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Viewfinder: “KEEP SMILING at M&J Auto” by Ira Brooker

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Sometimes practicality and creativity go hand in hand. In 2002, the Delaney brothers, owners of M&J Auto Repair in Saint Paul, were looking to drum up more business. The problem was that their garage didn’t look enough like a garage; the telltale roll-up doors faced the parking lot in the rear, so passing motorists on [...]

"KEEP SMILING" by Brian Sobaski at M& J Auto, Saint Paul, 2002. Photo by author.

Sometimes practicality and creativity go hand in hand. In 2002, the Delaney brothers, owners of M&J Auto Repair in Saint Paul, were looking to drum up more business. The problem was that their garage didn’t look enough like a garage; the telltale roll-up doors faced the parking lot in the rear, so passing motorists on Prior Avenue saw only a nondescript brick wall. Their novel solution was to recruit local artist and old high school classmate Brian Sobaski (known around the Twin Cities for his unique straw sculptures) to turn the shop’s west wall into something impossible to ignore.

Sobaski found his inspiration in a selection of automotive ads from the 1930s. “It’s kind of their style,” he says, “it’s an old school repair shop – not a lot of computers, very analog.” He proceeded to emblazon the building with a row of one-story black-and-white cartoon panels spotlighting some of the motoring mishaps that M&J specializes in repairing. Ten years later, the blown-out tires and ailing engines of yesteryear still loom large over Prior Avenue.

Wall paintings at M&J Auto by Brian Sobaski, 2002. Photo by author.

Sobaski proudly notes that although the Delaneys invested in anti-graffiti sealant for his paintings, it’s rarely been put to the test: “I think it’s kind of a show of respect from the taggers.”

The ads glow with a friendly liveliness not often seen in modern advertising, especially in my largely industrial pocket of Midway. Their kinetic energy, crisp monochrome and clean geometric design are unmistakably retro, but there’s also a timelessness to them that draws me in every time I pass by. Our eyes aren’t trained to expect art in that environment, let alone see it on a business as traditionally utilitarian as an auto shop, and that makes it all the more arresting.

M&J Auto signage by Brian Sobaski, 2002. Photo by author.

Curiously enough, the image Sobaski identifies as “everybody’s favorite” is the only one that isn’t car-related: a mugshot of a grinning black dog sporting the slogan “KEEP SMILING.” It’s an order that I, for one, can’t help but obey.’

About the author: Ira Brooker is a writer and editor based in Saint Paul. He blathers about pop culture at A Talent for Idleness and also maintains an archive at irabrooker.com.

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Viewfinder posts are your opportunity to “show & tell” about the everyday arts happenings, interesting sights and sounds made or as seen by Minnesota artists, because art is where you find it.  Submit your own informal, first-person responses to the art around you to katie(at)mnartists.org, and we may well publish your piece here on the blog. (Guidelines: 300 words or less, not about your own event/work, and please include an image, media, video, or audio file, and one sentence about yourself.)

mnartists.marketplace: Spring 2012 Featured Artists

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Drawing Club: A Collaborative Coloring Book The second edition of artist-designed objects for mnartists.marketplace, Drawing Club: A Collaborative Coloring Book, follows in step with the first edition of specialty pint glasses released last fall.  We sent out a call to Minnesota artists for submissions, juried the entries, and are using the selected designs on a [...]

Drawing Club: A Collaborative Coloring Book, page by Hot Sundae

Drawing Club: A Collaborative Coloring Book

The second edition of artist-designed objects for mnartists.marketplace, Drawing Club: A Collaborative Coloring Book, follows in step with the first edition of specialty pint glasses released last fall.  We sent out a call to Minnesota artists for submissions, juried the entries, and are using the selected designs on a limited edition release of a specialty object. This time around, however, instead of printing the selected designs on pint glasses, we’ve taken a page from mnartists.org’s Drawing Club and printed the designs in a high-end coloring book that invites its user to collaborate with the featured artists! Starting Saturday April 28th, the coloring books will be available in the Walker Shop and online for $10.

For those of you hearing about this for the first time, mnartists.marketplace is a mini-store within the Walker Shop devoted to the presentation and sales of local art, artistic wares, and art inspired objects.  In addition to offering a curated rotating selection of local artist-made wares, mnartists.marketplace invites artists to submit designs for a twice-annual juried call, providing an opportunity for artists of all disciplines to produce a limited edition of designed objects to be sold exclusively at the Walker Shop and promoted through mnaritsts.org and the Walker Art Center.

Drawing Club: A Collaborative Coloring Book, page by Kristina Estell

In an effort to take this season’s mnartists.marketplace limited edition coloring book to the next level, inspiration has been drawn from mnartists.org’s Drawing Club at Walker Open Field. At Drawing Club artists and the public add to the pool of collectively created artworks. Drawing Club: A Collaborative Coloring Book, invites its user to collaborate with the selected artists: rip out a page, color it, hang it on a wall, photograph it and share with the larger community by uploading the image to the Drawing Club facebook page: www.facebook.com/openfielddrawingclub. There you’ll be able to view, contribute, and comment on all the uploaded works and therefore participate in this shared practice and social experience of art-making, collaboration, and play.

