&nbsp;

My conversation with DJ and curator Yasmeenah Sideak-Jama takes place over Zoom on an early Fall evening, when she is visiting&nbsp;the home of a friend,&nbsp;meeting&nbsp;her friend&#39;s&nbsp;baby for the first time since its birth. She takes time from&nbsp;her jubilation to talk with me about her work, describing her adoration for music and community&nbsp;as though it&rsquo;s been preordained.

She grew up the middle sibling of two brothers, in upstate New York, Ohio, and intermittently Minnesota. Yasmeenah recalls through and across all these places the ever-present sounds and visuals of music programming. MTV, VH1, and BET are remembered as less of a pastime and more of a curriculum. She describes her adolescent self as animated, exuberant, often the &ldquo;weird kid.&rdquo; &ldquo;I spent a lot of time alone,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;If it wasn&rsquo;t watching, it was acting, singing, writing.&rdquo; &nbsp;

The same holds true today, though Yasmeenah​&#39;s categories of work are far from solitary in nature. It&rsquo;s become more or less apparent that Yasmeenah&rsquo;s multidisciplinary passions align with the most virtuous aims of the popular culture that once engrossed her: to fill a space, adorn it, and make those in it &mdash; as many as possible &mdash; feel held and seen. As a DJ, Yasmeenah&#39;s&nbsp;more audible works traffic the airways of the likes of KFAI and KRSM and have charged the rooms of any number of functions across the Twin Cities. &nbsp;

Yasmeenah goes on to share her proposal for a world, more specifically a community, in which Black Minnesotans can sense and grasp freedom wherever it lay. It&rsquo;s through a myriad of stories told through and about her work that Yasmeenah makes clear at the end of the day, these liberatory strivings are the goal. And while DJing has long been her praxis of choice, Yasmeenah&rsquo;s means to the ends of freedom have expanded in recent years to include photography, organizing, and curating. &nbsp;

Of course, song&rsquo;s place in Yasmeenah&nbsp;vision of the future is never far off. If anything, communicating through selected sounds has more than prepared Yasmeenah for the pensive onlookers and careful readers of the zines and billboards she&rsquo;s created. In either sphere, communication is king &mdash; &nbsp;to connect an audience with ideas both ephemeral and concrete. &nbsp;

&ldquo;Throwing a party is curation to me,&rdquo; Yasmeenah says. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it&#39;s always recognized as such&hellip; Dealing with the curation of parties you&rsquo;re also dealing with the social hierarchies that exist. The duty of the DJ is to do that research. I have to agitate and push and challenge people out of that comfort zone&hellip; With an exhibit, intellect is usually placed at the forefront. At a party, every energy is welcomed. The lovers, the awkward person standing in the corner, the friends ki-ki-ing. You have to meet [everyone] where they&rsquo;re at.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Even still, Yasmeenah notes, &ldquo;DJing could only cover so much of what I wanted to convey. [Visual] art gives me that room to be more clear about how I want people to feel. Because what&#39;s in front of you is what&#39;s in front.&rdquo; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQyMTUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Time:Capsule, a collaborative zine edited by Yasmeenah&nbsp;and Maryama Dahir&nbsp;and featuring 20 Minnesota-based artists. <a href="https://wfpc.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/time-capsule-zine" target="_blank">Available for purchase here</a>. Photo courtesy of the artist.

&nbsp;

In the summer of 2020, she expanded her practice with the creation of Time:Capsule. Though dubbed a zine, the collaborative project between Yasmeenah and Maryama Dahir fashions itself as more of an anthology &mdash; a living expression of Black voice and thought in a climate laden with anti-Black violence. Yasmeenah recalls the undertaking of Time:Capsule in terms that honor the process&#39;s tediousness as much as they do its pleasure. One of these pleasures, for Yasmeenah, was paying every artist for their contribution in a season that was full of financial strife for creatives, especially Black ones. In addition, proceeds from the sale of Time:Capsule go directly to supporting Black trans and nonbinary youth in Minnesota through a mutual aid fund created in partnership with the organization&nbsp;Women for Political Change.&nbsp;The raison d&rsquo;etre of Time:Capsule is summed up by Yasmeenah in the words of Nina Simone, from 1987: &ldquo;An artist&rsquo;s duty is to reflect the times.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Yasmeenah&rsquo;s most recent project shares many of the ambitions of Time Capsule, but on a different scale of magnitude. The newly unveiled billboard, aptly titled Authority and Visibility, sits at the entrance of the Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, Minnesota. The semi-truck-sized board features the monochromatic portraits of 20 Black Minnesotans and stands at the crossroads of Highways 8 and 95, both of which run through the state. Atop the photographs is a message layered in translucent yellows, greens, and reds. It reads, Here we are for now. How well prepared are you / To meet the changes necessary / To make the world a more human dwelling place? &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQyMTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Authority and Visibility. Photo courtesy of Franconia Sculpture Park.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIwMzEwMDAx/full.jpg" />The crowd at the unveiling celebration for Authority and Visibility. Photo courtesy of the artist.

&nbsp;

Yasmeenah describes the process of creating&nbsp;Authority and Visibility&nbsp;in conceptual and logistical terms: &ldquo;At first, I really thought about the terrible, oppressive forces on Black folks in the Twin Cities. But I also thought about the same powerful young folks who make things happen everyday. I wanted people to see these Black faces in rural Minnesota. I knew I wanted a yearbook aesthetic, so I picked people with an impact in their communities in unique ways.&rdquo; &nbsp;

The portraits that fill Yasmeenah&rsquo;s billboard are of local young authors, neighborhood caretakers, queer tech music trailblazers and organizers, documentarians, and more. At its core, the piece is radiant, bustling, and made for all&nbsp;&mdash;something like the morning music video countdowns of VH1. Though&nbsp;unlike most billboards, Authority and Visibility sits on the ground. It faces outward, towards traffic, as cars decide whether or not to keep straight or change their destinations entirely. And without a need to tower over drivers or land, Authority and Visibility is grand in its demands and dreams to anyone in passing.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1NjEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Yasmeenah Sideak-Jama&nbsp;&nbsp;at the unveiling celebration for Authority and Visibility. Photo by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/bearboiphoto/" target="_blank">@bearboiphoto</a>,&nbsp;courtesy of the artist.

To see more of the artist&#39;s work, follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/yasmeenahxo/" target="_blank">@yasmeenahxo</a>. To purchase a copy of Time:Capsule, <a href="https://wfpc.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/time-capsule-zine" target="_blank">click here</a>.

Authority and Visibility is on view now at <a href="https://www.franconia.org" target="_blank">Franconia Sculpture Park</a> in Shafer, MN. It&#39;s always well worth a visit.

The DJ, curator, zine-maker, and public artist casts her eyes - and pushes her audience - towards a future for the people

Move the Crowd: a profile of Yasmeenah Sideak-Jama 

&nbsp;

Have you ever wanted to read the Bible, or maybe just felt like you&nbsp;should? No wonder why so many of us haven&#39;t: it&#39;s long, it&#39;s old, it&#39;s difficult to follow (depending on the translation you pick), and good God in Heaven, it can be boring.&nbsp;

Well, artist Sam Robertson is here to help with that last part. Next year he will be releasing a new illustrated version of the Old Testament, available for <a href="https://1111press.com/oldtestament" target="_blank">pre-order through Minneapolis&#39;s own 11:11 Press</a>, and the 257 paintings he created to accompany the text are absolutely bonkers. Forget Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner; Robertson has painted us a horse of a very different color. His is a cast made up mostly of&nbsp;ruddy, modern-day white folks&nbsp;trapped in outlandish, kaleidoscopic landscapes&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;wearing safety vests, dust-busting eggs off the kitchen counter, and hoisting fishing trophies into the sky.&nbsp;Each illustration was&nbsp;inspired by a specific passage highlighted on the adjoining page. Sometimes the connection is clear;&nbsp;other times, not in the least. All of them, however, are delightfully strange, irreverent, and oddly enough, make you want to engage with the text, if only to understand what you&#39;re looking at. (I think dolphins may have something to do&nbsp;with circumcision, for instance, but I really can&#39;t be sure.)

We connected with Sam to get to the bottom of this weird, seven-year saga he has just completed, and to get the deets on some big plans he has to get the book out into the world. If anybody knows&nbsp;the Pope, it might be best to warn him now.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIwMjcwMDAx/full.jpg" />The death of Moses, Deuteronomy 34: 5-6.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Russ White: As texts go, you can&rsquo;t get much older, bigger, or more impactful on Western culture than the Old Testament. It&rsquo;s been translated, interpreted, and illustrated countless times over the past three thousand years. What drew you to this project in the first place? What has your relationship with religion and with that book in particular been throughout your life? 

Sam Robertson: I was drawn to the project in a roundabout way. I wanted to undertake a large, flexible illustration project that I could evolve with and learn a lot from. I had heard of some other people who set out to illustrate existing books with existing fan bases who then found that that audience helped to create momentum for their illustration endeavor. I thought I could maybe find a publisher that way, by illustrating a popular book, and hoping it might open the doors to further opportunities down the line. I ran through potential books in my head. None of my favorite books seemed like the right choice, but when I thought of the Old Testament, I knew that was the one. It was an epiphany. &nbsp;

I had never read the book, but I went to a Roman Catholic grade school up through 6th grade. I remember that experience being very tedious. I don&rsquo;t think I took away anything positive or memorable about the Bible from how it was presented to me as a kid. Most of what I remember is being kicked out into the hallway during classes a bunch and never understanding why. Like when I said &ldquo;puke-arist&rdquo; instead of &ldquo;eucharist.&rdquo; The teacher screamed, &ldquo;Stop saying that you say that ALL THE TIME&rdquo; when it was for sure the first time I had ever said it. Then I remember feeling all sad and lonely out in the hallway.

The Bible wasn&rsquo;t made digestible for young minds at the school I went to. I remember being in church trying to make the flame of the candle by the altar four pews away wiggle from blowing at it as hard as I could without being noticed and therefore reprimanded, for the better part of many 45 minute masses, never hearing a word of what was spoken by the priest, because I was 10 years old&nbsp;and super hyper. And I remember having to sit boy girl boy girl in church so we would be less likely to have fun, make jokes, or be any sort of distraction. That&rsquo;s my whole religious takeaway from those early 7 years of Catholic school. Then I got confirmed in high school, and that felt transactional, like something I was supposed to do but didn&rsquo;t care about. I felt guilty about getting confirmed under those circumstances, not being into the Bible. And then I remained agnostic up until the start of the project&nbsp;and to the present day. I&rsquo;d consider myself to be sort of spiritual, but I haven&rsquo;t been drawn to any one religion. &nbsp;

Going into illustrating this, I had a sense of the Old Testament being the book that has probably most shaped humanity. So I wanted to take that energy and bring myself into the conversation, reflecting on the influence it&rsquo;s had, and on our Western consumerist culture I was born into. A culture somehow descendant from&nbsp;that text. And I wanted to approach it sort of like a lost, ageless, estranged child, who didn&rsquo;t know of this formative book for 3000+ years and is just meeting it now, trying to explain or piece together in some way the long journey its words have sent me on, both historically and culturally. But I needed to do it without actually researching the history and the culture. Like if I found it in a time capsule in my yard and never heard tell of the old days or something. I just wanted to stay in my role as the millennial I am, uninfluenced by this book in any real direct ways, and try to make sense out of it symbolically. Then when I started to illustrate it, it felt like it was meant to be. Its words (The King James&nbsp;Version&nbsp;in particular) had tons of rich imagery and archaic phrasings to work with. Often all I had to do was to show up for the paintings, to put the time in, and they made themselves. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNzkwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM2MTEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Purified maidens on their way to see King Ahasuerus, as one does. Esther 2: 12-13. Bottom: Jeremiah 6: 19-20, in which our burnt offerings displease the Lord.

&nbsp;

RW: Your illustrations offer a really surreal, cartoonish take on specific passages from each page. I&rsquo;m assuming you read the entire thing, which can be very dense and very dry at times. How did you land on which passages to illustrate? 

SR: Yes, I read the entire thing, but it was an admittedly superficial reading. Humor has often been at the core of my paintings, even before this project, so I tried to select passages I thought I might be able to do something funny with. That&rsquo;s not to say I was out to lambaste or make fun of the book - humor is in part the language I use to explore deeper themes and things that interest me. I feel like humor has the power to really cut through the weeds and into the depths of human struggle, which the Old Testament seems to be about. I think a little crust of humor makes the paintings more accessible for many people, so they can kind of let their guards down, and then I can really explore what humans are doing with their time! Then I can really start to dig into the jarring contrasts between the beauty and brutality of the human impact on each other and the planet. The Old Testament already seems to be all about those themes, so I discovered it fit snugly with my style, in a way no other book could. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW: Your work in here is really hilarious and engaging and delightfully strange. It&rsquo;s not the first time the Bible has been illustrated by contemporary artists (I&rsquo;m thinking of R. Crumb and Basil Wolverton specifically, and there are surely many others), but I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever seen a version with so many cowboys and rodeo clowns and construction workers and games of beach volleyball. Can you explain how you landed on this particular style and set of characters? 

SR: Looking back on the work, I&rsquo;m not exactly sure how I landed on the individual characters or the style to be honest. I approached each painting with the goal of making it its own thing that could stand alone, and did whatever inspired me in the moment to avoid getting bogged down by the vastness of the endeavor. I tried to make whatever connections I could within each passage, sometimes drawing inspiration from a literal interpretation, sometimes just a subconscious feeling about what might best illustrate it. My intention was always to make a series of paintings where each could stand alone without the words that inspired it, but then when each was paired with the Bible verse, it would make even more sense and become more profound, and when all got bound together in their final form with the entire text of the Old Testament in a big book, they would take on a meaning of their own I couldn&rsquo;t have imagined, that they&rsquo;d be larger than the sum of their parts. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxNzUwMDAx/full.jpg" />The first spread of Robertson&#39;s book.

&nbsp;

RW: It&rsquo;s a funny juxtaposition, pairing these seemingly irreverent illustrations with the King James translation itself, reverently reprinted in full. Most artists would have started Genesis, for instance, with God conjuring light out of the darkness or creating Adam and Eve in the Garden; the very first image in your version is a cattleman awkwardly trying to hog-tie a calf in distress. It kind of sets the mood for an unconventional, critical reading of the text. What do you hope readers will get out of viewing the Old Testament through your lens? What did you get out of it? 

