my work as an actor: to speak my truth.”

Justin Markofski ’02, Obma’s college roommate and close friend of 22 years, has a clear vision of what makes him a standout in the sea of celebrities. “Hans takes a special interest in others and goes out of his way to remember things about people that will make them feel seen, special, and cared for. … He is teachable and pragmatic. This combined with his diligence has helped to cultivate his skills as an actor within a unique niche.”

Obma consistently receives high marks from most anyone he interacts with. Kathleen Culver ’88, MA’92, PhD’99, director and professor at the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication, got to know him when he was a student double majoring in journalism and Spanish, and they remain in contact to this day.

“I first met Hans when he took our introductory boot-camp class, Mass Media Practices,” Culver says. “I remember him being a fan favorite of his classmates. Hans has a joyous soul, a big heart, and tremendous talent. He’s someone who gets along with everyone and always strives for the best outcomes for all, which is so important in fields like ours, because they so often rely on teamwork.”

ACT TWO: GETTING INTO CHARACTER

Relocating from Wisconsin to Los Angeles in 2008 was a culture shock and a career gamble. But Obma knew that if he didn’t try, he would regret it. “Once in LA,” he says, “I felt like I’d gotten to this place where there really were thousands of doors to opportunity, but so many of them were closed with signs that said, ‘Don’t knock.’ It wasn’t a welcoming feeling.”

If you’ve ever watched Vampire Diaries, The Rookie, Narcos: Mexico, or For All Mankind, you’ve seen Obma playing a variety of characters. And getting those roles took time and hard work. Arriving in LA with no acting credits, he soon realized that he needed help defining the areas where he had something unique to offer. “While specializing in foreign roles, I also worked out how to play criminals and found that I have the capacity to play mentally ill characters quite naturally,” he says.

Finding a renowned acting coach was key to acquiring the confidence and skills necessary to move forward. “Working with David Rotenberg was a foundational time for me,” he says. “I would send him tapes of different monologues, to which he would offer notes. For several months, I did villain after villain, and he told me that I need to play bad guys. And now, I know how to approach those types of roles in a way that I didn’t before.”

Shortly after working with Rotenberg, Obma booked a handful of roles in close succession. First, he got to portray a Revolutionary War hero on TURN: Washington’s Spies, which was a French-language role. Around that same time, he was in an episode of NCIS: New Orleans playing a German master villain, quickly followed by a Hungarian bad-guy role in Get Shorty.

Another one of Obma’s early successes was booking a prime-time role on Criminal Minds. He found being on set exhilarating. In 2018 and 2019, he earned a role in the fourth and fifth seasons of the Breaking Bad spinoff, Better Call Saul. “Even though my character, Adrian, was rather secondary,” he says, “that job helped pay for a couple years of life.” He also enjoyed the opportunity to interact regularly with lead actor Jonathan Banks, who played hitman and fixer Mike Ehrmantraut.

Meaningful experiences, career wins, and good friends kept Obma in LA full-time for 12 years before he moved back to Wisconsin in 2020. Among those friends was fellow actor and mentor Shun Lee, who helped him recognize that he didn’t have to apply everyone’s advice or have every social media account. And he didn’t have to accept every role.

“When I first moved to California, I had the rather erroneous thought that anyone who’d been here longer had something to offer that I ought to consider,” he recalls. “But many of those I interacted with were coming from a place of defeat and jadedness. Through my time with Shun, I came to recognize that if you have wisdom and apply it consistently, that is what will likely lead to positive results. The best advice tends to focus on the possibilities and how to pursue them effectively.”

As Obma’s career began to take off, so did his confidence and reputation, earning him a place in the final season of the comedy series Grace and Frankie. He was a Norwegian candy smuggler — Hummer Von Vuckinschloker — opposite Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. That same year he portrayed an evil scientist in WandaVision with Elizabeth Olsen and Kathryn Hahn.

“Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda were gracious and complimentary, which meant a lot, and I now carry myself differently because of the way things went on that set. The same holds true for WandaVision, which was a victorious experience where they kept giving me more and more to do because they were happy with what I was creating with my character.”

Most recently, Obma played a principal role in May December, directed by Todd Haynes and starring Natalie Portman. “Both Natalie and Todd were gracious, and it gave me an opportunity to firmly plant my feet and work with an Oscar-winning actress and an Oscar-nominated director,” he says. “I could have walked into that film and fallen flat on my face, but working with Todd and Natalie, instead of falling, I flew.”

ACT THREE: SILVER LININGS

When the pandemic began in early 2020, it offered opportunities to slow down and look at things from an entirely different angle — adopt a pet, make your own sourdough, learn how to knit. For Obma, it was a chance to delve deeply into practicing languages and accents. He also read The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron, which inspired him to write.

“I came up with an idea for a television series that would feature a main character, Joseph Gard, who’s a sensitive man from Wisconsin,” Obma says. “He’s an MI6 interpreter who speaks many languages and uses different accents, which is perfect for me — a dream role.”

Once he felt he had written a successful pilot — A Question of Service — Obma decided to go a step further and fund the entire project himself, all during COVID. What came after is something he couldn’t have predicted.

After submitting his 20-minute proof-of-concept film to 11 film festivals across the U.S. and the UK, he came away victorious, winning eight times in his category. For a first-time writer, it’s an incredible feat.

