Blogs Field Guide

eavesdrop 05.27.08

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPce12kb0Fk[/youtube] Swing into the opening party for Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf. The course is open through Labor Day.

more Mini Golf installation photos

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. These come from Walker staff photographer Gene Pittman, who captured some of the fun and frenzy in the week leading up to tonight’s opening of Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf.

Mini Golf and Design for the Other 90% Installation

If you’ve taken a stroll down Vineland Avenue recently, you might have noticed that there is some activity happeneing on either side of the street. Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf and Design for the Other 90% are both being installed right now, opening to the public next week. Walker photographers Cameron Wittig and [...]

There is still time to win Rock the Garden tickets!

It may be sold out but I am holding two tickets in my hot little hand right now. Oh, they look so nice! You too can partake. Picture it: You sitting on the Walker lawn ona warm summer evening, sipping a beverage of yourchoice andlistening to the sounds of Andrew Bird, the New Pornographers, Cloud [...]

It may be sold out but I am holding two tickets in my hot little hand right now. Oh, they look so nice!

You too can partake. Picture it: You sitting on the Walker lawn ona warm summer evening, sipping a beverage of yourchoice andlistening to the sounds of Andrew Bird, the New Pornographers, Cloud Cult and Bon Iver.

All you have to do is come up with an original one-line joke, submit it by June 4th, and make our galley speaker Joseph Scrimshaw laugh. Winners will be announced at our last Richard Prince gallery talk about jokes on June 5th at 7pm.

So, step right up andhit me with yourbest shot. First place winners also get two free tickets to Joseph Scrimshaw’s show at Bryant Lake Bowl entitled Adventures in Mating. Second prize is two tickets to Artist Designed Mini-Golf and a salty dog from the Walker shop. Not bad for second place!

Fire Away! And, never mind the Pat Benatar reference!

Here is a highlight from this week:

I’ve always heard when God gives you lemons, make lemonade. God gave me iced tea. What the$%# am I supposed to do?

Duct Tape Suit

WACTAC member Carson Giblette spent over two weeks assembling his amazing duct tape suit for the Prior Lake High School Prom. I just wish he could have been a part of the WACTAC organized Un-Prom Fashion Show. Via minneapoline. Thanks for the tip Megan.

Forewarned is forearmed? More on gallery notices

One of my favorite art bloggers, Edward Winkleman, posted on a gallery’s responsibility is to warn visitors before they enter a potentially upsetting exhibition. Like many museum and gallery people, he’s waffling on the issue: he can see that parents might appreciate knowing in advance that an exhibition includes “mature” content, but he also makes [...]

One of my favorite art bloggers, Edward Winkleman, posted on a gallery’s responsibility is to warn visitors before they enter a potentially upsetting exhibition. Like many museum and gallery people, he’s waffling on the issue: he can see that parents might appreciate knowing in advance that an exhibition includes “mature” content, but he also makes this very valid point:

The main problem with warning signs, of course, is how they frame the work before the viewer encounters it, setting up a predetermined context in which the viewer should approach it. In other words, the viewer is not permitted to make up their own mind about the work, free of the institution’s instruction.

He argues that a sign puts visitors in a position of entering the gallery with their defenses up — I agree. But – - on the other hand, I wonder if for a lot of parents, any show at a contemporary art museum would get their defenses up. Would you be more on guard with no signs, and no guidance on what to expect, or with signs at the entrance to each potentially upsetting gallery?

Pig’s Eye Landfill Is Here

Rain or shinestart practicing your putting. Zoran Mojsilovis installingPig’s Eye Landfill on the course of Walker on the Green. The large wooden assemblage was trucked in this morning with the assistance of an imposing crane. It’s mostly made of elm branches and trunks that were salvaged from a wood recycling site in town. Zoran says, [...]

Zoran Mojsilov with Pig's Eye Landfill

Rain or shinestart practicing your putting. Zoran Mojsilovis installingPig’s Eye Landfill on the course of Walker on the Green. The large wooden assemblage was trucked in this morning with the assistance of an imposing crane. It’s mostly made of elm branches and trunks that were salvaged from a wood recycling site in town. Zoran says, “The mouse hole lines up with the cup just right. Now onto finishing the green.”

For more information on Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf visit http://blogs.walkerart.org/ecp/2008/05/13/artists-green-makers-mini-golf/

Artists on the Green: The makers of Mini Golf

Small packages hold big ideas at Walker on the Green: Artist-designed Mini Golf. Here are the artists, architects, and designers chosen through an open call to create green-themed holes destined to challenge players’ senses as much as their games: Andrew MacGuffie; Brett Smith and Erin Smith: Chris Pennington, Eric Velde, and Nate Carney Kulenkamp; Ed [...]

