Currently on view at Artistry in Bloomington, <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/revitalizing-symbols">Revitalizing Symbols</a> features work from 13 Indigenous and First Nations artists exploring identity and the act of reclamation through multiple media, stories, perspectives, and layers. Curated by Emerging Curators Institute fellow Alexandra Buffalohead, the show focuses on visibility and representation and is the first of four exhibitions organized through ECI&rsquo;s newly developed program for upcoming regional curators.

I caught up with curator Alexandra Buffalohead to talk about visibility within the local arts scene and how the artists in Revitalizing Symbols are seeking to redefine traditional expressions of language, land, identity, and art through a modern narrative.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5MzUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Revitalizing Symbols, installation view. Photo by <a href="http://www.nicole-l-thomas.com" target="_blank">Nicole Thomas</a>.

Juleana Enright: What is your background and how did you get involved in the local art world?&nbsp;

Alexandra Buffalohead: I have been drawn to music and art since I was younger in middle and high school. I completed my Bachelor of Arts from Augsburg University with a major in Studio Arts. After graduating and being overconfident I found it challenging to find a job with just a bachelor&rsquo;s degree and returned to school for an Associates Degree in Graphic Design. I worked for a few non-profit Native organizations and started an Art History Master&rsquo;s program and museum studies certificate at the University of St. Thomas. Half way through my program I accepted a job as the Arts and Cultural Engagement Manager at the Native American Community Development Institute and All My Relations Arts Gallery, and I believe this has submerged me more into the local art world. I&rsquo;ve been playing in a band with my parents called Bluedog since I was younger. I used to feel like I had to separate the two or pick one or the other. Until recently meeting other musicians and artists who do both fluidly, I have learned that I shouldn&rsquo;t try stick to one, but to encourage both.

From ledger artwork, textiles, and paintings, to video and animation, the visual language is really present in this exhibition. Why was it important for you to incorporate such a complex array of different practices and media into this exhibit?&nbsp;

It was important for me to share the complexities of these artists who are doing this work in a positive, empowering way. I wanted to try to support as many artists within capacity, intriguing audiences&rsquo; curiosity to learn more while combating stereotypes of art created by First Nations people.

Tell us more about what you wanted to convey to the viewer through the exhibit&rsquo;s title, Revitalizing Symbols?

I wanted to convey that this is something to show a place of strength, power, survival, and resistance that First Nations people are doing, to emphasize our existence and to celebrate these artists, and that there are other artists doing revitalization through their work in telling their stories (with consideration of who the work is intended to be seen by). Revitalization that is happening with different Nations&rsquo; languages, in reference to land, and specifically symbols. Since Indigenous North American art has been canonized by European academia, I wanted to convey that there is a wide range of what artists are doing with symbols, and in their own ways of creating their own iconography and challenge this with Indigenous methodologies.&nbsp;

I wanted to show that there are artists who are literally revitalizing cultural symbols or storytelling, but also on their terms, with abstraction. For example, (with the multi-generational puzzle-like wood abstract work by Ojibwe musician/artist) Briand Morrison, who &mdash; though using different mediums &mdash; finds inspiration from his father, George Morrison&rsquo;s abstraction work. Or Haley Greenfeather English, who leaves it up to the audience to use their experiences of viewing and understanding to interpret her paintings.&nbsp;

One of your personal goals for this exhibit was to work with as many artists as possible, selecting artists who came from a variety of different career levels, Tribal Nations, rural and urban communities. What was the research process like for you and how did you discover artists you invited to participate?

I feel like due to time, I was only able to half-achieve this goal. The research process has been ongoing since my academic career started and has been created and interwoven from relationship-building with the artists from my graduate research program, to my work at All My Relations Arts and Northern Spark, and with my side career as a musician.

Through a travel grant I was able to visit Chicago where I met Debra Yepa-Pappan and Andrea Carlson. Both of whom I was fortunate to meet again at the Native Art Studies Association Conference (NAASA) &mdash; held in Minneapolis in October 2019 &mdash; where I also met Holly Young, who I had been following on social media.&nbsp;

In 2016, I was in Santa Fe for a convening and went to the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) museum. There, I was blown away and inspired by a senior student exhibition from IAIA. One of the colorful murals was created by Haley Greenfeather English.&nbsp;

A friend, Hannah Smith, introduced me to Jaida Grey Eagle who had just completed her BFA at IAIA. Jaida shared with me beautiful photographs from her Winyan series, and at the time I felt the Revitalizing Symbols exhibition was missing not only photography, but portraiture.

Jehra Patrick from the Emerging Curator&rsquo;s Institute and Law Warschaw Gallery introduced me to Nicholas Galanin, who had a solo exhibition this past fall at Law Warschaw. I had the honor of giving him a mini-tour of Minneapolis and my work at All My Relations Gallery.&nbsp;

I have to credit All My Relations Arts and colleagues for introducing me to Chholing Taha, Jonathan Thunder, and other artists. One of the first solo exhibitions I had ever gone to with my mom and that really moved me was by Jim Denomie.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1MzQwMDAx/full.jpg" />Jim Denomie,&nbsp;Standing Rock-Bitch,&nbsp;oil on canvas.

The use of symbolism has played a significant historical role in Native American and Indigenous art. How do you see the artists in this exhibit reviving traditional mediums into a modern narrative?&nbsp;

I think this is a complicated question. I personally see and interpret all of the artists in this exhibition reviving traditional mediums into modern narrative. In Jaida Grey Eagle&rsquo;s Winyan series, she asked for the consent of the artists and for the artists to choose how they were photographed and what objects they were photographed with, while also having audio recordings of the artists telling their stories. In Holly Young&rsquo;s work, she visited different institutional collections, and is inspired by the objects she has spent time with. Through her research, she creates and honors her Dakota ancestors using items they used, while also incorporating modern fashion as an influence.

How have the concepts of intergenerational transference of knowledge and the ancestral history our bodies hold shaped your practice?&nbsp;

I am honored to be able to do this work, and feel this is a way of honoring my ancestral history by working with these artists. I feel blessed that my daytime job encourages the support of empowering artists at different ages and tries to create space for these artists. This is a practice that is challenging, and something I want to try my best in applying as I&rsquo;m able to. With the panel for this exhibition, and even in the curation, I tried to be mindful in including individuals from different nations and at different ages.&nbsp;

What has it been like working with the Emerging Curators Institute? How has this opportunity led to deepening your relationship to the role of curator?&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s been great working with the Emerging Curators Institute and with my mentor Michelle Westmark Wingard. It&rsquo;s been challenging and empowering. I am really appreciative of the model that they are striving for, which is a non-traditional educational cohort and collective with efforts to public access. Every ECI public or cohort meeting influences my curatorial practice and perspective, and carries over to my work at All My Relations and NACDI.&nbsp;

It has been great to not only grow and see my cohort members grow, but the program as well and the incredible networking opportunities it&rsquo;s presented.

This opportunity has reinforced to me that the research and learning component is ongoing, and reinforced my understanding of the shared work that goes into exhibitions, and the importance of all of the contributing roles.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxMzcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Jaida Grey Eagle, Mikayla Patton, photograph from the artist&#39;s Winyan series.

In your curatorial practice, a common theme is increasing visibility for Indigenous North American artists and working towards creating space to present a cultural narrative through art. As far as the local scene is concerned, what steps do you see to continue this work? What strides do you feel have been made and what challenges do we as a community still face in Indigenous representation?&nbsp;

Steps I see needed are funding opportunities for the artists, continued support for programs like ECI &mdash; to help develop spaces to bring artists &mdash; and for professional development for the art communities together. I feel like there have been great strides made just in this past year towards Indigenous representation, but it can&rsquo;t just end here. It needs to be ongoing support. First Nations people are still misrepresented in popular culture. In the Twin Cities, there is support needed for artists in terms of affordable studio spaces and grants that are designed, evaluated, and structured more inclusively, with Indigenous methodologies in mind. On a larger scale, with this upcoming census, not only it is important that Urban and Reservation communities work together to share the importance of making sure Indigenous people are counted accurately, but that we are counted accurately so that funding to support programs for our neighborhoods and communities is continued.&nbsp;

Why do you think it&rsquo;s important for members of the community to view this exhibition and what reflection do you hope its attendees will take away from the experience?&nbsp;

I feel it&rsquo;s important for members of the First Nations community to view this exhibition because it shows ourselves represented in positive ways, in as many ways as possible. Hopefully it will inspire others to create and share their work to continue to increase the amount of artists. It is important to see our stories told from us, from Indigenous people.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxMTcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Alexandra Buffalohead. Photo by <a href="https://www.greene.photography/portfolio" target="_blank">Greene Photography</a>.

Revitalizing Symbols runs through February 14th at the Inez Greenberg Gallery at <a href="http://artistrymn.org">Artistry</a>. Bloomington, 1800 W. Old Shakopee Blvd., Bloomington. Free to the public.&nbsp;Gallery hours: M-F 8am - 10pm, Sat 9am - 5pm, Sun 1 - 10pm

To learn more about Emerging Curators Insitute, visit <a href="https://www.emergingcurators.org" target="_blank">their website</a>.

Banner image: Jaida Grey Eagle,&nbsp;HolyElk and Bernie Lafferty&nbsp;(detail),&nbsp;photograph.

A 2019/2020 Emerging Curators Fellow, Buffalohead talks about Revitalizing Symbols, a group show on view through Feb. 14th

First Nations Curation: An interview with Alexandra Buffalohead

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When I arrive at Gamut Gallery to meet John Foster, he&rsquo;s in the corner of the room taking a time lapse of one of his most iconic pieces, Me, Myself, My Sparkle Table. It&rsquo;s a table made with dichroic acrylic, one of Foster&rsquo;s signature materials, and is adorned on top with three icosahedrons, twenty-sided polyhedra. A type of iridescent plastic, dichroic acrylic changes color depending on your angle thanks to its mirror-like rainbow finish &mdash;&nbsp;in other words, turning the gallery into a kaleidoscope. As the sun hits the table, light refracts around the room in such a spectacular way, we&rsquo;re both mesmerized for a second.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been in the gallery at this time of day to see it do this,&rdquo; Foster explains. It feels like a chromatic portal. Over the course of our interview, I take probably six videos of this piece, one for every time the natural hard sunlight bathes over it. And yet there&rsquo;s this magical, transcendent element that can only be captured in person, a minuscule change that happens each instance. Projections filter light into multicolored harmony, activating optical vibrations that the screen just can&rsquo;t properly capture.

Seeing this collection in person &mdash; a body of work he refers to as &ldquo;interdimensional quilting&rdquo; &mdash; calls to mind the Infinity Mirror Rooms produced by Yayoi Kusama, an artist Foster references in our conversation. From peep-show-esque channels to multimedia installations, Kusama creates kaleidoscopic environments which challenge the viewer to step into an illusion of time and space. This central theme of utilizing time, space, light, and materials to create a moment is unmistakable in <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/shimmer-john-foster-s-first-solo-exhibition">Shimmer</a>, Foster&rsquo;s first solo exhibition, which explores the sculptural synergy and visual context surrounding those concepts.&nbsp;

I sat down with the artist to talk about the creation of Shimmer and how his work taps into synesthesia on a universal level.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3MDEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Me, Myself, My Sparkle Table; Dichro acrylic, glass;&nbsp;35&nbsp;x 30&nbsp;x 36&quot;;&nbsp;2019&nbsp;

Juleana Enright: Shimmer integrates your more well-known kaleidoscope polyhedra sculptures and signature iridescent geometric pieces with a completely new body of work, the &ldquo;Chromaflora Botanical&rdquo; collection. What drew you to unite these series?&nbsp;

John Foster: The process for making the kaleidoscopic polyhedra is extensive and a bit oppressive. Adhering to geometric truths and tolerances requires a certain degree of creative problem solving, but doesn&rsquo;t lend itself to a high degree of intuitive flow. I wanted to make things that would come to exist a bit more gesturally, with immediacy as the catalyst. A more organic approach produced familiar forms, visually engaging a conversation about growth and life.&nbsp;

JE: You use very specific material in your sculptures. How did you discover this material and how does it speak to your practice?

JF: I use materials to activate the eye. Polarized films, adhesives, resins, employed to achieve&nbsp;dynamic, iridescent, reflective projections of light. I am playing with the idea of transmutation, trying to keep my hand out of the work. I want my art to appear as if it was generated by something other, following specific parameters to establish continuity of form and content.&nbsp;

JE: Your work centers around creating experiential sculptures that play with space, light, and motion. What drew you to these themes and how does it relate to your personal identity?&nbsp;

JF: I try to consider how our identities are formed interdimensionally, how our experiences are different and also the same. It&rsquo;s important for me to make things that are accessible to everyone, to distill complex ideas into portals of understanding. The Esometric Window screenprint series is an illustration of inward reflection, a depiction of infinite potential of self.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIyOTcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Triacontahedron Esometric Window,&nbsp;4- color screen print, Limited Edition of 50,&nbsp;16&quot; x 20&quot;,&nbsp;2019

JE: Your work intersects fine art with a variety of mind-expanding&nbsp;theories: from quantum physics to tactile synesthesia, chromatherapy to stereographic projection. People spend their careers studying these interdimensional planes. How do you approach creating in a way that&rsquo;s both visually and intellectually palpable to you and accessible to be explored by your audience?

JF: The first step is to make the ugliest things possible, to study the material, to find failure and strength. It is a physical and emotional relationship with materials and ideas. I am chasing a visceral understanding of concepts, trusting the process and rewarding the curious observer.

JE: Can you describe the moment when you first made the connection that you wanted to produce something more organically alive, like your &ldquo;house plants/succulents&rdquo; creations?&nbsp;

JF: I have generally been interested in taking mundane utilitarian objects and emphasizing their value as symbols or benchmarks in our development as a whole. When I first made life-like simulations, I became even more interested in how and why these objects and symbols resonate.&nbsp;

JE: We&rsquo;ve talked before about &ldquo;happy accidents,&rdquo; which can be inspiring or the bane of existence for artists. How do you use your &ldquo;happy accidents&rdquo; to continue to be experimental in your work?&nbsp;

JF: I really love and hate happy accidents. There really are no accidents &mdash; everything is an opportunity for understanding. I like to call myself a Pretengineer. The process of finding out why and what materials do is magical to me. I keep a lot of notes on what forces influence certain effects, and try to do things in a way that I can replicate, building a repertoire of techniques and makers of language/vocabulary.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

JE: You&rsquo;re very intentional about the names for your pieces. You name things &ldquo;what they are.&rdquo; Can you give an example of one of those instances for this exhibit?&nbsp;

JF: I am interested in paradox and self-reference. I try to make art that exists in this kind of space. An example is the piece titled&nbsp;Luciferus Simulacra Divinorum, which is a nod to Brancusi&rsquo;s sleeping head series. Materials have meaning, and the way they are manipulated can impart feeling. This piece plays with foreground/background, displays tension and balance with high contrast of texture, while relating to human form on a 1-1 scale. It&rsquo;s a light bringing simulation of divine reflection.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMyOTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />LSD (Luciferus&nbsp;Simulacra&nbsp;Divinorum);&nbsp;hand-formed&nbsp;dichro&nbsp;aluminum, gypsum, glass;&nbsp;8&nbsp;x 8&nbsp;x 6&quot;;&nbsp;2019&nbsp;

JE: What makes your work so dynamic in person is that you get a sense of playful interaction. To understand what&rsquo;s there (the visual projections), the viewer has to understand what isn&rsquo;t so obviously seen &mdash; the negative space between an object; the chromatic harmony. How would you say that translates into the concept of chromatherapy and why people might be drawn to your work?

JF: I would argue the viewer doesn&rsquo;t need to understand much to feel the magic of this seemingly chaotic color combination. Because the work requires our witnessing of changing light conditions and perspective, we never see the same piece twice. The color combinations are a result of mathematical harmony;&nbsp;it&rsquo;s as natural as it seems artificial. The photos of the work don&rsquo;t show all of the colors in the spectrum, in fact&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;many of the blues and violets the work produces we see only in certain natural phenomena, like bubbles and butterfly wings. The idea that these are not pigments is interesting to me, that our perception and optical physiology is what allows us to see these certain wavelengths.&nbsp;

JE: What practices or&nbsp;meditations do you use to challenge yourself to step outside of the linear box?&nbsp;

JF: I love to make &ldquo;warm up&rdquo; work that is never destined to be in front of anyone. Sometimes I set a timer for one hour, and try to make as many things as possible in this time. This is simply an exercise to get the mind working in a creative way.&nbsp;

JE: How does beauty, space, and art unite for you?&nbsp;

JF: When I can blur the line between these ideas, I feel like I made a successful piece. Space is only something we cannot see, but it can be manipulated to show beauty, and this becomes an object of Art.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5MDcwMDAx/full.jpg" />The artist, the art, and the sun at work.

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/shimmer-john-foster-s-first-solo-exhibition">Shimmer</a> is on view now at Gamut Gallery with an Exhibit Finale Dance Performance on Thursday, August 22nd. For more info, visit <a href="http://www.gamutgallerympls.com" target="_blank">gamutgallerympls.com</a>.&nbsp;

Banner image: Medium Dodecahedron,&nbsp;Dichro acrylic,&nbsp;5&nbsp;x 6&nbsp;x 6&quot;,&nbsp;2019.&nbsp;Images courtesy of Gamut Gallery.

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The artist behind these kaleidoscopic wonders talks about material, identity, and the importance of failure when you're looking for beauty.

Shine On, You Crazy Polyhedron: John Foster at Gamut Gallery

&nbsp;

Brooklyn-based composer and artist&nbsp;Grant Cutler wants to help you enjoy the silence so you can examine the noise. This Thursday, the former MPLS artist plays host to <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/pop-up-photo-book-release-thoughts-becoming-loud">a pop-up experience</a> which explores the complexity of a moment through impressionistic multimedia works: an interactive portrait&nbsp;and large-scale photo prints. Celebrating the local release of his photo-book,&nbsp;Thoughts Becoming Loud &mdash; which premiered in Brooklyn in April &mdash; the exhibit will be accompanied by a set of quadraphonic audio-works performed through a locally-designed sound system. The equivalent to 4.0 surround sound, quadraphonic audio uses four channels positioned at four corners of the listening space, reproducing signals independent of each other.&nbsp;

The show&rsquo;s title is inspired by a German diagnostic term, Gedankenlautwerden, for a patient who hears their thoughts spoken aloud as they think. Cutler&rsquo;s works present, out loud and in physical space, a mass of concepts, impressions, and memories, co-existing in us within a single instant. Among the works is an interactive digital collection of sounds and images which the viewer can start and stop at will, creating unique compositions in the moment. The artist describes the piece as &ldquo;synthesiz[ing] a kaleidoscopic portrait of one woman&rsquo;s inner dialogue.&rdquo;

Here, Cutler shares some thoughts about the MPLS debut of Thoughts Becoming Loud, the inner complexities of a moment, and the evolution of his practice.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ2OTcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Photo by Aaron Rice. All images courtesy of the artist.

