Immigrant Family

Tom Otterness uses his cartoonishly doughy figures to explore the haphazard nature of life, its glories and ignominies. His charming, non-threatening figures do the oddest things, however, as in his work Life Underground, 2004, a series of vignettes in the New York subway system’s 14th street station that includes a crocodile emerging from the sewer to gobble up an unsuspecting pedestrian. While his figures are round, the ideas behind them are often sharp.

His work Immigrant Family, commissioned for a new development in Toronto, honors a fundamental truth about the growth in population in North America. This history is vibrantly alive in Milwaukee, with each summer’s festival schedule highlighting the cultural heritage of one of the groups who found refuge in our region, escaping from economic or political conflicts at home, creating community on the shore of Lake Michigan.