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

MPLSART Sketchbook Project

&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. 

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Betsy Alwin

As a teenager in Malaysia, Kar-Keat Chong spent long days outside sketching the architecture in George Town &ndash; learning to draw through his high school art society and weekend lessons. Twenty years later, after focusing on his studies and career as an architect, he&rsquo;s once again finding time for his childhood passion.&nbsp;

Now&nbsp;he&rsquo;s exploring the nooks and crannies of the Twin Cities,&nbsp;drawn especially to industrial relics and how historic buildings shape urban landscapes. And since 2017, he&rsquo;s also been involved with the local chapter of <a href="http://www.urbansketchers.org/" target="_blank">Urban Sketchers</a>, an international nonprofit for artists who meet together to sketch on location.&nbsp;

&ldquo;A good friend of mine from my hometown had started a chapter in Penang, and he&rsquo;s well connected with the Urban Sketchers global group,&rdquo; says&nbsp;Chong. &ldquo;He came here and spent a few days with me, and he really encouraged me to get back into painting and sketching.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUzNzUwMDAx/full.jpg" />

Chong&rsquo;s father-in-law, fellow watercolor artist <a href="http://www.chengkheechee.com" target="_blank">Cheng-Khee Chee</a>, also inspired him to continue his artistic practice outside of architecture. Chong always follows Chee&rsquo;s advice to elevate his works through dynamic compositions that capture the viewer&rsquo;s eye.&nbsp;

&ldquo;When I&rsquo;m out doing plein air painting, it&rsquo;s an information gathering session. I&rsquo;m trying to capture the feeling and the energy that I&rsquo;m experiencing &ndash; the light quality, the activities around me, the people,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;Back in the studio, that&rsquo;s when I start to experiment, analyze the information and compose a finished piece.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3vFbVRuVM]

&nbsp;

For the 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project, Chong wanted to include work that felt true to his interests as an artist. One watercolor sketch, of the modern Walker Art Center with the Basilica of St. Mary in the background, shows architecture through the years &ndash; how buildings age and contribute to a place over time, which resonates with his background&nbsp;as an architect.&nbsp;

There&rsquo;s also a depiction of Mill Ruins Park &ndash; one of the first places Chong sketched on location after returning to drawing and painting in 2017.

&ldquo;A friend and I were trying to find places to draw one Saturday morning in July, and just decided to sit on the Stone Arch Bridge and draw this view of the city. We were a little uncomfortable, because there were so many passersby &ndash; but we put our heads down and started drawing,&rdquo; Chong laughs. &ldquo;After a while, I got used to it again.&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/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5NjkwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1NzkwMDAx/full.jpg" />

&nbsp;

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZvPH9Aopz0]

&nbsp;

To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://kar-keat.com" target="_blank">kar-keat.com</a> or follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/karkeatchong/" target="_blank">@karkeatchong</a>.

All images courtesy of the artist. Banner image: Mill Ruins Park No. 1 (detail), ink and watercolor, 2017.

The local artist, architect, and Urban Sketcher discusses the intersection of his interests and exploring the Twin Cities through plein air painting.  

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Kar-Keat Chong

&nbsp;

Lizardman (Matt Wells) is an artist, illustrator, muralist, and co-founder of Minneapolis based collective Rogue Citizen. He&#39;s produced work for the music industry, craft brewing, performing arts, organized labor, and justice movements.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NTUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Astro&nbsp;Chimp,&nbsp;Lizardman/Blaster&nbsp;collab, Montana spray paint, approx 20ft tall, 2018, NE&nbsp;Mpls

&nbsp;

Blaine Garrett: As one of the founding members of Rogue Citizen, can you talk a bit about what the group is and how it got started?

Matt Wells: Rogue Citizen is an art gang that started in Minneapolis when the original four of us were museum security guards in 2009. We were in our 20s and pretty frustrated with not being able to make the work we wanted to, not committing enough time to it. We just needed something to do. So at first it was a lot of scheming and sticker bombing, some sneaking around. We started doing live painting at our friends&rsquo; punk and hip hop shows. We won a small cash grant for a recycled materials art project that set us up with a lot of paint and beer. Pretty soon we were getting invited to paint walls, and lined up a string of gallery exhibitions. One of those early ones was &quot;Execute Rogue Citizen&quot;&nbsp;&mdash; on the closing night all unsold work was destroyed with an axe.&nbsp;

How has Rogue Citizen changed over the years?&nbsp;

After years of commissions and paid projects the money was getting kind of messy, floating around between personal accounts and sock drawers. Which is a good problem to have, I guess, but we created an LLC and got a bank account. What started out as kind of a weird sideshow became a real part of our careers.&nbsp; 
RC works like a band sometimes, we&rsquo;re working collaboratively on walls, on stage, etc. Or it can work like a record label, like putting our resources into making a solo exhibition happen for one of us. There&rsquo;s six artists now: Blaster, Dalsen, Goat, MG, Ugaso, and myself. It&rsquo;s helped us all develop a lot as artists and educators in ways I&rsquo;m still trying to wrap my head around. I have no clue what I&rsquo;d be doing right now if Rogue Citizen never happened.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji-e0-EPaqw]

&nbsp;

Unions have been a hot topic this year. Rogue Citizen has done a lot of projects supporting labor movements over the years. How did this become an aspect of your work?

As museum guards we were members of SEIU Local 26, and in 2011-12 we started working with the union to create a lot of signage, banners, and graphic design around labor issues locally and nationally. We made materials that were featured in Washington DC during Occupy Wall Street, labor convention murals in Denver, and over the years a ton of illustration work for labor &amp; justice campaigns across the country. We recently got to create a permanent mural on the AFL-CIO labor pavilion at the MN State Fair, I&rsquo;m really proud of that one. 
I think a lot of those relationships and what we like to do kind of coalesced in a show a few years ago called Minimum Wage, where each of us made over 40 one-hour paintings, each one name-your-price for at least federal minimum wage, which was and still is $7.25/h. All proceeds went to low-wage worker centers in Minnesota. That happened with support from the unions, Arts &amp; Democracy Project, 15Now, and Gamut Gallery &mdash; at a moment when we were trying to get the actual minimum wage raised in Minneapolis.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxNjAwMDAx/full.jpg" /> 
Labor Pavilion mural,&nbsp;Rogue Citizen collaborative, Montana spray paint,&nbsp;approx 13&nbsp;x 50&#39;.&nbsp; MN State Fairgrounds

&nbsp;

Do you think working collaboratively has helped you grow as an artist more than you would have individually?

Absolutely. Everyone in Rogue Citizen comes from different art &amp; academic backgrounds. You learn how to be patient and listen real quick, you&rsquo;re forced to work with colors, compositions and textures you normally wouldn&rsquo;t. We only had one rule when we started collaborating on canvases &mdash; nothing&rsquo;s sacred. The end is all that matters, so if the consensus was some element gets painted over or sanded out, that&rsquo;s what happened. I&rsquo;ve gotten better at embracing that idea in my own work. And I&rsquo;ve gained a lot of technical skills from working with the group: spray paint, light construction, art installation.&nbsp;

Collaboration can be difficult for artists. Was that hard for you to get into? Do you have any advice for young artists who might want to work collaboratively in the way Rogue Citizen does?

Crew up or screw up. Even really ambitious solo artists don&rsquo;t succeed in a vacuum. Everyone needs support, and if artistic collaboration is a real priority, drop your ego at the door and figure out what works, so you&rsquo;re also in a position to offer support. And if you find yourself making rent money from it, LLC up. Being a business is a pain in the ass but totally worth it.&nbsp;

You do a lot of murals. Can you reflect a bit on the nuance between public art and other aspects of your practice?

Murals can be so big and tangible, and have a life of their own in a way that paintings or digital work often can&rsquo;t. Something that can help characterize a city block or a whole neighborhood. I&rsquo;m not sure I&rsquo;ve worked on anything that&rsquo;s really done that, but it&rsquo;s an amazing idea. Even though you may have gotten paid for it, and someone technically owns the building, once it&rsquo;s up nobody can really &ldquo;own&rdquo; a mural or take it with them. Unless you&rsquo;re famous and they carve up the wall to auction it off, I guess. People are the worst.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzNzAwMDAx/full.jpg" />&nbsp;Empires Rise, Rogue Citizen collaborative, paint on canvas, 12 x 9&#39;, 2013, on display at Modist Brewing Co.

&nbsp;

What was the best advice given to you as an artist?

When I was in school a visiting illustrator explained that there were three things to keep in mind in order to be successful: 1) make quality work, 2) meet deadlines, and 3) get along with your art director. But the catch is, he said, you only need to do any two out of the three, doesn&rsquo;t matter which two. I thought that was really strange at the time, but now I think it explains so much, and not just in commercial art. 
How have the events of the last year affected your work?

2020 was tragic and transformative, and frustrating and just such a clusterfuck. I was the lead on a massive RC project going into February, and broke my leg a couple days before we were scheduled to begin. The rest of the crew, along with WUNDR and Jessica Barnds, perfectly finished that enormous interior mural (at Minnesota&rsquo;s Largest Candy Store) right as we got into pandemic lockdown at the end of March. To eat up time and stay sane, I started posting daily 8x8&rdquo; paintings, which I&rsquo;m still making when I can.&nbsp;

The killing of George Floyd and the uprising shook the world, and it&rsquo;s still shaking. I&rsquo;ve made public art around it just like a lot of other people, but I&rsquo;ve been inspired by what Andres Guzman, DAESK, Reggie LaFlore, Leslie Barlow, and others have made, and what groups like Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block have been working toward. Black lives must matter, policing must be reimagined, and our justice system must be rebuilt.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE3NzEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Shining Moral Trickle on the Hill,&nbsp;Lizardman, paint on panel, 24 x 8&quot;, 2020.&nbsp;

 
What, if anything, do you hope the audience takes away from your work?

My work in the Sketchbook Project, and in the Gamut Gallery exhibition, for me is about process, and tension, and it&rsquo;s some kind of muddled science fiction fever dream, maybe.&nbsp; 
Unlike illustration, which is usually trying to communicate a particular message or feeling, my personal &ldquo;fine art&rdquo; work is still developing. I hope the audience sees that I take my craft seriously and I&rsquo;m learning.

By the time this gets published, Minnesota will be lifting further Covid-19 restrictions on occupancy, etc. What is something you are really looking forward to?

I&rsquo;m looking forward to traveling more often for work, and visiting family. Traveling for any reason, really.&nbsp; After I get a shot or two in the arm I&rsquo;m really looking forward to sitting at a lunch counter, and meeting friends at a bar.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxODAwMDAx/full.jpg" />Vulgarian Impeacher,&nbsp;Lizardman, paint on panel, 30 x 24&quot;, 2019

 
The 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project had a big impact for a lot of artists. What was your experience working on the project? Do you have any suggestions for artists interested in participating in the 2021 Sketchbook Project?

It was awesome being one of the last artists to work in the sketchbook I was in because I got to see what everybody else had done. There are some great artists in that one, like Jennifer Davis for instance, so I felt motivated to make something cool and worthy.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE3NzMwMDAx/full.jpg" /> 
Lizardman&#39;s pages from the 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project

 
How can people best support you and your work right now? 
A lot of my work can be seen at <a href="http://www.lizardmanart.com/" target="_blank">lizardmanart.com</a> / IG <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lizardman_rc/" target="_blank">@lizardman_rc</a> . Also my crew Rogue Citizen at <a href="http://www.roguecitizen.com/" target="_blank">roguecitizen.com</a> / IG <a href="https://www.instagram.com/rogue_citizen/" target="_blank">@rogue_citizen</a> .&nbsp; Commissions are open, no wall is too big, no canvas too small. 
Thank you so much for your time and contributing your work to the MPLSART 2020 Sketchbook project. I&rsquo;m really looking forward to seeing what you do next.&nbsp;

Thanks for having me on board for this round. I hope this project keeps rolling.&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;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxNzMwMDAx/full.jpg" /> 
Lizardman.&nbsp;Image courtesy of the artist.

Muralist, illustrator, Rogue Citizen co-founder, and 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project contributor Lizardman talks collaboration, labor movements, public art, and more. 

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A With Lizardman of Rogue Citizen

&nbsp;

Gordon Coons (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa and Ottawa/Potawatomi from Michigan) is a painter, printmaker, and cedar smoke artist. Largely self-taught, he paints in the Ojibwa Woodland style and creates smoke art by burning cedar. He embellishes some of his cedar smoke pieces with 24-karat gold leaf to represent Grandfather in the Ojibwa culture. He also prints with linoleum block.&nbsp;

Coons draws inspiration from his Anishinaabe heritage, and his bright color palette comes from his natural surroundings in the Great Lakes region. &ldquo;I also enjoy incorporating playfulness in my images, telling stories of relationships between Western and Native cultures, and the connection we have to our shared historical events,&rdquo; he says in his artist statement. 

Coons exhibits nationally, and his work is in permanent collections across the country. He regularly shows and wins awards at annual Native American art markets across the country.&nbsp;He also curates exhibits of Native artists.&nbsp;Some of the venues include the Ordway, St. Paul, MN; Dakota Discovery Museum, Mitchell SD; Bald Eagle Days, OCCA EXPO CENTER, Quad Cities, Rock Island, IL; and many other venues.&nbsp;Coons&#39;s&nbsp;artwork has been used to support Native businesses, and he also participates in a variety of Native art educational programs in museums, schools, and art festivals.&nbsp;Find more at <a href="https://gordoncoons.com" target="_blank">gordoncoons.com</a>.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxODQwMDAx/full.jpg" />Madeline Island, acrylic on canvas, 36&quot;&nbsp;x 36&quot;

MPLSART:&nbsp;How did you become interested in art? What were some of your early influences?

Gordon Coons:&nbsp; I always created some form of art; I just did not know it was called art.&nbsp; In the native culture, it was something we always did, whether the art was considered a craft or what is now known as art.

In the Ojibwa culture, we grew up with art all around us. Art could be seen on the regalia at our powwows with beading designs, on painted leather works, and vendor stalls at powwows.&nbsp; We shared our art with relatives and visitors.&nbsp; &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5NjYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Man Transferring into Healer (No. 2),&nbsp;oil on canvas,&nbsp;30 x 24&quot;

How did you get involved in the Sketchbook Project? Did it impact or otherwise fit into your pandemic art practice?

I was contacted by Blaine Garrett about participation in the Sketchbook Project. I was honored to be part of this collaboration. It was great to be selected to be included in this fabulous Sketchbook Project with these outstanding artists.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ3NjkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Dancing with Raven Spirit, charcoal on paper,&nbsp;24&nbsp;x 22&quot;

Once the pandemic is over and it&#39;s safe to venture out once again, what is something you are looking forward to?

The pandemic has kept me locked up in my studio. I miss the opportunity to travel to Native art venues and visit old friends and start engaging patrons again. &nbsp;

I am currently waiting on the season schedule of Native art festivals and I&rsquo;m looking forward to the confirmation of my late summer/fall 2021 scheduled for&nbsp;Santa Fe Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico; The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in southern Colorado; The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area in St. Paul; and the Minneapolis Central Library in downtown Minneapolis, MN.

How can people support you and your work?