JE: Though currently based in Brooklyn, you lived in Minneapolis for some time as an artist/musician. What prompted the move and how would you say the scene differs between the two cities?&nbsp;

GC: I lived in Minneapolis for 10 years before I moved to New York about 6 years ago, when my partner got an internship in Brooklyn. I&rsquo;m lucky to remain part of a really strong community of artists and musicians in Minneapolis, and still collaborate regularly with the folks I built relationships with over the decade I spent living here. At the same time, I&rsquo;ve grown as an artist living in New York, where there are endless art communities, venues, and events to explore and inspire an arts practice. I compose a lot more for film than I used to and have produced more visual and interdisciplinary works since moving.

For Thursday&rsquo;s pop-up reception, attendees can experience both your first bound photography&nbsp;collection&nbsp;and a debut performance from the monolithic hand-crafted sound system, Palace Speaker Array, which will be used to perform your latest quadraphonic compositions. Can you tell us more about the production behind this sound-work and how it relates back to your photography series?&nbsp;

A few years ago I started writing quadraphonic compositions. I had an installation on Governors Island in New York one summer that featured a generative quadraphonic piece, using regular consumer speakers for playback. After that show, I knew I wanted to design a system that would be as intentional as the sound being played from it. My attempt with the Palace Speaker Array was to make something beautiful and substantial, that could be used to experience any of the quadraphonic pieces I&rsquo;ve worked on, and even to play other composers&rsquo; work. MPLS Guitars manufactured the speaker cabinets, and Peter Bregman engineered the electronics elements.

All the works being shown together have come together over the last handful of years, so this is just an opportunity to share them all at once.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5MDAwMDAx/full.jpg" />

Thoughts Becoming Loud, a large-format photo book, is a 5-year-long project created to find meaning across a half-decade of disparate moments. Where did the idea for this exhibition come about and how has it evolved since your original vision?&nbsp;

As the web-based generative composition was coming together, I started to think about what physical work could accompany and add dimension to it. I started to curate photos I&rsquo;d taken and ended up selecting mostly pictures from road trips and life in the Midwest. Both the digital work and book deal with the act of trying to narrativize what&rsquo;s in our minds. Both were born from uniquely Midwest experiences.

I&rsquo;ve done a lot of reading and writing about consciousness over the last several years. Thoughts Becoming Loud is one iteration of this exploration, and I came across the concept of Gedankenlautwerden when I was trying to find a term for what the work feels like to me.

One of the topics this body of work explores is the complexity of a moment and how engaging in profound silence affects our intermittent consciousness. How would you expand on that?&nbsp;

Users can interact with the work, which is made up of 9 video cells that start and stop playing when clicked. Each cell pulls randomly from a library of video and audio that I composed, using footage of and vocal performances by Holly Hansen. This gives audience members the chance to add and subtract elements, creating a composition that will never be the same twice. My hope was there would be some satisfaction in organizing these different inputs, but also that the process would mimic the tension of competing thoughts that are constantly present in our minds.

In the last decade, you&rsquo;ve performed inside a James Turrell sculpture, shared stages with world-renowned artists including &Oacute;lafur Arnalds and Isabel Allende, and installed quadraphonic sound environments in Manhattan galleries. How have these experiences shaped the examination of sound and environment within your personal art?&nbsp;

I have become more conscious of &mdash; and interested in &mdash; the relationship between sound and the experience of a place. Making ambisonics field recordings has become a favorite practice for me, and figuring out how to compose with these recordings, integrate them into music, and create settings in which to play them back has been very motivating to me. My focus on physical and visual media has increased as my understanding has grown of the relationship between sound and space.

The original opening of Thoughts Becoming Loud was a 3-day interdisciplinary exhibition at the Realty Collective Gallery in Brooklyn. Was it difficult to pare it down to just a one-night-only pop-up event?&nbsp;

This pop-up is a chance for me to share recent works with my community here. I wanted to celebrate the completion and debut of the Palace Speaker Array with its co-creators, who are all based here. Holly Hansen contributed vocals and is the portrait subject for the digital work Thoughts Becoming Loud. The book is filled with places and people from here as well. It&rsquo;s exciting to be able to present these works alongside the collaborators who made it all possible.

Is this your first experience taking an exhibition on tour to multiple cities? Do you plan to do more pop-up events like this one in Minneapolis?&nbsp;

This is my first time showing elements from the same collection in multiple cities. Probably like most artists, my least favorite part of making art is promoting my work. But I do love the opportunity to celebrate the results of artistic collaborations, and to make space for starting conversations and relationships.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ4OTkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Photo by Aaron Rice.

Catch the one-night-only exhibit, <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/pop-up-photo-book-release-thoughts-becoming-loud">Thoughts Becoming Loud</a>, Thursday June 20th from 7-9pm at the Task Building, 414 N. 3rd Ave, MPLS.&nbsp;

Banner image taken from interactive A/V project on <a href="https://www.grantcutler.com" target="_blank">the artist&#39;s website</a>.

MPLS artist, musician, and Brooklyn transplant comes back on 6/20 for a one-night-only showcase of images, sounds, and silence.

Thoughts Becoming Loud: an interview with Grant Cutler

NCECA&rsquo;s 53rd annual conference, Claytopia, hosted this year in Minneapolis, is just around the corner. For some, this offers a fresh and expansive glance into an art medium often riddled with preconceived notions. One of the artists helping challenge that relationship is Idaho transplant and ceramic artist Peter Ronan. A resident of Northern Clay Center&rsquo;s Anonymous Artist program, Ronan&rsquo;s work centers around using function and self-exploration to create a tangible yet cognitive representation of queer culture. &nbsp;

For some creatives, the need to define themselves by one specific medium can help hone their craft. For Ronan though, uniting the various nuances of his identity and embracing the in-betweens is at the heart of what makes his craft so uniquely niche. Working towards the idea that an artist can blend self and craft into one art form, Peter&rsquo;s personal evolution was transformative for the vitality and vibrancy of his own work.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Justifying your need to work and your practice to people can be exhausting,&rdquo; Ronan explains. &ldquo;A lot of people base your success on money and selling things. It&rsquo;s always this monetary success. That&rsquo;s great, but it&rsquo;s not my motivation for my work. If that happens, I&rsquo;m happy with it, but it&rsquo;s more that I&rsquo;m making the work because I feel this need to make it. It&rsquo;s this cathartic, almost meditative experience. I see art as a way for self-healing.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUyODAwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ4ODUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top: A collection of&nbsp;Ronan&#39;s recent ceramic works. Bottom: The artist in his studio.&nbsp;Photos by Katie Garrett.

Identifying as both a queer individual and a craft-person, Ronan discovered that by unearthing parts of himself previously kept more silenced, he also liberated his artistic style, forming objects and vessels that became explicitly queer in nature.&nbsp;

&ldquo;The work before this current work fell within the queer context, but it was a little more subtle. Whereas these latest objects are obviously phallic. It&rsquo;s not my intention to be &lsquo;in your face&rsquo; with this work, but it is kind of inevitable. It is progressing. These objects are more direct and the evolution of the work is becoming more direct.&rdquo;

In Ronan&rsquo;s previous work, carving techniques and extractions of the negative space in the clay obscured the phallic shapes in his pottery designs. Much like Peter&rsquo;s own self-identity, this newer body of work isn&rsquo;t afraid of a little provocation.&nbsp;

&ldquo;To me, it&rsquo;s obvious. But maybe that&rsquo;s my mind as the maker. The representation of queer culture is sort of like my personal experience and my personal understanding. It&rsquo;s in hopes that it can speak to a larger queer &mdash; and hetero &mdash; audience. You see the piece, and you&rsquo;re going to have some sort of reaction. You can choose to see it as these phalluses or you can see it as a beautiful pot. I think that&rsquo;s the interesting duality.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ4ODUwMDAy/full.jpg" />Photo by Katie Garrett.

Ronan&rsquo;s work ranges from ornate, functional vessels he likes to imagine &ldquo;weird queer stuff going into,&rdquo; to homages to a past, a way of understanding and revisiting his experiences through another lens &mdash; a visual search for closure. Moving away from the commodified versions of ceramic art, Ronan&rsquo;s work explores a less sterile interpretation of art, specifically art within the context of homoeroticism. Although it may not be the first art form that comes to mind when one considers the trajectory of homoerotic art, Ronan explains that it definitely fits under the umbrella.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I think there&rsquo;s a history of queerness and craft as a whole. Academia has made this heavy distinction between art and craft, which to me is unfortunate. I think humans want things to be black and white but there&rsquo;s a lot of in between spaces. I equate being a craftsperson similar to being queer. It&rsquo;s not like &lsquo;the other,&rsquo; but there is a level of that. A lot of people want to put themselves in the singular context &mdash; I&rsquo;m an artist; I&rsquo;m a potter; I&rsquo;m a painter &mdash; it&rsquo;s this one thing. I identify in a number of different ways, and I&rsquo;m a number of different things. I appreciate that level of totality. I don&rsquo;t choose to make those heavy distinctions between craft, art, fine art. My primary material is definitely ceramics, but I&rsquo;m interested in how ceramics, pottery, and functionality can exist outside of the specific ceramics context.&rdquo;

Interested in dismantling the binaries of narrow narratives through ornate and bright form, Ronan&rsquo;s work explores dualities such as fantasy vs. reality; art vs. craft; tragedy vs. comedy; masculine vs feminine.&nbsp;

&ldquo;We have this concept around gendering everything, and it translates into inanimate objects, within life and art. We often want to equate those roles as one for one. But it goes back to the idea of the in-betweens and nuances within individuals. These pieces I&rsquo;ve been making toe the line between this traditional sense of &lsquo;this is feminine; this is masculine.&rsquo;&rdquo;

While working on his BFA, Peter explored much of his work through the gaze of what he referred to as &ldquo;craft shame.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&ldquo;In school I was very much in the closet and I was trying to make this work that was talking around the general shame I was feeling towards my identity by reframing it around the shame I felt as a craftsperson. The work was this preemptive attempt to talk about external reasons and present my visual response. I have a really complicated relationship to shame. In my mind, it&rsquo;s a very powerful motivator, but it&rsquo;s not always productive or healthy.&rdquo;

Allowing his work to be more flexible and straightforward in its narrative, Ronan introduces a larger spectrum for interpretation. This concept of being flexible to the changing needs and expectations of the ceramics community is similarly reflected at the NCECA conference. While he&rsquo;s attended the conference in the past, this will be the first time Peter is at the hub of the action, having a studio within the walls of the Northern Clay Center.&nbsp;

Playing host to a weekend-long arrangement of exhibits, wholesale markets, and panel discussions, the NCECA conference sets out to engage regional, national, and international artists, curators, and creative thinkers to explore and celebrate the roots of ceramic work while pushing against the traditional perception of ceramic art. Showcasing a wider range of more nuanced and radical forms, the conference hopes to reshape audience perception of what the future of ceramic arts can produce.&nbsp;

&ldquo;The interesting thing about this conference is that it is very inclusive. More so recently there&rsquo;s been a push for more diverse work, especially [from] POCI and queer [folk]. There are specific shows that are expanding the breadth of the ceramic field. For a long time, the main people were the classic white, presumably straight dudes. In my career as a ceramist, the first NCECA was like the first push for more inclusivity and diversity within the field. We really have to showcase the entire spectrum of what&rsquo;s out there instead of this narrow thing.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIyODkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Photo&nbsp;by Katie Garrett.

Stop by the <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/northern-clay-center-nceca-exhibits">Northern Clay Center</a>, 2424 E Franklin Ave&nbsp;from March 27&nbsp;- 30,&nbsp;for a glimpse into Peter Ronan&rsquo;s studio work.&nbsp;

&mdash;&mdash; 
His open studio show&nbsp;is part of <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/claytopia">&#39;Claytopia&#39;</a>, the 53rd annual conference for NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts), happening March 27&ndash;30, 2019 in MSP.

Ahead of this week's NCECA conference, we caught up with one local ceramicist making space for queerness in the craft world.

Peter Ronan: Liberating Clay From "Craft Shame"

The Scene

With a passion for weaving political and cultural elements into high quality wearable goods, Ojibwe textile artist Maggie Thompson proves that craft and art go hand in hand. The founder of Makwa Studio based in the Northrup King Building, Thompson hand weaves each of her signature designs &mdash; caps, cowls, tunics, and tops &mdash; using luxury, American-sourced yarn. She also creates fine art tapestries and sculptural installations that don&rsquo;t pull any punches. She incorporates an emotional dialogue into her work through subtle references to her Native culture (&ldquo;Makwa&rdquo; means &ldquo;bear&rdquo; in the Ojibwe language) and addresses contemporary Native issues such as appropriation, stereotyping, blood quantum, and the intimacy of community through weaving, screen printing, and knitting.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/maggiethompson1c.jpg" /> Photo by Bobby Rogers for NEMAA.

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We caught up with Maggie to get a look into her process and learn more about her studio life.

&nbsp;

Juleana Enright: Your technical process looks pretty slick and portable. What is your favorite part of your process, and how would you describe how you use it to create work?

Maggie Thompson: My favorite part of knitting and weaving is playing with all the different colorways that you can incorporate into one pattern. I usually start with a drawing and then map it out to be used as a punch card pattern for my knitting machine. Then I will usually create a small fabric sample testing out different colorways.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/maggiethompson2.jpg" /> Photo by Bobby Rogers for NEMAA.

&nbsp;

JE: What&rsquo;s the hardest thing about your knitting and weaving practice?

MT: I think the hardest thing is just always having to pay really close attention to the details, and is mostly a lot of drafting and counting &mdash; to gauge size, change colors, or keep a consistent design repeat. The yarn can also slip off the needles fairly easily which can result in your whole piece falling off the machine. It takes a lot more brain power than you&#39;d think. It&#39;s also very physical work so I can only do so much at a time.

&nbsp;

JE: How do you utilize your studio space? Why is having a studio in Northeast and being part of that art community important to you?

MT: My studio space is full of equipment &mdash; looms, knitting machines, sewing machines, and lots and lots of yarn. I do most of my thought process at home but do all the execution in studio.

I love having a space because of the community and history of the arts in that area. My mom has had a space at NKB since I was in 4th grade, so it&#39;s pretty much like a second home to me. The space is also affordable compared to a lot of other spaces and is accessible 24/7 with elevators which is key for moving things when you&#39;re doing a bunch of shows.

&nbsp;

JE: What&rsquo;s the most indispensable item in your studio?

MT: Aside from my knitting machine, it&#39;d probably be my latch hook or transfer needle, both of which I use for my knitwear projects.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/maggiethompson3.jpg" /> In Loss; vinyl, photography, weaving; 9 x 11&rsquo;, 2015

&nbsp;

JE: What question are you asking in your work right now?

MT: The majority of my inspiration comes from my Native Ojibwe heritage and family history, especially for my knitwear. For my fine art work I also explore themes of grief and anxiety and how art can be used as a tool for healing.

I actually haven&#39;t been making a lot of new work right now but am just starting to expand old concepts on grief and loss, but this time while reflecting on the ending of a romantic relationship. In addition, exploring ideas of self worth, stability, and the understanding of love within a romantic context.

&nbsp;

JE: What risks do you want to take in your work and how has working within this challenge changed you?

MT: I want to start doing more installation work with textiles and more sculptural knitwear fashion pieces. I also like to use different materials from each fine art piece to the other. In this sense I am constantly challenged because of learning how different materials behave with another. So far my knitwear has been flat pattern pieces but making them more sculptural will also force me to think about how the piece will react and conform to the body.

&nbsp;

JE: What kind of creative patterns, routines, or rituals do you have?

MT: When I&#39;m working I always need to be listening to music and have a coffee at hand. Then when I need a break I usually go on a bike ride or do pole fitness.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/maggiethompson4.jpg" /> For Love Alone; vinyl, metallic thread, &amp; beads sewn into a body bag; 3.5 x 7.5&rsquo;; 2016.

&nbsp;

JE: How do you know when a piece is finished?

MT: My work usually revolves around a lot of math and set sequences so all I have to do is decide on how big I want my piece to be and then plug everything else in.

&nbsp;

JE: When did you first realize that creating was something you wanted to do? Describe that moment?

MT: I have been creating ever since I was a little kid. One of my earliest memories was with my mom and drawing in my journal. She told me to scribble on a page and then look for a familiar image out of my scribble and bold the lines to make the image come out clearer. She also taught me how to do blind contour drawings as kid as well.

&nbsp;

JE: Could you describe your work in five words?

MT: Colorful, Bold, Emotional, Warm, Repetitive

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/maggiethompson5.jpg" /> Fragments; foamcore, fabric, photography, &amp; assemblage; 8x 10&rsquo;; 2016.

&nbsp;

For more on Maggie Thompson&rsquo;s artwork and knitwear, visit <a href="http://makwastudio.com/" target="_blank">MakwaStudio.com</a>. For more on the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association, visit <a href="http://www.NEMAA.org" target="_blank">NEMAA.org</a>. 

This article originally appearing in the Spring 2018 issue of N Studio, NEMAA&#39;s biannual magazine.

One of NEMAA’s many talented artist members, Maggie Thompson brings her life to her loom in the Northrup King Building.

In the Studio with Maggie Thompson

Most often in natural progression, a body of work comes first, followed by critique. For poet/performance artist Miriam Karraker however, the two spark each other into existence and exist to probe deeper into each other&rsquo;s psyche.

