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Join us at to support and foster the convergence of art, community and education at RedLine Milwaukee! The Soirée will include the first viewing of the feature exhibition: Life of Artist Paul Mandracchia 1957-2014, live auction, Salon Art Sale with canvases available for $100.00 each, RedLine Artist Studio Tours, cocktails and appetizers.
Live Auction: Works by Paul Mandracchia, and others.
Salon Art Sale: Artists will be announced in May.
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With your support, RedLine Milwaukee will continue to provide access to art for all through our programs: Education, Exhibitions, Artist-in-Residence, and Community Print shop and Art Lab Workshops. Funds raised from the Soirée will support RedLine Milwaukee and education programming.
RedLine Milwaukee’s programing spans the lives of many artists, from school group visits to residency and solo exhibitions. Each year RedLine Milwaukee’s annual Soirée and fundraiser will pay homage to the life and accomplishments of a local artist or art patron. In 2015, RedLine choose Paul Mandracchia, a dancer, colorist, artist, gardener, writer, and art patron. “Other people go in to work and server time every day,” Mandracchia said. “I get to do something I love; I feel privileged, lucky.” Mandracchia atypical of most ballet dancers, grew up never having taken a ballet class until he was almost 17 years old. Mandracchia became curious about ballet through the chore of driving his three sisters to ballet class. “It took me a long time to get up the courage to admit I wanted to be a dancer,” he recalled.
After retiring from ballet Mandracchia started decorative painting, which blossomed into a burgeoning business, Painted Finishes. Paul was proud of his work with the Kohler Corporation and the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI. For Kohler, Paul painted on Mylar a replica of the original finishes from the rural Mississippi home of the “rhinestone cowboy,” an outsider artist who transformed his life into a performance. The Mylar was then used as a wallpaper of sorts as the replica was installed at the museum.
Mandracchia continued his art career as an artist and writer and found the garden a place to express himself artistically. Married to Gary Hollander, his partner for 32 years, both became avid gardeners. Gardening provides a release from Hollander’s work as a psychologist, and Mandracchia as artist and a writer found the garden a place to express himself artistically.
As an artist, Mandracchia’s work appeared in many galleries and installations in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, Shorewood, Kohler, Chicago, and most prominently in 1993 at Bergdorf Goodman Men in New York City.
Paul was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and after a few years of artistic inactivity he began to create a series of self-portraits reflecting how he felt inside. Paul’s self-portraits became the platform to support arts during the Open Canvas fund raisers for MIAD.
Paul believed that death is both a part of being alive and a terminal condition; one from which we neither wake nor sleep in some other place. Paul considered the influence we have through living whole lives is what connects us to the future, thus the memory we have of him is important. We think Paul would approve of his solo exhibition Life of Artist Paul Mandracchia 1957-2014.