So, how do these triumphs translate into a series getting picked up by a streaming platform?

“Once I’m ready to start reaching out to producers, I’ll share all that we’ve achieved thus far,” he says. “Then, I’ll pair that with the excellent bookings I’ve had as an actor. My hope is that it will all add up to something they may want to invest in. I’m eager for a 10-episode series, to avoid making choices that don’t ring true, and to work with people who are passionate about crafting quality stories.”

Obma maintains a generosity of spirit in everything he does, including how he views his college experience as a key to his career. He is a fourth-generation Badger, which is a great source of pride for him.

“I love the idea of people from the Badger state succeeding,” Obma says. “I like that the UW has been part of the experiences for so many important people in my life, too. I love that a person can come from Wisconsin, attend UW–Madison, and go do anything in the whole wide world. I think that’s very exciting.”

Almost as exciting, perhaps, as being on the verge of the role of a lifetime. •

Most nights find Wright, an associate clinical professor at UW Law School, working on his second thriller, a follow-up to his smash debut, The Coyotes of Carthage, a screwball dive into the bleak world of dark-money politics. No less an authority than bestselling legal-thriller writer John Grisham calls Wright “a major new voice.”

Down in his basement, sitting at a wood desk strewn with papers and empty bottles of unsweetened tea, Wright faces the wall with two screens in front of him (one for research, one for writing). Music pounds. Sam Cooke, Aretha, Master KG, Outkast, the Chicks. More often than not, the same song roars over and over and over and over again.

“For me, writing is a loud experience,” says Wright, who also lectures in the UW Program in Creative Writing, where he earned his MFA. “Part of the way I know I’m doing okay is that you sort of zoom out on the music. You’re not really listening to the lyrics. You lose track of time. You’re mesmerized with whatever’s on the screen.”

Author Lorrie Moore, Wright’s former UW writing instructor, is a bit in awe of him. “He works hard and stays up late,” she says. “He laughs and makes you laugh. He is blessed/cursed with a quick, high-energy brain.”

Wright is a towering presence, both intellectually and physically, thanks to his six-foot-two height. Besides his UW degree, he has a bachelor’s in economics and history and a master’s in environmental economics from Duke as well as a law degree from Washington University. He even found time to get a master’s from Johns Hopkins’s writing program while doing a five-year stint as a trial attorney in the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. When Wright applied to the UW’s program, he wrote, “I have the perfect job. For someone, but not me.”

His sly wit snakes through every page of The Coyotes of Carthage. When asked to describe himself, he conjures up a cinematic vision, pointing out his freckles, hair that’s a little wild, and his “exceptionally big head,” which requires him to wear “special big-headed glasses.”

Besides teaching in two programs, Wright is the former codirector of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate wrongly convicted people. Thanks in part to his efforts, four men were freed.

Wright continues to meet clients in Wisconsin’s maximum-security prisons with law students in his clinic. “I sometimes describe it as being like Scooby-Doo,” he says. “A bunch of students and I get in a van, and we go and try to solve murders around the state.”

Experiences like these inform Wright’s fiction. His Department of Justice work, for example, had him trekking to rural areas to try voting rights cases. While passing time in places like Bolivar County, Mississippi, he befriended local politicians — “masters of their communities,” as he calls them. And the down-and-dirty secrets he learned about small-town elections reveal themselves throughout The Coyotes of Carthage.

Swamp Creature

The novel tells the tale of Dre Ross, a sleazy, 30-something, African American political consultant in Washington, DC. A former small-time drug dealer raised by a bipolar schizophrenic mother, he slept in alleys and did hard time in juvenile prison for a savage assault he didn’t commit.

This down-and-out swamp creature has been given his last chance: Go to backwater Carthage, South Carolina. Dupe its flag-waving voters into approving a ballot initiative that will sell public land to a mining company. Never mind that its toxic runoff will kill tourism, poison the water supply, and basically destroy the place. The dirty trickster whips up websites for phony front groups such as the Council of Christian Commerce and the Society for American Freedom. He runs dishonest ads and polls. He launches nasty online attacks.

Dre, writes Wright, “wonders at what point he lost control.” Whether he means of the campaign, his sanity, his decency, or all three goes unsaid. Lest a reader think Dre only has it in for white people, he is an equal-opportunity abuser who “admits that for his people he might have done more harm than good.”

Sour wisdom from the dark-money world — and Wright’s rural journeys — peppers Dre’s thoughts. “Elections are about getting voters to hate others.” “God bless social media. Good for pictures; terrible for truth.”

“Steve has a real heart to his work,” says novelist Judith Claire Mitchell, who formerly taught in the UW creative writing program. “There’s an emotional openness that balances the cynicism. His main character in Coyotes is very openly wounded. His heart is broken, and that’s not hidden.”

Critics loved the book for the way it combines the alienation of Catch-22’s Joseph Heller with Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo ethos and the wacky imagery of a Coen brothers movie. “Riveting,” with a “tick-tock pace and knockout prose,” cheered the Washington Post. “Darkly funny and bleakly honest,” gushed Salon. “Crackerjack debut,” raved USA Today, which put Wright on its list of “100 Black Novelists You Should Read.”

“Writing,” says Wright, “is the art of keeping people paying attention.”