SR: That first painting I made a couple weeks before I even thought of illustrating the Old Testament, and it became what steered the whole project, being a reflection on God&rsquo;s order to dominate the world and all the other plant and animal creations. From there it was like, &quot;Well, let&rsquo;s explore what happened later on, over three millennia later, after we were told to dominate all the plants and animals.&quot;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;

I don&rsquo;t hope for readers to get anything specific out of it;&nbsp;each can bring their own experiences to my illustrated version of this book and take away their own thing. What I got out of it personally was the experience of having a very defined purpose for seven years and what that does to a person. (It was supposed to take only one year but that&rsquo;s not what happened.) It was a serious and seriously long journey. There&rsquo;s been nothing else like it in my life, it was transformative. I was so much younger when I started it, irresponsible and aimless perhaps, and in those past seven years while I painted, I also got married and had two kids and learned a trade (tiling). The early paintings are so different from the later ones and my thoughts on the world have changed a lot, too. I used to be pretty indifferent, and I&rsquo;m sure some of my worldview changed due to this project, but much has likely changed from having lived seven more years, from being with a partner who cares deeply about the world, and from having kids. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxNzYwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNzgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top: Ezekiel 20: 15-26, in which the Lord expresses his disappointment in the people of Israel flaunting his statutes.&nbsp;Bottom: Dolphins are just one of many recurring, unexpected thematic elements throughout.&nbsp;Illustration for&nbsp;Joshua&nbsp;5: 2-3.

&nbsp;

RW: Did you come away with a favorite book or a favorite story from the Old Testament? 

SR: Since I read it over a four or five year period and was focused on finding inspiring passages more so than gleaning a storyline, I remember surprisingly little. I remember being disappointed with Psalms, hoping for poetic beauty but finding mostly what seemed to me like rambling prayers for self-enrichment and death to one&rsquo;s enemies. So I&rsquo;ll read it again when I get my hands on one of these copies at some point perhaps. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW: Right now the book is in production by 11:11 Press here in Minneapolis, with a scheduled release next summer. At that point, I hear, you have a performance piece planned?

SR: Yes, I&rsquo;m going to sell it door to door. Equipped with a briefcase, some 60&rsquo;s era salesman clothing, my own welcome mat (this isn&rsquo;t a very welcoming world anymore) and a hidden mic (it&rsquo;s legal, I researched it), I&rsquo;m going to see how the world receives this book if I just show up and try to get them to buy it. I hope to sell many books this way, thousands and thousands and thousands, but also I want to simply converse with people and record those conversations (keeping the people&rsquo;s anonymity of course) and see what they&rsquo;re thinking about the world in this era where most of us are all getting so cloistered, insular, and divided. I hope to make a podcast about it, part radio drama, part actual salesman conversations. I don&rsquo;t think most people want a Bible salesman at their door these days, but I hope to change that. I hope they want me at their door. I hope they want me there and they don&rsquo;t want to beat me up. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

Also I&rsquo;m trying to get an introduction by&nbsp;Pope Francis if anyone knows how I can get in touch with him, and I&rsquo;m trying to get hotels to stock this book. One hotel in Wisconsin called The Oxbow is looking to buy 33 copies which is super exciting. I want it to replace, or at least accompany, all the Gideon bibles that are a staple in American hotels and motels. I think that&rsquo;s a mainstay that&rsquo;s never really been played with, the fact that in almost any hotel room you visit, you can open a drawer and be sure to find the same exact bible with no flourishes. I want weary travelers to open their hotel room drawers all frantic and disheveled and find this book and find salvation. So if you&rsquo;re a hotel owner/manager/worker reading this, and you think you want to partake in this opportunity, let me know. Make no mistake, this is a beneficial opportunity for both parties, me and you. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW: How can folks preorder the book? And do you have any plans to show the original paintings as well?

SR: Preorders are at <a href="https://1111press.com/oldtestament" target="_blank">www.1111press.com/oldtestament</a> - The preorders are what will fund the printing of this book. We will print a few extra, but your only guarantee to acquire this book is to preorder it. There may be subsequent print runs in the coming years, but who knows? &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

And as for showing the originals, I do want to show the paintings. I want to exhibit the whole series at the Vatican, mark my words. I&rsquo;ve shown sections of the paintings in four different exhibitions during the creation of this body of work, but there&rsquo;s probably 70 that the world has never seen in person. I&rsquo;m looking for opportunities to show all the originals in Minneapolis, and then on the road, hopefully to tons of cities, like you name it I want to go there. I want to bring these paintings on a crazy world tour. I want to go to LA, Chicago, NYC, then Rome, Berlin, other exotic European places, and Russia, Palestine, and Mexico as well. Then I want the Vatican to buy all the originals. They got tons of money and assets. They&rsquo;re the richest establishment ever, or at least they were. They can throw down for this, give me a break!&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1NTgwMDAy/full.jpg" />Sam Robertson, amidst&nbsp;a non-burning bush. All images courtesy of the artist.

To learn more about and&nbsp;preorder Sam&nbsp;Robertson&#39;s Illustrated Old Testament, visit <a href="https://1111press.com/oldtestament" target="_blank">1111press.com</a>. Books are set to arrive in June of 2022.&nbsp;

For more on the artist, follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/samrobertsonart/" target="_blank">@samrobertsonart</a>.

Banner image: the wizards being cast out, I Samuel 28: 3.

Artist Sam Robertson spent seven years illustrating the King James Version of the Old Testament, and someday soon he'll be bringing it to your doorstep

The New Old Testament: The Good Book gets weird

The Scene

&nbsp;

Reggie LeFlore describes his ventures through visual art in mythic proportions. It&rsquo;s a tendency that makes a great deal of sense coming from an aerosol muralist who shares, with delight, that his best work is guided by storytelling. &nbsp;

You may not recognize his name, but if you spend any time in Minneapolis, you certainly recognize his murals. Bright, bold colors; lavish stenciled faces; raised fists and charming rattle cans &mdash; all signed with his tag (and IG handle) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ral86/" target="_blank">RAL86</a>. LeFlore delineates his inclination for portraiture as ultimately an adoration and reverence for peoples&rsquo; stories. In the endeavor of painting his subjects, he takes on learning them first, creating alongside them. &ldquo;Really, collaboration did nothing but to amplify this love for portrait work,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;Because now I can tell you in as many details as you&#39;d like what you want to know about them. Where they came from, who they are now&hellip;&rdquo; &nbsp;

Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, LeFlore paints a picture of his childhood by way of the media he consumed. &ldquo;I was listening to rock, hip hop, trance, breakbeats, drum and bass, and I also read and watched a ton of comic books, cartoons, anime, and mangas,&rdquo; he says, sharing a laundry list of genres and outlets. But of all his influences, it was the public and visual expressions of art throughout hip-hop culture that stuck. &ldquo;Street art specifically. It wasn&#39;t present as much in Nebraska, but it was all over&nbsp;music videos on TV&rdquo;. &nbsp;

As the culture peaked, so too did LeFlore&rsquo;s interest. It was after he graduated from Benson High School in 2004 that he began pursuing a degree in Media Arts, writing his own stories and developing characters along the way. While his original intrigue in illustration and cartooning eventually waned, an illustrative technique and style still perseveres in his work. Explaining his approach, he says, &ldquo;I was carrying over vectors and vexel techniques from graphic design to be able to make tonal values for my stencils. Which helped me&nbsp;approach&nbsp;[spray painting] with a technical lens.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Of course, inundated in the history of hip-hop was the need to make one&rsquo;s self, one&rsquo;s story, and one&rsquo;s name known. Graffiti artists of the day did so on any surface necessary. LeFlore credits these visual pioneers for sparking his love for the art form and lauds them by name. &nbsp;

&ldquo;Cornbread, the dudes from Tats Cru, T-Kid&hellip; It was crazy. Seeing what these people were able to do with very limited resources. That&#39;s what got me into it&hellip; One of the most profound things I&#39;ve learned about public and street art is that it&rsquo;s a vessel to improve people&#39;s daily lives... Blank wall spaces, deteriorating buildings. Painting enters those public spaces.&rdquo; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIwMjMwMDAx/full.jpg" />The Afrocentric Spectrum, mural along University Avenue in Saint Paul. Photo courtesy of the artist&#39;s website.

&nbsp;

After making his way to Minneapolis in 2016, LeFlore recounts taking on the Made Here, a project&nbsp;by Hennepin Theatre Trust, in which artists filled up downtown storefront windows with their creations. Whether subconscious or intentional, Made Here was the perfect vehicle for LeFlore to put his influence from street art and graffiti&nbsp;into practice. &ldquo;Lots of buildings weren&rsquo;t at capacity, so our art was a way to activate that space.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Today, LeFlore&rsquo;s work takes on exponentially larger canvases. He goes into detail about having just completed a colossal multi-story public mural powered by Hennepin Theatre&nbsp;Trust and The X Games along First Avenue downtown. The work itself depicts the combined portraits of five young skaters. They gaze up in all directions, effervescent in their color&nbsp;scheme. The city&rsquo;s skyline traces behind them. &nbsp;

Though as with any project of this proportion, it wasn&rsquo;t without its tribulations. &ldquo;There were challenges in the beginning with the timeline and trying to take on an image of this magnitude in just a few months,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Your work can get lost if you don&#39;t have any special sense of direction. Storytelling gives it that direction, and people help with that story&hellip; There were connections we needed to make to be able to feel comfortable depicting kids in the Twin Cities.&rdquo; It wasn&rsquo;t until connecting with the local skate&nbsp;shop 3rd Lair and having a chance to sit down with owner Mark Rodriguez and&nbsp;some of their most dedicated skaters that the mural&rsquo;s imagery really came into focus. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMyMTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Mengistu, one of LeFlore&#39;s collaborators from&nbsp;3rd Lair Skatepark &amp; Skateshop, celebrates the mural&#39;s completion at the X Games Mural Celebration this past August. Photo courtesy of Hennepin Theatre Trust.

&nbsp;

Dale Stark, Manager of Public Relations at Hennepin Theatre Trust echoes the necessity for and presence of utter intention behind LeFlore&rsquo;s multi-story work, comparing it to developing theater productions. &ldquo;Picking an artist, picking a theme, it all clicks when you start to see the likeness [murals] have to any show. It&rsquo;s always more than just color on a backdrop. That&rsquo;s what got me excited about it.&rdquo; &nbsp;

&ldquo;It was really about a way that we could show the positivity of young skaters of color,&rdquo; Stark continues. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re the future, the next generation of leaders, our future voices. We wanted to honor the impact that these youth have on downtown&hellip; With construction and the pandemic, the city&rsquo;s center was a ghost town. Now, with people returning, we hope that they return with a new perspective and realization that downtown&rdquo; &mdash; much like the city itself &mdash; &ldquo;is simply not what it used to be.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Even outside of the vastness of LeFlore&rsquo;s downtown skate mural, it&rsquo;s clear that the artist has a propensity for projects that span space and time. Just this past summer LeFlore was selected by the City of Bloomington and the Ua Si Creative to collaborate on the creation of one of Minnesota&rsquo;s longest murals. The 750-foot-long&nbsp;work envisions the South Loop of Bloomington&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.bloomingtonmn.gov/pl/news/one-longest-murals-minnesota-coming-south-loop-2021-07-06" target="_blank">&ldquo;past, present, and future,&rdquo;</a> featuring art by LeFlore, Marlena Myles, Martzia Thometz, Xee Reiter, Andr&eacute;s Guzm&aacute;n, and Tom Jay and Thomasina Topbear of&nbsp;the City Mischief Murals collective.

As he continues his practice, Reggie anticipates a hunkering down on public art informed by narrative. He speaks with a concentrated giddiness about a mural-based graphic novel that could one day sprawl across the city&rsquo;s public spaces. With characters in development and a storyline inspired by his long-standing love for comic books, it&rsquo;s an epic worth watching vacant walls for.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM2MDgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Self-portrait from the artist&#39;s recent solo exhibition, Laying the Groundwork, at Gamut Gallery May-June 2021. Image courtesy of the artist&#39;s website.

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To see more of LeFlore&#39;s work, check out <a href="http://ral86.com" target="_blank">his website</a> or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ral86/" target="_blank">follow him on Instagram</a>. His mural for Hennepin Theatre Trust is located at 714 1st Ave N, across from First Avenue. The Ua Si Creative mural is located on 30th Ave S between Lindau and American Blvd.&nbsp;in Bloomington.

For more on Hennepin Theatre Trust, visit <a href="https://hennepintheatretrust.org" target="_blank">their website</a> or follow them on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hennepintheatretrust/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>.

Banner image: LeFlore&#39;s X Games mural on 1st Ave. Photo courtesy of Hennepin Theatre Trust.

Fresh off two gigantic murals in Minneapolis and Bloomington, the artist reflects on the power of people, color, and what a wall can mean to a city

Reggie LeFlore Never Paints Alone (Even When He Does)

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Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA), the North Minneapolis arts organization where young people are paid to be artists and designers, is ready to break ground on its new arts campus September 17, bringing to life a vision that goes back over a decade.

In the past three years, the project has been kicked into high gear, after structural issues on two of its buildings became severe enough that a demolition was in order. JXTA set up a skate park in the intervening time period, which will continue to act not only as a place to skate but as a forum for town halls, small groups, and community gatherings while the new building on Broadway Avenue is erected.

According to Gabrielle Grier, who became JXTA&rsquo;s Managing Director a year ago, JXTA&rsquo;s new transition follows the organization&rsquo;s status as the epicenter of art and design in the Twin Cities.

&ldquo;I think it is incredibly important that JXTA is the only Black-owned and -led&nbsp;art and design organization of our size in our region,&quot; says Grier.&nbsp;&quot;That is essential for the BIPOC community, and for everyone else as well.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1NTUwMDAx/full.jpg" />JXTA Managing Director Gabrielle Grier. Photo by&nbsp;David Sherman - NBA Photographer.

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In the economy coming out of the pandemic, JXTA&rsquo;s focus on non-traditional forms of learning and incorporating different creative processes is needed more than ever, Grier says. &ldquo;COVID has informed us that we have to be creative beings. There&#39;s no other way that this works.&rdquo;

JXTA&rsquo;s new three-and-a-half story building will take up 17,000 square feet, with an additional terrace, and will feature LED lighting displays, Grier says. It will house space for each of JXTA&rsquo;s labs, where young people are paid a living wage to work creatively, and there will also be a wood shop and an outdoor classroom. &ldquo;It mimics the same appeal as a pavilion space where young people will be able to take their work outside,&rdquo; Grier says of the outdoor space. &ldquo;The same feel that you get on a college campus.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Grier is looking forward to how the new building will impact the sensory and physical infrastructure for people that interact with North Minneapolis. &ldquo;I am mostly excited for being able to extend and support the beautification of North Minneapolis,&rdquo; Grier says. &ldquo;I also think how incredibly important it&#39;s going to be for young people to walk by and know that this is an extension of a space that they live, and for JXTA to now be in one building and for people to know where to go.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Grier&rsquo;s relationship with JXTA began peripherally back when she was a teenager. Having grown up in Brooklyn Center and then Plymouth, she was involved in organizing while she was in high school doing block parties and talent shows, where she encountered the organization. Then, in her 20s, she became involved with the FLOW Northside Arts Crawl. After she finished her master&rsquo;s degree program at the University of Minnesota, she began teaching in JXTA&rsquo;s contemporary art lab, and she helped build&nbsp;the organization&rsquo;s ceramics program. &nbsp;

A potter by trade, these days Grier is more involved with running JXTA than working with clay. &ldquo;I would say I&rsquo;m an artist through and through,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;even if that means everything from strategy to throwing pots.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Grier assumed her role as managing director in August of 2020, when North Minneapolis was still reeling from the unrest that erupted following the murder of George Floyd, on top of the havoc that Covid was bringing to the community. Being able to navigate all that was happening was all part of what JXTA is all about. &nbsp;

&ldquo;It is an exemplar of the work that JXTA does, in the essence that things are extremely nuanced,&rdquo; Grier says. &ldquo;The same way that JXTA bridges graphic design, environmental design, architecture, and contemporary art &mdash; like painting and drawing &mdash; and finds a way for them to speak together, I would say that was the same essence in which I showed up to this role.&rdquo; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NjMwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMyMTIwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIwMjIwMDAy/full.jpg" />Apprentices and teachers at work across JXTA&#39;s&nbsp;disciplinary spectrum. Photos courtesy of Juxtaposition Arts.

