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

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

&nbsp;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

&nbsp;

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

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

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

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

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

The Fight for the Future of California Street

The Scene

&nbsp;

<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">This is the first in&nbsp;a series of articles encouraging you to help Juxtaposition Arts reach <a href="https://juxtapositionarts.org/donate/capital-campaign/" target="_blank">their fundraising goal</a>&nbsp;before the end of the summer. <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&amp;hosted_button_id=MUHFVF2XGR9KJ&amp;source=url" target="_blank">Donate</a> today!</div>

Juxtaposition Arts has big plans.&nbsp;And while&nbsp;Covid-19 and the civil unrest and collective grieving&nbsp;that followed George Floyd&rsquo;s murder caused the nonprofit to cancel their annual Move The Crowd fundraiser this year, JXTA&nbsp;is still moving forward with their&nbsp;ambitious capital campaign. The&nbsp;goal for this summer is&nbsp;$2 million&nbsp;from individual donors, part of a $14 million overall campaign to cement JXTA&rsquo;s place as a vital arts center in North Minneapolis. With the fundraiser, JXTA is making moves to create an extensive arts campus in North Minneapolis, one that will bring the work the organization has been doing in the community to the next level.&nbsp;

JXTA isn&rsquo;t just an arts education hub. The organization&rsquo;s model is about building up North Minneapolis&rsquo;s strength through the arts, with year-round learning opportunities for youth as well as its core JXTALabs program, where young people age 14-21 are paid a living wage as they build arts and design skills.

<h3>In the beginning</h3>

JXTA first came to be 25 years ago, when Roger and DeAnna Cummings, along with co-founder Peyton Russell, were teaching arts classes in different spaces around the city. They decided to form their own nonprofit in order to centralize the arts education programming they were offering, which included mentorship opportunities and training in mural painting and contemporary art.

In the 2000s, JXTA purchased three buildings at the intersection of Emerson Avenue and West Broadway in North Minneapolis, redeveloping the buildings as spaces for education but also re-imagining how art could build wealth by and for North Minneapolis communities. During those years, the organization shifted from just being about creating and teaching art to thinking about art as a tool in community development.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxNTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />A student taking a drawing class through JXTA&#39;s Visual Art Literacy Training (VALT) program. Photo by Rich&eacute;&nbsp;Effinger&nbsp;for Juxtaposition Arts.

&ldquo;I like being able to do art, and I like being able to do art in the community, but also, more importantly, I want to bring the community along so that they benefit not just from my art in general, they benefit from the financial opportunity,&rdquo; says Roger Cummings, JXTA&rsquo;s Chief Cultural Producer. According to Cummings, the vision for JXTA grew into something that was using art as a means to build capital in the community, where participants were gaining project management skills and had ownership in what was being created.&nbsp;

Cummings says the notion of using art as a way to build wealth came out of Intermedia Arts&rsquo; Institute for Community and Cultural Development, a program run by Bill Cleveland and Erik Takeshita. &ldquo;They showed examples of people&rsquo;s work from all over the country,&rdquo; says Cummings, including ways organizations were using social practice as well as using art to earn money.

Cummings calls it an Aha! moment. &ldquo;This could be something larger than what we are currently seeing,&rdquo; he remembers thinking. As part of the Institute, the JXTA leadership team studied what would work from other initiatives around the country.&nbsp;

&ldquo;We went to study and had a year to go visit all these places and really dig in to see what they were really about, and then what is our place in the whole mix,&rdquo; he says. The experience of being part of the cohort offered JXTA both the connections as well as the roadmap to take the organization&rsquo;s impact to the next level. &ldquo;That gave us the know-how, the credibility, the connections, to be able to bring this to fruition,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;

<h3>Artmaking as social enterprise</h3>

One big success was in 2004, when the organization began to re-imagine West Broadway as a corridor, which involved an exhibition that included models for what the corridor could look like. Staff from the Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development department attended the exhibition, which resulted in the city eventually unveiling the&nbsp;West Broadway Alive! Small Area Plan. &ldquo;I think that was a way that artists were beginning to be involved in the planning of communities in a more official, city-sponsored way,&rdquo; Cummings says.

Since 2010, JXTA has employed an apprenticeship model, where young people from the Twin Cities, prioritizing those from North Minneapolis, are offered paid positions as they learn art and design trades. The apprentices are paid an hourly wage as they work in areas of graphic design, contemporary art, screen-printing, environmental design, public art, and mural painting.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxNTcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Photos: top row and bottom right by Justin Sengly for Juxtaposition Arts, bottom left by Rich&eacute;&nbsp;Effinger for Juxtaposition Arts.

Currently, JXTA is experiencing a leadership transition, as longtime CEO and co-founder DeAnna Cummings moves to her new position as Program Director of Arts for the McKnight Foundation.&nbsp;

According to Roger Cummings, JXTA is breaking up the Executive Director role into three separate positions: a Managing Director, a Financial Manager, and an Executive Assistant. The team, working with Cummings, are heading up the already underway capital campaign, part of a vision for JXTA&rsquo;s campus that goes back over a decade.&nbsp;

<h3>The Capital Campaign</h3>

This summer JXTA has secured over 1500&nbsp;new individual donors, many of whom had never donated to JXTA before, Cummings says. &ldquo;They were just random people that were just starting to donate twenty bucks, one hundred bucks, a thousand, and so that is great,&rdquo; Cummings said. &ldquo;We know our reach is getting out there.&rdquo;&nbsp;

So far, JXTA has raised $3.1 million over the past two years. Part of that money went into building a temporary skate park, as a way to have something both beautiful and functional that the community can enjoy during the construction phase of the project.&nbsp;And this month, they hope to build on that momentum.

