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“The Camera Artistry of Frankie Cole” has helped shape Milwaukee’s self-identity since the 1970s. Across decades of creative work, Cole has turned his lens to capture internationally known entertainers including Marvin Gaye, Roberta Flack, and Taj Mahal, and mainstays of Milwaukee’s skyline and cultural life, including as official photographer of the Great Circus Parade. Cole, with Michael Ward and Gerald Duane Coleman, was a founder of the Freewheelers at the Martin Luther King Library.
“Red Tropical Circle" exemplifies Cole’s innovative technique of “us[ing] my camera like a paint brush” to convey a “beautiful trip of emotions, impressions and moods of people, places and things.” In this composition, Cole's camera artistry creates a sense of "inner movement" shared by Richard Overton's two abstract compositions and the puzzle pieces of Edgar Jeter's "Girl Reading." Picturing a waterfall at the Mitchell Park Domes (formerly Milwaukee Conservatory), "Red Tropical Circle" joins other works in celebrating the places and public institutions that help connect us and anchor our social infrastructure: the library (Edgar Jeter’s “Girl Reading”), the zoo (Gerald Coleman’s “Pride of the Bamboo Forest,” based on the gorillas at the Milwaukee County Zoo), and neighborhoods and front stoops (Sylvester Sims’s “Brothers” and its look back to the “warmth, vigor and camaraderie” of 'Old Walnut Street').