Currently, I receive my support through my web site <a href="http://www.gordoncoons.com" target="_blank">www.gordoncoons.com</a>&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/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1ODEwMDAx/full.jpg" />

Makwa / Bear, acrylic on&nbsp;canvas, 20&nbsp;x 30&quot;

Banner image: Native Son (detail), block print, edition of 25, 18 x 18&quot;

The local painter and printmaker (and contributor to the 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project) catches us up on his work, his processes, and where he's showing next

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Gordon Coons

&nbsp;

allison anne (they/them) is a Minneapolis-based collagist, mail artist, zinemaker, and graphic designer. Their practice of&nbsp;self-directed experimentation with many traditional and digital media&nbsp;is influenced by an education in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, where they received a Bachelor of Arts degree that also focused on Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. allison&rsquo;s myriad of interests and background create a personal perspective often expressed through recycled, found, and reclaimed materials. They are an active member of the <a href="http://www.iuoma.org/" target="_blank">International Union of Mail-Artists</a>&nbsp;and a founding member of <a href="https://twincitiescollagecollective.com/" target="_blank">Twin Cities Collage Collective</a>, a group which endeavors to expand access to and interest in collage in Minneapolis-Saint Paul and beyond. 
 
allison&rsquo;s focus on analog paper collage is a constantly evolving exploration of personal experiences through the reconstitution and rearranging of various printed media and ephemera. By recontexualizing images and materials, the artist creates complex, textural, and&nbsp;intuitive abstractions&nbsp;and configurations that consciously engage with themes of identity, physical self, and gender as they relate to the personal, the political, and the sociocultural. Prioritizing sustainability and that which is left behind, allison frequently works with rescued, found or recycled materials, using collage and correspondence art as ways to explore the intersections and interactions between context, materiality, and creativity.

&nbsp;

<div><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzNjMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Structural Colour,&nbsp;paper collage, 8.5&quot;x11&quot;, 2020</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>Blaine Garrett:&nbsp;How did you become interested in art? What were some of your early influences? 
 
allison anne: At the risk of sounding clich&eacute;, it&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;ve always been interested in. My mom has a significant arts background, having taught art classes before moving towards elementary education. I had a lot of exposure to various things through her college art history textbooks and the variety of materials found in my basement growing up. I also spent a lot of time at various museums with my dad while growing up, and started to form fairly strong opinions about various types of art early on. Most of those opinions have since evolved, but it is pretty neat to have vivid memories of seeing things like Claes Oldenburg soft sculptures at the Walker Art Center as a kid, and the opportunity to revisit those again throughout my life. I loved to draw and experiment with paper and recycled household materials to make different things as a young kid. I was fascinated by picture book illustration (Trina Schart Hyman and Leo &amp; Diane Dillon come to mind), cat illustrations by Louis Wain and Edward Gorey, that kind of thing. I wanted to illustrate books too, but in the end, that didn&rsquo;t really end up sticking with me.&nbsp;The earliest collages I can remember being interested in was the sleeve for The Smashing Pumpkins&rsquo; album &ldquo;Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness&rdquo; with it&rsquo;s surreal, detailed Victorian ephemera-based collages by John Craig, but I don&rsquo;t think I put much stock in collage as a medium overall until I was older.</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div> 
As a founding member of the Twin Cities Collage Collective, could you tell us about the group and&nbsp;what they&#39;ve been up to? 
 
Twin Cities Collage Collective is a group of collage artists based in Minneapolis/St. Paul that formed in late 2018. Currently, we have eight members, and before the pandemic, were primarily focused on creating in-person opportunities for anyone interested in the medium of collage to experiment with it and connect with others. As our mission states, we strive to provide an inclusive, safe space to support one another and bring attention to collage as an art form. We aim to provide a forum to share ideas, techniques, and our work, and intend to be a positive force in the world of collage, its history, and cultivation. We took a bit of a hiatus during the pandemic, but are gearing up again. Recently, we started re-posting work from the global collage community on Instagram (use <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/twincitiescollagecollective/?hl=en" target="_blank">#twincitiescollagecollective</a> if you&rsquo;d like to participate) and have a few other announcements coming soon, such as a Discord server and a World Collage Day project. Check out <a href="https://www.instagram.com/twincitiescollagecollective/?hl=en" target="_blank">@twincitiescollagecollective</a> on Instagram or&nbsp; <a href="https://twincitiescollagecollective.com/" target="_blank">twincitiescollagecollective.com</a> to keep up with us.</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUzNzQwMDAy/full.jpg" />Ascend, paper collage, 8.5&quot;x11&quot;, 2020</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>
Where do you source your materials from? 
 
All over the place, ha! Pre-pandemic, a lot of my material came from thrift stores, garage sales and other secondhand sources. I&rsquo;ve always enjoyed that kind of search for odd treasure. Something I love about collage is that it only gets better and better with community in every way imaginable. Sharing or trading materials with other artists via mail, swapping, and very thoughtful and generous donations from folks in the community. Folks will contact me about various books, paper, or ephemera that they are offloading to see if I want to take it, which is especially helpful as Twin Cities Collage Collective aims to provide collage material at our (pre-pandemic) meetups to address the potential barrier of collage material acquisition as a challenge to getting involved with the medium. We&rsquo;re currently working on some other ways to redistribute material into the community, so stay tuned. When I worked on my pieces for the sketchbook project, I used some materials that you had previously passed to me in the piece Drill 2. That&rsquo;s another element of collage that I love:&nbsp;the layering of experiences, of memory and community.

 
There&rsquo;s been a lot of attention on mail art during the pandemic. Why do you think that is?

Two main things come to mind. First, it prioritizes connection regardless of distance, and it thrives outside of institutions like galleries or museums. Mail art has always pushed back against that kind of structure, and is highly community-centric. There is also an intimacy or care present in correspondence and/or mail art that other manners of modern communication lack. There&rsquo;s an investment of time, of intention. And while there&rsquo;s plenty of exchanging with complete strangers in the mail art community, I&rsquo;ve always been struck by the extension of creativity and care present in it.&nbsp;

When I discovered mail art as a community and practice beyond making weird correspondence for friends, I was experiencing a lot of isolation resulting from an abusive relationship. Mail art felt expansive in expression and communication, something that was beyond the surveillance and control of my then-partner, and that experience solidified my personal feelings about the medium and community as a site of significant personal and creative connection. It&rsquo;s really great that others have found ways to get involved with it during the pandemic, and are using it to explore new ideas and connections outside more &lsquo;traditional&rsquo; venues for sharing artwork.&nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5ODcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Mail art postcards: Compartment 2 (front) &amp; Compartment 3 (back)&nbsp;Walls, collage,&nbsp;d&eacute;collage,&nbsp;and vintage carbon transfer on recycled paperboard, approx 6&quot;x4&quot;, 2021

 
Collage has been gaining a lot of visibility these last few years. There are several collage artists in the sketchbook project. Do you see the medium becoming more accepted by the world of fine art?

This is an interesting question, and the short answer is yes, but there are so many layers to it. Historically, collage and photomontage have not been seen as an especially &quot;fine&quot;&nbsp;art, but it&rsquo;s dependent on the context of what&rsquo;s being discussed, and how fine art is being defined. Collage has certainly risen in visibility, and it does seem like there is a wider interest in it from galleries and publications these days. Collagists are good at creating their own spaces for their art, too. There&#39;s so much community, and various collage groups that exist all over the world. The medium lends itself well to self-publishing in zine and book format, and there are many publications that are exploring it, such as <a href="https://www.cutmeupmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Cut Me Up Magazine</a>, <a href="https://www.plastikcombmag.com/" target="_blank">Plastik Comb Magazine</a>, <a href="https://oltrecollage.bigcartel.com/" target="_blank">Oltre Collage Fanzine</a>, and <a href="http://kolajmagazine.com/content/" target="_blank">Kolaj Magazine</a>. Every February, there&rsquo;s a project from Edinburgh Collage Collective and the Scandinavian Collage Museum called <a href="http://kolajmagazine.com/content/content/collage-events/februllage-2020/">Februllage</a>. Artists from all over the world participate, and it really shows how vastly talented and welcoming the collage community is. Personally, whether the medium is accepted as a fine art or not isn&rsquo;t much of a concern, because the community and accessibility aspects are more of a priority. The arts are a powerful way to connect communities, to teach and learn, to prioritize and work towards social justice. Expanding awareness of collage as a medium and a means of connection are personal goals, as well as a driving factor behind Twin Cities College Collective.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NzAwMDAx/full.jpg" />dream insert, paper collage, 8.5&quot;x11&quot;, 2020

 
&nbsp;

How did you get involved in the Sketchbook Project? Did it impact or otherwise fit into your pandemic art practice? 
 
My friend Stacey (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/stace_of_spades/" target="_blank">stace of spades</a>) who is also featured in the project, mentioned early on that she was working in a collaborative sketchbook organized by MPLSART.&nbsp;You reached out, and of course I wanted to get involved! The concept of a local creative project creating some nearness and interaction at a time of isolation within our local arts community was really exciting to me. In terms of how it fit into my overall pandemic art practice, artmaking has been my main focus in this period of isolation, especially after becoming unemployed. Finding ways to work collaboratively during a period where the vast majority of my time is spent alone has been really great. There&rsquo;s long been an element of that present in what I do because of my involvement with mail art and the general interest in collaboration that many collage artists share, but the opportunity to be involved with the sketchbook project has been a chance to meaningfully connect with many artists in a variety of mediums in the Twin Cities.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5NzMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Mouldered, paper collage, 8.5&quot;x11&quot;, 2020

&nbsp;

Once the pandemic is over and it&#39;s safe to venture out once again, what is something you are looking forward to? 
 
I&rsquo;ve really been missing opportunities to engage with art and other creative folks face-to-face. A lot of what Twin Cities Collage Collective has been up to the past few years has hinged on getting together &mdash; talking, making, exploring. Those types of connections are something I&rsquo;ve been missing, and am really looking forward to starting up again in the future. I miss that freedom of movement without the constant risk assessment &mdash;&nbsp;just walking around with a coffee, visiting museums and other arts spaces, looking, investigating, talking to folks.

 
How can people support you and your work? 
 
A great way to support my work is by following and interacting with it on social media, especially <a href="https://www.instagram.com/allisonannecollage/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>. It&rsquo;s the main place where new work is posted, and is the easiest place to find me. There&rsquo;s a really vibrant collage community on Instagram! If you are interested in purchasing my work, I have an online shop for original works and zines as well as a print shop. There&rsquo;s also an option to subscribe to exclusive zines and other items if getting some creative monthly snail mail captures your interest! Finally, keeping an eye on Twin Cities Collage Collective and connecting with us is a good way to get involved with the collage community both locally and globally.&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;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" height="314" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNTQwMDAx/full.jpg" width="314" /> 
allison anne. Photo courtesy of the artist.

&nbsp;

To learn more about the artist and their&nbsp;work, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://allisonanne.com/" target="_blank">allisonanne.com</a><a href="http://www.lorahlavsa.com/" target="_blank">,</a>&nbsp;or follow them on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/allisonannecollage/" target="_blank">@allisonannecollage</a>. Banner image:&nbsp;SPEAK EASY (detail),&nbsp;sketchbook paper collage, 2021
</div>

The local collage artist discusses the state of the medium, sourcing materials, and community.

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with allison anne

MPLSART

&nbsp;

Unlike many of us who &mdash; perhaps by birth, marriage, or employment &mdash; came to live in the frigid plains of the Midwest, interdisciplinary artist and MCAD MFA graduate Roshan Ganu shares that she came here for the polar vortex. Not in spite of it. What&rsquo;s more, it&rsquo;s these thoughts on the insulation and reflection &mdash; literal and otherwise &mdash; ushered in by winter that frame both the monumental and miniature life and work of Roshan Ganu.

&ldquo;I love the winter,&rdquo; says Ganu proudly. &ldquo;For one, it always teaches me something new. There&rsquo;s something about the fresh snow, especially how it looks at night. The reflectivities&hellip; The way that any trace of light bounces off of it and brightens the street.&rdquo;

Looking back to just last year, during an artist residency that she undertook in rural Minnesota, Ganu recalls, &ldquo;There were times that you couldn&rsquo;t tell where the earth had ended and the sky began.&rdquo;

With a collection of work that scales the sides of buildings and captures entire sentiments in a stretch of cotton-sheathed streetlight, it&rsquo;s no surprise that someone of Ganu&rsquo;s imagination would come to such mythical epiphanies about a season that even the most veteran Minnesotans might come to resent every now and again.

Ganu&rsquo;s sculptural installations play with scale &mdash; some larger than life, others shrunk way down and incorporated into animations. Her&nbsp;love of cartooning lends the work a playful sense of humor, even as she&#39;s investigating very real themes of identity, immigration, and isolation.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />A recurring character in Ganu&#39;s work is Chappal, an animated cartoon slipper commonly worn in India, who has adventures here in Minnesota. Screenshot from 2-part video series made in conjunction with the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Thinking again about her time in the snowy, rural flatlands, Ganu remembers the isolation as what led her to internal reflection. When asked what being an artist means to her, Ganu admits she never thought that she was one. The idea of art was always outlined with rigidity.

&ldquo;It was always the Renaissance, the pristine human figure. That&rsquo;s not what my work is.&rdquo;

Growing up in the Indian state of&nbsp;Goa&nbsp;with her mother&nbsp;&mdash;a linguist&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;and her grandmother, who was a painter until the birth of her children, Ganu saw the work of her grandmother to still be art, albeit within the home: a love that often took the form of embroidery and crafts she made for her family. Art as service.

&ldquo;I saw art to be the act of creating a home, beautifying it,&quot; she says.&nbsp;&quot;Growing up with that idea of building home has really stuck with me.&quot;

Equally important for Ganu is the telling of a story. With an undergraduate degree in Journalism and a master&rsquo;s in French and Linguistics, Ganu shares that in her miniature works, &ldquo;It starts with a story &mdash; pulling from personal history &mdash; then juxtaposing it with a seemingly incontextual, &lsquo;I am here&rsquo;... Appropriating the space around me to create a sense of familiarity, always meeting the space halfway&rdquo;.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5NjUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Screenshot of East 25th Street, Minneapolis; papier-m&acirc;ch&eacute;&nbsp;&amp; mixed media animation; 2019.

Works like that of East 25th Street, Minneapolis operate as ample illustration. Moments become worlds within the sculpture&rsquo;s 24 x 10&rdquo; frame, and worlds become moments. Ganu describes East 25th as an experience in and of itself &ndash; a multi-media installation captured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G90BYrqdi4c" target="_blank">in this video performance</a> &ndash; laden with texture, scents, simmering lights, and even the sounds of her own voice.

&ldquo;I remember people coming out of it emotional, so I thought it&rsquo;s not just the size, it&rsquo;s the sensorial experience. My voice, the visual, the smell. If that&rsquo;s possible at this scale, what happens when I scale up? Will it hold?&rdquo;

Even her relatively large pieces, like The Banyan Tree standing at 6 feet tall, are still bound between the real and the fictional. And as is Ganu&rsquo;s artistic mandate, &ldquo;Wonder and amusement are kept at the center.&rdquo;

Her art, like that of many artists, starts inward. &ldquo;I view it as a strength that I am extremely vulnerable in my process. And it drives my process and dictates the final thing. Even after the thing is over, the living decisions are still translations of my feelings, that vulnerability.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s an illustration of the human condition &mdash; that if she is tender and puts that into the world for others to see and consume, then naturally there must be some universality to that vulnerability. For Ganu, that too is play.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NjkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Ganu&#39;s stage set for her upcoming collaboration with Ritika Ganguly&nbsp;at the Minnesota Opera, part of their MNiatures series: 8-10 minute collaborative&nbsp;operas pairing artists from different creative&nbsp;practices.

With projects on the way with the Minnesota&nbsp;Opera, the Artistry in Bloomington, and a solo show at the Duluth Art Institute, Ganu has no shortage of space for more worlds of miniature size and more tenderness. If she has to take a break, however, walking is her activity of choice.