&ldquo;We need another $400,000 to go and we&#39;ll get that $4 million mark,&nbsp;which would be huge,&rdquo; Cummings says. &ldquo;If we get this money before the end of August, we will start to break ground in the spring.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NDcwMDAx/full.jpg" />

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzNDgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Renderings of the plans for JXTA&#39;s expanded campus, including a new arts complex on Emerson Ave and renovations to two buildings on Broadway. Lizzo and Lil Wayne approve! Renderings by 4RM+ULA Architecture for Juxtaposition Arts.

If the fundraiser is successful, the new complex will be a three story building that is part of a larger campus. The new art center, which will be located on Emerson Avenue and include property previously owned by Urban Homeworks,&nbsp;will create room for JXTA&#39;s education programs, work labs, and an exhibition space, in addition to storage space, a new lobby, and administrative offices. The larger campus will include a mix of old and new, with some of the current JXTA buildings getting renovations, such as the building at 1108 Broadway, which will contain a new fabrication studio. JXTA plans to contract the&nbsp;demolition to a company employing people in the community, and the whole build has been planned with efficiency and sustainability in mind, from reusing materials to including solar panels, a green roof, and an innovative stormwater management system.&nbsp;Cummings says that having&nbsp;multiple buildings in addition to outdoor features like the skate park and a rooftop terrace&nbsp;will encourage people to flow between the different spaces.

&ldquo;I think that&rsquo;s the special sauce within JXTA,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;being able to have specific disciplines in different places so that you can walk back and forth to these places just on one block.&rdquo;

<div><a href="https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=Q0sfpDk_ZpsJ7xZPLhS3IRh99n0TSL2uGozwVKlREj5ANENjBZ5gwcJrxhpNBnAo7xC3YW&amp;country.x=US&amp;locale.x=US" target="_blank">Donate today</a> to JXTA&#39;s Capital Campaign! And learn more about what they do at&nbsp;<a href="https://juxtapositionarts.org" target="_blank">juxtapositionarts.org</a>. And stay tuned as we cover more details of JXTA&#39;s impact on students and the Northside in the coming weeks!</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>All images courtesy of Juxtaposition Arts.</div>

As part of an ongoing capital campaign, Juxtaposition Arts is working to raise $2M from donors like you to expand their campus.

Building the Future of Minneapolis: JXTA Needs Your Help!

The Minneapolis Arts Commission is looking in 2020 to become more visible and more accessible for artists and residents across the city. With new goals around engagement with artists and arts organizations, making connections with City Council members, and increasing education about what the Commission is and does, the government body you may have never heard of is taking small steps to become more of an understood player in the city&rsquo;s public art system.&nbsp;

The City of Minneapolis first chartered the MAC back in 1974, with initial funding at the time coming from the National Endowment for the Arts. The group of seventeen commissioners &mdash; five artists, five arts administrators, and seven laypeople &mdash; are appointed by the Mayor and the Minneapolis City Council for up to three consecutive three-year terms. They work closely with the Long Range&nbsp;Planning Division of the Minneapolis Department of Community Planning &amp; Economic Development (CPED) and vote on a range of different arts issues &mdash; including public art projects as well as art policies.&nbsp;

That being said, the Commission doesn&rsquo;t have veto power. &ldquo;We shepherd the process through,&rdquo; says commissioner Robyne Robinson, who has served on the Commission for about a year. &ldquo;From my experience, we get information on a project and we discuss it, and we decide whether it should be shepherded through, but it really is an advisory role.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Right now, Robinson says, the board is trying to bring in new members and help the public understand what the role of the MAC is. &ldquo;We really need to brand our identity,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp;

The MAC is looking toward ways it can be more inclusive and equitable. Robinson, a jewelry designer and former news anchor, caught the public art bug while working at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport as their Art Director, where she had a chance to look at the bigger picture of art in a community. Now with her consulting firm, five X five art consultants, she is interested in creating emotional equity in a community around art. &ldquo;We all talk about the things that are most central to our lives, and identify them as ours &mdash; &lsquo;Our church, our grocery store, our school. That&rsquo;s my library. That&rsquo;s my department store,&rsquo;&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of how we define who we are. Any public art should have that emotional equity invested in it.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxMTUwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1MzMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Public art installation at Bde Maka Ska&nbsp;to honor Mahpiya Wicasta (&quot;Cloud Man&quot;)&nbsp;and celebrate the history of Heyata Otunwe, a village located on Bde Maka Ska from 1829-1839. Artwork by&nbsp;Angela Two Stars, Sandy Spieler, and&nbsp;Mona Smith, in conjunction with landscape architects and a design team comprised of Wicasta&#39;s descendants, Dakota advisors, Minneapolis Parks and Rec, and&nbsp;Minneapolis&rsquo;s Art in Public Places program. According to Public Arts Administrator&nbsp;Mary Altman, the Minnneapolis Arts Commission &quot;was instrumental in getting the City&rsquo;s public art funding ordinance adopted.&quot;

Toward that end, the commissioners are going to be venturing out more around the city for their meetings, according to Joan Vorderbruggen, another commissioner. Like Robinson, Vorderbruggen does plenty around public art outside her role with MAC, as the Director of Hennepin Theatre District Engagement for the Hennepin Theatre Trust. In the past, the Commission has mostly held their meetings in the Crown Roller Mill building, where CPED has their offices. &ldquo;In 2020 our plan is to host our meetings at different arts organizations and try to get to every ward,&rdquo; she says. Just last month MAC held a public meeting at Squirrel Haus Arts, a local arts venue in the Howe/Longfellow area.