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The biggest challenge Grier has noticed in her tenure is knowing the worth and value of the organization, feeling the support from the community, and at the same time trying to move people about the importance of what JXTA is trying to do, Grier says. &nbsp;

&ldquo;There are ways that we have to talk about and express the need for the build, rather than it just being something that is rightfully so,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Having to be in a conversation with folks about the relevance of the work on one end, while also simultaneously being completely supported by community and by funders and by corporate folks about how important JXTA is, and sitting inside of that juxtaposition &mdash; no pun intended &mdash; I think is, is a part of the challenge.&rdquo; &nbsp;

The groundbreaking ceremony and thank you party takes place September 17, with the building demolition taking place the first week in October. JXTA plans to continue construction through the winter, spring, and early summer. &ldquo;We anticipate that we will be sitting inside our new building in August of 2022,&rdquo; Grier says. &nbsp;

In the meantime, JXTA still has about $400,000 to raise toward the project. The organization has also launched a $5 million legacy campaign that supports the first two years of program needs, as well as the needs of the inaugural year.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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The <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/event/juxtaposition-inc/capital-legacy-campaign/build-jxta-groundbreaking" target="_blank">groundbreaking ceremony</a> takes place Friday,&nbsp;September 17th, at 4pm at&nbsp;2007 Emerson Avenue North in Minneapolis. 

For more info, visit <a href="https://juxtapositionarts.org" target="_blank">juxtapositionarts.org</a> or follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jxta_arts/" target="_blank">@jxta_arts</a>.&nbsp;To donate to their capital campaign, <a href="https://juxtapositionarts.org/donate/capital-campaign/" target="_blank">click here</a>.

Banner image: rendering by&nbsp;4RM+ULA Architects​. All images courtesy of Juxtaposition Arts.

With a celebration planned for September 17th, the Northside art and design org is putting their capitol campaign funds to work for their community

Breaking Ground: Juxtaposition Arts begins their new build

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The year was 2019.&nbsp;The Before times. The State Fair was in full swing, signaling the end of summer with one last long bacchanal of deep fried, sunburnt delight. After a few years in a row of leaving grumpy&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;staying too long and paying too much&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;my wife and I had a strategy, and I share it with you now because it holds up in Plague times, too: Go early. If possible, go early on a weekday.&nbsp;

It&#39;s a contentious affair, since Fair organizers have thrown out all precautions short of a &quot;strong urging&quot; for masks. It&#39;s a reckless calculation on their part, as requiring proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test has kept recent festivals like Lollapalooza from being super-spreader events (<a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-covid-cases-traces-lollapalooza-festival-chicago-20210818-i6lqnuxmpbht7ky6rkfwxqhwvu-story.html" target="_blank">although it was responsible for&nbsp;over 200 cases</a>). If you&#39;re thinking about going, you&#39;ve hopefully&nbsp;already performed your own personal calculus around the risks to you and those around you of wading into the sweaty throngs of your fellow mouthbreathing countrymen. It&#39;s a lot to consider, although the science behind vaccines, masks, social distancing, and outdoor activities are all in our favor. Whether you want to reward the Fair&#39;s lack of leadership with your dollars is another matter.

For those who choose to attend, perhaps our strategy from 2019 will help: we&nbsp;started at&nbsp;8:30am, with a corndog&nbsp;for breakfast and a&nbsp;beer flight as soon as they opened. 10/10 highly recommend, and no waiting in line! Next stop was the Fine Arts show, and we had the whole place practically to ourselves. After that we meandered&nbsp;across the entire&nbsp;fairgrounds, ate some bites and met some goats, and&nbsp;by noon&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;just as the streets were growing thick with humanity&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;we were on our way back to the car. Social distancing was key, even then.

Just like the vaccines, it&#39;s not foolproof.&nbsp;If you do go this year, dear traveler, I wish you godspeed and safe air, and I hope you&#39;ll make a point of seeking out some art. And, it shouldn&#39;t have to be said (for multiple reasons), but&nbsp;wear your&nbsp;dang mask! Certainly&nbsp;when you&#39;re indoors! And if you haven&#39;t gotten vaccinated, hit up the North End Event Center first and get it for freeeeeeeee. Please. Seriously, Jesus Christ. They&#39;ll give you $100.

Okay, everybody grab yourself a whole-ass&nbsp;bucket of cookies and let&#39;s either do this thing or at least see what we&#39;re missing:

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQyMDUwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<h2>1. The Fine Arts Building</h2>

Way up on the East end, at Cosgrove and Randall, is the crown jewel of the State Fair art experience: the Fine Arts Building, with its annual state-wide Fine Arts Competition. It&nbsp;can feel like a proper cattle call in there when it&#39;s busy, caught in a current of people shuffling steadily past&nbsp;all 321 works of art. Going early will give you some space to really take it in.&nbsp;

As always, the show this year is like speed-dating the entire state, exhausting and exhilarating. It&#39;s a wild mix of media and content, spanning everything from recent political histories to deep cultural traditions. The sheer breadth and&nbsp;volume of image-makers in this state is staggering,&nbsp;even with just a fraction of them all in the same room.&nbsp;It&#39;s a microcosm of the Fair itself: bringing people from all different backgrounds together to peek into each other&#39;s lives. Rural folks get to see some weirdo art; city slickers get to walk through the barns.

&quot;We hope to curate an experience that nurtures a desire to seek out other arts experiences throughout the year, that this show is a gateway,&quot; says Jim Clark, the Fine Arts Building&#39;s&nbsp;superintendent.

Both photography and figurative painting loom&nbsp;large in this exhibition,&nbsp;which makes the deviations from that norm all the more memorable. It&#39;s always interesting to see which pieces stick in your mind once you exit the building. For those staying home, <a href="https://issuu.com/mnfinearts1/docs/21-msf-fine-arts-catalog_final" target="_blank">the full show is online here</a>.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUwMDMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Areca Roe (Mankato),&nbsp;Self Care, archival pigment print. Image courtesy of the artist&#39;s website.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE2MDUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Darius O Holmes (Eden Prairie),&nbsp;Freedom Is A Mindset, July 4th 2021, digital print.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNzEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Lexi B Ames (Saint Paul),&nbsp;Huskers, ballpoint pen.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE2MDUwMDAy/full.jpg" />Liliana Lennox (Robbinsdale),&nbsp;Study of Norma Bassett Hall, in Magenta, acrylic on muslin.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUwMDMwMDAy/full.jpg" />Patty A Voje (Saint Paul),&nbsp;Dairy Queen, oil on board.

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<h2>Studio:HERE</h2>

Also in the Fine Arts Building is the Studio:HERE residency program, featuring&nbsp;a different artist every day turning a corner of the exhibition space into their own personal art studio. Expect painting, ceramics, fiber art, printmaking, and more.&nbsp;Alyssa Baguss&nbsp;has set up a Minnesota Artists Penny Press, with which you can hand-crank a design from one of four local artists into crushed coins, and Andy Sturdevant&nbsp;will turn the studio into his office, so you can watch him lay out books for his publishing imprint and even go on a Zoom call with a collaborator. See, artists aren&#39;t so different from the rest of us. Full schedule of artists is:

8/26:&nbsp;Arden Harrison-Bushnell, fiber/embroidery/bead artist &bull; 8/27:&nbsp;Mike Smieja, potter &bull; 8/28:&nbsp;Joshua Bindewald, printmaker &bull;&nbsp;8/29:&nbsp;April Malphurs, sculptor/glass artist &bull;&nbsp;8/30:&nbsp;Blair Treuer, fiber artist &bull;&nbsp;8/31:&nbsp;Niccu Tafarrodi, diorama artist &bull;&nbsp;9/1:&nbsp;Kristine Heykants, photographer &bull;&nbsp;9/2:&nbsp;Andy Sturdevant, artist book publisher/writer &bull;&nbsp;9/3:&nbsp;Scott Krohn, scratchboard/colored pencil artist &bull;&nbsp;9/4:&nbsp;Christopher Harrison, painting/drawing/sculpture artist &bull;&nbsp;9/5:&nbsp;Alyssa Baguss, though her Penny Press is active every day &bull;&nbsp;9/6:&nbsp;Kordula Coleman, ceramicist

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<h2>&nbsp;</h2>

<h2>2. Crop Art</h2>

A quintessential&nbsp;State Fair&nbsp;tradition, the crop art is always a blast. Expect a big wall of mostly small works, painstakingly assembled using a variety of seeds and glue, often taking the form of hilarious political commentary or equally hilarious celebrity portraiture. It&#39;s inside, and there&#39;s often a line, so it&#39;s your call whether it&#39;s worth the risk to see if the seed is mightier than the sword.&nbsp;

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<h2><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5OTkwMDAx/full.jpg" /></h2>

<h2>3. Joyful World Mural Park</h2>

A new attraction this year, the Joyful World Mural Park is further west, just past the Grandstand. Produced by the State Fair&nbsp;in partnership with&nbsp;Forecast Public Art, the project will feature twelve&nbsp;of the best muralists working in the Twin Cities today&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;Leslie Barlow, Jennifer Davis, Jose Dominguez, Hibaaq Ibrahim, Tom Jay, Maiya Lea, Geno Okok, Shade Pratt, Xee Reiter, Joy Spika, Kao Lee Thao, and Thomasina Topbear&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;creating work envisioning a better world. Artists will be on site from 11am to 3pm each day, weather permitting, though not all at one time.

Tricia Heuring, who consulted for Forecast to help curate the event, explains:&nbsp;&quot;These are intended to be mini-murals, for State Fair audiences to see up close the process of painting a large-scale artwork. Across the 12 days of the Fair the murals will all be in different stages of the process, some finishing earlier and others starting later. I think that will be an interesting evolution for the audiences. Just because you are there earlier in the Fair doesn&#39;t mean you&#39;ll only see in-progress murals...&nbsp;It&#39;s been a rough year and a half, so the theme of the mural park is Joyful World,&nbsp;giving the artists an opportunity to design something that makes us all feel like better days are ahead.&quot;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxNjgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Mural by Shade Pratt (Fola). Photo by Tricia Heuring.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1NTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Image courtesy of mnstatefair.org.

<h2>4. Cream of the Crop Artists</h2>

Just a few steps away, in the West End (open air) Market, stop in at the Cream of the Crop Artists Gallery to do some shopping. Expect a little bit of everything: fine art paintings, sculptures, abstract and pop art, and archival and silkscreened prints,&nbsp;as well as t-shirts, gifts, magnets, stickers, art ties, buttons, caps, you name it. Organized and staffed entirely by artists, it&#39;s a fun, safe spot to go digging for your new favorite treasure. Organizer and artist Genie Castro says, &quot;We are open 9-9 daily in the open air of the West End Market. Our amazing booth is fun with artists working throughout the day.&quot; Plus, she adds,&nbsp;&quot;We are right by the <a href="https://www.mnstatefair.org/location/schells-stage-at-schilling-amphitheater/" target="_blank">Schell&rsquo;s stage</a>!&quot;

For those who can&#39;t make it, their shop is also&nbsp;fully online&nbsp;at&nbsp;<a href="https://creamofthecropartists.com" target="_blank">creamofthecropartists.com</a>. With all the money you saved on tickets, parking, and&nbsp;sticked&nbsp;foods, you should buy yourself some art!

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzOTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ1ODEwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ3OTQwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNzIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Some booth shots showing the wide variety of&nbsp;treasures&nbsp;available&nbsp;at Cream of the Crop Artists Gallery. Bottom:&nbsp;Genie Castro (second from left) with fellow artists and art-lovers in their booth at the West End Market. All photos courtesy of Genie Castro.

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There&#39;s more art to be had&nbsp;&mdash; if you still have the stomach for it after all those cookies&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;from a variety of vendors at&nbsp;The Grandstand (5), the Merchandise Mart (6), and the International Bazaar (7)&nbsp;(which is also outside). I will leave that up to you, my friends. The sun is getting high in the sky, though, so I vote we bounce.&nbsp;

Be safe out there!&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM2MDIwMDAx/full.jpg" />​Greta J Sandquist&nbsp;(Saint Paul),&nbsp;Becoming Something More, oil on panel

The Fair runs from August 26th - September 6th, from 6am to midnight everyday except Labor Day, when they close at 9pm.&nbsp;For more info, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mnstatefair.org" target="_blank">mnstatefair.org</a>.

All images are photos taken by the author unless otherwise noted. Article has been updated to include a photo of a Joyful World mural.

A quick and cautious guide to finding art at the Minnesota State Fair, August 26 - September 6

Art at the Fair: What to see at the Great Minnesota I Don't Know If It's A Good Idea To Get Together

On paintings, projections, and our endless fascination with Vincent van Gogh 

Immersing Vincent

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Entering into the new site-specific installation created by&nbsp;Rosy Simas at All My Relations Gallery&nbsp;&mdash;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/yodoishendahgwageh-a-place-for-rest-rosy-simas">y&ouml;doish&euml;ndahgwa&rsquo;geh (a place for rest)</a> &mdash;&nbsp;is a bit like stepping into a different dimension.

As you walk in, you are surrounded by an immersive sound score by French composer Fran&ccedil;ois Richomme. There are nature sounds like crickets, but also deeper tones that make you think of entering some deep cavernous space, or perhaps stepping inside the human body.