&ldquo;I love walking,&quot; she says.&nbsp;&quot;Cities, towns, villages. It gives me a sense of place. I&rsquo;m doing that in my work, as well. This could be the research. And each city has such a discrete street language. Stickers, graffiti tags as mapping sources. I google and go from there. Investigating, mapping. When random people tell me about their day. The image of a cat drawn on a footpath.&rdquo;

Ganu makes clear that excitement drives her even in a packed schedule. That in light of the ways that the pandemic has forced her work to become virtual, it&rsquo;s also becoming giant. She&rsquo;s finding solace in a winter like no other &mdash; and rightfully so. Because when you work with concepts as huge and as utterly personal as Ganu does, you can find&nbsp;joy&nbsp;even&nbsp;from&nbsp;being in flux, comfortably. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NjgwMDAx/full.jpg" />The artist in her studio.&nbsp;

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

Ganu&#39;s&nbsp;collaboration&nbsp;with Ritika Ganguly&nbsp;and&nbsp;the Minnesota Opera, titled Xylem, premieres Friday, February 12th at <a href="https://mnopera.org/mniatures-tiny-operas-big-ideas/" target="_blank">mnopera.org</a>. The <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/unfurled-artistry" target="_blank">group show at Artistry</a>, titled&nbsp;Unfurled&nbsp;and&nbsp;curated by Christopher E. Harrison, will run February 26 - April 2. Ganu&#39;s DAI show is scheduled for the fall.

Mixing the large and the small, the real and the imagined, Roshan Ganu's artwork connects us to home by way of humor.

The Many Worlds of Roshan Ganu

Lora Hlavsa&nbsp;(she/her)&nbsp;is a Minneapolis based artist, illustrator, and designer. Her work is informed by intersectionality and inspired by femininity in its various forms. Raised by a Filipina mother and an American father in Minnesota and California, identity has been a core focus of Lora&rsquo;s work, and her bold and colorful pieces aim to convey a multidimensional world that reflects the many layers of the daily human experience. As one of the 68 contributing artists to <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/sketchbook/2020/artists" target="_blank">The 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project</a>, we wanted to learn more about her work and her practice.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Blaine Garrett: How did you become interested in art? What were some of your early influences? 
 
Lora&nbsp;Hlavsa:&nbsp;I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home that fostered my creativity from a young age. I&#39;ve always joked that I am a &quot;professional dabbler,&quot; and I think it&#39;s because I was exposed to so many different creative practices growing up. I come from a family of creative people, all of whom practice in vastly different disciplines. Between both sides of my family, we have painters, writers, chefs, musicians, tailors, woodworkers, and scrapbookers &ndash; and that&#39;s just the last three generations.

While none of these practices may be capital &quot;A&quot; artistic mediums, I do think that being exposed to so many different areas of creativity growing up gave me the confidence to continue pursuing past childhood experimentation. Some of my fondest memories growing up are learning to draw with my parents, playing piano with my Grandma Evelyn, or learning to sew with my Lola Saling. That interdisciplinary nature of my creative upbringing has significantly impacted the pathways I&#39;ve chosen to take as an adult.&nbsp;

People find it surprising that I have a degree in Geography. When I was in school, I wanted to focus on art but lacked the confidence to commit to it full-time. Like many of my fellow Millennials, I had taken out a big chunk in student loans and was on scholarship, and couldn&#39;t afford to pursue something that I didn&#39;t feel sure I could make money with post-graduation. So I picked Geography, the perfect degree for someone with a myriad of interests because nearly any topic can be examined through a spatial lens. I loved my program but found myself continuing to gravitate towards art and wound up spending my senior year working on a senior honors thesis examining the community impact of murals in the Twin Cities. My fieldwork took me across Minneapolis and Saint Paul, documenting and mapping murals by local artists like Jimmy Longoria and Broken Crow. I suppose it was through this project that I started to understand the importance of art in Minneapolis &ndash; and that I could make myself a creative home here.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxNTMwMDAx/full.jpg" /> 
Jeepney, acrylic and acryla gouache on canvas, 24&quot;x36&quot;, 2021

&nbsp;

BG: Is there overlap between your design work and your artistic practice? 
 
LH:&nbsp;&nbsp;Maybe a little, but I generally regard them as two separate practices. I think of design as more &quot;creative problem-solving&quot; &ndash; your client comes to you with something that&#39;s plaguing them, and it&#39;s up to you to come up with a solution that satisfies all of their needs. You&#39;re bringing your skills to the table and using them to create something beautiful &ndash; but ultimately to your client&#39;s specifications. If you create something aesthetically pleasing&nbsp;but it doesn&#39;t solve your client&#39;s problem, you haven&#39;t really completed the task. Having an artistic perspective is essential to design, but having that strategic skill is an integral part of the process.

On the flip side, my personal practice is wholly my own &ndash; and thus a little more emotional and reactive than my design work. In my personal work, I tend to create pieces motivated by my own experience and the things that inspire me. Less thought is given to systems or problem-solving &ndash; it&#39;s more of an experiment, trial-and-error until I have a reaction to what&#39;s on the page.

Sometimes I need to turn that left-brain off and just focus on making. When I&#39;m designing, I spend a ton of time at the computer, staring at files, pushing pixel by pixel until something is just right. Painting gives me the chance to let loose a little, to step away from the screen and create something tangible that exists beyond my email.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1NzYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Cover Girls, Digital, 2020

&nbsp;

BG: Your paintings contain a lot of scenery and often feel like staged fashion photography. Is this by design? Is there a deeper symbolism? 
 
LH:&nbsp; I&#39;d never really thought about it that way, but I suppose you&#39;re right! As a kid, I was hell-bent on becoming a fashion designer. I come from a long line of tailors and sewists on both sides of my family, and growing up in the heyday of Project Runway and Teen Vogue, it was only natural that I felt the draw of the family trade. During my senior year of high school, I put on a fashion show with a couple of other girls for the school talent show and made three or four dresses that my friends modeled in the high school gym. At home, my closet door was plastered with images cut out from editorial spreads and print-outs of fashion illustrators that I really loved. While I abandoned the dream of becoming a fashion designer, I suppose my interest in fashion has remained. My day gig as an art director involves me creating visual concepts for photoshoots, and so I bring a little bit of that work home with me and into my practice as well.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1NzUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Quarantine Brunch&nbsp;Club, Digital, 2020

&nbsp;

BG: How have the events of the last year affected your work? 
 
LH:&nbsp; There is no denying that this year has challenged all of us in various ways, and I am no different. But while I&#39;ve experienced my share of personal challenges this year, I&#39;m grateful that my art practice has actually flourished in quarantine. I&#39;ve always considered myself an extrovert and usually spend a lot of time outside the house between work and social engagements. When COVID hit, all of that changed. I needed an outlet to occupy my newfound time at home, so I started devoting more energy to creating art. Having dedicated time and space to just making stuff was necessary to protect my mental health in the early days of quarantine.&nbsp;

I&#39;ve always gravitated to highlighting women of color in my work. My mom is Filipino and my dad is white, and throughout my life I&#39;ve found myself in predominantly white spaces, especially since I&#39;ve lived in Minnesota. Through my artwork, I hope to show a more vibrant and multidimensional world where women from all backgrounds are represented and celebrated as a direct contrast to some of the environments in which I grew up. In the aftermath of George Floyd and the uprising, I knew that representation was more important than ever, and so I&#39;ve continued to focus on creating work that puts women of color front and center.&nbsp;My work is about the quiet (and sometimes banal) everyday moments in women&#39;s lives, but uses color and composition to reflect the chaos and beauty of the feminine experience.

BG:&nbsp; I first became aware of you and your work through this year&#39;s C4W show at Gamut where you won the crowd favorite prize. How was that&nbsp;experience and how did it impact your practice?&nbsp; 
 
LH:&nbsp; Cassie at Gamut Gallery has been so supportive of me from the start &ndash; I probably would have procrastinated and missed the deadline to submit to C4W if she hadn&#39;t reached out to me personally. It was the very first time that I had participated in a show outside of school, and I was so excited to be featured in a gallery to begin with! When I won the crowd favorite prize, I was caught totally off-guard because it was already a huge honor to show with so many local artists that I deeply admire. The painting I&#39;d entered was titled Bisikleta, and felt kind of like a self-portrait: it depicts a woman on a bike, with American and Filipino flags mounted on the rear rack and surrounded by color and plants. To have won crowd favorite for something so personal to me was incredibly validating and, to be honest, helped me realize that I&#39;d found my artistic voice.

BG: What do you hope the audience takes away from your work?&nbsp; 
 
LH:&nbsp; My work on the surface is bright, colorful, and bold, and I hope that it brings viewers a little bit of joy at the very least. But I also want the audience to see that this vibrant world is far from simple and that each piece is telling complex stories with somewhat simplistic imagery. I like to think of my work as a modern-day I-Spy book; there are so many stories to be found in the tiny details, and there&rsquo;s always one more thing hidden amongst the chaos. But above all, I hope that my female-identifying audience sees themselves in my work, especially women of color. At the end of the day, I want my work to feel representative and inclusive. I want women to look at the images of a woman taking a bathroom selfie, or making a mess in the kitchen, or on the cover of a magazine, and see themselves and feel a sense of peace or comfort with a side of joy and humor.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ3NjMwMDAx/full.jpg" /> 
The Bride,&nbsp;acryla&nbsp;gouache on wood panel, 8&quot;x8&quot;, 2020

&nbsp;

BG: Once the pandemic is over and it&#39;s safe to venture out once again, what is something you are really looking forward to? 
 
LH:&nbsp; Honestly, the first thing I&#39;d do is buy a ticket to First Ave&#39;s first in-person show. Doesn&#39;t even matter what it is &ndash; I just want to be in that room again, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow music lovers, drinking a beer, and listening to music as a community again. Before the pandemic, my fianc&eacute;&nbsp;and I were probably going to at least one show a week, sometimes at First Ave, sometimes at Turf, lots of times at Amsterdam, other times at hole-in-the-wall watering holes. Live music has been a constant in my life since I moved to Minneapolis and to have gone nearly a whole year without it seems unreal.

I&#39;d also be thrilled to be able to bring my parents to see my work in person at a gallery or a public show somewhere. My dad has always encouraged me to pursue art, even in the times when I didn&#39;t think it made sense. My mom has also been a huge influence on my work, and I&#39;m not sure she even realizes the extent of it. But my dad is immunocompromised, and my mom lives in California, so they haven&#39;t been able to make it to an in-person event due to the pandemic. It would mean so much to me to share this with them, so I&#39;m hoping that I can keep things going long enough to safely see my work out there in the wild.

 
<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUzNzMwMDAy/full.jpg" /> 
Pinay Pantry,&nbsp;risograph print on paper, 11&quot;x14&quot;, 2020

&nbsp;

BG: What&rsquo;s the best way people can support you and your art right now? 
 
LH:&nbsp; Well, I&#39;m really looking forward to reopening my online print shop in early February. I&#39;ve been working on some new prints and other products, which has been a fun yet challenging project to be juggling on top of a full-time gig.&nbsp; When I reopen, I&#39;m hoping that people a) buy stuff or b) share my work online so more people see it!

One project that I&#39;m really excited to release is actually an extension of my Pinay Pantry&nbsp;print. The original print came about as I was reminiscing about all of the Filipino treats and pantry items we had around when I was a kid. We&#39;d go to this Filipino supermarket 40 minutes away in Vallejo and pick up all the stuff we&#39;d need for a month. Here in Minnesota, that stuff is a little harder to come by, so I wanted to illustrate those items as a little reminder for myself. When I printed them, I didn&#39;t really expect that people would want to buy them, and I certainly didn&#39;t expect to sell out of them. So I started thinking that perhaps I could expand the project to other cuisines as well.

I can only speak to my own experience as a Filipina, so I enlisted a few friends to create a Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese version of the print. Each woman provided me with a list of everyday pantry items that they grew up with, and I illustrated them. Like the original Pinay Pantry&nbsp;print, half of the proceeds from the sale of these prints will go to a non-profit or mutual aid fun of each collaborator&#39;s choosing. The whole project is now called &quot;The People&#39;s Pantry,&quot; and I hope to continue to expand it by collaborating with others who have had a similar experience with food.

 
<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NTMwMDAx/full.jpg" /> 
The People&#39;s Pantry: Japanese,&nbsp;Digital, 2021

&nbsp;

BG: Thank you so much for your time and contributing your work to the 2020 MPLSART&nbsp;Sketchbook Project!&nbsp;I&rsquo;m really looking forward to seeing what you do next.&nbsp; 
 
LH:&nbsp; Thanks so much for having me! I&#39;m so grateful to be a part of the sketchbook project and looking forward to working with MPLSART more in the future.&nbsp;&diams; 
 
&nbsp;<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5NzEwMDAx/full.jpg" /> 
Lora Hlavsa. Photo by <a href="http://www.voxlandphoto.com/" target="_blank">Hanna Voxlan</a>.

&nbsp;

To learn more about the artist and their&nbsp;work, visit <a href="http://www.lorahlavsa.com/" target="_blank">lorahlavsa.com,</a> or follow them on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lorahlavsa/" target="_blank">@lorahlavsa</a>. 
&nbsp;

The local artist, who participated in our 2020 Sketchbook Project, offers insight into her practice and aesthetics behind her work.

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with Lora Hlavsa

As we gear up to unveil&nbsp;MPLSART&#39;s 2020 Sketchbook Project&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;in which 68 local artists created original works in five traveling sketchbooks that will be auctioned off as well as collected and reprinted&nbsp;&mdash; we will be profiling some of the artists involved over the next several weeks to give you a taste for what&#39;s to come!

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ1NjMwMDAx/full.jpg" />God series, digital.

Ron Brown has been an artist all his life, working in painting, illustration, collage, digital art,&nbsp;comic books, and fashion, and says that he doesn&#39;t believe in being just one kind of artist because the world of art is limitless. Originally from Gary, Indiana, Brown moved here with his family&nbsp;to get away from the disparities in Gary and to be able to have a better art education. He&nbsp;had aspirations to go to&nbsp;Perpich&nbsp;Art High School, but due to transportation difficulties&nbsp;he became a freshman at Roosevelt instead, eventually attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before leaving to return to the Twin Cities&nbsp;at 19. His involvement with art has been in many community events, art performances, and anything that was Afrocentric to express his talents. He finds inspiration for art from the love of music, comic books, and the superhero Black Panther. &nbsp;

In Brown&rsquo;s art, he pursues the work of Afrofuturism because it expresses the beauty of Blackness and African diaspora culture. He speaks upon his Black culture and lived truth. &ldquo;My art is my sword and my tongue is my shield,&rdquo; he says. His paintings show bold lines, creating figures and facial features that represent the African diaspora in some way, literal shape, or form. And the paintings have warm and cool colors that come together collectively. Throughout his artwork, Brown has redrawn negative aspects of his past as a way for him to redraw his own reality. Many people imagine flying cars and the unknown future, but Brown&rsquo;s future is informed by his past, a reality revolved around the life of living in the projects and the struggles of being a Black man. In the world of visual arts, Black people&rsquo;s artwork doesn&rsquo;t get the recognition it deserves. Brown pushes back against this, creating art to make Black people feel proud of themselves and to feel seen. Because they have more potential than what the world credits them with. The challenges he experiences as an artist come from the fact that he&#39;s Black. Black people don&rsquo;t have safe spaces to freely express themselves culturally and artistically. Black communities are hurting from the many injustices that target Black souls deeper then we can imagine. This is why Afrocentric art is important in Brown&rsquo;s work. He believes that Black art must be celebrated so that we can see the many layers of Blackness in art and the many layers of Black existence. &diams;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzNjIwMDAy/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxNjMwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5NjMwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzNjIwMDAx/full.jpg" />From top: The Umah, digital; Pop-up at Martin Patrick, bottle series &amp; acrylic on wood;&nbsp;The Naked Truth, digital.&nbsp;Portrait by <a href="https://www.jadepatrickphoto.com" target="_blank">Jade Patrick</a>, used with permission. Artwork courtesy of the artist.

