Profiles of McKnight Fellows

This is the fifth&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/mcknight-profiles">in a series of articles</a>&nbsp;profiling the six distinguished artists chosen as 2019&nbsp;McKnight&nbsp;Fellows in Visual Arts, a grant&nbsp;program for&nbsp;mid-career artists in Minnesota&nbsp;that&nbsp;is&nbsp;administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.&nbsp;Culminating the two-year fellowship (delayed last year&nbsp;by the pandemic), there will be two McKnight Discussions, each&nbsp;held in person:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/400213234812760/" target="_blank">The first</a>&nbsp;is on&nbsp;May 24th at 6:30pm&nbsp;at&nbsp;MCAD, featuring Janet&nbsp;Dees,&nbsp;Steven and Lisa Munster&nbsp;Tananbaum&nbsp;Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Leslie Barlow,&nbsp;Mary&nbsp;Griep, and&nbsp;Melvin R. Smith.&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/927464617889113">The second</a>, featuring&nbsp;Henriette&nbsp;Huldisch,&nbsp;Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Walker Art Center,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Joe&nbsp;Sinness,&nbsp;Alexa&nbsp;Horochowski, and&nbsp;Tetsuya&nbsp;Yamada&nbsp;has unfortunately been postponed until the fall, due to&nbsp;Covid-related&nbsp;scheduling issues.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYxMjYwMDAz/full.jpg" />Photo by Rik Sferra

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There&rsquo;s not a lot of smiling in art museums. Take a stroll through the Minneapolis Institute of Art, for instance, and you will find happy faces in very short supply. Sure, you can almost always find people at the caf&eacute; laughing and talking, or&nbsp;gaggles of schoolkids running gleefully from room to room on field trips. It&rsquo;s not at all an unhappy place; I love that museum.&nbsp;

But the people on the walls &ndash; in the paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures? On the whole, not a chipper bunch. On a recent visit I found only a handful of exceptions: a couple of smiling buddhas, one placidly cordial baby Jesus, and a few quizzical smirks in the Modern &amp; Contemporary galleries. Aside from that, this massive collection of some of the world&rsquo;s best art has very little to say &ndash; at least representationally &ndash; about joy.

The first full-fledged, teeth-flashing smiles I found were well into my visit, up on the third floor, in a beautifully stylized painting of a Black mother proudly posing with her young sons, by the artist Joy&nbsp;Labinjo. The source image looks like a candid family snapshot, the three boys up front cheesin&rsquo; for the camera &ndash; an utterly normal moment of fun. But in the context of the exhibition it&#39;s in, Rituals of Resilience, the painting &ndash; and these sudden smiles inside the gallery &ndash; take on the weight of something larger and more powerful. You get the sense that, as the poet Toi Derricotte put it in the title to one of her poems, &ldquo;Joy is an act of resistance.&rdquo;

Around the corner from Labinjo&rsquo;s piece is another domestic scene, a mixed media portrait by Leslie Barlow of her grandmother, Ellen Barlow, sitting at home on the couch. There is not quite a smile on her grandmother&rsquo;s face, but it&rsquo;s close. She wears a loving, knowing, contented look, not so much gazing out at the viewer as studying the artist &ndash; her granddaughter &ndash; with patience and pride. Behind her on the wall, a flash of yellow brushstrokes haloes her head. At her slippered feet the canvas becomes a quilted carpet of fabric blocks and old family photos &ndash; a scrapbook of domestic life as faded as the box of tissues on the side table, which Barlow has left barely there in the breezy pink strokes of her underpainting. It reminds me of visiting my own grandmothers at their homes: the years of accumulated family history&nbsp;in the furniture and the photos and the familiarity &ndash; in the stuff and the smells of the place.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg5MTAwMDAz/full.jpg" /> 
<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgxMjEwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Ellen Barlow,&nbsp;Oil, pastel, acrylic, photo transfer, and fabric on canvas,&nbsp;66&rdquo; x 48&rdquo;,&nbsp;2019. Bottom:&nbsp;When I was your age, we&hellip;,&nbsp;Acrylic and quilted fabric on canvas,&nbsp;72&rdquo; x 76&rdquo;, 2019.

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The story of a family is the story of time passing. Barlow&rsquo;s portraits often&nbsp;contain pieces of what has passed, some of it ugly and some of it sweet, much of it written on the faces of her subjects. But the way she paints grabs ahold of the present moment, teasing out deep rivers of feeling from something as simple as a woman relaxing on her sofa at home.

&ldquo;My paintings aren&rsquo;t about just capturing a likeness,&rdquo; Barlow explains, &ldquo;although that&rsquo;s important to me. They&rsquo;re also about sharing something about that person&#39;s&nbsp;energy or personal story.&rdquo;

Flashes of orange, teal, and magenta form the folds in Ellen&rsquo;s sweatshirt; her hands fade in and out of focus like memories. Some subtle drips run through her figure and onto the floor below, but her face is fully realized in wonderfully observed sections of color. She glows with light purples, blues, golden pale yellows, rich red browns, and carefully placed black shadows. A painting like this makes you realize just how many colors you can find in a face. In a way, that is what Barlow&rsquo;s work is all about: exploring life between colors and cultures as part of a multi-racial family in a society still structured around white supremacy.

&ldquo;My work talks about those issues on an intimate level,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Instead of talking about racism with a capital R, I&rsquo;m talking about intergenerational trauma&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;the subtle ways these systems and constructs affect us in our families, in our friendships, in our romantic relationships, and how these things perpetuate over time.&rdquo;

Her paintings are typically one step removed from autobiographical &ndash; you won&rsquo;t find many self-portraits in her recent catalog, but you will find her grandmothers, her parents, her siblings, her colleagues, and her friends. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always felt weird about self-portraits, to be honest,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;I feel like I&rsquo;m already really present in the work. I paint a lot of family members, so it&rsquo;s very much my story.&rdquo; Indeed, you can see the artist quite plainly reflected in her subjects&rsquo; eyes, in the confidence and comfort with which they pose, knowing they are not just being studied but being seen.&nbsp;What you&rsquo;re seeing on their faces, more than anything, is trust.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjczMjcwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY3MzEwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Nicole and Seth and their daughter (and daughter to be), in the kitchen,&nbsp;Oil and acrylic on panel,&nbsp;60&rdquo;&nbsp;x 48&rdquo;,&nbsp;2020. Bottom:&nbsp;Lacey and their poodle, in the backyard,&nbsp;Oil, acrylic, yarn, and canvas on panel,&nbsp;60&rdquo; x 48&rdquo;,&nbsp;2020.

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That trust was on prominent display in Barlow&rsquo;s MAEP exhibition last year, Within, Between, and Beyond, filling up Mia with a lot more smiles than normal. The show featured 16 large-scale portraits of individuals and families from different ethnic backgrounds, with different lived experiences, accompanied by <a href="https://new.artsmia.org/exhibition/leslie-barlow-within-between-and-beyond/" target="_blank">video interviews</a> with the subjects telling their own stories. The paintings themselves are large and luscious &ndash; all painted on four by five foot wooden panels &ndash; each one caught in the balance between finished portrait and sketchy underpainting. Barlow&rsquo;s colors are&nbsp;almost radioactively vibrant in some spots: a hand glowing bright red, a brick wall turned neon orange,&nbsp;a landscape rendered in&nbsp;swirling magentas.&nbsp;As with Ellen, here her subjects&rsquo; faces ground the works, even as arms, legs, and whole rooms fade into atmosphere. You can tell she&rsquo;s having fun making these.

&ldquo;For me, when I&rsquo;m pushing around that goo &mdash; the pigment and the dirt, there&rsquo;s something very sensual about it,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very embodied experience. I don&rsquo;t feel separate from the paint, I kind of get lost in it.&rdquo; If you follow her on Instagram, you&rsquo;ve likely seen <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CF8FGZJHL1O/" target="_blank">pictures of her painting palette</a>, expertly dappled&nbsp;with dozens of daubs of oil paint in every shade imaginable. That process alone can take up to two hours, mixing and preparing her materials at the start of a painting session. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like when people pour their coffee in the morning to get ready for their day. It&rsquo;s how I get in the mindspace to paint.&rdquo;

Textile elements pop up on some of these paintings, as well: red scraps quilted into the background of one; embroidered sunflowers&nbsp;in the foreground of another. It&rsquo;s a&nbsp;material nod to the history of American craft and art, calling to mind the quilts of Gee&rsquo;s Bend and the collages of Romare Bearden, while also connecting Barlow to contemporary artists working in fiber-based media, such as Bisa Butler, whose work hangs nearby in Rituals of Resilience.&nbsp;

In one of the MAEP pieces,&nbsp;about two dozen different fabric patterns form an undulating line encircling a woman dancing. The quilt has become a sort of aura around her, feeding right into her yellow floral dress. The trees in the background are nothing more than purple line drawings dripping down the golden woodgrain. The woman, however, is fully rendered, her face highlighted ever so slightly by hints of luminescent green. She, too, is smiling out at us.

&ldquo;We&rsquo;re so complicated and layered,&rdquo; Barlow says with a small laugh. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m really fascinated by how we navigate the world, especially now, how we find joy amongst all the pain, and how we lean on each other to make it through.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg5MDkwMDAz/full.jpg" />

Murals created in 2020 by Creatives After Curfew, honoring Tony McDade, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor.

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Fostering community around art is central to more than just her painting practice. It informs&nbsp;everything that she does professionally, and she does a lot. In addition to her studio practice, Barlow has been volunteering with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.midwestmixed.com" target="_blank">MidWest Mixed</a> for the past seven years, facilitating connections between people of mixed race and multiracial backgrounds. She is also a core member of <a href="https://creativesaftercurfew.com" target="_blank">Creatives After Curfew</a>, a large crew of muralists in Minneapolis who&rsquo;ve been making murals together since the city was covered in plywood after the murder of George Floyd. And now she works as Director of <a href="https://publicfunctionary.org/studios" target="_blank">PF Studios</a>, the art studio program Public Functionary runs out of the Northrup King Building in Northeast, providing subsidized space and professional development to over 20 young BIPOC artists.

I ask her, with everything she&rsquo;s got going on, what is it that keeps her from burning out?

&ldquo;What keeps me going is the work feeds itself. Now, even though I&rsquo;m doing several things, they&rsquo;re all very interrelated. There&rsquo;s a conversation I can have at Creatives After Curfew that feels very connected to a conversation in the studio program, which then impacts how I&rsquo;m thinking about my own work, which then makes me want to bring up something at Midwest Mixed. It doesn&rsquo;t feel like I have to separate parts of myself to do the work.

&ldquo;We create these super weird and wonderful lives as artists,&rdquo; she continues. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no roadmap, but when you pause and take a step back to look at what you&#39;ve been doing, you&rsquo;re like &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m here. This is what I dreamed of.&rsquo;&rdquo;

Right now, Barlow has just finished up a commission for the Minnesota State Fair &ndash; the Official 2022 Commemorative Art, no less &ndash; and she is now gearing up for a solo show at Bockley Gallery in the fall. &ldquo;The joy was always there,&rdquo; she&nbsp;says, speaking about her work up to this point. But this show, she tells me, &ldquo;will have very intentionally joyful images.&rdquo; She is still in the early phases of seeing what will work in the studio, let alone in the gallery, but she gives me a hint: there will probably be some cosplay. Barlow has always worn her sci-fi love on her sleeve, dressing up in elaborate costumes as Star Wars, Star Trek, or MCU characters, and a few years back some of her own cosplay even made it all the way onto some&nbsp;of her canvases. Now she&rsquo;s revisiting the idea with a renewed focus on community.

&ldquo;There is something really interesting about cosplay, especially for people of color, especially for Black cosplayers,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;You can kind of live outside of your prescribed identity and be a different person. The mask that you put on or the role that you play in cosplay sometimes can feel more true to you than the experiences you have outside of cosplay. Because you get to be anything, in a way, and it&rsquo;s really expansive.&rdquo;

It makes sense, for work so rooted in the past and so viscerally connected to&nbsp;the present, to start thinking about the future. And to think about future audiences at the same time.&nbsp;&ldquo;I see myself almost as archiving stories,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Trying to create space for images and stories that I would have loved to have seen as a kid, particularly when I felt lost and alone and like nobody knew or cared about my lived experience. I didn&rsquo;t really see that in museums or elevated in that kind of way.&rdquo;&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkxMDgwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcxMDkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Two works from the exhibition Loving. Top:&nbsp;Derek and James,&nbsp;Oil, pastel, and acrylic on panel,&nbsp;48&rdquo; x 48&rdquo;,&nbsp;2017. Bottom:&nbsp;Sweetness,&nbsp;Oil, pastel, acrylic on panel,&nbsp;40&rdquo; x 30&rdquo;,&nbsp;2020

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I wonder if framing joy &ndash; particularly Black joy in America &ndash; as inherently revolutionary is its own kind of theft: disallowing a smile from simply being a smile. In Derricotte&rsquo;s poem, the narrator wonders why a pet fish would mean so much to a young, Black girl.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&hellip;What does her love have to do

with five hundred years of

sorrow, then joy coming up like a&nbsp;

&nbsp;

small breath, a

bubble? What does it have to do

with the graveyards of the

Atlantic, in her mother&rsquo;s

heart?

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It&#39;s a hell of a weight to put on happiness. Wandering out of the Rituals of Resilience gallery, the last smiles I see at Mia &ndash; at least on the walls &ndash;&nbsp;are in two photos by Gordon Parks. Fittingly, they are on the faces of protestors. Some are&nbsp;dressed in suits, others are wearing sweatshirts printed with Malcolm X&rsquo;s face. His image&nbsp;is stern and serious, but they are smiling, laughing, and hollering.&nbsp;The joy, of course, is part of the fight. The essence of&nbsp;privilege is when your joy doesn&#39;t have to be, when it can exist apart from words like resistance and resilience.

A few years back, Barlow won a State Arts Board grant to create portraits of interracial families as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. We&#39;ve all been raised to believe that those fights were won, that those chapters in the history books were set in stone. Now, just in the past month, the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that may well strike down Roe v. Wade&nbsp;also opened the door to roll back Loving as well.&nbsp;As always in this country, the past is present.&nbsp;

But&nbsp;the future is ours to imagine, and Barlow is thinking ahead, in both her painting practice and her community work. &ldquo;How do we break those patterns and try to create something new?&rdquo; she&nbsp;asks.

&ldquo;What happens when we really love up on each other?&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYxMjcwMDAz/full.jpg" />

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

Banner image:&nbsp;Grandmother and Child (detail),&nbsp;Oil, pastel, acrylic, quilted fabric on panel,&nbsp;48&rdquo; x 48&rdquo;, 2019

Ahead of their upcoming Discussion Series, each of the six 2019 McKnight Fellows in Visual Arts talks to us individually about their practice

2019 McKnight Artist Fellowship Profile: Leslie Barlow

The Scene

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To converse with Ta-coumba is to bear witness to his paintings. He is a fortune teller, a griot, and a time traveler. Decades are recounted, the present is inspected, and the future impressed upon with Spirit Writing, sounded out in Rhythm Patterns, and epitomized with acrylic paint on canvas. Stories, people and places, learnings and teachings, queries and ruminations are discovered and retold in the coarse edges and fragmented beams of Ta-coumba&rsquo;s work. Our conversation spans what feels like hundreds of topics before I even get to ask him an interview question: African and Indigenous musical traditions, his acclaimed first art exhibition as a 6 year old, activism and police brutality in the late 60&rsquo;s, Roe v. Wade, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture aka FESTAC &lsquo;77, and decking out his live/work studio at the Lowertown Lofts Artist Cooperative &ndash; what he calls his &ldquo;spaceship&rdquo; &ndash; with a La-Z-Boy that no one but him is allowed to sit in. &ldquo;This world is the same as the world I was in in the &lsquo;60s,&rdquo; he exclaims. &ldquo;Like, fuck!&rdquo;

Ta-coumba is omnipresent at intersections of visual art, spirituality, community, and activism. He has produced some of the Twin Cities&#39; most acclaimed and profound public artworks and installations; muraling on a children&rsquo;s hospital and childcare facility, tiling at a transit center and library, enameling on a music school and housing developments, and engraving into the ground at the Minneapolis sculpture garden as a water-activated shadow etching. &ldquo;People used to say &lsquo;I want to buy some art, when are you doing a show?&rsquo; and I&rsquo;m like &lsquo;No, wait &hellip; I may never do a show!&rsquo; There have been artists that have never done shows, but they might carve stuff into wood, [into] the corners, different colors, and there&rsquo;s just these sculptures that they put there, for the community to have a healing space, or a quiet space, or a safe space. I was doing a lot of murals that were telling people it was safe to be there,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;

Ingrained in his practice is a deep embodiment of Black and Indigenous traditions. &ldquo;Rhythm patterns are basically what every indigenous culture uses to communicate and send a message. That&rsquo;s why I was an African drummer.&rdquo; He&rsquo;s speaking about his technique of repeating patterns, and Spirit Writing, his process of coloration and shape building, both prevalent motifs in many of his paintings. &ldquo;Drumming and dancing and pounding the ground has always been my way of knowing that I exist. Especially when you really go find some earth and pound it; the Native culture is the same way. So pounding is a rhythm pattern.&rdquo; Ta-coumba begins to sing throaty, undulating tones of an Native chant. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the Spirit Writing. Spirit comes in, and with African, African-American it&#39;s different kinds of blues. Spirit writing, Rhythm Pattern. They&rsquo;ve blended.&rdquo;

&ldquo;The two styles (Spirit Writing and Rhythm Patterns) have always made me feel comfortable. Of course I mastered realism, pencil, paints, oil. But I&rsquo;ve been doing that since I was 3 years old. By the time I was 13/14 I was getting bored, so I started doing things with dots, then I started looking through them. I remember my mother talking about the bible when I said I didn&#39;t understand that, she said &ldquo;read between the lines&rdquo; so I started looking between the dots, and I started seeing things between the dots. I just looked, first by taking where the dots are not, I&rsquo;d take a colored pencil and make lines, then I look at it, take a tracing paper and make lines over that, and take it out. It&rsquo;s another style, and there would be faces and things, but a combination between nature, water, trees, the clouds, and the skies weaving between each other in a visual maze. What I call &lsquo;Superlative Realism&rsquo;...the highest degree is the spirit. So I paint the spirit, the furthest out, the furthest you can go.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgyOTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Arrival,&nbsp;2021 Acrylic on canvas, 36&quot; diam.

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No edge or corner is the same in Ta-coumba&rsquo;s work. Pieces like Holy Spirit and Arrival are galactical stained glass &ndash;&nbsp;masses of kaleidoscopic slivers and 3-dimensional parallelograms of refracted light. His works are hypnotizing, intensely colorful, and fractalesque, much like his personality and his philosophy. &ldquo;Each one of us is an individual. We have our own beats and rhythms, and then like a thread, certain people from certain cultures will have similar colors and similar kinds of textures in the thread, but the master weaver takes these things and creates a tapestry. I don&rsquo;t know if I&rsquo;m a master weaver but I&rsquo;m training. My paintings and training are these pieces that are like tapestries of life.&rdquo;

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m time traveling, not going back so much because going back is not part of our nature. We are history, so we don&rsquo;t have to go back to history. And then going forward doesn&rsquo;t mean credentials, it just means going forward&hellip;but you gotta get more knowledge.&rdquo; Having recently been awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship out of more than two-thousand applicants, Ta-coumba will be honored in the Fine Arts category, specifically for his knowledge, contributions, and &ldquo;exceptional creative ability in the arts.&rdquo; Some notable awardees in fine arts include Alvin Ailey, James Baldwin, and Zora Neale Hurston. The formal fellow event will be held this summer, on June 7th in New York City.

&ldquo;I respect and I am gratefully humbled and appreciative that I was selected for the Guggenheim. My view of the award is that there are some great and amazing people that have received them, and have moved forward to do even more things. It&rsquo;s almost like a key, like you get the Willy Wonka golden ticket. 180 people were chosen, 1 or 2 people are from [the Twin Cities]. I told myself I was going to sit down and research all 180 of them, before I meet them. So the award is just a great honor. I&rsquo;ve tried 8 or 9 times, and this was my time.&nbsp;

&ldquo;But this is a very important, specific thing for many different fields, not just fine arts! I get to meet people in the top of their fields that are scholars, filmmakers, scientists. Oh my god, that&rsquo;s like a treasure chest of people! You can go &lsquo;wassup!&rsquo; and they say &lsquo;what&rsquo;s skippy with you?&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve been learning from other artists that have made it &ndash; made it, made it &ndash; and I was like &lsquo;how can I get up there?&rsquo; and all I got was &lsquo;You gotta show up.&rsquo; And then I started mapping out things to show up places. Did things in Thief River Falls, Orono, Willmar, Kerkhoven, Kellogg, Rochester, there&rsquo;s so many places, McIntosh, Erskine, Fosston, Minnesotans don&rsquo;t know these names. Minnesotans that live here don&rsquo;t know these places.&rdquo;

&nbsp;&ldquo;Within a year of showing up, I get a Guggenheim.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY4OTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Ripple Effect,&nbsp;2021 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 40 1/4&quot;

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At <a href="https://dreamsong.art" target="_blank">Dreamsong</a>, Ta-coumba is wearing a shirt that says &ldquo;The Fearless Artist&rdquo;, and is constantly surrounded by throngs of family, friends, and admirers. &ldquo;Healthy environment, healthy community, healthy Ta-coumba,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Doing this show, this is my graduation, my hello, my thanks for believing in me. I just wanted to celebrate us. I wanted to celebrate all of us. When I celebrate people it&rsquo;s because I want them to exist, I want them to survive, I want them to be able to navigate. And if it&rsquo;s not my artwork that helps them navigate then it&rsquo;s somebody that&rsquo;s at this show.&rdquo;

Earlier, Ta-coumba had casually suggested that I get opinions from other gallery attendees, remarking that &ldquo;they know as much as I do!&rdquo; In the intimate two-room gallery of Dreamsong, it&rsquo;s not hard to overhear the speculations of those both new to and familiar with the work.&nbsp;

&ldquo;...it&rsquo;s busy&rdquo; someone states plainly.&nbsp;

&ldquo;You gotta look at it in sections otherwise it&rsquo;s too much.&rdquo;

&ldquo;Every time you walk past you see something you didn&rsquo;t see the last time.&rdquo;

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s dense, and layered.&rdquo;&nbsp;

I am particularly drawn to his Untitled works, a collection of seven 12 x 9 inch pieces where strips and swaths of color contrast against a black background. From one shard peeks a baby-pink eye, lowered, looking with what feels like judgment. From another, the lining of a cell wall is bordered by dotted ribosomes in primary colors. In Crossing Borders, a mass of entwined figures ascend from the south of the canvas while a golden spiral radiates to all four corners. I can&rsquo;t find the words to succinctly translate the way these pieces speak, even though I know there are hundreds.

&nbsp;&ldquo;I try not to explain anything with my paintings; they got their own voice,&rdquo; says Ta-coumba. &ldquo;I want people to experience my pieces, and not be afraid when they go in them that they have to define any more than their feelings. Their feelings are the definition.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU3MTEwMDAz/full.jpg" />Untitled, 2022 Painted tape on paper 12 x 9&quot;

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<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/awakening-ta-coumba-t-aiken" target="_blank">Awakening</a> is on view at <a href="https://dreamsong.art" target="_blank">Dreamsong</a>&nbsp;through June 25. To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://www.ta-coumba.com" target="_blank">his website</a> or follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tacoumba/" target="_blank">@tacoumba</a>.

Banner image:&nbsp;Upon Her Return (detail),&nbsp;2021 Acrylic on canvas,&nbsp;60 x 48&quot;. All images courtesy of the gallery.