&nbsp;

In her recently released, limited-edition chapbook, Works on Paper Or Without, Miriam has created a piece of art that dives into the history of the book as an art object. Written over the course of a summer&rsquo;s residency at The White Page gallery, the book is a combined effort of friendship, resources, community, and critical theory. Teaming up with Alyson Coward of Qxiz Editions to design, print, and bind, Karraker&rsquo;s chapbook isn&rsquo;t simply a collection of poems but an ode to the intimate and complex ways we assign and inhabit language. Inside the hand-made flax paper pages resides an experience as tactile as it is visual, with precise attention to detail and secret passageways for the reader to be absorbed in. Through musings on the creative practice and an examination of text and poetry, Karraker&rsquo;s work evokes critical theory while leaving room to partake in the mundane and find our presence in what Karraker calls &ldquo;the precarious moment.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/mirriam_book1.jpg" />

&nbsp;

Getting her start as a Religious Studies and French double-major at Lewis and Clark College, critical theory and the position of interrogating the self was always at the forefront of her studies.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;In undergrad, I was taking English classes and really disliked the scope of the department,&rdquo; Karraker explains. &ldquo;They really only offered a few post-colonial lit classes, cultural lit, women&rsquo;s lit &mdash; I don&rsquo;t even think they had queer lit &mdash; they were really tied to the canon. I don&rsquo;t see the discipline interrogating itself very well in this context, at this college. I was also really interested in the ways that communities, in the institutional sense, self-define. I had this interest in cults and positioning of the self against a broader historical context, but really what it is is finding common threads.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I was always taking poetry classes in college and wasn&rsquo;t willing to give up a creative life outside of studying. I was always using poetry as a way to procrastinate my other work. Now I don&rsquo;t see it as procrastination, I see it as a way to gain insight into future projects, even if I don&rsquo;t know what it is yet.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Now in the MFA program at the U of M, Karraker&rsquo;s focus is studying poetry, although she says her interests have shifted into a metafictive or looser interpretation of what poetry is. After the election, Karraker began writing poems about chronic illness and the healthcare system but soon moved on to prose.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I signed up for this long-form fiction class, kind of on a whim. I&rsquo;ve had this idea for a novella for a really long time about a gallery guard at the Walker&hellip; This was a project on what writing is and what it means to write, but I realized that I haven&rsquo;t really figured out what that means for myself yet. There&rsquo;s not a lot of emphasis on critical theory in the MFA. I needed to make a scaffolding for myself.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

To create this scaffolding, Karraker proposed a residency at The White Page. She would be in the space all summer writing about the exhibits (Sheila Wagner&rsquo;s <a href="http://the-white-page.org/Sheila-Wagner-Rosette">Rosette</a> and Derek Ernster&rsquo;s <a href="http://the-white-page.org/Derek-Ernster-man-after-my-own-boot">man after my own boot</a>, specifically) and hosting workshops offering fellow artists and writers a chance to expand their process outside of the ocular into the multisensory.

&nbsp;

A big facet of the book are poems about Sheila and Derek&rsquo;s work. Ekphrastic poems, meditations, musings, and perspectives.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/mirriam_book2.jpg" />

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I mainly wrote about Rosette because it was thinking about how the ocular is estranged, how paintings are like bodies. We exist in these containers, and we think that there&rsquo;s this stability. Her work encapsulates this trickery and slipperiness of image. I didn&rsquo;t have the art words to describe it, but that&rsquo;s kind of what the project for me was, translating what she was doing visually into another visual form, text. The text ends up being a sort of shadow of what was. A useful shadow for thinking about these bigger questions of how do we see ourselves in art. Art isn&rsquo;t just artifice, it is an inhabitable thing. In poetry, a lot of things hinge on the visual. We talk about the image when we teach poetry. There&rsquo;s this trend towards the visual, away from how poetry is a spoken art form and is intensely oral and acoustic. I structured a lot of the workshops around how to frame that in your own practice, thinking outside the visual.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/mirriam_book3.jpg" />

&nbsp;

For the book launch, Karraker and Coward designed an archival installation. &ldquo;We papered over the windows with sheets that have each page of the book printed, with cheap, yellow stock paper that conveys this to-be-determined, continuation. We staged a recreation of my studio space with my desk and the book. We have emails between me and Alyson, between me and The White Page, between Alyson and the paper people, between Alyson and Casey. We have Alyson&rsquo;s typography research, all of my research, my teaching materials. We were inviting people to come touch this stuff. I got to look at Gertrude Stein&rsquo;s archive last summer before I started working on this project, and I think it inadvertently rubbed off on the project. What would it mean if writers were more open about sharing their process?

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I think for a long time I was like &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t be a writer because writers are these mystic, god-figures who you don&rsquo;t know how they do what they do but they do what they do really well.&rsquo; And I kind of hate that. Because we are just people. Your work is just a reflection of whatever weird experiences you&rsquo;ve had so why not just be explicit about it. Process is also really intimate at the same time.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

In honoring that intimacy, only 35 copies of the chapbook were printed, a reflection of the number of people involved in making it.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a site-specific book in a lot of ways. My friends on the East Coast aren&rsquo;t going to know about Sheila&rsquo;s paintings but people here will. It needed to be released in a small way, in a small place. Because I&rsquo;m just part of a bigger creative network of other people. This book is a group effort in that I needed other people to inspire work; I needed these conversations about how do you survive as an artist right now but also to make the physical object.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the fanciest chapbook I&rsquo;ve ever seen, honestly. I never thought I would make something or be part of something this pretty. But it makes sense that it&rsquo;s this pretty; it makes sense that it&rsquo;s a dear object because every object is a group effort.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/mirriam_book4.jpg" />

&nbsp;

Catch a live performance by both/and (aka Miriam Karraker) Saturday, January 20th, 6-11pm at Yeah Maybe, 2528 E 22nd St., Minneapolis. Featuring artists Jonathan Herrera, Sanford Mirling, Emmett Ramstad and Tamsie Ringler, and additional performances by mitchKaraoke, Sister Species, and Wild Firth.

&nbsp;

Karraker has also recently released <a href="http://www.mnartists.org/article/keeps-watch?utm_source=mnartists.org&amp;utm_campaign=f4996bab2f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_17&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_059305b321-f4996bab2f-322863297&amp;mc_cid=f4996bab2f&amp;mc_eid=13d16cbf8a">a series of poems</a> in response to Jennifer Nevitt&rsquo;s exhibit, Sans Terre, at Mia.

&nbsp;

All photos by Jonathan Kaiser.

Local poet Miriam Karraker reflects on how her writing process relates and reacts to visual art.

Miriam Karraker’s Dear Object

Not afraid to center himself at the heart of where a story lies, Minneapolis-based photographer Den-Zell Gilliard&rsquo;s work merges journalistic documentation with street photography elements to create images that capture the unearthed truths and reveal their cultural relevancy. In recent years, Gilliard contributed on a local project documenting the intimate, real-life stories of victims of police brutality, abuse, and misuse of power. The project was dubbed Behind the Blue Line and featured a devoted team of writers and photographers, including Gilliard, Annabelle Marcovici, Joe Davis, and Erica Seltzer-Schultz. The subjects were photographed at the scene of their victimization &mdash; usually a home or a crime scene &mdash; and interviewed about their experiences.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/denzell_tom_lablanc.jpg" /> From Behind the Blue Line: Tom LaBlanc in a parking lot where police assaulted him in 1980

&nbsp;

For his latest project, Gilliard has teamed up with the Pillsbury House&rsquo;s Art Blocks Program to produce Sunday&rsquo;s Best, a photo series highlighting some of the Twin Cities&rsquo; oldest Baptist Churches. As part of the Art Blocks Program, artists get the opportunity to use their artistic practice to deepen relationships on the blocks where they live. A vibrant and poignant project, personal in nature, Gilliard takes an in-depth look into a culture whose aging members mean their rich history is slowly disappearing. The series features members of El Bethel, Saint Peter&rsquo;s AME, and Greater Saint Paul Churches and congregations that have been neighborhood staples for over 135 years.

&nbsp;

Whether documenting neighborhood architectural fissures or adding political commentary to a portraiture series, it&rsquo;s clear Gilliard believes in the preservation of culture and seeks to examine both its aesthetic and emotional significance in his work.

&nbsp;

We caught up with the local photographer to chat about projects, past and present, and how his street approach to documentation carries a more personal touch.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/denzell_bandw.jpg" /> Image courtesy the artist&rsquo;s Instagram

&nbsp;

Juleana Enright: Originally you majored in law enforcement, but then made the career jump to pursue photography. What made you feel you could give back more to the community through this pursuit?

&nbsp;&nbsp;

Den-Zell Gilliard: For me, it was about the outreach. I knew I could reach a bigger audience through photography. I&rsquo;ve been able to relate and get to know people that I would not have through a role in law enforcement. Ultimately though, I made the decision because I wanted to give back in a more positive way. I don&rsquo;t think law enforcement can do that; art can.

&nbsp;

JE: Tell us about your involvement with the Behind the Blue Line photography project. How did you team up with your fellow creative collaborators, and what motivated your desire to help tell these particular stories of police brutality?

&nbsp;

DZG: The original writers of the project messaged me because they saw my work on Instagram and needed a second photographer. It was a really hands-on experience. I would go with our team of writers and interview/photograph the victim on the spot of the crime. Documenting everything is the key. Being personal with your subject really helps to get those sought shots to tell the best story you can.

&nbsp;

JE: Do you still have friends in the world of law enforcement, and if so, how do they respond to the Behind the Blue Lines project?

&nbsp;

DZG: I do. I never asked them about the project. That&#39;s something I would feel more comfortable doing now. It was a pretty heavy project. Definitely no police involved.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/denzell_sundaysbest.jpg" /> From the Sunday&rsquo;s Best series

&nbsp;

JE: How has your work within Behind the Blue Line shaped your current photography and focus?

&nbsp;

DZG: Since working on BBL, I&rsquo;ve pursued projects with a similar approach, going in-depth with the subject and documenting them outside of studios, in the streets, or on the site of the story. Sunday&rsquo;s Best is my newest project, which was funded by the Pillsbury House. It was a three-month-long docu-series where I shot some of the Twin Cities&rsquo; oldest Baptist Churches and their members. The final reveal will be in exhibit form, but the project will continue once a year. For the next chapter, I might expand on my series The Odyssey of the Black Boy using community from the 8th Ward.

&nbsp;

JE: What drew you to working on the Sunday&#39;s Best project? Do you have a relationship with church communities?

&nbsp;

DZG: I grew up in the Baptist church, and I always wanted to document that community. The elders won&#39;t be here with us forever. It was insightful to have that opportunity to learn from them.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/denzell_sundaysbest2.jpg" /> From the Sunday&rsquo;s Best series

&nbsp;

JE: What do you think it means to be a political artist in our current political climate and what responsibility does that hold?

&nbsp;

DZG: It&rsquo;s really important that I can help make an impact from my work. As an artist, you have the opportunity to have a huge platform to say whatever you want and use that to start a movement. I think it&rsquo;s a powerful time to be an artist.

&nbsp;

JE: Both the BBL and Sunday&rsquo;s Best series are connected to specific locations, and the storytelling element is very site-specific. Where do you see the line drawn between art and photojournalism?

&nbsp;

DZG: To really make an impact you have to go in with an artist&#39;s mind but really tell the story. I never went to school for journalism or writing, but I love telling stories. At the end of the day, it&#39;s all about getting to the personal.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/denzell_denzell.jpg" /> The photographer at work. Photo by <a href="http://www.brucesilcoxphotography.com" target="_blank">Bruce Silcox</a>.

&nbsp;

Den-Zell Gilliard&nbsp;will be giving an <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/written/2017/12/one-on-one-den-zell-gilliard/">artist talk </a>about Sunday&#39;s Best, including a slide show of the photographs, at <a href="http://www.wingyounghuie.com/f866931730" target="_blank">Third Place Gallery</a> on Wednesday, December 27th, 7 - 8:30 pm.&nbsp;To see more of Gilliard&rsquo;s work, follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/denzellg/" target="_blank">@denzellg</a>.

&nbsp;

Banner image photo by <a href="http://www.brucesilcoxphotography.com" target="_blank">Bruce Silcox</a>.

Local photographer Den-Zell Gilliard reflects on the importance of community storytelling through two very personal projects.

One on One: Den-Zell Gilliard

Curated from more than 200 photographs taken over the course of six months in 1974, artist Perci Chester&#39;s In Search of the Glass Slipper (on exhibit at Traffic Zone Gallery) is an intimate retrospective series documenting the gay party scene in San Francisco. Vivid, vibrant, and unbridled, the photographs evoke the freedom of the pre-AIDS era, revealing the seldom seen and showcasing an underground culture in a joyful and honest depiction. Each photograph not only represents the life around her during this era but also chronologically contextualizes the novelty of so many cultures living quite harmoniously in San Francisco.

&nbsp;

As the title would suggest, the exhibit poetically embodies our universal desire to find love and acceptance. Her photographs capture ephemeral moments, exploring narratives through friendship and community while highlighting the costume and transformation of people taking part in a &quot;cycle of hide and seek.&quot;

&nbsp;

&quot;This show has been incubating in my head for years,&quot; she explains. &quot;It&rsquo;s personal, that the people &mdash; the subjects &mdash; trusted me. In that trust, people shared themselves in these photographs. They are very present, revealing an honesty &mdash; &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s who I am&rsquo; &mdash; to me and to the world.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/glass_slipper_redrose.jpg" /> Red Rose, archival pigment print scanned from film negative

&nbsp;

Inspired by a workshop at the San Francisco Art Institute taught by Imogen Cunningham and Lisette Model, two women who helped redefine modern photography, Perci started taking photos with her Leica M-3. Emulating the ruthlessly candid, humanistic, unconventional work of those essential portrait photographers, she began photographing everything from people on the street to people fixing sewers, Latino costume parades, and house parties.

&nbsp;

&quot;Living in SF at that time &mdash; opening myself to different communities with many kinds of opportunities &mdash; kept me fascinated to continue to explore SF. I also was enamored with the quality of light that happened often in the city &mdash; I called them &#39;San Francisco dream days.&#39;&quot;

&nbsp;

Perci&#39;s &quot;dream days&quot; carried over into the nightlife, documenting an underground scene and community at its most rare, raw, and expressive. After taking photos at a Halloween party her college roommate took her to in 1974, Perci decided to bring her camera along to all of these lively soirees.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/glass_slipper_poco.doti.jpg" /> Poco Doti, archival pigment print scanned from film negative

&nbsp;

&quot;Several people became friends and invited me to a number of house parties that year where people in drag vogued for my camera and shared stories with me, excited to reveal themselves where they had not previously been able to for so many reasons.&quot;

&nbsp;

Perci also photographed other drag events, including concerts by the famed disco and soul diva Sylvester, who would perform at the San Francisco nightclub Bimbo&#39;s. She wanted to showcase the energy of people enjoying themselves in the elegant setting of the nightclub.

&nbsp;

Hesitating to show the series until she could establish connections with the appropriate venue, Perci put the collection on the back burner, focusing on her work as a painter and sculptor. Until now, she didn&#39;t feel that the public was open to see this work and understand the community it represents. For her, this series represents a freedom and laissez-faire nature specific to the pre-AIDS gay community in San Francisco.

&nbsp;

&quot;I always felt these were significant images that I wanted to share. This community lived in two worlds &mdash; a kind of hide-and-seek existence in which finding partners and developing romantic relationships may have interfered with their public lives, in jobs and public acceptance. I am not an authority on the activities of gay life at that time, though I heard stories from my gay friends. Anonymous sex with multiple partners at the &lsquo;bath houses&rsquo; was popular with some people. All that changed dramatically with the AIDS epidemic. So these photographs were taken at private parties and events where people felt safe and comfortable in a community of like-minded friends.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Using scale to highlight the vibrancy and color of this work, the exhibit specifically calls attention to three images, blown-up and life-size, which set out to pull the viewer into the choreography of the subjects&rsquo; lives and personalities.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/glass_slipper_portraitinorange.jpg" /> Portrait in Orange, archival pigment print scanned from film negative

&nbsp;

&quot;My choices were aesthetic &mdash; I felt if I blew up the photographs to an almost human scale, we would feel and understand the presence to that person. The person in the orange dress is really dancing how it feels to live on a precipice, standing on tiptoes with a Ta-da! Trying to find balance. The person with the red rose turban is looking at us &mdash; directly expressing their persona &mdash; and I love how the monkey looks and points, further engaging the direction of our gaze. The image I call Poco Doti is wearing such a great costume, with every detail carefully considered and with a choreographed pose that is joyful and energetic. In some ways, they are artists &mdash; as Cindy Sherman explores various persona using herself continually reinvented. A portrait is a presence and speaks to us as we perceive them.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

When asked about the open reveal of this culture and the intimacy of the subjects, Perci explains, &quot;I really don&rsquo;t know why I was trusted, other than I was introduced as a friend through friends. I was enthusiastic about being with them and loved their elegance and sense of themselves. I always asked people I didn&rsquo;t know if I could take their photos. I also think photographs are a means of sharing a sense of personal pride and individual humanity &mdash; as the popularity of &#39;selfies&#39; exhibit today. So people were thrilled to pose whether in a playful or more serious manner.&quot;

&nbsp;

Recalling the work of fellow portrait photographers Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, MPLS-ex-pat Benjamin Fredrickson, and Montana Merida, Glass Slipper offers a glimpse into a moment in time that has cultural significance beyond simply snapping pics at parties. Her lens turns toward the intimate and provocative, the beauty in the mundane and everyday life, the joy of living, the honesty in identity, and a shared ephemeral intimacy.

&nbsp;

&quot;It is so important to be true to ourselves and stand up for our values of inclusivity. It is important to recognize that the broad spectrum of gender identification is not new &mdash; it has always been an aspect of human history. In this exhibit, I attempt to bring you the elusive image, maybe revealing the broad spectrum of gender &ndash; certainly the diversity of human experience with our universal need for self-expression and the desire to be included. When we look at a portrait we not only see that person &mdash; we also look at it to see ourselves.&quot;

&nbsp;

Perci Chester&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/in-search-of-the-glass-slipper-san-francisco-1974">In Search of the Glass Slipper</a> is on view at the Traffic Zone Gallery, 250 3rd Ave N., Minneapolis through Friday, September 29th. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday 9 am - 5 pm or by appointment. For more info, visit <a href="http://trafficzoneart.com" target="_blank">trafficzoneart.com</a>.

Artist Perci Chester shares never-before-seen photos from her party-going days in mid-‘70s San Francisco, now on view at Traffic Zone Gallery through September 29th.

