Banner image: Nick Legeros&#39; Blue Ribbon Bronze studio. All photos by Cory Eull.

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I met Nick Legeros a couple years back while on a walk in Northeast Minneapolis. I was loitering around his studio&rsquo;s backyard, intrigued by a giant, Frankensteinian head seen from a distance. He saw me lingering by, and I was invited in without hesitation, offered coffee, and naturally given a tour.

Since that first encounter, there&rsquo;s been an inclination to revisit. There is a charm to the <a href="https://nemaa.org/partners/blue-ribbon-bronze-studio-gallery-foundry-nicholas-legeros-inc/" target="_blank">Blue Ribbon Bronze</a> building and location, like it&rsquo;s been stuck in time since before Northeast&rsquo;s high-rise apartments and restaurants took root in the area. With the foundry mere blocks from the historic Grain Belt brewing complex and an out-of-service railroad line just yards away, there&rsquo;s an industrial sense to its whereabouts. Bronze casting itself being a thousands-year-old process, there is a timelessness inherent to the craft, too. Something about Legeros&rsquo; demeanor and practice remind me of trailing behind my dad as he moved swiftly from task to task in his woodshop, or watching as my partner goes from filing wheel spokes into nails to deconstructing a harmonica in a very ADHD-influenced, yet effective fashion.

Legeros bought his workshop in 2003. With the building&rsquo;s commercial overlay, he knew he&rsquo;d be able to make as much noise as needed without complaints. He&rsquo;d end up leveling out the floor and altering the space to accommodate a foundry. Legeros recalls when artists were pushed out of the North Loop in the 1980s and &#39;90s, and the resulting surge of studio spaces being rented for cheap in the vacant mills and warehouses of the Northeast neighborhood &mdash; thus birthing the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District.

&ldquo;This is a very unique situation,&rdquo;&nbsp;Legeros said. &ldquo;If all the florists in Minneapolis were within a one mile square, and there were thousands of them, you wouldn&rsquo;t think to go anywhere else for flowers. You&rsquo;d have all of the variety, you&rsquo;d have the best pricing, you&rsquo;d have everything. And so, I still think there are a lot of artist zones across the country, and a lot of cities using them for development. Ours developed pretty well already, because as soon as artists move in, you get more restaurants, more galleries, you get what&#39;s happened to Northeast. It becomes kind of tony; everyone wants to live here.&rdquo;

As I toured his studio again, this time with a voice memo rolling on my phone, and this time accepting the coffee that was offered along with a packaged biscotti, Nick welcomed me into his office. As I sat on the armchair getting situated, Nick paused before pulling my espresso shot, saying he had to check the temperature of some wax he was melting in back.

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<img alt="Dirty pot on a black stovetop." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/6d808838-01fb-4326-a68f-9fcd5362a3e4/6d808838-01fb-4326-a68f-9fcd5362a3e4.full.jpg" /><img alt="Man in blue gloves pouring wax from a dirty pot into a small white mold." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/cfc5ebd8-7718-4c7e-8190-e0eb16e29ca4/cfc5ebd8-7718-4c7e-8190-e0eb16e29ca4.full.jpg" />Top: A pot of wax in Legeros&#39; studio coming to temperature. Bottom: The artist pours the melted wax into a mold.

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Legeros moved from thing to thing in the studio, assessing the way he would mount a stainless steel cupola onto the tin roof of the education building at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. And how he would then position a hammered copper rooster and wind vane with a threaded rod atop the cupola, which has to be perfectly balanced in order to work properly, the whole instrument spinning on a single bearing. Legeros has never made a weathervane before, so much of his process has been one of trial-and-error and hands-on research.

&ldquo;There&rsquo;s tremendous history to this stuff, and there&rsquo;s plenty online you can learn about&rdquo;, said Legeros.