Small packages hold big ideas at Walker on the Green: Artist-designed Mini Golf. Here are the artists, architects, and designers chosen through an open call to create green-themed holes destined to challenge players’ senses as much as their games:

Andrew MacGuffie; Brett Smith and Erin Smith: Chris Pennington, Eric Velde, and Nate Carney Kulenkamp; Ed hernandez and Yves Roux (BBDO Minneapolis); Geoffrey Warner and Blake Loya (Alchemy Architects); Jason Brown, Elizabeth Scofield, Frederic Scofield, and Sean Frank (Survival Design); Maura Rockcastle and Regan Golden-McNerney; Kevin Kane and students (City of Lakes Waldorf Law School); Zoran Mojsilov; Tyson McElvain and Dan Winton (Julie Snow Architects); James Dayton Design; Phil Docken and Kirk McCall (Walker Art Center).

The course opens May 24 on the greenspace adjacent to the Walker’s Vineland Place entrance. Course hours are 10 am to 8 pm every Wednesday through Sunday, through September 7.

20 Under 20 St. Paul

This post was written by Marty Marosi, current Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC) member, about the 20 Under 20 exhibition. Hello from St. Paul! This day is significant because it’s the second and last day of curating, and also the same for how many times I’ve been in St. Paul. We’ve been putting [...]

This post was written by Marty Marosi, current Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC) member, about the 20 Under 20 exhibition.

Hello from St. Paul! This day is significant because it’s the second and last day of curating, and also the same for how many times I’ve been in St. Paul.

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We’ve been putting the St. Paul show together by working with each piece like, well, let’s just say they don’t call ‘em ‘pieces’ for nuthin. We’ve looked at all the pieces in a giant group and picked out ones that seemed to work together. If an artist had multiple works, we considered it in its entirety. Then from there, we put it on the wall, and have been practicing a whole ‘mix ‘n match’ and trial and error process. Luckily we don’t make mistakes.

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(Here’s a picture of Witt spouting off some philosophy)

Witt (WACTAC superfan) is workin like a dog over here, he paces back and forth all the time. With how long the spaces are in this warehouse, each trip takes alost 20 minutes. He hasn’t eaten anything all day except doritos for lunch and toast for breakfast. But I think he’s milkin it a little bit because he said he ate just ‘a piece of toast’, leaving much to the imagination as to the scantness of his meal. Nonetheless, I saw him sporting the tired-man’s beard a couple days ago and I think he needs to just kick back and let the WACTAC’rs do some work for a change.

While David puts his life on the line to hang up all the art, I get the real cush job of documenting our progress and eating snacks to sustain myself. David is the real strong-silent type, but we like having him around.

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Putting all this together has been a trying process, both emotionally and physically. At one point I thought my body wouldn’t take another kit-kat after eating so many during the initial curating phase, but I endured.

Before we got to this point, we spent countless hours down in the WACTAC bat-cave looking at what seemed like, and probably was, thousands of artworks. It was like No Exit down there. Sartre said ‘Hell is other people’ and the temperature became infernal with all the bodies in the room. One benefit, however, was how much muscle mass I gained from raising my arm for multiple votes and re-votes.

Overall, this has been a great experience. It’s been a long and elaborate process, but that makes the fruit of our labor that much sweeter. We hope this contest and show will be successful in continuing our objective to reach other teens (and tweens) out there who want to get involved with the art world.

If you have a chance, check out the series of 20 Under 20 events happening in the coming weeks.

Yoko Ono Stories

Last week, I was giving a tour to a small group of artsy academics in town for a meeting. One of my usual tour stops in the Permanent Collection galleries is at a small work by Yoko Ono in Gallery 2 titled Painting to Hammer a Nail. I like to talk about Yoko Ono as [...]

Yoko Ono, 2001Last week, I was giving a tour to a small group of artsy academics in town for a meeting. One of my usual tour stops in the Permanent Collection galleries is at a small work by Yoko Ono in Gallery 2 titled Painting to Hammer a Nail. I like to talk about Yoko Ono as a musician, an important conceptual artist, and her role in the Fluxus movement, etc. But this time, in the middle of my Ono spiel, a woman in the group mentioned that she had been Yoko’s roommate in the 60s. She went onto tell us how it was John Cage who first encouraged Yoko to meet the Beatles because they were composing music in non-traditional ways. She also mentioned that she had given Yoko her first Beatles album as a gift and told the tale of the two of them spotting Paul McCartney on the street, chasing after him, but never catching up. Fact or myth? Who knows? But we all had a very Yoko-esque moment imagining how the world might have been changed if Yoko had met Paul before she met John.

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