Marc Sijan
Syl the Public Safety Officer
Syl the Public Safety Officer is modeled after Marc Sijan’s father. Sijan wanted to memorialize his father who worked with him in his studio for over 25 years and whom he had a very close relationship.
According to Sijan, Syl is inspired by the people who live, work and raise their families in Milwaukee. He says that these hard-working people often get overlooked, but they are the people who have made Milwaukee special. Like his father.
“I’ve been to a lot of museums and galleries and have noticed that many people ignore the guard. But the guard, and the people who work behind the scenes, are critically important to the success of those events and the success of any community.”
Sijan states that of all of his pieces, Syl is the most popular. He especially loves it when he sees people come up to Syl to ask questions or get directions and it takes them a while to realize he is not living and breathing.
Syl the Public Safety Officer is part of the art from the Burke Collection donated to the Midwest Express Center in 1998.
Rosie from Guest Services
Rosie from Guest Services is the companion piece to Syl. Sijan’s newest life-sized, hyper-realistic figurative sculptor was conceived after spending an afternoon in a Milwaukee restaurant.
“I am inspired by the people who are never in the spotlight. I was eating lunch one day and noticed the woman who was busy cleaning up after customers. Most of the time she is never event noticed or appreciated, but it is people like her that make other people’s experiences special.”
Sijan realized that at Baird Center the guest services staff are some of the most important people in the building. They greet the guests with a smile, answer questions and make sure people leave their event with a positive impression of Milwaukee.
According to Sijan he wants people who view Rosie to carry that impression of the guest services staff as a helpful friend with them long after their visit.
“I want them to walk away and take that image with them for a long time. I am hoping Rosie and what she represents will be seared into their hearts.”
About Marc Sijan
Milwaukee native Marc Sijan is a world-renowned realist artist. Through the use of clay, he creates life-sized, hyper-realistic figurative sculptors about which the New York Times has said, “they are true to life right down to the fingerprints, all that is missing is the pulse.”
Sijan started his journey with clay at a very young age, making little figures at his Milwaukee home when he was just a child. Inspired by three-dimensional art, he was driven to make his figures more and more realistic. Over the years, he pushed himself to make each piece more true-to-life because of his desire to get to the heart and soul of his subject.
Sijan says he is following the creative primal compulsion of humankind to create images that reflect a respective perspective of themselves.
“I follow a basic human instinct of recreation that began over 17, 000 years ago when man decided to sketch his own image on the walls of caves in southern France, resulting in some of the most remarkable art ever conceived. Even Picasso was impressed by these sketches, observing that this was the beginning of the development of recreating the figure, although on flat surfaces.”
He has become an international hit, with his more than seventy-five one-man museum exhibitions setting records worldwide. His work has been collected and exhibited throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Sijan earned a BFA from UW-Whitewater and an MFA from UW-Milwaukee.