After countless long grueling hours sifting through over 200 submissions from over 65 artists, the jury made the difficult decision of selecting the perfect 15 pages for inclusion in the coloring book. In the spirit of sharing and collaboration, take the time to read on and get to know a little more about the featured artists whose work you and/or your children may be defacing enhancing in the near future:

Saman Bemel-Benrud is an artist, designer, and comic maker. He recently had an apocalyptic dream involving earthquakes, tornadoes, and giant panthers. In order to prevent the end of the world, he had to collect all the stars and bring them back to his castle. The dream ended well, with pixel victory fireworks exploding against the night sky.
trashmoon.com

Emily Bennett Beck is a painter who explores themes of celebrity and fantasy. Her work deals with the expressions of (sincere and insincere) sympathy and reverie toward characters and public figures, which she translates in coloring book form for this project. As ‘participants’ color her page, they are able to revel safely in moments of inner turmoil and romantic drama without leaving the safety of their own identities. Emily’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, and she currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin- Stout.
www.emilybennettbeck.com

Cornelius Coons began his career in Los Angeles, graduating from the California Institute of the Arts with a degree in Graphic Design, before finding his way to the Midwest. Most recently, he worked as an Art Director for Schematic (now Possible Worldwide) and Peterson Milla Hooks, where he led multi-platform national campaigns for clients such as Target, Microsoft, Kmart and Gap.
graay.co

Brandon Cramm’s work accepts acute misinterpretations within his research, which he strives to prolong through the production of work. His process allows for one form of understanding to stand in the place of and communicate something about, or supplement the needs of the other. This might be best illustrated by a literal mistranslation where someone confuses something that is not physical for something that is.
mnartists.org/brandon_cramm 
www.cargocollective.com/brandoncramm

Kristina Estell received a B.F.A. in sculpture with distinction from Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana and received her M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 2004. Estell was awarded a full scholarship from the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle and received McKnight Foundation Grant fellowships in 2007 and 2011. Estell has exhibited her work internationally and has attended artist residencies within and outside of the USA. In 2010, Estell was selected by artist Dan Graham to receive a full fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany for a 10-month visual arts residency.
www.kristinaestell.com

Hot Sundae is a Minneapolis-based collective consisting of Amelia Irwin and Nicole Killian. Both have MFA’s from Cranbrook Academy of Art and their work is weird and fun and represents a sad-faced ying-yang.
www.hot-sundae.com

HOT TEA is a Minneapolis-based artist collective. The two words hot and tea or more specifically the phrase “HOT TEA” was chosen to highlight the relationship between the two words. These two words compliment each other both physically and grammatically. Without one or the other you wouldn’t have a phrase that evokes a sense of comfort, warmth and relaxation.  The project is a comment on all relationships good and bad and the things that lie between them. Like the phrase itself Hot and Tea are two totally different words brought together to represent something new, which reflect on the media and surfaces that the project makes use of.

Karen Kvitek is a lover of old books, birds, vegetables, flat rocks, friends, animals, and anything odd. She has a BFA in graphic design and a day job behind a cash register. She’s rarely without pen and paper, especially enjoying a good fine-tipped pen that’s nowhere near running out of ink. Fine-tipped pens and found images are her favorite things to work with and she thinks drawings make great gifts.
www.karenohbuddy.blogspot.com

Max Mose is an independent cartoonist and illustrator based out of St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2011, he received his MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies, which is located in dreamy, picturesque, slightly dilapidated White River Junction, Vermont. His self-published comics work has often been described as “deliberately weird.”
www.maxmose.wordpress.com
www.secretacres.com/store/

Terrence Payne is a Minneapolis based artist whose work has been shown at museums, galleries and universities throughout the United States. His work is also found in private collections all over the globe.   He has found a really strong and creative community in Minnesota with a supportive audience and ambitious, talented artists. Building upon this community, he has also been the gallery director of the Minneapolis Arts Collective, Rosalux Gallery, since 2002, helping other artists further their own careers.
www.terrencepayne.com

Casey Seijas’s drawing was inspired by his inner 10-year-old, back when he’d spend afternoons witnessing glorious battles between good vs. evil, and wonder from the backseat of car rides, “What do those colorful maze-words say?” that he’d see under bridges and behind shopping centers. He has art crushes on the Dadaists, Andy Warhol, J.C. Leyendecker, Jenny Saville, Neo Rauch, Banksy, CASE2, ELET, Anibal Padrino, Katsuhiro Otomo, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Eduardo Risso, Aaron Draplin, Charles Anderson, his uncle Jaff, the crew over at Aesthetic Apparatus, whoever painted the card art on old G.I. Joe action figure packaging, and the dude who did the art for Iron Maiden’s t-shirts. He is also known as FCV*CASE*MCT and Tootsie Cornrolls.
caseyseijas.com

Angela Sprunger was born in India, grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in Minneapolis. She a drawer, painter, printmaker, and sewer. Her recent work is about nostalgia. Her current drawing and print series is about being cautious of the desire to surrender to nostalgia’s persuasion that the past is better than the future. Conversely, she indulges and perpetuates nostalgia through fabric work, creating child-centered sewn objects like totes and stuffed animals.
angelasprunger.com

For Melissa Stang, drawing is the bedrock of her artistic practice.  She’s also very flexible in that she is capable of numerous, vastly different visual styles and generally works on several different projects simultaneously. She’s come to describe herself as a drawing-based, mixed-media object maker who is also a reasonably knowledgeable amateur naturalist.
melissastang.com

Peter Steineck is a maker of things and a current 4th year Graphic Design student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Pending a 2012 graduation, Peter hopes to become an attentive, participating member in the conversation of design. He enjoys movies, comics, letters, and subversive comedy. He does not enjoy jellyfish, little sleep, and people like Andy Rooney. RIP old man.
cargocollective.com/petersteineck

Lex Thompson’s work focuses on manifestations of hope and failure in the American landscape.  Photographs I Wish I’d Made, No. 1 (Scarlett Macaw) is from his series Mahalo, exploring the Hawaiian Islands.  The project is primarily composed of photographs, supplemented with images from television and cinema that shaped his expectations of Hawaii.  As a counterweight to these media images, he made the drawings – “Photographs I Wish I’d Made” – as records of photographs he failed to make.  These renderings, filtered through memory and nostalgia, give just as sublimated a vision of the actual scene as the photographs from television.
www.lexthompson.com

