The site’s co-owner from 2015 to present takes us behind the scenes of the Sketchbook Project, the relaunch, and the 20th anniversary party.

Looking Back on 20 years: Blaine Garrett on Building Community

Banner image: Kristoffer Knutson and Lori Barbero at Deuce Seven&#39;s 2006 SooVAC show. All photos ripped from the depths of&nbsp;Facebook, unless otherwise noted.

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Last week, we shared a Q&amp;A with MPLSART&#39;s founder, <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2025/09/looking-back-on-20-years-of-mplsart-founder-emma-berg-on-making-a-scene" target="_blank">Emma Berg</a>, who started this site way back in 2005 as an events calendar and personal blog. This week, we&#39;re taking a walk down memory lane with Kristoffer Knutson, who came on as a site partner soon after, helping relaunch the site to be more aesthetically engaging and practically sustainable.&nbsp;Together, the two ran this site for nearly a decade before selling it to Katie and Blaine Garrett for a dollar ten years ago.&nbsp;

Knutson is a prolific producer and creative enthusiast in his own right, a kind soul who came up in the DIY days. For all involved, MPLSART has always been a hustle, a labor of love in service to the artists and arts audiences here. Over the years, Knutson has put his energy into a variety of other creative pursuits around town, as well &mdash; in the agency world, as owner of <a href="http://www.instagram.com/hello_robotlove/" target="_blank">ROBOTlove</a>, and now as a project manager with <a href="https://juxtapositionarts.org/about-3/team/" target="_blank">Juxtaposition Arts</a>.

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Russ White: I wanted to start by having you walk me through your history with the site. Also now we&rsquo;re coming up on this anniversary &mdash; 20 years is wild. How does that feel?

Kristoffer Knutson: Yeah, when I saw it was 20 years, I was like, what? But I am reminded of that often &mdash; that time was so intertwined with ROBOTlove which closed 15 years ago and people still bring it up. It feels like yesterday that it was happening. And then in many ways, it feels like a lifetime ago.

So really the connection came from my store. ROBOTlove opened in 2004 next to SooVAC&rsquo;s original location on Lyndale at 27th. Emma had been a customer and was showing up frequently with her then-partner Ben Olson, an amazing painter. She began talking about this website that she had called MPLSART. I loved the idea of a place to go to find events and gallery shows. I was also starting to meet the artists that she and Ben were hanging around with and I was interested in supporting them in some way. I felt like MPLSART was a natural extension of the artistic community that I was trying to build at ROBOTlove.&nbsp;

So eventually, sometime around early 2005 or something I said, I&rsquo;d like to help you make this bigger. I proposed an investment of my time and set aside a small bit of funding to help hire a developer named Seth Walker to boost the site up and make it something more. His design aesthetic was right &mdash; he had designed and built ROBOTlove&rsquo;s site, and he knew how to tackle the back-end coding. We basically sat down with him and said, what would the site be if it was souped up?

But it was always Emma&#39;s and she was the origin of it &mdash; it was her vision. I&rsquo;ve always tried to use what I have to support creative people like her, that are doing amazing things. And I loved the way that she used photos from the openings to give this energy to Minneapolis&#39;s art scene.

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<img alt="Storefront called &quot;robot love&quot; with stencil artwork of Joey Ramone in the window" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/f5caafb8-5fcd-4be2-ba25-9a539bb5736a/f5caafb8-5fcd-4be2-ba25-9a539bb5736a.full.jpg" /><img alt="Inside of a store selling skate decks, shirts, and figurines" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/e994a8d9-5a6f-4658-9a94-8f03f76e5d57/e994a8d9-5a6f-4658-9a94-8f03f76e5d57.full.jpg" />ROBOTlove, inside and out. Photos courtesy of Kristoffer Knutson.

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RW: Well, as an events website, this is something I&#39;ve always thought about: how important to the art is the party? Because they&#39;re a little bit different. Openings are kind of the worst time to see the art because there&#39;s often too many people standing in the way. What&#39;s that relationship, do you think?

KK: I think it&#39;s about building some momentum around things, or maybe rotation around things, so that there&#39;s some little spin-off that makes people think &quot;I want art,&quot; or &quot;I want to see the art.&quot; I mean, surely, I don&#39;t know what the number might be, but 80% of the people that are at the openings aren&#39;t really there to collect art. And then there&rsquo;s, and I&#39;m sure you yourself have seen that small contingent of people that are there just to eat. I also appreciated that Emma was really always very deliberate about not showing the artwork in the photos of the openings because she wanted people to go to see the art themselves.