Meanwhile, Simas has a layered visual design mapping the space, including multiple projection screens. In some cases the screens pop out from the wall, catching the light differently than the screen behind it. It creates a rich texture, as the video &mdash; filtered with differently hued colors at different points in the gallery &mdash; displays footage of natural landscapes and warping angled lines. &nbsp;

Finally, there are sculptural elements as well, including larvae-like pods that hang down from the ceiling, which Simas created with Jeffrey Wells back in 2019 for a residency at the Weisman Museum, and a loom structure. There are also anti-gravity chairs where visitors can sit and perhaps take a nap. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIwMTQwMDAx/full.jpg" />

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A member of the Seneca Nation, Heron Clan, Simas often makes interdisciplinary performance works that incorporate dance, sound, video, lighting, and other visual elements that are intimately a part of the art form. She also has veered more into the visual arts world side of things, presenting her work within the context of a gallery, like when she had her work on view at Soo Visual Art Center two years ago along with poet and artist Heid Erdrich. &nbsp;

With y&ouml;doish&euml;ndahgwa&rsquo;geh, Simas deliberately moves away from elements that make up the experience of seeing performance. &nbsp;

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s different than a performance work in the sense that [this installation] is&nbsp;not intended to create a lot of stimulation of the nervous system,&rdquo; Simas says. &nbsp;

The work engages the nervous system through the senses &mdash; especially aurally and visually&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;as a way to occupy it enough for the mind to get quiet, Simas says. The idea is to take away any sense of fight or flight mechanism, or even the experience of pleasure. Rather than stirring you up, the work is meant to slow you down. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQyMDIwMDAx/full.jpg" />

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In some ways, the piece operates like a sensory deprivation tank. In that case, the participant gets immersed in water without any sound or light as a way to relax. In y&ouml;doish&euml;ndahgwa&rsquo;geh, there isn&rsquo;t an utter lack of stimulation, but the music and visual elements have a way of enveloping you into a dream-like experience. &nbsp;

It&rsquo;s the opposite of how Simas normally creates work with her collaborator, Richomme. &ldquo;Sometimes we&rsquo;re working with sound crescendo in a way that is supposed to create heightened alertness to what is happening on stage,&rdquo; Simas says. &ldquo;This is taking all of that away.&rdquo; &nbsp;

The piece is part of a three-year project by Simas called she who lives on the road to war. It&rsquo;s a response to global loss and the need to grieve. With her work, she&rsquo;s creating a place to take refuge and console for all that has happened in the last couple of years, especially for Black, Indigenous, and bodies of color.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a place for resting,&rdquo;&nbsp;Simas&nbsp;says about the work. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s really needed in the Native community.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Originally, y&ouml;doish&euml;ndahgwa&rsquo;geh was slated to take place at Hair &amp; Nails Gallery, but the show was cancelled.&nbsp;In a public statement, Hair &amp; Nails wrote that it failed to provide a supportive environment for Simas to work. &nbsp;

&ldquo;As individuals and as a small arts entity, we have been made uncomfortably aware of the extent and scale of our impact in the perpetuation of systemic oppressions, particularly, white body supremacy,&rdquo; they write in their public statement. &ldquo;Our experience this week has helped us see that we have much more work to do as individuals and as a gallery to undo racism and oppressive cycles in our hearts, actions, and in our community.&rdquo; &nbsp;

It&rsquo;s unfortunate the original venue failed in supporting Simas in creating this powerful show. While All My Relations is a wonderful setting for it, the controversy shows how far white-led institutions have to go to undo systems of oppression in the community. Simas&rsquo;s a place for rest offers a place of refuge for those on the front lines of this work.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUwMDEwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/yodoishendahgwageh-a-place-for-rest-rosy-simas" target="_blank">y&ouml;doish&euml;ndahgwa&rsquo;geh&nbsp;(a place for rest)</a> is on view at All My Relations through September 21st. Open hours: Mondy - Friday, 10am - 5pm, and Saturdays 10am - 3pm, at 1414 E Franklin Ave in Minneapolis. For more info, visit <a href="http://www.allmyrelationsarts.com/yodoishendahgwageh/">allmyrelations.com</a>, <a href="https://www.rosysimas.com" target="_blank">rosysimas.com</a>, and follow <a href="https://www.instagram.com/allmyrelationsarts/" target="_blank">the gallery</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/rosysimasrosysimas/" target="_blank">the artist </a>on Instagram.

All photos by Russ White for MPLSART.COM.

In a new multimedia installation, artist and performer Rosy Simas and collaborator François Richomme create 'a place for rest'

Gallery As Refuge: 'yödoishëndahgwa’geh' at All My Relations

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It&rsquo;s not often that tears are&nbsp;shed during a press preview for an art exhibit, but that&rsquo;s exactly what happened at&nbsp;the American Swedish Institute prior to the opening of Kindertransport&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;Rescuing Children on the Brink of War.&nbsp; &nbsp;

It would be hard not to get emotional experiencing this exhibition, which tells the stories of families who had to make the heart-wrenching decision to separate after Germany&rsquo;s &quot;Kristallnacht,&quot; November 9th into the 10th, 1938. &nbsp;

Over the course of that night&nbsp;&mdash; &quot;The Night of Broken Glass&quot;&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;hundreds of Jewish homes,&nbsp;businesses, and synagogues were destroyed by rioters from the Nazi party, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and put into concentration camps. The Kindertransport (German for children&rsquo;s transport) was a coordinated effort to provide safe haven for Jewish children, housing them in Great Britain as well as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Staying in foster homes as well as hostels, schools, and farms, more than 10,000 children escaped the concentration camps, even as many of their families waited for the worst to come.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1OTgwMDAy/full.jpg" />Installation view of the exhibit at&nbsp;the Center for Jewish History in New York. Photo by C&amp;G Partners, courtesy of ASI.

The exhibition, <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/kindertransport-rescuing-children-on-the-brink-of-war" target="_blank">on view at the Osher Gallery at ASI</a>, was created and organized by Yeshiva University Museum and the Leo Baeck Institute- New York/Berlin, and was previously exhibited at the Center for Jewish History in New York and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Michigan. &nbsp;

According to Michael Simonson, archivist and director of public outreach at the&nbsp;Baeck Institute, the Kindertransport came to be when organizations around both Germany and Austria, as well as other countries, began to work together. In England, one organization called the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany and Austria, took about 10,000 children, waiving the normal visa requirements&nbsp;and immigration limits. Other countries took fewer, and Sweden took about 500. &nbsp;

But they didn&rsquo;t take adults. &ldquo;The world for the most part was very anti-immigrant,&rdquo; Simonson says. &ldquo;And it was anti-semitic, and no one wanted the Jewish refugees in their countries.&rdquo; The United States, for instance, did not participate in the effort. A<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner–Rogers_Bill" target="_blank">&nbsp;Congressional bill</a>&nbsp;was introduced in early 1939&nbsp;to bring 20,000 children, but it was never brought to a vote.

The exhibition is made up of historical objects, photographs, letters, diary entries, and other ephemera that illuminate the excruciating experience the families went through. You read letters from anxious parents inquiring about how their children are faring in school, even as they manage to suppress their fears about their own safety. &nbsp;

&ldquo;When you come to good people, who will raise you on our behalf and look after&nbsp;you, try to give your best,&rdquo; one letter states. &ldquo;Always take care of your little sister Linda and stick together wherever you&nbsp;may be. Do not forget your Jewish roots.&rdquo; &nbsp;

On one wall of the Osher are hundreds of identification tag replicas, representing the thousands of children that made it out of Germany. Thinking about all those children &mdash; many who never saw their parents again, is a painful illustration, beautifully executed. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNjgwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1OTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Installation view of ID tag replicas.&nbsp;Photo by C&amp;G Partners, courtesy of ASI. Bottom: Pressed flowers among&nbsp;Benno Black&#39;s childhood belongings. Photo by Sheila Regan.

Erin Stromgren, the exhibitions manager at ASI, got tearful as she described opening a suitcase full of memories and keepsakes owned by Benno Black, who left on the Kindertransport away from Germany to the safety of the United Kingdom in 1939. Inside the suitcase was a book of pressed flowers Black had collected with his mother. Next to each pressed flower, you can see her gentle handwriting describing the plant. &nbsp;

Black settled in Minnesota, where he and his family live to this day.&nbsp;Also highlighted in the&nbsp;Turnblad Mansion are the stories of Kurt Moses, who was 11 when he and his younger brother left their small farm in T&uuml;tz, Germany to find shelter in La Guette, France, as well as Siegfried Lindenbaum, who was only&nbsp;9 when he and his brother escaped the small town of Unna, Germany. &nbsp;

Beth Gendler, Lindenbaum&rsquo;s daughter, says for much of her life, her father never talked about what had happened to him. Lindenbaum died in 1993, before the rise of social media and other tools he might have used to share his story with the world, Gendler says. &ldquo;In fact he never spoke about it at all. We sort of had an inkling of what had happened growing up.&nbsp;He never spoke publicly until he attended a reunion of survivors 50 years later, which is about two years before he died .&rdquo;&nbsp;After her father attended the reunion, he did a lot of writing and processing, she says. &ldquo;It&#39;s such an honor to be able to share the story.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Besides the stories of the three Minnesotans who left on the Kindertransport, the exhibition in the Turnblad also includes illustrations by Swedish illustrator Stina Wirs&eacute;n, of a book called The Story of Bodri&nbsp;about the Holocaust, by H&eacute;di Fried.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUzOTIwMDAx/full.jpg" />A reminder that this wasn&#39;t so very long ago. Benno Black at the exhibition with his family, which now calls Minnesota home. Photo by Jon Dahlin, courtesy of ASI.

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<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/kindertransport-rescuing-children-on-the-brink-of-war" target="_blank">Kindertransport&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;Rescuing Children on the Brink of War</a>&nbsp;runs through October 31 at the American Swedish Institute. There will be several exhibition tours and talks, some given by descendants of the children who escaped. Check <a href="https://asimn.org/exhibition/kindertransport/" target="_blank">ASImn.org</a> for details.

ASI is located at 2600 Park Avenue, Minneapolis.&nbsp;Museum Admission: $12 adults, $8 seniors ages 62 +, $6 ages 6&ndash;18 and full-time students with ID. &nbsp;Free for ASI members and children ages 5 and under.

The ASI Museum, Museum Store, and FIKA Caf&eacute;&nbsp;hours are Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit <a href="http://www.ASImn.org" target="_blank">www.ASImn.org</a> or call 612-871-4907.

Banner image: a map of kindertransport routes across Europe to Great Britain. Photo by C&amp;G Partners, courtesy of ASI.

A powerful new exhibition tells the story of Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany before the outbreak of World War II

Lest We Forget: 'Kindertransport' at The American Swedish Institute

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When I want to feel close to my grandma, I put on a silver ring striped with three bands of opal. It reminds me of the countless times I saw her wearing it, where we were when she bought it, even the couple who sold it to her. &nbsp;

I&rsquo;ve always been something of a hoarder, and I&rsquo;ve never been able to shake the idea that objects are conduits &mdash; to our own memories, but also to other people through time. &nbsp;

At Revere Auctions in St. Paul, there is a glass case filled with such objects, and among them&nbsp;an ancient Greek glass amphoriskos &mdash; a small, slim-necked jar, only six inches tall, that looks like it could hold perfume. It&rsquo;s positioned on a brightly lit shelf, next to a group of Egyptian alabaster pottery, a few steps away from two first-edition books by Huey P. Newton. &nbsp;

These objects have been brought together through time for an <a href="https://live.revereauctions.com/auctions/revere-auctions/day-1-decorative-arts-of-the-world-6514/catalog" target="_blank">upcoming two-day auction</a> (starting Tuesday, July 27th at 11am EDT) and are currently being displayed at Revere as a preview for the sale. They&rsquo;re surrounded by decorative arts, paintings, prints. An entire living room is set up in the middle of the space with furniture that will be for sale. Co-owner Sean Blanchet pulls up a seat, choosing from a group of eight mid-century modern dining chairs, and talks about the pieces he&rsquo;s most drawn to &mdash; including a mysterious wooden figurine being sold as part of a small lot. It looks like a depiction of a person in prayer. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1NDkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Revere Auctions is located in St.&nbsp;Paul&rsquo;s Priorworks building, located in the Creative Enterprise Zone north of University Avenue. Pictured here, furniture is displayed as part of the preview for an upcoming auction.

Sean explains that he creates lots when pieces are interesting but wouldn&rsquo;t sell for much by themselves. These items are grouped together and go up for bid as a bundle. Not much is known about the wooden figure, except that it was likely carved in Europe around the turn of the 18th century. Somehow, it&rsquo;s made its way to Revere&rsquo;s space in a former industrial building in St. Paul and has found a new home among three jade dishes and a sculpture of Buddha, laughing, surrounded by monkeys. &nbsp;

There&rsquo;s a magic to coming in and viewing centuries-old items up close, holding the kneeling figurine, seeing it juxtaposed with the amphoriskos, or&nbsp;a 1930s wooden cow carved by a prisoner in Maine. On the base of the cow, there&rsquo;s a small piece of paper that says, &ldquo;And you think you have problems?&rdquo; Apparently there is a market and collectors for prison folk art, made throughout history. Bidding for this sculpture starts at $100. Bidding for the cryptic figurine and its newfound group starts at $20, and the auction house estimates that the nine-item lot might sell for a couple hundred. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzODcwMDAx/full.jpg" />The kneeling wooden figurine, at right, paired in a lot with a laughing Buddha statue, a wooden carving, three jade dishes, lacquered chess pieces, and a Japanese&nbsp;tsuba, or sword&nbsp;hilt. Image courtesy of Revere Auctions.

Sean also singled out a silver bangle from Ancient Rome, two snake heads almost meeting. Putting on the bangle, there was a strong sense of connection &mdash; neutral and anonymous, but undeniable. An awe at the ongoing afterlives of objects and a desire to be a part of that history. There&rsquo;s also a disbelief at being able to touch something that would usually be seen from a distance. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Next to the bangle was an almost solid gold 50-peso coin. Someone had turned it into a pendant and placed a ring of diamonds around the metal. They had taken two incredibly valuable things and customized them, in a way I would never have imagined doing, but which also reminded me distinctly of my grandmother &mdash; always putting slightly mismatched things together, like sewing yellow curtain fringe along the hem of a dress. It made me curious about the person who had altered the coin in this way, and the person who would purchase it at the auction. Would they keep it as is, or would they take it apart and reset the diamonds? Where had that dress my grandma put together gone after she moved out of her home? &nbsp;

There were paintings, as well &mdash; framed, with gallery stickers accumulated on the back. These are likely as the original artists made them, although Sean points out that buyers can sometimes find old paintings underneath newer layers. A William Wegman photo hung in one corner, alert-looking Weimaraners standing cleanly against a pink backdrop. But the most surreal and interesting things to me were the ones that held a little more age, a little more mystery. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ1NzQwMDAx/full.jpg" />The items in a preview and auction are determined by what the auction house receives from clients, most often individual collectors and estates. Contemporary art trays from Mexican artists Miguel Pineda and Pedro Cervantes are among the items up for bid.