 

We can’t wait to see what you all will do with your artist-designed coloring book pages, so don’t be shy and be sure to share images of your collaborative coloring online at: www.facebook.com/openfielddrawingclub

For more updates and information about mnartsits.marketplace follow @mnartistsdotorg on Twitter and like the Walker Shop and mnartstist.org on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/walkershop and http://www.facebook.com/mnartists.org

About the Walker Shop
The Walker Shop supports the mission of the Walker Art Center through the sale of merchandise from around the globe. It offers a unique assortment of award-winning contemporary home and office accessories; artisan jewelry; books about multidisciplinary contemporary art, design, and culture; creative toys; and exclusive Walker products. All proceeds support the Walker’s artistic and educational programs.

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The mission of mnartists.org is to improve the lives of Minnesota artists and provide access to and engagement with Minnesota’s arts culture.

mnartists.org is a joint project of the Walker Art Center and McKnight Foundation.

VIEWFINDER: “Wishes for the Sky” by Katie Hill

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For the past few Earth Days, weather permitting, Grace Minnesota has presented Wishes for the Sky: a day of wishing on kites, experiencing public art, and respecting the environment hosted on Harriet Island in Saint Paul. Wishes for the Sky makes public otherwise private thoughts; it also makes communal an otherwise individual practice. As kids [...]

My wish in flight. Photo by author.

For the past few Earth Days, weather permitting, Grace Minnesota has presented Wishes for the Sky: a day of wishing on kites, experiencing public art, and respecting the environment hosted on Harriet Island in Saint Paul.

Wishes for the Sky makes public otherwise private thoughts; it also makes communal an otherwise individual practice. As kids we vow not to share what we wish for when blowing out birthday candles for fear of it not coming true. And as an adult, I can’t think of the last time I honestly truly wished for something, never mind telling anyone about it.

So imagine bringing together a whole population of ‘wishers’ and inviting them to wish together, in public! Wishes for the Sky validates all wants, letting the wisher chose their own hope after an inspiring chat with a Heart-Counselor and a walk through the Wishing Pavilion. While many wish for world peace and an end to poverty, others have wished to meet a famous teen heartthrob or for warm summer weather. No matter the desire, it is illustrated with words on traditional Chinese kites and then set to flight as the wisher tries to catch the wind.  This public performance of wishing is unique and, for many (including myself), treasured.

Yesterday, I wrote a wish on a kite. I was able to fly it for a few minutes on intermittent wind bursts before returning it for another to wish on.  And though at the time I was entirely confident in the promise and practice of public wish-making, that feeling has now passed. Today, I simply cannot bear to publicly pronounce my wish. The fear of the birthday wish that may not come true if shared has returned, and with it, my self-consciousness. I suppose this speaks to the power of such an event, but also reveals the truly ephemeral nature of wishing.

 

Past wishes. Photo by author.

Getting my wish stamped. Photo by author.

Meeting with Heart-Counselors to receive kites. Photo by author.

Entrance to the Wishing Pavilion. Photo by author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the author: Katie Hill is an art historian, writer, and cat lady living in Saint Paul. She is also the current mnartists.org Program Fellow.

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Viewfinder posts are your opportunity to “show & tell” about the everyday arts happenings, interesting sights and sounds made or as seen by Minnesota artists, because art is where you find it.  Submit your own informal, first-person responses to the art around you to katie(at)mnartists.org, and we may well publish your piece here on the blog. (Guidelines: 300 words or less, not about your own event/work, and please include an image, media, video, or audio file, and one sentence about yourself.)

Viewfinder: “That’s my house!” by Joel Hagen

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I think James Casebere is stalking me. That’s my house in “Landscape with House (Dutchess County, NY) #8.” Sure, my house isn’t in New York — it’s in Fargo — but he isn’t fooling me with that title.                             See it? It’s [...]

I think James Casebere is stalking me.

That’s my house in “Landscape with House (Dutchess County, NY) #8.” Sure, my house isn’t in New York — it’s in Fargo — but he isn’t fooling me with that title.

James Casebere, Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #8, 2010. Framed digital chromogenic print mounted to Dibond paper: 69 3/4 x 86 1/4 inches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See it? It’s the house in the foreground, all by its lonesome on the street with driveways to nowhere. It’s the only house without window shades; the one without pigment that’s fenced in by hedges.

Look.  My house cowers below the looming houses on the hill; those big colorful houses with above ground pools, TV antennae, and playgrounds. And above them, a stately blue house presides at the top of the hill. Me, I’m at the bottom — colorless — watching the sun set behind the other houses, blocked from a forest of color by my betters. It’s rather sad – this exploitation of my life and house for art.

But wait!

Take another look: See how there are no driveways visible at the bigger houses, how their curtains keep them insulated, how their pools, barbecue sets, and TVs keep them tethered to their homes?

I have mobility. My home has the only vehicle in sight in this unpeopled world. I have a bike. I have a house that spills onto the sidewalk, connected to a road that leads to the great unknown. I moved to the Twin Cities from Fargo to escape this life — to become something more than the value of my house size — to connect to culture by going to events like the Lifelike exhibition at the Walker Art Center.

But then I turn a corner in the gallery and James Casebere is shoving my old life right back in my face. And I nearly trip over a bronze sleeping bag as I back away.

 

About the author: Joel Hagen is a freelance writer living in the Twin Cities. His web portfolio is at www.mrjoelhagen.com.