Meanwhile, Vorderbruggen says, the commission wants to deepen its relationships with different members of the City Council. &ldquo;We are getting in front of each of the City Council members and finding out their agendas and what type of budget lines they are looking at,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp;

Some work has already been done in this area, Vorderbruggen says. For example, the state&rsquo;s Percent for the Arts program was led by the Commission. &ldquo;We are seeing the benefit of that when there are investments in development by the city,&rdquo; Vorderbruggen says. &ldquo;A certain percentage goes toward public art.&rdquo; For example, the new city administrative building in downtown Minneapolis will have art on every floor of the building, much of which will be by local artists like Witt Siasoco, Marlena Myles,&nbsp;Angela Two Stars, and Christopher Harrison. &ldquo;That is a really big achievement,&rdquo; Vorderbruggen says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s definitely supported by the Arts Commission.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzMjEwMDAy/full.jpg" />Mock-ups of mural designs for one of several conference rooms in the new Public Service Building, at left by Marlena Myles, at right by Witt Siasoco.

Still, both Vorderbruggen and Robinson say there are limits of what MAC can and can&rsquo;t do. &ldquo;You get started and you are eager to make change, and you realize things take time,&rdquo; Vorderbruggen says. &ldquo;I feel like right now, I&rsquo;m happy with where we are at. We are going to meet at different arts organizations throughout the city so we can have more interaction with small, medium, and large arts organizations. It&rsquo;s a good time right now. It&rsquo;s not being super ambitious. It&rsquo;s beginning steps.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Crystal Brinkman, the Executive Director of Kulture Klub Collaborative, who, like Robinson, has been on the Commission for a year, says one of her goals is to advocate for citizens and residents who don&rsquo;t often have a voice in decisions or access to opportunities. Brinkman is on MAC&rsquo;s Access and Engagement team, which, besides organizing the roaming meetings in different parts of the city, is also soliciting feedback from artists who have worked within the city to see what their experience has been like. &ldquo;With the hope that we will have gained insight in how to improve those processes and make them more accessible,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re hoping to make opportunities more open, and the options for those opportunities more accessible,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp;

Brinkman notes that MAC is active on social media (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/MPLArtsComm/">@MPLArtsComm on Facebook</a>), so watch out there&nbsp;for public meetings, new opportunities, and news on what the Commission is up to. They meet every third Wednesday of every month at 5:30pm, but the location of their February 19th meeting is not yet set.

You can also read more about MAC, including profiles of all seventeen current commissioners,&nbsp;at <a href="http://www.minneapolismn.gov/dca/mac/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR383e-WeISBXcqExTMV8MALuSfRMqZuI8B56ntmO0kw7uc7YUKbYRIHJ4Q">their city website</a>.

Banner image: One of several recently approved utility box wrap designs, this one by local artist&nbsp;<a href="http://www.innerswirl.com" target="_blank">Kao Lee Thao</a>.

As the MAC plans more public meetings, we wondered... just what is this 45-year-old board and what do they do?

The Minneapolis Arts Commission steps out of the shadows

Welcome to the VIP Room. It is maybe a little bit different from VIP Rooms you might find at an adult entertainment club downtown. It&rsquo;s a lot cheaper, first of all &mdash; only a $10 donation! You still meet with an erotic dancer one on one, but instead of a lap dance, be prepared for a conversation.&nbsp;

At <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/491348658262059/" target="_blank">the Feminist Strip Club&#39;s&nbsp;VIP Room</a>,&nbsp;each audience member&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;after getting checked by a bouncer&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;is given a menu of questions that the performer they are paired with has chosen in advance. You select a question as a starting off point for a 10-15 minute discussion, before heading &ldquo;backstage,&rdquo; where you&rsquo;re walked through the process of how dancers get paid. &ldquo;They are really getting that sort of behind the scenes information that if they are not in the industry they don&rsquo;t have,&rdquo; says Monica Sheets, the artist behind the project. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think most people know that dancers are independent contractors and are not actually being paid by the club.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The Feminist Strip Club launched in March, when Sheets began a series of workshops with a group of adult entertainers at the Weisman Art Museum, as part of the Museum&#39;s Target Studio for Creative Collaboration. They talked and dreamed about what ideal working conditions for strippers would look like, collaborated on creating a magazine based on those ideas, and hosted the first VIP Room event. The Feminist Strip Club will return to the Weisman in 2020, but in the meantime, Sheets is hosting a VIP Room experience at her studio in the basement of the&nbsp;Casket Arts Building this weekend during the <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/open-casket-fall-2019" target="_blank">Open Casket</a> fall art&nbsp;festival.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1MjAwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM5MTAwMDAx/full.jpg" />Participants converse with entertainers during the first incarnation of the VIP Room at the Weisman Art Museum. Photos by Boris Oicherman.

