In Our Minds

The M and Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts are excited to present In Our Minds, an exhibition celebrating art making as a form of research, improvisation, and play. In Our Minds features recent works by Beatrix*Jar, Bill Crane, Kramer Hagenbarth, HML, Mary Johnson, Ashlea Karkula, Don Porcella, Mark Schoening, Andrew Seymour, Briana Shelstad, Dietrich Sieling, and Victor Van—artists who revel in the process of creation as an opportunity to test ideas and see how they will play out in material form.   

Trusting their intuition to make material and aesthetic decisions as they go, these artists transform and enliven everyday materials and themes into prompts for curiosity, enjoyment, and an occasional bit of humor. In Kramer Hagenbarth’s hands, functional ceramics solidify into monster mouths. HML sews together humble scraps of fabric to create a one-of-a-kind muscle suit. In Mary Johnson’s Nightingale Rug, an assemblage of squeaky dog toys forms a vibrant, playful abstraction. Don Porcella uses humble pipe cleaners to create whimsical, immersive landscapes. Andrew Seymour’s brightly colored parades of circular forms exude the warm, sunny, invincible spirit of summer.   

Balms for anxious and uncertain times, the artworks represent the self-trust and resourcefulness of their makers, along with their openness to different artistic outcomes and to having fun along the way. In Our Minds extends viewers an invitation to engage in multisensory play from the sidewalks and skyways of downtown St. Paul. These are serious reflections on the human condition, to be sure, but they also ask if art needs to be “serious” to be important. 

In Our Minds features artists with and without disabilities, from inside and outside the Interact studio community. Taking cues from Interact, In Our Minds seeks to advance frameworks for understanding creativity that move away from myths of independence towards recognition and celebration of interdependence.  

FEATURED ARTISTS
Beatrix*Jar, Bill Crane, Kramer Hagenbarth, HML, Mary Johnson, Ashlea Karkula, Don Porcella, Mark Schoening, Andrew Seymour, Briana Shelstad, Dietrich Sieling, and Victor Van

ACCESS INFORMATION
The M’s gallery spaces are currently closed to the public. In Our Minds is installed in the windows on Robert Street and 4th Street, as well as the M’s Ecolab Skyway entrance. Visitors can access the skyway via automated doors that lead to elevators at 350 Robert Street and at the Pioneer building lobby entrance on Robert Street. Some of the sidewalk surfaces around the viewing windows are uneven. The window installations are on view to the public 24/7. Admission is free, everyone is welcome, and a map is available adjacent to the windows north of the 350 Robert Street entrance. Because the M’s gallery spaces are closed, there are no publicly accessible bathrooms.  

Image: Ashlea Karkula, Shark Bite, 2018, acrylic on canvas, image courtesy of the artist