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Viewfinder posts are your opportunity to “show & tell” about the everyday arts happenings, interesting sights and sounds made or as seen by Minnesota artists, because art is where you find it.  Submit your own informal, first-person responses to the art around you to katie(at)mnartists.org, and we may well publish your piece here on the blog. (Guidelines: 300 words or less, not about your own event/work, and please include an image, media, video, or audio file, and one sentence about yourself.)

Viewfinder: “Axis Mundi” by Jay Orff

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The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. –Marcel Duchamp   The axis mundi is basically a connection, the center, where two worlds come together.  Everyone, [...]

John Fleischer, “Δ" (detail), 2012. Courtesy of air sweet air and the artist.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

–Marcel Duchamp

 

The axis mundi is basically a connection, the center, where two worlds come together.  Everyone, everything — every story, every myth, every day — has its own axis mundi, or can. Seeing it requires an act of interpretation; someone has to decide, this is the center, and describe it as such.  Sometimes that axial point is hard to miss, like a mountain or a steeple, but not always.  Regardless, it is one of the most basic human symbols and tools for meaning making — from the altar to the steeple, to the holy mountain, sacred garden, sacred tree — they are all places where the human and the divine consciously connect.  An axis, of course, can be discerned as any pivotal transition point: where one thing becomes another, where the past and present meet, for instance.

And this brings me to the current show by John Fleischer, which uses the symbol of a triangle, “Δ,” as its name. The multimedia installation is on view through April 15 at air sweet air gallery in St. Paul, and you should go see it, plain and simple.

For me, the biggest and most interesting axis that the John Fleischer show confronts and explores is the pathway between representational and conceptual art, between body and spirit, materialism and idealism. In so doing, the installation explores a transition that has been happening in art for some time now.  Fleischer’s pieces in the show go back and forth, using different approaches to creating art and meaning, as well as creating a bridge between 20th- and 21st-century aesthetics.  I think, in some ways, Fleischer is continuing the work of the conceptual Formalists — the work and ideas of Martin Puryear, for instance — and, I suspect, using their ideas as a starting place.

John Fleischer, “Δ" (detail), 2012. Courtesy of air sweet air and the artist.

The centerpiece of “Δ” is a work made up of 33 handmade wooden dowels, barbell shaped pieces separated into three groups of 11, carefully arranged on cardboard platforms a few inches off the ground.  We view them from above first, seeing their geometric arrangement, but are quickly compelled to kneel down to get a closer look at the well-crafted pieces of wood — to admire the workmanship, the wood grain, the balance.  These qualities speak to a classical appreciation of visual beauty; the wooden rods are, quite simply, beautiful objects.

Next to them is another wooden piece, submerged in wax; beside that is a plastic bucket filled with saltwater and rusting cans.  The natural process of decay is an important part of this piece.

The installation’s pieces move back and forth, from the natural world to the manipulated, to artifice, asking us to decide where the axis is situated.  Seeing his work, we cannot help but come to the conclusion, at last, that the axis mundi is in our imagination, that art is an imaginative act that we take part in — something we think, feel, and believe into being.

Mold is growing in Fleischer’s glass jars, and its texture and pattern is also beautiful in its own way; since it’s in a gallery, it’s a lot easier to call the mold beautiful than if it were found, instead, growing on something in your fridge.  Regardless, even if you wouldn’t ever call mold beautiful, exactly, inserted into a piece of art it still forces us to consider it anew, to freshly question its place: Can mold fit into a larger system of aesthetics?  To me, it can, and its delicate, lovely decay (at least in the gallery setting) represents and actually is an example of transition — of change from this to that, from present to past. It’s the kind of thing that happens beyond our control, but which we constantly feel compelled to comment on and make meaning from.   Mold and rust, everyday decay, are a part of our present that will become someone else’s past; this piece exists, is actually alive on that particular axis of our meaning making right at this moment. The piece itself shows us how we interact with the world around us to find and create our own axis.

It’s important to note that Fleischer created this exhibit specifically for the air sweet air space, in consultation with Cheryl Wilgren Clyne, the gallery’s mastermind and proprietor.  I think this site-specificity comes through in the work: the idea of the process behind its installation, of the gallery being an axis, too, between artist and audience. After all, the gallery is where the two come together in the viewing of the thing to work out precisely what it is we call “art.”

John Fleischer, “Δ" (detail), 2012. Courtesy of air sweet air and the artist.

Perhaps art is always moving in the direction of concept, of thought, of contextualization, asking us to bring more to it, just as it brings more to us and challenges us in ever new ways.  Or, maybe it just always seems that way, with each generation confused by the next one’s new, ugly art.

The wooden barbell assortment gives us the lovely wooden pieces carefully, tenuously arranged and accents them with mold and rust.  It’s all of a piece, it all clearly goes together — but how do we get from one to the other? Where do we fix the center?  Where is our balance?  What happens next?

The projected paintings, the large wooden phallus — I think these represent the foreground of Fleischer’s art, the present and the past. But the axis mundi in the middle of the floor seems to me the mechanism moving with the flow of contemporary aesthetics, acting as a stimulus for questioning the rest. And the questions it brings up are, to my mind, all about where those aesthetics have come from and where they are going next; how do we use them to make meaning? How do we use them to get us to tomorrow?

 

 About the author: Jay Orff is a writer, musician and filmmaker living in Minneapolis. His fiction has appeared in Reed, Spout, Chain and Harper’s Magazine. Read more on www.jayorff.com.

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Viewfinder posts are your opportunity to “show & tell” about the everyday arts happenings, interesting sights and sounds made or as seen by Minnesota artists, because art is where you find it.  Submit your own informal, first-person responses to the art around you to katie(at)mnartists.org, and we may well publish your piece here on the blog. (Guidelines: 300 words or less, not about your own event/work, and please include an image, media, video, or audio file, and one sentence about yourself.)