Like most first-time novelists, he took a long time to finish The Coyotes of Carthage — four and a half years. He came home from work and would “eat something, walk the dogs, and write — and that was my life.” When he gave the supposedly final manuscript to friends to read, they hated it. Too intellectual, too grim, they said.

During those years Wright had started visiting prisons. “The darkness of that world — the horrific crimes, the awfulness of the wrong person going to jail, and the possibility that the real person who did it was out there and causing more harm — entered the novel, and it became very different from what I wanted it to be,” he says. “I don’t know if I was using it as therapy.”

When told he should cut it from 140,000 to 70,000 words, Wright says, “I was pretty sad, but you stand up. You brush yourself off, and then you go at it, and in the end, I’m still quite proud of it. But it’s obviously a very different book than I thought I had finished four years ago.”

First novels are notoriously autobiographical, but Wright’s upbringing bears no resemblance to Dre’s. When asked what traits he has in common with his ruthless, haunted antihero, Wright jokes, “I think in the book I describe him as exceptionally good-looking.” He quickly confesses that he shares Dre’s “cynicism and acerbic responses. I can be a bit of a smart aleck.”

A Family of Eccentrics

The son of a computer scientist mother and a father who was an army doctor, Wright grew up obsessed with storytelling. He loved the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, which allowed preteen readers to control plots by deciding which way stories would turn.

He wrote his own Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes and fan fiction and remains an avid devotee of Star Trek and Star Wars. His dog, Ahsoka, a black Lab/Great Pyrenees mix, is named after a Star Wars character mentored by the virtuous young Anakin Skywalker (before he became Darth Vader).

“He tries to show her all the ways in the world to be good, with the irony being he ends up the worst person in the world,” Wright says, adding, “Now that’s not at all my relationship with my dog.”

His two sisters and parents were also Trekkies. “I’ll be honest,” he says, “I come from a family of eccentrics.”

He had a globetrotting childhood, growing up in Nashville, Spokane, Oakland, and on military bases in West Germany and Alaska. “There’s nothing like being an American overseas, especially during the Cold War, to make you love and admire your country.”

Having been in spit-polish schools on military bases, Wright got the shock of his young life in Augusta, Georgia, where he endured his junior and senior high school years. With uncharacteristic understatement, he says, “That experience was formative.” Westside High School introduced him to a community where education was inseparable from race, Christianity, and traditional notions of patriotism.

Once, when he stayed silent for a football game prayer and merely bowed his head, teammates razzed him. A teacher yelled at a student for failing to show respect for the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. Students isolated themselves by race at lunch, and admission to Advanced Placement classes seemed to Wright to have a cap on Black students.

“Race is one of those things we continue to try to figure out,” he says. “Obviously, over the arc of our country, we’ve made tremendous progress, but especially as a Black civil rights lawyer who represents Black men in the criminal justice system, [I see] we clearly have a long way to go.

“A lot of the conversations we have about even discussing race in our schools deal with people’s discomfort with having conversations about our past and how that implicates our present. My hope is that we can get better at having those conversations. Hopefully, that will lead to better policy in health care, criminal justice, poverty — things I’ve dedicated my life to dealing with.”

Part of the key to Wright’s success is his easygoing nature, which allows him to feel at home in varied settings.

“He has no problem being plunked down in a room with conservatives or liberals, or with people who aren’t interested in politics or who are very interested in politics,” says his former Department of Justice colleague Robert Popper, who is now senior counsel at the right-leaning group Judicial Watch. “He likes to laugh with and, frankly, at them all.”

Back in his days as a rural trial lawyer, Wright became friends with a lot of politicians he would not necessarily vote for. “But I thought they were very good people, and it wasn’t the end of the world,” he says.

This ability to see all sides of people and situations clearly has benefits for Wright’s work as both a novelist and a law school professor.

No Easy Answers

Wright takes his law students behind bars in the Wisconsin towns of Waupun, Stanley, and Green Bay.

He struggles to describe the smell of a maximum-security prison. A “giant antiseptic bleach” scent provides the top note. Underneath lurk odors of men who haven’t showered because of guard shortages. “I think it’s the smell of misery,” Wright says.

Before the students go in, he gives them a talking to.

“This is something you’re going to remember the rest of your life,” he tells them, keeping tabs on their moods. “I’m always mindful of their energy and the tone, because there’s just objectively sadness in a prison, and for some students, it’s scary.

“Prisons are by design intimidating. You walk through one hall. A door closes behind you, the barred door opens in front of you, and you walk down another hall. Just the sound of it. The clicking of bars behind you and the clicking of doors ahead of you. The whole aesthetic. You’re occasionally given a tour, and we’ve been to solitary wings. There are guys in there just screaming for their lives.”

Nevertheless, Wright encourages his students to retain a sense of humor.

“You can still have moments of levity and moments of laughter,” he says. “I want them to learn, but I want them to have fun. I don’t see how you can have fun without laughing every once in a while.”

Most of his students have very strong feelings about the criminal justice system. Some hate police and believe no one should go to jail. Some think police can do no wrong, and there are no innocent people in jail. “They tend to be a little simplistic at both extremes,” says Wright.

“Part of what I hope to do is to create some complexity, to explain to students that oftentimes there aren’t a lot of easy answers, that there are different stakeholders, and that all people — including the police, suspects, and victims — are not all just one thing.”