Initially figuring a rooster cast in bronze would be too heavy to catch wind, he made a one-sided version. Modeling it in clay, making a mold of it in plaster, casting it in wax and eventually in bronze, he then took copper and hammered it into the bronze to transfer the shape, finally seaming together two pieces like this. Before deciding to use hammered copper, Legeros called up an illustrious weathervane maker on the East Coast, to learn more about the copper repouss&eacute; technique the maker specializes in, where the material is heated, pushed forward from the back, and cooled multiple times over. Eventually the copper is chased, or embossed, with detail from the front.&nbsp;

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<img alt="Rooster weathervane in an art studio." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0d3b799d-f452-435e-985a-1d3a15dab86e/0d3b799d-f452-435e-985a-1d3a15dab86e.full.jpg" />

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Welding and adjusting the part that would clamp the cupola to the roof, trying to get the fit just right, Nick intermittently took the temperature of the wax that was heating in sauce pans atop a gas stove. Once the wax was to temperature, he began slowly pouring it into a flexible silicone mold of a figure, made from an original wax model. Two or three layers of casting wax were poured into the silicone, which was held secure by a plaster mother mold.

At this point, the cast&nbsp;wax mold is immersed in an &ldquo;investment material&rdquo; of plaster, brick dust, and silica flour before loaded into a kiln. &ldquo;The casting ends up looking kind of rough, like sand, because you have to encase it in a fireproof material that will withstand the heat of the bronze and the burnout process&rdquo; The molds get baked at 1200 degrees for 24 hours, &ldquo;to get not only the wax out but all the chemical moisture out, otherwise the bronze going into the mold will explode from the rapid connection to the moisture.&rdquo; There ends up being a network of vents and arteries, called sprues, attaching the cast to a cup. This gets the bronze flowing in and the air out. Within this sculpture process, there is a dance of filling positive then negative space. A back and forth, a straying from and arriving at an authentic form.

&ldquo;A lot of people don&#39;t get into this because it&#39;s too much process, it&#39;s not immediate. And they don&#39;t want to deal with molds or wax or anything other than modeling clay. And you can do that, you can go to a foundry, and they&#39;ll take it and transfer it to bronze. It costs an awful lot to do that, and you don&#39;t necessarily get back what you gave to them. Because they&#39;re gonna try to reproduce it as best they can, but it&#39;s not like an artist that gets to refine things and make it better as you go along. And there are a lot of steps, so that&rsquo;s one of the reasons why I do it, is I can keep making it better. So what I finish with is way better than what I started with.&rdquo;&nbsp;

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<img alt="Man stands on a table adjusting a sculpture of a metal house." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/ba0b50e9-53ab-4269-862c-18a33bca0fee/ba0b50e9-53ab-4269-862c-18a33bca0fee.full.jpg" />The artist at work in his shop.

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There were multiple moments where Legeros was either talking to me or himself &mdash; I didn&rsquo;t bother to ask who &mdash; as he narrated what he was looking for or what puzzle he was trying to solve. Rummaging through a tool cabinet while mumbling &mdash; there&rsquo;s something comforting about being around someone who&rsquo;s keeping busy. At one point Legeros turned to me and said, &ldquo;Maybe this isn&rsquo;t what you had in mind today,&rdquo; gesturing to the steps he had traced in the studio at least 10 times by then. He didn&rsquo;t know, but it&rsquo;s exactly what I had in mind.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all problem solving&hellip; A&nbsp;job like this is 90% engineering&rdquo;, said Legeros. He pushes a lot of limits however, even with the systems-based approach. Creativity filters in because of the knowledge and experience acquired working with different materials. That flexibility comes from really knowing what the material is going to do. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it fun?&rdquo; Legeros&nbsp;asked.&nbsp;&ldquo;All the stuff you don&rsquo;t know until you know?&rdquo;

Much of Legeros&rsquo; work consists of memorial pieces, some honoring people he knew. &ldquo;I get asked to do a lot of memorial stuff, and it always adds a different layer to what you do, because you&rsquo;re not just making a buck, right? You&rsquo;re kind of immortalizing somebody in a way, and you&#39;re helping people with their grief. It can be personal to you, like this is,&rdquo; Legeros says as he hands me a golf ball marker off his desk, the face of a recently passed friend appearing when I flip the coin over in my hand. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nice to be a part of your world around you, and to have tangible things that connect other people, and that provides a wonderful dimension to just going to work at casting stuff.&rdquo;

&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you become known as an artist without interacting with other people&hellip; I ended up figuring that out when I was 55. It took me a long time to figure out why I&rsquo;d been able to have a career when so many artists did not. It&#39;s just networking&hellip;&rdquo;

That&#39;s why Art-A-Whirl is a success, Legeros notes, because it forces artists&rsquo; doors open and the people stream in. Even if artists would prefer to hermit in their studios, many have come to depend on the annual open studio tour economically. Legeros&rsquo; foundry is unique from most studio buildings in Northeast, but it still operates within the buzz of Art-A-Whirl, because for him it&rsquo;s about the in-person interactions. His doors will be open, and he might just invite you in for a coffee, give your dog a treat, and let you linger while he breaks open a plaster mold or cuts sprues off a freshly cast&nbsp;bronze.◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="Smiling man sitting at a desk." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/f4b236a0-7f85-46e6-ae3e-a08aa8f34504/f4b236a0-7f85-46e6-ae3e-a08aa8f34504.full.jpg" />Nick Legeros.

