Once a month throughout the 2025-26 academic year, Slow Digest will feature an episode of C21’s 6.5 Minutes With…C21 podcast series, produced by C21 Graduate Fellows Jamee N. Pritchard and Yuchen Zhao.
In this episode of 6.5 Minutes with C21, graduate fellow Jamee Pritchard interviews Milwaukee-based sculptor and UW-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts lecturer Mich Dillon. Dillon’s artistic practice explores memory, connection, and liberation through wood, rope, and found materials. In his work, wood symbolizes the human body, rope represents unseen tensions, and found objects speak to the cultural imprints carried through everyday life.
Dillon’s sculptures, including the award-winning Supporting Dreams, reflect on both personal experience and broader social perceptions. He explains that the piece was intentionally designed around a simple visual metaphor:
“I was trying to keep the concept really simple and exemplified with each piece. The top of the sculpture is an old Milwaukee window frame that’s green. Beneath it is a red beam support, like the kind you’d place under a cracked beam to hold up a house. The base is a mound of dark soil that, when the sun hits it, actually sprouts.”
The materials carry symbolic weight. The old window frame represents earlier generations and long-standing ideals in Milwaukee. The beam support signifies the act of holding something up, while the soil suggests the possibility of new life.
“And so oftentimes we think of the old supporting the young,” Dillon says. “But I was also thinking about how the young need to support the old, specifically within Milwaukee.”
Central to Dillon’s practice is the idea of “slow care,” which he describes as being fully present and attentive within the creative process.
“I’d say slow care is being present within yourself,” he explains. “Oftentimes I get caught up in my mind, racing thoughts pulling me this way and that way. But when I’m working, I kind of shut that off and let my body do the processing.”
Rooted in Milwaukee’s diverse communities and shaped by his experiences navigating different cultural and racial spaces, Dillon’s work invites reflection on how care, attention, and memory shape both art and everyday life.
The views, information, and opinions expressed on 6.5 Minutes with C21 are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the Center for 21st Century Studies, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, or the University of Wisconsin System.
Notes:
Guest: Mich Dillon, sculptor and lecturer at UWM’s Peck School of the Arts
Host: Jamee Pritchard, Graduate Fellow, Center for 21st Century Studies (C21)