Spoken like a true novelist. •

On the UW campus, music is everywhere, whether it’s being performed on stages or taught in classrooms. Little wonder, then, that the university has produced popular musicians of the highest order. They’ve mastered their genres, sold millions of records, even been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Here are some of the greatest songs by artists Badgers can proudly call their own.

“Down So Low” | Mother Earth, 1968

Madison native Tracy Nelson x’67 spent a couple of years at the UW studying social work and singing at parties and coffeehouses. Then California beckoned. In San Francisco she fronted the blues-rock band Mother Earth and, following a romance with future rock legend Steve Miller x’65, wrote the weeper “Down So Low.”

Nelson has recorded the soul-inflected song numerous times over the years. As performed by Mother Earth, it’s staggering, a slow burn punctuated by startling key changes and sweet backing vocals. Nelson’s singing is gigantic. “I know your opinion of me isn’t good,” she moans, and anyone who’s ever been through a breakup knows just what she means.

“Feel Your Groove” | Ben Sidran, 1971

After earning a doctorate in American studies at the University of Sussex, keyboardist Ben Sidran ’67 launched a music career that included work with the Steve Miller Band and a series of solo albums on which he perfected a distinctive blend of jazz and rock. “Feel Your Groove,” the title track of his debut release, feels like a statement of purpose, with Mose Allison–inflected speak-singing, dreamy chord sequences, teasing strings, and an extended jam that signifies maximal groove-feeling.

“Dueling Banjos” | Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell, 1973

Bluegrass seldom dominates the pop charts, but that’s what happened in 1973, when the rollicking “Dueling Banjos” peaked at number two on Billboard’s Hot 100. The release was also a number-five country hit and even topped the easy-listening chart. Not bad for this simple instrumental duet recorded by guitarist Steve Mandell and, on banjo, the late Eric Weissberg x’61. (Right, one of the banjos on “Dueling Banjos” isn’t a banjo. Don’t worry.)

Weissberg attended the UW and the Juilliard School of Music before collaborating with future screenwriter and director Marshall Brickman ’62 on a 1963 album, New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass. Tracks from that album, as well as “Dueling Banjos,” wound up on the soundtrack of Deliverance, the unsettling 1972 film that gave “Banjos” its wide audience.

“The Joker” | Steve Miller Band, 1973

Steve Miller came of age musically in Texas, but his roots are in Milwaukee. That’s where he had an early mentor in Les Paul, a pioneer of electric guitar and a good guy for a future Rock & Roll Hall of Famer to know. At the UW, he founded the Ardells, which featured future stars Boz Scaggs x’66 and Sidran. Miller left Wisconsin to soak up the blues in Chicago, then made his way to San Francisco and launched a campaign to conquer radio and the rest of the world.

A series of albums and singles met, at first, middling success. Then came “The Joker.” It reached number one on the Billboard pop chart and set the template for hit records that followed: sparkling arrangement, glib lyrics, guitar hooks no one forgets. But as great as other Miller singles are, “The Joker” wields a secret weapon: the word pompatus. Pompatus.

“Lowdown” | Boz Scaggs, 1976

Boz Scaggs and Steve Miller were friends and musical collaborators as schoolboys in Texas, and with the Ardells they entertained in dorms and at sorority parties. Scaggs appeared on the first two Steve Miller Band albums and released a series of tasteful solo albums that didn’t make much of a commercial impact, notwithstanding the searing Duane Allman collaboration “Loan Me a Dime,” from Scaggs’s second, self-titled release. But when Scaggs released Silk Degrees in 1976, the album’s deft agglomeration of soul, rock, and disco captured a moment. The Force was strongest on the low-key “Lowdown,” with its sly groove and louche lyrics, to say nothing of a flute earworm to beat all flute earworms.

Silk Degrees was a multiplatinum smash. No need to wonder-wonder-wonder who is doing that smooth, dare we say silky, singing. It’s Boz.

“Member of the Family” | Spooner, 1982

Garbage cofounder and drummer Butch Vig ’80 walked a long road to alt-rock megastardom. A native of Viroqua, Wisconsin, Vig studied film at the UW. Beginning in the 1970s he was in the power-pop band Spooner, along with future Garbage guitarist Duke Erikson, and the band went on to release three indie albums. The first, 1982’s Every Corner Dance, received positive attention in Rolling Stone. Singer/ guitarist/songwriter Erikson “acknowledges his debt to the Beatles in just about every song,” critic Lloyd Sachs wrote.

The album yielded the memorable track “Member of the Family,” which features the jerky rhythms and tinny keyboards familiar to fans of early 1980s New Wave. The song’s melancholy lyrics fit uneasily with the upbeat music, and what’s more New Wave than that?

Fire Town’s “Carry the Torch” features chiming guitars and Byrds-like dreaminess.

“Carry the Torch” | Fire Town, 1986

Next on Butch Vig’s musical journey came Fire Town, a rock band whose members included another UW alum, Phil Davis ’76, MA’81. The group released a pair of albums with Atlantic, In the Heart of the Heart Country and The Good Life. A standout track from the former, “Carry the Torch,” features the chiming guitars and Byrds-like dreaminess that were all the rage on college radio in the mid-1980s.

