Midsummer: a Summer Solstice Festival

Drawing on the popularity of Franconia’s 2021 Summer Solstice Performance Festival which was positively reviewed in MIT’s Performance Art Journal, Midsummer: a Summer Solstice Festival continues the Swedish tradition of celebrating the longest day of the year. Curated by Franconia’s outgoing Executive Director Ginger Shulick Porcella, Midsummer is a celebration of light and love, the festival will include performances throughout the late afternoon and evening by ten local performance artists, followed by a sunset observation and an intention-setting bonfire. Franconia is thrilled to capstone the event with a special late-night viewing of the new moon on the darkest night of the summer, courtesy of the Minnesota Astronomical Society who will be providing telescopes for visitors. Other traditional Midsummer activities for visitors include creating flower crowns with Franconia’s native flowers, creating solstice suncatchers, and creating a collaborative solstice altar. Center City Swine Circus food truck will be on site during the festival. 

The Minnesota Astronomical Society instructs the public about astronomy through observational and informational platforms, lectures, forums, discussion groups, classes, publications, and other celestial observation events. They will be leading a night sky viewing for this event from 10pm-midnight.

A full program and event schedule will be available at www.franconia.org

This event is free and open to the public; parking is $10/vehicle.

ARTISTS
Kristin Bauer is a multimedia artist and writer with a background in psychology, born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, currently residing in Arizona. Her work examines linguistics and poetics, rhythm and movement, emphasizing forms of visual and written communication. Bauer has exhibited widely in galleries and museums, including the Arizona Biennial at Tucson Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum and Mesa Arts Center, and has participated in group exhibitions across the US and Mexico. Her work was included in the Borderland Biennial of 2015, exhibiting in both the El Paso Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte Ciudad Juarez. Bauer was a recipient of an Artist Grant from Phoenix Art Museum’s Contemporary Forum in 2012, where she exhibited her work the following year. She has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her work has been in Scope NYC, Dallas Contemporary, ArtNY Fair, Scope Miami, ArtSouthampton and Aqua Art Fair with Aureus Contemporary. Her work Counter (Balance) is currently on display at Franconia Sculpture Park.

Brian Black and Ryan Bulis have been working collaboratively in Southern California since 2004. This artist team appropriates iconic activities and challenges preconceptions of masculinity, athleticism and identity. Their assisted sculptures are exaggerated archetypes taken from the workplace, sports and pedestrian life. By adjusting the familiar and pushing the level of absurdity in their art making, they invite the audience to reconsider the sanctity and boundaries of the art institution. Their collective work allows their independent objectives and concerns to converge into what has simply become known as Brian & Ryan. Brian & Ryan are current Mid-Career Fellows at Franconia Sculpture Park. 

Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, originally from Detroit, Michigan. She has premiered over 40 original solo and collaborative performance works around the world. Recent works include “…hewn & forged….” at the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival (2016); “_______ is the thing with feathers” at “Call & Response: Experiments in Joy” (2014); “Say My Name” (an action for 270 abducted Nigerian girls)” (2014); and “Fugue (Da, Montréal),” at the Hemispheric Institute Encuentro (2014). Her writing has appeared in Small Axe, Obsidian, Asterix, Rain Taxi, and other publications. Her performance memoir, Swallow the Fish was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms Press in 2017 and her second book Experiments in Joy was released in 2019. 

Suzanne Lindgren makes potions and ‘zines and will be leading a midsummer herbs workshop. Participants can make herbal oils using local St. John’s wort, yarrow and mugwort. Visitors can leave with their own vials and instructions for how to activate these plants during the summer months. 

Sean Noyce was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the globe at venues such as Scope Art Show, Miami and New York; Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm; SPRING/BREAK Art Show, LA; Galerie Pompom, Sydney, Australia; (e)merge Art Fair, Washington, D.C.; Texas Contemporary, Houston; QiPO, Mexico, City; The San Diego Art Institute; Temple University, Rome; Torrance Art Museum; University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; Oxnard College; and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island. Noyce’s work has been featured in The Washington Post; Artforum; Fabrik Magazine; FULL BLEDE; New York Daily News; Playboy; Voyage LA; Only In Hollywood; and Flavorpill. Sean is a current Mid-Career Fellow at Franconia Sculpture Park.

Wang Ping was born in Shanghai, China and came to the USA in 1985. A poet, writer, photographer, installation artist, and founder / director of Kinship of Rivers project; her multimedia exhibitions include “Kinship of Rivers: We Are Water,” “Behind the Gate: After the Flood of the Three Gorges,” and hundreds of installation exhibitions at schools, colleges, galleries, museums, lock and dams, and river confluences worldwide, including interactive installations at Mount Everest and Kilimanjaro. She has authored 15 award winning books of poetry, prose and translations. Her awards include the Minnesota Book Award, Eugene Kagen and Asian American Studies awards. She is Professor Emerita of English at Macalester College. She is recipient of NEA, Bush Artist Fellowship for poetry, McKnight Fellowship and Lannan Foundation Residency, Vermont Studio Art and others. She received the Distinct Immigrant Award in 2014, Venezuela International Poet of Honor in 2015, and is the National Beat Poetry Foundation’s Minnesota Beat Poet Laureate 2021-2023. 

Lacey Prpic-Hedtke is a photographer, astrologer, and public artist in Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis. Her work is on the themes of history of place, protection, magic, and remembrance. Her work explores and is shown in unregulated and public spaces. In 2017 she opened The Future--a project and residency space that acts as a community center for artists, healers, and witches. 

Angela Tillges is a civic project manager, artist, and educator skilled at working with public institutions and community organizations on projects of social, artistic, and ecological importance. She leads projects that provide people the opportunity to make personal, lasting connections with public and natural spaces. She is the Great River Passage Fellow for the City of Saint Paul. Formerly, she served as Senior Program Specialist for Chicago Park's Culture and Nature Unit and spent 9 years as the Associate Artistic Director for Chicago’s Redmoon Theatre, a company that created free public spectacles providing opportunities for engagement, community building, and recognition of the possibility for change. She holds an M.Ed. from Harvard University with a focus in Arts and Education.

Emma Wood is a nonbinary, Swedish-American, arts facilitator, interdisciplinary artist and emerging curator based in Mni Sota Makoce/ Minnesota on Dakhóta Land. They work with intersections of mycelium and glass. Bridging between science and art to investigate their personal relationship with grief. Their work is on a transition exploring the duality of ephemeral and archival. Wood pursues citizen science in mycology (specifical mycoremediation). Wood is currently exploring temporary and biodegradable processes that specifically benefit the environment through mycoremediation. Utilizing fungi as an artistic medium to develop projects with a multidisciplinary approach, Wood’s work investigates their identity, Swedish heritage, environmentalism, and grief. Their work is inspired by personal experiences as well as external influences of temporary existence, the process of decomposition, and life cycles. Emma most recently was a 2021 Emerging Artist-in-Residence at Franconia Sculpture Park.

Image: Kristin Bauer, Reinventing the Wheel, 2021