Open Studios Day of Art, Performance and Poetry

Julie Caffey and Linda Schumacher showcase art, performance and poetry during their annual Artistwives Collective Open Studios event on Sept. 12 from noon-6 p.m. The couple, who has lived in Columbia Heights for five years, will showcase Caffey’s colorful and textured fiber arts and textile pieces and Schumacher's site-specific assemblage TRANSMISSION. The event will also feature work of longtime Chicago-based artists, Barrie Cole and Pate Conaway, St. Paul-based writer Emily Simon and other guest artists. The event is free and open to the public. 

Caffey and Schumacher write, “After witnessing our neighbor abducted from his home by ICE in February, we wanted this year’s open studio focus to be a more interactive experience featuring a wider array of artists, writers and performers as a way to celebrate our interconnected humanity.”

Guests can expect a live reading from Cole’s debut book, Lacquer is a Thrilling Word, as well as readings by other members of her writing group, including Simon. Conaway will debut his work-in-progress, which combines different mediums, including digital image, print, collage, sewing and correspondence art (mail art).

In the early 2000s, Cole performed solo works at the Bryant Lake Bowl, as well as the now-closed Loring Playhouse and Theater Garage. Writing for City Pages, Max Sparber wrote, “Cole is relentlessly articulate. With a keen way of defying expectations, she performs her monologues with a precise diction and wild-eyed enthusiasm.” Kristen Tillotson said, “Fascinating and original, Cole pours it on so imaginatively you almost don’t notice she’s pinning her wet hair on a clothesline,” in her Star Tribune review. 

"Working with this group of artists has been a great support to my art, while inviting me into new unexplored territories," Conaway said. Conaway will demonstrate his process of printing whimsical and absurd images on fabric and sewing faux postage stamps and courier bags. 

After living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the couple moved back to Schumacher’s home state of Minnesota in 2022 to continue pursuing their artistic endeavors.

Artist Bios:

Julie Caffey: Julie Caffey is a multidisciplinary artist who works across multiple mediums including fiber arts, painting and performance. An improviser by nature, Julie combines movement, objects, color and collage to cast a light on the mundane, to tease out the wisdom in the ordinary, and to conjure the healing that comes with deep attention. Most recently, Julie has been working in fiber arts, most making quilts drawing up on 30 years of performance, play and call and response techniques to tell non-linear stories: grids that disintegrate, disrupt, reassemble and transform with some mysterious resolution. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area and graduate of Columbia College in Chicago, Julie now lives and works in Minnesota.

https://www.juliecaffey.com/

Barrie Cole: Barrie Cole is a Chicago-based playwright, poet, essayist, and instructor with more than three decades of experience.  During her 30-year career, Barrie has amassed a catalog of more than a dozen plays, hybrid works, poems, and monologues that have been performed throughout the United States. Now focusing primarily on  poetry, Barrie’s work revels in the plasticity of language. Barrie’s first book, Lacquer is a Thrilling Word is now available from Finishing Line Press. www.barriecole.com 

Pate Conaway: Pate Conaway is a graduate of Chicago's Second City Training Center and received his MFA from Columbia College, Chicago (2000). His work often explores the connection between visual art and performance, often applying the principles of one discipline to another. As with improvisation techniques for the stage, Pate looks for inspiration from commonplace objects or everyday situations. After learning to knit, Pate spent five weeks at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago knitting a pair of mittens large enough for him to sleep in.  http://artiststatement.weebly.com/

Linda Schumacher: As a self-trained photographer and mixed media artist, Linda Schumacher explores the beauty and transformative power of everyday life. Through the use of rhythmic, raw visual motifs, Schumacher constructs complex, multi-layered assemblages that disrupt conventional perception, elevating the ignored and overlooked subjects into focal points deserving of close attention and curiosity.https://www.lindaschumacher.art/

Emily Simon: Emily Simon is a writer and producer originally from Buffalo, New York. She enjoyed seasons in New York City and Seattle, spent 20+ years in Los Angeles working in television, and arrived in Minnesota with her family in 2019. 

Her clients have included ABC, HBO, FX, The Disney Channel, Time Life Entertainment, Shout! Factory, and others she frankly can’t remember. She’s written for Carol Burnett, Vicki Lawrence, Cher, Dolly Parton, Robert Klein, Don Rickles, and Tim Conway, and has had the privilege of interviewing many amazing people including Betty White twice. 

Most recently she spent 2 1/2 years in the Advancement department at Playwrights’ Center, and by the time you read this may or may not know where she’s going next. 

Emily has made herself largely un-Googleable, but you can find out more about her at: www.emilyhsimon.com