To learn more about the artist and his work, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artofronbrown.com/" target="_blank">artofronbrown.com</a>, or follow him on Instagram at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/oppositional_gays/" target="_blank">@</a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/afroanimeillustrator_ronbrown/" target="_blank">afroanimeillustrator_ronbrown</a>.

Banner image: Never Forgets (detail), acrylic on wood.

This profile was written as part of a new writing program developed in partnership with Juxtaposition Arts, in which our editor works directly with JXTA&nbsp;Apprentices to develop each piece.

One of 68 amazing artists in our 2020 Sketchbook Project, Afrofuturist Ron Brown works across media as the self-described "dopest Black artist in the Twin Cities"

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Ron Brown

&nbsp;

Russ White (he/him/his): First off, how are you? How has the pandemic affected you and your studio practice?

AK Garski (they/them/theirs):&nbsp;2020 provided me with many harsh lessons. As an artist I typically piece together multiple jobs to make ends meet. For the past five years my primary form of employment has been adjunct teaching;&nbsp;however adjuncts are contracted on a semesterly basis, and we do not have job security. I had no classes to teach in the spring of 2020 so when the pandemic hit in March, I was already in the middle of job hunting for seasonal work. Eventually, I was able to qualify for unemployment, which was a huge relief and an eye-opening experience. For the first time in my life, I was able to devote my full self to my artistic practice and I was not being asked to perform unpaid labor, which is always the case when I am adjunct teaching. I was also able to rest when my body was tired. Although I was &ldquo;unemployed&rdquo; I was working hard at something I am highly skilled at. I recognized with renewed clarity that maintaining a rigorous art practice is, in fact, hard work. If I pushed myself too hard, worked too many consecutive hours, I became less efficient in the studio. The only cure for depletion in creativity is rest. I began asking myself: what type of work qualifies as a valuable form of labor in the world today? I am still in the process of understanding and deconstructing a lifetime of toxic values that took hold in my life out of necessity due to capitalism. Americans are conditioned to admire people who succeed in their career at any cost, even at the expense of their physical, emotional, and spiritual health. I came to realize that a part of me thought of this kind of pedal to the metal, unsustainable career drive as an impressive mark of &ldquo;mental discipline.&rdquo; Unemployment taught me how I, someone who thought of themselves as an anti-capitalist, had accepted capitalist ideology on a deeply personal level. I defined my self-worth based on how much I could produce, with limited capacity for self-compassion and consideration of the societal conditions that make my life difficult as a person who is compelled to make art, who struggles with chronic health conditions, and who is also trans/non-binary. &nbsp;

Now that I am beginning to fully understand how maintaining a set of values that reinforce capitalism hurts me and my community, I am also beginning to establish new values. I am asking myself how I can continue to unlearn what needs unlearning while adapting my teaching strategies and artistic practice accordingly. &nbsp;

You are part of the new cohort of artists in residence at Second Shift Studio in Saint Paul. What has that meant for your practice? What are you working on there now? &nbsp;

Becoming a 2020/21 artist in residence at <a href="https://secondshiftstudiospace.org/" target="_blank">Second Shift Studio Space</a> has been truly transformational for my art practice. For 3 years I worked out of the second bedroom in my apartment, which is only 100 sq ft. Before that I set up a makeshift studio in my &ldquo;dining room&rdquo; (which was more of a glorified hallway in my one-bedroom apartment). &nbsp;I crammed everything I could into my second bedroom studio space: my flat file, drafting desk, two easels, and all of my supplies. I made it work, but I was always trying not to trip over myself, which made me quite anxious; I create technically detailed work with almost no margin for error from drips of water or paint. At Second Shift, my workspace has tripled in size,&nbsp;and I have access to a small storage space. I am able to spread out, I can hang multiple finished pieces and works in progress up in the same place, and experiment with different installation techniques. This has been particularly important as I expand upon a body of work titled <a href="http://akgarski.com/yes/no-text-portraits-of-consent" target="_blank">Yes, NO: Portraits of Consent</a>, a series of drawings and paintings of the words &ldquo;yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;no&rdquo; selected from literary and academic texts at pivotal moments in the narrative. This series consists of multiple, relatively small&nbsp;works on paper that utilize a variety of drawing and painting techniques.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxNzgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Beyond Endurance, from The Erotic as Power by Audre Lorde, oil on panel, 20&quot; diameter, 2020.

Often times, I am working observationally, as I study the printed word from the books I am referencing. Visual elements within the composition of each piece such as color, contrast, and emphasis vary in accordance with the context of the narrative and emotional tone of the text overall. I select each &ldquo;yes&rdquo; or &ldquo;no&rdquo; from texts that explore consent politics from multiple perspectives. Systemic violence, particularly violations of consent, are often viewed strictly through the confines of the gender binary. Therefore, I am specifically selecting books, essays, and articles by queer and trans authors as well as authors who are Black, indigenous, and people of color.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM5NjEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Do It Anyway, from Sissy by Jacob Tobia, graphite pencil on torn Arches watercolor paper, 2020.

I read each text closely. As I read, I am searching for moments in the narrative where a &ldquo;yes&rdquo; or a &ldquo;no&rdquo; profoundly impacts the story that is being told or the thesis of the piece of writing. A &ldquo;yes&rdquo; or &ldquo;no&rdquo; could be spoken through dialogue, expressed as internal thought, or utilized pragmatically in an academic essay. &nbsp;This project was supported by a 2019 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. Through the completion of this grant, I discovered that I would like this project to achieve a larger scale than I initially anticipated. I can envision a whole wall covered in at least 50 drawings. As someone who tends to work for long periods of time on a single painting, working more rapidly and at a smaller scale has pushed me to open up my practice in ways I never anticipated. It has forced me to let go of achieving &quot;perfection&quot;&nbsp;in every piece, which has been a frightening&nbsp;but liberating experience for me. &nbsp; &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5NjkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Left: &ldquo;No, from Hunger by Roxane Gay, graphite on torn Arches watercolor paper, 2020 Right: No as No, from Hunger by Roxane Gay, sennelier ink and watercolor on torn Arches watercolor paper, 2020.

You&rsquo;ve developed an Anti-Racist Art Curriculum available for free online through your artist website and your Instagram account. Can you tell us more about it, how people are using it, and how putting it together has informed your own work as a white artist? &nbsp; 

I began working on the creation of the free, publicly accessible <a href="http://akgarski.com/micro-syllabus-1-white-privilege-in-art" target="_blank">anti-racist art &ldquo;micro-syllabi&rdquo;</a> back in July of 2020. This curriculum is a condensed and more user-friendly version of a traditional semester-long syllabus. It provides users with a curated selection of readings, explanations of key concepts within the readings, and critical thinking questions to guide them through the subject matter. The curriculum is an extension of my social practice artwork, responding to the growing need for anti-racist curriculum that draws direct connections between white privilege, the historical prevalence of racism, and visual culture. &nbsp;

For far too long, &ldquo;artistic liberty&rdquo; and &ldquo;creative freedom&rdquo; have been prioritized over understanding the impact of colonialism in art and developing the ability to recognize how inequities within our society impact our imagination and, therefore, influence the artistic process. The first micro syllabus confronts these issues head-on by tackling the following questions: How does racial bias impact our imaginations and the artistic process? How do white artists benefit from racial privilege? Do artists have the right to depict the stories of people outside of their racial group? These questions are specifically directed to white artists, as we are rarely asked to consider how white privilege shelters us from legitimate criticism from our BIPOC artistic peers and community members. Recently, we have seen a swell of white artists create work about Black pain, create images of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, take commissions to create public murals focusing on similar themes, with little consideration about whether or not such actions co-opt the pain of the Black community and, even worse, take up creative space that rightfully belongs to Black artists. Local artist Maiya Hartman wrote a piece about this that was featured on MNartists.org, called <a href="https://www.mnartists.org/article/black-experience-white-gaze" target="_blank">&ldquo;The Black Experience via The White Gaze.&rdquo;</a> &nbsp;

As a white artist and educator, creating this anti-racist art curriculum, I am very conscious of my own privilege. My background working in the field of equity and inclusion does not mean I am incapable of making mistakes or indirectly perpetuating white supremacy without realizing it. I believe we should all be skeptical of the underlying intentions of white folks working in diversity, equity, and inclusion particularly in regard to their income and whether or not they actively redistribute wealth to BIPOC communities. Because white supremacy is a system of domination created by white people to advance their global power, it is very easy for white folks to lean back into all the privileges that white supremacy affords us. At the same time, I also believe that white people have a responsibility to work to dismantle the system we created and continue to benefit from. Too often white people expect people of color to educate us about white supremacy, without understanding the problematic nature of such an emotionally exhausting request. It is my hope that my first micro-syllabus will help white artists take responsibility for our own education and start thinking critically about how white supremacy permeates everything we do, including the creative work we do in the studio. &nbsp; &nbsp;

In 2021, I&rsquo;ll be creating more syllabi that will not be targeted specifically towards white readers and will prioritize addressing the prevalence of white supremacy in art history while centralizing the artwork and critical theory of BIPOC artists and scholars. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback about the curriculum from students, fellow educators, and local community members. Eventually I&rsquo;d like to put together an online course that utilizes the curriculum, but this is still very much in the idea stage for now. &nbsp;

Much of your work is about breaking down what you call our &ldquo;state of psychological duality that is encouraged by the gender binary.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s such a keen insight&mdash;how the social constructs around gender affect our thinking in so many other ways as well&mdash;and I&rsquo;d love for you to expand on that. What does a future with more nuanced understandings of our bodies and each other look like to you? &nbsp;

As person who is trans and non-binary, I consider it to be my life&rsquo;s work to understand just how deeply the gender binary has influenced my perception of myself and the world around me&mdash;gender identity and expression are really only the tip of the iceberg. So much within Western culture is measured within a false binary: logic vs. emotion, mind vs. body, light vs. dark, masculinity vs. femininity. These socially constructed divides prevent us from recognizing the validity of people and ways of thinking that defy categorization within a binary. Before I claimed my true self publicly and asked people to acknowledge me for the person I know myself to be (someone who is gender non-conforming, trans, non-binary, and gender fluid), I spent many years creating self-portraits. These drawings and paintings often contained two figures that assumed adversarial positions.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUzNzEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Both Ends Burning; sennelier ink, watercolor, and gouache on paper; 72&rdquo; x 55,&rdquo; 2017.

This is perhaps best articulated in the largescale painting, Both Ends Burning, a piece that depicts two selves bound together by the same ACE&nbsp;bandage. ACE bandages are symbolic of early methods of breast binding. It&rsquo;s a queer symbol of gender non-conformity that not all cis-gender or straight folks recognize. ACE bandages are notoriously dangerous to bind with because they are not designed to move with your body. The more a person breathes, the more the bandage restricts and resists bodily movement. This can cause breathing problems, bruised ribs, and spinal issues. Nowadays we have much healthier methods of binding. The ACE bandage has become a metaphorical symbol in my work for the challenges of living openly as trans: the thing that frees you and gives you life can also restrict you, make you vulnerable. As a symbol it is neither good nor bad, it resists that kind of binary categorization. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5ODQwMDAx/full.jpg" />It&rsquo;s A Girl (detail); sennelier ink, watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper; 144&rdquo; x 55,&rdquo; 2016.

During the time that I was making these self-portraits, I was still clinging to the gender and pronouns that I was assigned at birth, I was afraid to embrace myself fully as something entirely different. My artwork understood my desires better than I did. Once I came out publicly as non-binary and trans, self-portraiture became inadequate. I could not express the ways in which I was made to disassociate from the person that my childhood self wanted to be&mdash;the ways in which I had disconnected from my body in order to survive&mdash;through self-portraiture. So I began building a new visual language through a collection of objects. Each object is chosen for its functional purpose, symbolic meaning, and personal significance. I also gathered ephemera that had been cut or pulled from my body in the years prior to my transformation. I recontextualized these bodily fragments with other objects, giving them new meaning. These drawings/paintings created in colored pencil, gouache, and ink make up my newest and ongoing body of work, The Redacted Collection. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NTIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Left: Redacted;&nbsp;sennelier ink, watercolor, gouache, graphite, and colored pencil on paper;&nbsp;4&rdquo; x 6,&rdquo; 2020. Right: Scraping Goodbye,&nbsp;colored pencil on paper, 4&rdquo; x 6,&rdquo; 2020.

I long for a future where a more nuanced understanding of our bodies allows us to be kind to ourselves and others from an early age. I do not want young children to have to go through the shame, isolation, and violence that is still so prevalent within our transphobic and racist society. I am trying to find ways to create this future through my art practice and through my social practice artwork like the <a href="http://akgarski.com/social-practice" target="_blank">Gender Re-Reveal Party</a>, a series of events that I have created in collaboration with LGBTQIA+ student groups to celebrate gender fluidity and rejoice in a wide range of gender expressions. &nbsp;

You contributed two pieces to the MPLSART Sketchbook Project. Do you normally keep a sketchbook going, and if so, what does that practice normally look like? Was it a different experience contributing to this Project? &nbsp;

I do not normally keep a sketchbook! I feel guilty admitting this but with my limited time, I would rather jump right into the process of creating more substantial drawings, paintings, or social practice projects. This is why, at first, I was very unsure of what my contribution would look like for the MPLSART Sketchbook Project. I decided to create two colored pencil drawings of my asthma inhalers, functional objects that play a crucial role in my life but seem almost exclusively utilitarian in their aesthetic design. I was thinking about the precariousness of my body as someone who lives with severe asthma and how vulnerable I have been feeling during the pandemic. I fell in love with capturing the structure of my favorite brand of rescue inhaler, Albuterol (Ventolin HFA, the blue one with the drop toggle cap). I have not addressed the struggles I have had with my health directly in my artwork. For a long time, I wanted to maintain distance between my chronic illnesses and my identity as an artist. This was largely due to internalized ableism and shame. My contributions in the MPLSART Sketchbook Project presented me with an opportunity to begin opening up about this topic and I foresee myself addressing this more directly in future work. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxNzgwMDAy/full.jpg" />The artist&#39;s two contributions to the MPLSART 2020 Sketchbook Project.

To learn more about the artist and their work, visit <a href="http://akgarski.com" target="_blank">akgarski.com</a>, or follow them on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/oppositional_gays/" target="_blank">@oppositional_gays</a>.

The local artist, who participated in our 2020 Sketchbook Project, offers their insight on rest, consent, anti-racism, and the gender binary

Beyond the Binary: Q&A with AK Garski

&nbsp;

Bridget Kranz:&nbsp;There are so many ways to define the value of an artwork, what do you tell first-time buyers to look for? How does that change based on a person&rsquo;s motivation for collecting?

Douglas Flanders: When someone comes in having never purchased art before, we tell them to walk around, look at the art, and get a feel for what they like&nbsp;&mdash; then we focus in on that area, because we carry everything from the Old Masters to graffiti. We carry a lot of abstract work, and some people aren&rsquo;t sure what they mean when they say abstract. A contemporary landscape could be abstract to them &mdash; we try to figure out their definition of those words. We also try to establish what their intent is for the collection. Do they want it to be primarily an investment or decorative?

Some people who bought an $800 piece back in 1972, they&rsquo;re quite wealthy today, and people say, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s going to be the next big investment?&rdquo; We never know. We can only, based on our experience, make suggestions. No matter what happens value-wise, years from now we hope they&rsquo;ll have enjoyed living with the piece. If it&rsquo;s a work that has increased in value, that&rsquo;s a big bonus. &nbsp; &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1MjkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Doug in New York City for an art fair, with &quot;Steve Flanders&quot; street sign (no relation, although&nbsp;Steve is his brother&#39;s name).

If someone comes in wanting an investment piece &ndash; or at least one that likely won&rsquo;t depreciate &ndash; what should they look for?