Party People In The Place To Be: Vintage Photos On View At Traffic Zone Gallery

Support, time, and space &mdash; these are the main elements that together formulate the design for local video art project, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/feministvideoquarterly" target="_blank">Feminist Video Quarterly</a>. Co-founded by Paige Tighe and Chelsea Parker, the project started as a way for the two video artists to support each other&rsquo;s work and that of their friends, but it has quickly evolved into a collaborative group that creates space for femme-identified and gender non-binary filmmakers.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/fvq_thursdays.jpg" /> Still from <a href="https://vimeo.com/216342065" target="_blank">Thursday&#39;s Child</a> by Maret Polzine, to be screened at [Hindrance]

&nbsp;

Thursday&rsquo;s screening, [Hindrance], will be the seventh FVQ screening to take place and partners up with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/soundunseen" target="_blank">Sound Unseen</a> to include films which heavily revolve around the accompanying music/audio/soundtrack in some way.

&nbsp;

From inception to its current screening, FVQ has always been about engaging others through the creation of art using a DIY approach to give power to filmmakers. Inspired by the radical feminist&nbsp;group the Guerrilla Girls, who had a Twin Cities art takeover last spring, Parker and Tighe joined forces to create their version of art activism in a local arena.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I was struggling to be an artist and an activist,&rdquo; explains Tighe. &ldquo;I got my master&rsquo;s in public practice art, and what really came out of that program was me becoming a performance artist and starting to make videos. I was working at Minneapolis Television Network when I met Chelsea, and the Guerilla Girls came to town. They wanted to do a local satellite show at MTN and though I was lackadaisical about that, mostly because no one was getting compensated, it inspired me to do a local video show at MTN. I asked Chelsea to show, and she was so passionate about it and I loved what she&rsquo;s showed so much that it just catapulted from there into our event.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/fvq_teeth.png" /> Still from <a href="https://vimeo.com/194425093" target="_blank">Josie - Glow Worms</a> by Chelsea Arden Parker, screened at P U S H=PULL

&nbsp;

Growing from a modest screening of mostly friends&rsquo; work at small independent galleries to Thursday&rsquo;s screening at&nbsp;the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater, the project has really found its niche in creating art &ldquo;outside the white box.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Having both spent time at art school and beyond working with different media, Parker and Tighe bonded over a mutual dissatisfaction with the hustle and ingratiation involved in making &ldquo;capital A art&rdquo; to be shown in a gallery. They discovered what they were actually passionate about was how to engage people in creating art.

&nbsp;

Through Americorps, Parker worked at a public access television station facilitating an afterschool youth art programing, and it reignited the desire to do her own art.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I started in photography but had a disconnect with how to be a really engaging photographer,&rdquo; Parker elaborates. &ldquo;From my experience teaching teens, I realized how accessible video art is. Every week we would ask them to bring in stuff that they wanted to show the class and it was always someone on YouTube. I was able to teach them what they were seeing, the different techniques or edits and give the power to them as filmmakers.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/fvq_bw.png" /> Still from <a href="https://vimeo.com/139094835" target="_blank">Components</a> by Jes Reyes, screened at REST - LESS

&nbsp;

&ldquo;Getting to work in different dimensions is what brought together my performative [work] and my painterliness,&rdquo; Tighe says. &ldquo;A lot of my first videos looked like abstract expressionist paintings but in a multidimensional way. Yes, video is an image but it&rsquo;s also sound and editing. You can spend as much time as you want with a photograph or a painting or something that is still, but video allows the filmmaker to tell a story in the way that they want to frame it.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

When it comes to the natural evolution of video art, Parker makes this comparison, &ldquo;I think video is much like digital art. Digital art 20 years ago everyone just thought of as using clip art to make real art. Now, same with video, it&rsquo;s like &lsquo;no, this is real art.&rsquo; This is us building on a tradition. It&rsquo;s new and it&rsquo;s fun, but it&rsquo;s also a frontier of art that&rsquo;s possibly not accepted yet but it&rsquo;s accessible. You can take whatever you want and make a video out of it. You can steal from different eras. You can take old 80&rsquo;s cartoons and make something with a political edge. If you&rsquo;re really into Dukes of Hazzard, you can take four frames of Dukes of Hazzard and make an art video about it. And it could be about the movement of a hand or misogyny. However you frame it, that video gets to be what you want it to be.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/fvq_qbert.png" /> Still from <a href="https://vimeo.com/197732485" target="_blank">Observation of Habit</a> by Paige Carlson, screened at &gt; &gt; &gt; GUSTO

&nbsp;

In our current technological society, so many of us have art-making software in our pockets. It&rsquo;s this DIY and inexpensive element that lends itself to the accessibility of video art; anyone can document anything they wish.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;There&rsquo;s kind of a cool element in being able to capture what you as the filmmaker are seeing,&rdquo; Tighe explains. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s transitioning real life to a moving image so that people can see [the same thing] you are, and see it in a way that allows people to relate to you. It&rsquo;s like what we&rsquo;re doing with selfie culture. The mundane can be some of the most exciting work.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Recently receiving a Visual Arts Fund grant from the Midway Contemporary Art Library ensures that the FVQ can help pay the many female, non-binary, and trans artists who aren&rsquo;t always given a platform to showcase their art.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;Ultimately, video is cheap,&rdquo; Parker explains. &ldquo;That standard that you have to be this good at something to be considered an artist is so shitty and blocks out those who create art everyday but don&rsquo;t think of it as art. The filmmakers involved in this group are living proof that you don&rsquo;t have to spend $500 to make something good. You need time, space, and support which is pretty much what the Feminist Video Quarterly is. Art-making is a vulnerable act, and we&#39;re trying to create a supportive place for that.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/159218401303181/?acontext=%25257B%252522source%252522%25253A5%25252C%252522page_id_source%252522%25253A1980124388879925%25252C%252522action_history%252522%25253A%25255B%25257B%252522surface%252522%25253A%252522page%252522%25252C%252522mechanism%252522%25253A%252522main_list%252522%25252C%252522extra_data%252522%25253A%252522%25257B%25255C%252522page_id%25255C%252522%25253A1980124388879925%25252C%25255C%252522tour_id%25255C%252522%25253Anull%25257D%252522%25257D%25255D%25252C%252522has_source%252522%25253Atrue%25257D" target="_blank">FVQ&rsquo;s [Hindrance]</a> takes place Thursday, September 7th at 7pm at Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater. The event is free and includes films from Tamara Alswager, Michelle Brost, Sophia Deutsch, Mixie Di, Emily Fritze, Eve Hernandez, Lizzie Hutchins, Maret Polzine, Jes Reyes, and Amelia Silbert. It will also feature live music from Devata Daun and visuals from Erin Busko, with donations going towards the Minnesota Indian Women&rsquo;s Resource Center. Follow their Vimeo channel <a href="https://vimeo.com/channels/fvq" target="_blank">HERE</a>.

Screening another series of experimental short films on Thursday, Sept 7th, at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater, FVQ’s founders want to remove the boundaries around "capital-A art."

Artist Profile: Feminist Video Quarterly

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m kind of painting my memoir, more or less,&rdquo; Bunny Portia explains to me regarding her recent work. Once a Playboy Bunny herself and now a visual artist at age 64, Portia definitely has a memoir to tell.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I mean for it to be both humorous and serious. I want to be seen but not seen,&rdquo; she tells me. We&rsquo;re standing in front of one of her most recent paintings, a large-scale self-portrait of the artist in her bunny costume, painted at her current age on a melting ice floor, surrounded by polar bears. And though the image strikes a comedic chord, it&rsquo;s also a symbolic representation of the way society looks at aging women &mdash; cast aside and deemed unuseful. For nearly forty years, Portia kept her experience working as a Bunny a secret. She feared the unveiling would result in unwanted attention and assumptions based on narrow concepts of morality.

&nbsp;

But an experience at Macy&rsquo;s a few years back changed her perspective. A sales associate helped a line of younger shoppers and then passed over her in the checkout line, claiming she &ldquo;didn&rsquo;t even see her there.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s this concept of invisibility of aging women, death, dying, and self-reflection which inspired her series Memento Mori, Latin for &ldquo;remember that you have to die.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/bunny_tempusfugit.jpg" /> Memento Mori V (Tempus Fugit), oil &amp; titanium sponge on canvas, 80 x 36&rdquo;

&nbsp;

&ldquo;A few years ago I decided that I wasn&rsquo;t concerned if people disapproved of my history or my art,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;Exploring the issues of aging from a woman&rsquo;s perspective became the focus of my art practice. It is an investigation that would have been impossible for me to undertake at a younger age. Wrapped up with the topic of age is the entire Western ideal of female attractiveness and, in many ways, identity and self worth.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

For someone who uses a moniker, the concept surrounding &ldquo;person&rdquo; and &ldquo;persona,&rdquo; is at the forefront of her artistry. But for Bunny, exploring this series is beyond simply personal, it&rsquo;s universal &mdash; a feminist exploration of age bias.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;As I reached late middle age, I became aware of another issue facing women almost universally. Age affects society&rsquo;s perceptions of women in both subtle and obvious ways. I don&rsquo;t think many are able to fully understand or recognize this pervasive issue until they have experienced it themselves. I know I didn&#39;t. In western society, the role of older women as anything but grandmothers seems to offend the sensibilities of most people.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/bunny_studio.jpg" /> The artist in her studio applying titanium sponge to Momento Mori IV (Becoming Mortal).

&nbsp;

Unlike some &ldquo;outsider artists&rdquo; who use Bunny imagery as campy, period, cultural icons, Portia references her stint as a Bunny for other reasons, countering the myth that youth is beauty.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;The image of me playing the role of the mythologized Bunny provides the reference point for my investigation as well as an opportunity to incorporate cognitively dissonant, vaguely surreal imagery into my art.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Addressing these concepts through portraiture and autobiographical works, her art neither glorifies nor condemns the image of a Playboy Bunny but instead challenges and responds to her history and the mythical icon itself.

&nbsp;

 
&quot;Did the Playboy Bunny image exploit women? Certainly. It was exploitative of men as well,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;As a term, intersectionality has gained currency in the last few years. As a concept it has been a reality of women&rsquo;s lives for decades. Trading on one&rsquo;s looks, when possible, was one of the relatively few well-paying options available to young women in the early &lsquo;70s. I spent a summer stuffed into an impossibly tight-fitting, padded costume, serving drinks and meals to customers who bought into the Playboy myth. Along with about a hundred other college age women, dormitory-housed and closely chaperoned, I played the role. Looking back, I see that summer of &rsquo;72 as a turning point in my life.&quot;

&nbsp;

With an advertising background, Portia uses her knowledge of software &mdash; Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign &mdash; to create hyperrealistic, autobiographical paintings to explore this role.

&nbsp;

One of these works was based on the famous narrative painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, often referred to as Whistler&#39;s Mother.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/bunny_whistlers.jpg" /> Arrangement in Grey And Black, oil on canvas

&nbsp;

&ldquo;My husband took a picture of me in a rocking chair and then I took a picture of Whistler&rsquo;s Mother, photoshopped her out, photoshopped me in, and then made it into a big color print and traced over it.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

The same way Anna Whistler&rsquo;s blank forbearance speaks of capitulation, Bunny&rsquo;s own stare addresses the nature of surrendering, ceasing to resist the forces of nature that cause her own aging.

&nbsp;

Inspired by two big turning points in her life &mdash; her stint as a Playboy Bunny and two hip implants (surgeries which both happened within the last decade) &mdash; Portia&rsquo;s skeleton paintings reveal the inevitable aging process, the failing body. Using x-rays from her doctor&rsquo;s visits, Portia juxtaposes the body of her Playboy self against the x-rayed images, showcasing the titanium revisions and even using a layer of titanium dust for the finishing touches.

&nbsp;

Toeing the line between morbidly reflective and humorous, Portia&rsquo;s work rethinks the pejorative connotations around aging and its attraction to a devastating mindset.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;Age is considered a liability, at best, or at times a disability. Ironically, each person who now holds that view will eventually possess that &lsquo;liability.&rsquo; This whole series has been about being a Venn diagram where there&rsquo;s ageism and sexism. I&rsquo;ve had sexism my whole life and now I&rsquo;ve got ageism. I&rsquo;m not sure where this will ultimately lead my art but I intend to continue to explore these themes that I feel are important both to me, personally, and to society as a whole.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/bunny_nowyouseeme.jpg" /> Memento Mori I (Now You See Me, Now You Don&rsquo;t), oil on canvas, 30 x 43&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Portia&#39;s work will be featured in the upcoming group exhibition <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/sq2-squared-100-new-works-each-10x10">Sq2</a> at Gamut Gallery, opening August 26th. She will also have work for sale at the Cream of the Crop Art Gallery in the West End Market during the State Fair, August 24 - September 4. To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit her website at <a href="http://bunnyportia.com" target="_blank">bunnyportia.com</a>.

Local painter Bunny Portia addresses ageism and feminism with her self-portraiture, mining her own experience of a summer spent wearing Playboy’s satin ears.

Artist Profile: Bunny Portia

Though Father&rsquo;s Day may have already passed, there&rsquo;s an alternative Daddy affair just around the corner that Minneapolis will be celebrating. The premiere of a new variety show/dance night, Daddy was created to bring the Twin Cities the best in burlesque, drag, music, comedy, poetry, fashion, Djs, and &ldquo;all queer&rdquo; performances.

&nbsp;

Flaunting the tagline that &ldquo;anyone can be a daddy,&rdquo; the event is primed to be a recurring night marketed for &ldquo;freaks of any gender&rdquo; which reclaims the hyper masculinized connotations surrounding the term &ldquo;daddy.&rdquo; Instead of existing within stereotypical confines of its societal definition, Daddy hopes to be a safe space, aka the connective tissue where folx from across queer scenes can unite and share in uncensored expression while basking in a vibrant, playful environment.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Crafted and promoted by musician/MPLS daddy Brent Colbert and illustrator/sex-positive podcast creator Archie Bongiovanni, Daddy features an umbrella of queer acts showcasing the eclectic roster of talent Brent and Archie are capable of curating. The debut lineup includes performances from Marcel Michelle Obama, a GNC/Queer/Trans Artist of Color with a multidisciplinary background interested in subverting conventional notions of eroticism, and Catherine Charles, a low femme pop punk pretty boy who makes gay music about gay sex, just to name a few.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/daddy_Marcel.jpg" /> Marcel Michelle Obama

&nbsp;

Much more than just a fun dance night, the event hopes to be a creative vision &mdash; fueled by queerness &mdash; which helps embrace self-identity and evoke self-expression.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

I sat down with Brent and Archie to chat about what attendees can expect from this new variety show, what it means to be a &ldquo;daddy,&rdquo; and how important queer visibility and representation are in the TC nightlife and art scenes.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Juleana Enright: Archie, you moved here from Alaska in 2008 and Brent, you&rsquo;ve been here since 2013. So, tell me, you&rsquo;re attending queer events, going to dance nights, cabaret nights, queer art happenings&hellip; what did you think was missing from these events that led to the inception of Daddy?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Brent Colbert: I think a lot of spaces are starting to feel really cliquey to some people, which honestly could happen anywhere. Or often spaces are underground and not a public space so people don&rsquo;t know about it or things are happening really late. Then there are places like Intermedia Arts who are doing amazing things but also showcase on an earlier, theater schedule. I think for the FB invite for Daddy I picked both the &ldquo;parties&rdquo; and &ldquo;nightlife&rdquo; categories because I wanted there to be a variety of both. There&rsquo;s not a lot of events that do mix it up.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Archie Bongiovanni: And sometimes you&rsquo;ll go to a dance night that&rsquo;s also a performance, but our mindset is, &ldquo;why not have a little bit of everything all at once?&rdquo; I also don&rsquo;t really think that there was anything necessarily missing as far as Minneapolis events, especially queer events, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean that stuff can&rsquo;t be added, that we don&rsquo;t deserve another night. I think that having something that&rsquo;s not on the weekend is really cool and good for us because we are both in the service industry. Part of what we were going for is having a spot for more venues and spaces to showcase folks who aren&rsquo;t super established and who don&rsquo;t have a &ldquo;name&rdquo; made for themselves yet.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

BC: And taking space to not only &ldquo;showcase&rdquo; them, but curate them. Because there are so many amazing queer performers.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/daddy_jennacis.jpg" /> Jenna Cis

&nbsp;

JE: In one of the posts I saw online promoting Daddy, you talked about &ldquo;reclaiming&rdquo; the queer context and connotations surrounding the word &ldquo;daddy,&rdquo; can you elaborate on that?

&nbsp;

AB: Daddy already has this queer connotation in terms of cis, male gay sex and sometimes that has been able to translate into other forms of sex. We would like to take that word and make it accessible to femme folx and maybe even take the capitalistic approach out of it too. When I write &lsquo;anyone can be a daddy,&rsquo; I think of going beyond the &ldquo;sugar daddy&rdquo; and &ldquo;dominant&rdquo; aspects of it and embrace that we can care for people in non-capitalist ways too. Really opening it up to include space for &ldquo;loving&rdquo; daddies, younger daddies &mdash; to challenge the hyper masculine part of it.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

BC: When I first approached one of my coworkers about the concept of Daddy, they were picturing this hard, leather daddy event. From the mission statement, to the poster, down to the logo, we&rsquo;ve tried to work to make clear what the theme of the event is &mdash; that it&rsquo;s all-encompassing &mdash; and to collaborate with the performers to make sure the theme of Daddy is translated throughout the event.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: Can you talk a little about the performers on debut night? How did you find them; who are they?

&nbsp;

BC: I&rsquo;ve helped organize drag shows before and I&rsquo;ve booked a ton of indie rock shows, but then I started to imagine the kind of party that I would throw and what it would feel like. I thought about all of the different spaces and how I think of them as different scenes, but what it would look like if those spaces and scenes could all exist within a larger space and we got to pull performers out from each scene.