There was definitely some thought behind it, but I think it was about making it a place you wanted to be. And then if that could in turn become supportive of the artists that were involved. That was the goal.

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<img alt="People smiling and talking at a party" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/7dee7239-b44f-4e0a-99f6-4b233e383ced/7dee7239-b44f-4e0a-99f6-4b233e383ced.full.jpg" /><img alt="Two men smile and pose at an art opening" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/117c84f1-f925-4aa6-aa1d-9e6447c4f2a6/117c84f1-f925-4aa6-aa1d-9e6447c4f2a6.full.jpg" />Top: Kristoffer Knutson and Emma Berg talk to Raul Osario in 2012. Bottom:&nbsp;Knutson with Lance Robertson,&nbsp;aka DJ Lance Rock, in 2010.

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RW: The way that you and Emma ran the site, we&rsquo;re talking about sort of the early blog life of the internet. Did you find that social media started changing how y&#39;all approached the site?

KK: I mean, we&#39;re talking 2005 to what, 2014? Something like that? There wasn&#39;t really Instagram at that time but Facebook had started to be more prevalent. Now, it&#39;s the decline of our civilization, for sure. I don&#39;t know! This maybe sounds pretentious, but I think that we were social media in some ways. You were seeing how people were out socializing. There wasn&#39;t the dialogue, there wasn&#39;t the back and forth, but I think it was like, &ldquo;Hey look, a picture of you at that event got posted.&rdquo;

So people would look out for the updates. If I remember right, we tried to post regularly every Tuesday, which was when the photo galleries were uploaded. So there were definitely people on Wednesday who were thinking , &ldquo;Oh, pictures are up. Did I make it?&rdquo; Which is a weird thing to think about.

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RW: No, that&#39;s cool. I mean, it&#39;s a very aughts kind of internet thing, I think.

KK: Yeah, there were definitely things happening elsewhere that we fit into. A key inspiration was the arts calendar <a href="https://hifructose.com/2010/09/13/10-years-of-fecal-face/" target="_blank">Fecal Face</a> in the Bay Area,<a href="https://hifructose.com/2010/09/13/10-years-of-fecal-face/"> </a>which was amazing. And there was <a href="https://www.thecobrasnake.com/" target="_blank">Cobrasnake</a>, he was a photographer in Los Angeles deep in the hipster scene. I wouldn&rsquo;t say were were trying to do what he did, party pics, but that&#39;s why people went to the site &mdash; they would go to look for listings, but they also came to see themselves.

And we used that as an opportunity to promote the artists around us who were making really great work and still do today. The idea was, while you&#39;re here, you should look at Drew Peterson. You should look at Isaac Arvold&rsquo;s work. You should see Ben Olson&rsquo;s paintings, and Eric Inkala&rsquo;s. There were fun perks to being &ldquo;media&rdquo; as well. When we were invited to the press preview the first year of the Haunted Basement at Soap Factory we were like yeah, we&#39;ll promote that! Sure. Let&#39;s go! I think maybe it was a stretch, but it&#39;s kind of art related, right?

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<img alt="MPLSART.COM 2006 &quot;Relaunch Party&quot; website screenshot" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/1fa2e9f2-f84c-46f7-9b94-b885c8f757d8/1fa2e9f2-f84c-46f7-9b94-b885c8f757d8.full.jpg" />Screenshot of the 2006 MPLSART Relaunch Party event listing, after Knutson helped revamp the site&#39;s interface.

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RW: So in looking at the site now, do you recognize it as something you helped build? Do you see the work that you did reflected in it in its current form?

KK: Yeah, I do. I think that the essence is still there. I think that Katie and Blaine were really respectful and deliberate about embracing the aesthetic of it and not just trashing it and making it something completely different. And that was important to Emma when we signed the papers. We made it clear that, you&#39;ve got a year to do this, and if we don&#39;t like what you&#39;re doing, it&#39;s coming back.

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RW: Oh, no shit? I didn&#39;t realize there was a clause.