If an artist is getting good exposure through museum exhibitions &mdash; if they&rsquo;re being collected by museums and books are coming out on them &mdash; we say that their careers are going in a good direction...&nbsp;Not everything appreciates. Art goes up and down in price based on popularity. Artists who were popular but haven&rsquo;t had big exhibitions lately, their work might be worth less now than when they were younger.

In general, I also tell people to stay away from reproductions. They should buy an original piece, hand-painted, when possible. There are a lot of people who make a painting, photograph it, then make prints of it digitally. If people who are buying that realize what they&rsquo;ve purchased, that&rsquo;s one thing. On the other hand, we&rsquo;ve gotten calls from people to come and appraise their art collections, and when I get there&nbsp;I find out they&rsquo;re all reproductions. Those people have paid a lot of money, and a lot of what they paid for is the framing.

At the gallery, what goes into determining price? Who is involved in that conversation?

If the artist is alive, we might contact them and say, &ldquo;We have a client reselling this, what do you think?&rdquo; A lot of deceased artists have estates or foundations where people manage the work that is left, and we compare prices with them. It also depends on the condition &mdash; has it faded in the sun, is there damage? The better the condition, the more it will increase in value.

When we start with younger, local artists, we usually tell them to set lower prices and see what kind of response we get from the public. We can always raise the prices as time goes by &mdash; there have been very few artists where we&rsquo;ve ever lowered the prices. <a href="https://www.flandersart.com" target="_blank">Right now&nbsp;we have a show up </a>where everything is priced at $1,000 or less. In January, we might see how things sold and raise the gallery prices based on response.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5ODEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Two works available through the gallery.&nbsp;Left:&nbsp;Red Poppies by Marcel Dyf. Dyf was a French artist born 1899, known for his delicate impressionist still lifes and landscapes. Right:&nbsp;Summer Country Fields with a Barn Red by Joyce Weinstein. Weinstein is an American abstract painter. This series are all based on aerial images.

What role do auctions play in determining the financial value of a work?

People watch auctions a lot more than they used to. Auctions used to be for galleries and art dealers, but now many more people from the public are getting into it. Something that might normally go for $10,000 to $15,000 can easily go for $25,000 to $35,000 at auction because of the number of people. Auctions used to be considered wholesale;&nbsp;now things are selling at more and more of a retail price. I&rsquo;m currently bidding on some pieces where I had a wholesale level in mind, and it&rsquo;s gone way beyond that.

With original prints, there is frequently more than one on the market at a time &mdash; you can search online to see if a print is available at multiple places and do some shopping. What we do is make sure the condition of the piece is pristine, and then it will have top value...&nbsp;People have to ask about the condition, ask the dealer to take it out of the frame. When it&rsquo;s essentially the same piece and it&rsquo;s a different price, there&rsquo;s a reason.

What options are available for people looking to buy or sell a work in poor condition? &nbsp; &nbsp;

Sometimes you can buy a damaged piece and, depending on what the damage is, have it restored for a reasonable rate and end up owning a piece for a lot less money.

You have to find out if it&rsquo;s restorable and what restoration would cost. There are a lot of things, like cracking and holes in the canvas, that are permanent. It can be fixed so visually it looks perfect, but the hole is there and that can&rsquo;t be changed &mdash; it still alters the value of the piece. &nbsp; &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5ODAwMDAy/full.jpg" />The Gallery&#39;s second location, now open at 5025 S. France Ave. in Edina.

What appraisal services does the gallery offer? How often do you recommend that people get work reappraised?

We always put together a notebook with a certificate of authenticity and current market value on pieces that we sell, so people can list them with their insurance company. That&rsquo;s something we do as part of the purchase. Every few years, I would say to get it reappraised. If something goes up in value substantially, I&rsquo;ll call the buyer and tell them.

We were working with a woman whose husband worked for Boeing, and his territory was in Asia. She would go with him and bring back artwork. One of the artists had a show with us, and our most expensive piece was around $13,000. A couple of months later, one of his paintings sold at auction for $600,000. We contacted galleries in Asia to see what they were doing, and we reappraised the pieces we had sold. We have no idea when that&rsquo;s going to happen, but we do our best to let people know when it does.

What resources do you recommend for buyers wanting to research a specific artist?

Our archives are really good, and I often go to the Walker and Minneapolis Institute of Art libraries. We try to keep up with monographs on most of our artists. We just bought a beautiful new book on Hazel Belvo, and one on Doug Argue &mdash; a former Minnesota artist. We also get catalogues. There are not as many being made today as there used to be, but there are still galleries publishing catalogues. These usually include an essay by an art critic, illustrations of many of the pieces, and a biography of the artist at the back. &nbsp; &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5ODIwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5NjgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Hazel Belvo&#39;s new book, A Matriarch of Art. Bottom: The gallery&#39;s current show, running through January 31st, of works all for sale for $1000 or less.

Douglas Flanders is the founder and owner of <a href="https://www.flandersart.com" target="_blank">Douglas Flanders &amp; Associates Fine Art Gallery + Consultants</a>, located at 818 W. Lake Street in Minneapolis. A second location is now open at 5025 S. France Avenue in Edina, complete with a library of art books and resources for buyers.

This is the second of two sponsored posts. Read more about the gallery&#39;s history in <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2020/11/four-decades-in-longtime-gallerist-branches-out" target="_blank">our first article here</a>.

All photos are courtesy of the gallery.

In a follow-up to our profile on Douglas Flanders & Associates, the gallerist discusses what to look for in an investment piece, how crowded auctions are impacting prices, and how restoration can factor into buying and selling.

Pricing & Value in the Fine Art Market: Q & A with Douglas Flanders

&nbsp;

The Bockley Gallery is a hidden gem tucked away near Lake of the Isles, encompassed by brawny trees and creative home architecture. The surroundings have a charm that matches the gallery, which typically exhibits work by artists in the gallery&rsquo;s roster. &nbsp;For this Fall Show, however, Bockley is giving us five artists brand new to the gallery: Leslie Barlow, Tom Jones, Jovan C. Speller, Jonathan Herrera Soto, and Jose Dominguez. This show features each artist&rsquo;s disparate artistic practice, combining their style, media, and aesthetic points of view to serve as an introduction to these artists&rsquo; practices and intentions. The gallery space itself has an open feel to it and a fluid flow, allowing you to really engage and focus on each piece at a time. It is quiet and peaceful, a way to kind of decompress and let the mind wander and be with the art.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5NjcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Leslie Barlow;&nbsp;Grandmother and Child;&nbsp;oil, pastel, acrylic, quilted fabric on panel; 48 x 48&quot;; 2019

Leslie Barlow&rsquo;s piece, titled Grandmother and Child, is part of her larger series: A Familiar Portrait of Labor and Love. Each piece of work represents a form of labor and love Barlow experienced, conveyed through photos and experiences. Grandmother and Child is a mix of oil, pastel, acrylic, and quilted fabric on a wooden panel. Looking at this work, I feel the candidness of the photo, and the stillness of the expressions Leslie captures from both subjects is surreal. The baby blank stare from Child is a mini-Mona Lisa, with the eyes following you as you walk by. &nbsp;

Before I noticed the swimsuits, I felt the heat and humidity from looking at it. The brush strokes give a very smooth and melting texture to the work &ndash; combined with the out of water look, the painting is reminiscent&nbsp;of&nbsp;a warm breeze coming by when you&rsquo;re getting out of the water during a summer day. The panel background adds to the melted sensation with the large stretched-out wood pattern. The open background really draws you into the center of the painting, highlighting the stars of it all. Speaking of stars, on either side of Grandmother and Child are quilted diamonds of multi-colored fabric. The quilted fabric patterns are like the Swedish Barn Quilt trail in Chisago Lakes, and the fabric itself carries with it a very grandmotherly nostalgia, which rounds out the sentiment that is woven into this piece and some attribute to their grandmother &ndash; a sense of nurture. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5NzcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Tom Jones, Elizah Leonard, digital photograph with beadwork, edition 2/5,&nbsp;40&nbsp;x 40&quot;, 2019

The next piece in the show is Tom Jones&rsquo;s Elizah Leonard, part of his Strong Unrelenting Spirits project. Jones&rsquo;s photographs examine identity and geographic place within the experience of American Indian communities. He is unapologetically Ho-Chunk and interested in the way that American Indian material culture is represented through popular culture. Strong Unrelenting Spirits is a series of portraits that are rooted in Ho-Chunk identity, fusing beaded designs that are traditionally used on clothing directly onto photographs. &nbsp;

In Elizah Leonard, a Ho-Chunk member is front and center &ndash; tall, proud, and confident. You can feel the solidarity in her by the posture and gaze alone. I noticed right away the sharpness of the photo; you can almost count the threads in the clothing. The beaded floral designs gently glide across the outline of the subject and give the look and feel of an aura surrounding them. The pitch-black background really makes the colors of the Ho-Chunk apparel burst out at you. Walking by the piece activates the beaded work to shimmer and in turn the subject, whom I assume to be Elizah, gets lifted off the photograph, almost holographic in nature. A lot about this is very thematic and cohesive &ndash; the floral &ldquo;aura&rdquo; pattern matching the floral pattern in the Ho-Chunk clothing, the colors on the vest matching the colors of the Ho-Chunk clothing and the diamond pattern on it, the beaded design on their stomach and the beaded orbs in the corner. It is all coordinated well. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5NzcwMDAy/full.jpg" />

Jovan C. Speller, Some of us didn&rsquo;t make it, cut and layered archival photographs, 24 x 24&quot;, 2020

Continuing our verbal tour of the Bockley Gallery Fall Show leads us to two collages by Jovan C. Speller. Both are cut and layered photographs from a series of hers called Relics of Home, utilizing photography, text, installation, and sound to examine origin stories. &ldquo;This work is a journey of research and reconciliation,&rdquo; writes the artist. &ldquo;I look into the past, upon the histories of Black people in this country &ndash; I look into the gaping ambiguity of what is the beginning of Black identity. I attempt to conjure the &lsquo;who&rsquo; that we were before we were stolen, transported, sold, and exploited. At least, that&rsquo;s where I began. Swallowed by the missing and forgotten ancestors and traditions. Where I have arrived is a different place entirely.&rdquo; &nbsp;

My first experience with the photo collages is that they both exist in&nbsp;a very dream-like state, especially with the black and white collaged in &ndash; it gives the work a reality break that feels surreal in contrast to the normalcy of&nbsp;the photo&rsquo;s background and content. In person, the un-stenciled collaged layers are apparent and have a raw tone with the physical construction of the works. Both works, which were made specifically for this show, have a quiet country stillness to the photos, which is aided by the silent ambiance in the gallery. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1MjgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Jonathan Herrera Soto,&nbsp;Sin Titulo / Untitled, 1 of 20&nbsp;unique collagraph prints on hand-made flax paper, 30 x 40&quot;, 2020

Next&nbsp;is the collagraph print Because I love you, because I will wait for you, every morning/Porque te Amo, Porque te Esperar&eacute;, Todas las Ma&ntilde;anas, from Jonathan Herrera Soto&rsquo;s series ironically titled Untitled/Sin Titulo. The clothing used in the series&nbsp;are either owned by the artist, given to him, or found abandoned outside, from locations poles apart in the United States. The Untitled/Sin T&iacute;tulo series provides an opportunity to remember and mourn the body, when there is no physical body left behind. The ambiguity of the clothing allows the viewer to create a world from their own experiences. &nbsp;

The general aesthetic of this piece is somber and caliginous; it reminded me of clothing you would see from a Titanic exhibit. The idea of Herrera Soto using real clothing he finds abandoned across the United States is ominous to say the least &ndash; the desolate articles have their own stories and experiences embedded into the fibers and stitches. When combined with the process Herrera Soto uses to create the work, the clothing becomes re-animated, but in a ghost-like fashion and feel. Another fun aspect to this piece is that I&rsquo;m not sure if this is from the 1900s, 1940s, or 1980s; it adds even more to the mystery. The title of the work is printed on the clothing in Old&nbsp;English font, adding more character and legend to this piece. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE3NjEwMDAx/full.jpg" />

Jose Dominguez,&nbsp;Farther Than My Father, acrylic and cut paper on masonite,&nbsp;48 x&nbsp;51 x 4&quot;, 2018

In a striking and clever change of pace, the exhibition&nbsp;transitions finally to Jose Dominguez&rsquo;s Farther Than My Father, from a larger series titled The Art of Avoiding PPL. The series includes multiple large-scale, mixed-media works along with smaller-scale drawings. Dominguez uses figuration, text, bright colors, and bold lines to capture the energy and tensions that underpin our relationships with our friends, family, and those that make up our communities. The artist confesses a love-hate relationship with people.

This piece is weirdly positive and positively weird with an eccentric feel and look to it. The colors are bright and vibrant, lunging towards you and drawing you in with its literal hands. The faces on the trees and moon-like objects placed around with the various expressions appear to look back at you with. A lot of things in this piece seem &ldquo;normal,&rdquo; but with the colors and patterns drawing you in more, all the fantastical details are soon realized: the hands in the middle that have a few too many fingers, the&nbsp;head emerging&nbsp;from the bush between the hands, the various lemon heads placed throughout, the ice cream sandwich face in the corner &ndash; it&rsquo;s an incredibly bizarre game of &ldquo;I Spy.&rdquo; Here Dominguez fuses the look of street art with the whimsical nature of Sesame Street, guiding your eyes along the board game squares and stairs up to the trees and the Sasquatch figure at the top. You can really feel Dominguez&rsquo;s zany and cartoonish lens of how he views the world &ndash; as a CandyLand fever dream. &nbsp; &nbsp;

The Fall Show at Bockley serves as an introduction to each of these artists. While their differences in style, media, and aesthetic points of view seems to be apparent, there is one huge thread tying these together: personal history. Each one of these pieces emphasizes their own familial and cultural background &ndash; whether that be outright like Tom Jones&rsquo; work celebrating Ho-Chunk culture or more subtly, as in Herrera Soto&rsquo;s work emphasizing&nbsp;those lost immigrating. Bockley&rsquo;s Fall Show runs through December 19th; to get a visual taste of these works in person please contact the gallery. With COVID (and Jack Frost) nipping at our noses and the urge to refrain from large gatherings, a stroll by through the gallery&nbsp;can be a great&nbsp;way to soothe the winter restlessness. &nbsp;

<a href="http://www.bockleygallery.com/index.html" target="_blank">Bockley Gallery</a> is located at 2123 W 21st St in Minneapolis, currently open by appointment only. Call 612-377-4669 or email <a href="mailto:information@bockleygallery.com">information@bockleygallery.com</a> to schedule your visit.

Banner image:&nbsp;Yeah, but where you from?&nbsp;(detail),&nbsp;cut and layered archival photographs, 24 x 24&quot;, 2020

This group exhibition, which closes December 19th, features Leslie Barlow, Jose Dominguez, Tom Jones, Jonathan Herrera Soto, and Jovan C. Speller

Personal histories: A look at Bockley Gallery's Fall Show

&nbsp;

Upon asking Shade Pratt what it was that spurred her dive into the life of art and design, the answer at first was pragmatic &mdash; and profound.

&ldquo;I know design isn&rsquo;t going anywhere&hellip; Everything around me, you, from the computer you&rsquo;re typing on to the bench you&rsquo;re sitting on &mdash; has been designed.&rdquo;

For Shade, though, the value of design in her life doesn&rsquo;t solely consist of its practical use-value. To create something you&rsquo;ve never seen before is always a regenerative act.