&nbsp;

So, when I thought of this night, Marcel was kind of one of the first people I thought of performing. I&rsquo;ve seen her perform at Intermedia, the Townhouse, Dykes Do Drag, and every time has been incredible. The last time I saw her perform at the Townhouse she was layering sheets of sheer fabric over her eyes and then kind of slowly ripping them off. It&rsquo;s always really conceptual; she&rsquo;s one of my personal favorites.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/daddy_catherine%20charles.png" /> Catherine Charles

&nbsp;

AB: The musician Catherine Charles is someone who I&rsquo;ve listened to on Spotify and who had wanted to have more chances to perform in public, and I was like &ldquo;now&rsquo;s your chance.&rdquo; And bb phat, who will be hosting the fashion show segment, makes harnesses that are accessible for every body and every size with recycled material, which is in alliance with our values at Daddy in a multitude of ways.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

BC: We picked Liv Hnilicka as the MC because she has the confidence and humor and really has a lot to say/is an important voice. I think she&rsquo;ll really amp up the crowd and hopefully establish the feeling for it too. It&rsquo;s a really big role.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

I made a post about putting this night together and asking for people&rsquo;s favorite performers or DJs and there were so many recommended whom I would have never randomly connected with. Within the scene, there are so many queer folx who have this creative, eclectic vision and often times it&rsquo;s fueled by their queerness.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

AB: Some of these are people we knew and some of them we just trust the people who recommended them. It&rsquo;s a lot about giving opportunities to folks to expand their performance and putting trust into artists that they will deliver a performance that will really set the tone for future parties to come.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: Under Trump&rsquo;s current political climate and looking back one year to the massacre at Orlando&rsquo;s Pulse nightclub, what do you think about queer visibility and how does Daddy affect that?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

AB: I think while we&rsquo;ve talked a lot about these fuzzy aspects of Daddy and showcasing the queer community, but we are also saying we want a sexy, safe party. Queer sexualities are always going to be seen as more pornographic, more deviant and explicit than heterosexualities. I think that being visible is a big part in taking that back.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

BC: I think also just having this be a big party that is all queer &mdash; you get to dress the way you wanna dress, present the way you want to present and not have to be so worried about that &mdash; is important. Getting to feel yourself in that way is one of the most political things we can be doing right now. Also, taking a conscientious role in understanding who the performers are, what they stand for, and why they are performing is another crucial component in putting together the programming.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

AB: With the political climate the way it is, if we don&rsquo;t have these moments of recharging ourselves in feel-good ways or expressing ourselves and being around others who are doing the same, then there&rsquo;s a chance of getting really burnt out. So, maybe Daddy is a little bit of both &mdash; political statement and party. You can see these amazing performers and support them but you can also ideally leave feeling better than when you walked in through seeing a new performer, connecting, recharging.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: It seems like involvement in queer events and the community is a priority and that your hope is through more events like this, others can find comfort and confidence in their own identity and expression. What does this event mean to you both on a personal level?

&nbsp;

BC: For a long time, I was &ldquo;out&rdquo; but I had this weird falsehood where I didn&rsquo;t want this to be my identity, but I&rsquo;m like, this is my identity actually. I&rsquo;ve experienced so many amazing events in Minneapolis, and it&rsquo;s why I wanted to do this.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

AB: It&rsquo;s different than going to a bar or night and taking it over; we&rsquo;re making it for ourselves instead of just existing in the cis-gendered, straight world. We&rsquo;re forming our own instead of conforming. Queer and bar events have such a cool history; I love being a part of it.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/daddy_daddy.png" />

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Daddy: a QUEER variety show and dance night is Thursday, June 29th at Icehouse MPLS, 2528 Nicolett Ave. The debut lineup features MC Liv Hnilicka; performances by Marcel Michelle Obama, Catherine Charles, and Jenna Cis; a leather fashion show by bb phat apparel; plus DJ sets from YONI and Apollolypstic. For more information and tickets, visit the FB invite <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1648982388446484/">HERE</a>.&nbsp;

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Banner image: YONI

Premiering this Thursday at the Icehouse, Daddy combines drag, fashion, and performance into a dance party with a vision. We caught up with the organizers to find out more.

Interview: Brent Colbert & Archie Bongiovanni of Daddy

This year, for the Art-A-Whirl event Wolf Pack, he shares the bill with some of the Twin Cities most innovative video artists. I caught up with Nick for a quick taste of what Wolf Pack will look like for attendees and to talk about the jarring nature of video aesthetics. 
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Juleana Enright: For Art-A-Whirl, Wolf Pack plans to represent a collection of sculptural video pieces from some of Minneapolis&rsquo; most innovative artists. What kind of elements make the artists in this show fall into this &ldquo;innovative&rdquo; category?

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Nicholas Knutson: Calling ourselves &ldquo;Minneapolis&rsquo; most innovative video and sculptural artists&rdquo; was a bold move, considering the abundance of talent in the Twin Cities that often goes unrecognized. The variety of media in the practice of each artist gives it a unique and original take on displaying our work. We are taking video, sculpture, performance, painting, and drawing and combining them to create a multi-dimensional experience for the viewer.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/nk_engram.jpg" /> Digital Bath/Engram, sculptural video installation

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JE: The content of your work is pretty futuristic. There are recurring themes which explore the oversaturated existence and the chaotic nature of digital media. How do you balance your work so that the disarray and hyper-realism is still recognized but the viewer isn&#39;t so overwhelmed by visuals that they miss the point?

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KN: In my latest piece (Digital Bath/ Engram, currently on display at 10th &amp; Hennepin as part of the Made Here installations downtown), the chaos of social media &mdash; which I&rsquo;m representing in my video piece &mdash; is projected onto a dodecahedron, which is a 12-sided shape commonly used for gaming dice. The shape of the sculpture is intentionally clean and simple, reflecting the &nbsp;technology we use to access social media and is meant to be pleasing to the eye. Juxtaposed against this is the jarring and spastic video. The desired outcome is that the viewer be mesmerized...but also uncomfortable.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/nk_knutson2.jpg" /> Digital Bath/Engram, as seen in the Made Here installation.

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JE: Minneapolis just recently showcased its first glitch art exhibit at Gamut Gallery. With distorted elements and references to digital media and the internet, what makes the video works you create different from glitch art?

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NK: I don&rsquo;t consider myself a glitch artist, although much of my work could fit into its parameters. My understanding is that &ldquo;glitching&rdquo; is breaking down digital or analog files with the intention of distorting imagery to the artist&rsquo;s liking. With this medium, the artistic process is itself the art. I find this to be satisfying at times, but also limiting, as my means of expression are varied.

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JE: Much of your work also examines the intersection of audio and video, manipulating visuals and sound to produce works that are dual sensory videocore performance art. What drew you to working with this medium?

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KN: I grew up with the powerful imagery of MTV in the &lsquo;90s and saw a new form of escapism that was both alluring and rebellious. Later, I was exposed to artists such as Mike Kelley, Pipilotti Rist, and Matthew Barney, who expanded the idea of video art and sculpture for me and indelibly changed my perspective. &nbsp;

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JE: Will your noise project, Soft Sculpture, be performing at this event?

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KN: Soft Sculpture is not performing at Art-a-Whirl this year, but a collective of the band plus assorted noise artists created a Super Group called Chaos Combat Marching Band, who will be performing alongside Fancy Ray at the Casket Arts Building, Friday at 6 pm.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/nk_einhorn.jpg" /> The artist (right) with a friend.

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Wolf Pack kicks off Friday, May 19th at the Arcana Lodge #187, 920 Lowry Ave NE. Check the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/846352372180359/">Facebook event</a> for more details.

With his fingers on the pulse of what radical videocore should be, artist Nicholas Knutson has found a way to speak to the nature of digital media and the saturated presence of the internet in the form of visual arts. 

Artist Interview: Nicholas Knutson

This year for Art-A-Whirl, artist Kate Iverson unveils Semblance of Disorder, a selection of works that she created from 2016-2017. Ranging from pieces on canvas and panel with vibrant color palettes to black and white works on paper focusing on soft abstraction, Kate explores the intersection of the unplanned and the organic. 
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I caught up with Kate to chat about her distinctive art style &ndash; which mixes a variety of media &ndash; and got some tips on how to survive <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/art-a-whirl-2017">Art-A-Whirl</a> while absorbing art to the fullest.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/iverson_4.JPG" /> Semblance of Disorder, mixed media

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Juleana Enright: This exhibit features works that you&rsquo;ve created over the course of a year, varying in styles, media, and color. It&#39;s quite the contrast visually, yet there&rsquo;s also a design-minded aesthetic that pulls it into a cohesive collection. What&#39;s it like to see them exist all together?

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Kate Iverson: It&rsquo;s fun to see it all together and looking somewhat cohesive, even though it was pretty unintentional. I&rsquo;ve always been an unapologetic medium and style jumper &ndash; it&rsquo;s often made me question myself as a visual artist, versus being a crafter or designer. So, despite still being pretty liberal with my contrasting color choices per series, my imposter syndrome has reduced significantly! I still feel the constant need to change, however, so while I seem to have found a foundational style, the implementation of it is still up for major interpretation. &nbsp;

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JE: Your work often tends to cross mediums, incorporating elements of tempera, ink, watercolor, and Japanese washi tape. What inspires you to explore such a wide variety?

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KI: I&rsquo;m not very deliberate in my art making &ndash; I am not a planner. I usually put a base color down, then make some sort of random shape and just go from there, I never have a clear vision of what it will look like until it&rsquo;s done. I think the crossing of mediums definitely factors into that lack of planning. I am also extremely impatient and appreciate life hacks, so often times I am considering how a certain medium, tool, or random item can be used for something I&rsquo;m doing. When I got obsessed with Japanese washi tape a couple years ago, it really stuck (no pun intended!) and has informed a lot of the geometric, structured elements in my work. I love washi tape, but not in a scrapbooking aunt type of way.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/iverson_6.jpg" /> Semblance of Disorder, mixed media

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JE: You received a stipend from NEMAA to produce a free art activity where you&#39;ll be on hand to share some of your fun signature design and painting techniques. What can you tell us about that?

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KI: Oh, the art activity is going to be so fun, and I&rsquo;m very grateful to NEMAA for the stipend! I personally think everyone is an artist at heart, but it can be hard to pull out of yourself when you consider art as being something unapproachable. I am going to have hundreds of mini canvases, plus paint, washi, and painters tape &ndash; basically I am going to show people how easy it is to create simple, cool art either by using tape and paint to color block or using colorful washi tape to create a design or a combination of the two. I think it&rsquo;s something really anyone can do, both kids and adults, so it will be fun to see the results. Everyone gets to take home their finished piece for free. We&rsquo;ll also be sampling Humm Kombucha while supplies last and offering complimentary Japanese sweets from my boyfriend/studiomate&rsquo;s ultra-adorable store, Tomodachi!

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JE: The title of this exhibit: Semblance of Disorder. It could almost double as a punk band name (which seems very much you) but is also a bit contradictory by definition &ndash; suggesting structure within chaos. How do you think it speaks to the conceptual and technical parts of your work?

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KI: It could totally be a punk band! Or maybe Swedish black metal. And yes, it&rsquo;s definitely contradictory, but I think pretty accurate when it comes to describing a lot of my work. While I love the look of structure, clean lines, minimalism, and geometric elements, I have a messy heart. I feel more personally connected to wildness and chaos. Sometimes that comes across in gestural brush strokes or a gritty look or feel, other times it shows up in cleaner ways, such as off-kilter shapes mixed together like crazy confetti. No matter what, there&rsquo;s always some sense of chaos to my order. I guess the title is another way of saying that.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/iverson_5.JPG" /> Semblance of Disorder, mixed media

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JE: You wear a lot of creative hats &ndash; brand strategist, creative director, copywriter &ndash; just to name a few. How does the way you approach working on creative projects for clients differ from the way you execute your personal art?

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KI: Not to sound like a hippy, but painting to me is very therapeutic and practically zen. It&rsquo;s really the only thing I&rsquo;ve ever done that allows me to really flip a switch in my brain and just relax and be purely intuitive. Like I mentioned before, my process is very unplanned and organic -- when I paint I kind of zone out and allow my brain to become abstract and open. Alternately, I love my client work too; it&rsquo;s usually very strategic and intense, but there&rsquo;s also an element of abstraction there too &ndash; being able to open your mind to really see the big picture of a brand, project, or message and connect that to a mood or feel. I like the balance of the two skill sets, and luckily, both sides have great crossover potential &ndash; I can bring an artist&rsquo;s perspective to client work and brand marketing know-how to my art career!

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JE: Let&rsquo;s talk Art-A-Whirl logistics. It can be a confusing AF cluster. Any tips to make the art journey less daunting?

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KI: 1. First and foremost, wear comfortable shoes, have a backpack or crossbody bag for carrying water and essentials (with room to safely stash small art purchases, of course!). I&rsquo;d also recommend riding your bike if you can, as parking can be a bit of a beast in the busier areas.

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2. Also be sure to pick up an official Art-A-Whirl catalog at one of the NEMAA info booths, studio buildings, and many other places around the district &ndash; it&rsquo;s got easy-to-read maps and a comprehensive directory of artists, galleries, businesses, and even restaurants. You can also download the <a href="https://nemaa.org/art-a-whirl/nemaas-app" target="_blank">official NEMAA</a> app that includes an interactive map and special event listings &ndash; very helpful. Try to hit some of the off-the-beaten-path spots &ndash; the vibe will be more chill and I guarantee you&rsquo;ll find some hidden gems.

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3. Lastly, be sure to check out City Pages, Secrets of the City, and other print and online publications for their must-see picks &ndash; they usually do a great job of curating lists of the most interesting events, spaces, exhibits, and performances during Art-A-Whirl, making it a bit easier to plan an itinerary.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/iverson_2.jpg" /> Semblance of Disorder, mixed media

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JE: What&rsquo;s one Art-A-Whirl event that goers shouldn&rsquo;t skip this year?

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KI: That&rsquo;s a tough one &ndash; there&rsquo;s always so much going on! The street where my actual home is, 22nd Avenue (between 6th and University) is usually pretty interesting. Not only is Grumpy&rsquo;s right there (Art! Food! Bands! Booze!) but my friends Aaron Neumann and Susannah Dodge have been working on fixing up an old storefront on 22nd &amp; 5th that will be a small gallery! Art-A-Whirl will be the gallery&rsquo;s debut, with a photography exhibit about old Northeast Minneapolis. Also on 22nd, photographer Keith Holmes mentioned that he&rsquo;ll be putting some large-scale photo prints up on the exterior of his house.

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My late night action recommendation would, of course, be Public Functionary on Saturday night. The event, <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/aphotic">Aphotic</a>, will feature live music, DJsm and projection art.

 
<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/kate-iverson-semblance-of-disorder">Semblance of Disorder</a> runs Friday, May 19th - Sunday, May 21st at Kate Iverson&rsquo;s new studio located in the 1101 Building, 1101 Stinson Blvd. The pop-up exhibit includes live painting, select work from special guest artists Michael Cina and Christina Da Cruz, complimentary snacks from Tomodachi, and free take-home art activities for both kids and adults.&nbsp;

Local artist, designer, and all-around creative powerhouse Kate Iverson previews her Art-A-Whirl open studio pop-up and gives us some valuable tips for best practices while Whirling.

Artist Interview: Kate Iverson

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/JennyDavisArt/photos/a.219893821370486.72783.198459606847241/1753367094689810/?type=3&amp;theater"><img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/aaw2017_brlsq.jpg" /></a>

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/JennyDavisArt/photos/a.219893821370486.72783.198459606847241/1753367094689810/?type=3&amp;theater">Burlesque of North America/CO Exhibitions + Art-A-Whirl</a>

Friday, May 19th - Sunday, May 21st, free

Always an excellent spot of Art-A-Whirl fun, CO Exhibitions and Burlesque of North America will be hosting a BRLSQ and Friends big to-do. Plenty of paintings and prints will be on display from the BRLSQ crew and their pals. Plus t-shirts, sticker packs, DJs, vinyl records for sale, and more! Featured artists include Wes Winship, Mike Davis, Ben LaFond, NMPH, Jennifer Davis, Greg Gossel, Michael Cina, Rudy Fig, and more.

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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/427763604258772/"><img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/aaw2017_devils.jpg" /></a>

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/427763604258772/">Devil&#39;s in the Details </a>

Friday, May 19th, 6-10pm, free

A personal Art-A-Whirl favorite, Rogue Buddha Gallery is the studio home to the macabre-loving, darkly fantastical artist and owner Nick Harper. They&rsquo;ll be hosting a group show featuring the works of Michael Thomsen, Alex Kuno, Rudy Fig, and Harper, described as an exhibit which &ldquo;attempts to cut through the blas&eacute; and find that which is worthy of adoration in compositions that elicit comparison to the ceremonial.&rdquo; Enough said!

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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/272730876519736/"><img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/aaw2017_food.jpg" /></a>

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/272730876519736/">Art -A-Whirl Artists Hosted at FOOD BUILDING</a>

Friday, May 19th - Sunday, May 21st, free

Home to Red Table Meat Co. and Baker&#39;s Field Flour &amp; Bread, and a big supporter of the arts and local creatives all year round, the FOOD BUILDING is another good Art-A-Whirl bet. Presented by NEMAA, the FOOD BUILDING will be hosting 14+ local artists and featuring live music and snacks from Baker&#39;s Field Flour &amp; Bread and Red Table Meat Co. throughout the weekend.

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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/429356770739943/"><img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/aaw2017_wanderlust.jpg" /></a>

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/429356770739943/">Art-A-Whirl with Wanderlust Vintage Market</a>

Friday, May 19th - Sunday, May 21st, free

With an art-fair-meets-craft-fair feel, Wanderlust Vintage Market will be showcasing artwork and performance from some of their favorite artists and makers. Includes live music from The BarRoom Clowns, D a N C E B U M S, Todd Sisson, and The Haws, plus a vintage caravan featuring works from jewelry artist City Stone Studio, high-quality shaving and bath soaps from Cooper &amp; French Soapmaking, wild vintage fashion finds and bold prints from local fashion curator Double Peace Studio, and more.

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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/635491109990377/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22[%7B%5C%22surface%5C%22%3A%5C%22page%5C%22%2C%5C%22mechanism%5C%22%3A%5C%22page_upcoming_events_card%5C%22%2C%5C%22extra_data%5C%22%3A[]%7D]%22%2C%22has_source%22%3Atrue%7D"><img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/aaw2017_psycho.jpg" /></a>

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/635491109990377/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22[%7B%5C%22surface%5C%22%3A%5C%22page%5C%22%2C%5C%22mechanism%5C%22%3A%5C%22page_upcoming_events_card%5C%22%2C%5C%22extra_data%5C%22%3A[]%7D]%22%2C%22has_source%22%3Atrue%7D">Psycho Suzi&rsquo;s Art-A-Whirl Outdoor Waterfront Festival</a>

Saturday, May 20th - Sunday, May 21st, free

If you find yourself in art overload mode and need a little break from intellectual stimuli, head over to punk haven Psycho Suzi&rsquo;s for their 5th annual puppy fashion show. The event features live music from The Soviettes, The Rope, Blinds, and The 99ers, plus a Transmission Dance Party with DJ Jake Rudh. Sip down tiki cocktails while you watch people go apeshit over puppies during the puppy pageant.