Celebrating both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a solo show at Dreamsong, the artist talks about Spirit Writing, Rhythm Patterns, time travel, and the importance of showing up

The Fearless Artist is present: In conversation with Ta-coumba Aiken

This is the fourth&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/mcknight-profiles">in a series of articles</a> profiling the six distinguished artists chosen as 2019&nbsp;McKnight&nbsp;Fellows in Visual Arts, a grant&nbsp;program for&nbsp;mid-career artists in Minnesota&nbsp;that&nbsp;is&nbsp;administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.&nbsp;Culminating the two-year fellowship (delayed last year&nbsp;by the pandemic), there will be two McKnight Discussions, each&nbsp;held in person:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/400213234812760/" target="_blank">The first</a>&nbsp;is on&nbsp;May 24th at 6:30pm&nbsp;at&nbsp;MCAD, featuring Janet&nbsp;Dees,&nbsp;Steven and Lisa Munster&nbsp;Tananbaum&nbsp;Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Leslie Barlow,&nbsp;Mary&nbsp;Griep, and&nbsp;Melvin R. Smith.&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/927464617889113">The second</a>, featuring&nbsp;Henriette&nbsp;Huldisch,&nbsp;Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Walker Art Center,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Joe&nbsp;Sinness,&nbsp;Alexa&nbsp;Horochowski, and&nbsp;Tetsuya&nbsp;Yamada&nbsp;has unfortunately been postponed until the fall, due to&nbsp;Covid-related&nbsp;scheduling issues.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcxMDYwMDAz/full.jpg" />Photo by Rik Sferra

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There is a temptation, when you&rsquo;re writing about an artist, to start in the gallery. To begin with their finished works, their completed thoughts, to uncover what the artwork reveals about the artist. It&rsquo;s sort of like solving a puzzle backwards &mdash; placing your pencil in the center of the maze and winding your way back to the start. And in the case of Alexa Horochowski&rsquo;s work, the gallery provides an embarrassment of riches:&nbsp;her large scale installations &mdash; at places like Rochester Art Center, Nemeth Art Center, and the Soap Factory&nbsp;&mdash; are eloquent, sober reflections of both her material and conceptual processes alike.

But these gallery installations also offer an incredibly wide range of media to focus on. Horochowski (pronounced horo-hō-ski) has worked in bronze casting, metalsmithing, video projection, sculptural drawing, found object installation, zine-publishing, and most recently flag-making, to name a few. The artworks she has created all share a sensibility at their core, but to nail down how they all fit together, how such a variety of work can emerge from a single studio practice, you have to leave the exhibition space. You have to go outside. And preferably, if you&rsquo;re able, about 6000 miles south.

&ldquo;I feel like my identity was formed by the Patagonian landscape,&rdquo; she tells me, during a studio visit at her home in Powderhorn Park. Though born in Missouri, Horochowski grew up in Argentina, the granddaughter of immigrants from Spain and Ukraine. Despite moving back to America when she was ten, those wide, wild vistas still call to her. &ldquo;My work is a lot about that &mdash; the landscape and the yearning for that landscape.&rdquo;

What sets a landscape painter apart from a common passerby is simple: they have stopped to pay attention. And this is the foundation of Horochowski&rsquo;s practice: observation. Her work, in any medium, stems from paying a keen level of conceptual attention not just to the natural world but to how we interact with it.

&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking about my lineage,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s farmers or fishermen, working class people. I visited Galicia, and they have their vegetable gardens and their chickens. They&rsquo;ll cook, they&rsquo;ll fish, they&rsquo;ll harvest stuff from the shore. They are very much in touch with the land, a total immediate connection.&rdquo;

A few moments later, the thought has distilled even further into something simpler and more compact: &ldquo;You know, I&rsquo;m just a peasant,&rdquo; she says, laughing.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg3MDMwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY3MjQwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Installation view of&nbsp;O Horizons&nbsp;at Nemeth Art Center, 2018. Bottom: installation view of&nbsp;Club Dismunuci&oacute;n at&nbsp;the Soap Factory, 2014.&nbsp;

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That connection to life and land is evident in her home studio as well, where her large collection of rather massive plants rub elbows with her artwork. It&rsquo;s the sculptor&rsquo;s dilemma: where do you put all these things when they&rsquo;re not on view at a gallery? Here, Horochowski&rsquo;s pitchfork sculptures &mdash; fiercely simple and elongated like stick figures &mdash; stand in a tight scrum next to a ten-foot-tall Norfolk pine tree. Nearby lays a pile of hand-sewn flags; next to that, a coiling black mass of cast bronze kelp hangs on the wall. It may sound like a clutter, but it&rsquo;s actually all very well organized, dusted, and cared for. On a bookshelf under the window sits a thoughtful display of small sculptures and mementos from Horochowski&rsquo;s youth &mdash; bits of petrified wood and found boleadoras, round projectiles that are used to hunt the South American ostriches native to Argentina.

Through the lens of a love for the land, her wide-ranging work starts to coalesce. The farm provides the context for her pitchforks and weathervanes, her cast&nbsp;bronze&nbsp;John Deere and Asgrow Corporation Farmer Caps. The found world provides much of the rest, as in her dark, hynoptic videos of kelp tossing around like alien spaghetti in the surf. It&rsquo;s all a meditation on connection to and disconnection from what we call &ldquo;the natural world.&rdquo; Our terminology itself keeps the wilderness at arm&rsquo;s length, at our own peril. There is a menace to Horochowski&rsquo;s work, a sense of stomach-pit dread that should be well known to anyone paying a lick of attention to our climate crisis. Much of her work takes the form of a lamentation, though there is also a sense of calm reflection and dutiful documentation as well (she got her BA in Journalism, after all). However you frame them, they are a human reaction to a time in our history when our relationship with the landscape has gone sour.

But she&rsquo;s no scold either. There is an earnest curiosity to her observations, a sense of adventurous wonder that comes through in both her conceptual explorations and her material investigations. A residency at Mammoth Lakes, California, brought her face to face with Methuselah, the oldest known living thing on this planet, a bristle-cone pine tree that is 5,000 years young. &ldquo;People show up, just like me, take a picture and then they walk away,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;and I was just thinking about that relationship of the super brief moment of snapping a shot and then walking away from this 5,000 year old being who&rsquo;s been there, who owns this history. I was fascinated by this interaction.&rdquo;

Her own snapshot of Methuselah factors in to yet another project &mdash; another medium &mdash; a photo book that ruminates on the scale of time. Preserved on each page are photos capturing moments from the life of this tree (which is much smaller than you might imagine) and the lives of the artist&rsquo;s family. These are moments that have been, in a way, artificially elongated through the medium of photography, snatched from the flow of time and preserved. And of course some day, on the scale of eons, they will be lost as well.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYzMDMwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY1MTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: One of Horochowski&#39;s two rescue cats, Doodles, sits among the artist&#39;s collection of sculptures and ephemera. Photo by the author.&nbsp;Bottom: The artist with her siblings at a petrified forest in the Patagonia.

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It should also be noted that peasant is a political term, and Horochowski brings an awareness of how class and commerce complicate and inform our relationship to the land. It&rsquo;s no surprise that, in a country where we don&rsquo;t often know our own history, we don&rsquo;t often know where our food comes from either. Certainly not who grows it.&nbsp;

She is interested in those connections as well, perhaps stemming from the way politics have impacted and interrupted her own life. Indeed, her family history is the story of human lives caught on the winds of geopolitical turmoil. Her grandparents fled Europe during the first World War, following a flow of immigrants to Argentina, whose indigenous populations had already been rocked by two centuries of colonial influx. After her father&rsquo;s surgical career took the family from Argentina to Missouri&nbsp;and back again, the family had to flee another crisis, the Dirty War, which landed them back in the United States for good when Horochowski was ten years old. Eventually her father made it back to his home, where he lived among an olive grove for the past 27 years, until, sadly, his passing at the end of April.

The story is reminiscent of one of Horochowski&rsquo;s simplest and most powerful bodies of work, the Vortex Drawings. Here, automatic drawing meets found object sculpture, performance, and videography, as piles of styrofoam cups and packing peanuts coated in graphite or ink are tossed about on large pieces of paper by a&nbsp;circle of carefully arranged&nbsp;industrial fans,&nbsp;angled to&nbsp;produce a man-made current akin to vortices found in nature. What is left behind are portentous, gaping whirlpools of marks made at random but under tight control. It is another form of abstracted lamentation, as though the butterfly got caught in its own hurricane. Single use disposables, like a single life, tossed about by the currents of a closed system.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkyOTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkxMDUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Vortex Drawings at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking, 2017. Bottom: Just a few of the many flags Horochowski has created, hanging in her home studio. Photo by the author.

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Wind gives flags their power as well, but in the case of her new collection of hand-sewn banners, Horochowski is having none of it. Instead of running up poles or streaming above protesters, these flags hang stoic and still inside the gallery. She made the first one as a memorial to George Floyd, an all-black American flag emblazoned with his name. Over the past two years of pandemic and polarization, the series has expanded to touch on Covid-19, the January 6th insurrection, pro-democracy demonstrations in Chile, and most recently the atrocities being committed by the Russian military against the people of Ukraine. An all-white surrender flag features the the Cyrillic word &ldquo;CHILDREN&rdquo; over&nbsp;the&nbsp;crosshairs of a target, referencing the brutal destruction of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-bombed-theater-had-children-written-nearby-satellite-images-2022-3" target="_blank">a Mariupol theater&nbsp;in mid-March, </a>which served as a shelter for civilians in the embattled town. Despite having &quot;дети&quot; written so large on the pavement that it could be plainly read by satellite, the Russians bombed it anyway,&nbsp;<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/mariupol-theater-death-toll-likely-much-worse-than-reported.html" target="_blank">killing 600 or more civilians</a>. Horochowski&#39;s&nbsp;flag is another landscape, and another lament. &ldquo;Because my father is of Ukrainian descent,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s really hitting a nerve for me.&rdquo;

Her father looms large in her work of late. She shows me an Acapulco chair she created for a show last year at <a href="https://hairandnailsart.com/past/nomeacuerdo-i-dont-remember-land/" target="_blank">Hair + Nails Gallery</a>, carefully woven with leather cording onto a steel frame. Like all of her work, it is simple and elegant (and quite comfortable), though it feels more personal. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s really a portrait of my father,&rdquo; she explains, &ldquo;so I think of it as a sculpture.&rdquo; The elder Horochowski inspired the piece through his lifelong penchant for mending items instead of buying new ones, like the plastic lawn chairs she photographed him fixing during a trip home before the pandemic. There is a sense of care and generosity in&nbsp;a nice piece of furniture &mdash; a work of art scaled to the contours of a human body, telling the story of a human life, and fit for a moment of rest, whether&nbsp;at home or at an art exhibition.

And so we find ourselves back inside the gallery at the end after all, trying to tease out something singular about this wide variety of work. &ldquo;I feel like I can&rsquo;t make a work of art that describes it all,&rdquo; Horochowski says, &ldquo;so I&rsquo;m always assembling parts that together communicate something bigger.&rdquo;&nbsp;

When I ask if she considers herself&nbsp;a sculptor at heart, she demurs. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a material artist, [but] my material investigation is dictated by an idea or concept. I don&rsquo;t explore and perfect a material or a process [the way a sculptor does] &mdash; I embrace materials and processes that are unknown to me, continually embracing learning.&rdquo;

Exhibitions, at their best, are about that exactly: sharing what the artist has learned, not just what they have created. Gallery spaces are set apart from the world in so many ways &mdash; by access, by class, by attitude. They are places defined by their walls, standing at a distance from the natural world and in some ways from the political one as well, at least in terms of the popular discourse.&nbsp;

That is just one of many disconnections that Horochowski&rsquo;s work seeks to mend, weaving together for us the concerns, interests, and explorations of a life lived curiously. In all of her projects, she offers us a sense of&nbsp;perspective: on time, on place, on the larger forces that shape a society, and on&nbsp;the smaller moments that shape a life.&nbsp;With the exception of the occasional fellowship, there&rsquo;s not a lot of money in big installations like hers. The value comes in the labor and, before that, in the looking.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MTQwMDAz/full.jpg" />A collection of objects from&nbsp;NOMEACUERDO LAND&nbsp;at Hair + Nails Gallery, 2021. Left to right: petrified wood, family photo,&nbsp;boleadora,&nbsp;aviator glasses fitted with obsidian lenses, and cast bronze packing peanuts.

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See more of Alexa Horochowski&#39;s work on <a href="http://www.alexahorochowski.com" target="_blank">her website</a> and follow her on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/alexahorochowski/" target="_blank">@alexahorochowski</a>.

You can also read Russ White&#39;s<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2019/04/perpetual-motions-alexa-horochowski-s-beautiful-sky-at-the-rochester-art-center">&nbsp;review of </a><a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2019/04/perpetual-motions-alexa-horochowski-s-beautiful-sky-at-the-rochester-art-center">Beautiful Sky</a>,&nbsp;her 2019 Rochester Art Center exhibition, as well as <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2021/11/democracy-flagging-on-art-protest-and-satire-with-alexa-horochowski">our conversation about her flag series</a>.

Banner image: globe from Beautiful Sky, 2019.

2019 McKnight Artist Fellowship Profile: Alexa Horochowski

This is the third&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/mcknight-profiles">in a series of articles</a>&nbsp;profiling the six distinguished artists chosen as 2019&nbsp;McKnight&nbsp;Fellows in Visual Arts, a grant&nbsp;program for&nbsp;mid-career artists in Minnesota&nbsp;that&nbsp;is&nbsp;administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.&nbsp;Culminating the two-year&nbsp;fellowship (delayed last year&nbsp;by the pandemic), there will be two McKnight Discussions, each&nbsp;held in person:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/400213234812760/" target="_blank">The first</a>&nbsp;is on&nbsp;May&nbsp;24th at 6:30pm&nbsp;at&nbsp;MCAD, featuring Janet&nbsp;Dees,&nbsp;Steven and Lisa Munster&nbsp;Tananbaum&nbsp;Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Leslie Barlow,&nbsp;Mary&nbsp;Griep, and&nbsp;Melvin R. Smith.&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/927464617889113">The second</a>, featuring&nbsp;Henriette&nbsp;Huldisch,&nbsp;Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Walker Art Center,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Joe&nbsp;Sinness,&nbsp;Alexa&nbsp;Horochowski, and&nbsp;Tetsuya&nbsp;Yamada&nbsp;has unfortunately been postponed until the fall, due to&nbsp;Covid-related&nbsp;scheduling issues.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MjAwMDAz/full.jpg" />Photo by&nbsp;Rik&nbsp;Sferra

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When you picture a tourist, what do you see? Dorky white socks maybe; definitely a fanny pack. And they are almost certainly wearing a camera around their neck.&nbsp;Usually a point-and-shoot, nothing fancy &mdash; a simple tool for tracking where they&rsquo;ve been and what they&rsquo;ve seen. I suppose these days smartphones are making that stereotype a bit old-fashioned, but either way the tourist&rsquo;s urge to record remains. For Mary Griep, however, a photograph is useful, but it isn&rsquo;t enough. She has visited a lot of places, and to really remember a place, to honor it, she&rsquo;s got to draw it.

In her second story garage studio in Northfield, MN, Griep (pronounced &ldquo;Grip&rdquo;) has a recent drawing&nbsp;tacked up on the wall with magnets &mdash; 56 sheets of Dura-Lar mapping out the&nbsp;side elevation of a massive cathedral. The whole thing is a good eighteen&nbsp;feet across and taller than the eight foot ceiling will allow. At first, it looks like a blown-up architectural drawing simply&nbsp;embellished with some colors and patterns, until you get closer. It&rsquo;s a recreation of Chartres, the Gothic and Romanesque French cathedral begun in the late 12th century, and the tells are all there: the rose window, the ornate spires, the flying buttresses. But this is no simple photograph, no straight-forward rendering. Shades of blue, gold, and gray&nbsp;balance beautifully within the precise line-work, hiding flashes&nbsp;of green ivy,&nbsp;collaged&nbsp;text, sky blue bubbles, and a thousand other tiny&nbsp;elements.&nbsp;Griep&nbsp;plays with space and perspective, chopping up the building into blocky chunks that repeat disjointedly, like a wallpaper pattern that doesn&rsquo;t quite line up. The building is dizzy with detail.

This piece, which took about a year to complete, is the latest in a series of drawings spanning the past two decades, in which Griep has recreated sixteen 12th century buildings from France, Cambodia, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Mexico, and elsewhere. It&rsquo;s not uncommon for an artist&rsquo;s career to be structured around a singular obsessive interest &mdash; a particular guiding question or undeniable impulse &mdash; and Griep discovered hers in 1998, on a trip across Europe&nbsp;with art history students&nbsp;studying Roman ruins and old churches, among them this very same&nbsp;French cathedral. The artist&nbsp;forewent the tourist&rsquo;s camera in favor of 100 sheets of paper, on which she captured small drawings of the building&rsquo;s intricate details. Back home, her drawings intrigued her, but somehow they weren&rsquo;t enough. &ldquo;I mean, there&rsquo;ve been a lot of drawings of Chartres, you know?&rdquo;

Thinking back on her actual experience of walking inside and around the church, the images started to pile up on each other, and the drawings transformed, creating impossible buildings spliced together from multiple perspectives. &ldquo;What I&rsquo;m really interested in is what happens if you&rsquo;re inside and you&rsquo;re outside [at the same time]?&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;Because our knowledge of a space isn&rsquo;t that camera vision.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYxMjIwMDAz/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYxMjMwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Studio view, featuring&nbsp;Palimpsest.&nbsp;Bottom: The artist shows the collage work and drawing that happens on the front and back sides of the Dura-Lar sheets, mimicking the inside/outside approach she is taking to her subject matter.

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Here in her studio, this latest drawing of Chartres flattens the whole complex out, mashing up several of the building&#39;s&nbsp;fa&ccedil;ades onto a single plane. At the base of each tower is an abstracted collage, not of the arched windows out front, but of the view from inside looking straight up. It&rsquo;s a sort of architectural cubism, creating a kaleidoscopic vision of interweaving details from the ceilings, floors, and walls, inside and out. Certain aspects repeat themselves, as though you are blinking and catching separate moments of the same structure. The hazy, transparent Dura-Lar allows magazine clippings and silver&nbsp;leaf&nbsp;collaged on the back to show through amongst the ink and colored pencil, leaving the viewer with an immense amount of details to digest.&nbsp;

This contemporary approach to recreating space actually borrows a sensibility from medieval art as well &mdash; fitting for a church of this vintage. If you were an artist in medieval Europe, Griep explains, &ldquo;you should include everything you know. If a horse has four legs, even if you can only see two or three, you have to put four in.&rdquo; Perspective, foreshortening, and what we would call realism were still two or three centuries&nbsp;yet to come.&nbsp;

Fittingly titled Palimpsest &mdash; a word meaning&nbsp;something rewritten or reused, with traces of the original still visible &mdash; it is also a meditation on all of the changes this building has been through over the years &mdash; including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/arts/design/chartres-cathedral-restoration-controversial.html" target="_blank">a recent and controversial restoration</a>. A lot can happen in 800 years, but what is it about that span of time and that particular century&nbsp;that has kept Griep&nbsp;so enthralled?

First of all, she explains, &ldquo;The 12th century is the first time you get a lot of buildings around the world that we still have.&rdquo; Her subjects are all considered sacred sites, but their religiosity is not exactly what interests her. &ldquo;Any building that&rsquo;s left from the 12th century I think is a monument to human attention,&rdquo; she says. Consider the laborers and artisans who crafted all of those magnificent structures, who chiseled the gargoyles and filigrees, who plumbed and leveled the mighty towers so expertly that they stand straight to this day. The people who cleaned them, attended them, defended them, and rebuilt&nbsp;them after calamity. All those names are lost to time. Or at least most of them; interestingly, the 12th century is also the first time in medieval history that we find a carver&rsquo;s signature, chiseled into an ornate stone tympanum at a church in southern France: it reads &ldquo;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gislebertus" target="_blank">Gislebertus</a> made this.&rdquo;

&ldquo;It was a really interesting time,&rdquo; she continues. &ldquo;For one thing, the technology was better, particularly for growing food. And people were going everywhere.&rdquo; Between robust trade routes, crusading armies and explorers, and the fledgling tourism industry of religious pilgrimage, people got around a lot more than we might assume. And in her own life, Griep was following suit. After completing her first drawing of Chartres (which is similar to this newer version but much more sober and straight-forward), she and her family visited Cambodia, where coincidentally she realized there was another gigantic 12th century religious site nearby: Angkor Wat. &ldquo;I knew they were contemporaneous,&rdquo; she says, so why not draw this place as well? Same scale, same approach, and one thirty-one-foot-long drawing later, the Anastylosis Project had officially become a series.

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Works&nbsp;from the&nbsp;Anastylosis&nbsp;Project. &quot;Anastylosis&quot; means&nbsp;&quot;the reconstruction of a monument from fallen parts.&quot; Top:&nbsp;Angkor Wat&nbsp;(Siem&nbsp;Reap, Cambodia), 2001-2002, Mixed media,&nbsp;8 x&nbsp;31&#39; x 8&#39;. Image courtesy of the artist&#39;s website. &nbsp;Middle, at left:&nbsp;Franziskanerkirche&nbsp;(Salzburg, Austria), 2013, Mixed media,&nbsp;48 x 36&quot;. At right:&nbsp;Ulu&nbsp;Camii&nbsp;(Divrigi, Turkey), 2007, Mixed media, 8 x&nbsp;10&#39;.&nbsp;Images&nbsp;courtesy of the artist&#39;s website.&nbsp;Bottom: Detail of&nbsp;San Marco (The Marble Carpet)&nbsp;(Venice, Italy), 2013-2015, Mixed media,&nbsp;18&nbsp;x 10&#39;.

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What followed has been&nbsp;a career of residencies and world travel, during breaks from teaching at St. Olaf, taking&nbsp;her to study churches, mosques, synagogues, Buddhist temples, and a Mesoamerican pyramid. She still grapples with one nagging question: &ldquo;Is this just a 21st century grand tour?&rdquo; She freely admits that there is tremendous privilege in being able to travel the world like this, though many came due to professional residencies and not mere vacations. Either way,&nbsp;Griep does not take these journeys or this responsibility lightly.

On the bookshelves in her studio are binders stuffed with research materials on each site, each culture, each history, that she has compiled and studied before every drawing begins. Hers is a very tidy studio, but really everywhere you look there are small stacks of papers, stuffed with post-its and full of details pertinent to any one of her many projects. The experience of a building is not just in its stones but in its stories as well. &ldquo;The landscape is visible,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;but what happened on it isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

While living in Thailand for four years in the early 2000s, she says she gained a valuable perspective. &ldquo;The best part of not living in your own culture is you get decentered. I was not important to Thai culture in any way, shape, or form.&rdquo; Still, she feels a responsibility to move through these places with integrity. When traveling with students, she would explain to them, &ldquo;This isn&rsquo;t your trip. You are here to see what you can figure out about not only this place but about yourself and who you are as a citizen of the world.&rdquo;

And as a citizen of history. In addition to these large-scale drawings, Griep also has a penchant for making books. They are mostly small hand-bound volumes that are spiral-bound or that&nbsp;fold out like accordions, chronicling interests ranging from climate change to early carnival culture to specific temples she has visited. But her most recent project, sitting out on the drawing table &mdash; completed but not yet bound &mdash; is a proper tome: some 80 pages, each about 18 x 24&rdquo; in size. Written on the cover amid an ornate set of tiled designs is the title: Home of the 37 Nats. &ldquo;This book is about justice,&rdquo; she says.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MjEwMDAz/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg1MTEwMDAz/full.jpg" />Details of pages from Griep&#39;s artist book&nbsp;Home of the 37 Nats. The Great 37&nbsp;Nats, in Burmese Buddhism, are deities similar to saints or angels.&nbsp;&quot;The nats are a little worrisome,&quot; Griep says. &quot;They have to be propitiated. They are all people who were killed because of injustice, usually royal injustice, and they have to help you figure out how we get justice.&rdquo;

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Inside is a complicated rendering of the very complicated history of Burma, known more commonly today as Myanmar &ndash; <a href="https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-burma-different-names-explained-8af64e33cf89c565b074eec9cbe22b72" target="_blank">though not by everyone</a>. Griep&rsquo;s book is built around yet another 12th century religious site: the Shwezigon, a Buddhist pagoda completed in the year 1102. It, too, is&nbsp;a reliquary for religious pilgrimages, similar to medieval European churches who tout&nbsp;their own sanctified items &ndash; a holy drop of blood, a sacred bit of cloth, a saint&rsquo;s lock of hair. The Shwezigon, it is said, enshrines a bone and a tooth from the Buddha himself.