Born in Maryland and raised in Minnesota, Shade returned east to the University of Maryland where she graduated with a degree melding art, architecture, engineering, and sustainability. Since then, between her world travels as a professional soccer player, Minnesota has always been home &mdash; her most recent stay elongated by the pandemic. As a designer whose visual acumen spans from shoes to murals to illustrations, Pratt says that&nbsp;&ldquo;Art is a part of everything I do.&rdquo; The value in art&rsquo;s omnipresence is that it&rsquo;s freeing for the artist.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NDkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Untitled, acrylic on canvas triptych, each 18&quot; x 36&quot;

In the past few months alone, that same ubiquity has moved Shade Pratt to hone new and long-shelved talents. She tells me she brings her camera everywhere, so when protests started in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, &ldquo;I was out there &mdash; camera in hand &mdash; trying to shed light for everyone who wasn&rsquo;t here [in Minneapolis] on what was really happening.&rdquo;

But, as can be the nature of protest, being on the frontlines took a toll. &ldquo;So I started to paint,&rdquo; she says. By way of bright, dynamic, large scale murals, Pratt tells me how she moved her voice into the visual language of paintings. To be clear, undertaking large&nbsp;scale murals in collaboration with local artists was still a labor, be it of love. They stood long hours under June suns, climbing up and down&nbsp;ladders, paintbrushes in hand. Folks started seeing Shade&rsquo;s work donning the sides of buildings across the city and commissions started coming in. She tells me, &ldquo;I really haven&rsquo;t put down a brush since.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5NzUwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5NjUwMDAx/full.jpg" />The artist at work on her mural, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, at 605 Central Ave NE in Minneapolis.

The pieces that manifest are illustrative and for her, driven by nostalgia and abstraction &mdash; an emphasis placed on negative space. &ldquo;The problem can be knowing when to leave space,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;where to stop&rdquo;.

When I ask about her process and sources that inspire, Shade tells me, &ldquo;Inspiration can come from anywhere,&rdquo; explaining&nbsp;that any moment in a day, every scene within a scene can be the seed for creative thought. Zooming out, Pratt mentions being inspired by transportation, cosmetics, infrastructure, and music colliding with it all. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t just stay in your market.&rdquo;

The line isn&rsquo;t straight, and the field isn&rsquo;t level. She shares that since May, much of her practice takes place within her home. Sometimes pieces are wholly driven aesthetically, and like we all hesitate to admit, content can arrive within a work much, much later.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxNDYwMDAx/full.jpg" />At home as much behind an easel as she is&nbsp;out on the pitch, the artist also has a successful career in professional soccer.

Equally significant to her artistic practice and underlying motivation is the fact that Shade Pratt also happens to be a successful professional footballer, usually playing the position of a winger&nbsp;or attacker&nbsp;for multiple teams spanning continents from North America to Asia. Though with the onset of COVID-19 around the world, her training and playing has been placed on a bit of a hold.

What&rsquo;s revealed itself as critical to any discipline of hers, especially that of art-making, is time management, organization, and getting used to not being in one place for long. So whether it be through mural-making for the public or footwear design internships&nbsp;for the likes of Adidas and New Balance, Shade isn&rsquo;t afraid of fluctuation or of shaking things up. With plans to work with an up-and-coming brewery on a new mural, partnering with local businesses expressing a positive message will always be important to her. She shares that, when it comes to the field, her goal is to inspire girls to pursue sports.

When it comes to art, her goal is to speak to the community, better yet the world.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzNTUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Tumble, acrylic on canvas triptych, each&nbsp;40&quot; x 30&quot;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxNTkwMDAx/full.jpg" />

For more info and a full portfolio, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://shadepratt.com" target="_blank">shadepratt.com</a>&nbsp;or follow the artist on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shadepratt/" target="_blank">@shadepratt</a>.

Banner image: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (detail), mural at 605 Central Ave NE&nbsp;in Minneapolis.&nbsp;All images are courtesy of the artist.

The 27-year-old professional soccer player and multidisciplinary artist/designer shares a bit about where she is and how she got there.

Shade Pratt Knows That Design Is What Makes the World Go 'Round

As a fixture in Minneapolis since 1972, it&rsquo;s inevitable that gallerist Doug Flanders has made his mark on the city &ndash; through people he has met and conversations he has been a part of, as much as the physical spaces he has occupied.

Representing local artists, as well as dealing in work from the estates of historic figures like Pablo Picasso, Flanders attracts clients from across the country and the world. But&nbsp;while a significant portion of his business comes from outside the state, Douglas Flanders &amp; Associates has continued to operate out of his hometown. Now, for the first time, the gallery is expanding its local brick-and-mortar operations to a second location in Edina.

With a collection that has grown from 150 pieces to over 15,000 during four decades in business, square footage was a major impetus in expanding from their current location near the intersection of Lake and Bryant. It was something that Flanders and Gallery Manager Jefferson Fee had been discussing for months, before a client proposed a property that she owned along France Avenue.

&ldquo;When she mentioned the space, I looked across the room at Doug and my eyes just lit up,&rdquo; recalls Fee. &ldquo;Doug has always maintained a location within one to three miles of downtown, but the reason we&rsquo;re excited about this space is that it&rsquo;s almost three times the square footage we have now.&rdquo;

Gallery staffers got to work this summer converting the interior, which formerly housed General Sports, and are now planning to open before the Thanksgiving holiday &mdash; although a fair number of shoppers have already wandered into the new space.

&ldquo;We had a couple who just moved here from Japan;&nbsp;they saw our sign in the window. They came over and bought two to three pieces already, and we&rsquo;re not even open yet,&rdquo; says Flanders. &ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s going to be a really good place to be.&rdquo;

Going forward, Fee hopes the other retail spaces and restaurants that populate the 50th &amp; France area will bring in more foot traffic. While the location on Lake Street will now become the gallery&rsquo;s primary venue for exhibitions, most of the inventory will be rehoused in Edina.

While Flanders frequently sells to museums, businesses, and even other galleries, residential buyers continue to be a significant part of the local market &mdash; and interior design showcases like the Parade of Homes Twin Cities are part of what has kept Flanders in Minneapolis over the years.

&ldquo;We really get to know people through that, who then come into the gallery and buy a piece or two,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;One year, one of the homes was sold to a doctor moving here from San Francisco and he bought all of the art that was in the house. That was a $200,000 sale back in the 1970s.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ3NTYwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ1NTUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top: The new space on France Ave, still under construction earlier this summer. The gallery plans to open to the public officially this month. Bottom: Flanders in his element at an opening, circa 1980.

<h3>Starting small, selling to other galleries &nbsp;</h3>

While Flanders has had plenty of practice interior decorating over the years, his artistic eye was developed even at a young age by his grandmother. Many of his earliest memories are of accompanying her to museums, both at home and abroad. As Flanders recalls, she was a painter herself, who wore &ldquo;long, dark dresses and white gloves, carried a cane,&rdquo; and was able to share her own technical knowledge about the work they were viewing.

After dropping out of the University of Minnesota, Flanders began his professional career with gallerist and pop art specialist Denise Ren&eacute; in New York. In order to strike out on his own, he then decided to leave the crowded East Coast market and set up shop back home in Minnesota.

&ldquo;My basic inventory was my own art collection. The first show that we did was of Georgia O&rsquo;Keeffe paintings and watercolors, and we had busloads of visitors,&rdquo; he recalls. &ldquo;We had teachers bringing their fifth-graders, we had university students, we had groups of senior citizens.&rdquo;

Despite not selling a single piece during the show, he later took some of the works to auction and was able to reinvest that money in growing his collection. As he tried to feel out what local clients wanted, Flanders visited graduate programs and bought pieces from artists like Eric Fischl, Susan Rothenberg, and Julian Schnabel. For work that didn&rsquo;t sell locally, he would go through rolls of film trying to get a few good pictures of his inventory to mail out.

A major source of income during these early years was other galleries in different parts of the country. Flanders would connect with fellow gallerists during art fairs, then promptly send them a letter and envelope full of slides as soon as he got home. Forty years later, he says these contacts are still some of his closest clients and friends. Additionally, a robust network of colleagues and former clients helps Flanders keep track of the work he sells and potentially facilitate future transactions.

&ldquo;A lot of pieces we sold back in the 1970s and 1980s &mdash; the people who bought that work are passing on, and a lot of it is coming back to resell,&rdquo; he notes. &ldquo;I just got a call from a woman I&rsquo;ve known for a long time down in Florida, looking for a Jim Dine sculpture we had about 20 years ago. She wanted to know if it was still available, so now I&rsquo;m contacting the owners to see if they want to sell.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1NjcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Flanders&#39;s first gallery in Minneapolis in the early &#39;70s at 12th and Harmon Place, now the site of a&nbsp;Bucca&nbsp;di&nbsp;Beppo.

<h3>Library planned for new location</h3>

Even as their collection has grown, both Flanders and Fee say there is a story behind almost every piece at the gallery &mdash; and, despite many clients looking for an investment, Flanders says he wants clients to prioritize choosing a piece they&rsquo;ll enjoy living with. To this end, the other key feature of the new Edina location is a library.

&ldquo;We want to create a space for people to sit down, thumb through art books, and get ideas about what they&rsquo;re looking for &mdash; as well as learn about the various artists we represent,&rdquo; says Fee. &ldquo;First and foremost, we like to find out what people like &mdash; what captures your mind and your heart? Collecting doesn&rsquo;t have to mean five figures on a price tag. The value is the quality of the art, and what works for one person may not work for another,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go out of our way to find anything and everything&nbsp;for anyone&rsquo;s art desires.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzNjMwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM5NTcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top: Douglas Flanders today, with a painting by James Leonard. Bottom: Jefferson Fee next to work by New York-based artist Joyce Weinstein.

<div>
Douglas Flanders &amp; Associates Fine Arts Gallery + Consultants will be opening their second location this month, at 5025 France Ave S in Edina, and are still open at their existing space at 818 W Lake St in Minneapolis.

Check out&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flandersart.com" target="_blank">flandersart.com</a>&nbsp;for more info, and please wear a mask if you intend to visit in person.

All photos are courtesy of the gallery.

EDITOR&#39;S NOTE: This article has been updated slightly since publication to reflect the evolving vision DF&amp;A has for their new space.
</div>

Douglas Flanders & Associates, long a fixture in Minneapolis, has big plans for their expansion to a second location in Edina

Four Decades In, Longtime Gallerist Branches Out

&nbsp;

<h1><a href="http://www.casketarts.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM5NTEwMDAx/card_large.png" /></a></h1>

<h1><a href="http://www.casketarts.com/" target="_blank">Open Casket 2020 Online</a></h1>

Online&nbsp;&bull;&nbsp;Nov 5th - 8th

Join the historic Casket Arts Building artists for a weekend of amazing art and shopping. Shop for paintings, jewelry, ceramics, woodworking, printmaking, sculpture, drawings, photography, gifts, and more, as well as enjoy a series of live and prerecorded interviews, art demos, and interactive studio tours.

&nbsp;

<hr />
&nbsp;

<h1><a href="https://shop.nemaa.org/art-attack/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" height="472" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE3NTUwMDAx/full.jpg" width="900" /></a></h1>

<h1><a href="https://shop.nemaa.org/art-attack/" target="_blank">Art Attack 2020</a></h1>

Online&nbsp;&bull;&nbsp;Nov 5th -&nbsp; 8th

The Northrup King Building&#39;s annual Fall studio crawl, Art Attack,&nbsp;is back&hellip; Online! Join over 350 artists and Galleries from Minnesota&#39;s largest studio complex for a virtual edition of the&nbsp;event. Buy artwork directly from artists from the comfort of your own home or in person during <a href="https://www.northrupkingbuilding.com/events/first-thursdays" target="_blank">extended First Thursday&#39;s hours Nov 5th</a>.

&nbsp;

<hr />
&nbsp;

<h1><a href="https://shop.interactcenter.org/" target="_blank">Interact Center&rsquo;s Great Big Holiday Sale 2020</a></h1>

Online &bull;&nbsp;Nov 16th - Dec 5th

Interact Center presents over 60 artists in their largest sale of the year. Make the holidays brighter for all with one of-a-kind items from Interact artists.&nbsp;Shop from your couch 24/7 during the sale&nbsp;for everything including jewelry, art, ornaments, scarfs, ceramics and holiday cards.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<h1><a href="https://shop.nemaa.org/open-studios/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" height="472" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NDUwMDAx/full.jpg" width="900" /></a></h1>

<h1><a href="https://shop.nemaa.org/open-studios/" target="_blank">Northeast MPLS&nbsp;Fall Open Studios</a></h1>

Nov 18th - Dec 31st&nbsp;&bull;&nbsp;Online

Browse artwork for hundreds of&nbsp;NEMAA&nbsp;(Northeast Minneapolis Arts&nbsp;Association) member artists and galleries.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<hr />
&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<h1><a href="https://shop.nemaa.org/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNDAwMDAx/full.jpg" /></a></h1>

<h1><a href="https://shop.nemaa.org/" target="_blank">NEMAA Holiday Shop</a></h1>

Nov 28th - Dec 31st&nbsp;&bull;&nbsp;Online

Browse artwork for hundreds of NEMAA (Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association) member artists and galleries.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<hr />
&nbsp;

<h1><a href="http://www.gamutgallerympls.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNDAwMDAx/full.jpg" /></a></h1>

<h1><a href="http://www.gamutgallerympls.com/" target="_blank">9th Annual Raging Art On at Gamut Gallery</a></h1>

Gallery Hours&nbsp;Dec 1st - Dec 31st &bull; Online Dec 2nd - Jan 4th @ Gamut Gallery&nbsp;&nbsp;

The event that kicked off Gamut&rsquo;s inception is back for the 9th year in a row! A holiday sale in a gallery setting, Gamut Gallery provides a fun-filled, consumer-conscious alternative to chain stores and mass mall shopping with our annual shopping event Raging Art On. Raging Art On (RAO), our holiday pop-up shop will be open for 3 weeks, featuring over a dozen new artists and an additional handful of artists that have been with us from the very beginning.

&nbsp;

<hr />
&nbsp;

Coming Soon 
- Nemaa&nbsp;online shop 
- NE Studios 
<span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Gifts in the Gallery&quot;}" style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:arial; font-size:10pt">- Gifts in the Gallery Artistry 
<span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Interact Center's Great Big Holiday Sale&quot;}" style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:arial; font-size:10pt">- Cream of the Crop 
-&nbsp;<span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Humbug &amp; Hoopla Holiday Event&quot;}" style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:arial; font-size:10pt">Humbug &amp; Hoopla Holiday Event 
-&nbsp;<span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Holiday Celebration of the Arts at the Anderson Center in Red Wing&quot;}" style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:arial; font-size:10pt">Holiday Celebration of the Arts at the Anderson Center in Red Wing 
&nbsp;

Keep it in the community this year, give original and meaningful gifts made by local artists.

2020 Holiday Shopping Guide

EDIT: This article has been updated to include comments from developer William Boulay, as well as a postscript&nbsp;Editor&#39;s Note to expand on the issue of affordability in this development. The original title of this article has also been altered to avoid any confusion about editorial intent.&nbsp;

The City Council will be voting on whether to move forward with this proposal at <a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Calendar/all/monthly" target="_blank">their meeting</a> on Friday, November 13th at 9:30am. We recommend you reach out to your Council representative before then to weigh on this project. More info on <a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download/Agenda/914/2301%20California%20St%20NE.pdf/46927/1829/2301%20California%20St%20NE" target="_blank">the initial&nbsp;proposal can be found here</a>, and the latest from <a href="https://northeastminneapolisartsdistrict.org/fighting-city-hall-and-developers/" target="_blank">the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District can be found here.</a>

&nbsp;

A new production/mixed use development planned for the space next door to the artist studio-filled California Building in Northeast Minneapolis is facing opposition from some of the artists in the building, the California Building owners, as well as the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District (NE-AD), and the Bottineau Neighborhood Association (BNA).&nbsp;

The 160-unit building, located over two adjacent properties at 2301 California St. NE and 78 23rd Ave NE, will be made up of affordable housing units, in addition to production space on the first floor of the building. Three lengthy appeals by NE-AD, BNA, and the California Building owners outline many of the points of opposition to the project. The project applicant is William Boulay, of St. Paul-based LS Black Development, who is working with ESG Architects on the design.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Our greatest objection is that the project, if it goes forward as proposed, doesn&rsquo;t mitigate the uses properly,&rdquo; says Jennifer Young, co-owner of the California Building, which provides studio space to 85 artists and makers. According to Young, the California Building owners foresee potential conflicts between the industrial uses of the artists in the California building and the residential use of the people that will be moving into the new development. &ldquo;If they build it as proposed, they are building conflicts into the future,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;All of a sudden the residential users &mdash; the new tenants &mdash; are going to complain about noise, and those conflicts are going to be ongoing.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Currently, there are single family residential homeowners interspersed into the nearby area around the California Building and the proposed new development, but Young says the California Building owners talk to them on a one-on-one basis.