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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/1807204286264843/"><img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/aaw2017_aphotic.jpg" /></a>

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1807204286264843/">Aphotic (Late Night Art-A-Whirl at PF) </a>

Saturday, May 20th, 9pm-1am, $5

If art hypes you up, you may be looking for some additional party action to soothe your soul after the studios and breweries close up shop. Never fear; Public Functionary has you covered. Presented by PF &amp; CMND+CTRL, &ldquo;Aphotic&rdquo; is a late night, post-Art-A-Whirl event featuring live production from Psymun and Devata Daun, special performances from David Maxwell, and DJ sets by DJ Just Nine, Frank Castle, and Ms. Lakesha. Plus live projections from Nolan Regan Morice, Psychographics, Art by Mixie, and Michascopes. Bonus: Head back the following day for a special party for Zuluzuluu to raise funds for their upcoming tour.

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For more info about all of the participating artists and events open to the public this weekend, please visit <a href="http://nemaa.org/">nemaa.org</a>.

 
Banner image: Alex Kuno, whose work can be seen at Rogue Buddha Gallery this weekend.

If you feel like exploring all that Art-A-Whirl has to offer this weekend, use this handy guide to go beyond the studio buildings for art, craft, food, dancing, and puppies. That’s right: puppies.


The Whirl Less Traveled: Art-A-Whirl Highlights You Don’t Want To Miss

Travel back nearly a decade to the streets of Minneapolis; if you saw brightly colored yarn entwined onto fences, you knew exactly the mastermind behind it: HOTTEA. Still known to many Minneapolites as &ldquo;the yarn guy,&rdquo; local artist Eric Rieger, aka HOTTEA, was captivated by the unbridled energy and chaotic essence of street art. Though after a bout with the law for producing what is still deemed illegal artwork, HOTTEA became drawn to more impermanent projects which harnessed a non-destructive take on street art using skeins of yarn.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hottea1.jpg" /> Yarn installation, NYC. 2014. Photo courtesy the artist&rsquo;s Instagram.

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Incorporating a skill and love for typography with weaving techniques, HOTTEA introduced the MPLS scene to what is now a ubiquitous artform that&rsquo;s paved the way for a sub-genre of &ldquo;yarn bomb&rdquo; artists. His signature &ldquo;fencework&rdquo; weaves words and images into nail-studded light poles and chain link fences. By connecting the dots, working the angles, and playing with shadow elements, HOTTEA created attention and dialogue around yarn as a street art medium. This was not your grandmother&#39;s craft night; this was about bringing awareness, emotion, and perspective into a street style that&#39;s often gotten a bad rap, a medium that&rsquo;s seen less for its artistic voice and more as a societal nuisance. For HOTTEA, it became more than just a tag. Within the elaborate techniques, there was a link tied to his family&rsquo;s culture of weaving, passed down for generations. In its vivid hues and dimensional framework, there existed a softer element not present with many graffiti artists. Pool these ingredients together and you have an artist who helped changed the way street art is made and viewed, adding an impassioned, lasting memory to an ephemeral art form.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hottea_LettingGo.jpg" /> Letting Go, yarn installation at Mia, 2012

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We recently caught up with the now critically acclaimed installation artist to chat about his national and international visibility, his collaboration with sparkling water giant Perrier, and the future of yarn art.

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JE: It&#39;s been a few years since MPLSArt has checked in with you (<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/written/2011/03/hottea/">our last interview</a> was way back in 2011), so we have a lot to catch up on. Let&#39;s start with your most recent endeavors. This year, Perrier launched <a href="http://perrier.tumblr.com/ARTXTRA">ARTXTRA</a>, a program through which the company collaborates with innovative artists. From the final three artists selected by a panel of experts, you won the popular vote to be the artist who reimagines and designs a series of limited edition Perrier bottles and cans. What are the challenges of designing within the confines of 2D Art&nbsp;when the vast majority of your visual aesthetic is in a 3D context, specifically yarn?

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HOTTEA: It&rsquo;s different, but it&rsquo;s also similar in a lot of ways. I adapt the patterns and shapes I use from my isometric lettering and translate it to the shape of the can. The fences that I do are all on a flat surface, and I come from a design background, so this project brought me back to what I used to do as a graphic designer.

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hottea_ASYLUM1.jpg" /> Asylum, painted installation on Roosevelt Island, NYC, 2015

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JE: A recent trend is companies partnering up with artists to showcase their work. Many Twin Cities breweries team up with local illustrators and graffiti artists to design unique artwork for their cans and taproom murals. PBR has a national Art Showcase contest that has given their brand visibility in the art scene. With the current political climate and the national funding for the arts being called into question, do you think continuing to establish these types of partnerships could be the financial answer to the future of the arts?

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HOTTEA: As an artist it is our responsibility to make sure we are smart about how we conduct our business. Many artists forget about the business side of this world. At the end of the day, someone either has to commission your work or buy a piece of art in order for you to live to work. There will always be people who buy or commission art, but it is the artist&rsquo;s responsibility to find and keep those opportunities consistent with their art and business skills.

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JE: Back in 2011 when we interviewed you, the New York Times was predicting that guerrilla art, specifically &#39;craftivism&#39; like the HOTTEA project, &quot;could become as potent a social movement as urban farming.&quot; Do you think graffiti knitting has continued on this projection? How has the insurgence of yarn artists and the popularity of yarn bombing influenced your work?

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HOTTEA: I don&rsquo;t believe it has consciously influenced my work. The things that I look to for inspiration are personal moments with my family and other people and mostly how we interact with each other and space. I am very interested in how we function emotionally as people and how we portray ourselves to the masses. HOTTEA has always been about taking two or more things and finding common ground between them - whether it be a space or idea. I find myself more inspired and influenced by the writings and findings of Freud than I am actual artwork. &nbsp;

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hottea_sesame.jpg" />

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JE: Two years ago, you collaborated with Sesame Street to create <a href="https://vimeo.com/116388441">a video</a> to help promote their new website. In the video, you and beloved muppet Grover work together to create a yarn installation on the streets of NYC. Sesame Street often creates controversial content that pushes boundaries. Do you think that collaborating with them and having a larger audience understand your work will shine a light on how your art form is perceived?

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HOTTEA: I believe artwork should be perceived differently by everyone. Even though I may not always agree with how people view my artwork, I believe that just makes it more interesting for me. I have always been the odd one out in every aspect of my life and if my artwork fit neatly into a certain category, something might be wrong.

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JE: When you visit Minneapolis, what are some places you love to tag? Are there any recent projects that might still be around to view?

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HOTTEA: I have an installation at HAUS, and that was actually my first hanging yarn installation. It was made somewhere around four or five years ago &ndash; but it&rsquo;s still there.

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As far as places I like to tag, I don&rsquo;t really like that wording &ndash; what I&rsquo;m doing I don&rsquo;t really consider to be graffiti. I&rsquo;m trying to do the opposite. Everything I do now in comparison to when I wrote graffiti is very different. I do all of my un-commissioned work during the day. I would have never even considered that as a graffiti writer. Doing graffiti, it was mostly about getting your name up and the style of letters you did it in. The work I do now is more about the surface or space it&rsquo;s in and how my materials co-exist with them. As a graffiti writer, I was very secretive about what I did and didn&rsquo;t tell my family or talk about it very much. My concept behind &ldquo;HOTTEA&rdquo; is to be completely vulnerable not only with the act of doing the work but also me as a person. &nbsp;

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In terms of upcoming projects, there is a pedestrian walkway at 35W and 94 near downtown with great views of the skyline. I am going to create a performance/installation over the bridge with balloons (the balloons will be a gradient of color from one end of the bridge to the other) and people holding those balloons. &nbsp;When everyone is in place on the bridge with their respective color of balloons a small choreographed performance/dance will take place. &nbsp;

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hottea_SydneyOperaHouse2%5B1%5D.jpg" /> Actions, yarn installation at the Sydney Opera House, 2016

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JE: Despite it being the complete antithesis of destruction, the graffiti nature of your work and its street elements still designate it as &quot;vandalism&quot; in the eyes of the law. In this way, so much of your work and who sees it is a race against time. What are the conceptual differences between the pieces you have done in a gallery setting - like your installation at HAUS - and designs you&#39;ve created for Perrier (i.e. works that have the longevity of viewership) versus the projects designed in urban settings?

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HOTTEA: Honestly, the only major conceptual difference is the space they are in. My work conceptually will always be about creating a lasting memory - much how I discovered yarn as my medium. It was a memory buried deep in my subconscious that surfaced when I was in a time of creative uncertainty. This memory was an everyday moment that helped me create something that I am very passionate about. Whether I am working on a commission indoors, for Perrier, or an un-commissioned installation on the street, I will always strive to create a positive lasting impression of that time and place. &nbsp;&nbsp;

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<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hottea2.jpg" /> HOTTEA (aka Eric Rieger). Photo by Jared Siskin &amp; Patrick McMullan.

&nbsp;

To see more of HOTTEA&rsquo;s work, follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hotxtea/">@hotxtea</a>, and to learn more about Perrier&rsquo;s collaborations with artists, visit <a href="http://perrier.tumblr.com/artxtra">ARTXTRA</a>.

&nbsp;

All photos courtesy of Perrier unless otherwise noted.

<div>&nbsp;</div>

We caught up with the internationally acclaimed street artist HOTTEA to talk about his career, his influences, and the philosophy behind all that yarn.

HOTTEA: How a Passion for Impermance Led to a New Street Art Perspective

Minneapolis visual artist and Associate Director of Soo Visual Arts Center, Alison Hiltner is an &ldquo;archaeologist of science fiction.&rdquo; Though some might see this as more of a hobby or even a conflict of interest, Hiltner has found a way to translate her love of science into art, creating thought-provoking, visually arresting installations. Her themes explore a fascination with how science &mdash; specifically in cinematic science fiction &mdash; has influenced our understanding of scientific research. By taking visual cues from both the natural world and fiction to create art, Hiltner allows room for something otherwise daunting and mysterious to be more accessible and experiential: art as a gateway drug towards a dialogue with science.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hiltner1.jpg" /> It Is Yesterday, installation view

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Her latest body of work, <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/alison-hiltner" target="_blank">a solo exhibition at Mia as part of their MAEP program</a>, explores the symbiotic relationship between human origin and the aquatic phylum cyanobacteria (often called blue-green algae). Examining this relationship, Hiltner strives to introduce the viewer to the vast world that is the intersection of art and science, establishing communication where there is no apparent common language.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

For this installation, Hiltner has created a mechanized interior environment exploring cyanobacteria via large-scale hanging sacks of algae. Like walking down the corridors of a science fiction mise-en-sc&egrave;ne, she brings the laboratory to the gallery in the hopes of inspiring a curiosity and a desire to understand more about the natural world in which we coexist with a great many other organisms.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

I caught up with Hiltner to talk about the connection between science and art and what it was like to bring her largest and most complex installation piece to date to Mia.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: For your MAEP exhibit, It Is Yesterday, you&#39;ve literally brought the science lab into a gallery setting to explore the symbiosis between algae and humans. Why algae? &nbsp;

&nbsp;

AH: I was drawn to algae for a variety of different reasons, and to quickly clarify, it is actually cyanobacteria, a primitive form of algae, and that is very important and will make an interesting lead in to the question below. Cyanobacteria was instrumental in forging the earth&rsquo;s atmosphere from the very start of the evolution of life. It also holds a very complex place in our rapidly altering climate, both as a resource to course-correct as well as a force for ecological destruction. I see this as a concise connection to how humans interact within our environment. On a more basic level, it appealed to me as something that registered as an organic life form. Its intense shade of green feels like the defining color of a plant but on an intensely primitive level. It forges a difficult, but meaningful, connection between the viewer and the cyanobacteria to push viewers to connect with a lifeform that seems void of life, yet is critically essential to our ecosystem.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hiltner3.jpg" />

&nbsp;

JE: In creating a responsive environment that explores growth and climate, how, more specifically, does this relationship between the beginnings of plant life and human origins connect? &nbsp;

&nbsp;

AH: This is a really great question and I think this link is a pretty concise summary of how I see that relationship: <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro.html">http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro.html</a>

&nbsp;

As far as how I forged that connection, the idea of an exchange of breath &mdash; the input of breath, filled with carbon dioxide, into the sensor chamber will exchange for the oxygen produced by the cyanobacteria. This exchange can feel like a very personal and primitive form of communication.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: What was the technical process in creating large-scale algae sculptures?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

AH: This piece was two years in the making. It started as a smaller scale piece, <a href="http://www.alisonhiltner.com/It-Was-Tomorrow">It Was Tomorrow</a>, and then endless prototyping, planning, consulting, experimenting, developing, more planning, and then executing. Not only am I dealing with a living thing that can die, I am also working with programming and interfaces, all of which have infinite variables attached. I try to solve and plan for as many of the outcomes as possible, but with all of the variables it is a constant moving target.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hiltner2.jpg" />

&nbsp;

JE: How do you think viewers will react to giant algae sacks at Mia?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

AH: Well, I hope they will be amused, curious, and eventually invested.

&nbsp;

JE: I recently listened to an NPR podcast on connecting science and art. During it, one of the guests speculated on the cultural aspect of science and art: origins. Both force us to reassess our place in the cosmos and probe into the larger questions of humanity. Both imagine the way the world is and as it might be. Where do you see the connection between science and art? &nbsp;

&nbsp;

AH: I think you nailed that one with the introduction to this question. But to address this a bit further, I believe that art is an invaluable tool for visual storytelling and creating a point of accessibility for the sciences that are somewhat intimidating to a large portion of the population. It creates an opportunity to directly interact with a hypothesis turned factual outcome; this ability to literally immerse someone in a line of thought is not really available to scientists on a large scale in terms of outreach. The laboratory is not usually a place for large groups of spectators.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: What led you to create your own connections with your sculptures and elements of science?

&nbsp;

AH: A lifelong love of the sciences; in what now feels like a previous life I thought I was going to pursue becoming a genetic engineer. Eventually I realized that art allowed me to investigate, understand, and share that understanding as a generalist instead of a specialist. In other words, I figure out it was more fun to play a scientist &ldquo;on television&rdquo; and still have the rewards of learning new things. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: When you&#39;re seeking a source for artistic inspiration, are there specific science fiction films or literature which have led you to explore the realms of wonder and mystery?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

AH: It is constantly expanding; I am a voracious consumer of films, not just sci-fi though that is most near and dear to my heart. As far as touchstones, Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey are the gold standards. There are far too many to name in particular, but for this exhibition Close Encounters of the Third Kind addresses similar ideas of forging communication with something that we have no common language with. Interestingly enough, I recently watched The Arrival and while it came out well after this exhibition was far into the final stages, I really connected to the exploration of linguistics in the film. And I will add Another Earth as it is a film that sticks with me as far as conceptual influences are concerned more than for visual components.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/hiltner4.jpg" /> The artist in her natural environment

&nbsp;

It Is Yesterday is part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, located in Mia&rsquo;s U.S. Bank Gallery. The opening reception is Thursday, March 16th, 6-9pm &mdash; held in conjunction with <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/alison-hiltner">Mia&rsquo;s Third Thursday</a> &mdash; with an Artist Talk on Thursday, May 18th. The exhibition runs through June 25th.&nbsp;

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All images courtesy of the artist.

Local installation artist Alison Hiltner tells us about the artistic, scientific, and cinematic inspirations behind her new MAEP installation, opening Thursday at Mia.

Interview: Alison Hiltner

When I started this article, I was hopeful. The sad thing is, it was a naive sense of hope. I truly thought we were progressing as a nation. We were talking about queer politics; trans and genderqueer were actual words that someone besides my small queer family were using; we elected our first Somali-American legislator; healthcare was a conversation; women&#39;s issues were back on the table as valid, indiscriminate rights. But it was all a sham. And despite a valiant effort, us &ldquo;strange&rdquo; humans could not band together and fight against a misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic racist.

&nbsp;

And I&#39;ll admit, I didn&#39;t want to write this article. I didn&#39;t think it mattered anymore. I mean, what does feminism &mdash; art feminism &mdash; even look like in this country now? But I awoke Thursday morning to an email in my inbox from Rhys Jones, the founder and organizer of A Conspiracy of Strange Girls, that said &quot;I just want to add that this morning, many CSG members are a) turning to our group for support and b) feeling even more strongly about that show in light of the fact that America just elected a literal fucking serial rapist.&rdquo; And I realized that the only thing we as artists, curators, musicians, and creatives can do in this time of infinite sadness is be more radical, to intentionally hold space for one another, to support one another&#39;s aberrancy, to remember that marginalized people are not expendable, to speak out and cry out even if our voice is a mere whisper. So, here&#39;s to that whisper, may it carry us until it can be stronger in this blanket of darkness.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/strangegirls2_rhys.jpg" /> Rhys Jones, Strange Girl

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This weekend marks the launch party for the newly-formed creative collective and arts organization that creates and promotes creative work by, for, and about &ldquo;Strange Girls.&rdquo; I caught up with Rhys (before the election) to talk about why creating a safe space in the art world is now more crucial than ever.

&nbsp;

JE: A Conspiracy of Strange Girls collective emerged as kind of an evolution to 2015&#39;s group art show, <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/written/2015/11/now-showing-strange-girls-never-die/">Strange Girls Never Die</a>. Why the decision to make it into a more permanent arts organization than say, an annual running art show?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Rhys Jones: After the huge response to the Strange Girls show last year, two things happened: first, I met even more kickass strange girls and my network expanded big time; and second, I got feedback from folks who came to the opening that was overwhelmingly positive across the board, and it dawned on me how great and potentially earth-shattering it would be to bring all of that together and create a real community. I sat on it for awhile though, and didn&rsquo;t really jump into action until late summer. One of my best friends was visiting from New York and gave me a talking-to for not having done anything with Strange Girls since the show (we&rsquo;re each other&rsquo;s tough love cheerleaders) &mdash; and that day a fire was lit under my ass, and I finally started telling people about this collective I&rsquo;d been dreaming about. While I&rsquo;m sure an annual stand-alone show would still be tons of fun and reach a lot of people, creating this community has way, way bigger potential.

&nbsp;

JE: The word &quot;strange&quot; may still be seen by some as a quality or an aesthetic that sets people apart from the &quot;norm&rdquo; in a pejorative way. In this context, the collective appears to be in the process of reclaiming the word as a more powerful and progressive designation. How does this reclaiming play into the collective&#39;s mission?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

RJ: I think the simple answer here is that our collective members embrace their strangeness, celebrate those differences, and understand it as a part of who we truly are &mdash; and who we are is reflected in our work. So many people who I&rsquo;ve met through this have told me that they&rsquo;ve genuinely identified as strange girls for a long time but didn&rsquo;t know that others did as well. My ma always said &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a strange little girl&rdquo; to me (affectionately, I swear) when I was a kid, so I guess I started young. We&rsquo;re all strange here, and that&rsquo;s a good thing.

