Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That would be too high up for little kids to see, so Milwaukee's Lois Ehlert puts her art on the floor leading into the Milwaukee Public Library Central Library's children's room when it was renovated in 1998.
Prompted by a commission from interior designer Susie Fondrie, Ehlert thought about pictographs she had seen during a visit to Peru. So Ehlert fashioned pictographic animals to welcome children into the space.
"I had to come to terms with the idea that people would walk on my art," Ehlert said with a chuckle during a 2008 interview with Journal Sentinel book editor Geeta Sharma Jensen. (Her pictographic animals are in linoleum.) "It’s kind of a reverse Sistine Chapel. When kids come into the room, they jump from one animal on the floor to another. This floor will probably last longer than I do."