Nick Legeros&#39; <a href="https://nemaa.org/partners/blue-ribbon-bronze-studio-gallery-foundry-nicholas-legeros-inc/" target="_blank">Blue Ribbon Bronze</a> studio is located at&nbsp;84 14th Ave NE. You can find Legeros&#39; works in many spots around the Twin Cities, including the Goldy the Gopher statue outside Coffman Memorial Union at the University of Minnesota. Follow the artist on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nikosculpture/" target="_blank">@nikosculpture</a>.

The Northeast-based sculptor invites us in to talk about process — both material and mental — around his large-scale bronzes

In Studio with Nick Legeros

Photos of Greetings From courtesy Diana Albrecht.

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An often-overlooked part of the landscape: signs.

Hand-painted on brick, flashing neon. Some are relics, pointing to businesses no longer there. But the most memorable signs speak to something greater than themselves, according to artist Kelsi Sharp.

Sharp is a professional sign maker and owner of Sharp Signs. In a new show at Augsburg University, she documents and shares some of her favorites from across the Twin Cities and Minnesota.

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<h2>Touring Minnesota through signs</h2>

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/greetings-from" target="_blank">Greetings From</a> is formatted, in part, like a tour. There are two road trips &mdash; a trip along the North Shore, and a trip through the Saint Croix River Valley. There&rsquo;s also a second gallery dedicated to the Twin Cities.

Each gallery includes Sharp&#39;s photos of signs in their natural habitat. Most are attached to a business. Some are &ldquo;ghost signs,&rdquo; advertising things that are no longer there. For the most part, Sharp didn&rsquo;t include people or cars in her photos, just the built environment.

The show features perennial-favorite landmarks, such as&nbsp;Betty&rsquo;s Pies and Dusty&rsquo;s Bar. It also includes sketches of signs, painted by Sharp on the walls.

Each road trip is accompanied by a handwritten note from Sharp. One details her route for future travelers; another includes honorable mentions for visitors interested in a self-designed scavenger hunt.

These travelogues provide a fascinating glimpse into Minnesota through the eyes of a professional sign maker. Sharp had only recently moved to Minnesota when Jenny Wheatley, gallery director at Augsburg, approached her about doing a sign-centered show.

&ldquo;I said yes without knowing what it was going to be,&rdquo; recalls Sharp. &ldquo;It became my exploration as a sign maker of these different regions.&rdquo;

The materials and landscape were a change from where she lived previously in New Mexico. Growing up along Route 66, metal signs were omnipresent.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t do hand-painted signs until I came to Minnesota,&rdquo; she recalls. &ldquo;I became aware of the world of hand-painted signs when I moved here. That&rsquo;s what clients were used to, and that&rsquo;s what they were asking for. Now that I&rsquo;m a part of it, I see that it&rsquo;s very Midwestern.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/b562a91c-357d-4ef7-885c-24f3d0350b75/b562a91c-357d-4ef7-885c-24f3d0350b75.full.jpg" />

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Sign styles or hallmarks even vary slightly by regions within Minnesota. In the Saint Croix Valley, Sharp noticed a bevy of hand-painted signs. In the metro, she noticed gold leaf.

Through the show, visitors see Sharp learning about and documenting local signs. It&rsquo;s also been set up to allow both Sharp and visitors to learn and experiment with the sign-making process.

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<h2>Archive, installation, and teaching experience</h2>

The show is part archive, part sketch, part installation. It&rsquo;s a teaching exhibition and has been a learning experience for all involved, say Sharp and Wheatley.

Visitors get a glimpse into the process and often express a new appreciation for signs that they see in the wild. Wheatley learned about the craft through working with Sharp, and Sharp was able to experiment in the context of a gallery show.