Prior to Minneapolis passing its new <a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/File/2620/Licensing%20Regulations%20for%20Places%20of%20Adult%20Entertainment%20Ordinance%20RCA.pdf" target="_blank">adult entertainment ordinance</a> that improves the working conditions for erotic dancers, The Feminist Strip Club published Issue One of The Grind: perspectives on stripping from the strippers themselves.&nbsp;The zine mixes persuasive and informative writing about policy issues around strip clubs, historical perspectives on how policy has changed, and photographs that illustrate the current and recent working conditions of the clubs. There&rsquo;s a lengthy transcription from a conversation conducted with a group of entertainers about their dreams for what an ideal club would look like, complete with photographs of their drawings of those utopian strip clubs. There are sassy snap-backs to online reviewers, contact information for all of the Minneapolis City Council members, and a call to action, requesting folks to come out to a public hearing on a new city ordinance&nbsp;(which has since passed) that would improve the conditions of club workers.&nbsp;

Sheets, an artist who uses art as a means for civic engagement, organized the collaboratively created zine with a group of current and former adult entertainers. The issue was put up for sale at local independent bookstores and galleries and at the Weisman, and distributed free at Minneapolis clubs. Some of the content also ran on Workday Minnesota&rsquo;s website.&nbsp;

Sheets was a stripper herself as a teenager. &ldquo;It is something I&rsquo;ve been interested in for a long time,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It was a pretty pivotal experience for me in a lot of ways, particularly the responses I got from people when I&nbsp;would tell them that I had been a dancer when I went away to college&mdash; that&rsquo;s kind of what first sparked my interest in doing something around this topic.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Sheets hasn&rsquo;t performed since she was around 22, but she&rsquo;s followed the industry over the years. Recently she noticed there&rsquo;s been a growing interest in labor issues generally, especially around sex work. An opportunity came up to work on a project through the Weisman, which meant she could compensate participant dancers in her project. &ldquo;It was an opportune time to do something that I had been thinking about for a long time,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxMTkwMDAx/full.jpg" />The first issue of The Grind, a zine published by The Feminist Strip Club. Image courtesy of Monica Sheets.

Sheets takes a participatory approach to her practice. In this case, she worked with five to eight dancers (more or less at different stages), and set up a framework where the dancers were driving much of the content and focus. &ldquo;It&#39;s not like I&rsquo;m saying, &#39;We&rsquo;re going to do this thing, and it&rsquo;s going to look like this at the end,&rsquo;&rdquo; Sheets says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m saying, &lsquo;Who wants to get together and talk about these issues and have a talk with a labor law professor, talk with someone that does policy work on labor issues, and then we will figure out how we will come back to the public with this work that we&rsquo;ve done internally.&rsquo;&rdquo;

Because Issue One of The Grind focused particularly on the new Minneapolis ordinance, the group decided they wanted to reach entertainers that work at the various clubs. That was a task easier said than done.&nbsp;

&ldquo;We went to each of the clubs and tried to get into the dressing rooms, which has various levels of complication to it,&rdquo; Sheets says. &ldquo;It makes sense that they don&rsquo;t just let people back into the dressing rooms.&rdquo; The content of the magazine also wasn&rsquo;t exactly something they thought many club owners would support, so the group found ways to distribute the magazines without the owners and managers knowing what was inside.&nbsp;

While the Feminist Strip Club doesn&rsquo;t have a formal partnership with Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), a group that was instrumental in advocating for the new Minneapolis ordinance, Sheets says she met with the group towards the beginning of her project, to make sure she wasn&rsquo;t replicating&nbsp;work that was already being done.&nbsp;

&ldquo;SWOP is a political policy based organization working on policy change, and certainly at the Feminist Strip Club, we are interested in that as well, but we are also interested in creating space for imagining alternatives and more big picture thinking,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp;

Future issues of The Grind&nbsp;may take&nbsp;on other topics related to adult entertainment work, and Sheets envisions archiving the whole project down the road.

In addition to the VIP Room performance&nbsp;&mdash; which takes place Friday night in Sheets&#39;s lower level studio&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;The Feminist Strip Club will also host a bake sale on Saturday afternoon, where visitors&nbsp;compete in a water and spoon race while wearing 6-inch heels. The winner gets their choice of baked goods.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzMDcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Photo by Boris Oicherman.

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/491348658262059/" target="_blank">The VIP Room</a> performance:&nbsp;Friday, Nov 1st, from 6:30-9:30pm;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1533475963461981/" target="_blank">Cakewalk &amp;&nbsp;Bake Sale</a>: Saturday, Nov 2nd, 1:30-3:30pm. <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/open-casket-fall-2019" target="_blank">Casket Arts</a>, 681 17th Ave NE, Lower Level Studio 4 (downstairs, past the elevator).

&nbsp;For more info on Monica Sheets, visit <a href="http://monicasheets.com" target="_blank">the artist&#39;s&nbsp;website</a>.

Labor practices, activism, and utopian strip clubs are on the menu at a participatory performance this weekend at Open Casket.

The Feminist Strip Club

Artist Alison Price is an idea&nbsp;person. &ldquo;I just come up with wild ideas and then I try to talk people into it,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s my thing.&rdquo;&nbsp;

An artist who works mostly in abstraction, Price creates highly textured paintings. She was featured on <a href="https://www.tpt.org/mn-original/profile/alison-price/" target="_blank">Minnesota Original</a> last year, and received the Judge&rsquo;s Choice awards at a recent competition at the Hallberg Center for the Arts&nbsp;in Wyoming.&nbsp;

She&rsquo;s also got a knack for coming up with creative exhibition ideas. For instance, she has organized the SweetArt Salon des Refus&eacute;s, (&ldquo;that&rsquo;s the Wintertide rejects,&rdquo; she says, referring to NEMAA&#39;s&nbsp;juried biennial). She also has done a similar Refus&eacute;s&nbsp;show for artists that didn&rsquo;t get into the State Fair Fine Art exhibition, called Salon des&nbsp;Refus&eacute;s on a Stick.