Griep&rsquo;s big book takes its time working through the history of this place. Some pages are finely detailed recreations of tile and stone work in colored pencil mixed with gold leaf. Others feature lengthy quotations, all drawn out in military-style stencils, the artist methodically building up each letter, each word, each sentence like she&rsquo;s laying bricks. No shortcuts, no skimped labor&nbsp;&mdash; a project crafted by hand with solemn respect. The texts excerpt the temple&rsquo;s construction, its &ldquo;discovery&rdquo; by Europeans, and the country&rsquo;s political history through monarchy, colonization, democracy, and military dictatorship.&nbsp;

Next to the book is another small stack of papers: print-outs of information Griep has received from her Burmese contacts listing details about civilians murdered while protesting against the 2021 coup which overthrew the parliamentary election of Aung San Suu Kyi&rsquo;s National League of Democracy party and established military rule. The data bring Griep&rsquo;s book up close to the present moment, weaving together names and perspectives across a full millennium. It is a sad and serious document, and an incomplete one, as any history will be when retold from the outside looking in. Griep ends her book with a quote from John Steadman&rsquo;s The Myth of Asia: &ldquo;Any interpretation is in a sense a falsification of the system it attempts to interpret.&rdquo;

Back here, just this weekend, my wife and I stumbled upon some of Griep&rsquo;s drawings while out walking our dogs: fifteen sections from her Anastylosis Project drawings all installed together, creating one big patchwork building &mdash; a beautiful, poetic&nbsp;sort of&nbsp;Unitarian&nbsp;Frankenstein &mdash; on view through the windows of the University of St. Thomas&rsquo;s Iversen Center for Faith. It is a portrait of a single species scattered across continents, trying to make sense of their places in the world all at the same time. Each of them reached for the heavens in their own way, magnificently, with great care and likely great suffering. And all of them remain beloved enough to have been maintained all the years since.&nbsp;Griep, it seems, has compressed that creative attention into a single practice, trying to make sense of these places&nbsp;all at once. A tourist, she&rsquo;s not.

&ldquo;I probably feel closest to the monks and nuns who worked on illuminated manuscripts in the scriptoriums,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how they passed on knowledge. You were one link in the chain.&rdquo;

Her drawings, her studies, her binders of research &mdash; all drops in a river moving ever forward. A few years of a life spent paying attention, seeing people long gone in the stones and the stained glass they crafted and cared for, in the grime and the death and the majesty of these old places. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s about me,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s part of an ongoing conversation. How many things do we talk about over a thousand years? This is just my two cents worth.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkxMDcwMDAz/full.jpg" />

Tell Me A Story, 2020;&nbsp;Giclee prints, silver leaf, gold leaf;&nbsp;University of St. Thomas Art Collection.

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To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://marygriep.com/" target="_blank">her website</a>. All images by the author unless otherwise noted.

2019 McKnight Artist Fellowship Profile: Mary Griep

This is the second&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/mcknight-profiles">in a series of articles</a>&nbsp;profiling the six distinguished artists chosen as 2019&nbsp;McKnight&nbsp;Fellows in Visual Arts, a grant&nbsp;program for&nbsp;mid-career artists in Minnesota&nbsp;that&nbsp;is&nbsp;administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.&nbsp;Culminating the two-year&nbsp;fellowship (delayed last year&nbsp;by the pandemic), there will be two McKnight Discussions, each&nbsp;held in person:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/400213234812760/" target="_blank">The first</a>&nbsp;is on&nbsp;May 24th at 6:30pm&nbsp;at&nbsp;MCAD, featuring Janet&nbsp;Dees,&nbsp;Steven and Lisa Munster&nbsp;Tananbaum&nbsp;Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Leslie Barlow,&nbsp;Mary&nbsp;Griep, and&nbsp;Melvin R. Smith.&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/927464617889113">The second</a>, featuring&nbsp;Henriette&nbsp;Huldisch,&nbsp;Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Walker Art Center,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Joe&nbsp;Sinness,&nbsp;Alexa&nbsp;Horochowski, and&nbsp;Tetsuya&nbsp;Yamada&nbsp;has unfortunately been postponed until the fall, due to&nbsp;Covid-related&nbsp;scheduling issues.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjczMjQwMDAz/full.jpg" />Photo by&nbsp;Rik&nbsp;Sferra

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A few blocks from the State Capitol in Saint Paul, a black giant stands quietly in a park. Over thirty feet tall, the steel figure is frozen mid-stride, one solid I-beam leg planted slightly forward of the other. As you move around the sculpture, looking up at its Modernist, geometric torso, it&rsquo;s hard to tell which direction it is headed. Atop its long neck are not one but two faces &mdash; identical and symmetrical, each one an elongated circle that has been creased up the center and squared off on top. They look like Zulu shields by way of Brancusi.

One of many pieces of public art in Western Sculpture Park &mdash; including works by Mark di Suvero and Amy Toscani &mdash; this giant was created by Melvin R. Smith. Though listed on <a href="https://publicartstpaul.org/project/western-sculpture-park/#map-of-western-sculpture-park" target="_blank">publicartstpaul.org</a> as Walking Warrior, Smith refers to it as &ldquo;The Spirit of Rondo.&rdquo;

Fitting then, that the sculpture stands just one block from Interstate 94, the public works project that plowed through the thriving Black neighborhood of Rondo in the 1950s and &lsquo;60s. Over the course of those years, <a href="https://saintpaulhistorical.com/items/show/160" target="_blank">according to Saint Paul Historical</a>, over 600 African-American families were pushed out of their homes and hundreds of businesses shuttered to make way for I-94,&nbsp;despite another, less destructive route proposed to the north. A successful community was successfully destroyed.

Though born and raised in Oklahoma and now based in Eagan, Melvin Smith spent formative years living in Rondo along with&nbsp;his wife Rose J. Smith &mdash; herself an artist, as well &mdash;&nbsp;and the pair have dedicated much of their artistic output to capturing and reconstructing the essence of the community they knew there. A 2019 exhibition, Remembering Rondo at the Weisman Art Museum, showcased both artists&rsquo; works: Rose&rsquo;s oil paintings and Melvin&rsquo;s collages and sculptures.&nbsp;

Each artist&rsquo;s approach to the canvas and the subject is similar but distinct. Both Melvin and Rose create narrative, figurative works, rich in colors and characters, simplifying shapes and compositions down to the bare necessities. They offer us snapshots of life in public spaces &mdash; street scenes, bus stations, family portraits &mdash; and in the exhibition, the very buildings themselves came to life as pedestal-mounted miniatures. The collection of work was cohesive, with a sense of care and clarity afforded to remembering and reconstructing Rondo. But when I ask if the two ever collaborate on artworks, Melvin volleys back a perfectly timed, &ldquo;Oh my god, no,&rdquo; punctuated by&nbsp;a burst of laughter.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU3MTAwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkyOTMwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgyOTgwMDAz/full.jpg" />Works from the 2019 exhibition&nbsp;Remembering Rondo, courtesy of Weisman Art Museum. Photos by Rik Sferra.

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Based out of their home in Eagan, the two artists may keep separate studio practices, but the boundaries blur when it comes to art storage. Bedroom after bedroom, along with Melvin&rsquo;s basement studio, are crammed full of canvases, framed works, flatfiles, and an endless array of sculptural maquettes &mdash; studies for larger works like the one in Western Sculpture Park. It&rsquo;s quite amazing, the volume of works that have come out of this house and been stored inside of it. &ldquo;This is our life&rsquo;s work stuffed in this house,&rdquo; he says, as he guides me through. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see downstairs how cramped we are. But we still get it done.&rdquo;

When I visit, there is a collection of large framed collages stacked in the living room from recent studio visits in preparation for a gallery show in New York. Melvin gamely starts flipping through them to show me. Many of these large compositions are narrative &mdash; brightly colored with abstracted figures and buildings created from cut and torn bits of paper. The source materials come&nbsp;from magazines, newspapers,&nbsp;historical photos, bits of wallpaper, junk mail. &ldquo;I make art out of what I have in my hand,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really look for stuff. Whatever I&rsquo;ve got right there at my disposal, that&rsquo;s what I use to make art out of.&rdquo; With a wry chuckle he warns me: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re gonna see a lot of mixed up crap.&rdquo;

The works not only represent Black American cultural history but are steeped in it as well. As&nbsp;Kind of Blue plays&nbsp;over the stereo, the conversation turns to Jacob Lawrence, whose approach to color and composition are a clear influence, and to Romare Bearden, who created similarly collaged portraits of Harlem street&nbsp;life using magazine scraps, but whose work Melvin says he discovered only after he had already begun his own collages.

For Smith, the artwork&nbsp;clearly happens fast, the pieces of paper ripped and rippled from the gel medium adhesive. &ldquo;I make quick decisions,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;When I&rsquo;m done I&rsquo;m done, I just walk away.&rdquo; Old handwritten postcards and envelopes give some works the weight of untold stories, of clutter remixed. In others, the saturated gradients of more contemporary magazine ads affix his figures in the here and now. Faces emerge from different shades of black and brown paper, eyes cocked in our direction if they are there at all. Proportions are no matter; these works are all about the vibe. At his heart, he says, he is a surrealist.

As he shows me more, laughing and telling stories the whole time, the history of 20th century collage emerges as a throughline. We talk about Picasso and Braque using the medium in their earliest Cubist experiments. There are Matisse&rsquo;s botanical cut-outs, then the German Dadaists like Hannah H&ouml;ch and Kurt Schwitters, a particular favorite of Melvin&rsquo;s. Other works &mdash; and he shows me dozens &mdash; touch on painters and sculptors as well: Albers&rsquo;s devotion to color, Malevich&rsquo;s experiments in geometry, and Calder&rsquo;s playfulness with wire all echo faintly inside this house. Going through one drawer of a flatfile, I remark on how his cityscapes use space almost theatrically, giving his scenes a flat kind of openness that comes from an exaggerated sense of deep perspective &mdash; very similar to Giorgio di Chiricho. Melvin stands up straight, says &quot;Oh my god,&quot; and&nbsp;starts laughing again. &ldquo;Man, that&rsquo;s my favorite artist!&rdquo;

The conversation feels like a walk through a museum, and there is enough work in the Smiths&rsquo; house to fill one. &ldquo;You ain&rsquo;t seen nothing yet,&rdquo; he says, as we move into the third room full of art, this one dominated by a stack of&nbsp;4&#39;&nbsp;x 5&rsquo; canvases, all finished in the past two years of the fellowship. These are rougher, non-narrative, and seemingly more free-association, composed of ripped up pictures and text from ads, magazines, family photos, and art posters. Artists as wide-ranging as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Tony Fitzpatrick, and Andy Goldsworthy peek through in sections, part of large kaleidoscopic compositions that are somewhere between stained glass windows and haggard city billboards. The process here is d&eacute;collage &mdash; adding and then subtracting imagery and information.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjczMjUwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg1MDgwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYxMTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Different approaches to collage, from the figurative and narrative to more abstracted work with d&eacute;collage.&nbsp;Bottom: Detail of a larger work, created during the Fellowship. Middle image courtesy of the artist.

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&ldquo;I like it because I&rsquo;m a journalist,&rdquo; Melvin says, referencing the&nbsp;degree he earned and his early career as a writer, and before that, a newspaper&nbsp;boy. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a layer of information. You tear one thing off and you go deeper and deeper into history, man.&rdquo;

Journalists, it is said, write the first draft of history, and as Nina Simone declared, artists share that responsibility as well: &ldquo;An artist&rsquo;s duty, as far as I&rsquo;m concerned, is to reflect the times,&rdquo; she said. Without the past, we are lost in the present, and without an awareness of where we are, there&#39;s no telling where we&#39;ll end up.

On either side of the hearth in their living room are two large pieces, each six by five feet: on the left, by Rose, is a painting of an enslaved Black man, head in his hands, shackled by the wrist to a wooden floor.&nbsp;On the right, by Melvin, is&nbsp;a collaged portrait of a Black man in a white, brimmed hat set against a flat wall&nbsp;of old, 19th century newspapers. Both pieces include a yellowed advertisement for a &ldquo;Great Sale of Slaves.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s an obscene relic of a legacy that so many people try to deny, diminish, or whitewash over. &ldquo;Everyday we look at those pictures,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;so we know where we&rsquo;ve come from and who we are.&rdquo;

The face on Melvin&rsquo;s portrait is sectioned off into planes of white, red, blue, and green. He has a jet black nose and thick black eyes and lips. Melvin points at the face. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s who we are. African-American men are masked men.&rdquo; Spontaneously he recites the opening stanza of <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44203/we-wear-the-mask" target="_blank">&quot;We Wear The Mask,&quot;</a>&nbsp;a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

&nbsp;

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,&mdash;

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

&nbsp;

Masks are everywhere in his work &mdash; and in their home. The hallway is lined with sculptures, assemblages, collages, and prints, all featuring a different style of mask. Downstairs the tabletops are thick with mask maquettes for larger sculptures made out of wood, steel, and cardboard. Even down in the woods behind their house, a monumental mask stares back from between the trees, bright and colorful, constructed out of old car parts. &ldquo;I think everyone is touched by the mask,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It connects us all to Africa.&rdquo;

When I ask why he keeps making them year after year, mask after mask, he says, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a continuum. Every time you do a mask, you create. I like the creativity part of it. The whole idea of mask-making, or doing art period, is that surprise you get when it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo; He pauses for half a second. &ldquo;You know what I&rsquo;m talking about &mdash; you&rsquo;re an artist, I&rsquo;m not talking to the wall here!&rdquo; And he busts out laughing again.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY3MjkwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY3MjgwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: The piece hanging in the Smiths&#39; living room, courtesy of the artist. Bottom:&nbsp;Mask sculptures&nbsp;both downstairs and upstairs at their home.

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Here again, Picasso looms large. So much of modern European and North American art history has grown out of his use of the mask motif. And, of course, as with so much that has been taken by so many, he got it from Africa. Scholars point to his earliest introduction to African aesthetics <a href="https://www.palmbeachstate.edu/honors/Documents/picasso_and_africa_how_african_art_influeced_pablo_picasso_and_his_work_nadeenpennisi.pdf" target="_blank">as a Congolese figurine</a>&nbsp;that Matisse brought to a dinner party at Gertrude Stein&rsquo;s house. As the story goes, Picasso was so engrossed with the object that he held it in his hands the whole night; a visitor to his studio the next day, a French writer, described brand new drawings strewn across the floor featuring an abstracted, one-eyed face over and over again. &ldquo;Cubism was born,&rdquo; the writer reported.

Soon thereafter, on a trip to the Musee d&rsquo; Ethnographie du Trocadero in Paris, he encountered masks and figures from Gabon and the Ivory Coast, which soon showed up as the faces of Les Demoiselles d&rsquo;Avignon. &ldquo;The masks were not like any other pieces of sculpture. Not at all. They were magic things,&rdquo; Picasso told another writer years later. They made him understand, he said, &ldquo;why I was a painter.&rdquo;

Back in the park off of I-94, the Spirit of Rondo wears two masks &mdash; one looking forward, the other looking back. Melvin says this piece was inspired by James Thompson, one of Saint Paul&rsquo;s founding fathers and a freed Black man. For the Smiths, Rondo represents the realized potential of peaceful racial integration. &ldquo;Here is a place in America, that nobody knew about, that had a Black founding father. I&rsquo;m proud of that fact. I had relatives who came here in 1919. They were going to school with whites. I had an uncle who graduated from St. Thomas.&rdquo;

Rondo&rsquo;s razing, however &mdash; the forced evictions, the splintered community &mdash; tells a different side of the same&nbsp;story: the vindictive potential of white supremacy. If you doubt it, try to&nbsp;imagine a proposal to demolish all of the homes on Summit Avenue even getting a hearing.&nbsp;Even now, as some are proposing another massive public works project &mdash; a land-bridge over 94 to try to reconnect Rondo &mdash; many activists and residents of Rondo <a href="https://moneypowerlandsolidarity.libsyn.com/preserve-rondo-with-tish-jones" target="_blank">are unimpressed</a>.

Like the giant in the park, the Smiths find a balance between looking forward and looking&nbsp;back.&nbsp;On the easel in Rose&rsquo;s studio is a canvas probably seven feet long, a painting in progress of ladies in mid-century dresses and hats. Upstairs, Melvin pulls out a portfolio packed full with even more of his collages, spanning years. This is someone for whom artwork is a means to both find and make meaning in this life. &ldquo;A song in our souls&rdquo; is how he describes his and his wife&rsquo;s incessant artistic output&nbsp;in writing. In person, he&rsquo;s more direct. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a disease,&rdquo; he says, with a twinkle in his eye. &ldquo;It don&rsquo;t go away.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />&quot;The Spirit of Rondo&quot; in Western Sculpture Park. Photo by the author.

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Banner image: Melvin Smith, Combs Family, 2003, paper collage&nbsp;courtesy of Weisman Art Museum. All photos are by the author unless otherwise noted.

2019 McKnight Artist Fellowship Profile: Melvin R. Smith

This is the first in a series of articles profiling the six distinguished artists chosen as 2019&nbsp;McKnight&nbsp;Fellows in Visual Arts, a grant program for&nbsp;mid-career artists in Minnesota&nbsp;that&nbsp;is&nbsp;administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.&nbsp;Culminating the two-year fellowship (delayed last year&nbsp;by the pandemic), there will be two McKnight Discussions, each&nbsp;held in person:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/400213234812760/" target="_blank">The first</a> is on May 24th at 6:30pm at MCAD, featuring Janet Dees,&nbsp;Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University,&nbsp;in conversation with Leslie Barlow, Mary Griep, and&nbsp;Melvin R. Smith.&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/927464617889113">The second</a>, featuring&nbsp;Henriette&nbsp;Huldisch,&nbsp;Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Walker Art Center,&nbsp;in conversation with&nbsp;Joe&nbsp;Sinness,&nbsp;Alexa&nbsp;Horochowski, and&nbsp;Tetsuya&nbsp;Yamada&nbsp;has unfortunately been postponed until the fall, due to&nbsp;Covid-related&nbsp;scheduling issues.

<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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYzMDEwMDAz/full.jpg" />Photo by Rik Sferra

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Let&rsquo;s face it: portraits are really just an elaborate excuse to stare. We&rsquo;re all taught from an early age that looking too long&nbsp;is&nbsp;impolite, but in truth there can be some generosity in it, as well. For the sitter, a portrait can be a chance to feel seen; for the viewer, a chance to see themselves in someone else. For Joe Sinness, whose meticulously rendered colored pencil drawings&nbsp;are sumptuous and symbolic, portraiture is both a personal indulgence and a way to give back. You can tell he&rsquo;s having a good time, but this generosity comes with great gravity, as a matter of life and death.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m trying to find a way to make queer bodies look beautiful,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but also defensive, without looking like we&rsquo;re villains. Because we&rsquo;re being treated like villains constantly.&rdquo;

It&rsquo;s no understatement. Right now, the bigots and charlatans of the American right are waging another disingenuous culture war, as always aimed at the most marginalized among us. In the first quarter of 2022, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/nearly-240-anti-lgbtq-bills-filed-2022-far-targeting-trans-people-rcna20418" target="_blank">according to NBC News</a>, there have been nearly 240 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced in state legislatures across the country, most of them targeting trans people, many specifically targeting children. And that&rsquo;s only the first three months &mdash; a gut-wrenching increase over the 191 such bills proposed in the entirety of 2021. Add to that, if you can imagine, the indignity of having your very existence debated&nbsp;incessantly&nbsp;by pundits, trolls, and allies alike.&nbsp;

When we met for a studio visit at his home in east Saint Paul, Sinness had just gotten back the night before from a trip to Texas for a corporate illustration gig, his suitcase still standing near the back door, not yet unpacked. It was a journey deep into Red America, where &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go, Brandon&rdquo; is common shorthand for a whole spectrum of aggro unpleasantness. Sinness found it unnerving and spent the plane ride home, he tells me, reading James Baldwin&rsquo;s The Fire Next Time. &ldquo;I am amped the fuck up,&rdquo; he says with a laugh.

This is an artist who has never been shy. Five years ago, at his MAEP show the Flowers, Sinness brought leather bar culture to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, elevating aspects of kink and cruising to museum-quality standards in immaculately detailed colored pencil drawings. One in particular stands out in my memory: Chris, a 31 x 22&rdquo; portrait from the knees up of a burly, muscular man wearing only a black leather jock strap, a studded chest harness, and a leather puppy mask. He is staring straight back at us, fully realized in exquisite detail, no hair or blemish left unobserved. His skin shimmers with layers of yellows, pinks, and purples; the bumps on&nbsp;his nipple, the stitching on his harness&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;all of it in sharp focus for our consideration. It is a remarkable, unassailable piece of drawing. It also gives no fucks, and Chris meets our gaze and stares right back, as if daring us to clutch at our pearls. Behind him, a giant puffy cloud fades from pink to white against a dark blue sky, framing this S&amp;M enthusiast in a transcendent, saintly aura. Out of the dungeon and into the shining sunlight.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY4OTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Chris, colored pencil on paper, 31 x 22&quot;, 2017. Collection Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota Artist Fund and Gift of Funds from Thomas J. Arneson <a href="https://collections.artsmia.org/art/127246/chris-joe-sinness" target="_blank">2017.102</a>&nbsp;

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Heavenly clouds have been a recurring motif in Sinness&rsquo;s drawings,&nbsp;although he grimaces at such religious terminology. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m trying to divorce myself from the Catholic language I grew up with,&rdquo; he says with another laugh. In reality, the clouds were inspired by the album art for Dolly Parton&rsquo;s 1978 country-disco record Heartbreaker (which honestly still feels a little religious, because Dolly Parton is a&nbsp;saint). Either way, fundamentally Chris is about the elevation and exaltation of kink, both through the backdrop but even more so through the medium.&nbsp;

The level of technical skill on display is a seduction in itself: at first you can&rsquo;t believe it&rsquo;s not a photograph, then that it&rsquo;s not a painting. &ldquo;Colored pencils,&rdquo; you gasp, with indignant surprise. You get closer and marvel at the control, the artistry, the amount of time it must have taken. &ldquo;I really like working with high realism,&rdquo; Sinness says. &ldquo;It gets people&rsquo;s attention, and it makes them pay attention longer.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Of course, in the case of the Flowers, what we are paying attention to are men screwing in the woods, or laying ass-up on a bed, or posing in leather dog masks; not exactly your standard museum fare. They are provocative but tender, ethereal but grounded. These are real people, enjoying real moments, although an element of film-grain fantasy lingers in some of the pieces as well &mdash; a bit of throw-back nostalgia to the necessarily more furtive, coded days of American queer culture.&nbsp;

The walls of Sinness&rsquo;s home studio are peppered with these inspirations: screenshots from old Hollywood films and fuzzy &lsquo;80s TV shows, clippings of glistening buttocks and bodybuilders from &lsquo;70s pin-up mags, and the artist&rsquo;s own photos and sketches from live models, each affixed into these seemingly random mood boards with torn bits of blue painter&rsquo;s tape. In addition to the hyper-real portraits, Sinness also has a years-long interest in still life, masterfully orchestrating disparate elements together in colored pencil drawings that read as tromp l&rsquo;oeil collages. Even the blue painter&rsquo;s tape gets recreated, indistinguishable in one drawing on display from the two actual pieces of tape holding it to the wall.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc5MTQwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYyOTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Dawn, colored pencil on paper (note:&nbsp;one piece of blue tape is not like the others). Bottom: Photo references taped&nbsp;to the artist&#39;s studio wall.

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&ldquo;I really liked how still life spaces could become a stage for queer performance,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;I take images of people, flowers, and objects, and they interact in a way that is a little bit of an unexpected performance.&rdquo; He has described this work as a queering of time and space &mdash; connecting the old and the new, creating new contexts even as he leaves so much of the cream paper empty. I wonder if this work isn&rsquo;t also queering realism in some way: taking that most traditional benchmark of artistic mastery for a ride, creating generative realities out of rigid academic observation. There is an elegant magic to these compositions, conjuring monuments to desire out of houseplants, gemstones, and polaroids &mdash; or drawings of them, at least.

Realism itself is a fiction, as Magritte pointed out with his pipe. But it&rsquo;s not easy. When I ask Sinness what the point of all this belabored rendering is for him, he gives it to me straight: &ldquo;Part of the gay experience for me was being great at everything to avoid the flaw of being queer.&rdquo; He takes a beat and adds, &ldquo;I have a good therapist.&rdquo;

During the pandemic, he has been slowly working on a new series of portraits, allowing himself the space and the time to lavish each one with as much attention as it deserves. These fellows come across as less saintly, a bit more mischievous, and more directly relatable than the subjects of his previous work. &ldquo;I just want things to be a little bit grittier, a little bit more aggressive,&rdquo; Sinness says of these drawings.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY3MjIwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg1MDQwMDAz/full.jpg" />

Top: Birthday 2 (detail), colored pencil on paper, 28 x 19&quot;, 2020. Bottom: Untitled, colored pencil on paper, 28 x 19&quot;, 2022.

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They are stunning to look at &mdash; hyper-real in saturated colors that fill each page to its deckled edges &mdash; fully realized scenes of individuals serving a kitschy, knowing bit of cheesecake. There is a homemade-ness to the backdrops that says, This fantasy can happen anywhere; you can create it in your bedroom, in your basement, with anybody, and with any kind of body. The drawings are sweet but not saccharine, certainly funny, and borderline camp &mdash; as with Untitled, in which&nbsp;a man&nbsp;poses&nbsp;nude with a big fake snake draped across his bare shoulders and a silky bit of fabric barely keeping him modest. But as John Waters explained, &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re in on it, it can&rsquo;t be camp.&rdquo; An homage, then, to the playful joys of questionable taste.