&nbsp;

The thing about artists/creative folks is that we all know a gang-load of other artists and creative folks &mdash; and Strange Girls always know a gang-load more Strange Girls. I started by talking to artists who I knew would be into it (most of whom had art in last years Strange Girls show) first, and then branching out to people I knew less well, then all of them started recruiting, and on and on. Much though I love my friends, I certainly didn&rsquo;t want CSG to just be the Rhys&rsquo;s Friends Club (that would be an awesome club though, I keep good people). Just in the few short months since I officially started this, I&rsquo;ve met so many incredibly talented Strange Girls who I might not otherwise have connected with, and it just keeps expanding.

 
Beyond member-to-member recruitment, I also plan on reaching out to the out-of-state artists who showed work in Strange Girls Never Die last year, as well as others who I&rsquo;ve met along the way. One of my dreams for CSG is working with artists/makers/gallery owners/organizers in other cities around the country to co-curate Strange Girls shows in their cities &mdash; I&rsquo;ve got leads in New Orleans, Chicago, Brooklyn, Richmond, and Oakland so far, and I can&rsquo;t fully express how excited I am at the potential for those projects.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/strangegirls.jpg" />

&nbsp;

JE: Though Minneapolis is home to many art spaces run and operated by women, it&#39;s rare to see a female-dominated or femme-only art exhibit. Why do you think there&#39;s a shying away of this kind of show, and how can we as a community collaborate with more cis women, femmes, non-binary, trans, and genderqueer artists in a way that feels genuine and supportive while closing the gap?

&nbsp;

RJ: For me it comes down to the idea of intentionally holding space for and creating community with women/trans/femme and queer folks, something that still feels uncomfortable for some people. &ldquo;Equality&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t just mean 50/50 representation in all groups/spaces/institutions, but also that exclusively WTF groups are just as important and necessary as any other and we&rsquo;re allowed to create our own communities, networks, and support systems.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s also important to me that we&rsquo;re organizing around a framework of support and collaboration rather than treating everything as a competition. And there really is strength in numbers.

&nbsp;

JE: The conversation in the local scene surrounding a &quot;safe&quot; space for musicians and venue-goers has been a long-running one, but in the arts scene I feel like it&#39;s less talked about. How do you think we can open up the conversation to include more voices and to help more art spaces establish an identity of being supportive and respectful zones?

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RJ: This is a little difficult for me to fully answer because I&rsquo;m such a damn homebody, but I will do my best.&nbsp; Like you, I&rsquo;ve experienced my share of art-bro-ism in galleries and venues &mdash; it&rsquo;s the same macho garbage, just with tighter jeans and different cigarettes. I like the Afro Punk model of posting huge signs at their events with a list of bullshit that is not welcome at the event (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc). We can&rsquo;t necessarily make you not be an asshole in the rest of the world, but we can name what won&rsquo;t fly in our own spaces &mdash; and if you don&rsquo;t like it, I hope the door doesn&rsquo;t hit you on the way out. I&rsquo;ve heard people argue against attempts at creating safer spaces by saying &ldquo;Well, the world isn&rsquo;t safe,&rdquo; as if that somehow negates the need for such spaces. If the rest of the world isn&rsquo;t and will never be truly &ldquo;safe&rdquo; for a lot of people, why on earth wouldn&rsquo;t we create places and groups where we can find refuge? &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: In a traditional art gallery style show, we often get lost in the visuals of a certain piece and forget the time consuming effort and vision it took to create such artwork. For this event, you&#39;re ditching the traditional, and instead members of the collective will be creating new, original pieces live within the space. What sparked the idea for live art-making and what can attendees expect during the creation process?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

RJ: I am a huge process nerd. I love seeing other people&rsquo;s studios/workshops and practices, and seeing how they specifically do things. Sometimes artists do this at open studio events &mdash; let people see the magic happen &mdash; and I wanted to take that and expand upon it. I also think that letting people really see the work being created helps contribute to the respect of creative labor and art-making. And it offers sooo many opportunities for people to nerd out about different art forms, creative processes, aesthetics, equipment, etc&hellip; and I love that. I&rsquo;m also very interested in deviating from what an art show &ldquo;has to&rdquo; look like. The other aspect of this that I&rsquo;m really into is that for things like the pewter pouring, tshirt printing, and leather tooling, those are all processes that are often completely foreign to the average person and, beyond just being something interesting to look at, can be legit learning opportunities. &nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/strangegirls2_collab.jpg" />

&nbsp;

Our co-conspirators (aka attendees) can expect to see the creation of two large scale paintings (by Ivy Sendrijas of Dim Media, Martzia Thometz, and Marika Paumen; and Joy Spika and Katrina Knutson); wonder over molten metal at the live pewter pouring station (Jess Bergman Tank &amp; Samantha Leopold-Sullivan); have a custom printed tshirt made right in front of them (Kara Faye Gregory); see the process that goes into embellishing leather (Lauren Roberts); get hands-on with our interactive installation/performance piece being built specially for this event (Mary Allen and Nicole Simpkins); see video from 7 members of Creepy Girl Travels Society from all around the world also creating new work from afar (Allison Landers); and get $5/5 minutes portraits drawn on the spot (Lucie Biros and Claire Ward).

&nbsp;

JE: The launch also includes performances by Star Child, OAKS, royal brat, Queenie von Curves, and Penny Dreadful. What about these local acts embodies the Strange Girls mindset?

 
Rhys: Both Queenie and Penny are CSG members (both recruited by other members) &mdash; Queenie will be performing a burlesque routine and Penny will be performing an aerial silks piece. Star Child (Mary Allen and Joy Spika) and OAKS (Erica Krumm) have CSG members as well, and royal brat was recruited by members. We&rsquo;re a big, multi-talented family.

&nbsp;

JE: The launch doubles as sort of a fundraiser also for the collective to get off the ground and you&#39;ll be selling/releasing collective-designed mini prints, stickers, t-shirts, and more. What will these extra funds help the collective accomplish in the future?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

We&rsquo;ve got big dreams. We&rsquo;ve got shows we&rsquo;re starting to plan for the winter, spring, and summer and would love to work toward a Strange Girls music festival and Halloween Ball. We&rsquo;re planning to have presences at local art fairs and makers markets in the warmer months and will be continuing to release limited edition prints, tshirts, etc&hellip; Bringing Strange Girls to other cities is a really exciting, though not terribly cheap, prospect. And another big part of the CSG masterplan is to create a Strange Girls mentorship program, connecting collective members and the next generation of creative Strange Girls. We&rsquo;re also hoping to team up with other local women/queer focused/owned groups, businesses, teams, etc for events of all sorts all over the cities.

&nbsp;

JE: With over 60 inaugural members, it&#39;s no surprise that each comes from a variety of creative backgrounds: visual art, tattooing, music, performance, craft, even arts organizing. Nicole Sara Simpkins is a local visual artist and printmaker who has printed an autobiographical tarot card set and produced some really cool punk flyers. Annabombb is an acrylic painter whose art is centered around body positivity. Marika Paumen is a multi-media artist exploring the psychological phenomenon of Pareidolia within her art. Remedy Rook is a tattoo apprentice, musician, and self-proclaimed biophilic. What is it about this collective that inspires such a diversity within its members? Why do they find this space to be so welcoming?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Rhys: I definitely made it a point to recruit all sorts of creators &mdash; I think expanding our membership beyond traditional fine arts gives the group an incredible breadth of talent, skill sets, practices, experiences, and ideas and makes us all push ourselves to do bigger and radder things. Members have the opportunity to push and develop their own practices and work with other artists and makers, collaborate with each other on new work, swap skill shares, get feedback/critique on works in progress, barter/trade, and our collective network for resources and promotion is many times greater as a group. Seeing friendships and collaborations coming out of CSG meetings, events, and online spaces is really my favorite thing and warms the ashes in my cold, dead heart. It&rsquo;s why I wanted to bring this group together in the first place &mdash; I just want there to be more rad shit in the world, and this group is bursting at the seams with that.

 
--Juleana Enright 
&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/a-conspiracy-of-strange-girls-launch-event" target="_blank">A Conspiracy of Strange Girls Launch Event</a> is Saturday, November 12th, from 6 to 10pm at CO Exhibitions Gallery in Minneapolis. The event is one night only. Learn more about CSG at <a href="http://strangegirls.org">strangegirls.org</a>, and see Rhys&rsquo;s work at <a href="http://lowwbones.com" target="_blank">lowwbones.com</a>. 
 
Cover Image Credit:&nbsp;Birdskull Photography/Maddie Wiberg

Local artist and organizer Rhys Jones tells us more about A Conspiracy of Strange Girls, a newly-formed creative collective mounting a one-night-only arts bonanza at CO Exhibitions this weekend.

A Conspiracy of Strange Girls: An interview with Rhys Jones

Tarot cards, game nights, witchy workshops &mdash; these might not be your typical words associated with an art gallery, but the events calendar and arts programming at <a href="http://lightgreyartlab.com/">Light Grey Art Lab</a>&nbsp;contains them all. Revolving around the experimental side of art appreciation, the art space is illustration-heavy and definitely holds a space in its heart for gamers, providing a regularly scheduled, community-focused game night. No wonder they&rsquo;ve been featured in the console generation&rsquo;s bible, Nintendo Magazine. From mystically-themed workshops where attendees can design their own crystal pendants and talismans, to an entire exhibition which invited 100 international artists to contribute a symbolic depiction of one of the constellations or nearby astral bodies to create a tarot and oracle deck, Light Grey brings to life an amalgamation of art and fantasy.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Founded by artist Lindsay Nohl and located in Minneapolis&rsquo;s Whittier neighborhood, the gallery and collaborative arts space brings together creatives from around the world to exhibit work, collaborate on projects, and oftentimes share in epic world sojourns via their international travel residency program. On top of her gallery work, Nohl has published a number of projects including Girls: Fact + Fiction, an eighty-page celebration of real-life and fictional heroines, and has contributed to Rolemodels: The Battle for Vyk&rsquo; Tornaahl, an artist deck and RPG fantasy card game. She also teaches at MCAD in the Illustration Department.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

This weekend, Nohl lends her curatorial expertise to Gamut Gallery&rsquo;s annual &ldquo;call for works&rdquo; exhibition, <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/call-4-work-2016">C4W</a>,&nbsp;where she has selected artwork from twenty-four artists out of a diverse pool of submissions to create a cohesive group show focused on the elements of intention and communication. I caught up with Lindsay to chat about the history of Light Grey Art Lab, her approach to curation, and what we can expect from LGAL in future months to come.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/gamut-c4w-lightgrey.jpg" /> Light Grey Art Lab

&nbsp;

JE: How did Light Grey Art Lab come about and why did you decide opening a gallery/artspace was something you wanted to do?

&nbsp;

Lindsay Nohl: Light Grey Art Lab was my way of answering a couple big challenges with the creative life. As a commercial artist, I often found myself unable to share my work (as most of my work was under non-disclosure agreements until nearly a year after I made it), and I knew that others, particularly illustrators, designers, animators, and people in the games industries all might have the same challenge. We were all being creative but with no immediate way to celebrate the work we were making. The turn-around for many of our exhibitions at Light Grey are short, usually within a month of the call for work, so when someone makes a piece of work, we share the process &mdash; everything from the sketches someone posts on social media to small crops of the work as we lead up to the show. Finally, when the opening comes around, the full piece is revealed, and we try our best to make it as visible as possible.

&nbsp;

Beyond that, I had heard many times from my other creative friends, my past students, or my colleagues that making work in your studio, particularly if you are a freelance artist, or at a company where there isn&#39;t a big art team, was often a lonely job! Many of us crave creative conversation, ways to make work together, and to be challenged and to find a way to be inspired by others in our field and beyond. These days, we host everything from artist lectures to group workshops led by creatives to residency programs and travel trips for others that would like to travel abroad and adventure with others. The easiest way for people to participate and join the conversation is through the group exhibitions, where the conversation can start online and hopefully begin new friendships.

&nbsp;

The final thing was that there isn&#39;t always room to experiment or see your work in new formats when you have tight deadlines or are working commercially. We try to switch up the format of our exhibitions, from experiential exhibitions like Dream Arcade, where we created a 27 level platformer game in which artists could create their own worlds, to the COSMOS exhibition, where each of 100 artists researched and reinterpreted the constellations and astral bodies of the night sky. Inside the gallery, artists saw their work transformed into a planetarium &mdash; we built prints loaded with fiber-optics so visitors and artists alike could appreciate the stars inside. A couple years ago we did an art show for Halloween called Skate or Die, where we helped artists realize a skateboard showcasing their work. It&#39;s a fun creative challenge to think about how your work can transform, and how different formats can challenge your view of how many things you&#39;re capable of making.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/gamut-c4w-dreamarcade.jpg" /> Dream Arcade opening reception. Photo courtesy Light Grey Art Lab.

&nbsp;

Juleana Enright: You&#39;ve been an illustration instructor at MCAD for over a decade. What would you say are the most interesting differences between the roles of teacher and curator?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

LN: Teaching is incredible. I enjoy listening to individual artists&rsquo; obsessions, ambitions, and try to help as much as I can with any creative challenges they may be working through. Curating lives in a similar world for me, and due to the nature of our shows, it&#39;s actually quite a similar process. Since our exhibitions are thematic, I give a &#39;prompt&#39; to the creative community, just as I would in class, and then artists from all areas respond. Each piece of work contributed is a reflection of the artist&#39;s interests, perspective, and focus on the theme, and it&#39;s as much a self-portrait as it is an answer to the creative challenge I&#39;ve provided.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

The funny thing about our projects at Light Grey is that they also share the &#39;surprise&#39; facet of receiving artwork on the deadline date! We do not choose artwork from already-created works by the artists. Every piece in our exhibitions has been created specifically for the show. In that way, curating for Light Grey is just like teaching, where work at the college is presented on critique day and revealed to the rest of the class for a response!

&nbsp;

JE: Tell us a little about your published projects, Girls: Fact + Fiction and In Place: Wish You Were Here.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

LN: The published projects are meant to be seen as a body of work but with many different contributors. We always have thematic exhibitions, and the published projects allow viewers to look at the broader conversation around a theme. In the case of Girls: Fact + Fiction, we wanted to create a &#39;short&#39; list of all of the women that have inspired us as creatives. Each artist contributed their pick, and explained a bit about why they were highlighting that person. We had entries from all eras and backgrounds, and it is wonderful seeing all of the stories in one book so viewers can appreciate the individual artist&#39;s highlighted person, and their personal stories of why the woman they chose has changed their lives.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/gamut-c4w-girls.jpg" /> Photo courtesy Light Grey Art Lab.

&nbsp;

JE: Would do you think is the most challenging part of owning and operating a gallery?

&nbsp;

LN: Time management. I have this problem with &quot;Feature Creep&quot; -- which is when you keep wanting to make something cooler and, in turn, making it more complex. I&#39;m lucky to work with three super rational creative people, so they keep me grounded, but I&#39;m all about trying hard to make an experience really cool, so it&#39;s hard to say no to adding things and adjusting things the whole way through. I&#39;m also juggling my other jobs (as owner of a product design studio, <a href="http://paperbicycle.com/">Paper Bicycle</a>, where I design graphics and objects for home, stationery, apparel and gift products) and as an adjunct faculty member at MCAD, where I am constantly inspired by the students and their infinite creativity. I tend to stay late, work into the night, and need a lot of coffee.

&nbsp;

Someday I&#39;d love to find a way to get some work-life balance, but I think that&#39;s a problem for a lot of creative folks that both make work for a living and do it for fun.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

JE: What exhibitions or events does LGAL have coming up that you are most excited to showcase?

&nbsp;

LN: I&#39;m super excited about the new year &mdash; we have some really incredible shows coming up. Fortune is our end-of-year exhibition that will last through January, that showcases gilded artwork! The whole show is metallic, with rose gold and gold, and we&#39;re super excited to see it shine! We have a trip to Japan scheduled for the spring, where we&#39;ll be bringing groups of artists from all around the world to experience Japanese food, hike through misty mountaintops, learn more about the culture and the artwork, and make work abroad with other creatives. This program is just one of the travel programs we&#39;re getting ready for for the travel season over the summer and can&#39;t wait to adventure with everyone!

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/gamut-c4w-iceland.jpg" /> Iceland Residency Program artist talk. Photo courtesy Light Grey Art Lab.

&nbsp;

Beyond that, we are getting ready for our 4th year running our Iceland Residency Program. It&#39;s an academic program led in the wild outdoors in Iceland, where artists learn from one another, explore the extreme landscape, and get to participate in 12 creative workshops contributed by the artists-in-residence. It&#39;s always something we look forward to. Iceland is incredible, but traveling there with other creative folks is the best.

&nbsp;

JE: You were recently a guest curator for Gamut Gallery&rsquo;s annual Call For Works group exhibit, which opens <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/call-4-work-2016">this weekend</a>.&nbsp;Can you talk a bit about how you selected the artists and pieces for this specific show?&nbsp;

&nbsp;

LN: The artists selected for the show were all very confident creators whose artistic voices were strong, vibrant, and intentional in the way they handled their media, how they put together their submissions, and within the craftsmanship of the final works themselves. When curating, I look for people that are consistent in their creative voice, regardless of media used or subject matter portrayed. There&#39;s always something very revealing about a personal body of work -- it&#39;s a self portrait without being a self portrait. Each work speaks volumes of the creator&#39;s intentions and their thoughtfulness in the execution of their themes. This body of work is a mix of very representational works amongst stylized illustrative work and abstract pieces with collage and photography. I believe the works chosen are both strong pieces alone and within the context of the group exhibition.

&nbsp;

Intention and communication are the words I&#39;d use to describe the body of work. I think all pieces selected did a great job of communicating their individual themes and it was a pleasure looking at how clever people have been about representing emotions, stories, and moments within their chosen media. They are all very clearly communicative.