‘This is Art?’ – “It Is What It Is!” comic by Todd Balthazor

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About the artist: Todd Balthazor is a satirical, often anthropomorphic illustrator, fine artist, muralist and children’s art instructor from St.Paul, MN, with a BFA in illustration from the College of Visual Arts (CVA).  He has done artist residencies at Jackson Elementary and the St. Paul University Club, and his work has been displayed in venues both [...]

About the artist: Todd Balthazor is a satirical, often anthropomorphic illustrator, fine artist, muralist and children’s art instructor from St.Paul, MN, with a BFA in illustration from the College of Visual Arts (CVA).  He has done artist residencies at Jackson Elementary and the St. Paul University Club, and his work has been displayed in venues both locally and abroad, including: illustrations in the Altered Esthetics Gallery (Minneapolis), the Walker Art Center blog, and multiple Red Leaf Press publications (St. Paul); visual narratives at the Adugyama Art Exhibition (Ghana, Africa) and the Save the Children Nepal Project (Nepal, India); and murals at an orphanage in Jaurez, Mexico.  Samples of his work can be found at toddbalthazor.com and toddbalthazor.blogspot.com.

Balthazor also works as a guard at the Walker Art Center, and draws on his experiences behind the scenes at the museum in his weekly comic strip for mnartists.org, It Is What It Is.  (Click the image above to enlarge it.)

Only in Minnesota: The Art Shanty Projects

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Welcome back Art Shanty Projects, we’ve missed you.  Yesterday, upon leaving the pop-up arts colony on Medicine Lake, my arts-skeptical husband sighed, “Only the Minnesota arts scene…” As I dramatically inhaled and prepared to launch into one of my arts-do-matter diatribes, he cut me off, “I meant that in a good way.”  Was this skeptic [...]

Art Shanty ProjectsWelcome back Art Shanty Projects, we’ve missed you.  Yesterday, upon leaving the pop-up arts colony on Medicine Lake, my arts-skeptical husband sighed, “Only the Minnesota arts scene…” As I dramatically inhaled and prepared to launch into one of my arts-do-matter diatribes, he cut me off, “I meant that in a good way.”  Was this skeptic sincerely expressing a sense of wonder and appreciation? Well done Shanty folks!

 

Some of the Art Shanties

Officially, The Art Shanty Projects are “an artist driven temporary community exploring the ways in which relatively unregulated public spaces can be used as new and challenging artistic environments to expand notions of what art can be.”   Unofficially, they are a great time when open to the public on weekends and a truly thought-provoking arts experiment only imaginable in Minnesota.

 

The cold temperature was the only reason we left before we had time to fully discover what all 24 shanties are about.  Some highlights from our first (yes, we’ll be back) brief icy outing included:

ICE-cycle Shanty

Inside the Reflection Shanty

Waiting in line to try the Robot Reprise

Close up of the Shantyquarian (note the "I'm Old Gregg" ref.)

 

 

 

 

–The ICE-cycle Shanty offering tricked-out ice-bikes complete with animal costumes and a skate of a ski in place of a front wheel — for the more daring visitors to try out

–The Reflection Shanty which brightens your mood and view as you enter the light-filled space and inspires many to take “Chicago-Bean-like” photos of their own reflections

–The Robot Reprise is innately cool even if you don’t have the time/inner body heat to wait in line for your turn to climb in and play

–The Letter Press Shanty, printing hand set newsletters daily, complete with tweets from around the web and the world that have been sent to the Shantyquarian

There were so many great projects, much more than can fit into this pithy and light-hearted blog post…

Dancy Shanty Front Door Sign

My favorite spot, however, was the Dance Shanty.  Sure, it sounds straightforward: go inside and bust-a-move. So I began to think, how is this original or artistic or interesting?  Then the music drew me in, the sign on the door read “Enter in Back,” just like any hip dance club, and the bumping “Whoomp! (There it is)” forced a nod of the head or bounce of the step until I was through the backdoor.

 

Inside the Dance Shanty

Then BAM! A full-fledged dance party underway, complete with colored lights, a DJ wearing Dwayne-Wayne-style flip-up sunglasses, and puffy-coat-clad dancers.  Granted, the toddler in the snowsuit bouncing up and down to a remix of The Knife’s “Heartbeats” may have unfairly influenced my opinion (and melted my almost frozen heart).

But, when I realized that I, too, was unabashedly dancing in my Sorels, among strangers, in the middle of the day, in a temporary structure on a frozen lake, and so was my skeptical husband – well, that’s when I knew that the Dance Shanty was more than just a portable nightclub. It is an original and artistic experiment, diffusing the performer/audience boundary and exploring the art of play through music and movement, all the while making people feel good.

So bundle up (seriously, its cold) and get out there before it’s too late – the Art Shanty Projects close Feb. 5th!  I’ll see you in the Dance Shanty.

 

Little one not too sure about the Monsters Under the Bed Shanty

View from inside the Solar Ark Shanty

Troll Sign, Nordic Village Bridge Shanty

Only for the strong-stomached, the Sit and Spin Shanty

 

 

mnartists.org staff and writers weigh in on the year that was

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You know what season we’re in? Right after the big holidays but before Valentine’s Day – comes like clockwork every winter. It’s “Year in Review”  lists season! I know, I know – everyone does them, take them too seriously and they’re reductive, they inevitably leave too much good stuff out… C’mon! Year-end features are a [...]

You know what season we’re in? Right after the big holidays but before Valentine’s Day – comes like clockwork every winter. It’s “Year in Review”  lists season! I know, I know – everyone does them, take them too seriously and they’re reductive, they inevitably leave too much good stuff out…

C’mon! Year-end features are a trifle, sure, but they’re really fun to write and read – no harm to anyone, and an interesting lens through which to take stock of all the arts you seen, heard, and been part of in the last year. Besides, no one here’s suggesting a few little lists amount to the last word on anything. Just consider this our contribution to your light weekend reading.