It&rsquo;s all part of a creative lineage that Sinness is tapping into and carrying on, a list of names that adds up&nbsp;throughout our conversation: James Baldwin,&nbsp;Edwin B. Willis,&nbsp;Maria Callas,&nbsp;Dolly Parton,&nbsp;Al Parker. Interestingly, you&#39;ll notice a complete lack of self-portraits here.&nbsp;Some drawings look back to those who came before; others look squarely at those who are here now. All of them, though, are&nbsp;about looking both to the community and to the&nbsp;future. &ldquo;I was born in 1980 and didn&rsquo;t grow up with any queer elders,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;and also a lot of my queer elders died. So now I&rsquo;m thinking, how do I be the queer elder that I never had?&rdquo;

There&rsquo;s a beautiful world somewhere out there, maybe in the past and hopefully in the future, when the sun shines down through the clouds onto a man at the beach being given his flowers. It is simple and tender, with not a fascist in sight, and Joe Sinness invites us to really look, if you like, and take all the time you need.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc2OTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Gift, colored pencil on paper, 2020.

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

Banner image:&nbsp;Liam&nbsp;(detail), colored pencil on paper, 17 x 13&quot;, 2015.

2019 McKnight Artist Fellowship Profile: Joe Sinness

Reviews

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Three white walls lined with (mostly) two-dimensional work. It&rsquo;s the basis for an exhibition, just like form and content are the bases for a work&nbsp;of art.

Thoughtful Dialogue: 15 Years of Form + Content, which has <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/thoughtful-dialogue-15-years-of-form-content">an opening reception this Saturday</a>, showcases the many directions artists can go from there. The exhibition commemorates the 15th anniversary of Form + Content Gallery in Minneapolis&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;which has been in the same North Loop location since it first opened in 2007&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;and showcases work by 35 current and former gallery members.&nbsp;

In their diverse works, they all rely on the foundation that gave the gallery its name &ndash; and on the strong foundation they have in each other.

The gallery has a revolving group of 12 member artists &ndash; new members join as other members leave, keeping the number at a dozen. Members of the gallery run the business as well as curate exhibitions. Their dues pay for the gallery&rsquo;s operations, and Form + Content doesn&rsquo;t take a commission from&nbsp;members&#39;&nbsp;work when it is&nbsp;sold in the gallery.&nbsp;

The retrospective is a surprisingly cohesive smorgasbord, a one-stop introduction (or reintroduction) to almost three dozen local artists. All past and present gallery members were invited to show one piece of work. The only rule:&nbsp;it couldn&rsquo;t be larger than 15 inches in any direction.&nbsp;

The result is a multidisciplinary, multi-artist show packing Form + Content&rsquo;s walls&nbsp;with an incredible variety of work. The pieces fit neatly into the rectangular gallery, close enough to &ldquo;talk to each other,&rdquo; in the words of longtime gallery member Joyce Lyon.&nbsp;

Almost all work is for sale, and while the art isn&rsquo;t staged like it might be if you brought it home, it is hung&nbsp;in a way that gives meaning to the exhibition&rsquo;s name, Thoughtful Dialogue, a phrase borrowed directly from the gallery&#39;s own&nbsp;mission statement.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg3MDAwMDAz/full.jpg" />Installation view of&nbsp;Thoughtful Dialogue. Image courtesy of the gallery.

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Dozens of unique perspectives in Dialogue

Each piece is unique, and you&rsquo;d guess immediately that they were all made by different people. But for a show of 35 artists in one room, it feels incredibly coherent &ndash; in part because you walk in with the expectation that the pieces will be from different perspectives, in &ldquo;dialogue&rdquo; with each other.&nbsp;

Even for an outsider, the relationships between the artists in the show overlay the work itself, giving additional interest to the contrasts and commonalities. Howard Oransky is the only founding member who is still with the cooperative. In his 15 years with the gallery, other artists have inspired him in unexpected ways.&nbsp;

&ldquo;My studio was two blocks away from the gallery, which allowed me to start working on larger-scale paintings,&rdquo; says&nbsp;Oransky. &ldquo;I had been a figurative painter, but I started doing these large abstract works.&rdquo;

Oransky, who is the Director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, went on to curate shows of other artists&rsquo; work, and to display his own work alongside other artists and gallery members he admired. One of these fellow abstract artists, Clarence Morgan, has a piece hanging next to Oransky&rsquo;s in the show.

&ldquo;When helping arrange the show,&quot; says Lyon, &quot;I was going in part by what I knew of these people &ndash; in terms of what they talk about in their work and how they talk to each other.&nbsp;There&rsquo;s a real distinction between finding something that looks good over the couch and finding something where there&rsquo;s a visual connection.&rdquo;

The show balances this connection with work that Lyon says distinctly captures each artist.

&ldquo;People have found a way to encapsulate what they do in this size &ndash; which is quite specific and much smaller than most of us work,&rdquo; says Lyon. &ldquo;I could walk around here, and for at least two thirds of the work, I know immediately who made it.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU5MTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY1MTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: James Boyd Brent, Going back again, Intaglio (etching, engraving, aquatint), 9 x 9&quot;, 2022. Bottom:&nbsp;Arlene Burke-Morgan,Turbulent Flow, acrylic on paper, 12 x 12&quot;, 2012&nbsp;

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Passage of time on display

Work didn&rsquo;t have to be new &ndash; dimensions were the only rule. In this way, Thoughtful Dialogue&nbsp;inherently shows the passage of time. One former member, Arlene Burke-Morgan&nbsp;&ndash; who was also Clarence Morgan&#39;s wife&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;passed away in 2017. Her work hangs in the show alongside that of Laura Bigger, another former member listed as part of the Crescent Collective. Lyon explains&nbsp;that this collaborative was made up of three younger artists who shared one membership as a way to split the cost of dues.

Lyon points out a self-portrait by Patricia Olson as another example of how the passage of time is apparent in this 15-year retrospective.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Time is something that artists think about, but I don&rsquo;t know if it&rsquo;s universal. It might be that you find more of it when artists are mid-career or older,&rdquo; says&nbsp;Lyon. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an older face and there&rsquo;s interior activity&nbsp;going on &ndash; that interior activity speaks to me about the passage of time. She&rsquo;s inside of herself and it&rsquo;s somewhere other than the present place.&rdquo;

Lyon&rsquo;s piece depicts a stretch of woods along the Minnesota River where she has worked often over the past two decades. As a floodplain, trees that she considered landmarks have come and gone. Lyon revisited the work this year in preparation for Thoughtful Dialogue.

&ldquo;I returned to the drawing and thought I was going to make major changes, but instead found myself adding atmosphere,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;As I did, I felt myself reentering the experience and thinking about Jane, a friend who had another version of this drawing but who is gone now.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU5MTgwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYzMDAwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Joyce Lyon, Revisiting Jane&rsquo;s Woods, oil stick, 15 x 15&quot;, 1998-2022. Bottom: Gwen Partin, Remnants: Catenary, paper and fabric collage with embroidery, 15 x 15&quot;, 2022

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&ldquo;Presenters and members&rdquo; of the arts community

Coming up on 15 years since the founding of Form + Content, it was important for those close to the gallery to celebrate the community they&rsquo;ve created. As both members and business owners, these artists&rsquo; ties to Form + Content run deep &ndash; and make their commitment to the work they&rsquo;re showing even stronger.&nbsp;

While Thoughtful Dialogue&nbsp;is a celebration of member work, Oransky stresses&nbsp;that this wasn&rsquo;t the only goal in starting Form + Content.&nbsp;

&ldquo;We wanted to get away from that &lsquo;vanity gallery&rsquo; idea,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;All of us are artists and we all intended to show our work in the gallery, but that wasn&rsquo;t our only motivation.&rdquo;

Oransky was initially drawn to Form + Content not as a way to show work, but as a way to test the waters of curation.

&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve taken on this role as both presenters and members of this larger artistic community, and as such we feel responsible to supervise ourselves and the level of quality in everything that we put out there.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Seeing the level and variety of work in one room establishes the importance of Form + Content for downtown Minneapolis and the entire Twin Cities art community. Whether the exhibitions showcase members&rsquo; or other artists&rsquo; work, there&rsquo;s always a &ldquo;dialogue&rdquo; happening at Form + Content. A visit to the gallery is a free ticket to that conversation.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg5MDgwMDAz/full.jpg" />

All images are courtesy of the gallery.

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/thoughtful-dialogue-15-years-of-form-content" target="_blank">Thoughtful Dialogue: 15 Years of Form + Content</a>&nbsp;is now on view at Form + Content Gallery, with a Public Reception this Saturday from 6 - 8pm. The show is on view through May 28th. Gallery hours are&nbsp;Thursday - Friday - Saturday: 12:00 - 6:00 pm, and masks are encouraged.&nbsp;

For more information, visit <a href="http://www.formandcontent.org" target="_blank">the gallery&#39;s website</a> or follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/formcontentgallery/" target="_blank">@formcontentgallery</a>.

Banner image:&nbsp;Kristen Lowe, Meadow Down (detail), Mixed media, 15 x 15&quot;, 2022

Commemorating fifteen years as an artist-run gallery, Form+Content showcases the breadth of their community with works by thirty-five artists from the past decade and a half

Form + Content, Past and Present: Three dozen artists in “Thoughtful Dialogue”

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With just ten minutes before the performance was set to begin, the line to enter the State Theatre still stretched down Hennepin Avenue. I stood at the back while Miranda, my partner, went ahead to look for another entrance. She called a minute later and told me to hurry to the front, where theater staff had just opened a second door.

We congratulated ourselves on our good luck until we noticed, under the marquee, three singers gathered in a semicircle, wedged between the two lines. Each had a blue and yellow flag draped over their jackets. Although the crowd that had since queued behind us quickly obscured our view, we could just make out a hashtag sharpied to a cardboard sign that one of the singers held: #NoFlyZone. The trio&rsquo;s presence was no coincidence, as the marquee above them announced that the Russian Ballet Theatre would be performing Swan Lake inside.

Though Miranda&mdash;who has trained in ballet for most of her life&mdash;and I had bought tickets a few months prior, when war felt like a far-off possibility, we found ourselves debating whether to boycott the performance in the week leading up to it. For their part, Russian Ballet Theatre has worked to draw distinction between the rich history of Russian ballet they aim to share, and the state with which&nbsp;they are now reluctantly identified. The company&rsquo;s United States tour launched just a week before the invasion of Ukraine, after which they changed their name to &ldquo;RBTheatre.&rdquo;

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CaVM4WGP_A6/" target="_blank">They&rsquo;ve also taken to social media</a> to highlight the transnational identities of their cast, including principal dancers Olga Kifyak and Evgeny Svetlitsa, both of whom are Ukrainian. As authorities redraw the world in red lines, RBTheatre&rsquo;s producers and dancers remind us that regimes rarely represent the people within their borders. Outside the theater, the singing trio&rsquo;s presence felt like another kind of reminder, pulling us&mdash;the thousands of Minnesotans spending their Friday night at a ballet while atrocities unfolded just far enough away&mdash;into this endless entanglement, asking us not to avert our attention. And yet, our rush to get in obscured their message.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY4OTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />Left: Outside the State Theatre before the performance.&nbsp;Right: Inside the theater at intermission. Photos by the author.

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The performance had already begun once we made it inside, though you might not have known it from observing the audience, who continued to file in through the first act, using their harsh phone flashlights to find their rows. A man carrying a White Claw in each hand cut through the accessible aisle, jumping over a railing and landing atop his seat. Despite these distractions, it seemed like nothing could touch Kifyak, who performed Swan Lake&rsquo;s leading role&mdash;known to be among the most demanding of any ballet&mdash;flawlessly.

After the curtain call&mdash;during which the loudest applause went to the Jester, the ballet&rsquo;s comic relief&mdash;we filed back onto the street. We half-expected that the trio would still be singing, and wondered whether the audience, no longer in a hurry, would linger like we hadn&rsquo;t previously. But standing in their place were two workers already changing over the marquee to announce the next show: a lecture by Jordan Peterson.

When we arrived back home, I did as I had every night since the invasion began, clicking from one news outlet to the next. Staying informed is one thing, but I&rsquo;ve developed an unhealthy habit, scrolling past images of bombed out hospitals and apartment buildings to find small Ukrainian victories: scenes of everyday civilians constructing sandbag barricades to protect sculptures, or a Russian tank regiment destroyed. I recognize the hypocrisy in this&mdash;that for every ounce of attention I&rsquo;ve committed to the invasion of Ukraine, I&rsquo;ve dedicated a fraction to protracted conflicts happening elsewhere. (My country occupied Afghanistan for the vast majority of my life, so how is it that I know so little of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/21/1039393832/a-u-s-strike-recently-killed-afghan-civilians-but-its-far-from-the-first-time" target="_blank">the 5,900 Afghan civilians killed by airstrikes since 2001</a>, and yet I can recognize the precise pitch of air raid sirens in Lviv? If the fall of Kabul was projected as an inevitability, why does the threat to Kyiv feel so unacceptable?)

By the end of the night I felt sick. Not because of the performance, of course, but for the realization that I held more in common with its audience&mdash;who could choose when to tune in and out&mdash;than the trio under the marquee. Kafyik, her country invaded in the middle of her tour, carried the world&rsquo;s weight with each fouett&eacute; turn. We, the audience, were unworthy of her performance.

Fortunately, I wouldn&rsquo;t need to consider this quandary for long, because to live in the United States is to always have something else to look at. And so, the next day, I pulled up the Walker Art Center&rsquo;s Insights Design Lecture Series, where I came across <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoQ5CJpZ_oc&amp;list=RDCMUC_7GFqFFwqFIAaHVLkiMsOw&amp;start_radio=1&amp;rv=eoQ5CJpZ_oc&amp;t=15" target="_blank">a recording of the lecture that artist Piotr Szyhalski had given earlier that week</a>.

The video fades in as he approaches the podium. Where there typically might be applause, he&rsquo;s met with silence, and the camera pans out to reveal that the near-400 plush seats of the Walker Cinema are entirely empty. Szyhalski speaks slowly, projecting a series of numbers on the screen behind him: 437,842,762, 80,647,343;&nbsp;5,978,461, 975,150.&nbsp;Each figure representing the number of Covid-19 cases confirmed worldwide and in the United States to-date, followed by the corresponding number of deaths. &ldquo;As if this was not a picture dark enough&mdash;&rdquo; he says, choking up before clicking to the next slide, which holds an image of that now familiar blue and yellow flag, &ldquo;&mdash;I am really feeling the weight of history today.&rdquo;

Szyhalski was invited to discuss his recent Covid-19: Labor Camp Report, a project he took on at the pandemic&rsquo;s beginning. (The artist defines his &ldquo;Labor Camp&rdquo; moniker as the framework for his practice, which he describes as his &ldquo;ceaseless work of trying to make sense of the world.&rdquo;) With the Covid-19 Report, he provides the essential labor of re-interpreting what our leaders have termed &ldquo;unprecedented times.&rdquo;&nbsp;For 225 consecutive mornings, he made a daily ink drawing based on the dissonant headlines he&rsquo;d been struggling to make sense of, posting each to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/laborcamp/" target="_blank">his Instagram account</a> in the afternoon. While his initial illustrations represent the uncertainty of the pandemic&rsquo;s early days&mdash;depictions of disinformation, of homes turned inside out&mdash;the content builds on itself much as the horrors of 2020 did, with renderings of the uprising for racial justice and the fight for voting rights as spring became summer and summer turned to election season. Leaning into the madness, Szyhalski ended the series on election day&mdash;what he called a &quot;point of no return&quot;&nbsp;in <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CHJJtSdnUC-/" target="_blank">his accompanying post</a>.

The drawings have since been widely exhibited at a number of venues, <a href="https://new.artsmia.org/exhibition/piotr-szyhalski-labor-camp-covid-19-labor-camp-report" target="_blank">including at the Minneapolis Institute of Art last year</a>. In these installations, the prints function collectively as a visual encyclopedia. But in his Insights lecture, Szyhalski explains the painstaking process behind every individual entry. He&rsquo;d begin by assembling &ldquo;news shrapnel&rdquo;&mdash;lists of words and phrases that arose from consuming the news. That shrapnel became cards that he&rsquo;d shuffle around and connect with visuals collected from both contemporary media imagery and historical propaganda aesthetics. Next came pencil sketches that would evolve into full ink drawings.

Picturing Szyhalski descending to his basement every morning before sunrise might conjure the image of an obsessive artist absorbed in his work. But in reality, he made the Covid-19 Report for us. (&ldquo;We do not operate in a vacuum. We do not work for ourselves only. What we do is a social act,&rdquo; he states at the presentation&rsquo;s opening&mdash;the &ldquo;we&rdquo; referring to artists and designers.) He looks back with amazement about the ways the project was embraced by the public, who shared the drawings widely on social media, giving the illustrations legs that stretched beyond the exact dates they emerged from his basement; a section of the project&rsquo;s <a href="https://frankfrank.org/laborcamp-report-book/" target="_blank">accompanying book</a> is further devoted to those who printed and wheatpasted copies onto utility boxes and underpasses in their own cities. With its wide embrace, Szyhalski has found himself not as the series&rsquo; sole creator, but as the steward of an &ldquo;autonomous entity&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;as somebody who tends to this organism, who tends to a garden.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkyOTAwMDAz/full.jpg" />Left: Szyhalski&rsquo;s April 20th, 2020, entry to his Covid-19: Labor Camp Report.&nbsp;Right: A recent illustration the artist shared on his Instagram account.

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The lecture concludes in a Q&amp;A. Rather than stumble through questions sent in through the Zoom chat, Szyhalski instead tasks the audience with asking questions amongst themselves. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not alone, then ask each other. And if you&rsquo;re alone, ask yourself.&rdquo; For the next twelve minutes, he stands at the podium in silence. I have the urge to skip ahead, to close the tab. But I realize that, much like the Covid-19 Report itself, this too is a lesson in attention. And so I sit alone in my apartment and listen to this strange stillness&mdash;to the exhalations that Szyhalski&rsquo;s microphone picks up, and to the humming sound of the radiator next to me. The recording was made days ago, but surely we&rsquo;re breathing the same air.

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid we&rsquo;ve run out of time for questions,&rdquo; Szyhalski&nbsp;finally says, breaking the silence. After thanking the virtual audience, he straps on his mask and walks off stage, leaving us with one final image: that of Ukraine&rsquo;s flag projected in an empty theater. As he exits, I remember <a href="https://twitter.com/meghamohan/status/1499620570232766464" target="_blank">a video I saw earlier in the week</a>, where the crew of TV Rain&mdash;Russia&rsquo;s last independent news channel, which was shuttered after referring to the war as a &ldquo;war&rdquo;&mdash;walks off set following their final broadcast. The crew departs, and the station switches to a recording of Swan Lake, referencing <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgqgd/russias-last-independent-news-channel-plays-swan-lake-as-it-gets-shut-down" target="_blank">the history of Soviet state media playing the ballet during times of turmoil</a>, like during the failed 1991 coup attempt, when the same recording played on a loop for hours. Here again is another lesson in repetition, in accumulation: that no trouble is new, but the way we speak about it can be.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgyOTYwMDAz/full.jpg" />Left: A final frame in Szyhalski&rsquo;s lecture.&nbsp;Right: A screenshot from TV Rain&rsquo;s final broadcast, as the staff walked off.

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As Szyhalski and TV Rain&rsquo;s crew stepped offstage in their respective corners of the world, they stepped into uncertainty&mdash;the crew into a new atmosphere of intensified censorship, and the artist back into his endless labor of trying to make sense of the world. In the time since, Szyhalski has returned to his ink pens and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/laborcamp/" target="_blank">created new drawings responding to the invasion</a>, focusing repeatedly on refugees crossing the border into Poland, where he grew up. These recent illustrations feel like a continuation of the Covid-19 Report; while his early pandemic routine has been interrupted, Szyhalski remains an artist who refuses to operate in a vacuum, whose work never stops.&nbsp;

From my bystander perspective, it also seems the war is digging into a new, uncertain phase. Though the images pouring out of Ukraine are no less horrifying, the initial shock of invasion has churned into a grinding thing around which I can sense my own attention beginning to flag. And yet Szyhalski&#39;s drawings demand that we hold onto these words, these images, these moments, even when the theater empties and the marquee changes over.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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To witness a recording of Piotr Szyhalski&rsquo;s Insights lecture, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoQ5CJpZ_oc&amp;list=RDCMUC_7GFqFFwqFIAaHVLkiMsOw&amp;start_radio=1&amp;rv=eoQ5CJpZ_oc&amp;t=15" target="_blank">visit this link</a>. To view the full Covid-19: Labor Camp Report chronologically, as well as his recent drawings responding to the invasion of Ukraine, visit Szyhalski <a href="https://www.instagram.com/laborcamp/" target="_blank">on Instagram</a>. Additionally, more copies of the series&rsquo; accompanying book will soon be printed, with details to come on IG.

 
If you feel compelled to support Ukrainian peoples&#39; continued resistance to Russia&#39;s occupation, there are many places to donate. Here are just a few:

&bull;&nbsp;The Kyiv Independent is continuing to provide independent&nbsp;journalism throughout the country.&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent" target="_blank">Follow them on Twitter</a>&nbsp;and support their fundraising efforts&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/kyivindependent-launch" target="_blank">here</a>. 
&bull;&nbsp;<a href="https://razomforukraine.org/razom-emergency-response/" target="_blank">Razom for Ukraine</a>&nbsp;is a pro-democracy organization working to provide critical medical assistance&nbsp;across the country. 
&bull;&nbsp;The Switzerland-based&nbsp;<a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/donate/ukraine" target="_blank">International Committee of the Red Cross</a>&nbsp;has been working in Ukraine since 2014, and is now providing urgent humanitarian aid to civilian victims of the war. 
&bull;&nbsp;We also suggest following photographer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artforum.com/slant/a-wartime-diary-by-yevgenia-belorusets-88035" target="_blank">Yevgenia&nbsp;Belorusets&#39;&nbsp;daily dispatches from Kyiv</a>&nbsp;that the artist has been writing for Artforum International since the invasion&#39;s onset.

Banner image: A scene from the recording of Szyhalski&rsquo;s Insights Design Lecture Series at the Walker Art Center.

Szyhalski is also a participating artist in our 2021 Sketchbook Project,&nbsp;has a work on display currently at Gamut Gallery&#39;s <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition">Sketchbook Project Exhibition</a>, and will participate in the <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition">Artist Talk Exhibit Finale</a>&nbsp;on April 9th.

At the beginning of March 2022, Piotr Szyhalski, the artist behind the 'Covid-19: Labor Camp Report,' gave a lecture at the Walker Art Center while, across town, the Russian Ballet Theatre performed 'Swan Lake'

Learning Not to Look Away

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I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s a stretch to say that what is currently on view at NE Sculpture&nbsp;is not your typical white cube installation. Down in the subterranean gallery space, a&nbsp;series of hectic, haphazard&nbsp;assemblages fill up the room, pieced together with found objects, collaged news clippings, plastic tubing, and frenetic energy.

&ldquo;When you&rsquo;re a real artist and you&rsquo;re doing it for the cause, it doesn&rsquo;t really take a lot of time,&rdquo; explains&nbsp;Andrew Moore, the architect of this construction. &ldquo;It flows easy.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/the-promised-land-how-do-we-change-this">The Promised Land: How Do We Change This</a>, which closes on Saturday,&nbsp;is a collection of recent sculptures, paintings, collages, and clothes Moore has created, all centered around the singular cause of exploring, explaining, and &mdash; as the title suggests &mdash; changing the root causes of trauma in Black American communities. It is bold, unflinching, and rough, in more ways than one.

Near the entrance, you first encounter a wooden boat on stilts with a cut-out of Minnesota standing as its sail. The ship of state, you might say, in this case covered bow to stern and tip to tail in references to violence. Collaged across it all are white cops, Black death, a fat pink pig in a tuxedo, and a black mannequin torso covered in names-turned-hashtags: Crawford, Bland, Rice, Garner, Sterling, and more. Newspaper articles plastered to&nbsp;the port bow tie&nbsp;those deaths to another episode a full century prior: the 1920 lynching of three Black men in Duluth. It&#39;s a startling, literalist approach to historical narrative, a cold dash of water on the myth of Minnesota Nice. Welcome to the art show.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcwOTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MTIwMDA0/full.jpg" />The Promised Land&nbsp;installation views.

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From there, red, white, and blue tubes fly up off of the boat, leading to other, wilder assemblages, each one crudely assembled, scrawled with messages, and speaking in the angry, relentless language of political satire: toilets and guns and cages and coffins. The metaphor of the tubes is clear: local politics, national power systems, the pain of some communities, and the complicit wealth of others are all connected, like a closed system, a single body.