It was impossible not to feel the weight of all the people who had held these objects previously, and the knowledge that many had come from the estates or collections of the recently deceased. These strangers were brought together in one space, awaiting new owners and rubbing elbows in the process to create juxtapositions you wouldn&rsquo;t normally get to see. &nbsp;

Revere has shelves of reference books, and Sean was able to share information as well. While there was mystery, there was also an act of discovery and the feeling of peeling back layers &mdash; getting drawn in by something&rsquo;s form, then finding out more about its history. Looking at the amphoriskos, Sean discussed the strong tradition of intricate glass work in Ancient Greece, how artisans made patterns by twisting different colors of glass together, how these pieces were valued as trade items. It was easy to wonder: where had this vase been since it was made? It was easy to wonder about all the lives it had been a part of. &nbsp;

When I hold my grandma&rsquo;s ring, I also think about the parts of her life I never knew. I wear it back to the places we used to go together to bring her there with me, and I take it to new places to show her for the first time. &nbsp;

Holding objects at Revere, being surrounded with history &mdash; ancient to contemporary, still living as these items move through the world &mdash; I felt a similar sense of connection. Here I was, holding a wooden figurine that a stranger who lived 200 years before me put their time and energy into creating. Here I was, able to bid on and possibly own a piece of Ancient Greece. It is so out-of-the-ordinary, so magical, and yet so suddenly possible.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); box-sizing:inherit; caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px">◼︎

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The upcoming auction is divided into two parts: <a href="https://live.revereauctions.com/auctions/revere-auctions/day-1-decorative-arts-of-the-world-6514/catalog" target="_blank">Day 1: Decorative Arts of the World on July 27</a>, and <a href="https://live.revereauctions.com/auctions/revere-auctions/day-2-fine-jewelry-with-a-collection-of-fine-modern-contemporary-art-7177" target="_blank">Day 2: Fine Jewelry with a Collection of Fine Modern &amp; Contemporary Art on July 28</a>. The auction will take place virtually, but the items are displayed for viewing at Revere Auctions, 755 Prior Ave. N., Unit 235 C, St. Paul, MN 55104. 

The auction house is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., or by appointment. For more information, or to view a complete gallery of upcoming auction items and starting bids, visit <a href="http://www.revereauctions.com" target="_blank">www.revereauctions.com</a>.&nbsp;

Banner image: A lot of seven Modern African, Asian, and Native American sculptures and vessels.&nbsp;All photos taken by the author unless otherwise noted.

In a preview of items going to auction July 27th and 28th, decorative arts, jewelry, and contemporary art share space and swap stories

Conduits Through Time: Art objects from around the world and across centuries rub elbows at Revere Auctions

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It&rsquo;s too soon to be able to look at the art coming out of this time with any kind of objective distance, and yet When Pattern Becomes Form, presented at Form + Content Gallery, offers a glimpse. Three artists in the exhibition &mdash; Clarence Morgan, Stuart Nielsen, and Howard Oransky &mdash; present work that belies neat messaging or easy interpretations. The bright colors of the three bodies of work pop from these paintings, introducing a dialogue made up of patterns, shapes, and abstraction. It&rsquo;s as if, when the edges of our present reality are too wide to fit into clean narratives or realistic representations, then expressionist gestures, subconscious wanderings, and form ground the discourse. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Stuart Nielsen&rsquo;s harlequin patterned figure sits at the center of the gallery, providing a festive and perplexing image to greet visitors as they first enter. The painting hints at the movement of a figure, without explicitly outlining one. Are these the arms of a clown, or perhaps a jester doing an upside down split? The boldness of the patterns against the black background demand attention. Nielsen takes an almost mocking attitude with the work. The world, the painting seems to say, is upside down and there is no response left but to try to laugh. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5OTQwMDAx/full.jpg" />Stuart Nielsen,&nbsp;Brite River,&nbsp;oil on linen, 98 x 66&quot;, 2020

In a recent virtual artist talk, Nielsen said he was interested in the Harlequin pattern&rsquo;s history, both in art and also language. &ldquo;It was originally a malevolent kind of character,&rdquo; Nielsen said, noting its association with hell in its origins in Germanic languages. &ldquo;And then the Italians sort of turn it around and made it commedia dell&rsquo;arte.&rdquo; Nielsen also mentioned he was interested in the Harlequin pattern because of its use historically as a kind of camouflage. Indeed, Nielsen&rsquo;s Brite River, as well as the three Brite River studies also on view, suggest an impish shape shifting. &nbsp;

Howard Oransky&rsquo;s series of oil paintings, The Body in Pieces, No. 1-3, similarly hint at the notion of a figure. &ldquo;They are my idea of figures,&rdquo; he told me on a recent visit. The lightness of his brushstroke, smearing against the canvas in circular motion, summon the impulse of dancing. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxOTgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Howard Oransky,&nbsp;The Body in Pieces, No. 1,&nbsp;oil on canvas, 68 x 48&quot;, 2020

In his notes about the work, Oransky calls Linda Nochlin&rsquo;s lecture, &ldquo;The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity,&rdquo; an &ldquo;apt description&rdquo; for the work. Nochlin&rsquo;s lecture roots her analysis of the nature of fragments in modern art with the French Revolution, a period that bears certain similarities to our current reality. &nbsp;

Think about it: our era is marked by startling inequality between the rich and poor, much like the conditions that anticipated the French Revolution. In the last year we have seen cities burn as part of a reckoning of racial injustice, and the capitol besieged by a far-right attempted coup. In the meantime, Americans have grappled with its past as cities have examined ways to address how&nbsp;racism has infiltrated laws and institutions. In response, states across the country have introduced legislation that bans Critical Race Theory, an academic movement that seeks to illuminate ways American slavery is ingrained into American law and policy. Meanwhile, violence and murders are approaching&nbsp;an all-time high, and human body parts are being found in public places in Minneapolis, including a severed head left on a park bench on Franklin Avenue. We haven&rsquo;t so much left the conditions that anticipated the French Revolution and its subsequent modern era as returned to them. &nbsp;

Nochlin goes on to investigate how the Impressionists utilized a confined frame to create cut-off body parts. The viewer was shown just the knee of a performer, for example, in Honore Daumier&rsquo;s Orchestra during a Performance of a Tragedy. Edward Degas often homed in on a fragmentary view of dancers &mdash; in doing so highlighting the power dynamic between his male gaze and the bodies of his female subjects. &nbsp;

Oransky&rsquo;s fragments don&rsquo;t so much grasp for power as let it go. He asks the viewer to slow down, to remember that we are all, when it comes down to it, only human. Each dancing brush stroke in the painting is a breath. &nbsp;

Opposite Oransky&rsquo;s paintings are seven works on paper by Clarence Morgan that utilize layers of graphite, watercolor pencil, marker, and paint. They look a bit like they were created on top of maps and have a sense of wandering in the way the squiggles intertwine with straight lines and right angles. &nbsp;

Morgan&rsquo;s works offer an intuitive cartography. The tension between circuitous pathways and straight lines suggest we are now and perhaps always discovering our route, retracing it, finding a better way, and not necessarily in that order: sometimes these routes are embarked upon all at the same time. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE3OTIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Clarence Morgan;&nbsp;New Levels of Thought (detail);&nbsp;Graphite, watercolor pencil, ink, gouache &amp; markers on heavy watercolor paper;&nbsp;40 x 60&quot;; 2020

All created in 2020, Morgan&rsquo;s works on paper don&rsquo;t explain themselves to be &ldquo;pandemic&rdquo; art, and yet the chaotic energy of his layered hatchmarks, loops, and geometric shapes emulate the experience of the last year of collective angst, fear, discord, and transformation. Some of the titles, like Not that Unusual&nbsp;and Never a Dull Moment, carry with them a sense of whimsy. Others, like Frontiers of Perception and New Levels of Thought, touch on philosophical wanderings. One smaller work, titled Autonomous Zones, conjures areas barricaded by protesters in Portland, Seattle, and in Minneapolis in protest of the police. &nbsp;

Morgan doesn&rsquo;t over-explain his process and resists doing so in his comments on the work. &ldquo;Pretending I can rationalize through the use of language the reasons why these works insist on making their way into the world remains a mystery,&rdquo; he writes. &ldquo;Sustaining, but not defining that mystery is what&rsquo;s at stake.&rdquo; &nbsp; &nbsp;

Morgan lets his art speak for itself. The meaning asserts itself in the back part of your brain as you travel through the paint. Like the other two artists, he speaks to our time through a visual language, not a verbal one.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/when-pattern-becomes-form">When Pattern Becomes Form</a> is on view at Form + Content Gallery through​ July 31st, with open hours Fridays and Saturdays, 1-5pm. If you would like to make an appointment to see the show outside of those times, contact <a href="mailto:formandcontent@gmail.com">formandcontent@gmail.com</a>. Masks are required.

For more info, visit <a href="http://www.formandcontent.org" target="_blank">formandcontent.org</a>.&nbsp;All images courtesy of the artists.

New works by Clarence Morgan, Stuart Nielsen, and Howard Oransky play with bright color and loose marks, while speaking abstractly to our current moment

The Brush As A Tongue: 'When Pattern Becomes Form' at Form+Content

As we come out of COVID hibernation, we discover there are a boatload of new art spaces to visit in the Twin Cities

Art, Opening: New spaces emerge as isolation ends

&nbsp;

On what seemed to be another impossibly warm summer day, I was welcomed into the conference room of the Minnesota Museum of American Art (The M). A handful of ladies &mdash; and what were made out to be their friends and children &mdash; reclined around a hollow rectangle of tables and chairs. Hastily labeled white takeout containers laid strewn across the table tops in satisfied completion, red and white picnic pattern wax paper sticking its tongue out of the sides. The attendees, most notably the members of the Rondo-based Hallie Q. Brown Community Center (HQB) senior women&rsquo;s group, donned pastel blouses and caps. I met them cackling and smiling at a short documentary projected onto the wall. The video, it turns out, was of themselves. Particularly, its purpose was to enumerate how the artists at present arrived to this moment of celebratory relaxation. It was about their journey in, through, to, and over art.

Aptly named The Magnificent Golden Agers, this group of women gathered to celebrate the completion of literary and visual arts projects spanning the past year&nbsp;&mdash; pandemic included.

The teachers of this group of magnificent agers, Nicole M. Smith and Lawrence El Grecco Waddell, take turns admitting that they learned far more from these women than could ever be taught. They delve into the project&#39;s inspiring texts and materials, one of them being&nbsp;A Choice of Weapons by Minnesota photographer&nbsp;Gordon Parks. Smith tells me, &ldquo;As the pandemic came on, of course we had to shift gears&hellip; We sent every member an art kit equipped with portable DVDs, books, cameras, journals, etc... It just had to be interdisciplinary&hellip; Because that&rsquo;s what art can look like. That&rsquo;s what art is.&rdquo; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5ODkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Gloria Massey,&nbsp;Black and Proud, mixed media, 2020.

Smith and Waddell recount some early reluctance by the ladies to think of themselves as artists. For Smith, the task of convincing these women of their artistry stems from her own negotiations with what it means to be one.

&ldquo;Being a vision-impaired artist, there is this synchronicity that has come into my being, a relatability with those that are deemed marginalized or &#39;throw aways&#39;&nbsp;by society. So it gives me a deep purpose and fuel to do work in this way with my community. Like yo, let&rsquo;s love us up!&rdquo;

It was abundantly clear to me at the unveiling event of their newest exhibition of collages, Wise, Gifted, and Black, that the stories tossed across the tables in The M&rsquo;s community room were the result of an arrival at some creative epiphany. &nbsp;

One Golden Ager, by the name of Shirley Barber, reflected when asked what she&rsquo;d learned.&nbsp;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned to pay attention to the little details. The trees outside, the leaves on them, blowing. But how often do you think about what makes them move? How often do we consider the wind?&rdquo; &nbsp;

She takes her time with the words &mdash;&nbsp;as though relaying a live account of her imagination in that moment &mdash;&nbsp;and they swell with lyricism. &ldquo;I pay attention more to life. The clouds, for instance. I look at it [all] in a different way&hellip; The unseen forces of life, the kind artists tend to and keep close.&rdquo;

Eventually, the group makes its way out into the sauntering breeze of Barber&rsquo;s words on the downtown streets of St.&nbsp;Paul. We turn the corner to see for ourselves the culmination of visual works by Ruth Wilson, Gloria Massey, Shirley Barber, Janette Gray, and Bettye Jackson.

In front of her collage, Gloria Massey shares that she&rsquo;s a lifelong member of the HQB and the Rondo neighborhood. Though she didn&rsquo;t always think of herself as an artist, Massey has &ldquo;so many memories of art.&rdquo; Most of which came from her time at community centers as a child. In fact, she only really left Rondo once to try her hand at creating a life in Milwaukee, but admittedly, Ms. Massey shares, &ldquo;Home is home.&rdquo; She adds that it&rsquo;s actually the anniversary of her return to Rondo &mdash; it&rsquo;s been 47 years since that day. Titled Black and Proud, Massey&rsquo;s work lines up the gazes of iconic Black figures with the viewer&rsquo;s. Quotes are reconsidered in marker, pencil, and text, reinvigorated as they sit near the grins and gazes of the &ldquo;greats.&rdquo; Massey&rsquo;s collage reads boisterous and meticulous. Words pulled from articles and profiles emerge as stepping stones around the collage&rsquo;s paperscape, &ldquo;Ancestors&hellip;Mahalia&hellip;Black Mayor&hellip;. Ella.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5ODUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Bettye Jackson,&nbsp;Untitled, mixed media, 2020.

Bettye Jackson, on the other hand, remembers with some sweetness that she never intended to make a home out of Rondo. &ldquo;I came to not stay&hellip; I came up [here] from Arkansas to babysit my sister&#39;s daughter,&rdquo; she tells me. &ldquo;That was in 1960.&rdquo;

When I ask about creativity in her life, Jackson recalls art in all of her most durable routines. &ldquo;Actually, I would paint for fun sometimes&hellip; and I used to love to cook. Truthfully, cooking is like art.&rdquo;

With pride, she shares the memory of the first cake she made, along with the quintessential fact that it was baked using a wood-burning stove. These sweets of yore were feats accomplished at the helm of apprenticeship, Jackson explains. &ldquo;My mother would tell me &lsquo;Clean your dirty clothes off, sit in the chair, and watch me&rsquo;... There was no measuring cup in those days, just a coffee cup. So yeah, that took some skill.&rdquo;

Jackson goes on to list the names of her favored desserts: apple stack cakes, cream-filled caramel cakes, and coconut-layered cakes. The room stirs with aroma at the spell of each recipe. In a beautiful sort of correspondence, Bettye Jackson&rsquo;s collage is simple and evocative with a background the hue of plush saffron. Within the visual work, sweating cooks contemplate a meal while cut-outs of produce and steaming dishes float ephemerally as their frame.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNjIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Janette Gray, Ancestors: Past, Present, &amp; Future, mixed media, 2020.

The women of Hallie Q. Brown&rsquo;s Magnificent Golden Agers may have started from many a geographic place &mdash; citing cities&nbsp;from North to South &mdash; but what becomes clear to me is the significance of where they are now. In the neighborhood of Rondo, U.S.A. Were I not taken back to stories of my own grandmother&rsquo;s childhood in Rondo, I would still feel at home and at joy with these women.&nbsp;

I retrace in Gloria&rsquo;s words&nbsp;the map of my own great grandfather&#39;s barber shop that existed mythically somewhere on Selby Street. It was named The Head Hunters after their family, the Hunters, in a&nbsp;dousing of wit that prances through all the conversations I still have with my grandmother today.

I think about the serendipity of Wise, Gifted and Black being held at The M, an institution I was first introduced to in the summer of 2020 on a panel.&nbsp;I took my opportunities then&nbsp;to speak and spent them on abolition. I think about how my grandparents guided me through these tenets, whether they were conscious of it or not, by always putting community first.