We’ll give our year-in-review staff picks in a blog post next week. But for this one, we asked some of our regular contributors to give us their picks for the best arts happenings of 2011 – any field, any discipline, it just has to have a local angle of some kind.  And if you have a favorite from 2011’s cultural shindigs, exhibitions, performances, festivals, or art fairs, add your own in the comments below — the more the merrier!

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MIRANDA TRIMMIER, ARTIST & VISUAL ARTS WRITER

Jennifer Anable’s MFA thesis show at the University of Minnesota: Meticulously executed sculpture that manages to be sad, smart, funny, unassuming all at once

Jeff Millikan’s Preserving / Memory at the Bell Museum: Strange, subtle use of Bell Museum archival objects & poetic didactics that imagine the personal histories behind natural history collections

Conversations in the wake of Nathalie Djurberg’s The Parade & its opening night at the Walker Art Center: I think people really connected to this show…because I had so many animated conversations. The work’s not local, but there’s something about the word-of-mouth ripple effect of good art that is…

Conversations about potentially faster-than-light neutrinos: Some of the most creatively & intellectually stimulating conversations i had this year weren’t about art at all…every time i talked to people about this bit of science news (that some neutrinos had been measured moving faster than the speed of light…implying that the theory of relativity is wrong…or that multiple universe theories are correct…or something very weird is going on), the discussion went somewhere odd and inspiring.
the waters will not prevail/ non-public salons and performance nights: Some of my best experiences with art this year weren’t public. In particular, I loved this night of art & performances, put together as a ritual to ward off rising Mississippi waters that threatened to flood a friend’s cabin. Some of it was great, some not at all, but there’s something wonderful about people putting time into making art that’s not meant to win grants, get press, or position a career…it can feel like a reparative counterweight to all that hustling.

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ANDY STURDEVANT, BON VIVANT, ARTIST & VISUAL ARTS WRITER

  1. The Opening Act: A Survey of Jan Xylander Exhibition Posters, Natasha Pestich at the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, MIA: A touching, brilliant look at a fictional artist’s career, in poster form.
  2. A Public Thing, Works Progress and Red76, November 2011: A perfect union of topicality, live event, archival publication, public conversation and artistic collaboration.
  3. Everybody Wins, David Sollie at Soo Visual Art Center: Another inventive, strangely poignant blurring of fact and fiction.
  4. Conductors of the Moving World, Brad Zellar, published by Little Brown Mushroom Books: A strange, affecting look 1970s America through the eyes of a visiting Japanese traffic cop.
  5. Pocket Lab Reading Series, Rogue Buddha, organized by MC Hyland: A consistently great monthly gathering of poets, writers and readers
  6. Northern Spark Festival, June 2011: Up all night, with almost everyone!
  7. Dark Dark Dark and the Modern Times Spychestra, Spies, Walker Art Center, August 2011: A live scoring of an almost-forgotten Fritz Lang silent film, complete with a stage full of stompers, masterminded by the best band in Minnesota.
  8. World on a Wire, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, at the Trylon Microcinema, August 2011: Another almost-forgotten German film classic, presaging the last thirty years of science fiction.

Crap From the Past, hosted by Ron “Boogiemonster” Gerber, KFAI: The only guy in town who could play a suite of 1980s-era Ronald Reagan novelty hip-hop records. And he’s been at it for twenty years!

The Walker Art Center’s new website: Does everything a contemporary art center’s website ought to do (and quite a bit more).

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LIGHTSEY DARST, POET & DANCE CRITIC

2011 feels like the year I missed. I choose the most inopportune moments to go out of town, get sick, and get in a car accident. So, with apologies to everything I missed, here’s who and what caught my attention this year:

  1. Merce Cunningham Dance Company: The world’s premiere modern dance company is sure to top everyone’s list in its final year. I put it here not for the weight of history, though, but because November’s performance at the Walker really was transformative and exhilarating. Plus, Cunningham’s influence shows up everywhere these days: I’d guess he’s at least one of the forces behind the resurgence of dance movement in avant-garde work both locally and nationally. Look for this influence to grow as former Cunningham dancers spread across the dance landscape.
  2. Chris Schlichting: His show at the Ivy Studios was a must-see—strange, sexy, mesmerizing, pleasure for the eyes as well as the mind.
  3. The Southern/the Cowles: What can I say that hasn’t been said? Dance space in Minneapolis is in crisis. I say, the heck with it, let’s just decide that everywhere is dance space. Get to your feet, people.
  4. Raina Gilliland: Her name means Queen, she’s extravagantly tall and exotically gorgeous, and she’s third-generation MN dance royalty (of the Loyce and Lise Houlton line)—Raina Gilliland was never going to blend in. She could either stand out or disappoint, and for her first couple of years here, I thought it might be the latter. But last year her confidence blossomed. The Nutcracker is the best case in point: where in 2009 she trembled on the few steps Coffee takes alone, in 2010 she ruled the ballerina role of Rose (the leader of the Waltz of the Flowers). This year, she takes on the Sugarplum.
  5. The Next Big Thing: I won’t leave you wondering: I can’t name it. But I saw a lot of loose energy out there this year—the kind that suggests next year might be critical. What new direction will our dance go?

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CONNIE WANEK, POET & ‘WHAT LIGHT’ WINNER

Right away in January 2011, Charles Baxter published his new and selected stories, a volume entitled Gryphon, and immediately I knew it would be a good year for literature.  This is a great collection.  Playful, intriguing, heartbreaking, unnerving–these stories are nothing short of astonishing.  I was pleased to see all the great reviews of the book (including Joyce Carol Oates’ take in the NYTBR).  Wow, and he’s a Minnesotan!