Part of the proposal for the project is a petition to rezone the two properties, including adding an IL Industrial Living Overlay District to the existing I1 Light Industrial District. That change would allow for residential dwelling units at the site and also seeks a permit to increase the height that would be allowed. Ultimately, according to the California Building appeal, the 2301 California St. development imposes a residential building into an industrial zone.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxNzAwMDAx/full.jpg" />The initial&nbsp;rendering of the new development, submitted to the City for approval by LS Black Development and ESG Architecture &amp; Design,&nbsp;courtesy of <a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download/Agenda/914/2301%20California%20St%20NE.pdf/46927/1829/2301%20California%20St%20NE" target="_blank">an&nbsp;August 6th memorandum</a> from the CPED&nbsp;detailing the proposal.

But according to Mei-Ling Smith, a Senior City Planner for the City of Minneapolis, change coming to the neighborhood is inevitable. &ldquo;There used to be grain silos and storage tanks on this site for years and years and years,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;So it&#39;s definitely going to change from a strictly industrial site to one that has a mix of uses, and it has more residential. That&rsquo;s not something you can argue with.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The appeal written by the California Building owners asserts that the proposal &ldquo;misapplies the zoning code and the 2040 Comprehensive Plan in an inconsistent and illegal manner.&rdquo;&nbsp;

While the Minneapolis 2040 Plan has been passed, the zoning code has not been updated, Young says. In the California Building appeal, Young and her husband John Kremer wrote that the developer used provisions in the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, but doesn&rsquo;t meet the current Zoning Code standards, including going over the allowed height of the building plan. Young says that even provisions of the 2040 plan aren&rsquo;t followed, like the requirement that a building of that size be split into two separate buildings.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Right now there is nothing written for the implementation plan that guides development on industrial land that also has a residential component,&rdquo; Young says. &ldquo;Until that code gets written, you have to follow existing code.&rdquo;&nbsp;

According to Smith, who wrote the city <a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download/Agenda/1194/RPT-PLAN11552-2301%2520California.pdf/48613/1980/2301%2520California%2520St%2520NE">report</a> on the project, a number of people have been upset about the rezoning component to the development. &ldquo;That&#39;s maybe a technical thing that people are still upset about, but one of the things that is being applied for is to add an overlay district to allow residential uses on an industrial site. That&rsquo;s going to be considered at the same meeting, but it can&#39;t be appealed.&rdquo;

According to Smith, the new 2040 Plan is causing some confusion. &ldquo;Our new comprehensive plan is adopted, but our zoning code is not all the way up to date yet,&rdquo; she says. However, the current ordinances aren&rsquo;t reflective of the future guidance. &ldquo;So there is a lot of confusion right now. So on a case by case basis, we&#39;re trying to be very calculated, we&#39;re trying to be consistent with how we&#39;re applying these new rules, and we&#39;re right now in the process of updating the actual ordinances to more closely reflect the built form. So there is a lot of confusion about that, which is totally understandable. And we&#39;re muddling through it as well.&rdquo;

Besides the California Building owners, artists that have their studio spaces in the building are also gravely concerned about the new development.&nbsp;

Madison Rubenstein, an artist in the California Building, says she thinks this isn&rsquo;t the right project for the lot. &ldquo;My concern is that this building is being put next door without any consideration for the artists or people across the street,&rdquo; she says.&ldquo;The parking will be right up against our loading dock. I don&rsquo;t know if I&rsquo;m going to have the same access and parking.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Another artist in the building, Hilary Greenstein, says she has concerns the developer has disregarded the community&rsquo;s desire for green space.&nbsp;

&ldquo;My research has found several instances of the developers exploiting industrial codes to cut corners and override the interests of artists and neighbors,&rdquo; Greenstein wrote in an email. &ldquo;They are ultimately seeking to profit off the history and culture of this diverse artistic community without listening to the community&#39;s needs.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Tim Kremer, Young&rsquo;s brother-in-law and a board member for the Bottineau Neighborhood Association, who lives in the neighborhood, says he is mostly concerned with the scale of the development. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t find other places in Minneapolis where the city would allow them to build a building that&rsquo;s a block and a half long,&rdquo; Kremer says. &ldquo;The building is so large that the houses directly across the street will not see the sun shine until noon on Christmas Day. The size of the building doesn&rsquo;t fit with the character of the neighborhood.&rdquo;

According to Kremer, BNA has talked about being committed to the goals of the 2040 plan, including its goals around affordable housing. &ldquo;We want more affordable housing, we just think this neighborhood doesn&rsquo;t need 6 stories,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;

Kremer says he likes living in the neighborhood because of all the artists, and he&rsquo;s concerned this new building, with only 1/3 of the first floor devoted to production space, will move the neighborhood away from the arts.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I like what the arts do,&rdquo; Kremer says. &ldquo;I like what it does to the neighborhood. Without that production space, it begins to degrade the character of the neighborhood.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxNTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Courtesy of&nbsp;<a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download/Agenda/914/2301%20California%20St%20NE.pdf/46927/1829/2301%20California%20St%20NE" target="_blank">an&nbsp;August 6th memorandum</a>&nbsp;from the CPED&nbsp;detailing the proposal.

According to Smith, a number of things changed in the development proposal after neighbors and artists gave testimony through the planning commission.&nbsp;

For example, the developers increased the amount of space devoted to production on the first floor, she says. &ldquo;So some of the things that are in the appeal statements were already addressed by the developer or will have to be addressed by the developer if they want to pull building permits, as the current condition stands,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;So I think it will be an improvement overall.&rdquo;&nbsp;

According to&nbsp;Boulay, the project for the development has adjusted in a number of ways based on feedback from neighbors. That includes&nbsp;increasing the amount of production space in the building from 11,600 square feet &nbsp;to about twice that, 23,000 square feet. They also&nbsp;added solar panels to the project, broadened the affordability of the project to be 40-80%&nbsp;area media income, and committed to spending $150,000 to local public art.&nbsp;Boulay&nbsp;also said the project will donate 5 to 10 thousand dollars on a greenhouse construction for the nearby California Street farm, and would add a bike path that would connect to the future&nbsp;Bottineau&nbsp;bike trail.&nbsp;In addition,&nbsp;Boulay&nbsp;said he hopes that artists themselves would live in the building. &ldquo;We anticipate that a good number of our residents will be artists or people that desire to live in Northeast so they can enjoy the arts. &nbsp;We also hope that our commitment to incorporate public art into our design will help to inspire our residents to engage in the arts.&quot;

According to Smith, what has been missed in much of the opposition to the project is that the development represents a large amount of affordable housing.&nbsp;

&ldquo;This year, we&#39;ve received kind of an unusual amount of affordable housing proposals, and that&#39;s something that&#39;s consistent with the city goals,&rdquo; Smith says. &ldquo;It&#39;s something that we have been using to justify an increase in height. That&#39;s just because it&#39;s one of the Comprehensive Plan goals. It&rsquo;s not the only thing that a project would have to accomplish in order to be approved, but it&#39;s one of the things we would be looking at.&rdquo;&nbsp;

According to Smith, the three lengthy appeals she received about the development, from the California Building and from BNA and NE-AD didn&rsquo;t talk about the affordable housing. &ldquo;They&#39;re talking about a lot of other issues,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I think maybe tiptoeing around it.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&ldquo;100% of the housing will be affordable,&rdquo; says City Council member Steve Fletcher.&nbsp;

The average affordability of the development will be 60 percent Area Median Income, Fletcher says. &ldquo;What they&#39;re doing here is actually averaging out so there&#39;ll be some that are slightly above that standard, and then a bunch of housing at 40% AMI, which is actually the housing the city needs for people who are really struggling to find housing.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The next step in the process is a Business, Inspections, Zoning, and Housing committee meeting at 1:30pm on November 2nd, which is open to the public but held remotely due to the pandemic. To give input at the meeting, <a href="http://www2.minneapolismn.gov/meetings/onlinemeetings/attend-citycouncil-meeting">sign up at this link</a>.

Barring any delays, the final decision on the development will be made by the full City Council meeting taking place on November 13th.

&nbsp;

EDITOR&#39;S NOTE: After publication, artists Hilary Greenstein and Madison Rubenstein expressed disappointment that a deeper dive into&nbsp;the affordability of this development was&nbsp;not included.&nbsp;Greenstein, in their original interview, states, &quot;Affordable housing is a human right and is very badly needed in Minneapolis. But this is not it. It is not affordable&hellip; We are looking at rents of $1200-2000, which is not affordable to the majority of our neighbors. This project calling itself affordable while planning to charge that much is a gaslighting tactic to divert from their consistent steamrolling of community input.&rdquo;

Willy Boulay of LS Black Development provided us with a detailed rental structure for the development, the vast majority&nbsp;of which (119 out of 160 units) are projected to fall into this range, from $1200-2000 a month, in a range of different sized units&nbsp;reserved for tenants making 60-80% AMI. According to LS Black, there will be 41 units expected to fall under that range, costing $505-1087 for 1-bedroom units, $601-1066 for 2-bedroom units, and $692-961 for 3-bedrooms, all dependent on the tenants&#39; income. These AMI%&nbsp;rates&nbsp;are&nbsp;scheduled to be in place for 30 years due to a deed restriction on the property.

Again, we encourage you to reach out to your City Council representative before Friday, November 13th, to weigh in on this issue.

Banner illustration by Russ White, using photo from the <a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download/Agenda/914/2301%20California%20St%20NE.pdf/46927/1829/2301%20California%20St%20NE" target="_blank">original project proposal</a>.

As the City Council considers a massive new development in Northeast, the artists and owners of the neighboring California Building push back to make sure it's a good fit for the Arts District.

The Fight for the Future of California Street

&nbsp;

It can be difficult to turn left into the parking lot of Wet Paint Artists&rsquo; Materials and Framing &mdash; but that shouldn&rsquo;t be a deterrent. Situated on a bustling corner of Grand Avenue in Saint Paul, surrounded by other independent businesses, the feeling of socially-distanced activity adds to the store&rsquo;s atmosphere.

In late summer, a back-to-school buzz pervades as staff members assemble kits for local high schools and Macalester College students pop in on last-minute supply runs. Although this kind of activity has increased, the store has been busy all season &mdash; with curbside pick-up through the spring and early summer, and the addition of in-store shopping in late July.

While Wet Paint has long been a supporter of area schools and arts organizations, it has taken on a more pressing role in the last few months. After the murder of George Floyd in late May, local artists have created hundreds of murals across town to protest ongoing police brutality, and the store has helped with guidance and financial support.

&ldquo;When someone comes to us saying, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m in this community. Here&rsquo;s what we intend to do and here&rsquo;s how you can help,&rsquo;&rdquo; says&nbsp;co-owner Scott Fares, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve been making sure they get what they need.&rdquo;

He describes&nbsp;a period of time when artists would show up regularly with a patron and a wall to paint. They would give Wet Paint a budget, and the store would start taking discounts and throwing in free items to make sure the project stayed within it.

&ldquo;I called Wet Paint the first week in June to secure materials for painting, and they gave us a bulk order discount plus some free materials like brushes and cups,&rdquo; says&nbsp;Leslie Barlow,&nbsp;one of the leading artists behind Creatives After Curfew. &ldquo;They were even able to get us materials the same day that I would call them &mdash; their local delivery option made things so much easier.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1NTkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Located one block north of Stevens Square Park in Minneapolis, a recent mural by artists from the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/creativesaftercurfew/" target="_blank">Creatives After Curfew</a> collective was created using materials from Wet Paint. Photo by Bridget Kranz.

At the time, customers weren&rsquo;t allowed inside Wet Paint due to the COVID-19 lockdown, and Fares recalls making deals by talking over the phone &mdash; or yelling through the store window. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t business as usual, we were just getting things out there to people and figuring it out later.&quot;

Another challenge was keeping enough of the right materials in stock. With protests ongoing across much of the country, Fares noticed a run on everything from sidewalk chalk to mural and spray paint. Throughout the pandemic and the demonstrations, Wet Paint has tried to make its inventory responsive to the community&rsquo;s needs &mdash; both altering and building on the foundation of over 40 years in business.

From college store to art destination

Fares took over ownership three and a half years ago, along with business partner Darin Rinne. Despite their short tenure as owners, the pair&rsquo;s relationship with Wet Paint dates back over three decades. Rinne has worked there almost continuously since graduating from&nbsp;Macalester&nbsp;in the late 1980s, where he met Fares in the printmaking department.&nbsp;

Founded in 1976, Wet Paint initially operated out of an apartment above its current location, catering to students at the neighboring campus. Still, since its founding, the store has also attracted a large professional following from across the Twin Cities.

&ldquo;At one point, we had over 16 different lines of oil paints and none of them were student-grade stuff,&rdquo; says&nbsp;Fares. He credits&nbsp;the previous owner, Beth Bergman &mdash; who helmed the store for over 30 years &mdash; with setting up a successful foundation for the business.

&ldquo;She realized early on that we couldn&rsquo;t compete on price alone &mdash; we needed to have a real selection of high quality items and a specialization that you couldn&rsquo;t get any other place,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;The challenge for any independent art supply store is having enough selection to make it worth someone&rsquo;s while, and that&rsquo;s why Wet Paint has been able to survive and thrive.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM5NDQwMDAx/full.jpg" />Darin Rinne, left, and Scott Fares have owned Wet Paint Artists&rsquo; Materials and Framing for three and a half years,&nbsp;but their relationship with the store dates back three decades to when they were students at Macalester College. Photo by Bridget Kranz.

Forming deeper community connections

Personal connections with suppliers have also helped the store stay healthy over the years, as the owners are in regular contact with brush- and canvas-makers, working with them on inventory as well as community initiatives. As Fares notes, most manufacturers consist of only one or two people and are even smaller operations than Wet Paint.

These relationships also help when it comes to partnerships between Wet Paint and the Twin Cities community. Recently, a number of manufacturers donated supplies to make kits for youth in Urban Ventures, a nonprofit program based in South Minneapolis. Instead of just passing the materials along, Wet Paint sold them in-store, giving customers the chance to sponsor participants by buying a kit. They were then able to donate both the kits and the money to Urban Ventures.&nbsp;

For both the suppliers and the store itself, Fares says&nbsp;he also&nbsp;likes to find ways of giving back that go &ldquo;beyond just writing a check.&rdquo; This summer, that has taken the shape of helping stock and distribute materials for murals &mdash; including providing guidance on which brands or types of paint might work best in different scenarios.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxNDUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Marketing manager Kristina Fjellman restocks a spray paint cabinet at the Grand Avenue store front. As local artists create murals to protest ongoing police brutality, artist-grade spray paint has been one of the store&rsquo;s most important items this summer. Photo by Bridget Kranz.