&nbsp;

The process for curating the C4W show was really fun. I really enjoyed looking at the themes that each artist brought to the table, and learning more about them through the work they&#39;ve submitted. When putting together the assortment, I didn&#39;t compare artists to one another, but looked for the individual intention in each piece (much was inferred by the title) and then how artists were clever about their interpretation of the theme. Work that communicated well was my top priority -- I suppose that has a lot to do with being from the illustration and design field.&nbsp;

Readability and response is paramount when communicating ideas to viewers. If an artist communicates a concept well (through their choices in medium, approach to making, and the final visual), it&#39;s likely the work has a lot of strength. If it&#39;s clever, it&#39;s an even stronger piece of work. You can not separate the choices an artist made in their approach to a piece, from the final itself. It&#39;s all part of the work.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/gamut-c4w-lindsay.jpg" /> Lindsay Nohl. Photo courtesy MCAD.

&nbsp;

--&nbsp;Juleana Enright

&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/call-4-work-2016">C4W: 2016 Annual Open Call for Work Show</a> opens at Gamut Gallery this Friday, November 4th 7-11pm 
$5 admission with a live synth set from Modwell&nbsp; 
For more info, <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/call-4-work-2016">check out our event listing</a> and be sure to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/318041615241629/">RSVP on Facebook</a>

Ahead of this weekend’s C4W opening at Gamut Gallery, Juleana Enright caught up with Lindsay Nohl to talk about guest curating that show and running her own artspace, Light Grey Art Lab.

Interview: Lindsay Nohl of Light Grey Art Lab

&ldquo;We didn&#39;t know this is what we were getting ourselves into when we started. We started looking for a studio space and then found a storefront space on 42nd Street near Hiawatha. It was more aligned to be a gallery and we thought, &#39;Well, if we&#39;re going to have a gallery, we should have a residency program; if we have a residency program, then we need a bigger space,&rsquo; and we moved in here.&quot;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

The space is 3400 Cedar Ave, aka The White Page, a collectively-run artist space founded by artists Kathryn Sheldon, Alanah Luger-Guillaume, Alexis L. Stiteler, and Rebecca Spangenthal. <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/the-white-page-3rd-anniversary">This Saturday</a>, The White Page celebrates three years of art programming by hosting an anniversary party which will include a silent auction featuring artwork from past and upcoming TWP artists, an array of prizes donated by local businesses, DJs, dancing, and more.&nbsp;

 
Recently I sat down with the founding members as they collectively recounted the history of The White Page&rsquo;s inception and broke down the strategy behind their unique residency and arts programming.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/wp3_Carolina.jpg" /> Transplanting Cityscapes, installation by Carolina Borja

&nbsp;

Part studio space, part residency program, part gallery, The White Page is an openly feminist, welcoming DIY space comprised of eleven practicing artists (including TWP founders), who divvy the cost of rent and communally shared studio space, a wood shop, and a fully-functioning darkroom. When the space isn&rsquo;t being utilized as a gallery, it plays host to music events, workshops, literature and poetry readings, rental one-nighters, performance art pieces, and events that can take place either coexisting within an exhibition or in direct response to it.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Imagining the space, Kate, Alanah, Alexis, and Rebecca - all Minneapolis transplants - were simply looking for a studio space to create their own art, but in discovering the city and falling in love with its art community, they realized their chosen locale could double as a space to highlight local artists. They hoped to create a place for emerging artists to show their artwork (possibly for the first time), establish a network, and springboard their art opportunities.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t have a model that we formatted ourselves after. We&#39;ve definitely found other spaces on a national scale that are doing things similar to us, but when we first started we had no idea. We just thought, &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s get people [from back home] to come here because there is potential for this art community to grow.&rsquo;

&nbsp;

&ldquo;We were all separately applying to residencies and hitting walls repeatedly because we don&#39;t have our MFAs and we had never had our own solo shows before. There was a certain point where we realized The White Page could have a public component and provide that in-between space for people. Once we thought about other people who we went to school with or knew that could benefit from having an opportunity like this, it just kind of snowballed from there.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/wp3_Jacob%20and%20Naama.jpg" /> Grave&rsquo;s Bait Stick Snare, installation by Jacob Raeder and Namaa Hadany

&nbsp;

TWP now finds themselves a part of a small network of local DIY art spaces whose focus is on assisting emerging artists by providing them the opportunity to produce and exhibit their work while working within a community environment. Their active residency program hosts six MPLS-based, national, and international applicants per year, each residency culminating in a month-long exhibition. The residents are exposed to the practices of the eleven other active studio members, building a communal terrain that fosters constructive dialogue and a fully-realized arts immersion during a stage which, for most residents, is at the beginning of their careers.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;The space itself has more of a life, a vibrancy. Our residents often tell us how nice it is to have the traffic of artists coming and going. There are lots of opportunities for opinions and feedback, more resources, more people to draw on who have connections in the city that we don&#39;t.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

These connections attract more attendees and a more diversified crowd to each exhibit, harnessing a creative interaction that both artists and viewers can build upon.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&ldquo;We definitely immediately missed the college energy of having people working all around you. It was a conscious decision to build that space around us again for ourselves. You just can&#39;t do it alone in a bubble without anyone&#39;s feedback ever.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/wp3_Isa.jpg" /> Heliotuduc, installation by Isa Newby Gagarin

&nbsp;

When it comes to residencies, TWP&rsquo;s definition is - by their own admission - pretty loose. They predominantly try to accept applicants who need the studio space to work in, but it&rsquo;s not their sole deciding factor. Visiting residents tend to use the studio more heavily, whereas artists residing in the Twin Cities may have other studios, relying on the space as strictly a place to premiere their final collection. In that aspect, the structure of the program changes from residency to residency.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

A step away from institutionalized art galleries, TWP encourages resident artists to utilize all facets of the gallery - floor to ceiling - for an immersive experience that reimagines the space.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&ldquo;We&#39;re often more excited about exhibits that take up the whole space because it&#39;s risky. Our goal isn&#39;t to make money so it takes that pressure off the artist and allows the freedom for riskier elements of expression and imagination. It&#39;s kind of an experiment. We are a tool to help artists realize whatever vision they see and bringing forth that image to get them to the next step.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

That immersive quality and potential for exposure is what drives the residency-produced exhibitions. By not asking their artists to make a product that they can sell, the artists have the opportunity to be their most experimental, providing the confidence for future shows.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

They cite Baltimore artist-run spaces like First Continent, Springsteen Gallery, and BB as examples of galleries who achieve successful exhibitions by allowing their artists to dive into uncharted creative territory. In these spaces, every external design decision made by the gallery owners (from aberrant lighting choices to experimental gallery layout) meets the artist halfway to craft a space which has the potential to be an engaging, immersive and visceral experience from the minute you walk through the doors. It&#39;s not simply about decorating the walls. For emerging artists, the ability to have full range of the gallery in its rawest form and experiment at will is truly rare and monumental.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&ldquo;It boils down to an element of trust. We&#39;ve entrusted them with the entire space - that&rsquo;s very important to whatever next step you&#39;re trying to get to. Showing that you&#39;ve done it before, that you can do it successfully and that you&#39;ve documented it well, all of that - even if it doesn&#39;t help you financially in that moment - it helps with applying for grants and with future opportunities.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

While TWP&rsquo;s mission of establishing a platform for emerging artists is crystal clear, their formatting hasn&rsquo;t always been. And that&rsquo;s okay - they&rsquo;ve rolled with the changes and will continue to adapt as necessary. Perhaps it&rsquo;s this acceptance of an organic evolution which has allowed them a radical, boundaryless edge and three years of success alongside their peers in more traditional non-profit and commercial galleries.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/wp3_TWP.jpg" />

&nbsp;

-- Juleana Enright 
 
TWP&rsquo;s 3yr Anniversary Party is Saturday, September 24th, 7pm-midnight. It will be a night of food, drink, raffles, music, dancing, and more. Entry is FREE and all are welcome. For more info, visit our <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/the-white-page-3rd-anniversary">event listing</a> or the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1774528326128810/">facebook event</a>.&nbsp;

Celebrating its third anniversary this Saturday with a blowout party, The White Page has found remarkable staying power as an art gallery, artist collective, residency program, and event space.

Gallery Profile: The White Page

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/olig_Profile.jpg" /> Artist Mat Ollig

&nbsp;

Local painter Mat Ollig is a bit of an anomaly. As a successful freelance artist, he seems to effortlessly sell artwork while maintaining his own personal style and dabbling in the experimental. While many artists rely on a second job to support their art, Mat quickly found that his art sales trumped the money coming in from his &ldquo;real job&rdquo; after graduating from MCAD. Establishing a unique, intimate rapport with collectors and appreciators of his art, Mat made the transition from screenprinter/designer to full-time, professional painter and has since created original artwork for the Hyatt Regency, the Millennium Hotel&rsquo;s clubroom, CrashPlan software company Code42, and Omni Brewing as well as contributed a year-long display of several paintings in the Minnesota State Capitol&rsquo;s Senate wing.&nbsp;

I sat down with Mat in his studio in North Minneapolis to chat about taking chances with his artwork while keeping collectors happy and how he&rsquo;s developed a lucrative career heavily based on commission work alone. And while his studio reads &ldquo;artist,&rdquo; with panels of finished and unfinished work floating above our heads, his demeanor falls more in line with a sales leader&nbsp;or marketing guru. Mat definitely knows how to sell his art.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/olig_Riveting.jpg" /> Riveting the Banks of the Mississippi, oil on canvas, 52&rdquo;x 65&rdquo;

&nbsp;

JE: While many artists rely on gallery representation to sell artwork and to gain recognition, exhibiting art in a gallery setting is not something you do with much frequency. At the same time, selling art doesn&rsquo;t seem to be an issue for you. To what would you attribute this?&nbsp;

MO: I&rsquo;ve been really fond of biographies of the old artists and read about how they sold art before the modern gallery came about. They sold their work and formed relationships with collectors in a more personal fashion, and they would then in turn be referred to their collectors&rsquo; friends, and so on and so forth.

I took those lessons to heart, and found it easy to navigate amongst collectors. They would invite me over to their home and show me their collections, and I would invite them to my studio, and we would talk about my paintings. More often than not, they would leave my studio with one or two small paintings tucked under their arm.

JE: Your first commission, the one that &ldquo;got the ball rolling,&rdquo; came from someone who spotted your work online. Can you elaborate on that story?&nbsp;

MO: My first break was with Ogletree Deakins - a Minneapolis law firm. They found one of my paintings on MCAD&rsquo;s website and they contacted me. I actually honestly almost deleted [the email] because I thought it was a scam. It was this woman saying &ldquo;Hi, I represent this law firm; we&rsquo;re new and we love your work.&rdquo; It sounded too good to be true. But I quickly Googled the person&rsquo;s name and realized it wasn&rsquo;t a scam. I did their lobby painting and they liked it so much, they asked if I could create the artwork for their entire office, and that just catapulted everything.&nbsp;

JE: What do you think it is about your artwork that allows it that ubiquitous accessibility factor, something that can easily be displayed in corporate offices and high-trafficked spaces?&nbsp;

MO: It&rsquo;s not something you can instantly digest; you have to spend some time with it, but it&rsquo;s definitely accessible. My new work is multidimensional with varying panels. I have a 14-foot dimensional painting with Code42 that has 23 individual canvases. It&rsquo;s representational, but abstracted. I think that&rsquo;s what corporate collections like. They have guests who come in and they&rsquo;re waiting around and they want to be able to entertain them while they wait. People just enjoy looking at my art.&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/olig_Fracturing-spacetime.jpg" /> Fracturing Space/Time, oil on canvas, 53&#39;&#39;x53&#39;&#39;

&nbsp;

JE: Much of your artwork is an &ldquo;ode to past accomplishments&rdquo; that we&rsquo;ve experienced either locally or on a worldwide level - our first lunar landing or the building of local architectural structures, for example. What draws you to create a visual retrospective of these historical moments?&nbsp;

MO: Mainly because back then, everything was spectacle. I feel like there isn&rsquo;t much spectacle on the grand scale anymore, everything is becoming smaller, thinner, waiting for the next update with the latest features. It&rsquo;s harder to be more appreciative of it. Hearing the stories of what past generations did - building giant rockets, going to the moon, Zeppelins - I&rsquo;m trying to invoke that feeling of accomplishment.

JE: Your newer paintings feature a series of fragmented pieces that when pieced together create a larger, complete composition. How did that experimental process come about?&nbsp;

MO: For the longest time, I was starting to get bored with painting rectangles and squares. I had this idea that I wanted to create something that was more dimensional. I saw some work done by Gregory Euclide and his work is very dimension, with varying layers and I thought &lsquo;how can I apply this to a painting.&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t know if it was the pattern of argyle or if I was waiting for something to load on my computer with a slow connection and it just became fragmented, but it just kind of came to me one day. Using diamonds instead of squares, the work becomes more engaging and doesn&rsquo;t just recede into the architecture; it becomes its own thing. By having the gaps in between the panels, it becomes more of an installation and sculptural, rather than just a two-dimensional piece.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/olig_godly.jpg" /> Godly Judgement Over the Waters, oil on canvas, 57&rdquo;x 82&rdquo;

&nbsp;

JE: With this particular series, you explore the subjects in our collective conscious. The paintings portray the fragmentary nature of memories - related images overlap and boundaries cease to exist. What draws you to examine this concept?&nbsp;

MO: I&rsquo;ve done a lot of research on phenomenology and how we perceive the world around us and how that influences the way we see things. When we look at a painting, we&rsquo;re not just taking in all in at once, we see fragments. Even when we see someone, it&rsquo;s not the entire face; we create a mosaic based on the individual details. I wanted to create a painting that was more true to that, essentially paring down as much as I could and also adding as much as I could, in a contradictory but complementary manner. By overlaying the images, it&rsquo;s creating more of a feeling of that image rather than just a visual depiction. A lot of my work before the dimensional pieces was about the inside and the outside of architecture and buildings, and it just becomes this experience.&nbsp;

JE: Would you say that your personal work is creatively different from the work you&rsquo;ve been commissioned to do or do they fall in the same bracket?&nbsp;

MO: There&rsquo;s definitely a difference. My personal work is a lot more experimental. I like to investigate how perception works. I like to think that I&rsquo;m a &ldquo;series artist.&rdquo; I have the &ldquo;Neo-Cubist Paintings&rdquo; where I explore layering imagery over one another to create a narrative more akin to the way the viewer sees the world, and the result of exploring phenomenology and how it relates to the viewer&rsquo;s experience of viewing the art. I focus on using compositional elements to keep the viewers&rsquo; eyes within the painting. These paintings appear both representational, yet abstract, and are my most popular paintings.&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/olig_moderncafe.jpg" /> Modern Caf&eacute; [RGB Prototype #14], oil on canvas, 24 x 30&rdquo;

Then I have the &ldquo;RGB Paintings,&rdquo; a series of 24 &ldquo;prototypes&rdquo; investigating how to create full color images using only the colors that our retina can decipher: red, blue, green, and black (no color). I was turned on to this idea after reading Modern Chromatics by Ogden Rood, a book that inspired Seurat. I had to suspend this investigation, as I developed a repetitive stress injury in the length of my arm creating the thousands of hand painted hatch marks needed to create the effect. It took me seven years to create the right color green, and I&rsquo;m currently waitlisted for the new YInMn Blue that will be available as soon as their EPA paperwork is filed.&nbsp;

The &ldquo;Multi-Panel Paintings&rdquo; an extension of the Neo-Cubist series but investigating how to create paintings using the most minimal compositional elements possible, which, ironically, led to an incredibly complex composition. These paintings embrace their being art objects, rather than typical 2-dimensional art. They are in effect installation pieces and merge with their location in ways sculpture does and paintings typically don&rsquo;t. &nbsp;

For the &ldquo;Dimensional Paintings,&rdquo; which is the evolution of the &ldquo;Multi-Panel Paintings,&rdquo; I literally added a layer. This is the current series of paintings I&rsquo;m exploring, and can be considered the same series as the Multi-Panel series. The sculptural nature of the paintings is becoming more heavily evident, and my latest painting has five layers of panels. This will continue until the paintings are able to literally leave the wall, and become free-standing painted sculpture.

&ldquo;3D Encoded&rdquo; is the most adventurous, scientific, and laborious of my series, being still in development. By using a concave lens&rsquo; chromatic aberration, which bends light like a prism, I noticed that some colors appear to dramatically advance, while others receded. This was discovered in a reducing lens; something artists used to make a painting look smaller, and easier to see when they were in front of it in a small studio. Ironically it&rsquo;s beginning to show that classical color theory is holding true in allowing something to appear three-dimensional using color alone. Currently, I&rsquo;m mapping out colors to determine their relative depth in relation to one another. It is essentially a more refined and detailed explanation of Hans Hoffman&rsquo;s &ldquo;push pull&rdquo; theory of color.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/olig_pallet-table.jpg" />

&nbsp;

JE: As an MCAD alum, you often participate in the MCAD Art Sale. How would you say this event helps propel you as an artist and get a feel of what&rsquo;s working and what&rsquo;s still rough draft phase?

MO: It&rsquo;s been a really good way to not have to worry so much about offending past collectors and has helped me hone in on my style. I found that the multi-layered technique which combines abstract and representational was the most popular, and honestly that&rsquo;s the most fun style I like painting in. But I also use it to experiment with different styles of paintings. The RGB Paintings, for example, I premiered at the last show. I didn&rsquo;t sell as many as I wanted to but I&rsquo;ve been getting a lot of interest after the fact. I think it&rsquo;s just a little too new. It&rsquo;s a technique that no one else is really doing.&nbsp;

JE: Any future projects we should be aware of?&nbsp;

MO: My next big project will be finished by this fall. I have a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and for that piece I&rsquo;m going to be going to ten small town diners, scattered around the state, and creating artwork about the history of that diner. They&rsquo;re not going to be historic diners per se, but the place where all the locals go, a multi-generational establishment and how they tie into local history. So, there&rsquo;s this one diner out west on Highway 12 that Hubert Humphrey would have gone to because it was on his way to the cities, and I also found the last Embers in existence, which was a Minnesota company. Once I find the diners, I&rsquo;ll create a painting that will be in the diner and there will be a postcard at the diner and a brochure showing all of the locations so people are going to have to go on an epic road trip to collect all ten postcards.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/olig_porkys.jpg" /> You Can Dine in Your Car!, oil on canvas, 41&rdquo;x 78&rdquo;

See more of Mat&#39;s work on his website,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.matollig.com/" target="_blank">http://www.matollig.com/</a>

-- Juleana Enright 
​

Minnesota native Mat Ollig talks commissions, compositions, and the many facets of his painting practice.

Written by Juleana EnrightWebsite

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