Three notable things happened this year that are interrelated, and all connected to Robert Bly:

  1. First, Robert Bly published Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey, a new book of quite wonderful poems.  I especially love a group of poems about his father and mother and early years–very powerful.  For example, despite a turbulent history with his father, Bly says, “The way I found/ Of opening a poem I took/ From the way he walked into a field.”  I love that.
  1. Bly was our first, and now we have a second Minnesota Poet Laureate, Joyce Sutphen. She is a perfect choice, and I don’t say that because I (very happily) call her my friend, but because she is the soul of generosity, and she is a brilliant writer and thinker. Governor Dayton could not have chosen a more ideal ambassador for poetry in the state.  Three cheers!
  1. I was happy for weeks after hearing that Tomas Transtromer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.  The connection to Robert Bly is as follows: Bly introduced Transtromer to American audiences by translating many of his poems into English for the first time.  I understand that there is a volume of their correspondence over the years that has been published in Sweden (in Swedish), and I fervently hope someone publishes it in America.  Transtromer’s work has been deeply admired for many decades, and the Nobel Prize has never been more justly bestowed.

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SHEILA REGAN, ACTOR & ARTS WRITER

Best Dance Shows

Ananya Dance Theatre: Tushaanal: Fires of Dry Grass

Ragamala: Sacred Earth

Best Performance Art

Tim Carroll at the Soap Factory

Best Acting Performances

Barbara Berlovitz in Mother Courage

Anna Sundberg in After Miss Julie

Best Art Shows

Aerodynamic Karoake at Bockley Gallery

Jennifer West at Franklin Art Works

Three Artists: Guo Gai, Meng Tang, Slinko at Soap Factory

Finally, We are all Young Again by Adam Caillier and Michael Mott at the MAEP Galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

Angela Strassheim’s Evidence at Minneapolis Institute of Art

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JOHN JODZIO, FICTION WRITER & miniSTORIES FINALIST

  1. So Many Great Readings at Magers & Quinn: From Greil Marcus to Tea Obrecht to John Sayles to countless other literary and cultural heavyweights, M&Q had a incredible year booking events.  Sometimes when you go, they even have a table with some free wine or a cooler of beer set up, so you can watch someone incredible and then do a bunch of drunk book shopping.
  2. Any Place Where Shane Hawley Is Is Way Better Than Where Shane Hawley Isn’t: Every time I see Shane Hawley in action, I love him a little more. Some people call him a poet and some people call him a comedian, but all I know is that he has taught me that my heart is an open chalice that can be filled again and again with his hilarity and angst.
  3. Brian Beatty and Andy Sturdevant’s Epic Beard Battle: Two of the town’s most recognizable beardo artists sit down outside a Punch Pizza and beard battle to the death. Luckily it was caught on video for everyone to enjoy

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And speaking of BRIAN BEATTY, WRITER, COMEDIAN & HOST OF YOU ARE HEAR

  1. 2011 Minnesota Fringe Festival: Making it to Edinburgh in time to catch the last few days of Scotland’s original Fringe made me realize how lucky we are to have such a great festival right here at home.
  2. Will Eno’s Oh the Humanity and Other Good Intentions at Intermedia Arts: I chatted up this evening of shorts for Minnesota Public Radio’s Art Hounds, but the performances of Matt Sciple, Mo Perry and Christopher Kehoe were even better than I was able to articulate on the radio.
  1. Loren Niemi at Hot Dish storytelling event at the Trylon Microcinema: Loren was called up from the audience to share a story on stage at this second Hot Dish event. His short three-minute story was perfectly constructed and expertly told.
  2. John Jodzio + Paper Darts = Get In If You Want To Live: Finally, a Jodzio story collection with pictures, because I’m tired of reading his hilarious flash fictions. Words? Urgh.
  3. HUGE Theater: I’m on record comparing politicians obviously awful at making it up as they go along with comedy improvisers, only more meaningless, but the local improv scene deserved another venue besides The Brave New Workshop, Comedy Sportz and Stevie Ray’s. And the folks behind HUGE are among the funniest in the metro area.

 

What Do Artists Need?

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As mnartists.org works towards rebuilding our website in the coming year, we are also in an opportune position to refocus and reappraise how we, as an organization, can best serve artists. When my colleague, Scott Stulen, and I sat down to revisit our mission statement, we agreed benefiting artists will always be central to our [...]

As mnartists.org works towards rebuilding our website in the coming year, we are also in an opportune position to refocus and reappraise how we, as an organization, can best serve artists. When my colleague, Scott Stulen, and I sat down to revisit our mission statement, we agreed benefiting artists will always be central to our mission. As we move forward with planning for the new site (new bells and whistles aside), Minnesota artists and their needs will remain core to our mission and our focus as an organization. No easy task, as artists needs vary depending on the stage they are in their career, their location, and have different needs associated with their discipline of focus.

So what is it that all artists need?

I can speculate; I’m an artist too.  Let me introduce myself: I’m Jehra Patrick and I work as Project Coordinator for mnartists.org.  I do everything from answering help-desk questions, to planning, promoting and managing our off-line programs like Drawing Club, CSA: Community Supported Art, MN Made, and mnartists.markerplace; I also assist in managing the McKnight Photo Fellowship for Photographers and work to direct artists and arts enthusiasts to the resources they need – online and otherwise. I am also a visual artist.  I’m an artist who loves to support other artists. In thinking about what artists need, I can speculate as both an artist and as someone who supports artists and interacts with artists regularly.  Here’s what I’ve got, but please feel free to chime in:

Artists need:

• Exposure Artists need their work to be seen; they need an audience, they need coverage and feedback

• Community Whether it’s camaraderie with other artists, support from their local community or a network of followers

• Resources Space to produce, the materials or expenses that make your work a reality and the time to make it

• Professional development Artists need a plan, a business strategy to market themselves as professionals; they need the tools meet their ambitions

All of these ‘needs’ vary – and may mean different things – depending on the artist’s stage in their career. The form that each of these needs takes also varies by the artist’s discipline of focus, and another thing: What artists want. What artists want depends on their own goals, which also vary depending on where they are in their career.