Lastly, I think back to the personally foundational abolitionist poem by Junauda Petrus, conveniently titled, &quot;<a href="https://vimeo.com/426276718" target="_blank">Give the Police Departments to the Grandmothers</a>.&quot; I think about the fact that indeed, these are the grandmas, friends, and lovers. That they&rsquo;re here now, fashioning fiction, remembrance, and beauty for anyone to see. Because even in impossible weather, The Golden Agers ensure that whenever art is the task, storytelling and community are, too, crafted. Magnificently.&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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Top: Installation view at the reception in June. Bottom: The artists themselves, left to right: Shirley Barber,&nbsp;Bettye Jackson, Nicole M. Smith (in front),&nbsp;Janette Gray, Gloria Massey,&nbsp;and Lawrence El Grecco Waddell.

Wise, Gifted, and Black will be on view at The M through July 17th. The show is installed in their window display at 350 Robert St. N in Saint Paul. For more info, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://mmaa.org/wisegiftedandblack/">https://mmaa.org/wisegiftedandblack/</a>

Special thanks to Nancy Ariza, The M&#39;s&nbsp;Associate Curator of Learning and Engagement.

Banner image: From the Magnificent Golden Agers&#39; 2019 event at The M. Left to right:&nbsp;Gloria Massey, Bettye Jackson, Shirley Barber (above), Janette Gray, and Ruth Wilson.&nbsp;Images courtesy of The M.

Now on view in The M's window display, the show of collages celebrates Black history, Black culture, and the power of making art

Wise, Gifted, and Black:  A Group of Women Forge Community and Artistry in the Heart of Rondo

Hungry For After, the recent exhibition of MFA thesis work at UMN&rsquo;s Katherine E. Nash Gallery, first greets viewers with a legion of ghosts. The black matte words of the show&rsquo;s title sit against a somehow even blacker-backing. The hunger, then, veiled and laying in wait. Each artist&rsquo;s dispatch stands discrete from their classmates, tied by what emerges subtly as their communication with the very hunger of its name. Throughout the gallery, restfulness waits behind orange curtains, archive ripples through the digital, forms lose and find their way. Apparitions, hospitable as they seem, meander an endless journey. The entirety of Hungry For After grasps across mediums the syntax of what it means to want.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5ODMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Caitlin Skaalrud, foreground:&nbsp;the me behind the closed door, installation, 2021. On wall:&nbsp;A and B, digital comic, 2021.

The welcoming ghosts &mdash; fashioned delicately in paper skins &ndash; stand only by the points of material that graze the floor beneath. Part of an installation by Caitlin Skaalrud, the specters begin sparsely, coalescing in population at the foot of an artist&rsquo;s drawing table, painted entirely white. Above it, the largest of them floats in front of a long graphic narrative comic strip mounted on the wall. Their words traverse through memory, liminality, and belonging. Whether the ghosts, delicate and revered, have found their home or are still in search of it remains to be seen. What&rsquo;s important perhaps, is the journey &mdash; &nbsp;one that&rsquo;s ornate and ethereal. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxOTAwMDAx/full.jpg" />Nicholas Bauch, System for Embodying Landscape: Twin Cities, mixed media&nbsp;installation and performance, 2018-2021.

Meandering the bending walls of the Nash Gallery, your eyes settle on the warmth of tangerine curtains sheathing a thin, sleek camping chair. On the floor beside it, an open suitcase carries only thick, academic books. The semi-room created by Nicholas Bauch fills with air; glass shelves carry glass jars of sand and other collectibles, sitting below arid landscapes. &ldquo;DWELL&gt;MOVE&rdquo; assigns the space, placing the collections of prints and items in stillness. In the corner of one photograph, against a perfectly blue sky, a gallon of water teeters down. No water falls from it. In the spirit of the hierarchy of those words that name the space, a print and its halves &mdash; taking up nearly an entire wall &mdash; is dizzying at first glance. Bauch&rsquo;s ecology of branches and their counterparts weave into one another and collapse infinitely downward. The image nearly vibrates, insular and bustling with wood, dirt, and the unintelligible in betweens. In the center of the room sits a cassette deck and some tapes. There&rsquo;s an ask, subversive in a year of society-wide hand sanitizing, for you to pop in the tapes and have a listen. Next to it, another touchable item which reads with comfort and few words. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5OTcwMDAy/full.jpg" />R.C. Tibbott;&nbsp;Gestures of Pressure and Time; ceramics, paper, metal, found objects; 2021

What follows in the next gallery space is a chorus of seriality from R.C. Tibbot. Tactile military issue boots flop and stand at attention alongside over 100 delicately propped ceramic bases of what could have been vases or bowls. Each base has been destroyed, cut short in faintly different manners. The crowd of possibilities they create grids neatly on a giant square of white floor. The boots are worn, dilapidated almost; the square, quiet and demanding. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxOTgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Grant McFarland,&nbsp;Cash and Carry (detail), 2021, installation view

Perhaps in the same neighborhood of thought, Grant McFarland takes inventory of the necessary. &ldquo;BED / SPOON / SHIRT / PLAYING CARDS / STOOL / BUTTER.&rdquo; All the named items&nbsp;scatter themselves throughout the room, single twins to separate items that are clearly elsewhere: an empty clothes hanger, a spoon-shaped cut-out in wood. Butter, nearly a pound, sits chilling behind the door of a tinted fridge &mdash; dated and named by its form and birth. The lives of each item read first as simple. After all, their existences trace our own daily needs. In this space however, it is the pedestrian, clean fabrications that beg the question of how they came to be thought of in the ways that we do. To be found anywhere, any way, an item&rsquo;s significance transforms with its production. McFarland remarries intimacy with utility. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1ODcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Sayge Carroll;&nbsp;Other Worlds; installation with projection and sound, ceramic, canvas, leather, muslin, paper, found objects, rock, wood, latex paint; 2021

A memory book of vinyl album covers bursts verdant across the transitional wall: forgotten classics from Nina Simone, Lou Rawls, Harry Belafonte. At the center of an altar is a community of clay, what looks to be a mammoth oven. Hides, drums, pebbles, and rocks all take rest alongside one another. Mahogany and cyan glazes commune. It&rsquo;s a meeting space, perhaps. One chair is present, its own instrument sitting loyal at right. Suspended above, a camera moves through a land that reveals itself to be committed to neither 3D nor 2D construction. The makings of an archive, if not pure imagination, fall into place. The land on and in screen is traversed easily, a river and brush is the guide. What felt like phantasmal onlookers were passed and nature would resume. On second encounter, the apparitions swell with features and belonging &mdash; a pair stands in stoic joy, wedding dress and tuxedo. A boy in a thin-brimmed hat and cream blouse floats in contrapposto. Neither at the point of imagination nor archive but somewhere in between &mdash; Sayge Carroll&rsquo;s Other World fashions just that. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxODkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Brandon Chambers,&nbsp;(L-R:) Your Pods and Mine #1-2, alcohol ink on Yupo paper;&nbsp;Network, alcohol ink on Yupo paper;&nbsp;Spirit of the Time, ceramic, 2021

Brandon Chambers makes sultry out of the formulaic with explorations of structure. Inks come to life in their folly, squares bloom into spores. Stretching across the wall, Chambers&rsquo;s work spills and returns to itself by way of earthly colors &mdash; light velvet reds and rust-born oranges &mdash; bridged by inevitable blacks, to mustards and seafoam. An egalitarian assessment of hue whose result is numbing and undoubtedly alive. Sitting across is a haunting of ceramic forms, geometric and organic at the same time. All perhaps descendants of a scaffolded cube, the boxes bow and sway like the bones of wrecked houses. Some are assured while others melt. They all line up at shoulder height for display, even assessment. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxODgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Rini Keagy;&nbsp;Pacaya y Tikal;&nbsp;installation with digital and screen prints on mulberry paper, sand, silica, pebbles, brick;&nbsp;2021

Further down the wall to blacker backings, Rini Keagy embraces dust. A mound of it calls to mind sandstone and piles up to a point below prints that fade and emerge at once. Triumphant architectures materialize at point perspective. Figures the color and mood of blueprints stare in suit and blouse. Keagy&rsquo;s world maps dream-like within El Cenote, the 2-channel video that spans a cavernous pit of black walls. A culmination of archival video, document, and sound, El Cenote levitates over impossible natural forms, cenotes plunging into themselves as the same temple-pyramids of their prints waft across the work. Letters and resolutions flutter into being, and darkness &mdash; what might be read as emptiness &mdash; is all that remains.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/hungry-for-after-umn-mfa-thesis-exhibition" target="_blank">Hungry For After</a>&nbsp;was on view at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota from April 27 - May 14, 2021. You can view <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/art/galleries/katherine-e-nash-gallery" target="_blank">a video walkthrough of the exhibition here</a>.

Banner image: Rini Keagy,&nbsp;El Cenote, 2-channel video, 00:08:30, 2021. All photos by the author or MPLSART.

Open only by appointment last month, the exhibition of seven MFA grads touched on objects, histories, and emotions just out of grasp

After 'Hungry For After': 2021 MFA Thesis Work at UMN's Katherine E. Nash Gallery

Artists and artisans are opening their tents back up this weekend and all summer long, heralding the return of one of our favorite sweaty summer past-times

The Summer Art Fair Round-Up

MPLSART Sketchbook Project

&nbsp;

To 22-year-old artist and musician Papa Mbye, drawing is a long-held practice of memory. Born in The Gambia, Mbye describes his arrival to the States and his arrival to the passion of art-making in terms of luck. His parents arrived in the U.S. shortly after winning the lottery&nbsp;&mdash; the green card lottery, specifically.

Reflecting on those first few years and what inspired him to pursue the arts, Mbye remembers back to Memphis, Tennessee,&nbsp;when his mom, in an effort to soothe her son, would make etchings of abstracted birds on paper.

The family moved to Minneapolis when Mbye&nbsp;was four, and a few years later, his&nbsp;dream was to&nbsp;be&nbsp;an illustrator.&nbsp;&quot;Making cartoons, going ham on school projects&hellip; I didn&rsquo;t see Black characters, so I&rsquo;d make them,&quot;&nbsp;he tells me.

Since then, Mbye describes his practice of drawing as being rooted in repetition, something like that of the birds on Memphis paper.

&quot;I&rsquo;d find something that I like and keep doing it to get it right. There&rsquo;s certain characters that I can&rsquo;t stop drawing,&quot;&nbsp;he says. One in particular, with&nbsp;a gaping smile and only a few cartoon follicles,&nbsp;has developed as a kind of&nbsp;iconography&nbsp;within Mbye&rsquo;s work.

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Mbye notes that the character is one he can&rsquo;t shake, that he keeps returning to, although his relationship with the figure is by no means confining. &quot;He&rsquo;s a true translation for how I&rsquo;m feeling at any given time... It&rsquo;s easy to distort him&hellip; a blank slate of a figure.&quot;&nbsp;Mbye&#39;s&nbsp;visual work feels&nbsp;like a conversation between the artist and the images that surface. Vignettes of colored pencil marks fashion themselves like words, ones that don&rsquo;t always make their way off the edges of his sketchbooks.

&quot;I was figuring out how to translate what I felt in a language that felt true and fluent. I&rsquo;ve always had problems with words and interacting in an &lsquo;orthodox&rsquo; manner. I could talk to the drawing and then talk to people through it.&quot;

When I ask him what&rsquo;s next for his practice, Mbye turns to the necessity of trusting&nbsp;one&rsquo;s self&nbsp;in the time of creation. A trust that he&rsquo;s building across media, with <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/5JVtTuCBPvUOTZ2YjrAPTp?si=h3qkmXetQBOPuxhpKDaAkg" target="_blank">several musical singles out</a> and an upcoming project he describes&nbsp;giddily&nbsp;as &quot;an overlapping body of work.&quot;

Drawing and music, he says, &quot;intersect in that I tried both traditionally, but that&rsquo;s never really been an option. I know that they&rsquo;re for me because I can be nothing but myself... How ideas develop in both [music and drawing] take parallel paths, in terms of timing. I might start a demo spur-of-the-moment, then return to refine it, giving it skin and blood and flesh and then I clothe it and ship it off.&quot;

Mbye makes sure to say that the task of trust isn&rsquo;t easy, or even concrete. &quot;It could be acceptance of myself, not holding back.&quot; But trust, he makes clear, is something worthy of practice, necessary for evolution.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1MzkwMDAx/full.jpg" />

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To see the artist&#39;s work and hear his music, check out his page on <a href="http://againstgiants.com/portfolio/papa-mbye/" target="_blank">Against Giants </a>and follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/papayoungvision/" target="_blank">@papayoungvision</a>&nbsp;and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/papambye_/" target="_blank">@papambye_</a>.&nbsp;

All images courtesy of the artist.

A profile of the visual artist and musician, who was a participant in the 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project

Papa Mbye: Drawing is an act of trust

&nbsp;

The 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project is drawing to a close this month.&nbsp;The Project&nbsp;collected 120 original works of art by 69&nbsp;local artists in five traveling sketchbooks over the course of a very challenging year, and now, after a successful Kickstarter campaign to produce a limited edition&nbsp;book and an awesome group exhibition at Gamut Gallery, the 2020 sketchbooks&nbsp;have one final hurrah: going up for auction. We&#39;ve teamed up with local auction house <a href="https://www.revereauctions.com" target="_blank">Revere Auctions</a>,&nbsp;who are hosting an online auction on May 22nd at noon CDT&nbsp;full of amazing art that will&nbsp;benefit&nbsp;several local causes and organizations. <a href="https://live.revereauctions.com/auctions/revere-auctions/community-benefit-auction-6464" target="_blank">You can start bidding now&nbsp;though</a>, and go see the books in person at Revere starting May 17th.

I sat down with co-owner Sean Blanchet to find out more about&nbsp;fine art auctions, how he got interested in what seems like such a rarefied world, and whether there&#39;s room for the rest of us to join in the fun.