“Stupid Girl” | Garbage, 1995

The music Butch Vig made with his 1980s bands was taut and effective, but something was missing. That something, it turns out, was Shirley Manson. Vig, Steve Marker, and Duke Erikson teamed with the flame-haired Scots siren to form Garbage. A signature act of alternative rock’s commercial triumph in the 1990s, Garbage has sold zillions of albums, played the grand stages of the world, and recorded a James Bond theme, all while maintaining its acerbic wit and fierce artistic integrity. At the height of their fame, band members stayed in Wisconsin even as performers not half as successful might have drifted to the coasts.

“Stupid Girl,” the highest-charting single from the group’s self-titled debut, perfectly encapsulates the Garbage strategy: voluptuous synthesizers, concise guitar hooks, arch lyrics, and, best of all, Manson’s menacing vocals. Wherever this song is playing it’s 1995 again, but only in good ways.

“Breakfast of Champions” | Rainer Maria, 1999

From the ashes of another group named for a poet, Ezra Pound, UW students Kaia Fischer ’97, William Kuehn ’93, and Caithlin De Marrais ’96 formed Rainer Maria. The emo combo made a name for itself among indie fans with its musing lyrics, soft-loud dynamics, and proudly unvarnished singing. In the 1990s and 2000s, the group released five albums and toured the small venues of the unforgiving indie circuit before parting ways in 2006. They subsequently reformed and, in 2017, released another album, S/T.

“Breakfast of Champions,” from the 1999 release Look Now Look Again, is a mournful, despairing breakup song with lyrics that are in turn abstract and all too precise in their sadness. “When he left me, we drove into a snowstorm,” De Marrais murmurs at the end. Sigh.

Peter and Lou Berryman: “I used to sit out on the Terrace and watch my grade point disappear.” Brent Nicastro

“Madison, Wisconsin” | Lou and Peter Berryman, 2000

Madison-based Lou ’77 and Peter x’69 Berryman have forged a long, remarkable career recording albums and performing their funny, subversive songs in folk clubs and church basements. Accordionist Lou writes the music, guitarist Peter the lyrics, and they harmonize robustly as they sing laugh-out-loud ditties about consumer paranoia, ecological dread, and weird stuff in the refrigerator. Career highlights include Love Is the Weirdest of All, a 2004 theatrical revue of Berryman songs that Madison Repertory Theatre staged in the UW’s Vilas Hall.

“Madison, Wisconsin” is a sweet, nostalgic tribute to the Badger State capital in general and the UW experience in particular. “I used to sit out on the Terrace,” they sing, “and watch my grade point disappear.”

“I’m Not Shy” | Joy and the Boy, 2004

Ben isn’t the only talented Sidran to graduate from the UW. Son Leo Sidran ’99 is a music-business veteran in his own right, with credits that include the Academy Award–winning song he produced, Jorge Drexler’s “Al Otro Lado del Río,” from the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries. In the early 2000s, Sidran teamed with the gifted singer-songwriter Joy Dragland ’00 to form the pop duo Joy and the Boy. Early gigs included a 2000 spot opening for presidential candidate Al Gore on Madison’s Capitol Square. Then came a series of releases, each one a showcase for Sidran’s taut musicianship and Dragland’s poised singing.

A standout song is “I’m Not Shy” from the pair’s first album, Paradise, with a teasing vocal by Dragland and a lively beat that recalls 1970s funk. “I’m not shy,” she purrs, and we believe her.

“Night” | Zola Jesus, 2010

As a UW student, Nika Roza Danilova ’10 studied philosophy and French. She also developed Zola Jesus, the brooding, goth-inflected music persona that, starting in the early 2010s, has been received ecstatically in the indie music world and beyond. Danilova has released a series of acclaimed albums marked by her powerful, operatic singing. “Not many female pop voices have sounded like this,” the New York Times reported admiringly in 2011.

“Night,” a highlight of Danilova’s 2010 release Stridulum II, recalls goth icons like Siouxsie and the Banshees with its moody atmospherics. Yes, it’s a love song, but take a line like: “In the end of the night we’ll rest our bones.” “Rest our bones” is a normal, everyday saying, but in this gloomy setting it has all kinds of creepy connotations.

“Devils and Angels” | Toby Lightman, 2013

As a member of the Chi Omega sorority, Toby Lightman ’00 honed her musical chops performing in Humorology, the annual variety show staged by UW Greek organizations. “I was in the cast all four years and directed my senior year,” she told the Badger Herald in 2004. After graduation the Cherry Hill, New Jersey, native tended bar in New York City and eventually signed with Lava Records.

Her debut album, Little Things, included “Devils and Angels,” a cheeky woman-done-wrong anthem that melds rock and hip-hop sounds with Lightman’s seething lyrics. “I’m going to greet you at her back door as you’re coming out,” she hisses. That can’t end well! The song slid into the Top 20 on Billboard’s Adult Pop chart, and a series of major-label and independent releases followed.

“Impossible” | Lucien Parker, 2017

Since 2007, undergraduates in the UW’s First Wave scholarship program have studied hip-hop culture in its many aspects — rap, poetry, visual art, dance. Some have gone on to successful recording careers, including rapper Lucien Parker ’19, the South Minneapolis native who landed his musing, low-key track “Impossible” on an episode of the Marvel TV series Cloak & Dagger. That makes Parker officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Achievement unlocked!