You should know before you go, the work here does not have the polish of a typical gallery exhibition, or of contemporary artists working around the same themes. <a href="https://abladeofgrass.org/fellows/jordan-weber/" target="_blank">Jordan Weber</a> and <a href="https://hughhayden.com" target="_blank">Hugh Hayden</a> both come to mind &mdash; two artists among many who use&nbsp;the language of contemporary art to speak truth to power. Moore&rsquo;s work is not crisp, clean, and clever in the same way. His objects are found, not crafted; his assemblages are&nbsp;jerry-rigged, not engineered. But still, the same urgent weight of history grounds his work, just as it should ground us all.&nbsp;

There&rsquo;s a term in the art world for creative expression like Moore&rsquo;s: &ldquo;Outsider Art.&rdquo; But outside of what? Certainly not outside of history: Moore&rsquo;s work is steeped in it, from Frederick Douglass to Malcolm X, Billie Holiday to Biggie Smalls. And certainly not outside of cultural precedent either. Moore came to local fame about ten years ago for showing these politically outspoken sculptures not in a gallery but on his front lawn in Powderhorn Park, working in&nbsp;the rich tradition of so many so-called folk artists before him. Simon Rodia&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/2021-12-24/how-the-watts-towers-were-born-and-how-they-got-to-be-100" target="_blank">Watts Towers</a> might be the most famous, though&nbsp;a closer comparison would be&nbsp;Joe Minter&rsquo;s 30-year-long installation of <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/african-village-in-america" target="_blank">African Village In America</a> at his home outside of Birmingham, Alabama.&nbsp;

Indeed, &ldquo;Outsider Art&rdquo; is a cultural niche&nbsp;all its own. The term typically denotes self-taught makers &mdash; you could say outside of academia,&nbsp;but definitely not outside of the art industry. Dealers and collectors have been trading in these rough-cut treasures for years.&nbsp;The <a href="https://www.outsiderartfair.com" target="_blank">Outsider Art Fair</a> just celebrated its 30th anniversary in January. And the intelligentsia are catching up to the salesmen, as curators give these artists&nbsp;more space and scholarship&nbsp;away from the auction block. 2018 saw <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/history-refused-to-die" target="_blank">an exhibition at </a><a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/history-refused-to-die" target="_blank">the Metropolitan Museum of Art</a>&nbsp;highlighting a variety of pieces by Southern artists, quilters, and craftspeople that had been gifted to the Met a few years earlier. And in 2019, one of Minter&rsquo;s assemblages &mdash; made of toys, tires, shoes, and license plates, not so different from Moore&#39;s own work&nbsp;&mdash; <a href="https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2019-Biennial?section=50#exhibition-artworks" target="_blank">was curated into the Whitney Biennial</a>. The outside had been brought in.

What Moore&#39;s work does exist outside of is &ldquo;polite society.&rdquo; Dressed in one of his home-made suits collaged with images, slogans, and bright yellow stripes, and topped with a Black Panther beret, the artist stands tall and stands out. He brings the artwork with him everywhere he goes.&nbsp;When I ask what kind of reactions he gets to his clothing, he says, &ldquo;I get a lot of conversation.&quot; And, with a laugh,&nbsp;&quot;I get a lot of surprised looks, too.&quot;

&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t be scared to draw people into a conversation. I do that with my outfits. You can&rsquo;t be relaxed all the time. People have to have something to break their mind. If you&rsquo;re relaxed all the time, this is what happens,&rdquo; he says, gesturing to his work.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY1MDYwMDAz/full.jpg" />Gentrification&nbsp;(top) and&nbsp;U.S. Slave Act, two&nbsp;collaborations with Amm-Ra Seka.

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Lining the walls are more collages and paintings, some of which are collaborations with a younger artist, illustrator <a href="https://www.instagram.com/elephantsamurai/" target="_blank">Amm-Ra Seka</a>. The paintings rage against gentrification and police brutality;&nbsp;menacing pigs stand brutish and muscular like minotaurs. Below them, in a plexiglas box,&nbsp;a bunch of little white figurines happily frolic in a holiday diorama. Another piece corrects the Bill of Rights to read the Bill of Whites, again scrawled in Moore&rsquo;s distinctive hand. And next to that is perhaps the most impactful and understated piece of them all: a&nbsp;store-bought frame hanging&nbsp;empty and unaltered on the wall. It&#39;s one of those &quot;collage frames,&quot; with&nbsp;41 little windows cut into the mat for your family photos. The artist has not touched it &mdash; no slogans, no commentary,&nbsp;just the faded&nbsp;stock photos of happy families:&nbsp;babies, grandparents, smiling couples at the beach, gleeful children&nbsp;building a snowman. It takes you a moment, but then you see the point: they&#39;re all white.&nbsp;

Some will scoff, to be sure. If you caught any of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson&rsquo;s confirmation hearings this week, you witnessed firsthand that disingenuous blowhards are eager to bulldoze past any real discussion of America&rsquo;s deep racism &mdash; and that those blowhards inhabit some of the highest seats of power in the land. Of course,&nbsp;those attitudes exist everywhere else in our&nbsp;polite society&nbsp;as well, lurking quietly across the entire political spectrum (our own Mayor Frey, for example, makes an appearance on the ship of state).&nbsp;

Moore&rsquo;s affiliation with the Black Panthers and his unabashed approach to difficult subjects makes it easy to paint him as a radical. The work shares the tone of early, politically conscious hip hop:&nbsp;as militant as Chuck D&rsquo;s lyrics, as dense as the Bomb Squad&rsquo;s production. Aesthetically the work connects with punk rock as well, whose visual sensibility was defined by angry, sardonic collages. But the message at the core of this work really shouldn&rsquo;t be radical at all. There aren&rsquo;t any Black Lives Matter signs in The Promised Land, but the fact that such a plain and powerful statement is a matter of contention in this country is proof positive that our problems are far from resolved. Still, as Moore says, &ldquo;If it wasn&rsquo;t for the radical people in this country, there would be no change at all.&rdquo; That is the damn truth.

There will be some who will scoff at the craftsmanship here, as well. With artworks, of course, context is key. Showing these works in a gallery is very different from showing them out in the neighborhood.&nbsp;For one, the audience is different.&nbsp;&ldquo;I hope that [people who visit this show] can grab the concept that this is something we live everyday,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t. You get a chance to walk in here and suck it in and evaluate how life really is for people of color. Especially now in Minnesota. Minnesota is like the new Mississippi. I hate to say it.&rdquo;

The work is rough and strange, against the grain of most gallery standards and likely even out of vogue to some degree for many activists out on the streets. The revolutionary sense of Black Joy that has been showing up defiantly on murals and in museums recently is not as evident here.&nbsp;There is a lot of love, though, most poignantly in the funeral bulletin for Moore&rsquo;s sister, who passed away shortly before his show opened and to whom the exhibition is dedicated. Where the work will go next is anyone&#39;s guess, and I wonder what the effect would be to see this not on his lawn and not in this small gallery, but in a grand rotunda or a museum hallway. Would it change it, would it cheapen it, or would it simply reach a wider audience?

The term that Moore uses to describe his work is &quot;Reality Art,&quot; a reflection of his lived experience as a Black man in the&nbsp;American Midwest, someone who has lived inside of the carceral system and come out the other side railing against injustice. Near the end of our conversation, I ask him what he thinks of being described as an &quot;Outsider artist&quot; instead.

&ldquo;Outsider artist?&rdquo; he asks, pausing to consider the term, trying it on maybe, like one of his jackets. He answers in a near non-sequitur&nbsp;&mdash; the call&nbsp;sign of a collagist:&nbsp;&ldquo;I would say a lot of people call me Knowledge.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg5MDAwMDAz/full.jpg" />All photos by the author.

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/the-promised-land-how-do-we-change-this">The Promised Land: How Do We Change This</a>&nbsp;is on view at <a href="https://ne-sculpture.org" target="_blank">NE Sculpture |&nbsp;Gallery</a><a href="http://ne-sculpture.org" target="_blank">&nbsp;Factory</a> through March 26th. Gallery hours are&nbsp;Thursdays, Fridays, &amp; Saturdays 12 -&nbsp;5pm or by appointment. You can see more of Andrew Moore&#39;s work on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/andrewmoorerealityartist/" target="_blank">@andrewmoorerealityartist</a>.

Known previously for elaborate and provocative art installations on his front lawn in Powderhorn Park, Moore and curator Joan Vorderbruggen bring his work to NE Sculpture

The Message is the Medium: The Radical “Reality Art” of Andrew Moore

2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project

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There are only two weeks left&nbsp;to&nbsp;preorder your copy of the limited edition 2021 Sketchbook Project&nbsp;book&nbsp;<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mplsart/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-book">via our Kickstarter</a>&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;your only chance to get your hands on the collected work of 70 Twin Cities artists who contributed to last year&#39;s traveling sketchbooks.&nbsp;

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In addition to the limited edition book, the original sketchbooks will be auctioned in April, and there is&nbsp;a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition">group exhibition at Gamut Gallery</a>&nbsp;currently on view through April 9th, featuring new&nbsp;work from many of this year&#39;s contributors&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;including this week&#39;s profiled artist: Samuel Fleming!

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<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:0.168683px">◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎
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Samuel Fleming (he/him) is a Minneapolis based artist who primarily works with ink on paper showcasing expressive forms with multiple layers of complex, contemporary imagery. He classifies his art in a limbo state between realism and abstract, depicted in ways he says are &quot;grotesque.&quot;&nbsp;Fleming has always found himself gravitating towards becoming an artist, even in his early days, and began to gain his footing within the art&nbsp;world early on. We wanted to take a deeper look into what inspires his distinctive artwork.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg1MDAwMDAz/full.jpg" />Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (from Encyclopedia Mulattica), ink on paper, 9 x 12&quot;

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Camryn Smith: What pulled you to creating, and how did you begin to pursue your career?

Samuel Fleming: I have been drawing for as long as I can remember, I have no memories of myself without art being a significant part of my life. When I was 14, I decided to pursue a professional career after seeing an art fair in NYC with my father. We saw artists and tents situated up and down the city blocks filled with talented people selling work of all kinds. By the end of the trip, I decided I wanted to sell my art like the artists at the fair.&nbsp;

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CS: What currently influences your work?

SF: I draw inspiration mostly from the work of old Renaissance artists and architects. My favorite artist of all time is Leonardo da Vinci;&nbsp;I love his artistic and engineering work. Today, I find myself gravitating towards Kehinde Wiley and Pablo Picasso as well,&nbsp;resulting in a taste for realism and abstract work. Especially when the two are mixed together, those are the pieces I enjoy making most right now.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYxMDkwMDAz/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY4OTEwMDAz/full.jpg" />

Top: The Harlem Renaissance (from Encyclopedia Mulattica),&nbsp;ink on paper,&nbsp;9 x 12&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;Bottom: Madonna and Child,&nbsp;ink on paper,&nbsp;18 x 24&quot;

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CS: How did you get involved with the Sketchbook Project?&nbsp;

SF: I was contacted by Blaine Garrett. He was introduced to my work through&nbsp;<a href="http://colorspaceartandimaging.com" target="_blank">Color Space Art and Imaging</a> after they had scanned 30 pieces of mine. At the time, I was writing and illustrating a book called <a href="https://store.bookbaby.com/book/encyclopedia-mulattica-vol-1" target="_blank">Encyclopedia Mulattica</a> which is available for free online as an e-book.

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CS: Do you have any upcoming shows or projects you would like people to know about? How can people support you?

SF: I am currently working on a book of exercises to teach people some drawing fundamentals. Unfortunately, due to my school schedule, I haven&rsquo;t had time to participate in many shows, but I sell my artwork on Instagram, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/samueljayart/" target="_blank">@samueljayart</a>, and I am always accepting new commissions. For any who are interested, I would love to participate in more shows and/or collaborate on projects.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkxMDAwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgxMDUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Samuel Fleming&#39;s contributions to the 2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project. Bottom: The artist in thought. All images courtesy of the artist.&nbsp;Banner image:&nbsp;Expression Collage (detail), ink on paper,&nbsp;9 x 12&quot;

A participant in our 2021 Sketchbook Project, Fleming allows us a peek into his bold, figurative drawing practice

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q & A With Samuel Fleming

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We at&nbsp;MPLSART&nbsp;are excited to unveil the results of&nbsp;the&nbsp;2021 Sketchbook Project! There is still time to preorder your copy of the limited edition book <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mplsart/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-book">via our Kickstarter</a> &mdash;&nbsp;your only chance to get your hands on the collected work of 70 Twin Cities artists who contributed to last year&#39;s traveling sketchbooks.&nbsp;

In addition to the limited edition book, the original sketchbooks will be auctioned in April, and there will also be a <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition">group exhibition at Gamut Gallery</a> opening March 18th, featuring new&nbsp;work from many of this year&#39;s contributors&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;including this week&#39;s profiled artist: Mary Gibney!

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<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:0.168683px">◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎
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&quot;I like visual clutter,&quot; Mary Gibney&nbsp;once said in an interview. It shows. There&#39;s a&nbsp;delightfully overwhelming density to her work&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;not only within each composition but within the entire range of her paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, and&nbsp;installations. They&nbsp;range&nbsp;in size from giant canvases to small scraps of paper, from thoughtful portraits to intense cartoons. Viewing her work all together&nbsp;is&nbsp;like standing still on a busy city sidewalk with people streaming past you on all sides. Bustling, bristling, full of lives you&#39;ll never know and faces you&#39;ll never see again.&nbsp;

We connected here to talk about the power of sketchbooks and strangers and just who all these faces belong to.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgxMDEwMDAz/full.jpg" />One of&nbsp;Gibney&#39;s&nbsp;contributions to the 2021 Sketchbook Project.

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Russ White: You have a remarkable range in the works you show &mdash; in terms of size, detail, and tone &mdash; and you are amazingly prolific (every single piece in your recent Rosalux show was from 2021!) The work was so varied and also so honest, it almost felt like looking at sketchbook pages blown up onto a wall. Do you normally keep a sketchbook going, and if so, what kind of stuff do you fill it up with?

Mary Gibney: Sketchbooks are essential! I keep several going.&nbsp;I always carry a small one and have multiple others sitting around my studio.&nbsp;I use them for sketches&nbsp;and words, riffing on themes, future show ideas, anything that pops into mind.&nbsp;Sketchbooks are so necessary for me to explore every silly idea or urge without self-editing.&nbsp;I&#39;m inspired by other artist&#39;s&nbsp;sketchbooks too and have been part of a sketchbook show that was so amazing &mdash; a glimpse into creative minds.&nbsp;Everyone does it differently.&nbsp;Mine are mostly drawn with my favorite&nbsp;Micron 02 pens, sometimes with added watercolor splashes. Occasionally I&#39;ll use a Japanese pen brush to really get loose.&nbsp;I have sketchbooks devoted to collage too, with the same idea of creating an image without judgement.&nbsp;

I have various sizes and styles, but mostly I use slim, cheap 5&quot; x 7&quot; paperback sketchbooks purchased in packs from Art Materials. Decent paper for sketching, but as far from precious as possible. Maybe you know this feeling &mdash; someone gives you a beautifully bound sketchbook that seems far too lovely to defile with half-baked ideas and scribbles.&nbsp;Paralyzed!&nbsp;I like to keep sketchbooks as a record of a moment, and often when I&#39;m flipping through them I see ideas that I&#39;ve forgotten about but may reconsider for my next show or art piece.

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RW: What do you find more challenging &mdash; or perhaps more fun &mdash; working from source images to create realistic portraits of actual people or making up compelling characters out of thin air? Who are these fictional faces smoking cigarettes, crying giant tears, or appearing on the body of your boxing lady?

MG: I think the right word here is FUN. I veer&nbsp;from using photos for face inspiration to completely made-up oddballs. I greatly enjoy&nbsp;using a found image to create a portrait, to make an effort to capture whatever emotion I&#39;m seeing in the photograph, and feeling that I&#39;m somehow making a connection with my re-creation, as if that character actually exists. And then there are the characters who are pure emotion.&nbsp;The women with giant eyes crying huge tears, floating heads and filling bodies, watercolors of tiny characters climbing or perched on the heads of other creatures, harpies, cats.&nbsp;My fascination with body parts &mdash; detached heads, breasts, eyes, mouths.&nbsp;Lately I&#39;ve been on a Harpie flow, producing multiple versions of this kind of beautiful, kind of scary woman-headed bird creature.&nbsp;Is she a protector or a threat?&nbsp;I&#39;m not sure.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg2OTQwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MDkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: A new Harpie piece, created for <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition">Gamut&#39;s Sketchbook Project Exhibition</a>, opening March 18th. Bottom: Cut-out heads&nbsp;from Gibney&#39;s recent Rosalux show.

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RW: One recurrent theme seems to be your interest in people passing through: regulars at old bars, people having their mug shots taken, street photography from the mid-20th century. What do you find so fascinating about these snapshots of strangers?&nbsp;

MG: What is more compelling than the face of another human? Over the years I&#39;ve been fascinated by the &quot;other.&quot;&nbsp;An unknown face in a crowd, nightclub, bar.&nbsp;It started with my urge to paint a stranger, and I needed good quality black and white, well-lit photos &mdash; mugshots and Weegee street scenes were perfect.&nbsp;As I painted these faces of strangers, I became more and more attached to them as people, unknowns yet somehow connected to me. I thought I was doing it as a way to look at and practice creating faces without using the face of someone I know or that others would necessarily recognize.&nbsp;I don&#39;t really care about making accurate representations;&nbsp;it would be boring to recreate them perfectly.&nbsp;I try to give a little emotional twist, to add some weirdness. But not through distortion or deliberate changes to their look, more through my own limitations of skill and addition of feeling.&nbsp;Trying to get to the heart of whatever attracted me to them in the first place &mdash; a look in their eyes?&nbsp; I can&#39;t really explain it.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgxMDEwMDA0/full.jpg" />Larry Cunningham, 12 x 12&quot;, inspired by Ernest Withers&#39;s photography

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RW: The past comes to life in your work in the form of found images, sometimes playfully as in your recreations of Vaudeville Stage Illusion Patents, and sometimes with a great reverence, as in your portraits of players from the Negro Baseball League. And your collages are full of old ads and ephemera. Is what drives this an interest in artifacts from a bygone era, or is that past still connected to our present do you think?

MG: I do really appreciate artifacts from a bygone era as you say, and I have a ton of source materials &mdash;&nbsp;old newspapers, magazines, hand-written letters, scrapbooks, Playboy magazines, corporate annual reports from the 1960s, black and white snapshots, school notebooks with class notes from the 1950s, maps.. So many things.&nbsp;Part of it is a love of recycling, the desire to turn a thing into another thing, as when I use&nbsp;these materials for collages.&nbsp;To add a layer of meaning to my art through materials that have passed through another life, other hands, now carried forward.&nbsp;

The Negro League player series started because of my love of baseball and the discovery of the photographs of Ernest Withers who documented Memphis baseball players and musicians in the 1950s.&nbsp; The wrestler series and circus sideshow series were both from a desire to show the &quot;other,&quot;&nbsp;and especially with the sideshow freaks,&nbsp;to show their beauty and dignity.&nbsp;

Weirdness, otherness, are important to me to try to portray, maybe I also relate in some way.&nbsp;The vast range of humanity!

From early on I wanted to make something &mdash; to draw something.&nbsp;I have a strong memory of my first artistic frustration in kindergarten when the yarn hair of my pretty girl face portrait (another face!) kept sticking to my fingers instead of the construction paper.&nbsp;I stayed late as my teacher hovered, unable to leave until I finally finished. Not my original vision of a head of curly blonde yarn hair but with one side curly, the other stuck down straight.&nbsp;My first sense of NEEDING to persist and also that it was &quot;good enough.&quot;&nbsp;That desire to just make a thing and to try hard to make it good enough has carried me forward.&nbsp;I&#39;ve always found a way to keep making art while also having a family and&nbsp;working a day job.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcwOTYwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgyOTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Pink Suit Man&nbsp;(top)&nbsp;and&nbsp;Strongman from Gibney&#39;s recent show, <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/laura-stack-designer-organisms-and-mary-gibney-pile-up-an-exhibition-of-exuberant-paintings">Pile Up</a>, at Rosalux Gallery.

&nbsp;

RW: I know you graduated from the University of Minnesota&nbsp;with a BFA in &rsquo;77. Did you grow up here, and have you been here in Minneapolis since college? What has been your experience as a member of the Rosalux Gallery collective, and more generally, what has been your experience as an artist in the Twin Cities?

MG: I did grow up here, and after graduating with my BFA, I contemplated what to do with that degree. What&#39;s next? Take more classes to become a graphic designer to support myself, then paint for the sake of personal creation?&nbsp;I got some good advice from an artist/graphic designer friend, that it&#39;s very hard to give that passion to two jobs.&nbsp;I took it to heart and my work life has always been separate from my creative life.&nbsp;I&#39;ve always been in the Mpls/St Paul art scene, both as a gallery-goer and a participant.&nbsp;Over the years I&#39;ve been in many shows&nbsp;and also put on my own shows through my friends&#39; bike shop downtown One on One Bicycle.&nbsp;That way I would be able to fill the walls with as much art as I could cram in and then have a big party.

<a href="https://www.rosaluxgallery.com" target="_blank">Rosalux</a> is such a well known creative collective, for&nbsp;20 years now!&nbsp;I&#39;ve been to so many amazing shows at their various locations.&nbsp;When I was invited in 2019 to submit to join I jumped at the chance to be part of it.&nbsp;The pandemic delayed our schedule for over a year, so my recent February show was my first Rosalux show. It&#39;s so wonderful to have a dedicated space and to be able to plan for my next show, Feb 2023, when I have the entire space and can make it into somewhat of an art environment with weird props and other touchable objects as well as art.

&nbsp;

RW: What is the best way for people to follow and support your work? Do you have any shows or events coming up you&rsquo;d like to promote?

MG: My Instagram account <a href="https://www.instagram.com/marygibneyart/" target="_blank">marygibneyart</a> and FB <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MaryGibneyArt" target="_blank">Mary Gibney Art</a> are usually the way I promote and announce art stuff.&nbsp;My website <a href="https://marygibney.com" target="_blank">marygibney.com</a> is mostly a gallery of past art and shows;&nbsp;it&#39;s a good way to see all my obsessions and series. Email mary@marygibney.com&nbsp;to reach me for art requests and to get on my mailing list. Direct messages from IG and FB are good too. I will be in the <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition">MPLSART Sketchbook art show at Gamut Gallery</a> opening on March 18th, and my next Rosalux show will be a solo show in Feb 2023.&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:0.1686830073595047px">◼︎

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgxMDIwMDAz/full.jpg" />The artist, one face among many. Banner image:&nbsp;Fight Me Baby&nbsp;(detail).&nbsp;All images courtesy of the artist.

A participant in the 2021 Sketchbook Project and upcoming Gamut Gallery exhibition, Gibney lets us in to her wild world of everyday characters

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q & A with Mary Gibney

The local comic artist, who participated in the 2021 Sketchbook Project, offers insight into their own creative and professional evolution

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with sunshine gao

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We at&nbsp;MPLSART&nbsp;are excited to unveil the results of&nbsp;the&nbsp;2021 Sketchbook Project!&nbsp;

Following the success of the 2020 Sketchbook Project, which was started as a way to connect and support artists during the pandemic, this second iteration features an entirely new roster of 70 local artists, who contributed 120 pages of original work to a series of five sketchbooks that&nbsp;traveled&nbsp;around the Twin Cities throughout 2021. The sketchbooks have been compiled into a beautiful 88 page limited edition hardcover book available exclusively via&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mplsart/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-book" target="_blank">a Kickstarter Presale</a>&nbsp;is now live. All net-proceeds from the sale of the book will be directly distributed to the participating artists.

As we gear up for the&nbsp;Kickstarter,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition" target="_blank">the related&nbsp;exhibition</a>&nbsp;at Gamut Gallery in March, and the auctioning of the original sketchbooks by Revere Auctions in April, we wanted to spend the next few weeks&nbsp;introducing&nbsp;you to some of the amazing artists who contributed to the project in 2021. You can see a full list of participants and timeline of events&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/sketchbook" target="_blank">here</a>, but in the meantime, meet Caitlin Karolczak!