__________

Russ White:&nbsp;&nbsp;When people think about the &ldquo;Art World,&rdquo; I think auctions often loom large in their imagination. We read headlines about these art objects selling for millions of dollars, and it helps feed into this sense that the art world is very distant, unattainable, and inaccessible. And part of that is that it&rsquo;s all happening far away,&nbsp;in New York or maybe in Europe somewhere, I don&rsquo;t know. &nbsp; &nbsp; 

As an artist here in Minneapolis, I have no connection to the world of auctions or the secondary market, and&nbsp;I was surprised to hear that we actually have an auction house here in the Twin Cities. I want to hear about Revere, but let&rsquo;s start with you: how did you get into the world of auctions? &nbsp; &nbsp;

Sean Blanchet: Well, it&#39;s interesting you bring up the market and New York and London;&nbsp;Paris, I think often comes to mind for people. Because that&#39;s definitely what kind of shaped a lot of my like early ideas about auction houses. &nbsp; &nbsp;

But also&nbsp;what shaped them for me were country auctions. When I was 16, my brother and I had an old beat-up station wagon, and we&nbsp;spent a lot of time driving out to country estate auctions, like out on the front porch. A&nbsp;lot of these estates had really amazing 18th century Pennsylvania painted furniture, along with folk art that was really incredible and super desirable, especially then. &nbsp; &nbsp;

And it was interesting, because those little auctions were actually the end of a very long chain of ownership for the objects that had started a few hundred years before when the person made it. For instance, there were blanket chests that were very profusely decorated with beautiful patterns and unicorns and mermaids but done in what would we consider now a &ldquo;naive&rdquo; style. These artists were carpenters by trade, and then they&#39;d taught themselves to paint, so what they&#39;re doing is like spectacular decorations without all the formal training that a lot of other artists are getting in Europe. &nbsp; &nbsp;

At any rate, these items started at these auctions, and then they trickle back to the big cities and the big galleries and the big auctions. ASo it&#39;s all part of this interesting food chain. And each time, people add a little scholarship, or they add a little knowledge and a little more context; they add a little more sizzle to the steak, if you will. &nbsp; &nbsp;

That lesson really helped me understand the role that industry professionals, especially dealers and auction houses, have &mdash; the way they provide access for people to the objects. I think a good auction house or a good dealer or gallerist is working really hard to help collectors and audiences understand the context of the artists and the makers, the aesthetics of their time period, and the quality of the items. &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1ODgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Artwork by Black Daze.

&nbsp;

RW: Are you a collector yourself? &nbsp; &nbsp;

SB: Yeah, it&rsquo;s a war between daycare bills and collecting. As an auctioneer, you become really aware of shifting trends. Certain categories or time periods or&nbsp;artists are really unpopular at the moment, and they become very cheap. So you can buy incredible examples, the best examples in that period and style, for less money. For instance, Japanese art of the 17th and 18th centuries has been quite down in the last twenty years, so you can buy exceptional examples of that now for very little money. Whereas if you&#39;re trying to buy, you know, mid-century art, good luck; you&#39;re competing with hedge fund billionaires. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Largely what&#39;s sold at auctions are the collections of estates and collectors, so you don&#39;t get to see exactly what you want to see every month, you just see what has come to market. So for me, it&#39;s almost like going to the beach, and seeing what washes up. What are the treasures that have arrived this month, right? &nbsp; &nbsp;

I&rsquo;ve talked a lot about older things so far, but there are also works by well known artists that are still working today. So there&rsquo;s a huge spectrum, and it&#39;s easy to escape your ruts of collecting and consumption and discover new things. &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW:&nbsp;And I imagine for the people attending and the people buying, everyone has their own approach to it, whether they are collectors or history buffs or maybe folks who are interested in investing in this like a market, buying low and selling high. Is there a typical kind of buyer&nbsp;in Minnesota? More broadly, who are the people that are coming to your auctions? &nbsp; &nbsp;

SB: It&rsquo;s a really great question. There&#39;s a real panoply of people that buy from us. I think that we&#39;re largely undiscovered, actually, within the Twin Cities, because 90% of what we sell leaves the state. We sell to a lot of galleries in New York, LA, London, and Europe in general.&nbsp;There&#39;s a really fascinating trend where people tend to buy art when they&#39;re traveling on vacation. Minnesota isn&rsquo;t as big a destination for vacation, particularly the Twin Cities, because I think a lot of people go on vacation up on the North Shore and other places. &nbsp; &nbsp;

So we get like all these people buying things abroad,&nbsp;they bring them back, and&nbsp;the things&nbsp;live in their house. Then&nbsp;people&nbsp;move, they go into assisted living, they pass away, or they just want to sell the things&nbsp;because they&#39;re bored of them.&nbsp;Then we sell them&nbsp;and they&nbsp;often go&nbsp;back to London or somewhere else. &nbsp; &nbsp;

I would encourage people to expand their concept of when they should be buying art, which&nbsp;seems like a simple thing. But a lot of the casual buyers, the ones who intend to pay the most for the artworks because they&#39;re not trying to make money on them in the short term &mdash; the collectors and the scholars &mdash; they should be looking close to home. &nbsp; &nbsp;

You can acquire so much more when you husband your resources a little bit, and focus on buying things and looking for things more opportunistically rather than within the narrow confines of a trip. &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Artwork by Papa Mbye.

&nbsp;

RW: For those who are interested in&nbsp;coming to Revere&nbsp;and starting to dip their toes into the world of auctions, what are the kinds of items that you offer? What are the price points that people could expect if they come to an auction? &nbsp; &nbsp;

SB: When I went to auctions as a kid, it was not like a pointed enterprise other than I wanted to buy things, and I really enjoyed it. But then as I got older, and I got more serious about being a professional in the industry, I would go for the educational value. I would look at every single object, and I would try to understand who is the buyer for it? What was its value? And what drove its value? And I learned the stories behind the objects&rsquo; history. &nbsp; &nbsp;

So I would encourage people who are not even buyers, who see themselves as museum-goers or who don&#39;t have the resources to buy, I would encourage them to still go to auctions and learn. And the secret there is that, inevitably, many auction houses will sell things within your price range, which could be under $100. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Sometimes, we&#39;ll get a whole estate and the people say, &ldquo;Well, you can take our Warhol, but you also have to sell the china.&rdquo; Okay, so we&#39;ll sell the china but we&#39;ll do it with no reserve, just starting at the bottom. I feel like the urgency of an auction is one of the things that really drives people&#39;s interest in it, because it&#39;s gonna happen on a specific day. So if the people don&#39;t show up with money, it could be your lucky day. It&#39;s a place where fascinating opportunities lie. &nbsp; &nbsp;

We also have a preview for every auction so you can come for usually the week before, and you can look at every single object, and you can touch it, and you can learn about it. I have a brilliant staff here that have all of our history backgrounds, and they&#39;re all really excited to &nbsp;share their knowledge of objects with people. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3ODIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Artwork by Jim Denomie.

&nbsp;

RW: Are the objects you handle primarily fine&nbsp;art and crafts? Or are you doing items like baseball cards&nbsp;and other collectibles? &nbsp; &nbsp;

SB: If it&#39;s a rare and valuable object, we&#39;ll sell it. And so that has taken the form of what we think of as &ldquo;collectible things,&rdquo; which is kind of a comical term, but we need something to call them. So trains and baseball cards and really rare coins fall in that category. Selling money is the easiest thing we do. And we sell a ton of oil paintings, lithographs, silkscreens, and things of that nature. A lot of bronze sculptures. &nbsp; &nbsp;

And then there&#39;s everything in between, like designer mid-century modern furniture, which is really interesting because a lot of those designers are household names. They&#39;re really not recognized in the same ways as artists, though. Because they&#39;re designers, they occupy a different space&nbsp;intellectually. &nbsp; &nbsp;

But that all kind of levels out in an auction. An Eames sofa can be right next to a painting, and then they can sell for the same amount of money. It helps you realize that these people were both striving to make a visual impact or a signal or message, and some of this furniture, you realize, is so far beyond utility. This is designed to be an artwork in and of itself. &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW: I wanted to end by talking about the MPLSART Sketchbooks that are coming up for auction at Revere soon, as part of a larger auction&nbsp;on May 22nd. These are the original five traveling sketchbooks, and they will be part of a community benefit auction, right? &nbsp; &nbsp;

SB: Yes, we are trying sort of a new concept: people are donating objects and choosing&nbsp;their own benefactors, essentially. So we&#39;re donating our abilities and resources as a conduit to the marketplace, and we&rsquo;re doing it all for free.&nbsp;It&rsquo;s going to give people the opportunity to turn their objects into money that they can then give to the nonprofit or charity of their choice, which I&#39;m excited about, because I&#39;ve never seen anyone that allowed that level of flexibility, and it acknowledges the real diversity of need and of organizations that are out there. &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzNzMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Some of the items that will be included in the&nbsp;May 22nd auction. Artist attributions, clockwise from top left: Kim Russell, Chuck Solberg, Bruce Tapola, Shephard Fairey, Pablo Picasso, and Frank Big Bear.

&nbsp;

These are collectors who really want to give and share. We have works by George Morrison, Alec Soth, Frank Big Bear, Rauschenberg, Picasso&hellip; And then the sketchbooks are just an astoundingly innovative idea, which I was really excited to participate in. Because I know a lot of the artists who are in there, I was pretty excited. I know that they&#39;re all really thrilled about participating in what has become a historically significant time capsule. &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW: It really is. The experience of flipping through the pages and seeing all these little original artworks is&nbsp;pretty&nbsp;mind-blowing. The breadth of expression, the breadth of experience, the fact that there are internationally renowned artists&nbsp;alongside young, emerging artists, and everyone in between,&nbsp;working in all different media. (<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/sketchbook/2020/artists" target="_blank">See the full list of participating artists here</a>.)&nbsp;Hats off to Blaine Garrett for being the genius to make this happen.&nbsp;

Do you have any expectations for how the sketchbooks&nbsp;will do at auction or what kind of bidders they might attract? &nbsp; &nbsp;

SB: That&#39;s one of the exciting things about it. A lot of people I&#39;ve talked to are interested in them. Sketchbooks are very popular in the marketplace. I think there will be institutional interests;&nbsp;I know there&#39;s collector interest. It&#39;s the kind of thing where I think that nobody should exclude themselves from bidding on them for any reason. &nbsp; &nbsp;

As I mentioned,&nbsp;there will be about a week-long preview period before the auction, starting May 17th. Check <a href="https://www.revereauctions.com/contact/" target="_blank">our website</a> and call to make an appointment, given the restrictions of COVID. There&#39;s also&nbsp;only a limited number of sketchbooks, and we want people to not feel rushed with them.&nbsp;We&#39;re spreading people out a little bit. And also, the books are&nbsp;incredibly precious. So we were keeping a close eye on them.

But it&#39;s a nice opportunity to experience them&nbsp;in person. There&#39;s at least one artist, no matter how well the books are reprinted, their work cannot be replicated; you have to see it in person. I don&rsquo;t want to give it away, so you should just come look for yourself.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

&nbsp;

<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3ODEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Artwork by Kristina Johnson.

Revere Auctions is located at 755 Prior Ave N in Saint Paul (in the same building as Can Can Wonderland). Their&nbsp;Community Benefit Auction will take place on May 22nd at 1pm EDT. All proceeds from the sale of the Sketchbooks will be divided among the participating artists. Proceeds from the sale of other lots will benefit various local organizations, including the Hmong Museum,&nbsp;MIGIZI, Juxtaposition Arts, the Minnesota African American History Museum and Gallery, and more.&nbsp;<a href="https://live.revereauctions.com/auctions/revere-auctions/community-benefit-auction-6464/catalog" target="_blank">Register and place bids at this link</a>, and <a href="https://www.revereauctions.com/contact/" target="_blank">schedule an appointment</a> to see the sketchbooks in person between May 17th and the 21st.

Based in Saint Paul, Revere will be auctioning off all five 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project books on May 22nd as part of a larger community benefit auction

Going Once, Going Twice: Q&A with Revere Auctions' Sean Blanchet

Reviews

&nbsp;

Have you ever visited a zoo on a hot, dull day? The animals are lazing about in their enclosures: a pride of lions lounges in the shade; an elephant lumbers lethargically across the dirt. A rhinoceros lays flopped on its side in the mud, flapping flies away from its haunches with a&nbsp;gray whip of a tail. You may pity them their captivity or begrudge them their mundane performance, but they don&rsquo;t care. They are unperturbed by your presence, bored as much by you as you are by them.

Step inside the pen, however, and the energy shifts. That&rsquo;s the vibe right now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where Nicole Havekost&rsquo;s monumental fabric creatures have taken over the U.S. Bank Gallery. There are eight of them, although it feels like more: large, lumpy figures &mdash; pear-shaped bodies with tubular limbs and impossibly long necks, sitting and sprawling and intertwining with each other on the gallery floor. Their skin is a hand-sewn patchwork of beige linen scrapped together with red stitching. Their wrists and necks terminate as flat caps: no heads, no hands, no feet. But still, they don&rsquo;t seem to mind. There may well have been violence committed, but any wounds have long since healed over. You walk among them, around them, sometimes underneath them, aware immediately that this is their space. Not because these monsters are aggressive or dangerous, but because they&rsquo;re at ease in the space, at ease with each other and with you in their midst. It feels like a family.

&ldquo;These are my ladyfriends,&rdquo; Havekost tells me. The sculptures are inspired, she says, by &ldquo;the ladies I know of a certain age&hellip; They&rsquo;re taking up space and not apologizing for it.&rdquo;

Before you get to them, however, you are greeted first by a large wall riddled with oversized, ruddy-colored pustules. It&rsquo;s acne on a macro scale, like some infestation of alien eggs, or barnacles growing on the bottom of a ship. Constructed out of paper sewing patterns, the sculptures immediately communicate a sense of organic menace, calling to mind the work of Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, and Louise Bourgeois. Interspersed among the mountain range of volcanic, puckered holes are tufts of loose thread, sticking out like so much untamed body hair.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5ODAwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxODMwMDAx/full.jpg" />

The show&rsquo;s title, Chthonic, references the unseen, the subterranean, the underbelly. Up close, the printed instructions of the sewing patterns show through the fleshy tones of the polyps, hinting at the structural nature of hidden labor &mdash; much of it performed by women &mdash; that undergirds so much of our polite society. Here, one explicit target is fashion, an industry that hides a multitude of sins, from the work done in factories across the world to the bodily blemishes that Havekost is airing on full display.

No surprise then, that the gentle giantesses in the larger gallery space aren&rsquo;t wearing a stitch. It&rsquo;s all &ldquo;pits, tits, crotches, and asses,&rdquo; Havekost says with a laugh. Moving through the doorway, you pass directly under one of the ladies, her arms and neck pushing against and disappearing into the wall above, almost as though she&rsquo;s holding the wall itself up. Her body is a roadmap of seams and darts, whipstitches standing in for scars and stretchmarks. Small black eyehooks &mdash; the kind you&rsquo;d find on a pair of dress slacks &mdash; swarm out of her armpits like a mass of ants, and her bosom, belly, and buttocks bulge with stuffing. Viewed from behind (and below), her lumpy backside stands as a striking rejoinder to Le Violin d&rsquo;Ingres, Man Ray&rsquo;s famous photograph of a woman&rsquo;s bare back perfectly painted with the stylized Fs of a classical instrument. These objects reject objectification, and as oversized and outlandish as they are, there is a familiarity, a reality, to these bodies.

&ldquo;I spent a whole lot of time in my life in opposition to my body, which doesn&rsquo;t do you any good,&rdquo; says Havekost. &ldquo;So to finally come around to acceptance of the body and the glory of it and what it can do is a real gift.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE3ODIwMDAx/full.jpg" />

This emphasis on what bodies can do is evident not just in the poses the sculptures hold but in their titles as well, many of them verbs: Settle, Lumber, Sway, Nourish. These are slow verbs, moments of subtle motion brought to life by Havekost&rsquo;s felt creatures. One stands mid-stride on all fours, her belly drooping towards the ground as her six-foot-long neck stretches out to sniff the floor. Another sits upright and armless, her elongated breasts resting on the ground, covered at the ends in more of the black eyehooks as though insects are swarming around her fat, felt nipples. The same infestation crawls out of the long crack of another sculpture&rsquo;s rear end as it lays splayed across the floor like that rhino at the zoo, lazily swatting away flies. You almost expect to see the artwork breathing.