Price is also a member of NEMAA&nbsp;&mdash; the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association, the nonprofit responsible for nearly 25 consecutive Art-A-Whirls, among other events&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;and her latest idea is a fundraiser&nbsp;for the organization.&nbsp;

&ldquo;As a full-time practicing artist, I get asked to donate work all the time&nbsp;to great causes, and I&rsquo;m happy to do so,&rdquo; Price says. &ldquo;But why don&rsquo;t we donate to our own cause this time?&rdquo;&nbsp;

Price found inspiration in Art 4 Shelter&rsquo;s annual art fundraiser, where artists donate small works to raise&nbsp;money for Simpson Housing Services. &ldquo;I thought, we could do something like that,&rdquo; Price says. &ldquo;With Art 4 Shelter, artists are donating to a very worthy cause. Here we are also donating to a very worthy cause, which is ourselves.&rdquo;&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s a flip from what is normally asked of artists. &ldquo;Artists tend to be really generous by nature, and this is actually helping ourselves succeed and thrive and making sure that Art-A-Whirl is well funded for 2020,&rdquo; Price says.&nbsp;

Price also thought of the Foot in the Door exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where once every 10 years, artists from all around the state submit works of art that fit within one cubic foot.&nbsp;

Her mind started churning, thinking about how NEMAA could take a similar approach, and&nbsp;she brought the idea to Anna Becker, NEMAA&rsquo;s Executive Director, who was immediately&nbsp;on board. NEMAA&nbsp;10X10 was born.&nbsp;

&ldquo;These ideas just happen,&rdquo; says Price, &ldquo;and I love how nimble and organic&nbsp;and fresh our board is, and our volunteers, that they just kind of jumped right in.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxMTgwMDAx/full.jpg" />NEMAA&nbsp;artist members building excitement for the inaugural&nbsp;10x10&nbsp;show.

Becker came up with the idea that the fundraiser could double as the organization&rsquo;s fall arts show. &ldquo;Since we&rsquo;re not doing a fall fine arts show,&rdquo; Becker says, &ldquo;we wanted to do an event that shows the range and diversity of artists that live and work in Northeast, and also fundraise for us and do something really cool and fun.&rdquo;&nbsp;

In the past, NEMAA has hosted a fall event called Fall Fine Arts, later renamed&nbsp;Autumn Northeast. &ldquo;We weren&rsquo;t going to be able to do Autumn Northeast because it&rsquo;s hard to find space for 150&nbsp;works of art,&rdquo; Becker says. &ldquo;Especially because it&rsquo;s supposed to be a survey of all of our artists, and we&rsquo;ve got 800 artist members.&rdquo;&nbsp;

For 10X10, each NEMAA member is invited to donate one or more&nbsp;pieces of work&nbsp;which have&nbsp;to fit in a 10x10&quot; cube. &ldquo;So if a jeweler has a pair of&nbsp;earrings, or a sculptor has a small maquette or a mockup &mdash;&nbsp;things like that can be donated,&rdquo; Price says. &ldquo;This could be a sketch, this could be a prototype, this could be a small work &mdash; some kind of creative spark they are willing to share. Then we will show them all at the Northrup King building in Gallery 332 and each will be for sale for $35.&rdquo;&nbsp;

With no labels on the walls, attendees of the fundraiser won&#39;t know who made the art; they will&nbsp;only find out after they purchase. According to Becker, it&rsquo;s a chance to use social media to amplify the name of the artists and the works, by adding an element of surprise.&nbsp;

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of a mystery show,&rdquo; Becker says. &ldquo;People come in, and they see all this work and they pick something they love, or they pick something that really moves them. They may come in and pick an artist they follow already, but the idea is you choose something solely on this connection you have to it.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE3MTQwMDAx/full.jpg" />NEMAA members in their studios in the Northrup King Building, Casket Arts Building, and California Building.

Becker said what&rsquo;s great about 10X10 is that it&rsquo;s accessible. &ldquo;This is for people that love art, love following art, and who don&rsquo;t have any art,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;So at the end of the night, there are going to be hundreds of pieces of original artwork that are going to find homes.&rdquo;&nbsp;

NEMAA artists are still in the process of donating their pieces, but Becker and Price say the work will be a mix of established artists and emerging members. There are also donations from the new Studio 400, a Public Functionary project led by artist Leslie Barlow, which is a space for emerging artists of color and marginalized artists.&nbsp;

10X10 won&rsquo;t have an admission fee, but there is a preview hour prior to the event, where attendees get first dibs on the artwork &mdash;&nbsp;<a href="https://nemaa.org/product/nemaa-10x10-special-preview-hour-ticket/" target="_blank">tickets</a> cost&nbsp;$50 and come&nbsp;with a free beverage at the bar. Other than that, all of the works&nbsp;will be available on a first-come, first-served basis throughout the one-night event. KFAI will be on hand to provide some DJ tunes, and there will be a cash bar throughout the evening.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxMTQwMDAx/full.jpg" />

NEMAA&nbsp;boasts over 800 artist members, located everywhere from the flagship studio buildings in Northeast to at-home studios in, around, and far beyond the Twin Cities.

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/nemma-10x10">NEMAA 10x10</a> takes place from 5-9 pm&nbsp;on Saturday, September 21, at the&nbsp;Northrup King Building, 1500 Jackson St., NE. Preview 4-5pm: $50, free after 5 p.m. More info at <a href="https://nemaa.org/nemaa_10x10/" target="_blank">nemaa.org</a>.

