About the Exhibition

October 13, 2018–January 13, 2019

MOWA | West Bend

“America’s Dairyland” is home to more than 9,500 dairy farms, where 1.28 million cows each produce an average of 2,500 gallons of milk per year. Wisconsin’s “cash cow” economy is inextricably linked to its cultural identity.

Craig Blietz lives and works in Sister Bay, Door County, where cows pattern the hillsides and local farmers welcome him into their barnyards. Although well aware of the long history of cow painters, Blietz but he is unconcerned with precedent. His first solo exhibition at MOWA features twenty-three “portraits” in a heroic cow parade against a depthless background of muted agrarian symbols—a unique marriage of realism and abstraction.