“Mr. Clean” | Yung Gravy, 2018

In the weeks leading up to his UW graduation, rapper Matthew Hauri ’17, a.k.a. Yung Gravy, had to miss class — but not for the usual college-student reasons. He was flying off for contract negotiations with major music labels.

The absences paid off when Hauri signed with Republic Records and launched a platinum-selling recording career. But he notched one of his greatest successes when he was still an independent artist: “Mr. Clean,” which samples the Chordettes’ “Mr. Sandman” and features Hauri’s funny boasting about his romantic conquests. The video, in which Hauri traverses Lake Mendota on a Sea-Doo, is a stitch.

Zhalarina’s “Lala” is a love letter to her father.

“Lala” | Zhalarina, 2019

Another First Wave alum, rapper Zhalarina Sanders ’15, MS’18, earned a regional Emmy for The Light, a collection of music videos she created for PBS Wisconsin.

She told National Public Radio that her powerful track “Lala” is a love letter to her father, who was incarcerated when she wrote it. “My favorite thing about the song is that it has done exactly what I wanted it to do for my family,” she said. “My dad definitely cries every time he hears it.”

“The Wine Talkin’ ” | The CashBox Kings, 2019

Harmonica player Joe Nosek ’97, MA’00 formed the blues band the Cash Box Kings as a UW graduate student in the early 2000s. His inspiration, he told the Chicago Tribune in 2017, was the Windy City legends whose music he heard when growing up in the Chicago suburbs: James Cotton, Junior Wells, Sunnyland Slim. “We wanted to help keep alive the traditional ’40s, ’50s, ’60s Chicago blues sound, and the ensemble approach to playing blues music,” Nosek said. A key personnel change came in 2007, when Chicago singer Oscar Wilson joined the lineup. The band tours internationally and has released albums steadily since its 2003 debut, Live! At the King Club.

On the group’s latest, 2019’s Hail to the Kings!, Brown duets amusingly with blues diva Shemekia Copeland in the boisterous shuffle “The Wine Talkin’.”

De Shields’s singing is merrily malevolent on “Road to Hell.” Lia Chang

“Road to Hell” | André De Shields, 2019

If you were watching the Tony Awards in 2019, there’s a 99 percent chance you cried as actor-singer-dancer-director-choreographer André De Shields ’70 accepted his honor for best featured actor in the musical Hadestown, which revisits the mythology of Eurydice and Orpheus. Rather than rattling off the list of names typical of these moments, De Shields shared what he called his cardinal rules of ability and longevity, beginning with: “Surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming.” It was a graceful moment in an unforgettable career, and the award was well deserved.

His signature tune from the show, “Road to Hell” by Anaïs Mitchell, opens the proceedings with a slinky New Orleans sound and singing that is merrily malevolent.

“Rakin’ and Scrapin’ ” | Leon Lee Dorsey, 2021

At the UW, jazz bassist Leon Lee Dorsey MM’83 studied with legendary professor Richard Davis. Now Dorsey’s an associate professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and the list of artists he has performed with is a who’s-who of American music: Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey.

Dorsey also leads his own band, and his latest release, 2021’s Thank You Mr. Mabern!, was the final recording project of the late pianist Harold Mabern, a legend in his own right. The Mabern composition “Rakin’ and Scrapin’ ” is a standout. •

“When individuals encounter my sculptures, I’d like them to feel a sense of wonder and inspiration,” Velliquette says. Michael Velliquette

Even if you’ve turned a sheet of paper into an airplane, a snowflake, or an origami swan, you haven’t come close to what Michael Velliquette MA’99, MFA’00 can do with studio art’s most fundamental tool. Velliquette is an assistant professor in the UW School of Education’s art department and a sculptor whose material is sold by the ream.

Yes: Velliquette’s medium is the canvas on which other artists scrawl their epics and smear their paints. But a look at one of Velliquette’s intricate sculptures proves that bare paper can put even the most lifelike paintings or evocative etchings to shame. His technique and tools are simple — scissors, knives, paper, glue, cutting, layering. But they create pieces that reflect the high level of skill and hundreds of hours (around 500 per artwork) that go into each one.

“When individuals encounter my sculptures, I’d like them to feel a sense of wonder and inspiration,” Velliquette told Shoutout HTX in May. “I want to convey the same sense of joy that I experience making them.”

His sculptures are not so much reflections of our world as newly imagined worlds in and of themselves. They are monochromatic, but Velliquette’s color choices are bold and tasteful, purposefully calling attention to the details that seem to emerge infinitely the longer one spends with a piece.

“I like there to be something everywhere that the eye rests [on] that sort of engages you or pushes you to the next thing,” he told Madison Magazine’s Maija Inveiss ’17, MBAx’24 in May.

Velliquette’s work has been featured in collections and galleries around the world. Images of his sculptures can be found on his website.

In 1961, Dylan’s future looked grim — until fate intervened at the end of his Madison stay. Sigmund Goode / Michael Ochs Archive / Getty Images

The extravagant Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, opened in May, completing Dylan’s apotheosis. Though perhaps completing is the wrong word, since the 81-year-old musician shows no signs of slowing down. After selling 125 million albums and winning Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, he’s still touring and writing singular songs. He even has a new book coming out this fall, The Philosophy of Modern Song.