<div>&nbsp;</div>

The Northeast nonprofit explores a new model for fundraising, hosting a group show that combines art, anonymity, and affordability: every piece is $35.

NEMAA 10X10: Putting the "fun" back in fundraiser

The majority of Jovan C. Speller&rsquo;s 15-year visual arts practice has been rooted in photography and film, often using traditional photographic processes. That means she&nbsp;uses a dark room a lot, something that got quite a bit more complicated when she had a child just over a year ago.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Being a mom, I need a safer, more kid-friendly practice,&rdquo; she says. Speller has been exploring ways to expand her medium repertoire, including in the areas of sound and installation.&nbsp;

An opportunity came along through Second Shift, a new studio space and residency program on the east side of Saint Paul. It&rsquo;s a nonprofit organization founded by artist Chris Larson and his wife, Kriss Zulkosky, a nurse in the Birth Center at Regions Hospital. Created to provide space and resources to women and nonbinary working artists in the Twin Cities, the organization&rsquo;s new residency program provides workspace, mentorship, as well as a stipend.&nbsp;

Larson says he and Zulkosky chose to create a specific focus toward women and nonbinary artists to counteract an unlevel playing field active in the art world for a long time.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I have male privilege,&rdquo; Larson says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen who gets recognized in museums. The scales seem to be off, and have been for a long time.&rdquo;

Besides studio space, Larson says Second Shift also has a mentorship component, providing professional development and networking opportunities. Through Larson&rsquo;s connections with a Walker board member, for example, the fellows were invited to a dinner with the Walker Art Center&rsquo;s new Director, Mary Ceruti.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzMTEwMDAz/full.jpg" />Jovan Speller, installation view of&nbsp;...and I shall call you Home, 2016.

The four current resident artists&nbsp;come from different levels of experience. Some are more established, like Speller, who has had a number of high profile opportunities&nbsp;including grants and curatorial projects on the East coast. Others are more at the emerging level, and Larson has been able to offer some resources such as helping with writing grants.&nbsp;

Speller initially heard about the fellowship through Larson, who mentioned it at a meeting for the McKnight Artist Fellowships, where they were both fellows. Later, a coworker forwarded a call for applications.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I thought it would be perfect,&rdquo; Speller said. &ldquo;I have a 15-month old now, so working around chemicals all the time is not ideal.&rdquo; Speller said her coworker knew she was looking for opportunities to have time and space to figure out new options for how to create art that wasn&rsquo;t quite so dangerous when you have a little one in tow.&nbsp;

Speller says the experience so far has been &ldquo;mind-blowing,&rdquo; even in ways she didn&rsquo;t anticipate. Not only does she appreciate having the space to lay out her work and see what she has, she also has been able to professionally photograph the work she has&nbsp;and arrange studio visits outside her home.&nbsp;

&ldquo;It hasn&rsquo;t felt professional,&rdquo; said Speller of inviting curators into her home studio. &ldquo;Now it removes that anxiety from the picture&mdash; not like I&rsquo;m playing hostess at my house. It can really be 100 percent about my work.&rdquo; The quality of her studio visits has improved, she says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s upped my ability to think through a lot of things.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5MTEwMDAy/full.jpg" />The newly built-out space, a former linoleum shop on Payne Avenue.

Second Shift has mostly been a labor of love for Larson and Zulkosky, who embarked on the project as a response to the rising costs of rent in the Twin Cities, with artists getting priced out of areas that previously had been havens for artist studios.&nbsp;

According to Zulkosky, the couple found inspiration from a show artist Jim Hodges did at the Walker in 2014, called Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take.&nbsp;&ldquo;From that we created the motto for Second Shift,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Our motto is Work, Make, Give more than you take. Today more than ever we feel it is important to give more than one takes if one has the means to do so. Our world is in dire need of giving, giving with no strings attached.&rdquo;&nbsp;

They took out a second mortgage of $75,000 to get Second Shift up and running. They&rsquo;ve also received some donations, as well as a STAR grant from the city of Saint Paul. In addition, the widow of H&uuml;sker D&uuml;&rsquo;s Grant Hart provided funding for the Con D&rsquo;or Grant Hart Artist Fund, which provides each of the residents a $5,000 stipend for the 2019-2020 cycle.&nbsp;

While not an artist herself, Zulkosky says she&rsquo;s seen for years how hard artists have to work to get by. Larson himself was at one point juggling multiple adjunct positions in addition to his own practice before landing a more stable job at the University of Minnesota. Together, they wanted to support other artists in the community. &ldquo;People are getting priced out,&rdquo; Zulkosky says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s frustrating to see artists struggling. We knew we wanted to try to do something&mdash; how can we help the community grow?&rdquo;&nbsp;

&ldquo;If we have the means to be able to do something, and that&rsquo;s economically feasible,&nbsp;let&rsquo;s do that,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;We are trying to give people a leg up.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzMDIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Heather Lamanno&#39;s studio space at Second Shift.