KK: Yeah, like I said, it was Emma&rsquo;s vision and we didn&rsquo;t want that to be left behind. I think that they did a great job of maintaining that and really recognizing its personality and then adding some more meat to it, right? With your input and with others. And I think the editorial side got really strong. The idea that it has become a voice for the arts and the cities &mdash; I think that&#39;s something we touched on with blog posts and visiting guest writers but I love what it&#39;s become now and that expansion of the site.

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RW: So, having had that front row seat, do you have a diagnosis of the art scene in Minneapolis &mdash; how it&#39;s grown and changed? It&#39;s a very open-ended question, but how are things different than they were 20 years ago? What do you think is successful? What do you think we should work on as a community?

KK: I think that one of the things that I&#39;ve really come to recognize, having been born and raised here in Minneapolis &mdash; and I&#39;m sure this is true of other cities &mdash; is the cyclical nature of it all. I don&#39;t think when we were running MPLSART I said, oh, this is novel. I mean, maybe the form that it took; it was maybe something interesting because of the times and the technologies available to us and things like that. But I knew that there had been a warehouse scene. I knew that there had been a scene in the nineties. I was aware that what was happening at that time was by no means the end all. And I also knew that there was going to be a new wave after us. And I think that what&#39;s encouraging is that we&#39;re definitely in that time now, 20 years later, with really solid, strong gallery representations, whether that&#39;s Hair &amp; Nails or Night Club or even David Petersen who&#39;s been here all along. I&rsquo;m happy that we were able to play our part in this timeline.&nbsp;

I think with social media, it&#39;s different the way we experience events now. I mean, clearly I&#39;m 20 years older now too &mdash; I&#39;m not as keen to be the last one at an opening anymore. But certainly there&rsquo;s still people going to galleries and there are still shows. I love that the galleries are able to be smarter about how they sell the work and market the work through social media. And the reach that has. I mean, just this week when I saw <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DOV6WGFgOYh/" target="_blank">Jerry Saltz</a> posting about Lauren dela Roche and Tia Keobounpheng, I was like, oh shit. That&rsquo;s great.&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s a different scene than it was 20 years ago. There was a sense of if we do really cool shit, someone&#39;s going to see it. But now I think that we know that even if you&#39;re doing cool shit, you have to get it out there somehow.

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RW: So you coming to the party on the 27th?

KK: Yeah, I&rsquo;m coming to the party on the 27th! I&#39;ll be there for sure, dude. It&#39;s going to be a blast.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="Man at diner with silver letter K on his forehead" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/c8ebe3b7-8c8e-4449-899a-06e84ddb468d/c8ebe3b7-8c8e-4449-899a-06e84ddb468d.full.jpg" /> 
Photo by Christian Erickson, circa 2009.

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This Q&amp;A is part of series of articles&nbsp;about the fine folks that have helped make MPLSART what it is over the last two decades.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/mplsart-20th-anniversary-celebration" target="_blank">Celebrate our 20th anniversary with us September 27th, 2025, at Southside Preservation Society.</a>&nbsp;We look forward to seeing your lovely faces at the party.&nbsp;

The site's co-runner from '06 to '14 looks back on listing art shows, hosting events, and posting the party pics every Tuesday for almost ten years

Looking Back on 20 Years of MPLSART: Kristoffer Knutson on Being the Original Social Media

Emma Berg and artist Bill Beekman. All images courtesy Emma Berg.

 
Emma Berg is a fashion designer, original founder of MPLSART, and a former curator in the Minneapolis arts scene. Named one of&nbsp;Vita.mn&rsquo;s most influential people in 2012, she has shown her designs at Mpls/St. Paul Fashion Week and the Walker Art Center. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, she blends her creative roots with leadership in tech strategy and portfolio management at J.Crew.

We talked to her about the earliest days and phase&nbsp;of MPLSART, from launch to sale, and caught up on where she is now. 
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Katie Dohman: Take us back to when MPLSART was just an idea: What was the scene like? 
 
