SHEBOYGAN, WIS.- This summer, the culmination of Wooster Collective: The Sheboygan Project brings international street artists to the city of Sheboygan for an open art collaboration that touches on the meaning of true community. Sheboygan’s urban landscape is in the process of being detailed in a way that expresses the story of the city’s people and culture.

The Sheboygan Project has been a union and growing relationship between city government, the community and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center over the past year-and-a-half. The Arts Center and the city have jointly selected and approved more than 20 different locations for the artists and volunteers to create their works of art. Each public art spot is on city-owned property, showing the deep level of trust the community has in the Arts Center and its initiatives.

The visiting street artists come from all across the globe; from Moscow, Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles and finally landing in Sheboygan. Internationally renowned artists, such as Gaia and Gabriel Specter, are spending weeks at a time in the city immersing themselves in the surrounding culture and getting to know the people who live there so the artwork becomes a true representation of Sheboygan.

All of the artworks are also being documented and tracked through walking maps viewers can use to tour the city and discover on foot. These maps can be obtained from the Arts Center.

The Sheboygan Project is a grand result of artist residencies, workshops, community-submitted artwork and finally collaborative installations.

The sheboygan project
Gabriel Specter: Completed and on view
Internationally known for his precise street art installations that revitalize forgotten environments, Specter takes an anthropological approach to his subject matter. His striking paintings document change and ultimately act as monuments to common urban experience.

Chris Stain: July 14–21
Chris Stain, a Queens-based artist, began adapting stenciling techniques in high school, which later led to his work in street stencils and urban contemporary art. His work echoes his upbringing and the people who helped shape his mental and physical landscape. Stain’s work illustrates the struggles of the unrecognized and underrepresented individuals of society.

Pawn Works with guest artist Other: July 19–21
The founders of Pawn Works are collectors, proprietors, and facilitators of the arts. They showcase progressive, contemporary artists with a focus on street art and provide the printing and distribution of high-quality vinyl stickers from a select network of artists. Participants will create their own stickers and place them on the sticker wall to leave their mark.

Troy Lovegates, aka Other, is a nomadic folk artist who paints stories of way finders and lost stories told around bonfires onto found scrap wood pieces and old metal building supports. His largest body of work has ridden the rails over the last 25 years from Canada all the way down to Mexico in the form of "hobo art" or "monikers”.

Gaia: August 5–26
Gaia, a Baltimore-based artist, employs a wallpaper-like technique, using wheat paste to adhere large-scale linoleum prints onto billboards and building exteriors. Working in cities from San Francisco to Seoul, Gaia is one of a legion of anonymous street artists who take the urban environment as a platform for creative expression and social activism.

Maya Hayuk: TBD
Maya Hayuk’s (NY) obsession with symmetry and nourishing color plays out in what might be views from the Hubble Telescope, airbrushed nail art, chandeliers, mandalas, Rorschach tests, or holograms.