Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC) members Partick Risberg and Evan Gabriel caught up with Nicholas Larkins of the band MMMs to talk about his participation in the 13 Most Beautiful Young Artists performance. Check out the interview and join us for the free performance on Thursday night!
The Walker is offering audio description for the screening of Ann Follett’s Stop the Re-Route: Taking a Stand on Sacred Land, which is part of the Women with Vision film series. For a full description of Follett’s film visit http://calendar.walkerart.org/event.wac?id=4915. The film is playing on Saturday, March 21, 2pm. To sign up for audio description service along with your ticket purchase, please contact Melissa Schedler at 612.253.3555 or Melissa.schedler@walkerart.org. Tickets are $8 ($6 Walker members).
What is audio description? Here’s a definition from The National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education:
“Audio description is a term used to describe the descriptive narration of key visual elements in a video or multimedia product. This process allows individuals who are blind to access content that is not otherwise accessible simply by listening to the audio. In audio description, narrators typically describe actions, gestures, scene changes, and other visual information. They also describe titles, speaker names, and other text that may appear on the screen.”
This afternoon a handful of people gathered to watch the dislocation and removal of the Cherry from the Spoonbridge. Walker Photographer Cameron Wittig was there to capture the process, and we’ve uploaded a selection of the shots to Flickr.
If you were part of that crowd, be sure to add your photos to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Flickr Pool. Or if you have video, leave us a note in the comments.
Next week the Cherry, normally found on top of the Spoonbridge in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, is going on winter vacation. Hot summer sun and 18 hours of water per day take a toll on the sculpture, so the Cherry will be heading to an offsite location to have it’s surfaces recoated and it’s rust protection updated. The Spoonbridge and Cherry was last repainted in place in 2006, it now requires a more thorough overhaul. Once work is done, the Cherry will be put back atop the Spoonbridge in mid-April.
Associate Registrar Joe King, who oversees all maintenance of sculptures in the garden, has promised to post some details about the refurbishment later this week. After the removal, we’ll also post some video and photos.
There’s a lot of glass in the Walker Art Center building. Opposites attract, right? Heat makes glass and cold makes ice. Why not combine these two materials in one experience?
Family Programs had a great idea, why not celebrate winter by vicariously embracing ice?
The theme for Free First Saturday, February 7, 2009, was showcasing Minnesota Artists and Arts Organizations, and there were interactive activities for families set up throughout the building.
Well, not everyone….
This upcoming Free First Saturday, February 7th, is truly important. We’re celebrating mnartists.org, the Walker’s online program that supports the state’s creative community. Come for FREE admission and rub elbows with many of the area’s most innovative and vibrant arts organizations, including Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Juxtaposition Arts, Universal Dance Destiny, and In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and more.
Also featured is a performance by local piano virtuoso Michael “The Hook” Deutsch. Michael’s ingenious creativity and extraordinary technique are amazing to experience. After losing his left hand in an accident nearly 30 years ago, Michael overcame this obstacle and taught himself blues and jazz piano. “What I do is I try to keep the blues alive,” he says in an interview on current.com. “It’s part of our American heritage. Blues and jazz-we gotta keep it going. They don’t teach this stuff in schools.”
Watch this video for more info and to see how Michael modified his prosthesis to suit his playing technique.
Free First Saturday is the Walker’s free day for families. On the first Saturday of every month, Walker galleries are open and free of admission fees from 10 am-5 pm. Free family-friendly activities and performances are scheduled throughout the day. Call the box office at 612.375.7600 for more info.
If you steal away for afternoon* in the exhibition Text/Messages: Books by Artists you’ll encounter a wide array of fascinating objects that relate in one form or another to the notion of the “book.” Among the things you’ll see are: a kite, a cake, a pistol, hand-made paper, mass-printed magazines, gas stations, comics, and cardboard. Together, these works are an imaginative wonderland that manage quite well to illustrate the vast styles, procedures and philosophies that make up the field of book arts.
A panel discussion this Thursday attempts a similar feat by gathering book makers and thinkers for an all-over conversation about the current state of artist book production. Here is a mini-introduction to the panelists:
Buzz Spector: artist and critical writer whose work makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object. He is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory, and perception. Spector has issued a number of artists’ books and editions since the mid-1970s, including, most recently, Time Square, a limited edition book whose text is taken from a sequence of Google searches on the nature of time.
Harriet Bart: maker of installations, large-scale sculpture, objects and books from her studio here in Minneapolis. All of Bart’s work is inspired by her deep interest and engagement with books and the written word. Her piece, In the Presence of Absence is featured in Text/Messages. She has also completed more than ten public art commissions around the world.
Sally Alatalo: artist, writer and performer based in Chicago. Her written, printed and performative work intersects with popular-cultural forms and activities such as genre fiction, hairdressing and household tasks. She is a force behind Sara Ranchouse Publishing, a xxx that deals in artist’s books, printed multiples and “art-at-large.” Read her publishing manifesto here.
James Hoff: artist and co-founder/editor of Primary Information, a non-profit publisher devoted to printing artists’ books and multiples by artists both young and old including John Cage, the Art Workers Coalition, Disband, Robert Filliou, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, and Dieter Roth, among many others. He is currently co-editing a facsimile edition of the seminal Avalanche Magazine.
David Plaztker, moderator: curator, book dealer/scholar, former director of Printed Matter, Inc., and purveyor of Specific Object, a personal venture dedicated gathering and presenting interesting objects in any artistic medium. Material shown range from artists’ publications, ephemera, prints, multiples and other editions to literature, music / audio works and unique artworks of the contemporary world. His most recent project is a film screening and exhibition of Belgian Conceptual artist, Marcel Broodthaers’ unusual hybrid of book and film, A Voyage on the North Sea (1973 – 1974).
Please join these folks for a stimulating conversation this Thursday, February 5 at 7 pm. Bring your questions and ideas on all things bookish and get inspired!
*A sunny day is recommended. The windows onto the terrace make for lovely sun bath in the reading area of the exhibition.
Powered by WordPress
