City officials and other partners of the development broke ground for The New State development. (Picture provided by The New State)
September 13, 2021 was a huge day for Milwaukee’s Near West Side, as community members gathered to celebrate the groundbreaking and the newly painted mural for The New State theater and community park. City officials and Near West Side partners picked up shovels at 2612 W. State St. Milwaukee, WI 53233 as a positive way to memorialize the project.
“It feels unreal, it feels long overdue, it feels like the first step toward a marathon yet to come. Joy, accomplishment, encouragement,” said Dima Pochtarev from the board of directors.
The New State is a revival of a historical theater that first opened in 1915 as a silent films theater. In the 1970s, the building became The Palms Music Club, a well-known stop for major artists on tour, including The Ramones, Annie Lennox, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. A fire in 2017 caused significant damage to the historic building. Then, in 2018, a project began to bring it back to life — envisioning the updated space as a place where both youth and adults who love music or are creatives can use the facilities to better learn about or perfect their craft.
The mural by Brad Anthony Bernard. (Picture by OnMilwaukee)
The New State will include a 415-capacity all-ages music venue, rentable sound engineering studios, a community music park with a stage, a storefront for local artists to sell art, music, and merchandise, classes and workshops to develop creativity for artists further, and a café.
The mural on one side of the building will be a part of the café. The Milwaukee Arts Board offered a grant match program to add a new mural installation in the city. West Side Arts Un, Limited (WSAU) and The New State decided they wanted it for the development, according to Pochatrev. Carvd N Stone sponsored the mural to help match the grant so they could receive the funding.
“It was so flattering to have another organization inquire to sponsor a portion of the grant match and participate in this project. And honestly, we couldn’t have matched the Milwaukee Arts Board to make this mural arts project a reality without Carvd N Stone,” he said.
Muralist Brad Anthony Bernard (L) and CNS Founder Nyesha Stone (R). (Picture by Samer Ghani)
Brad Anthony Bernard designed the mural and worked for five weeks with a group of college interns. The board members picked his design from a pool of other artists. He even hosted a Paint and Sip where people from the community, including Near West Side Partners, New State board members, and his colleagues. His work typically surrounds African Americans, and although he used Black people as the singer and DJ, he said the project was a refresher from his usual subject matter.
“The prompt as given by the new state committee was they wanted something to represent the hope of the future, youth, and the liveliness of the music. And so that’s what I went for. Even some of the subliminal things like anyone who’s in music production will see those things … engineering input, mixing boards, volume indicators, that sort of thing. It was just a nice challenge.”
Learn more about The New State theater project by clicking here.
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