Heather Lamanno, a recent graduate of MCAD&rsquo;s MFA program, says in the last year she&rsquo;s looked at space, and found it to be exorbitantly expensive, not to mention very difficult to even find a space. &ldquo;You almost have to know someone that is leaving their space,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp;

Living with three kids at home, plus two who are older and living elsewhere, Lamanno says it was hard for her and her&nbsp;husband to justify putting money into a studio space. &ldquo;It really means everything to me,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have a space. I&rsquo;d be trying to work out of my house, which has gone down in size to where we were living before.&rdquo;

Second Shift is located in an old linoleum shop, previously owned for three generations by the same family. The first order of business was cleaning the place out, because it was packed with garbage and old linoleum samples. &ldquo;We spent the majority of our budget on garbage disposal,&rdquo; Zulkoski says. Plus, it took a while to get approvals from the city.&nbsp;

By the time they got all of their paperwork in place, artists from around the Twin Cities were ready to step up to help.&nbsp;&ldquo;We had all these people volunteering,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It was cool.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Second Shift is currently set up as semi-private studios&nbsp;so that there&rsquo;s potential for conversation and collaborations. There&rsquo;s also a kitchenette with a long table that works as a break room and a meeting&nbsp;space.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1MDcwMDAy/full.jpg" />KB Lor,&nbsp;Kuv Niam Txoj Kev Npau Suav &ndash; My Mother&rsquo;s Hopes and Dreams

KB Lor, another Second Shift resident, says that while the artists are all working in different forms, she likes being in a shared space. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s interesting to see how they work and the process they go through,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;For me, it&rsquo;s always about the process.&rdquo;

The residency is the first time Lor has been able to work outside of her home. She previously lived in Woodbury&nbsp;and had a studio space, but recently moved to the East Side of Saint Paul to downsize.&nbsp;

Being able to work on a painting and leave it in place without having to put everything away makes a huge difference in her practice. &ldquo;It cuts down the time that I have to set up and take down,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Then, whenever I come in, I&rsquo;m able to reflect on it. If I were to take it back out, I lose that focus.&rdquo;&nbsp;

In addition to the residency program, Second Shift also has a curatorial arm. Last spring, Larson and Maria Cristina Tavera curated Thirty Three Views Plus Two, a group exhibition that took place at the Swedish Bank as well as Second Shift&nbsp;and other locations along Payne Avenue. According to Zulkosky, around 500 people came to visit the installations, and 22 curators from different Twin Cities art institutions visited the work as well.&nbsp;

On September 7, from 12-7 p.m., Second Shift will host an inaugural open house, featuring the four resident artists &mdash; K.B Lor, Jovan Speller, Heather Lamanno, and Angela St. Vrain. Each of the artists will be sharing recent pieces and works in progress.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxMTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Angela St.&nbsp;Vrain;&nbsp;A Strange Form of Home;&nbsp;fabricated steel, vinyl screen, cotton yarn; 2017.

Second Shift is located at 1128 Payne Ave. in St. Paul. More info at&nbsp;<a href="https://secondshiftstudiospace.org">secondshiftstudiospace.org</a>. 

All images courtesy of the artists and Second Shift. Banner image: Heather Lamanno, Between You and Me, acrylic on panel, 2018.

The newly opened residency program in east St. Paul provides studio space, stipends, and professional development to women and non-binary artists

Making space at Second Shift

Reviews

Caitlin Karolczak just wants to make art. Over the years, she&rsquo;s bartended, taken odd jobs, and co-run a vintage design shop, and now she&rsquo;s opening up her studio space in the California Building. It&rsquo;s all in service of giving her the time she needs to paint.&nbsp;

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a personal goal of mine to get to a point where I don&rsquo;t have to be so worried about bills,&rdquo; Karolczak said. &ldquo;I want to get caught up and concentrate on art.&rdquo;&nbsp;

That&rsquo;s the idea with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Storage-Contemporary-2188684954787462/" target="_blank">Storage Contemporary</a>, which gets its name from the space&rsquo;s use as storage for Karolczak&rsquo;s artwork. &ldquo;Literally I&rsquo;m using the space for storage,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The whole point of this is to start utilizing the space when I&rsquo;m not having a show or an opening&mdash;&nbsp; someone else can utilize the space.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The white box gallery space is separate from where Karolczak paints. Her large studio has two different rooms, so she sees the gallery space as being separate. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m managing and utilizing this space that happens to be attached to my work space,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My plan is to host things like art exhibitions and also maybe workshops, readings and performances.&rdquo;&nbsp;

On November 10th&nbsp;the space was used for the opening of an exhibition featuring the anonymous art collective Arton Erthnif. Since there&rsquo;s no buzzer system for the building, visitors were encouraged to simply bang on the back door so the elevator operator could let them in.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMzQyMDAwMDE/full.jpg" />Arton Erthnif is&nbsp;an anonymous collective of artists.&nbsp;

The show had an underground feel (despite being on the 5th floor.). &ldquo;I sort of think of it more like a New York-style gallery,&rdquo; Karolczak said. &ldquo;Where it&rsquo;s art happenings you hear about and you find yourself in some weird building, and then you&rsquo;re in this show. I&rsquo;ve seen some of the best stuff in that style of gallery shows.&rdquo;&nbsp;

LIE CHEAT STEAL,&nbsp;Arton Erthnif&rsquo;s exhibition, was mainly advertised on social media, but they had a bit of a problem because the publicity images featured Adolph Hitler with Donald Trump&rsquo;s blond hair, and apparently Facebook and Instagram don&rsquo;t allow such imagery on their platforms. (This author tried posting the image on Instagram twice, and both times it was taken down.)&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMTk2ODAwMDE/full.jpg" />

The show featured multiple copies of this image around the gallery, including a framed print in which a bullet hole is clearly visible in Adolph&rsquo;s blond toupee. There were small, thick books that featured the image as the cover, with all of Trump&rsquo;s lies printed on each of the pages, and opportunities for visitors to destroy the image in a paper shredder.&nbsp;

