To commemorate National Dance Week, Walker Art Center performing arts program manager Michele Steinwald sent out a call to 300 people in the Twin Cities dance community to gravitate to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Tuesday afternoon for a group photo in front of Spoonbridge and Cherry. Only two dozen showed up, not counting two dogs in tow, but Steinwald sees it as the launching pad to an annual photo shoot to mark this otherwise under-the-radar week.
Molly Priesmeyer’s MinnPost post turned me onto Phil Hansen, who is capturing international attention–one click at a time–for the self-made YouTube videos documenting his artistic process. Hansen recasts existing works of art (or pop art) from a pallet of paint, chalk, pencil and clever wit. He renders Chuck Close’s Big Self-Portrait with thousands of stick figures chalked onto blacktop asphalt, paints a mural of Bruce Lee by karate chopping paint onto a wall and uses matchsticks tipped in red, white and black for a portrait of Jimi Hendrix. More than 1.1 million people have viewed Hansen creating the Hendrix piece and then setting it on fire. Watch these and dozens of others on Hansen’s YouTube channel.
How would you spend a perfect day in Minneapolis? This is a question Walker Teen Programs Manager Witt Siasoco answered in a two-page spread in Giant Robot, the fantastic Asian pop culture magazine. Like any good day, it starts with coffee and breakfast, followed by a mysteriously short one-hour workday. There are scans of the article up here: page 1, page 2.
There are still two weekends of the Art Shanty Projects left and I swear it’s not that cold. Now in its fifth year, ASP brings together a community of artists to build and inhabit themed fishing shanties on Medicine Lake in Plymouth.
This year two co-conspirators and I created Medicine Lake Fisheries, a two-story shanty with an open air deck and a fishing tent on the second story. We’ve been fishing from the second story and admiring the view (see Justin Heideman’s shot above) for the past month. Andy Sturdevant, of the MOWSAR Shanty, has a thorough rundown of 2008’s shanties, but here are some of my favorite firsts from this year:
1. Catching a fish from a frozen lake.
Medicine Lake Fisheries is strictly a catch and release operation.
2. A Taiko-drumming groundhog wedding.
Last Saturday, February 2, Duane Tougas and Kat Corrigan were wed on the top of Medicine Lake Fisheries. Their wedding party consisted of 3 groundhogs and one mouse.
Also check out the Snap Shot Shanty’s photo blog- where they post the images they capture in their on-ice portrait studio.
Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, a New York filmmaker, follows the pioneers of Cuban hip-hop into their homes, on stage and on their travels abroad in Inventos: Hip Hop Cubano, screening 7 pm Saturday at Intermedia Arts. Jacobs-Fantauzzi is working with Bay Area hip-hop artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph in a residency with the Walker’s Teen Programs and also contributing to the Walker-commissioned premiere of Joseph’s the break/s, April 10-12 in the McGuire Theater.
After Saturday’s screening is a discussion with the filmmaker and a performance of Hip Hop Habana from the Real by Melissa Riviera, exploring hip-hop in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Call 612.375.7548 or email teenprograms@walkerart.org for details.
Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes, dubbed “the most influential of all the visual-arts blogs” by the Wall Street Journal, is building its Minneapolis blogroll. Off-Center makes the list (thanks!), but are there other local art blogs you think the world should know about? Here’s your time for civic pride: Leave a list in comments or at MAN.
Just a quick note about the MPR story that woke me up this morning (love my clock-radio). The new owner of Linden Hills’ first weeHouse, which dropped into the neighborhood today, first learned about his prefab house from the Walker’s own exhibition Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses.
Neighborhood gawkers pictured below:
Readers of this blog are no doubt aware that the Republican National Convention is taking place in St. Paul next September. Given this unique opportunity, The Walker and many other arts and education institutions in the Twin Cities are teaming up to create an entity called The UnConvention. Over the next year and a half, The Walker, along with these institutions, will be presenting lectures, workshops, classes and exhibitions based on the theme of participatory democracy.
We’ve put out an official media release, and have a website just for The UnConvention. Here are some details from the media release:
The UnConvention is about participation and democracy, the public sphere, media, and creativity--not a critique of the Republican Party and its policies. Our motto is “unscripting the political process”. The UnConvention exists as a counterpoint to the highly scripted and predetermined nature of the contemporary presidential nomination process and convention.
The mission of The UnConvention is twofold:
We working on some exciting projects that residents of the Twin Cities will be able to participate in. Conventions in the past have been a good excuse for people to leave town for a week. We’re hoping to give people a reason to stick around and participate in a constructive way. As the convention approaches, we also will be fleshing out the website with more features including a full events calendar, a forum and some project specific features.
We also put together an announcement video, created from the announcement or pre-announcement videos of many of the presidential candidates:
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