Dylan is up there with the greatest American artists, but would you believe that his path to immortality passed through a few low-rent UW–Madison apartments?

In January 1961, the 19-year-old University of Minnesota dropout headed to Madison with his acoustic guitar and harmonica, hoping to conquer the campus folk scene. He managed to meet the top UW folkies but, alas, not to impress them. At that point, only the former Robert Zimmerman saw himself as a musical genius. He performed for students at Groves Women’s Co-op, wailed Woody Guthrie songs at campus parties, and turned precisely zero heads. What most people noticed was the kid’s oddball outfit: a brown suit and a skinny tie.

How did it feel to be in Madison as a complete unknown, with no direction home? “I’ve been broke and cold,” he wrote to friends back in Minneapolis. The future looked grim.

Dylan crashed with his new UW friends for about a week and a half — and then fate intervened. One of his roomies offered a ride to New York City, which was folk music’s mecca. The determined teenager arrived in Greenwich Village and began the artistic transformation that would soon lead to “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and superstardom. When he traveled to Madison again in May 1961, staying with friends for another couple weeks, his guitar and vocals rang with new authority.

Dylan has returned to town many times since his two campus-area stays, treating generations of UW students to his various incarnations: fierce protest singer, gnomic rocker, poetic country crooner, true-believing gospel shouter, raspy jazz traditionalist. His latest Madison appearance was in 2012, at the 10,000-seat Alliant Energy Center. Were any 1961-era alumni in attendance that night, when he played a decades-spanning set of masterpieces such as “All Along the Watchtower,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Tangled Up in Blue”?

If so, they surely marveled at how many roads this man has walked down since flopping at Groves Women’s Co-op.

A provocative juxtaposition: the Lincoln statue (below) portrays a white man who embodies the United States’ complex racial history, while Abdu’Allah’s sculpture portrays himself in the modest setting of a barbershop. Kent Michael Smith / Courtesy of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art

In his sculpture Blu³eprint, UW art professor Faisal Abdu’Allah portrays himself seated in a barber chair. If you’re walking down State Street, you’ll encounter the limestone monument outside the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, which commissioned it for an exhibition of Abdu’Allah’s work.

And if you’ve just come from Bascom Hill, you’ll notice a resemblance to UW–Madison’s iconic Abraham Lincoln statue.

Jeff Miller

Both figures have a commanding presence. Both gaze stoically, arms at rest. But one portrays a white man who embodies the United States’ complex racial history, sitting on what might as well be a throne; the other a Black man in the more modest setting of a barbershop. It’s a provocative juxtaposition, particularly at a time when many public monuments are coming under fire and occasionally even coming off their pedestals.

The country is divided over which statues should stay and which should go, but Abdu’Allah proposes an artistic solution. Rather than removing artworks, he believes in inviting sculptors of color to create what he calls “counter-monuments.” Blu³eprint, for example, engages in dialogue with the Lincoln statue, presenting an alternate approach to commemoration.

Abdu’Allah is a professor of printmaking and associate dean for the arts in the School of Education. Last year, he was named Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art. He’s come a long way since his days in London barbershops.

That’s right — Abdu’Allah’s choice of a barber chair is not random. He hung out in salons during his youth, marveling over patterns the hairdressers made with their scissors. He became a barber himself, attended the Royal College of Art, and began incorporating barbershop imagery into his work.

To him, the barbershop is a place of renewal, with particular resonance in the Black experience. Hair — on the spectrum of kinky to straight — also has political and cultural connotations. And then there’s the fact that hair carries traces of our DNA, the very essence of who we are. Visitors can see how Abdu’Allah treats such rich themes when the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art opens the exhibition Dark Matter in September.

Blu³eprint has been up since spring, demanding attention on State Street. Abdu’Allah made the sculpture in collaboration with artist Martin Foot and Madison’s Quarra Stone Company, and he chose limestone as the medium because of its imperfections.

Those are suggestive of human imperfections, of course. Blu³eprint acknowledges that none of us are perfect, even if we do happen to be up on a pedestal.

Madison’s WADOMA performs for the hip-shaking hordes in 2014. Jeff Miller

Of all the things we lost during the pandemic, objective observers might argue that the summer music series on the Memorial Union Terrace was relatively insignificant.

But UW–Madison students and alumni would surely not be among those objective observers.

“The Terrace music series adds a sense of excitement to the Madison community,” says Heidi Lang, the Wisconsin Union’s associate director of social education. “It brings people together across generations, with something for everybody.”

For nearly 50 years, the free outdoor concerts have helped define a Madison summer. The series began with a smattering of shows in the 1970s but revved up in the early ’80s, when local acts performed on a wooden platform just outside the Rathskeller. One day, a few students had the bright idea of moving the platform down by Lake Mendota to create a more scenic backdrop, so they went ahead and did it without asking for permission. Startled administrators held meetings to debate the ramifications and decided that, hey, the new location wasn’t such a bad idea.

A Terrace remodel in the 1980s installed a permanent stage by the lake, complete with a canopy. And that — along with an increased budget to attract bigger bands — helped turn summer music on the Terrace into a sensation. The new name for the series, “Hot Summer Nights,” was not false advertising.