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<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:0.168683px">◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎◼︎

Caitlin Karolczak&nbsp;(pronounced Ka&bull;Roal&bull;Chek, as the banner on her website explains) has been a fixture of the Northeast Minneapolis arts community for years. Born on Minnesota&rsquo;s Iron Range, she attended the University of MN at 16, where she received a BFA in Fine Arts and a BA in Art History with an emphasis in 19th century medical photography. After founding her studio in NE, Karolczak&nbsp;dove deep into traditional oil painting, developing a practice mining the morose for examples of&nbsp;delicate, complicated beauty, expertly rendered in meticulous, classical painting techniques. Her work has grown to include&nbsp;mixed media experiments&nbsp;as well as&nbsp;installation, sculpture, and performance art, often incorporating objects of biology and antiquity from her personal collection. Her contribution to the MPLSART Sketchbook Project&nbsp;(pictured above) distills these interests beautifully, and it got us talking about sketchbooks, social media, and what we can learn from those who have come and gone.

&nbsp;

Russ White:&nbsp;Do you keep a sketchbook going as part of your normal studio practice? If so, how do you use it, and do you ever share it publicly? &nbsp;

Caitlin Karolczak: I don&rsquo;t keep a regular sketchbook.&nbsp;I collect a lot of symbols and imagery as well as &ldquo;faces&rdquo; I like from vintage photography, scans from books or auction catalogs, museum image databases etc, and keep all that in a folder on a hard drive. I often print things off for inspiration and have several three ring binders full of this random imagery. To start a painting sometimes I loosely plan it out in Photoshop and start sketching directly on panel or canvas (or whatever surface the painting or drawing will be on). I do sketches and experiments on paper and those tend to just be floating about my studio or in my flat file. I have wanted to practice keeping a sketchbook on my travels, but so far it hasn&rsquo;t consistently happened. I mostly end up taking photographs of things on the road and pulling inspiration from that later. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW:&nbsp;Was it challenging to make work for the Sketchbook Project, at that scale and knowing it would be part of this public-facing collection?

CK: I&rsquo;ve always been a fan of artists that keep sketchbooks.&nbsp;I admire that they can put their ideas down in such a way so I was excited to be a part of something alongside all these different types of artists. The most challenging part for me was knowing I had to limit my mediums, and I didn&rsquo;t have an unlimited supply of surface to keep re-doing it. I couldn&rsquo;t just keep piling paint or pastel on a surface and then remove it, etc.&nbsp;Oftentimes I&rsquo;ll have a really nice simple drawing but then I keep adding to it like a painting when it&#39;s not. So I&rsquo;ve been trying to keep other artists in mind whose style of drawing I love with a simple yet impactful style. The drawings of Holbein, Jr. or a Japanese artist who I&rsquo;m aware of because I handled some of his work in the past, Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita, came to mind. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

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RW: You mix a lot of media and mash up a lot of imagery in your work, mixing the macabre with the mystical, the realistic with the illustrative, the bright with the dark. How planned out is each composition when you start it, and who are these people that you&rsquo;re painting? &nbsp; &nbsp;

CK: In the past I didn&rsquo;t plan out a painting much at all. The end result could have wonderful texture and build up, but it takes forever for me to complete one. Now I work on several paintings at once. Depending on the deadline they will be maybe 50% or more planned out but I still like to work on paintings that I didn&rsquo;t plan much at all in-between so I can have a mental break. &nbsp;

I work from three different sources mostly, as far as people.&nbsp;Myself, antique photos I&rsquo;ve collected, as well as imagery from a large vintage gay physique / erotic / porn collection I bought.&nbsp;I like the images from the 1950s the most because it often features beautiful young men in a vulnerable way, more like how women are usually shown. I don&rsquo;t like my subjects to be too sexy or comfortable. This collection is where I got the imagery for my sketchbook piece Desert Poppies.&nbsp;I used myself as a model for my piece Nightshade&nbsp;to be exhibited at Gamut. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYxMDIwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcwOTQwMDAz/full.jpg" />

Top:&nbsp;Eve. Bottom:&nbsp;Belle&nbsp;Sant&eacute;;&nbsp;oil, enamel, &amp; dyed silver leaf on panel, 40 x 30&quot;, 2018.

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RW: A lot of people have been noticing ways the pandemic has distorted their sense of time &mdash; it can feel like time has flattened out, both speeding up or slowing down. Some of that, I think, comes from the lack of resolution we have around many of the crises we face, and some of it also comes from spending so much time on social media, living in a present moment that&rsquo;s constantly updating. But much of your work seems to draw inspiration from the past &mdash; from 19th century postmortem portraits, ancient mythology, and antique curios, for example. Your painting process is also typically quite slow and laborious. First off, have you felt pressure lately to speed up in your output to keep pace with contemporary life? And what do you think these old ghosts of the past have to tell us about ourselves today? &nbsp; &nbsp;

CK: Yes, I&rsquo;ve definitely felt the pressure to speed up my output. It has not helped with the production of work. I feel like the pressure different entities put on me as far as expectations to be a &ldquo;successful artist&rdquo; made me reject it all together, and honestly, the last few years I&rsquo;ve purposely not touched certain work. While I&rsquo;ve had spurts of production I decided to have some &ldquo;me time&rdquo; so that I could experience things beyond the pressure put on my career &mdash; something that will never fully define me. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Social media has both been wonderful and horrible. Without it I would not be a professional artist or get side work like appraisals or modeling. For the last decade I have sold almost all of my work exclusively through social media with the sporadic gallery / group show sale here and there. On the negative spectrum, it has to be fed constantly with content so you can stay on people&rsquo;s radar. Images of art&nbsp;get far less likes than &ldquo;selfies with art&rdquo;. You have to beat the algorithm by playing this game just to be seen and then you get criticized for being vapid. Also&hellip; stalkers. I have two different accounts. One just for art and another that&#39;s art / lifestyle / everything else. I post embarrassing or crude things on the latter sometimes, and it remains the more popular account&hellip;. &nbsp;

I love history, archeology, and science. I think imagery from the past is important because it&rsquo;s a deliberate record left by those that came before, a kind of Memento Mori. What was important to this person, and what did they choose to leave behind? All of us are the same at least in one respect because we all die.&nbsp;The knowledge of this keeps our purpose and values in check. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgwOTkwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU5MDcwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Medusa&nbsp;(detail); oil, enamel, gold pigment, and silver leaf on panel;&nbsp;30 x 26&quot;. Bottom:&nbsp;Armoured Bones.

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RW: You&rsquo;ve kept a studio in Northeast for years, first at Solar Arts and now at California Building, and you&rsquo;ve also worked collaboratively as a performance artist, a model, and a curator at your studio-gallery, Storage Contemporary. Broadly speaking, what are your thoughts on the experience of being an artist in the Twin Cities? &nbsp; &nbsp;

CK: I&rsquo;ve actually had a studio in Northeast since 2005. It was in the Bottling House for several years. Then the Solar Arts, and now I&rsquo;ve been in the California Building for I think&hellip;.. 7 years already. It&rsquo;s hard to believe. &nbsp;

There&rsquo;s a lot of great things about the Twin Cities &mdash; different communities and many wonderful galleries and museums. The support for artists in the form of grants is much higher than other states (if you can get one which I have not but hope to someday / will keep trying).&nbsp;The studio space WAS affordable but that is changing fast. I count myself as fortunate to have gotten into a space as well as having a landlord that still values artists. &nbsp;

It can, however, be quite isolating sometimes. If you don&rsquo;t fit into a specific genre or type or fad you can feel overlooked. Luckily I have a great support network here and have been able to use my Minneapolis studio as a home base while befriending like minded creatives around the world, and I&rsquo;m very thankful for that. &nbsp; &nbsp;

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Storage-Contemporary-2188684954787462/" target="_blank">Storage Contemporary</a> has been on the back burner the last year but I&rsquo;m looking forward to hosting at least a couple shows in 2022 with different curators &amp; artists&hellip;. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

RW:&nbsp;What&rsquo;s the best way for people to follow and support your work, and do you have any shows or events coming up that we should look out for? &nbsp;

CK: I regularly post new work and information about my shows on both of my Facebook and Instagram accounts but one of the best ways to stay up to date is by supporting me on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/StudioSilenti" target="_blank">Patreon</a>.&nbsp;I post time lapse painting videos, blog posts, events private and public, as well as send physical swag through the mail like prints, original art, and objects. &nbsp;

More sporadically I have a mailing list I send out to occasionally. And while I try to keep my website up to date I also have a small web store there that&#39;s updated more often. &nbsp;

I&rsquo;m of course in the upcoming <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition" target="_blank">Sketchbook show at Gamut</a> but also have some other shows. I have&nbsp;work currently in the <a href="https://hennepintheatretrust.org/events/made-here-alumni-city-place-lofts-minneapolis-mn-2022/" target="_blank">Made Here Alumni Exhibition</a>&nbsp;at The Best Buy Foundation Gallery inside Hennepin Theatre Trust (Hennepin Theatre Trust will be hosting an Art&#39;s Salon in celebration of the exhibition on March 22nd, 6 to 9 pm). A two person show with painter Rachel Bridge at <a href="https://revolutionartgallery.com" target="_blank">Revolution Gallery </a>in Buffalo, NY, which&nbsp;opens on March 18th.&nbsp;I have a solo show,&nbsp;Imitations of Mortality&nbsp;at the <a href="https://thesatanictemple.com" target="_blank">Satanic Temple</a> in Salem, MA, from June&nbsp;&ndash; September, 2022 (opening reception is slated for June 4th). Three of my photographs are to be published in the third edition of <a href="https://www.store.rubbettinoeditore.it/catalogo/il-corpo-solitario-vol-iii/" target="_blank">Il corpo solitario - the self-timer in contemporary photography</a>, published by Rubbettino Editions,&nbsp;Italy.&nbsp;And lastly I&rsquo;m going to be working with <a href="https://www.aliceriot.com" target="_blank">Alice Riot</a>, licensing some artwork and looking into NFTs and the metaverse to see what&rsquo;s possible there&hellip;. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Facebook:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/caitlin.karolczak" target="_blank">@caitlin.karolczak</a> &nbsp;

Instagram - for everything:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/caitlin_karolczak/" target="_blank">@Caitlin_Karolczak</a>,&nbsp;or for only art: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/StudioSilenti/" target="_blank">@StudioSilenti</a> &nbsp;

My Patreon: &nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/StudioSilenti" target="_blank">https://www.patreon.com/StudioSilenti</a> &nbsp;

My website: &nbsp;<a href="https://www.studiosilenti.com" target="_blank">studiosilenti.com</a> &nbsp;

My email: &nbsp;StudioSilenti@gmail.com&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg4OTQwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU0OTcwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Nightshade, which will be on view at Gamut Gallery starting March 18th. Bottom: the artist. All images courtesy of the artist. Banner image: Desert Poppies, created for the 2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project.

Another participant in the 2021 Sketchbook Project, the painter and performance artist talks about her process, her inspiration, and what we can learn from the past

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q & A with Caitlin Karolczak

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John Sauer&nbsp;(he/him)&nbsp;is a Minneapolis artist, painter, and illustrator. Sauer&rsquo;s work aims to not only connect&nbsp;with people, but to&nbsp;offer&nbsp;an interesting perspective on the world through a wide variety of themes and visuals. As one of the 70 artists who participated in our <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/sketchbook" target="_blank">2021 Sketchbook Project</a>, we wanted to do a deeper dive into his expressive practice. Here he reflects on his persistent desire throughout his life to create, no matter the medium. Throughout Sauer&rsquo;s creative endeavors there are consistent thematic narratives, and it all adds up in some way or another into something he calls a &lsquo;visual mix-tape.&rsquo;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Camryn Smith: How did you begin creating and why did you feel drawn to making art? &nbsp;

John Sauer: I&#39;ve been making some sort of art my whole life and had parents, teachers, and friends encouraging me all the way. It&#39;s the one thing I&#39;ve always been pretty good at. I had some vague plan to go to college and then do something art-related, but after changing majors a few times, I left UWM to move to MPLS and play in a band with friends that were already here. It was a lot more fun than what I was doing! That lasted for a little while. &nbsp;

At some point I started messing around making band posters and doing cartoony stuff for local zines. A friend who was doing design work gave me a music magazine illustration gig, and that was it! It never occurred to me before that I could make money doing fun stuff. Of course, in hindsight I was looking in all the wrong directions. Over time I met a lot of nice folks that gave me a chance and I was able to basically learn as I went along. &nbsp;

I spent the next couple decades mainly doing illustration work, and occasionally painting pictures on the side for my own amusement, or the occasional commission. After the 2008 recession, a friend gently nudged me into showing art. That went well and I started to transition to doing art/painting nearly full time. I often feel that I came at this sort of backwards with the help of a lot of friends, but that it was an almost inescapable path. I&#39;ve always been drawn to making art and would be doing it in some capacity no matter what or where I was. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY3MDgwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjYyOTMwMDA0/full.jpg" />Top: We Carry These Things 2, oil on panel,&nbsp;20 x 10&quot;&nbsp;Bottom: One of John Sauer&#39;s pages for&nbsp;the 2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project.

&nbsp;

CS: What does creating bring you? &nbsp;

JS: Primarily the satisfaction of doing something uniquely my own. That may not have been the same answer at one time. For a while I loved the utilitarian aspect of illustration work, just doing a picture for something &mdash; whether it&#39;s an ad, a label, a poster, a game, a magazine, catalog, etc. etc, and then moving on....next! I loved the challenge of that. &nbsp;

Now it&#39;s more personal;&nbsp;I much more enjoy expressing my feelings, or trying to make sense of modern life, people, and the world. That can be in both realist painting or surreal painting, from time to time I switch between them. I love doing landscape and still life as much as surreal art, I&rsquo;ve always thought of them as different sides of the same coin. &nbsp;

I&#39;d love to find time down the road to explore more figurative work too. I always enjoy working on new things, stretching my boundaries, and getting out of my comfort zone. It can get frustrating, but there&#39;s always the payoff, that rewarding &quot;ah-ha!&quot; moment when things click. Along with all that, the satisfaction of connecting with people. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

CS: What about your practice is challenging for you? &nbsp;

JS: I have a tendency to be both a procrastinator AND impatient. I&#39;ll find a million excuses to put off starting something and then get impatient while I&#39;m working on it. I want to be working on the next one...which I&#39;ll end up procrastinating. On the other hand, I can&#39;t stand putting anything out in the world that&#39;s half baked, so I tend to put a lot of time into each painting. Which leads to the biggest challenge of all &mdash; that there&#39;s not enough hours in the day! &nbsp;

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CS: Why did you choose to participate in the 2021 Sketchbook Project? &nbsp;

JS: Tony Cheng (who did awesome work in both the sketchbook for last year&#39;s Project and for the show at Gamut) was kind enough to ask me if I&#39;d be interested in doing it this year and threw my name in the hat. I missed last year&#39;s and had the sads and a bit of FOMO, I seem to miss all the calls for stuff like this, so I jumped right on it. What a great project idea!! &nbsp;

Sketchbooks have always been an important part of the process for me, and I always have a variety of sketchbooks on hand. In the past, I&#39;d sketch anywhere, any time, every day. Recently, sketchbooks are mostly work related, and are a mixed bag of notes, preliminary drawings, and often pages of doodles that seem nonsensical; however they often end up as seeds for larger ideas and paintings. &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU0OTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkwOTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Two&nbsp;pages from Sauer&#39;s own sketchbook, doodling characters and&nbsp;thumbnailing alley landscapes. Bottom:&nbsp;Alley&nbsp;No 92 - 57th St E &amp; 40th Ave S,&nbsp;oil, 14 x 11&quot;

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CS: Do you have any upcoming projects or shows you would like to share? &nbsp;

JS: I do! As part of this Sketchbook Project, I&#39;ll have a new painting in <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition" target="_blank">the group show at Gamut Gallery</a> in March.&nbsp;

I&#39;m also participating in three&nbsp;other group shows on the horizon:

&bull; Unloved Creatures 3, a group show at Rogue Buddha Gallery (NE Mpls.) in May.

&bull; Beautifully Bleak, a group show at Brassworks Gallery (Portland, OR) opens May 7.

&bull; Reality Mistaken, a group show at Brassworks Gallery (Portland, OR) opens June 4. &nbsp;

All four&nbsp;of those shows are loaded with amazing talent. I&#39;m honored to be part of them! In addition to this I always keep the internet updated: Instagram -&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/johnsauerart/" target="_blank">@johnsauerart</a> and my website - <a href="http://www.johnsauer.com">johnsauer.com</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU2OTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />All images courtesy of the artist. Banner image: Anomalies (detail), oil on panel,&nbsp;20 x 16&quot;

Ranging from whimsical sci-fi to studied landscapes, Sauer brings a fun mix of techniques to the 2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project

Sketchbook Artist Profile: A look at painter and illustrator John Sauer’s ‘visual mix-tape’

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Each time I enter the Minneapolis Institute of Art&nbsp;I end up getting lost, mistaking one marble hallway for another. I&rsquo;d like to think it&rsquo;s not my fault &mdash; after all, it&rsquo;s dizzying to navigate even a portion of the museum&rsquo;s 90,000-object permanent collection, which covers 5,000 years of human history. But I kept a strict itinerary on my most recent visit, stopping at only one show: Aaron Dysart&rsquo;s Passage, a presentation from the Institute&rsquo;s Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP). &nbsp;

The gallery was easy to find because&nbsp;a child&rsquo;s birthday party had overtaken the exhibition space. Children&rsquo;s jumps and laughter reverberated through the polished corridor when I approached. Within Passage, the party had found a playground, its main attraction a series of seven colorful inflatables, or &ldquo;noodle dancers&rdquo; as Dysart calls them. With their pointed paper hats, the children mimicked the dancers&rsquo; movements, rising and falling along with them; they dared each other to dart between the tubes, happily ignoring the black tape that runs along the parquet floor. Yes, the art was touched. &nbsp;

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[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GklgEnx0_c8] 
Installation view of Latitude. Video courtesy of the artist. &nbsp;

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Eventually an adult hollered and the party paraded out. As the room emptied, their shouts were replaced with the whirring sound of the dancers&rsquo; fans&mdash;white noise that coalesced into a chorus, enveloping the space. Only one other visitor remained, squatting in a corner of the rectangular room; I followed their cue and squatted in the opposite corner. For ten uninterrupted minutes, we watched as the nylon tubes slowly collapsed and built themselves up again, before collapsing and climbing once more. I felt my own breath steady, matching the tubes&rsquo; rhythms. When I rose to my feet and neared the wall label, I learned my breath was tapping into something deeper: the planet&rsquo;s own respiration. &nbsp;

The seven noodle dancers correspond to specific geographies &mdash; one&nbsp;a shrubland in northeastern Russia, for example; another&nbsp;a South African savanna &mdash; where scientists have established towers to collect atmospheric data. Dysart has plugged the dancers into ten-year datasets gathered from those towers which, among other things, measure the flow of carbon dioxide through these ecosystems. He programmed the lights at each tube&rsquo;s base to turn cooler blue tones when an ecosystem sequesters more carbon than it emits, and warmer red tones when the opposite is true. In this sped-up visualization, every three seconds of gallery-time represents a day&#39;s worth of data, meaning two hundred days passed in the minutes I sat transfixed in the corner &mdash; two hundred days marked by an impossible number of plants growing and decaying, marked by humans burning more fossil fuels, inflicting further stress on our own lungs. &nbsp;

Honestly, I&rsquo;m struggling to explain the science. But that&rsquo;s beside the point. Latitude offers many ways in: You can approach it from a scientific perspective and observe how a forest in Ontario absorbs carbon at a greater rate than one in coastal French Guiana, but you can also approach it while wearing a paper party hat, your arms flailing in the air. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg2OTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />Installation view of Latitude. Image courtesy of the artist. &nbsp;

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Dysart spoke of the multiple entry points into Passage on February 6th, when he joined Jessica Hellmann, a climate researcher and the director of the University of Minnesota&rsquo;s <a href="http://environment.umn.edu" target="_blank">Institute on the Environment</a>, and Nicole Soukup, Mia&rsquo;s Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, for a talk organized through <a href="https://thegreatnorthernfestival.com" target="_blank">The Great Northern</a> festival. During their wide-ranging conversation, they discussed the need for collaboration between artists and scientists, given the responsibilities of both to illuminate new understandings of entrenched issues. To this point, Dysart shared his frustration with the orientation of existing discourse surrounding climate change: &ldquo;The first article that talked about greenhouse gasses and its effects came out in 1953 in Popular Mechanics. We&rsquo;ve known about this for decades, and we&rsquo;ve used the same language [to describe climate change] over and over and over again.&rdquo; Though much of Dysart&#39;s work reinterprets heavy data &mdash; previous collaborators include lockmasters with the Army Corps of Engineers, workers from the District Energy Saint Paul power plant, and, while developing Latitude, scientists at the <a href="https://www.woodwellclimate.org" target="_blank">Woodwell Climate Research Center</a> &mdash; you&rsquo;d be forgiven if you didn&rsquo;t immediately recognize these sources. &ldquo;I like to be really underhanded,&rdquo; he told Hellman&nbsp;and Soukup. &ldquo;I love humor, and I love joy in the way that it can loosen people up.&rdquo; Readily found on the grounds of used car lots or in front of cell phone stores, the noodle dancers are the latest form Dysart has employed to trick us into conversations we might have otherwise grown weary of. &nbsp;

Another spectacle is found in the center of the gallery&rsquo;s smaller room. Dig Down to the Stars features the root bulb of a tree that Dysart salvaged from <a href="https://www.ever-greenenergy.com/project/environmental-wood-supply/" target="_blank">Environmental Wood Supply</a>, a wood waste dump site in St. Paul that provides much of the city&rsquo;s biomass fuel. Rather than being chipped and burned, Dysart gave this root system a joyful and heartbreaking final chapter; he fixed mirrors to the ends of each cut lateral root, creating the impression of a mirror ball and, as he describes it, &ldquo;a constellation of stars&rdquo; thrown onto the gallery walls. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgwOTcwMDAz/full.jpg" />Installation view of Dig Down to the Stars.&nbsp;Image courtesy of the artist. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

The mirror ball has been a symbol that Dysart has repeatedly turned to&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;see <a href="http://www.aarondysart.com/work#/surpirse-party/" target="_blank">Surprise Party</a>, where he transformed one of Mia&rsquo;s rotundas into a spontaneous light show &mdash; but Dig Down to the Stars hardly reads as one, in part because its motor runs at just one revolution per hour. While I examined the root, a group of teenagers wandered in and began placing bets on whether it was moving all. &ldquo;Our number one comment for the show is that the work is broken, because people expect movement to be quick,&rdquo; noted Soukup during The Great Northern conversation. Dysart&nbsp;is aware of this unease, but rather than cede to our expectations&nbsp;&mdash; to tease the audience assembled at Mia a bit more, he mentions that he could change the motor&rsquo;s speed at any time from a phone app &mdash; he lets Dig Down to the Stars reward slow looking. After standing stationary for a few long breaths, one of the mirrors suddenly caught a spotlight from the gallery&rsquo;s ceiling, temporarily blinding me. This felt something like proof. &nbsp;

Latitude and Dig Down to the Stars share an aesthetic and conceptual language, but their precise linkages aren&rsquo;t clear. Dysart would be the first to admit this. &ldquo;I like shiny things and colorful lights, and in the end I just try to jam them together,&rdquo; he says. When he builds these objects, he seems less concerned with some predetermined meaning than he does with enjoying the process of exploration and discovery that each project brings. That joy carries over to us; though he doesn&rsquo;t offer any solutions to climate change with Passage, he gives us permission to wander and wonder, to get back in touch with a planet we thought we already knew. &nbsp;

As I prepared to leave the gallery, one of the boys from the birthday party returned, this time accompanied only by his father. &ldquo;There they are!&rdquo; he shrieked, pointing to the noodle dancers. He ran to them, not thinking of the precarious future they signaled, but enjoying their falling and rising nonetheless.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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Passage is on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Art until February 27th, 2022. To see more of Aaron&rsquo;s work, visit <a href="http://www.aarondysart.com/" target="_blank">aarondysart.com</a> or follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/aarondysart/" target="_blank">@aarondysart</a>. You can also find a past interview with Aaron regarding his 2015 installation Solar System <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2015/12/interview-aaron-dysart-plume-project" target="_blank">on our site</a>. &nbsp;

For more on MAEP, visit <a href="https://new.artsmia.org/exhibitions/maep" target="_blank">Mia&rsquo;s website</a>. Jovan C. Speller will be featured in the next MAEP presentation, <a href="https://new.artsmia.org/exhibition/jovan-c-speller-nurturing-and-other-rituals-of-protection" target="_blank">Nurturing, and Other Rituals of Protection</a>, which will run from March 19 &ndash; June 26, 2022.

Banner Image: Installation view of the exhibition Aaron Dysart: Passage. On view at Minneapolis Institute of Art through February 27, 2022. Image courtesy of Minneapolis Institute of Art.