Back in 1999, McKnight Foundation issued a survey to gauge the needs of artists, out of which mnartists.org was developed. So how does mnartists.org continue assess artist’s needs? Over the next year, I will continue to reach out through topical blog posts to gauge varying needs of Minnesota artists and post to respond to these needs. While there will be more formal surveys, we also welcome candid feedback and encourage you to respond!  We want to hear from you!

What do artists need? What do you need as an artist? What do you need to continue to produce your work?  To make a living?  To take your work to ‘the next stage’?

Also, how do artists’ needs differ based on what you have? What is already available to you? What is missing?

MN-Made holiday shopping cheat sheet: craft fairs, art sales and trunk shows

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This isn’t a holiday gift guide with specific suggestions for what to get Mom, Dad, your S.O., the kids, Nana, Grandpa and that coworker-across-the-cubicle-you-chat-with-sometimes-but-don’t-really-know-so-well. (If you’d like ideas, though, you can find a few local gift guides out already this year, courtesy of the folks at Vita.mn, Minnesota Monthly, METRO magazine, or the Duluth News-Tribune. [...]

This isn’t a holiday gift guide with specific suggestions for what to get Mom, Dad, your S.O., the kids, Nana, Grandpa and that coworker-across-the-cubicle-you-chat-with-sometimes-but-don’t-really-know-so-well. (If you’d like ideas, though, you can find a few local gift guides out already this year, courtesy of the folks at Vita.mn, Minnesota Monthly, METRO magazine, or the Duluth News-Tribune. No doubt more such lists are on the way shortly.)

Instead, what you’ll find here in the coming days is a brief rundown of craft fairs, pop-up shops, mom & pop independents, and various and sundry art sales and trunk shows, and online shops where you can find kick-ass, locally made art and craft. We’ll point the way to some of the best spots for buying from Minnesota artists this season, and leave figuring out what to get Auntie Whosit to you.

This weekend:

No Coast Craft-O-Rama
Friday (3 pm – 8 pm) & Saturday (9 am – 5 pm), December 2 & 3
Midtown Global Market, Minneapolis

For me, it just wouldn’t be the holidays without this, the most fabulous of the Twin Cities craft fairs. From crazy-cute duds for kids, to cheeky baby gear, and ingenious toys and stuffed critters; stylish handbags, beautifully crafted jewelry, and handmade accessories, fancy soaps, candy, and punk paper products, awesome prints, posters, letterpress, and household doodads at every price point – I swear, this well-curated local craft fair gets bigger, and more bustling every year. If you’re in town and looking to check some of your near and dear off the holiday gift list, you should go. It’s a delight to browse, and I guarantee you’ll not leave empty-handed. (You can check out all the vendors online here)

 

College of Visual Arts’ Holiday Art Sale
Preview party December 2 (5 – 8 pm, $30 admission at the door)
Sale, Saturday (10 am – 4 pm) & Sunday (noon – 4 pm), December 3 – 4
College of Visual Arts Gallery, St. Paul

This year’s 6th annual holiday art sale boasts more than 2000 pieces of original work by CVA students, faculty and alumni – most of which will be priced at less than $100. Like all student-centric events of its kind, this art sale offers budget art collectors a great shot at affordable pieces by emerging artists, not to mention the satisfaction of putting your consumer dollar toward a good cause. Word to the wise: if you’re serious about making a purchase, it’s probably worth the price of admission to stop by the preview party. The really good stuff tends to get snapped up early. If you’ve got a bit more scratch to spend, you could also bid on work in the silent auction of pieces made by friends of CVA. All proceeds from both the silent auction and sale go to support the college’s scholarship programs.

 

Color Wheel Gallery’s Holiday Bazaar
Color Wheel Gallery, Minneapolis
Saturday (6 – 10 pm) & Sunday (noon – 6 pm), December 3 – 4

Gallery proprietor and artist Tammy Ortegon is hosting a local art and craft fair at her shop, including paintings, prints, collages, photography, and mixed media work by a bunch of Minnesota artists, but also crafty stuff by local folks, like handmade jewelry, knitted winter things, baby gear, and the like.

 

Rochester Art Center’s Gallery Shop Holiday Sale & Trunk Show
Rochester Art Center, Rochester
Sunday, December 4, noon – 5 pm (admission is free)

For its 6th annual gallery shop and trunk sale, the RAC is offering art and craft by a variety of regional artists, including glass & beaded jewelry, handmade housewares and kitchen vessels, fiber arts, Amaglyphe art packs and books, and deals on the usual cool stuff on sale in the gift shop.

 

The Grand Meander
December 3, 8:30 am through 5 pm
Along Grand Avenue in St. Paul

Start the day with breakfast with Santa and a visit with the big man’s reindeer; the kids will be thrilled by the fire truck and trolley rides, hayrides, caroling, and a community Christmas tree-lighting later in the day. While you’re in the neighborhood, stop by Grand Hand Gallery – particularly if you’re in the market for higher-end, locally made art and craft. Their Handcrafted Holidays selection is carefully curated and just lovely.

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>>Next up: The best mom & pop retailers, pop-up stores, and online outfits for MN-made art & crafts this season >>

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