Emma Berg: When I started MPLSART, my partner at the time [painter Ben Olson] and I weren&rsquo;t seeing the coverage of the galleries and artists we thought were exciting. Whether our opinion was wrong or right, we felt the local coverage was stale and felt a new energy was needed to expose the work of people we knew and wanted to know. Add in my excitement around the street art popping up around Minneapolis&mdash;it felt important to build something that would shine a light on a new group of artists emerging, including the work of Deuce 7, whose one-shot paintings were showing up all around&nbsp;Bde Maka Ska. Artists such as Jennifer Davis, John Grider, Eric Inkala, and Amy Rice were doing something that I wanted to highlight.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/21f2ed3a-04e0-4927-b6fc-084769e33db8/21f2ed3a-04e0-4927-b6fc-084769e33db8.full.jpg" />Artists Jennifer Davis and Keegan Wenkman&nbsp;

When Ben was first shopping around at galleries and where he could show, it was such a strange vibe. I remember going into a gallery and there didn&rsquo;t seem to be any interest in seeing his work. We were naive or whatever, but at the same time, it wasn&rsquo;t a welcoming space. We would go to shows and every time someone would ask, &ldquo;How do you know the artists?&rdquo; It was this feeling of, like, you couldn&rsquo;t be there because you just loved art. And that was the flick in my mind&ndash;that [attitude] is not it. Like, how do we even get in this art scene, if every time we go somewhere someone asks who we know? It didn&rsquo;t make any sense to me. I wanted to blow up the expectations of what that should be. I felt like, &lsquo;How do we come at this completely differently from an anti-establishment sort of way?&rsquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/7385fab6-2eb4-44fc-ac17-bd8be6f80999/7385fab6-2eb4-44fc-ac17-bd8be6f80999.full.jpg" />Artist Ben Olson

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KD: What skills or interests did you have to launch a website?

EB:&nbsp;I had been working at Target in HR/Technology. They paid for the MCTC classes to learn HTML and JavaScript&mdash;and I learned because I wanted to make this thing. They didn&#39;t know that I&rsquo;d use it for this side project for the next 10 years. It was just in this weird space of technology and wanting to do something, to crack something open. It just kind of happened.&nbsp;&nbsp;

When I started the site, I had learned just enough to be dangerous. When the site first launched, everything was manually sized and hard-coded to make it fit just right and the focus was simple: One, a calendar with a curated selection of openings; two, a section for street art; and three, the marketing ploy, which was photos of the people on the scene, enticing them to visit the site post-weekend to check themselves out as well as everyone else who made an appearance.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/490dd6f1-2054-4585-9276-5be8fb85fdaa/490dd6f1-2054-4585-9276-5be8fb85fdaa.full.jpg" />Artist Jaime Carrera and musician Grant Hart

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KD: What was your mindset at the time?&nbsp;

EB: Everything felt possible. The energy felt like it would carry it all.&nbsp;

There was BRLSQ screenprinting and the Warehouse District was actually a Warehouse District, with these big warehouse parties. The other piece to the scene at the time is that you saw artists, musicians, and designers coming together and hanging out. Which is unique in having those large events that can get pulled off, like [fashion designer] Anna Lee&rsquo;s Voltage: Fashion Amplified.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0339ccd9-8403-4b75-b9aa-5ac679b4db36/0339ccd9-8403-4b75-b9aa-5ac679b4db36.full.jpg" />Anna Lee, founder of Voltage: Fashion Amplified and MNFashion with friend

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KD: Tell us about your partnership with Kristoffer Knutson. How did you work together to bring the idea to life? What did you each bring to the table?&nbsp;

EB: Kristoffer approached me about partnering on MPLSART a bit after its initial launch. To be honest, I was hesitant. I liked the freedom I had with running it on my own, but it wasn&rsquo;t sustainable with how I had built it, and he was offering to invest in a rebuild that would ensure it could continue. He had ROBOTlove [on Lyndale] at the time, which was an enviable design store with a great aesthetic, and he had a great connection to the art scene. We brought in Seth Walker to help with the redesign and relaunched with a slick site in July of 2006 with a blowout party at Kingman Studios.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/2db12c0e-55cb-44c8-839c-c4997e98528a/2db12c0e-55cb-44c8-839c-c4997e98528a.full.jpg" /> 
Flyer for 2006 re-launch party

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KD: You had a full-time job, you did fashion and art, you were on the scene. Was your plan to make MPLSART a business? 
 