The others &mdash; what&rsquo;s the right word for them? Are they humans? Are they creatures? They&rsquo;re closer to rag dolls really, but still they have an energy about them, an engagement. The installation is no mere diorama. The rest of them act out other moments: one has wrapped itself up in its own arms like a straitjacket; two more are playfully knotted together at the neck; and a final pair face each other directly, a stout child perhaps, peering up at its eight-breasted mother. It&rsquo;s a family frozen in time, like snapshots from a household, or maybe scenes from a bathhouse. Still though, the gallery feels like an enclosure. The metal door marked EXIT remains unconcealed at the back of the gallery, but they don&rsquo;t mind this either; none of them could fit through it anyway. Their beige color even matches the gallery walls, and when viewed across the entire space, they&rsquo;re almost camouflaged in spite of their size. Perhaps another nod to the way we erase the lives and work of women &mdash; especially, as the artist noted, those of a certain age. But this installation isn&rsquo;t exactly a protest or a sit-in. It&rsquo;s a sitting with. Sitting with our bodies, our burdens, our entanglements, our assumptions, and our infestations. You almost feel invited to sit down with them and take a load off yourself.

On your way back out, leaving the lionesses&rsquo; den, you pass the ruddy polyps one more time. Their menace has diminished somewhat, an underbelly&rsquo;s ugliness relegated to a fact of life by the ladies&rsquo; stoic good humor. Strength takes many forms at many scales, and likewise inspires action at many speeds. At a time that demands constant, immediate action (or, more often, reaction), Havekost provides a setting in which rest might be revolutionary. This is not a safe space, per se &mdash; we&rsquo;re well beyond the days of a depoliticized art museum &mdash; but these sculptures still make room for self-care and self-love. They are spooky and they are weird, but they are themselves. They stay and they sit, in community with each other, while you head back out into a world defined by isolation and inequity. It&rsquo;s hard to say which one is stranger.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1ODEwMDAx/full.jpg" />

Chthonic is on view in the US Bank Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Art&nbsp;through June 26th. Admission is free but <a href="https://ticket.artsmia.org/products/general-admission" target="_blank">ticketed</a>.

To view more of the artist&rsquo;s work, visit <a href="https://nikimade.com">https://nikimade.com</a> or follow her on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nikimade/">@nikimade</a>.

All images are courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The sculptor's MAEP show, on view through June 26th, celebrates the resilience of bodies and community with a dark, loving humor

Slow Verbs: Nicole Havekost’s "Chthonic" at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

&nbsp;

I took in some public art last week. It was on my way in to work, stopped at a red light at 26th &amp; Hiawatha alongside four lanes of traffic. And there it was, scrawled in aerosol across the side of a utility shed for all of us to see, black in all caps: ANOTHER COLD DAY IN HELL. &nbsp;

The artwork was plainly ominous &mdash; assertive and resigned all at once. There was menace, anger, and pain in the straightforward linework, most evident in the expressive flourishes of paint that terminated each letter of IN HELL. The final L ended with a derisive little lick, a quick whip of the rattlecan. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1ODUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Artist unknown.

And it was a cold day that morning, as April can be here in &ldquo;the North.&rdquo; The trial of Derek Chauvin was just days away from ending, submitting for public record the murder of a man a thousand times over. And Daunte Wright&rsquo;s cruel killing was fresh in our hearts, another entry on a list of names that spans decades and a list of souls that spans centuries.

The next day I helped a friend board up their storefront for the second time, piecing back together a jigsaw puzzle of beautiful, plaintive murals from last summer&rsquo;s uprising: Justice for George. Black Lives Matter. We Are Minneapolis. On my way home, through a city patchworked with plywood and lousy with stormtroopers, I passed by the utility shed again. The message had been scrubbed away.

It&rsquo;s a funny detail of urban aesthetics, the slapdash cover-ups concealing a city&#39;s tags and&nbsp;murals. They&rsquo;re everywhere, once you start looking: walls and bridges, columns and underpasses, all blotted with squares of flat, flavorless paint. It&#39;s like some kind of&nbsp;Brutalist Expressionism, a&nbsp;concrete landscape of camouflaged abstractions &mdash; knock-off Paul Klees made at random by city workers, none of whom seem to carry around the same bucket of paint. It&#39;s all different shades of bland.&nbsp;Erasing&nbsp;the words and art of our vandals and activists, they checker the town&nbsp;in beiges and creams and grays. Neutrals. The colors of caucasity, you might say. What better visualization of Minnesota Nice could there be?

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzNjYwMDAx/full.jpg" />

Much of the public artwork from last summer has disappeared from daily view, some of it likely recycled&nbsp;or discarded, but it hasn&#39;t all been erased. Thankfully, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/memorializethemovement/" target="_blank">Memorialize the Movement</a> and the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery have saved some 200 plywood murals, which <a href="https://www.memorializethemovement.com/2021-exhibition" target="_blank">will go on view May 21-23</a> in Phelps Field Park near George Floyd Square. Another endeavor is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/urbanartmapping/" target="_blank">Urban Art Mapping</a>, a crowdsourced catalog of anti-racist public art&nbsp;run by a team from&nbsp;the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas. They have sought to document street art&nbsp;from across the world, logging everything from&nbsp;<a href="https://georgefloydstreetart.omeka.net/items/show/1852" target="_blank">dumpsters tagged with ACAB</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;portraits of George Floyd painted as far away as&nbsp;<a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/53077/archive/files/6dcdabb7e15a8ea72609b02dcea97251.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&amp;Expires=1620259200&amp;Signature=uw0joOtbUtXnBhH%2BK%2BtqzBEIPYs%3D" target="_blank">Syria</a>&nbsp;and <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/53077/archive/files/5e6c403cfb5f5388b950dd175d1586a0.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&amp;Expires=1620259200&amp;Signature=S263p7PEXKX%2F4jh9pfwt5AHBPjQ%3D" target="_blank">Kenya</a>. It&#39;s astounding and important work, especially given how short our memories can be.

Back in Minneapolis, I kept thinking about that phrase: another&nbsp;cold day in Hell. The artwork was gone, but the phrase&nbsp;stuck with me. (And last I checked, another iteration survives on the side of an&nbsp;overpass a few blocks up). Normally it&rsquo;s a prediction of pessimistic implausibility: &ldquo;It&#39;ll be a cold day in Hell before that happens&rdquo; goes the saying. I wondered if the artist would scoff at reading their words with a glimmer of optimism.&nbsp;Whether&nbsp;we could think of this past Tuesday as just such a day, when Hell froze over, when accountability was demanded and, for once, supplied. Of course, in Dante&rsquo;s Inferno, the ninth circle is frozen over, and the devil&nbsp;is trapped for eternity in ice of his own making. The metaphors are all there, right down to the name: Daunte.

We&#39;re&nbsp;all trapped, frozen in this heartless cycle of&nbsp;white supremacy and a&nbsp;truly criminal&nbsp;justice system.&nbsp;Maybe what we need is a thaw, and&nbsp;Tuesday brought&nbsp;three loud cracks in the ice. Guilty; guilty; guilty. But this ice is thick. It was a heartbreaking kind of relief to feel, at the expense of so much pain. It resounded&nbsp;across the country surely, but most of all here. This place is finally seeing those&nbsp;layers of beige paint peeling and sloughing off of its walls, and what&rsquo;s underneath is not so Nice. Our systems are corroded, our police irredeemable, our leaders... up for election. But our people? Well, peoples is peoples.&nbsp;I still think of myself as new here so maybe I&rsquo;ve got it all wrong, but to me, this is a town full of artists and organizers,&nbsp;poets and patrons, dancers and&nbsp;chaplains and weirdos with big hearts. You can see it in the streets, in the Square, at the Blue Barn in Brooklyn Center, and even on social media, where&nbsp;mutual aid efforts are going strong.&nbsp;Stories announcing&nbsp;&ldquo;Need Met&rdquo; are not uncommon, at least for the moment.

Still, there are so many needs, and still, too many cans of paint. Too many cops, too many thieves, too many desperate neighbors. It&rsquo;s still cold, but summer is coming, whatever that&nbsp;may bring. The last one brought heat, and this one may as well. We&#39;ll see.&nbsp;Until then and beyond it, we have each other to keep warm. ◼︎

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzNjYwMDAy/full.jpg" />

If you feel compelled to invest your time, talent, or treasure back into community, here are some current&nbsp;opportunities:

<ul>
	<li><a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/dauntewright?qid=9f8680ea56fc5086818598637ddd3898" target="_blank">Daunte&nbsp;Wright Sr Memorial Fund</a></li>
	<li><a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/brooklyn-center-mutual-aid-support-our-community" target="_blank">Brooklyn Center Mutual Aid Fund</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.gofundme.com/f/brooklyn-center-school-dist-students-and-families" target="_blank">Brooklyn Center Schools Food Drive</a>&nbsp;-&nbsp;Ends 4/23&nbsp;-&nbsp;Volunteers still needed for Friday&nbsp;(<a href="http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0c4aa9a722abfec07-blue">signup</a>)</li>
	<li><a href="https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60b094ca9af2aabfd0-capi" target="_blank">Cross of Glory Lutheran Church Food Drive</a>&nbsp;- Volunteers still needed for Friday</li>
	<li>See&nbsp;<a href="https://twin-cities-mutual-aid.org" target="_blank">https://twin-cities-mutual-aid.org</a>&nbsp;for ongoing opportunities</li>
</ul>

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

On buckets of beige, the soul of a city, and a chance encounter with some good graffiti

A Hard Thaw

&nbsp;

No matter the climate, one of the most common threads to be found among the many paintings of Flahn Manly is warmth. Through largely representational works, Flahn transforms how viewers interpret Black life, electrifying forms and faces with shine and depth. And upon learning more about what it is that leads him through his art-making process, Flahn&rsquo;s decisions around warmth make more and more sense. He discusses a campaign he completed on Black nobility, focusing on the humility that the discipline of painting requires of him.

&ldquo;One of the challenges I find is dealing with resistance in getting started. [Sometimes] it&rsquo;s not what&rsquo;s coming through, it&rsquo;s about getting into the canvas. Eventually I surrender. And sometimes something will come through me and what emerges is a completely different piece&hellip; Ego will say you want to be in control of the work, rather than letting it work through you.&quot;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ3NzUwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1ODQwMDAx/full.jpg" />

Though he doesn&rsquo;t say it outright, it is this same &ldquo;surrender&rdquo; Flahn describes that is perhaps a lesson in nobility itself.

Born in Liberia, Flahn moved to Minnesota in 1998.&nbsp;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been an artist since childhood,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;Art was the way Flahn learned to express himself. &ldquo;And now, it&rsquo;s my life.&rdquo; &nbsp;

As the child of immigrants, he says, the occupational industry of art-making wasn&rsquo;t always an option in his home. &ldquo;It was a no no.&quot; But as he moved through high school, he found artistry to be his saving grace.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s how I learned. I loved science, I loved history, language. I was also always kinesthetic, always hands-on&hellip; Drawing and painting were ways for me to have all of those things&rdquo;. &nbsp;

Now, splitting his time between Connecticut and Minneapolis, Flahn is focusing on paying the solace that he found forward. Having run a pilot program with the Boys and Girls Club to have kids come to the studio and paint with him, Flahn tells me, &ldquo;If art could save my life, how many others could I help?&rdquo;&nbsp;&diams;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5OTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NzYwMDAy/full.jpg" />All images courtesy of the artist.&nbsp;To see more of the artist&#39;s work, follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/flahn.art/" target="_blank">@flahn.art</a>.&nbsp;

A participant in our 2020 Sketchbook Project, the painter reflects on the power of art in his life.

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Inside The Vibrant Representational Work of Flahn Manly

&nbsp;

Sculptor Betsy Alwin didn&rsquo;t have too hard of a time adapting her work to the 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project &ndash; drawing has always been an important part of her practice.&nbsp;

Before diving in to the third dimension, she often sketches out new work. It&rsquo;s a way to let her imagination run wild, and then map out and adjust for the laws of physics. Alwin went to school for illustration before falling in love with sculpture in a required class. One of the things that drew her in was the physicality &ndash; moving around as she worked, creating new forms. After graduation, this movement was somewhat limited by a cramped apartment in New York City.

Some of her first works after college were illustrations made out of fishing line, something she could work with easily in a small room. Although they resembled line drawings, Alwin then hung them in space &ndash; giving a three-dimensional quality when viewed from the right angle. &nbsp;

&ldquo;Creating those was very meditative,&rdquo; she recalled. &ldquo;I had just moved to the city. September 11th had just happened, and I was really discombobulated.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5OTIwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1ODMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Lightness of Being; porcelain, flocked rebar, wood, and cast polyurethane foam;&nbsp;38&nbsp;x 24&nbsp;x 18&rdquo;; 2018. Bottom: Caught In The Cycle; earthenware, flocked rebar, wood;&nbsp;36&nbsp;x 24&nbsp;x 8.5&quot;; 2017.

While Alwin now typically works on a larger scale, she still enjoys playing with the everyday &ndash; often using rebar, bending it to form an organic line or covering it in fur-like flocking.&nbsp;

&ldquo;What happens is the form becomes really visible, and that&rsquo;s what I like about those material transformations,&rdquo; said Alwin. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about taking things that are easily dismissed and having them get a new life and meaning.&rdquo;

While she&rsquo;s not necessarily trying to invert how we think about rebar, she hopes viewers will take in the texture and composition of her forms to recognize something about themselves &ndash; a body looking at a body.

One of Alwin&rsquo;s pieces for the Sketchbook Project closely resembles a process drawing, giving a glimpse into her life as a sculptor. She added that it&rsquo;s been an adjustment for her this past year not being able to get inspiration from gallery openings and live events,&nbsp;making the Sketchbook Project an interesting way to communicate with fellow artists.

&ldquo;I really admire all of the people that are involved,&rdquo; said Alwin. &ldquo;It feels great to reconnect with the community in this way, and I&rsquo;m so excited to see what everyone else does.&rdquo;&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">&diams;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1MzMwMDAx/full.jpg" />One of the artist&#39;s pages in the 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ3NzMwMDAx/full.jpg" />

To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit&nbsp;<a href="http://www.betsyalwin.com" target="_blank">betsyalwin.com</a>&nbsp;or follow her on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/betsyalwin/" target="_blank">@betsyalwin</a>. 

All images courtesy of the artist. Banner image: Uplift (detail); porcelain, flocked rebar, and painted polyurethane foam;&nbsp;45&nbsp;x 38&nbsp;x 12&rdquo;; 2018.

A participant in our 2020 Sketchbook Project, the sculptor discusses her path and vision as an artist, plus finding inspiration in this communal initiative. 

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