&ldquo;My professional sign projects have to be executed perfectly,&rdquo; says Sharp. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t get to experiment with things where I can&rsquo;t guarantee an excellent outcome. In the show, I was really interested in trying new things.&rdquo;

The show spans three galleries at Augsburg. The Gage Gallery, devoted to the Twin Cities, has the name of the show in gilt lettering on its windows, which was done using&nbsp;imitation gold leaf, a new technique for Sharp. At the opposite end of the Gage Gallery, there&rsquo;s a re-creation of the hand-painted Viking Bar sign from just down the road. Sharp painted it on brick, then installed the panels together on the gallery wall.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/1cb34257-1491-45ac-bb29-47890aa0ee9c/1cb34257-1491-45ac-bb29-47890aa0ee9c.full.jpg" />

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Alongside the photos are Sharp&#39;s hand-painted sketches of other favorite signs. The only example of her professional sign work included is a sketch of the Marty&rsquo;s Deli sign &mdash; meandering cursive on the restaurant&rsquo;s wall of windows.

Sharp and Wheatley also wanted to offer teaching experiences for students and the public. As part of the opening reception, they collaborated to paint an almost 50-foot sign on the wall of the 720 Gallery at Augsburg, which is also used as a community and event space.

&ldquo;We had more than 50 people come and paint a beveled sign together and do wheat-pasting collage on the sign,&rdquo; says Wheatley. &ldquo;Kelsi had it all mapped out and made the process very approachable. She walked us through the sign-painting process and people got to try it on.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/1d4b11f6-6d66-41d7-a7bd-1b60320f8dc0/1d4b11f6-6d66-41d7-a7bd-1b60320f8dc0.full.jpg" />

Trying out a part of the process behind sign making gave participants a more tactile glimpse into the craft.

&ldquo;It makes it come to life,&rdquo; says Wheatley. &ldquo;This is something that is a practice. It&rsquo;s a skill and a trade.&rdquo;

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<h2>Community ownership</h2>

What do signs mean? Sharp says they give people a sense of ownership in their communities.

A sign is a landmark, or at least an accompaniment to a landmark. It&rsquo;s instantly recognizable. It&rsquo;s semi-permanent. It&rsquo;s something to expect, and most likely, it will meet expectations. It will be there. It signals familiarity and stability.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Sharp is enamored of the way signs are described in a City of Minneapolis ordinance.

&ldquo;The ordinance opens with what signs are supposed to accomplish,&rdquo; says Sharp. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re supposed to improve the flow of traffic, but also to increase safety in other ways. Signs communicate that people care about a neighborhood and are investing in it.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/5b59480a-eed1-4ffe-8879-9c3fc25b296e/5b59480a-eed1-4ffe-8879-9c3fc25b296e.full.jpg" />

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Especially in the context of the physical world, signs go beyond marketing. For Sharp, they help her feel firmly rooted in her neighborhood. As a renter, she says it&rsquo;s one of a few small ways in which she gets to take ownership.

Her goal for the show is not only for people to develop a new appreciation for signs, but for them to think more deeply about why these signs mean so much to them and to the community.

&ldquo;I want them to gain that permission and understanding of why it&rsquo;s so important for us to relate to signs in the way that we do,&rdquo; says Sharp. &ldquo;Not only to look at signs differently, but to use that to ground you in a place and take ownership of that place.&rdquo;&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="Smiling woman in hat and overalls paints a red and white sign on a brick wall." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/5f4f729c-82b6-4645-8ac1-1f51b8757a80/5f4f729c-82b6-4645-8ac1-1f51b8757a80.full.jpg" />Kelsi Sharp preparing the show. Photo courtesy of Jenny Wheatley.

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Greetings From is on view through June 30, Mondays through Thursdays, 10 AM -&nbsp;4 PM at&nbsp;<a href="http://galleries.augsburg.edu/greetings-from-by-kelsi-sharp/">Augsburg University</a>. To see more of Sharp&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://sharpsigns.com/" target="_blank">her website </a>or&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/sharpsignco/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>.&nbsp;

Sign maker Kelsi Sharp archives, recreates, and teaches about some of Minnesota’s most iconic signs in a new show at Augsburg University

Greetings From: Exploring, Learning, and Grounding Through Signs

Looking for more?&nbsp;The Summer Art Fest Guide will be updated regularly throughout the summer. Check back often for new events. Also, be sure to check out the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/calendar/upcoming">upcoming exhibition calendar</a>. 
 
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