EB: I always assumed that it would be this underlying pet project. It was time spent out on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays on openings and then the updates. It wasn&rsquo;t overwhelming, and of course, then I didn&rsquo;t have a kid, and I had endless energy. It never made sense to me for it to be something that made money. I don&rsquo;t know why; it just never was.&nbsp;

After Kristoffer and I partnered there were conversations around ads, but It just didn&rsquo;t resonate with me. It was started to be something there for people that got it and I didn&rsquo;t want to change that trust. It always felt this was going to be this labor of love.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/f58bebdc-f89e-4a36-847c-732ecae40fdb/f58bebdc-f89e-4a36-847c-732ecae40fdb.full.jpg" />Writer Joan Erakit&nbsp;with friend

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KD: What was your &quot;why&quot; behind the site, beyond your initial experiences on the scene?&nbsp;

EB: I remember the first time we listed an opening in an apartment. We actually went to the apartment, there were like 21-year-old kids living there, and they had solid art and had done their work to get it up. It felt important to showcase art that wasn&#39;t ordained.&nbsp;

I don&rsquo;t know that it changed the dynamic beyond having this be a scene. I don&rsquo;t think it sold anything more for struggling artists. It didn&rsquo;t necessarily create the energy in a &ldquo;I need to buy that piece&rdquo; way. But, in some cases, it played an early hand&nbsp;in some artists&rsquo; careers to keep going and making great things. It&rsquo;s like chicken or egg kind of thing.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/1d37aef4-b311-4545-9622-b30d1b6b0122/1d37aef4-b311-4545-9622-b30d1b6b0122.full.jpg" />Gallerist&nbsp;and Founder of Public Functionary, Tricia Heuring

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KD: What was the reception like to MPLSART and your work on it? 
 
EB: There was a sense of curiosity about it and most people I talked with about it in its early years loved the vibe, though I know there was the contingency that found it cringe.&nbsp;

In 2006 when we relaunched the site, people understood what it was. but when I first launched, I made business cards with a logo I created in Excel. I was at events, handing them out, and when I would ask people for their pictures, they freaked out. It [The concept of MPLSART] felt very foreign to everybody, and there wasn&rsquo;t any sense of what it was. It was like, &#39;What are you doing?&#39;

I was almost a voyeur. I was putting in my time.&nbsp;

But it turned really quickly. It probably took half a year to nine months and started to spread and people were hearing about it.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/9e8d700c-6036-4831-bf09-fbd748297e46/9e8d700c-6036-4831-bf09-fbd748297e46.full.jpg" />

Artist and founder of Rogue Buddha, Nick Harper, with friend at Outsiders and Others Gallery

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KD: What were some of your favorite memories or most consequential things you worked on?&nbsp;

EB: The Color of the Sun Through the Pink of My Eyelids was a pop-up exhibit that was installed across from the Guthrie Theater, with all the work hung being pink. It was early spring, and being that close to the river the warmth of the pink art from five artists was welcoming.&nbsp;

Love&rsquo;s Laborers: We presold American Apparel garments and those garments were then &lsquo;sent down an assembly line of artists and designers&rsquo; during a live event. Each creative would add their own touch to the piece, culminating into a unique wearable art piece. Once finished, the buyer was given the opportunity for an onsite photo shoot by duo Danica Andler and Joseph Kramm &hellip; with those photos later posted to the event&rsquo;s recap, of course.&nbsp;

The Relaunch Party: Centered around the painting of 40&rsquo;s by a handful of artists, where most of the artists came to my home in LynLake to paint. We posted the pics, and opened up tickets&mdash;however, the twist was that the 40s were sold in brown bags, so a buyer had no idea which bottle they were going to get.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/f9143053-ae4b-4c75-a84f-cf1dff9d4332/f9143053-ae4b-4c75-a84f-cf1dff9d4332.full.jpg" />Handful of 40s sold during our relaunch party in 2006

Deuce 7 @ SooVac: Working with Deuce 7 for the SooVac exhibit in 2007 was incredible. Getting to see up close how he was creating, and then walking him through how the pieces would relate to each other and the varied sizes we&rsquo;d ideally want to present to help him with sales. It was the balance between protecting an artist&rsquo;s vision and ensuring they are presenting work that will help fund their next adventure.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/d96ebc28-39a0-4adc-9f11-f9e7477e96b5/d96ebc28-39a0-4adc-9f11-f9e7477e96b5.full.jpg" />Kristoffer Knutson and&nbsp;original founder of SooVac, Suzy Greenberg

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KD: I remember you were curating art for Haus Salon in its early opening days&mdash;was that a MPLSART initiative?&nbsp;

EB: Curating at Haus Salon and Fox Tax, though not directly connected with MPLSART, was definitely an outpost and allowed me to stay inspired in the art scene and continue various approaches to sell art.&nbsp;&nbsp;

HotTea was set on creating this massive installation at Haus Salon, and hanging it was wildly complicated. It was an absurd conquest, and wonderfully inspiring. I&rsquo;m so happy he came in big and that we were able to support his vision.