Top local draws alternated with national acts like the Violent Femmes and the Indigo Girls, attracting hip-shaking hordes. The Union’s student music committee started booking bands on the way up, a tradition that continues to this day. Fleet Foxes are among those who played the Terrace before making it big.

If there’s a secret ingredient to the summer-music magic, it’s these student planners.

“The process is unique in the amount of responsibility we give the students,” says Lang. “The Union is committed to using the program as a learning opportunity for them.”

Today’s students work with adviser Sean Michael Dargan — a musician himself — who schools them in every aspect of the music biz. Though Dargan ensures a balance between cutting-edge and crowd-pleasing acts, the series always reflects the committee members’ passions. That’s why, for example, you’ll see the up-and-coming singer-songwriter Indigo De Souza in summer 2022.

You heard that right: the music series is making a triumphant return to the Terrace after the pandemic pause. And just in the nick of time.

“There is this desire for normalcy, and the Terrace is such a special place,” says Susan Dibbell ’84, MS’02, deputy director of the Wisconsin Union. “You’re on a lake in a big, open space, and it’s gorgeous. We’re all craving to be around people.”

In other words, summer nights are about to get hot again.

“A lot of the business and marketing stuff [from UW classes] has really stuck with me and helped me,” Hauri says. John Chiaravalle

Some UW students miss class when they travel for marching band or athletics. Matthew Hauri ’17, a.k.a. rapper Yung Gravy, missed class because he was jetting off for negotiations with major music labels.

Hauri notched the absences in fall 2017, when he was generating buzz with his debut single, “Mr. Clean,” and its exuberant video, filmed in Madison. He wears a fluffy white bathrobe and sways to a sample of the Chordettes’ “Mr. Sandman.” He washes a car with bikini-clad women and rides a Sea-Doo in Lake Mendota as the UW campus gleams in the background. “Mr. Clean” has received more than 60 million YouTube views to date and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Missing class paid off. That November Hauri signed with the Universal Music Group imprint Republic Records, home to Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Post Malone. He graduated the following month with a degree in marketing. “It was a pretty crazy last semester,” he says.

Since then he has toured extensively and released a string of singles and EPs, as well as three albums: Sensational, Baby Gravy 2, and Gasanova. He has collaborated with hip-hip icons including T-Pain and Lil Baby. His releases include another solo platinum single, and one with Canadian rapper bbno$, “Whip a Tesla,” went gold.

A native of Rochester, Minnesota, Hauri splits time between Los Angeles and the Gopher State. He started making music in his sophomore year of college, inspired by rappers like the late Gustav Åhr, who as Lil Peep found success distributing his music online. Hauri first recorded beats and rhymes on his own, and later he collaborated with producers he encountered on the online distribution platform SoundCloud. A freestyle rap about gravy led to his stage name, which he styled after the Swedish rapper Yung Lean.

Hauri says his UW education has served him and his music well. “A lot of the business and marketing stuff has really stuck with me and helped me,” he says. “I’ve always been very particular with imagery and branding.”

Few musicians graduate college with a major-label contract in hand. Was Hauri tempted to leave the UW early and pursue his career? “I wanted to say I did it,” he says of finishing school. “But I also knew my mom would want me to.”

Like all Sibande’s work, Sower in the Field explores the intersection of of race, gender, and labor in South Africa.

In her corner of the Chazen Museum of Art’s Mead Witter Lobby, Mary Sibande’s Sower in the Field is in constant conversation with light. The sculpture — a figure based on a body cast of the artist — wears a cascading dress and cradles an apron of seeds. At eye-level, the contours of the clothing catch the daylight from the wall of windows along East Campus Mall. When viewed from above, shadows spill from her skirt’s hem and ebb and flow with the movement of the sun throughout the day. At night, passersby can admire the work’s quiet, commanding presence backlit against the museum’s lobby.

The bronze piece is a rare departure from Sibande’s usual mixed-media approach but still bears hallmarks of her work, which interrogates intersections of race, gender, and labor in South Africa. The sculpture was cast for the Chazen at a foundry in South Africa and traveled by cargo ship, train, and truck to reach Madison. After its long journey, its message is right at home on the UW campus.

Sower in the Field is the latest acquisition under the Sara Guyer and Scott Straus Contemporary African Art Initiative.

“For a land-grant university, we thought this was a really interesting dialogue: a woman who’s planting something, birth and rebirth, agriculture,” says Katherine Alcauskas, chief curator at the Chazen. “We have a lot of works by John Steuart Curry and other regionalists, and we have a lot of similar images of farmers in fields, so we thought this would be a counterpart [to inspire] students to think about planting, about regionalism, and about the role of crops in the Midwest and in Africa.”

Sower is the latest acquisition under the Sara Guyer and Scott Straus Contemporary African Art Initiative (CAAI), made possible by the Straus Family Foundation. The curatorial endeavor was funded thanks to former UW professors Sara Guyer and Scott Straus to celebrate the diversity of contemporary African art at a campus with a long history in African studies.

“Sara and I found incredible beauty, excitement, energy, and creativity in contemporary African art,” Straus says. “Part of the impetus was wanting to bring it to a larger audience in the United States and to support African artists.”

After an exhibition of CAAI works in fall 2023, the show will likely travel, sending Sower on another, albeit shorter, journey.

The sculpture is in constant conversation with light.