The Oakland Museum & Garden, a small green oasis on Chicago’s Southeast Side, is also a lasting testament to the artistic vision of the late Milton Mizenburg Jr., a self-taught sculptor who lived and created art in this community for decades.
Four of Mizenburg’s squat, totemic-like wood sculptures form a line west along the length of the park. Painted in varying shades, including blue, gold and purple, they are fastened together with simple bolts. Small branches and bark-covered logs intersect with openings carved out of sanded blocks of wood.
Around the corner on S. Berkeley Avenue, three slender sculptures painted black and orange jut skyward from another open lot.
Earlier this month, Mizenburg’s supporters — among them his children, neighbors and local public officials — came together at the southwest corner of that garden, situated at E. 41st Place and S. Lake Park Avenue, to celebrate the artist with an honorary street sign in his name.
In doing so, they called attention to the power of community art projects to transform the streets around them.
Alderman Lamont Robinson of the 4th Ward, who supported the community’s petition at City Council and hosted the June 27 dedication, said the works are more than decorative.
“Mr. Mizenburg really changed the trajectory of not just this block but the South Side with his sculptures.”
Oakland, a pocket community, runs along the Metra tracks just north of Kenwood and east of Bronzeville. It stands out for its carefully preserved collection of late 19th century Queen Anne-style workers cottages and its proximity to Oakwood Beach, reached via a big blue pedestrian bridge, constructed in 2018 to create neighborhood access to the lake front.
When Mizenburg moved here with his wife Gloriadeen and three children in the late 1980s, the artist himself called the neighborhood a “hellhole” (referring to gangs and drugs). After renovating their home and building a small studio, he enlisted his sons, Milt Mizenburg III and David Mizenburg, to help clean up some of the trash-strewn empty lots near their home.
In the mid-nineties, Mizenburg began making art in the lots across from his house, after gaining permission from leaders at the North Kenwood-Oakland Community Conservation Council and the City of Chicago. By this point he had taught himself to make jewelry, furniture (including his “tree top tables”) and sculpture, using hand chisels and a chainsaw to transform tree stumps and other salvaged wood into three dimensional works.
Musette Henley, who has lived in Oakland for more than 30 years, says she would pass Mizenburg working on his outdoor sculptures in the garden every day, on her way to work.
“Oh gosh, he was such a wonderful person,” she recalled of the artist, who died in 2016 from blood cancer. “He had a yellow little sports car, and he’d wear his straw hat and his overalls, his red bandana, like he was on the Riviera somewhere.”
Patrick McCoy, a photographer and long-time art collector, says Mizenburg was a force. “He was passionate. Passionate, and kind of hardheaded too.”
Pointing to nearby developments, including Lake Park Crescent, a mixed income housing community and Williams-Davis Park, home to Mizenburg’s first bronze sculpture “Restoration,” McCoy said none of these projects, created as part of Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation, would have happened without Mizenburg’s intervention.
“Art has power,” declared McCoy. “We should have art to help socialize people. Instead, we’re looking at blank walls.”
Over time, the garden became overgrown and the sculptures started to deteriorate. Around 2015, a number of neighbors, with the support of Mizenburg’s family, stepped up, including Yetta Starr, a designer with an interest in preservation.
“I just felt that it was all going to go away because this space wasn’t [being] cared for,” says Starr. “But his family’s here, his things are here and we should preserve this.”
Starr and others went to work, hiring an artist to repaint the now faded sculptures, creating new signs and resurrecting a post fence and bench built by Mizenburg. They added garden plots and flowers. Avery Love, a young budding neighborhood artist who attended the ceremony with her father, Anthony Love, pointed out pink and purple blossoms she planted.
“It was really fun, and I enjoyed spending time in this area because I really like nature, and I like seeing all the cool statues,” said Love.
At the June street sign dedication, friends and family shared their memories of Mizenburg.
Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle popped in, there, she said, to celebrate Mizenburg as an artist and community activist.
Mizenburg’s oldest son, Milt, saying he didn’t “speak to crowds too often,” was moved to tears remembering how he helped his father, who didn’t finish high school, by reading him books from the library. He told the crowd they, too, could carry his father’s memory.
“His name will never pass away, even when these signs are gone, even when these statues are gone.”
Chicago’s poet laureate Mayda del Valle read a poem in Mizenburg’s honor. She noted the sense of connection in Oakland.
“How beautiful it is to see something that’s so well loved and taken care of by the community,” said del Valle, adding, “to have somebody who tried to beautify their neighborhood be celebrated in this way is really lovely, too.”
None of Mizenburg’s children followed his artistic path. But his daughter Laura Barnes credits her father with being a role model in other ways.
“My daddy, if he failed, he would still thank God and try again,” she said, adding wistfully. “When I see people admire [the garden], it makes my heart feel like he was touching people.”
Mizenburg’s son David admires how his neighbors rallied to help save the space.
“I give them props. Everything is just beautiful. This is the first time I can say a neighborhood that’s together. Because we’re together.”
His sister chimed in “It’s a community. But I call it family.”
Starr, now the executive director of the Oakland Museum & Garden, said community members regularly program performances and other art events in the space. As of late 2022, the site is protected from development through a land trust initiative. Starr and others will try to do the same for Mizenburg’s sculptures.
“I’m a realist. These are perishable. They’re wood,” she added. “But it’s not really about the artwork. It’s about honoring what he did here and his legacy.”