In his Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program installation on view through Feb 27th, Dysart transforms the gallery and shifts conversation with movement and light

Breathing In, Reaching Out: Aaron Dysart's 'Passage' at Mia

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We at MPLSART are excited to unveil the results of&nbsp;the 2021 Sketchbook Project!&nbsp;

Following the success of the 2020 Sketchbook Project, which was started as a way to connect and support artists during the pandemic, this second iteration features an entirely new roster of 70 local artists, who contributed 120 pages of original work to a series of five sketchbooks that travelled around the Twin Cities throughout 2021. The sketchbooks have been compiled into a beautiful 88 page limited edition hardcover book available exclusively via <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mplsart/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-book" target="_blank">a Kickstarter Presale</a> starting March 1st. All net-proceeds from the sale of the book will be directly distributed to the participating artists.

As we gear up for the Kickstarter, <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/2021-mplsart-sketchbook-project-exhibition" target="_blank">the related&nbsp;exhibition</a> at Gamut Gallery in March, and the auctioning of the original sketchbooks by Revere Auctions in April, we wanted to spend the next few weeks&nbsp;introducing&nbsp;you to some of the amazing artists who contributed to the project in 2021. You can see a full list of participants and timeline of events <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/sketchbook" target="_blank">here</a>, but in the meantime, meet Hibaaq Ibrahim!

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

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Hibaaq Ibrahim (she/her) is a botanical and abstract muralist living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was born in Sweden and has moved over 20 times. This drives her sense of curiosity and exploration.&nbsp; Every new home and neighborhood was an opportunity to discover:&nbsp;new friends, new flowers, new places to bike to. This carries over into her artistic practice. With her use of bold colors and familiar shapes, she aims to spark joy in viewers. As one of the 70 artists contributing to the <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/sketchbook" target="_blank">2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project,</a> we wanted to learn more about her and her practice.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg4OTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />Ibrahim&#39;s mural&nbsp;Zoe&rsquo;s Bakery in Minneapolis

 
Blaine Garrett: How did you get started as a&nbsp;muralist?&nbsp; 
Hibaaq Ibrahim: I&rsquo;ve made art for as long as I can remember. I used to turn all my school projects into art projects. However, when it came time for college, I didn&rsquo;t study art &mdash; I studied philosophy. I still love philosophy, and I probably would not have changed that if I could go back. I deliberately did not choose art because I thought it wasn&rsquo;t a career.&nbsp;This&nbsp;is why I didn&rsquo;t share my art with almost anyone until I was in my mid-twenties. Art&nbsp;was just something I did and I thought no one would care.

Fast forward to the global pandemic in 2020 and suddenly I was spending a lot more time at home. I was working from home for the first time in my life. I could pretty much work on my own schedule, so I started leaving large gaps of&nbsp;time in my days. One night early in the pandemic, I realized I had ran out of cat food. I did a quick Google search, and the only place in town I could find cat food at that hour was Southside&nbsp;Food and Deli. The exterior had a faded mural from over 20 years ago. I had a sudden idea, &ldquo;what if I offer to repaint their mural?&rdquo; I asked the owner and he agreed. I worked on it for about a week in my spare time. I loved the experience so much I wanted to paint another mural. Soon after, I started an Instagram page to share my art and I&rsquo;ve been painting murals ever since.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

BG: Does your artistic&nbsp;practice extend beyond murals?&nbsp; 
HI: I only paint murals right now and occasionally do digital artwork (just for myself). I love painting large, and murals are the only way I can do that. I haven&rsquo;t had a studio so large scale paintings aren&rsquo;t feasible for me. I am getting a studio in about 2 weeks as a new member of Public Functionary Studio 285! I&rsquo;ve wanted to venture into large paintings, prints, and furniture painting for a long time. Murals are my passion but I know they aren&rsquo;t accessible to everyone. Many of my followers rent for example. I would love to provide more ways to get my art to people who want it. Right now, you&rsquo;d have to go where my art is to see it. It would be to nice see my work framed in someone&rsquo;s home! I&rsquo;ve got a lot of ideas and this new studio space will make them possible!

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg0OTMwMDAz/full.jpg" />Ibrahim in front of her mural at&nbsp;Graze Provisions + Libation

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BG: Where might people see your murals out in the &ldquo;wild&rdquo;? 
HI: It would be a lot to mention every place I&rsquo;ve painted at this point, but I&rsquo;ll list 5 of my favorites! The hops themed mural I did at Acadia is one of my proudest. Graze Provisions + Libations is just amazing on it&rsquo;s own. I&rsquo;d recommend taking a photo with my floral mural and getting a latte at The Last Drop Cafe. If you&rsquo;re more into abstract, my mural at A Side Public House is for you! I go to Zoe&rsquo;s Bakery anytime I&rsquo;m near downtown. The mural I did there is super cute and is another one that I think makes for a great photo background.&nbsp;Lastly, a super fun one is at Stella Belle in St. Paul. It&rsquo;s connected to, and also a part of, Cafe Astoria.&nbsp;In a few weeks I&rsquo;ll have a mural map on my website where you can easily see all my public murals.

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BG: You were involved in several of the murals throughout Minneapolis&nbsp;created in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. How did this time affect you as an artist? 
HI: It was just a very confusing time. I, like many other artists, just felt in the dark. I wanted a way to process it and I think that&rsquo;s why I turned to art. I looked around Facebook and Instagram to see what community events were happening. I went to any art centered gathering I could because I really just wanted community. I met muralists for the first time in my life and I started to see it as something I could actively do.

I also co-ran a 4H youth club at a local library. I&rsquo;d often share my art and mural work with the teens who became interested in painting one of their own. My co club leader Alyssa connected me with Smoke in the Pit, a BBQ spot. They were located in George Floyd Square and had been continuously tagged. The club had been looking for a place to paint a mural and it just worked out. All the ideas in that mural came from the youth of 4H through discussion. They wanted to make the mural a message about connecting rather than breaking apart from one another. The quote on the mural is from Black Panther and it reads &ldquo;In times of crisis, the wise build bridges. While the foolish build barriers.&rdquo; This whole experience was about community building. It merged my passions of youth work and art in a way that still impacts me today.&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjgwOTMwMDA0/full.jpg" />The mural on&nbsp;Smoke In The Pit Ibrahim created with her 4H group

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BG: How did your involvement with these murals shape your artistic practice moving forward? 
HI: I started to see murals as a community thing. Even though now I paint mainly commercial murals,&nbsp;I consider my work to be centered in community. I paint in spaces that people gather. Places like restaurants, coffee shops, and homes. I love that my art is a part of spaces that hold positive memories for people &mdash; somewhere they go to study with a friend or have a birthday dinner. I always start my mural design process by imagining who will be there.&nbsp;

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BG: You had the distinction of being one of the first and last artists to contribute pages to the 2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project. In the time between, how did your approach them change? 
HI: When I made the first sketch, I was strictly a botanical artist. I still love that style but since then, I&rsquo;ve found a love for abstract art. My version of &quot;abstract&quot; isn&rsquo;t what you would first think of when you say the word, but I think that&rsquo;s why it took me so long to try it. I thought that abstract had to be moody and chaotic and have lines everywhere! I just wanted to make pretty things I saw in nature. I was not into abstract at all. I was actually against it, which just makes me laugh now.

I had a client who told me &quot;absolutely no botanicals.&quot;&nbsp;I was in a panic. I thought about dropping this client a few times. However, I decided to just see what I could do. It took 2 whole months to get a final mock up, which ended up being abstract. I was pushed every step of the way, further and further from where I felt comfortable as an artist. That experience was the most transformative of my career thus far. In a way, I had to go back to the basics to succeed on this project. I felt like a little kid, learning a new language. That sort of inspired the second drawing. Which has a little girl at the bottom. That&rsquo;s me. The drawing incorporates abstract, botanicals, and lots of color. It&rsquo;s a story about going back to the basics, learning new things, and then fusing that with what I was doing before to create a new lane for myself. All of the things coming out of my head are experiences.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg0OTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />Ibrahim&#39;s contributions to the 2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project

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BG: Did you find difficulty transposing your large scale mural style to the small scale of the 2021 MPLSART Sketchbook Project? 
HI: Yes and no. I sketch on regular 8&rdquo;x11&rdquo; paper and on my iPad often. However, it&rsquo;s typically through the lens of knowing it will be large-scale. I tend to draw very simply. With murals, it&rsquo;s important to consider how it will look far away. I&rsquo;m very concerned with the readability of the work so I do minimal linework, large shapes and botanicals, and tend to do solid color. It&rsquo;s also just my taste. My style doesn&rsquo;t always translate well to a typical size canvas. However, I find sketches in ink make more sense to me.

My first sketch [for the Sketchbook Project] had more detail than I typically do, because I could. It was fun to be able to add more lines to the leaves without thinking &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to have to paint that 10,000 times in real life!&rdquo; I used to paint fairly small-scale landscapes from age 17-20. I tended to only do half of a painting and abandon it. I see now that it was because I don&rsquo;t like painting small, and I also really really don&rsquo;t like painting landscapes!&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkwOTQwMDAz/full.jpg" />An example of Ibrahim&#39;s digital&nbsp;design experiments.

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BG: How do you see your work evolving during 2022? 
HI: I am most definitely going to incorporate furniture into the list of things I paint this year. I also want to casually do an art form that is unrelated to painting or mural work. I&rsquo;m thinking about sculptures but I don&rsquo;t know yet. My top priority right now is to start painting actual paintings again now that I will have more space.&nbsp;I also have a secret project I&rsquo;m working on that will likely take a year, so I&rsquo;m laying the groundwork now.

&nbsp;

BG: Do you have any advice for artists wanting to get into painting murals professionally? 
HI: Yes! Start with your own walls if you can. Or friends/family members. Even a piece of wood from Home Depot (a nice smooth surface). Don&rsquo;t worry about being good, or even sharing on social media. Don&rsquo;t worry about the best paints or supplies. I did my first mural with brushes from the Dollar Store. Just experiment and see what lights you up. And if you don&rsquo;t like painting something, drop it. Dropping landscapes really sparked my creativity. Sometimes you need to let go of the things you think you should be doing in order to make space for the things you want to be doing!

I also recommend&nbsp;finding podcasts by other artists.&nbsp;It helps you stay motivated and gives you great ideas you can apply to your own practice. My favorite podcast is <a href="https://www.creativepeptalk.com/" target="_blank">Creative Pep Talk by Andy J Pizza</a>. If you&rsquo;re local, reach out to me. I love giving all the advice to young people!

&nbsp;

BG: How can people best support you and your work right now? 
HI: My <a href="https://www.instagram.com/moonjuiceart/" target="_blank">instagram</a>&nbsp;is the easiest way to see my most recent work. My <a href="https://www.moonjuicemurals.com/" target="_blank">website</a> is a good place to look too, although it&rsquo;s usually a few weeks behind. Also, take pictures with my murals and tag me &mdash;&nbsp;I LOVE seeing it!

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BG: Thank you so much for your time and contributing your work to the 2021 MPLSART&nbsp;Sketchbook Project. Is there anything else you&#39;d like to say?&nbsp; 
HI: I just want to say thank you to my community, I would not be an artist were it not for your support!&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjczMDEwMDAz/full.jpg" />Photo of the artist. Photo by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/ryleeann_k/" target="_blank">@ryleeann_k</a>

The local muralist, who participated in our 2021 Sketchbook Project, offers insight into her own creative and professional evolution

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with Hibaaq Ibrahim

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In March 2020, we were told&nbsp;&mdash; and maybe&nbsp;told ourselves &mdash; that our transition online would be temporary. Exhibition openings and artist talks were postponed to some undetermined time when &ldquo;the spread&rdquo; had been stopped and we could gather together once more. But, now nearly two years on, our adaptations have become more permanent: wearing masks, working from home, absorbing the occurrence of mass death in every corner of the country, of the world. &nbsp;

We&rsquo;ve all responded to this moment&rsquo;s uncertainty in different ways. For her part, Jenny Wheatley, Augsburg University&rsquo;s Coordinator of Galleries &amp; Exhibitions, has had to adapt the programming of a gallery situated on a campus suddenly emptied of its students. To help chart a path forward, Wheatley had conversations with a grief specialist and an art therapist, both of whom explained how people will struggle to grapple with the slow-moving, grueling weight of the pandemic for years to come. &nbsp;

I&rsquo;ve long admired the programming that Wheatley has organized at Augsburg. She&rsquo;s a true champion of the university&rsquo;s students, and utilizes her platform to help embed current students and recent graduates in a larger artistic community. After those initial meetings with mental health specialists, she decided to restructure the gallery&rsquo;s programming to explicitly address students&rsquo; feelings of isolation and grief, &ldquo;focusing on how the galleries can be a space of respite for people when they return to campus, a place of calm, connection, and care.&rdquo; &nbsp;

To figure out how this restructuring might take shape, Wheatley began to facilitate bi-monthly online gatherings where artists and designers from across the country connect with students from Augsburg&rsquo;s Art &amp; Design Department. &ldquo;At these gatherings, artists were acknowledging uncertainty and the effect it had on their own situation,&rdquo; she tells me via&nbsp;email. &ldquo;By sharing how they were processing and finding their way through this time, it offered points of connection to other artists. And as the past years have pointed out, connection can center us during difficult times.&rdquo; &nbsp;

The idea for Gradual Ascent derived from this expressed desire and innate need for connection. The year-long project asks twelve photographers to take over <a href="https://www.instagram.com/augsburg_galleries/" target="_blank">the gallery&rsquo;s Instagram page</a>, sharing their &ldquo;obstacles, changes, and joys throughout one particular month.&rdquo; Alongside many of the images, photographers have included a reflection about their process or state of mind when making a specific photograph. Now ten months in, the project drops us into the lives of the featured artists, meeting them where they&rsquo;re at; this openness makes Gradual Ascent a joy to interact with. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc1MDIwMDAz/full.jpg" />App as exhibition space: recent Gradual Ascent posts by Yasmin Yassin, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/yazziz/" target="_blank">@yazziz</a>.&nbsp;

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Khadija Charif, one of the participating artists, has exhibited extensively around the Twin Cities, with shows at Soomaal House of Art, Yeah Maybe, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, among others. Though she has missed the energy of in-person openings, she finds value in the different forms of engagement that virtual exhibitions offer. &ldquo;The blessing in a virtual gallery lies in the softness and privacy of each viewer,&rdquo; she explains&nbsp;to me. &ldquo;As an artist, I find it wonderful that I get the opportunity to show my work and let the viewer experience the work however they interpret it, without crowds.&rdquo; &nbsp;

The anxiety that now underlies any social encounter has presented a challenge for Charif, whose multimedia projects often involve her own family and friends as subjects. In the beforetimes, &ldquo;to shoot a project was simply a few calls away and the gathering of friends,&rdquo; she writes. To counter these concerns, she turned her practice inwards, diving into her writing. &ldquo;I immersed myself in the language I found comfort in, and that was poetry,&rdquo; says Charif. Combining poems and photographs, her posts for Gradual Ascent reflect this transformation, granting us candid access to an artist expanding and deepening her practice. &nbsp;

The shift inwards that Charif has undergone is echoed by David Baboila, a 2018 Augsburg graduate who recently relocated to Tucson, Arizona, to pursue his MFA. A number of his previous series have been tied to particular geographies &mdash; exploring the residential fences and informal boundary-markers of a suburban St. Paul neighborhood, or visualizing how Arizona&rsquo;s desert landscapes embody the violence of border politics. The pandemic drove Baboila to investigate the geography closest to him: that of his own body. &ldquo;I was able to connect with people all over the world through Zoom, but I felt even more disconnected,&rdquo; he writes. &ldquo;This lack of connection was a huge force pushing me to consider the body.&rdquo; In the project he shared through Gradual Ascent, he poses &mdash; sometimes awkwardly, always endearingly &mdash; alongside figures in projected photographs, all originally made by a gay man from Tucson, who passed away without someone to inherit his slides. Incorporating himself into each image, Baboila adds a vital addendum to this appropriated archive &mdash; one where he examines his own relationship to masculinity. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkwOTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />David Baboila&rsquo;s November 19, 2021, contribution to Gradual Ascent. The artist is on Instagram <a href="http://www.instagram.com/saint__patrickryan/">@</a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/saint__patrickryan/" target="_blank">saint__patrickryan</a>.

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As a viewer, getting to witness Charif and Baboila as they sift through new forms and content is a rare privilege. Each of Baboila&rsquo;s posts are accompanied by open questions &mdash; about the role of an archive, or the potential of a photograph cleaved from its original context &mdash; and meditations on his methodologies. The virtual presentation of Gradual Ascent prompted Baboila to create this larger, process-oriented discussion: &ldquo;The Instagram posting allowed me to tap into a very intangible element of the work,&rdquo; he writes. &ldquo;Everything that happens when the camera is not pointed at me, sitting in my studio, working with these archives, and thinking through my experiences and the various meanings held in the archives are as much a part of this work as any &lsquo;final&rsquo; image.&rdquo; With the traditional hallmarks of artistic output &mdash; a tidy exhibition, with its associated artist talks and didactic wall texts&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;largely waylaid by the pandemic, online exhibitions like Gradual Ascent invite us to tap into a different kind of productivity, bringing our attention towards the behind-the-scenes labor that doesn&rsquo;t get celebrated enough within the conventional white cube. &nbsp;

Gradual Ascent has functioned as a year-long initiative to understand how artists are coping with uncertainty&nbsp;and altering their practices as a result. The challenge is now on the galleries and museums that feature these artists to recognize that, in light of our new realities, they too must adapt their operations. As for Augsburg Galleries, Wheatley is done making predictions for what shows will look like in the near future. Instead, she&rsquo;s getting comfortable with the amorphousness of our times, planning programming that not only supports artists and students, but cares for them. &ldquo;This time has been a practice in slowing down, being flexible, and responding to what is needed in the moment,&rdquo; she writes. &ldquo;I think it is this perspective more than anything that will guide the gallery programming moving forward, whether in-person or virtual.&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">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY4ODYwMDAz/full.jpg" />Jonathan Herrera Soto&#39;s exhibition Miel y Petr&oacute;leo / Honey &amp; Gasoline, in Augsburg&#39;s Christensen Gallery, just before the pandemic.

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Gradual Ascent is on view virtually now <a href="https://www.instagram.com/augsburg_galleries/" target="_blank">@augsburg_galleries</a>. A physical version of the exhibition is scheduled to take place at Augsburg this summer. 

Currently on view in the University&#39;s Gage Family Art Gallery is <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/resilience">Resilience</a>, a group exhibition on view through March 24th. Hours are Monday - Wednesday&nbsp;10am - 5pm, Thursday 10am - 7pm, and Friday 10am - 5pm.

Also currently on view in the University&#39;s Christensen Gallery is <a href="https://www.designandagency.com/augsburg-galleries#/in-the-midst/" target="_blank">In The Midst</a>, a collection of reflections from artists about the pandemic&#39;s impact on their practices,&nbsp;on view through March 24th.

For more from Charif&nbsp;and Baboila, follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/blvcknotes/" target="_blank">@blvcknotes</a> and <a href="http://www.instagram.com/saint__patrickryan/" target="_blank">@</a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/saint__patrickryan/" target="_blank">saint__patrickryan</a>.

Banner Image: David Baboila&rsquo;s November 5, 2021, contribution to Gradual Ascent.

Under Jenny Wheatley's leadership, Augsburg University's Art Galleries reoriented its programming during the pandemic, turning Instagram into the exhibition space

'Gradual Ascent': Connection and Care @Augsburg_Galleries

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Artistry is the perfect setting for its new show, On Belonging.&nbsp;&nbsp;

It sits inside the Bloomington Center for the Arts, which in turn sits inside the Bloomington Civic Plaza. Outside the entrance to the Inez Greenberg Gallery, where On Belonging&nbsp;is on view through February 18, Bloomington residents stop by an information desk to ask questions about city government and to pay their utility bills. &nbsp;

Inside the gallery, artists Nirmal Raja and Lois Bielefeld have created a show that explores city life, nationality, and how the place where you live shapes and doesn&rsquo;t shape your identity &mdash; in addition to determining where you pay your utility bill. The questions Raja and Bielefeld explore are questions that we encounter every day, though often not in as many words: &nbsp;

What is history? Can history be objective? How does nationality inform identity? How does culture inform identity? What about when nationality and culture collide? &nbsp;

These abstract concepts shape people&rsquo;s lives in everyday and profound ways from borders to belonging, and there are always going to be internal conflicts &mdash; of living in a place you don&rsquo;t want to live, of loving a place you don&rsquo;t truly feel a part of, or of trying to belong in a new environment while keeping your memories alive. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjkwODkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Nirmal Raja, Contained I (detail), collagraph on cast plaster and fabric, 51 x 9 x 9&quot;, 2016

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Raja and Bielefeld don&rsquo;t pretend to have all the answers. On Belonging&nbsp;appropriately feels like an exploration. The use of gallery space plays a large role. As you enter, voices in the atrium outside mingle with audio from a darkened theater. (Even more appropriately, one of the voices is a man on his phone in the civic plaza, talking heatedly about &ldquo;open borders.&rdquo;) &nbsp;

A banner with an abstracted timeline of Wisconsin history, a 30-yard rubbing of historical plaques from Milwaukee&#39;s river-walk, loops down from the ceiling. You have to walk around it to figure out what you&rsquo;re looking at, and you have to physically duck at one point if you want to walk under it. The banner shows up as well as a prop in a series of photographs, wrapping Raja at times like a cloak, or a serpent.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY0OTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />Untitled I, a&nbsp;photo from the series&nbsp;What is recorded | What is remembered&nbsp;by Raja and Bielefeld, 2017

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The Milwaukee-based artists also spoke to several different women for On Belonging.&nbsp;Their voices are included in multimedia components that lend to the sense of discovery. Put on headphones to listen. Sit down in a chair, scan a QR code, and get on SoundCloud to hear women interviewed by the artists tell their own histories In Their Own Words,&nbsp;and share their perspectives on History-with-a-capital-H. In one film, women hold up and then slowly let go of the timeline of Wisconsin history. Their voices can be heard while this unfolds, musing on history and identity. &nbsp;

&ldquo;Memory is another river flowing over the river of time.&rdquo; &nbsp;&ldquo;History is the part of memory that people decide to jot down.&rdquo; &nbsp;&ldquo;How much of our identity is tied to geography?&rdquo; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcyOTQwMDAz/full.jpg" />Nirmal Raja &amp; Lois Bielefeld,&nbsp;Downtown - Sari 18, collaboration from the series Reaching Through 5 1/2 Yards | 8497 Miles, 2017.

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There is plenty to dive into on the walls of the show, as well. A series of large-scale photographs forms much of the perimeter, and the theme of questioning and investigation is carried out through the staging of these works.&nbsp;In one series, Bielefeld photographed Raja wearing a sari at different locations throughout Milwaukee. Raja is often the only person in the photographs, and the only one who ever really acknowledges the camera. Her gaze and posture differ from piece to piece, inviting the viewer in, directing the viewer&rsquo;s eye, symbolizing her relationship to what&rsquo;s happening in the scene.&nbsp; &nbsp;

The compositions offer&nbsp;layers of meaning, open to interpretation &mdash; in the St. Francis Chapel, Raja has her back to the camera and stands next to a pew. At the Oriental Theater, she stares directly into the lens while casually holding a Diet Coke. At the Milwaukee Women&rsquo;s March, she&rsquo;s in the middle of the crowd but looking in a different direction.&nbsp;Sometimes these photographs feel completely staged &mdash; just Raja in the space. Other times, the pair seem to have happened on (or sought out) poignant symbolism in everyday Milwaukee, like Raja walking against the flow of a group of cheerleaders.&nbsp;These large-scale portraits&nbsp;surround the viewer, Raja&rsquo;s eyes watching as people take in the show &mdash; and Bielefeld&rsquo;s eyes watching Raja behind the camera. &nbsp;

City employees wander in over lunch or as a way to stretch their legs. They end up taking their time, looking back at Raja, Bielefeld, and the women they worked with, truly exploring the works around them&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;taking longer than you might expect them to as employees popping by a gallery that&rsquo;s down the hall from their offices.&nbsp;On Belonging&nbsp;invites that kind of deep dive, from the various ways viewers can physically interact with the work &mdash;&nbsp;putting on headphones, moving around and under certain pieces &mdash; to the myriad interpretations that can be drawn from it. It&rsquo;s focused, but not on the nose. The viewer is invited along on the expedition, and then they&rsquo;re invited to return back into the civic plaza, from there into the city and back into their own place within it. <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcyOTUwMDAz/full.jpg" />The artists, Lois Bielefeld (at left) and Nirmal Raja,&nbsp;at Bombay Sweets in Milwaukee.