 
KD: What do you wish had gone differently or that you had done differently?&nbsp;

EB: In hindsight, we didn&rsquo;t spend that extra effort&mdash;just my own naivete, really&mdash;on inclusivity. It&rsquo;s something I see in hindsight: I spent time building up a scene in which everybody I knew felt included, but we didn&rsquo;t go further than our immediate reach.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/226bf188-6edc-428e-8254-8d9b84becb9b/226bf188-6edc-428e-8254-8d9b84becb9b.full.jpg" />Deuce 7

&nbsp;

KD: Have there been any lasting rewards? 
 
EB: HotTea&nbsp;has shared many times:&nbsp;&lsquo;You and Kristoffer gave me that first show and it was a fun one. It was so cool.&rsquo; I remember being like, &#39;This is the show we&rsquo;re going to put here.&rsquo; And when I was having that conversation with everybody else, people would say &lsquo;This doesn&rsquo;t make sense, it won&rsquo;t sell,&rsquo; and I was saying &#39;That doesn&rsquo;t matter, he&rsquo;s passionate, it&rsquo;s great.&rsquo; Isaac Arvold lives half a mile from me in Brooklyn, and when he&rsquo;s introducing me to someone new he&rsquo;ll say, &lsquo;Emma kept ragging on me to work on my art.&rsquo; Now he&rsquo;s a creator. That&rsquo;s rewarding when you get to see someone and something you did allowed them to follow a bit of their dream.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/25db4d44-2612-4b1f-9354-a2911f90e87d/25db4d44-2612-4b1f-9354-a2911f90e87d.full.jpg" />Emma Berg, Was Berkley, and Kane X in BKLYN. Art in background by Clea Felien.

KD: What about following your own dreams? 

EB: I think for me New York was always the dream. Target had done these massive layoffs and I was part of those layoffs, and the day I walked into Target knowing what might be coming, I decided: If that happens, I&rsquo;m picking up and moving to New York. What I want here is still complicated and who knows how that might change&mdash;I just hit my 10-year mark. I left in 2015, when Katie Garrett and Blaine Garrett bought it. In that first five years I was having a baby, and trying to figure out New York, and I bought a home, so that&rsquo;s crazy. Now I&rsquo;m trying to get back a bit more into more art. With a five-year-old kid, I feel like I am seeing this glimpse of creativity and then of course there&rsquo;s also my full-time career.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/341f15a6-6abf-40bf-b78b-801ce9ed6e1e/341f15a6-6abf-40bf-b78b-801ce9ed6e1e.full.jpg" /> 
MPLSART&nbsp;logo

&nbsp;

KD: What&rsquo;s it like seeing MPLSART still going strong, long after you&rsquo;ve gone?&nbsp;

EB: I am so proud of them for keeping it going this long. There&rsquo;s part of me that hopes it keeps going to fill that in-between space. MPLSART was huge on the visuals for me, but I love that they&rsquo;ve got more articles driving content and I do appreciate that extra critical lens. We had put&nbsp;the feelers out there for the sale because I had been doing a lot more fashion, and so I was spending less and less time on the site. And Kristoffer was worn down on taking the majority of the work. It made sense to to sell. We sold it for a dollar&ndash;it wasn&rsquo;t meant to be this big scheme. It was more about who is going to love it and continue to carry it and make it feel like their own&mdash;treat it like family. I think they&rsquo;ve done fantastic.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

&nbsp;

This Q&amp;A is part of series of articles&nbsp;about the fine folks that have helped make MPLSART what it is over the last two decades.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/mplsart-20th-anniversary-celebration" target="_blank">Celebrate our 20th anniversary with us September 27th, 2025, at Southside Preservation Society.</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mplsartcom-20th-anniversary-party-tickets-1553439201469?aff=oddtdtcreator" target="_blank">Please RSVP</a>&nbsp;and we look forward to seeing your lovely faces at the party.&nbsp;

The fashion designer, artist, and curator gives an inside look to the heady, earliest days of MPLSART

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