Monthly Archives: January 2023

Friends of Grant Park Art Fair, July 23rd

Pop-up artist tents surround the brown shelter at area 5. All photos courtesy of Chris Stravinski Sharrow.

The very first Friends of Grant Park Art Fair was held on Sunday, July 23rd from 10am to 2pm. Thankfully, Mother Nature blew us a kiss with fabulous weather that day… and the turnout was estimated at 500 attendees, or more. Located in Area 5A brown picnic shelter, we hosted artists from a variety of mediums displaying and selling their works. The July fair preceded Heritage Day festivities in South Milwaukee.

The open air picnic shelter also featured sales of food and refreshment by the Friends of Grant Park. We hope to host a second art fair in July 2024, same location, same weather(?)…

Our mission statement is to preserve natural areas of the park, enhance unique features of the park, encourage use of the park, and to provide a mechanism for private contributions to supplement public funding of Grant Park.

Thirty artists and so much fun!

We’d like to thank Skyline Catering for donating taste-tempting cookies, and also thanks to the First Congregational Church in South Milwaukee for allowing us to safely prepare foods for the fair in their kitchen. We are indebted to the park’s maintenance workers who quickly cleaned the pavilion beforehand so the artists could arrive early Sunday to begin setting up their booths. And thanks to our members and volunteers who assisted in so many ways!

Invasive plant update

Friends of Grant Park received a competitive grant in March of 2022 to support girdling/and or removal of some of the larger flowering and seeding Japanese Tree Lilacs. This year, we worked with Milwaukee County Parks Natural Areas personnel and cleared approximately an acre of woodland of JTL. We also provided invasive species in-person education to 160 youth volunteers. These photos depict but a small portion of the trees removed. Thank you to the Southeastern Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium for their support. To learn more about invasive plants visit –

Invasive Plants | Southeastern Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium, Inc (sewisc.org)

Grant supported tree Lilac removal of larger caliper and flowering trees shown here.