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On Belonging&nbsp;is on view at Artistry&rsquo;s Inez Greenberg Gallery through February&nbsp;18th. There will be an artist talk and closing reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Feb. 18. Gallery hours: M-F 8am - 10pm, Sat 9am - 10pm, &amp; Sun 12 - 6pm.&nbsp;For more information, visit <a href="https://artistrymn.org/gallery-info-hours" target="_blank">artistrymn.org</a>.

For more on the artists, visit their websites&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nirmalraja.com" target="_blank">nirmalraja.com</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.loisbielefeld.com" target="_blank">loisbielefeld.com</a>&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;or follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nirmal.raja/" target="_blank">@nirmal.raja</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/loisbielefeld/" target="_blank">@loisbielefeld</a>.

Banner image: &nbsp;A photo from the series&nbsp;What is recorded | What is remembered&nbsp;by Raja and Bielefeld. Image courtesy of Raja&#39;s website. All other images are courtesy of Artistry.

Nirmal Raja and Lois Bielefeld collaborate across media to ask how history, nationality, and culture shape individual and communal identity

Abstract Questions, Everyday Implications: 'On Belonging' at Artistry

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Walkers are &#39;practitioners of the city,&#39; for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go.&rdquo; ― Rebecca Solnit, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1419449-wanderlust-a-history-of-walking" target="_blank">Wanderlust: A History of Walking</a>

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During the annus horribilis that was 2020, more specifically between the vernal equinoxes of 2020 and 2021 (and aren&rsquo;t these years of pandemic, racial violence, and political destabilization starting to bleed together?), artist and curator John Schuerman went for a walk. Many walks, in fact. &nbsp;

He did the walk a friend often takes. He and another friend started from their homes and stopped when they were six feet apart. A long-time participant in the annual Mayday celebration, he ventured to the parade route and pondered the festival&rsquo;s absence.

After George Floyd was murdered, not far from Schuerman&#39;s&nbsp;Minneapolis home, the artist went to the memorial site. &ldquo;I got to the mural of George Floyd, appreciated the beauty, and kept walking,&rdquo; he writes in his recently released&nbsp;book Unstillness: A Book of Walks. &ldquo;I saw rampant destruction and thought about the losses. Dreams up in smoke, deep costs&hellip;.&rdquo; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU0OTAwMDAz/full.jpg" />A hand-drawn map of Schuerman&#39;s walk along Lake Street after the uprising in June of 2020, past the 5th and 3rd police precinct buildings,&nbsp;the sites of protest and destruction, and the relative calm of the neighborhood south of Lake. Powderhorn Park is noted in green and blue.

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Such ponderings inspired Schuerman to investigate the &ldquo;repository of other possibilities&rdquo; the city held as he continued his walking practice, expanding the parameters as he delved more deeply into &ldquo;other ways to go,&rdquo; as Solnit put it. As evidenced in Unstillness, he&rsquo;d already begun pairing his walks with photographs, drawings, and reflections. Then, Schuerman decided to walk the perimeter of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis, several times &mdash; not the abandoned police&nbsp;building, but the whole&nbsp;section of the city it oversaw. &nbsp;

The book records how he negotiated the concrete edges and sharp corners of the built environment, made art from &ldquo;arsonist ashes,&rdquo; filtered water from lakes and streams to drink, tented at a former homeless campsite, and drew colorful sketches of places he encountered (sometimes while sitting on a stool made from refuse nearby). &nbsp;

He posted much of this material on Facebook &mdash; along with his comments on the destruction he found, police defunding efforts versus the rise in violent crime, gun-toting vigilantes safeguarding a block, a city-sanctioned homeless encampment, and his own intentions. Unstillness is a record, an archive, of those posts. &nbsp;

&ldquo;I felt like I had to do this walk,&rdquo; he writes at the end of his first precinct venture. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t pleasant, but it was real. I took some risks to reckon with things. I&rsquo;m left with many questions. How much safer was I on this walk because I&rsquo;m male? Because I&rsquo;m white? Will dis-empowering and demonizing the police lead to more violence in the long run as it has in the short run? Can police reform happen with a corrupt union in place? (A&nbsp;problem not exclusive to the police.)&nbsp;Is America capable of working for its collective? Or are we bound to a culture of self-interest? Am I?&rdquo; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg4ODkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Self-portraits drawn with &quot;arsonist ashes,&quot; from Schuerman&#39;s walk around the border of the Third Precinct.

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While he doesn&rsquo;t provide any answers, he asks the right questions. Some of which deserve an unequivocal &ldquo;yes&rdquo; in response; others are part of ongoing public discussions as well as private self-reckoning. Paul Klee&rsquo;s quote, &ldquo;A line is a dot that went for a walk,&rdquo; comes to mind, not least&nbsp;because Schuerman is an artist with formidable technical expertise (see his exhibition drawings), a proclivity for material innovation, and a keen eye for organizing space and symbol as an abstractionist. &nbsp;

He&rsquo;s also a person of depth and commitment. Being male and white certainly protected him, as it does in almost any area of the United States. But being thoughtful, compassionate, respectful, open, and observational didn&rsquo;t hurt either. &nbsp;

Fear, grief, violence, destruction, and threat permeate Schuerman&rsquo;s entries. What he&rsquo;s recorded, in essence, is a practice of walking as witness. That word, from the Old English, says an online etymology dictionary, means&nbsp;&ldquo;attestation of fact, event, etc., from personal knowledge.&rdquo; Circa 1300, to &ldquo;bear testimony.&rdquo; Twenty miles over 24 hours; that&rsquo;s how long the Third Precinct walk took. That&rsquo;s a pilgrimage. Late 1300s: an &ldquo;act of journeying through a strange country to a holy place.&rdquo; Strange, indeed, the Third Precinct had become; apocalyptic, contested, full of sorrow and heartbreak, with a memorial, a holy place, at its core. &nbsp;

At the same time, as Michel de Certeau wrote in The Practice of Everday Life, &ldquo;if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), then the walker&nbsp;actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.&quot; &nbsp;

In his entries and&nbsp;his book, Schuerman curates his walking practice with a visual history that includes his doctored maps, his artistic responses, photographic documentation, and images of himself looking solemn or perplexed. As such, it&rsquo;s an extremely personal or subjective take on this experiment; also one that pulls us back into a time period of tremendous anxiety and recognition. &nbsp;

It&rsquo;s a relief when&nbsp;Schuerman&nbsp;turns to his own block, drawing his walking practice inward with a geographical tightness that feels safer, more familiar. Soon enough, though, he starts walking to places in the Third Precinct where more recent crime has occurred. The most haunting image in the book is of a sheet for covering the deceased, still unused, crisp and folded. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjc4OTEwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjg2ODkwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Schuerman&#39;s photo from a walk to the site of a recent murder in Minneapolis. Bottom: A Trump sign with footsteps, seen on a walk into Scott County, south of Minneapolis.

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Schuerman takes a stand: &ldquo;I think we need to expect better of our city council and our police department. Neither choice we are being offered is acceptable: a police force built on systemic racism or the lawlessness and rising violent crime without police presence. There are better options. If the city council can&rsquo;t find these, vote them out.&rdquo; &nbsp;

He also walks to Scott County (17 miles away) after the January 6th&nbsp;insurrection to experience Trump Country: &ldquo;I did not expect to figure anything out on this walk. Just needed to do it.&rdquo; He walks in search of waterways not impeded by storm sewers, roadways, or development. He walks to Accent Signage Systems, where he used to work, reflecting on the mass shooting that occurred there, then continues on to other former workplaces &ldquo;remembering the playful hard work that happened here.&rdquo;&nbsp;He ends with a pilgrimage to the Brooklyn Park Police station, joining people gathered in memory of Daunte Wright. &nbsp;

He also includes, in Unstillness, a line drawing he created of his driveway, &ldquo;where I started my walking projects a few years back. I memorized this line drawing and practiced walking it out step by step on a driveway,&rdquo; making his artistic practice a walking practice, and vice versa. That&rsquo;s just one part of a frayed and fragmented, holey and holy urban fabric Schuerman records in Unstillness, woven in skeins and patches from physical endurance and bold need, its entirety &ldquo;a long walk thinking&rdquo; as Schuerman writes, a testament of witness during a long, dark&nbsp;period in the city&rsquo;s history.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcyOTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />A recent painting that&nbsp;Schuerman posted to Facebook: &quot;For solstice I walked in circles on the frozen lake seeking stillness, which came after a while. Marking time, the cycle of light, the orbit of the earth, and all the other circles that guide.&quot;&nbsp;

Unstillness: A Book of Walks is available for purchase directly from the artist. You can connect with him and see more of his work at&nbsp;his website:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.schuermanfineart.com" target="_blank">schuermanfineart.com</a>. And you can follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/instinctmpls/" target="_blank">@instinctmpls</a>.

Banner image: Schuerman&#39;s&nbsp;imagining&nbsp;of the nonexistent 2020&nbsp;Mayday Parade, with the artist shown at right. All images are courtesy of the artist.

The recently published book collects drawings, photos, and thoughts from the artist's ongoing practice of walking through the urban and suburban landscapes

'Unstillness': A review of John Schuerman's Book of Walks

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The waning days of every calendar year entice us to look backward. To catalogue the year that was, to seal it in amber through news recaps and &ldquo;best of&rdquo; lists and Spotify Wrappeds; to judge, in their passing, what the last twelve months meant to our history and our culture. It&rsquo;s a brief pause to our ever-forward march &mdash; a moment of leisurely, short-range nostalgia inside our daily scroll past the endless New. &nbsp;

One of the true pleasures of this past year &mdash; something that set 2021 apart from its more grueling predecessor &mdash; was seeing artwork in person again. Screens are great and all, but getting to meet objects face to face again has been a joyful rediscovery, a gift even, allowing us the chance&nbsp;to experience their scale and texture and presence in living color. And it&rsquo;s a shame that this review comes so late, after your chance to see Yvette Mayorga&rsquo;s Monochromatic Dreams at Law Warschaw has come and gone, because up close her pink cake paintings really come to life. &nbsp;

Armed with a piping bag and a palette knife, Mayorga lays down paint the way a cake decorator pipes on icing, creating thick, opulent, maximalist canvases that vibrate with life. They are messily precise &mdash; gooey and sensual but well-ordered and symmetrical &mdash; each square inch of canvas celebrating the stuff of life and culture with an overabundance of frosted pink detail. In between the decorative florets you&rsquo;ll find flip phones and fake nails, Nikes and gold chains, butterflies and bags of junk food, all produced from the nozzle of a piping bag. They&nbsp;are the details of daily life, specific to Mayorga&#39;s Mexican-American experience, collaged together with loving care. Throughout these flattened dioramas, green plastic army men point their rifles and cackling snakes lash out their tongues, mixing some menace into the playful nostalgia, commemorated together as a sheet cake hung on the wall. Up close, in person, it&rsquo;s uncanny. You really want to cut a fat slice off the corner and dig in. I almost wished at least one of the paintings was exhibited&nbsp;flat on a table with plates and forks, just to complete the illusion.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY2OTYwMDAz/full.jpg" />

Portraits of the Forgotten (detail); acrylic piping, collage, glitter, rhinestones, porcelain, and textile on canvas; 2021.

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Mayorga&rsquo;s mother worked as a confectioner, and&nbsp;her grandfathers worked&nbsp;at a Tootsie Roll factory, so cake-decorating is as much a part of her autobiography as all the other details. The rendering here is crude (I wonder what the artist could achieve if she took as much inspiration from&nbsp;fondant as from frosting) but impressive and impactful.&nbsp;It&nbsp;creates&nbsp;a balancing act between the light-hearted and the laborious that pushes us to teeter on the edge of the ethics of enjoyment, to marvel at Mayorga&#39;s&nbsp;patient hand certainly, but also to reflect&nbsp;on what it took to make all of the trinkets and objects she is recreating.&nbsp;The exploitation that is sewn into cheap garments and&nbsp;cooked into cheap food; those are&nbsp;part of our culture as well. Right now, as I write this, cake-makers for Rich Products &mdash; which provides cakes and desserts to Baskin Robbins, Walmart, and Cold Stone Creamery, among others &mdash; <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CXnDz3uL2PW/" target="_blank">are striking for</a> better pay, an end to forced overtime, and decent treatment by their employers. One striking worker, Cristina Lujan, describes the&nbsp;dizzying pace on their assembly line, saying that they are expected to finish&nbsp;13 cakes every single minute. Most of the workers, as it happens, are Latina.

Here you see the contemporary politics of food, labor, and identity baked right into Mayorga&rsquo;s work. In <a href="https://youtu.be/jYOPGviJOCg" target="_blank">an online discussion</a> with scholar and curator Dr. Jillian Hernandez, Mayorga explained: &ldquo;The lusciousness, the impermanence of frosting, is a way for me to reference the impermanence of citizenship, the impermanence of the idea of the American dream, while also talking about feminized ideas of labor, of women&rsquo;s work, and dismantling that through my subject matter, which is political and powerful in nature.&rdquo; &nbsp;

But Mayorga&#39;s interests are not limited to the contemporary.&nbsp;Also peering out from in between the icing is an art history lesson. In Pinknologic Anxiety, a printed portrait of Madame de Pompadour is seen on a cell phone&nbsp;gripped in a pair of frosted hands with&nbsp;golden talons, drawing&nbsp;a direct line between 250 year old beauty standards of the French high society and today. The painter, Fran&ccedil;ois Boucher, also inspired Mayorga&rsquo;s gorgeous pink portraits of her mother and father, each one lovingly rendered inside an ornate, gold-trimmed tondo, surrounded by the everyday objects in their home. It&#39;s a lovely,&nbsp;impactful diptych, a pure celebration of each individual parent captured in the same singular&nbsp;home. A king and a queen in their palace, each sitting squarely in their own&nbsp;power.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY0OTMwMDAz/full.jpg" />

Portrait of the Artist&#39;s Parents (After Portrait of the Artist&#39;s Daughter&nbsp;Fran&ccedil;ois&nbsp;Boucher, c. 1760), acrylic piping on canvas, 2020.

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This is Mayorga&#39;s reimagining&nbsp;of the Rococo.&nbsp;Aside from these explicit references (as well as some sumptuous riffs on 19th century&nbsp;vases and urns), the&nbsp;work in Monochromatic Dreams as a whole embraces the period&#39;s aesthetic of excess.&nbsp;A French movement of art and architecture, Rococo took the stately drama of the Baroque period and doused it in an overbearing floral perfume of decorative flourish, dominating the mid- to late-1700s between the death of King Louis XIV in 1715 and the execution of Louis XVI in 1792. It was like a mouthful of cake so rich,&nbsp;the sugar hurts your teeth. And it was&nbsp;the last, long gasp of overwrought, unapologetic luxury before the doors of the Bastille were pulled off their hinges.&nbsp;

There was also, however, mixed among the trappings of extreme privilege, a surprising humanism to the period. In <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2021/03/the-frick-on-madison-finally-lets-you-see-fragonard-up-close.html#_ga=2.107683330.1059955815.1640105490-906956577.1589263380" target="_blank">his review</a> of a collection of paintings by Rococo artist Jean-Honor&eacute; Fragonard, New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz writes: &nbsp;

Rococo imparted something to western painting that had never quite been there before: the unbearable lightness and gladdening mercy of being alive, expressed in loose brushwork at small and medium scale &mdash; for the enjoyment of private owners. This wasn&rsquo;t an art of kings, queens, and the church triumphant. It was first and last meant for pleasure, decoration, celebration, and love. &nbsp;

Rococo embodies a gleeful tackiness, a sophisticated excess that has trickled down over time, most commonly found nowadays in plastic and porcelain figurines, knick-knacks, and tchotchkes. For Mayorga, the Rococo is not distant or abstract in the least; it was part of her childhood. &nbsp;

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m referencing the Rococo in the interior of the home,&rdquo; she told Hernandez. &ldquo;These objects hold value although they&rsquo;re made of plastic and widely affordable&hellip; These objects &mdash; this idea of the Rococo &mdash; becomes a marker of &lsquo;making it&rsquo; in America, [of] having an indulgence within your home, similar to your car.&rdquo; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjU0ODgwMDAz/full.jpg" />Jean-Honor&eacute;&nbsp;Fragonard,&nbsp;The Progress of Love: The Pursuit, oil on canvas, 125 x 85&quot;, 1772. The Frick Collection.

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Fragonard&rsquo;s paintings are themselves like birthday cakes: capturing a moment, setting a mood, telling just a snippet of a story. One series of large scale works, The Progress of Love,&nbsp;depicts different stages of playful courtship, giving a surprising amount of power and agency to the women at each painting&rsquo;s center, at least for the time period. The characters are set small against a gigantic, lush landscape, rendered vertically like a portrait. Nature appears stately, voluminous, and benignly dramatic, looming in soft, cumulonimbus towers of foliage and clouds above the flush-faced actors below. &nbsp;

&ldquo;The landscape is this place of pleasure and leisure,&rdquo; explains Mayorga, reflecting on Fragonard. &ldquo;Leisure is something that my family did not have much of. A Rococo aesthetic [in contemporary homes] inserts leisure into a domestic space where folks are working constantly and doing very physical forms of labor.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Home, then, becomes &ldquo;a space of dreaming, a space that can signify wealth, or [that signifies] that the voyage was worth it.&rdquo; &nbsp;

On the floor in the gallery lies a large black and white checkerboard, the familiar vinyl kitchen floor pattern of so many houses and apartments (I had one for two years in Chicago myself). Spread out almost like chess pieces on the board are a variety of&nbsp;shoes &mdash; boots, sneakers, sandals, stilettos &mdash; each&nbsp;decorated in pink and white frosted plaster. Shoes are the quintessential metonym (as in &ldquo;boots on the ground&rdquo;), the go-to stand-in for the people who would stand in them. Here they reference class, age, and occupation, each one camouflaged to varying degrees in thick, pastel ornamentation. Most are in pairs, but some are alone, like the ones you occasionally see on the side of the highway, making you wonder after the story behind the object.

In <a href="https://youtu.be/dwht0znzgMo" target="_blank">another recent online conversation</a>, this time with Mia curator Robert&nbsp;Cozzolino,&nbsp;Mayorga&nbsp;is explicit: &ldquo;The work is attempting to monumentalize the amount of migrants who have crossed the US-Mexico border and lost their lives in doing so. Shoes are objects that are often found along the border.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY0OTIwMDAz/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcyOTAwMDAz/full.jpg" />Top: Installation view of Monuments of the Forgotten&nbsp;(foreground) and&nbsp;Portrait of the Artist&#39;s Parents (After Portrait of the Artist&#39;s Daughter Fran&ccedil;ois Boucher, c. 1760). Bottom:&nbsp;Monuments of the Forgotten&nbsp;(detail); plaster piping, acrylic piping, donated and found shoes; 2020.

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There is an undercurrent of escapism throughout the show&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;representing actual, attempted, and aborted escapes&nbsp;&mdash; made most literal in the&nbsp;embellished footwear in&nbsp;Monuments of the Forgotten. These are real items&nbsp;with real histories, donated to Mayorga&nbsp;(and in some cases decorated during community workshops)&nbsp;by real people.&nbsp;But somehow more effective, I think, are the long, pink slides cutting through Mayorga&rsquo;s&nbsp;painted tableaux, slipping past the wrought-iron gates and around the armed army men. These slides, in the artist&#39;s words, are &ldquo;a marker of being able to escape or to dream within these moments of militarization.&quot;

Another perk of seeing artworks in the flesh is that you also see them properly in situ. A painting inside a room creates a dialogue with the&nbsp;space itself, informing and being informed by the wall color, the lighting, the furniture or lack thereof. It creates &mdash; good, bad, or boring &mdash; a vibe. Anyone who&rsquo;s ever done the math on a sixty inch center knows the impact that place in space has on a work of art. Saltz mentions it in his gushing over the Frick, remarking, &ldquo;In the mansion, the Fragonards are installed &mdash; even swaddled and segregated &mdash; in a wonderful Rococo drawing room, with attendant panels over doors and next to windows. Here [at the Frick]&hellip; up close and at eye level, the work is reborn as these huge heraldic thunderous paintings, visually vehement and emotionally commanding.&rdquo; &nbsp;

And here, at Law Warschaw Gallery&nbsp;on Macalester&rsquo;s campus, Mayorga&rsquo;s recreations of Mexican-American domesticity hit a little different. The&nbsp;large works are dwarfed by the gallery&rsquo;s generous ceilings, and I wonder how one&#39;s experience of them would change on view in the closer quarters of, say, a bakery or a living room. In this setting though, as well as by virtue of the fact that they are Fine Art Paintings, Mayorga&nbsp;brings together studiously and carefully&nbsp;what we lazily term &ldquo;high&rdquo; and &ldquo;low&rdquo; culture &mdash; and this is precisely what has kept me thinking about this show since I saw it three months ago. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjY2OTcwMDAz/full.jpg" />Polly Landscape, acrylic piping on canvas, 2019.

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Whether we&rsquo;re talking about Fragonard or Mayorga or any of the rest of&nbsp;us serious artists, there is a certain mystique of automatic importance. This is the &quot;high.&quot;&nbsp;I&rsquo;m not sure if it&rsquo;s the pricetags or the artist statements or just a force of habit, but our work is elevated almost by default, put on a clean, white pedestal above the muck of pedestrian life. Meanwhile the artisans who sew our clothes, paint our nails, detail our cars, and cook our food are left invisible. If we see them at all,&nbsp;we might not even think to qualify their work&nbsp;as the&nbsp;&quot;low;&quot; that&#39;s the realm more of cartoons and kid-stuff, things you might see in a clever Pop Art painting (which, if you&#39;re keeping track, is once again&nbsp;&quot;high&quot;). We live our lives at a distance from our food, our land, our industry, and each other.&nbsp;The&nbsp;problem speaks to our embrace of the individual at the expense of the collective and to the degree to which market forces impact our imaginations. In most cases, what we eat does not have an author in the way that a painting does, so its worth somehow&nbsp;deflates.&nbsp;But&nbsp;food&nbsp;is inextricable from culture, intrinsically woven into who we are as peoples. Also woven in&nbsp;is our exploitation of the people who farm our food, who bake it, decorate it, and deliver it to our hungry mouths. &nbsp;

This year has helped me fall back in love, truly, with other people&rsquo;s art. At the same time, it has also left me wondering just what the point of all these pictures is. Not just Mayorga&#39;s, I mean, but all of them we&#39;re out here making. Are paintings made to look like cakes really that much more&nbsp;&quot;important&rdquo; than the cakes themselves? More to the point, are the people breaking their bodies to make&nbsp;those&nbsp;real&nbsp;cakes actually&nbsp;unimportant?&nbsp;Surely not, right? It is something to consider moving forward,&nbsp;perhaps as a prompt for resolutions if I may be so bold:&nbsp;we are what we eat.

Right now, though,&nbsp;the sun is setting on 2021, as it did already on Monochromatic Dreams and on the indulgent age of Rococo before it. We find ourselves looking back on the past twelve months, on the last two years of plague, and on the decades and centuries of dysfunction before them that led us to this strange, wondrous moment. We&rsquo;re all hurtling down the winding pink Barbie slide of history, past kings and&nbsp;queens&nbsp;and guillotines, again and again. We have not had our cake or eaten it, either; we are baked into the damn thing whole, each of us. And the next one is coming up fast, right behind us on the assembly line, looking pink and perfect.&nbsp;

But how will it taste?&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjcwODYwMDAz/full.jpg" />A Vase of the Century 7 (After Century Vase c. 1876), acrylic piping on canvas, 2019.

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Monochromatic Dreams was on view at Law Warschaw Gallery from September through December, 2021. To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yvettemayorga.com" target="_blank">yvettemayorga.com</a>&nbsp;or follow her on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/yvettemayorga/" target="_blank">@yvettemayorga</a>.

For more info on Law Warschaw Gallery, visit <a href="https://www.macalester.edu/gallery/" target="_blank">their website</a> or follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lawwarschawgallery/" target="_blank">@lawwarschawgallery</a>.

Banner image:&nbsp;Pinknologic Anxiety (After Fran&ccedil;ois Boucher, Madame de Pompadour, c. 1755)&nbsp;(detail), acrylic piping and collage on canvas, 2020. All images taken by the author unless otherwise noted.

Editor&#39;s note: this piece has been updated to correct a mistake. Previously, the article incorrectly stated that the artist&#39;s father worked at a Tootsie Roll factory, when it was her grandfathers.

In her recent solo show, Monochromatic Dreams, the Chicago-based artist lays it on thick, combining her lived experience of Latinidad with the aesthetics of Rococo

Written