&quot;We rely on a strong arts community, so we support a strong arts community.&quot;

When planning for this year&rsquo;s second annual Chroma Zone Mural &amp; Art Festival, it quickly became clear to director Angela Casselton that it couldn&rsquo;t be an in-person event. Still, the group decided to use its funds to commission a handful of artworks in St. Paul&rsquo;s Creative Enterprise Zone, continuing the momentum after last year&rsquo;s twelve&nbsp;artist-led works.&nbsp;

Casselton reached out to Wet Paint about partnering on this year&rsquo;s murals, and the store is now involved in an advisory capacity &mdash; providing guidance on materials, as well as significant discounts.&nbsp;

&ldquo;The artists get to choose to work with Wet Paint. They go over there and establish a relationship,&rdquo; says&nbsp;Casselton. &ldquo;Next year, we hope it will be an even deeper partnership, where we can bring in representatives from paint brands and do product demonstrations for the community.&rdquo;

She also felt that bringing in Wet Paint as a partner added to the reputation of the festival, given the business&rsquo;s long history. For Fares and Rinne, it&rsquo;s a symbiotic relationship &mdash; the store supports the local arts community, which in turn produces more artists and projects to support the store.&nbsp;

&ldquo;We are part of the community of artists &mdash; hiring from the community of artists, generating new artists in the community,&rdquo; said Fares. &ldquo;We feel lucky to be in a town that supports the arts, and we need to be on both sides of that equation &mdash; so that artists are supported, and we&rsquo;re supported.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ3NTAwMDAx/full.jpg" />A colorful mural by Jeffrey Nelson of Jephemera brightens up the back of the store, overlooking its parking lot off Grand Avenue in St. Paul. Photo courtesy of Wet Paint.

Wet Paint is located at 1684 Grand Avenue in Saint Paul, and online at <a href="https://wetpaintart.com" target="_blank">wetpaintart.com</a>. They are open 7 days a week from 10am-6pm, and don&#39;t forget to wear a mask!

Banner image: original photo courtesy of Wet Paint.&nbsp;

Wet Paint is a regular advertiser on MPLSART,&nbsp;but they did&nbsp;not sponsor this&nbsp;content.

The role one local art supply store (and longtime MPLSART supporter) has played during a summer of pandemic and protest

Beyond Writing a Check: Wet Paint steps up

If you happened to put your ear to the wind back in early April, you might have heard a strange, sad sound: the collective wailing of over 800 artists in Northeast Minneapolis. Art-A-Whirl &mdash; the annual open studio crawl that brings 40K+ people into the neighborhood for the Black Friday of local art events &mdash; had been cancelled.&nbsp;

But Anna Becker, the Executive Director of NEMAA, the nonprofit behind the art festival, had a plan: move the whole thing online. In the span of a mere month, Becker and local web developer Jeremy Burgeson created <a href="http://ArtAWhirl.org">ArtAWhirl.org</a>, a website that combines art retail, an interactive map, pre-recorded artist interviews and demos, musical performances, and the ability to order food from local NE restaurants. Since May, the website (which remains active and is still a great place to shop) has clocked over 35,000 visitors, a full 25% of whom were from outside Minnesota. And there have been over&nbsp;$44,000 in sales through the website &mdash; a figure that does not include&nbsp;sales made through individual artists&rsquo; existing shops that were linked to their profiles.

And now&nbsp;NEMAA&nbsp;is one week out from another online sales event, their annual 10x10 Member Fundraiser, which will feature hundreds of anonymous artworks for sale &mdash; all ten inches square or smaller, all only $35, launching September 26th at 5pm CDT. (<a href="https://nemaa.org/nemaa_10x10/" target="_blank">More info on that here.</a>)&nbsp;

Art-A-Whirl Online was, in the relative terms of this ill-fated year, a surprising&nbsp;success. And the lessons learned about online art sales will stay relevant certainly through the rest of the pandemic and likely beyond. Word on the street is that art sales are up, as a means to beautify the homes we&rsquo;re all stuck in, as well as an opportunity to support local makers in tough times.

We asked some of <a href="https://ArtAWhirl.org" target="_blank">ArtAWhirl.org</a>&#39;s&nbsp;top sellers to shed some light on their success with online sales, so that the rest of us might get our boats out into this rising tide.

<a href="https://artawhirl.org/artists/philipo-dyauli/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzMzYwMDAx/full.jpg" /></a>

<h2>Philipo Dyauli</h2>

What strategies do you have for selling your work online?&nbsp;

<ul>
	<li>This year was the first time I sold artwork online, and it was an eye-opening experience. I have a lot of respect for artists that sell items through online platforms. One of the strategies that worked for me was providing a range of price points to accommodate a wider audience while still making a profit. This also makes it less intimidating for newcomers when the work is priced at various ranges.&nbsp;</li>
	<li>Another helpful strategy was having enough inventory in the shop to ensure customers have a wide selection to choose from that are ready to purchase so they can get their order right away. With a platform like ArtAWhirl.org&nbsp;there can be a lot of competition, so once inventory runs out, updating in a timely manner is key.&nbsp;</li>
	<li>A final strategy is to promote the artwork heavily throughout your social media platforms. Be sure not to take any platform for granted. Social media adds an element of participation and allows you to connect with your audience. It also allows you to use your unique background as an artist so the customer can feel like a part of the artwork they are buying. For instance, if you plan on donating a portion of the proceeds to a local cause or if your artwork is highlighting local issues then let the audience know that in advance.</li>
</ul>

How has the Art-A-Whirl platform helped?&nbsp;

<ul>
	<li>The Art-A-Whirl platform centralized all orders and keeps track of number of sales on a monthly, weekly, or annual basis. The ability to export this information made the shipping process much easier.&nbsp;</li>
	<li>Having tech support available was helpful when setting up my profile and registering for a Minnesota Tax ID.&nbsp;</li>
	<li>Art-A-Whirl and NEMAA have large voices in this community and that helped bring art lovers to the website and my profile.&nbsp;</li>
	<li>The most helpful thing was the ability to upload all my artwork and information without having to create an entirely new shop through my website. I also appreciated that some of the fees for Art-A-Whirl are donated.</li>
</ul>

What do you do outside of just listing products that helps engage customers?

<ul>
	<li>Update Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and website/portfolio with recent artworks.&nbsp;</li>
	<li>Include a clear and visible link in your profile and story that leads directly to your shop.&nbsp;</li>
	<li>Keep the customers updated on shipping, inventory changes, and clearly communicate the pick-up hours/location.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>

Do you have any advice for your fellow artists and makers trying to transition to selling online?

<ul>
	<li>It can seem intimidating and overwhelming at first but coming from a self-taught painter, I would highly recommend creating an online shop. The benefits are far greater. Personally, it was a great way to know my audience&rsquo;s preferences when it comes to sales, practicing&nbsp;customer service, and knowing how to price my artwork.</li>
</ul>

<a href="https://artawhirl.org/artists/philipo-dyauli/" target="_blank">Art-A-Whirl profile</a> &bull; Website:&nbsp;<a href="https://philipodyauli.com" target="_blank">philipodyauli.com</a> &bull; IG:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/philipowashere/" target="_blank">@philipowashere</a> &bull; Northrup King Building, <a href="https://publicfunctionary.org/studio400" target="_blank">Studio 400</a>

&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;

<h2><a href="https://artawhirl.org/artists/stargirl-art-anna-anna-palmquist/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxNjEwMDAx/full.jpg" /></a></h2>

<h2>Anna Palmquist &bull; Stargirl Art</h2>

When the pandemic happened, and it was time for online Art-A-Whirl, I was in the midst of a house renovation that was taking up all my attention. I&rsquo;d pretty much given up on my art business because of the pandemic. I was used to selling my work out of various studios in the Northrup King Building. Also, because of my in-person success, my website/web presence was in desperate need of updating. I never seemed to get around to it.

But&nbsp;since the online version of Art-A-Whirl was there, I thought I might as well set up my shop. I&rsquo;ll be honest with you: I threw something together quickly because I didn&rsquo;t have much time (house renovation), and I didn&rsquo;t really expect anything amazing to happen. I didn&rsquo;t even do any social media posts or marketing to let my very few followers know I had a new online shop.

To my shock and surprise, in about a week or so of online Art-a-Whirl, I sold the exact amount of watercolor Moons online that I did in-person at&nbsp;Art-A-Whirl in 2019 (even with a price increase for shipping). That success motivated me to get my online game together. Since then, I have redesigned my website and am planning a social media/marketing strategy to sell online. I&rsquo;m rolling this out in September/October. Without online Art-A-Whirl, I never would have learned that my Moons sell great online. I also like that a percentage of my sales go back to supporting NEMAA. Without this organization, my art business wouldn&rsquo;t be where it is today.&nbsp;

I&rsquo;m looking forward to a bright online future where my audience isn&rsquo;t just the Minneapolis/St. Paul area but anyone with internet access.&nbsp;My biggest advice for artists is to not be afraid to try something new to get your work seen. You might be surprised by what happens. And if it&rsquo;s a colossal fail, then at least you learned what doesn&rsquo;t work for you.

<a href="https://artawhirl.org/artists/stargirl-art-anna-anna-palmquist/" target="_blank">Art-A-Whirl profile</a>&nbsp;&bull; Website:&nbsp;<a href="http://stargirlart.com/" target="_blank">stargirlart.com</a>&nbsp;&bull; IG:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/annastargirlart/" target="_blank">@annastargirlart</a>&nbsp;&bull; FB: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/annastargirlart" target="_blank">@annastargirlart</a>

&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;

<h2><a href="http://www.everthinejewelry.com" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxNjIwMDAx/full.jpg" /></a></h2>

<h2>Aisha Formanski &bull; Everthine Jewelry</h2>

In March when we figured out that the pandemic was going to impact gatherings, I knew I needed to rethink my business model immediately. I had been selling my work primarily at art fairs, and it was clear that these events were not going to continue in 2020. I signed up for a few online marketing courses and jumped in head first. I learned that I needed to start by spiffing up my website with better photography, and implement a strategy to improve my SEO (search engine optimization).

Next I tackled the question, how am I going to communicate with my clients without seeing them at events? I am posting to social media everyday. And&nbsp;I&#39;m sending out email newsletters twice a month. Showing up in your clients&#39; social media feeds&nbsp;and in their email inbox reminds them that you&#39;re here, that you&#39;re creating. People want to support artists and they&nbsp;are showing up for us.

In addition I&#39;m offering promotions like discounts, free shipping, freebies, and new product launches to create excitement for my clients to check back often. Customers are now welcome to shop at my studio by appointment. This has been great for the person looking for a last minute gift&nbsp;or someone&nbsp;would prefer to pick up their online order.

If you don&#39;t know where to start you can check out&nbsp;<a href="https://springboardforthearts.org/events/work-of-art-marketing/" target="_blank">Springboard for the Arts Work of Art: Marketing</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://tccollective.kartra.com/page/masterclass-signup" target="_blank">Twin Cities Collective&#39;s Social Media Masterclass</a>,&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://jennakutcher.com/business" target="_blank">Jenna Kutcher&#39;s Online Courses</a>.

<a href="https://artawhirl.org/artists/everthine-jewelry-aisha-formanski/" target="_blank">Art-A-Whirl profile</a>&nbsp;&bull; Website:&nbsp;<a href="https://everthinejewelry.com" target="_blank">everthinejewelry.com</a> &bull; IG: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/everthine_jewelry/" target="_blank">@everthine_jewelry</a>&nbsp;&bull; FB: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/everthinejewelry" target="_blank">@everthinejewelry</a>&nbsp;&bull; Casket Arts Building #202

&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;

<h2><a href="https://emilygraykoehler.com" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxNjIwMDAx/full.jpg" /></a></h2>

<h2>Emily Gray Koehler</h2>

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented all of us with unexpected challenges. For many of us in the art world we are asking old questions in a desperate search for new answers. How do I present my art to patrons online? How do I find patrons in the expanse of the internet? How do I encourage them to support me? Unfortunately, there are no magic solutions. It all comes down to hard work.

It may not be the same as attending gallery openings, presenting a portfolio to a curator, or a meet-up for a future commission, but as I sit in front of my computer developing my online presence, it may just be the most important labor I can perform for my art career in this unprecedented time.&nbsp;But, what does developing an online presence mean? For me, it means a multi-faceted approach using as many resources as I can effectively wield. I&#39;ve had an artist website for over a decade. It has evolved from a rudimentary portfolio page to what is now a central hub containing a shopping cart for art sales, information about me, my process, and my physical studio, email signup options, social media links, events and press, and more. It has taken a long time, a lot of work, some financial investment and trial and error to get to this point. The most important thing for any artist is to have a dedicated website. In addition to my website, I try to use as many resources as I can, all while directing them back to a single place: my website. As an example, I have a page set up on NEMAA&#39;s Art-A-Whirl site which I have linked to my website shop. During Art-A-Whirl and for many weeks after my site&#39;s analytics reported a significant uptick in activity and sales directed there from NEMAA! While I did not make as many sales as at past in-person Art-A-Whirls, the sales were significant and welcomed.

That brings up the issue of connection. Few of us have a budget to throw at traditional advertising, but we do have access to social media. While it does not solve everything, regularly posting and staying engaged with my two preferred social media platforms has kept me and my work in front of my patrons which is vital in this new digital, stay-at-home world. I create unique posts on my Facebook and Instagram pages multiple times a week. I reply promptly when followers comment and do my best to stay engaged in the wider arts community via social media. I also attempt to use as many diverse resources as possible. As an example, I was planning to participate in the Loring Park Art Festival this summer. When it was canceled due to the pandemic, the organizers began an aggressive social media campaign for its artists. All they asked of us was to send them content. The posts they made on my behalf&nbsp;not only resulted in new followers, but also sales. This would have been a lost opportunity had I not sent them the content they requested. In addition to social media, I maintain an email list to stay connected with my most engaged patrons. I send out monthly emails to my list containing images of works in progress, new works that are available for purchase, awards my work received in the past month, and any exhibitions or shows into which my work was juried.&nbsp;

Selling art online is never easy. Even the most dedicated collectors of my work would still prefer to buy in person. They want to walk up to a piece and see the texture of the hand-pulled print on paper, the vibrant oil-based palate unmanipulated by back-lit screens and pixel conversion, the scale of the print, the smell of the ink. However, we all know that is not possible right now. So, I stay engaged with them through all the virtual resources I have at my disposal, and I remain grateful and humbled by their support.

<a href="https://artawhirl.org/artists/emily-gray-koehler/" target="_blank">Art-A-Whirl profile</a>&nbsp;&bull; Website:&nbsp;<a href="https://emilygraykoehler.com" target="_blank">emilygraykoehler.com</a>&nbsp;&bull; IG: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/studioegk/" target="_blank">@studioegk</a>&nbsp;&bull; FB: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/studioegk" target="_blank">@studioegk</a> &bull; Thorp Building 1618 #137

&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;&bull;

To experience the now everlasting&nbsp;Whirl, visit <a href="https://artawhirl.org" target="_blank">artawhirl.org</a>. <a href="https://nemaa.org/nemaa_10x10/" target="_blank">NEMAA 10x10</a> opens online September 26th at 5pm; you can also purchase&nbsp;<a href="https://nemaa.org/product/nemaa-10x10-special-preview-hour-ticket-2/" target="_blank">Preview Tickets</a>&nbsp;to get you in an hour early for first dibs on small works.

Banner image illustration by Russ White.

Four months after NEMAA took Art-A-Whirl online, several of its member artists share the lessons they've learned

Written

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Kar-Keat Chong

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A With Lizardm...

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Gordon Coons

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with allison...

The Many Worlds of Roshan Ganu

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with Lora Hl...

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Ron Brown

Beyond the Binary: Q&A with AK Garski

Pricing & Value in the Fine Art Market: Q &...

Personal histories: A look at Bockley Galle...

Shade Pratt Knows That Design Is What Makes...

Four Decades In, Longtime Gallerist Branche...

2020 Holiday Shopping Guide

The Fight for the Future of California Street

Beyond Writing a Check: Wet Paint steps up

Distance Earning: Tips for selling art duri...

Community Spotlight

We can't do it without you.