While comparisons to Banksy&rsquo;s recent art-shredding stunt are obvious, an Arton Erthnif collective member present at the LIE CHEAT STEAL&nbsp;opening noted that the concept was developed before Banksy shred his own artworks after it was auctioned off at Sotheby&#39;s in October. Still, there&rsquo;s definitely a Banksy/Shepard Fairey vibe to the whole show, what with its anonymous authorship&nbsp;and broad-stroked political messaging.&nbsp;

Is comparing Trump to Hitler too easy? It&rsquo;s a conceit that has been used to deride all sorts of politicians in the past, but we are at a point in history when the current president calls himself a nationalist. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m proud of this country and I call that nationalism,&rdquo; he said at a press conference <a href="https://grabien.com/story.php?id=203211" target="_blank">recently</a>. &ldquo;I call it being a nationalist, and I don&rsquo;t see any other connotation than that.&rdquo; Trump also chided &ldquo;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/trump-charlottesville-delay/index.html" target="_blank">both sides</a>&rdquo; of the white supremacy debate, as if both racists and non-racists were equally at fault for the white pride riots in Charlottesville. His rise to power has coincided with a rise in hate crime, with&nbsp;hate groups becoming not only more visible but more accepted, as well as daily federal actions that are easily comparable&nbsp;to a fascistic&nbsp;leader (the Muslim ban, separating immigrant children from their parents, calling the free press &quot;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html" target="_blank">the enemy of the people</a>,&quot;&nbsp;etc.)&nbsp;

In other words, the Hitler comparison actually&nbsp;does kind of fit. Sorry&nbsp;Trump! Sorry Facebook protocols! And you know what? There&rsquo;s something quite satisfying about taking a Hitler/Trump poster and shredding it to little pieces. Is it a healthy thing to do? Maybe not, but we are at a point in history where we do what we need to survive.&nbsp;

You can try it yourself, in addition to a few other participatory cathartic experiences, through the end of the month, with a closing party on Friday, November 30. Then on December 8th, Karolczak mentions she&rsquo;s planning a workshop along with Kate Iverson of <a href="http://aliceriot.com" target="_blank">Alice Riot</a>. Watch the gallery&rsquo;s social media pages for details.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMTc2OTAwMDE/full.jpg" />Sweet, sweet catharsis.

Storage Contemporary is located in Studio 514 of the California Building at&nbsp;2205 California St NE in Minneapolis. LIE CHEAT STEAL&#39;s closing reception is&nbsp;Friday, November 30th&nbsp;from&nbsp;5 - 9pm.

All images courtesy the gallery.

The inaugural show at Caitlin Karolczak's new gallery in the California Building takes literal aim at 45, with a closing reception Nov. 30th.

LIE CHEAT STEAL (and Shred): Arton Erthnif at Storage Contemporary

Last year, more than 40,000 people visited the popular Art Shanty Projects, the on-ice public art program that took place on Lake Harriet for the first time, after moving from its previous location at White Bear Lake. Not only were there three times more people that attended the festival than the year prior, but donations as well as sponsorships went up from previous years, which is what makes the organization&rsquo;s announcement that the program won&rsquo;t take place this year all the more shocking.

Or maybe not that shocking, when you consider the reality of existing as an arts nonprofit. &ldquo;I think people have a hard time understanding that the Art Shanty Projects is an expensive program,&rdquo; says Ilana Percher, treasurer of the board for the festival. &ldquo;People have this concept that it comes out of thin air &mdash; that it&rsquo;s a labor of love.&nbsp; You can&rsquo;t continue a project that is only fueled by love and joy and enthusiasm. That&rsquo;s not an infinite resource.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/shanties1.jpg" />

&nbsp;

Formed in the winter of 2004 by artists Peter Haakon Thompson and David Pitman, ASP was originally hosted by the Soap Factory and took place on Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Minnesota. It became a nonprofit around five years ago and moved to White Bear Lake in 2014, where it was held that year as well as 2016 and 2017.

Percher says that the idea with moving the festival to Minneapolis was to make it more accessible. While she wasn&rsquo;t part of the leadership team at the time, she says, &ldquo;They wanted to increase participation and introduce it to more people &mdash; make it more accessible to urban dwellers who could maybe help support it.&rdquo;

At the time a couple of organizations in Linden Hills, such as the Linden Hills Neighborhood Council, had approached the organization, expressing a desire to help financially with the move. &ldquo;They helped us work with park board to obtain necessarily permissions,&rdquo; Percher said, noting that the Neighborhood Council were very supportive.

The move paid off in terms of increasing attendance. At Medicine Lake, Percher said ASP drew 18,000 in 2012. That number went down when they moved to White Bear Lake&mdash; drawing more like 10,000-12,000.

In 2018, &quot;We did get more money than previous years, but the cost of the program ballooned, and definitely a smaller percentage of visitors donated,&rdquo; Percher said.

The problem was that while there were more people attending, the number of board members shaking buckets was the same, so it was more difficult to reach everyone with a donation ask.

&ldquo;There was a lot of learning after the fact,&rdquo; Percher said. &ldquo;We were kind of overwhelmed as an organization. We didn&rsquo;t have the wherewithal to get the donations, but we didn&rsquo;t figure that out before it was too late.&rdquo;

Meanwhile, last year the organization had a bare-bones staff. &ldquo;We had three people,&rdquo; Percher said. &ldquo;Two were all-year and one was for the better part of the year. They worked more hours than we paid them for.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/shanties2.jpg" />

&nbsp;

This year, ASP had hoped to receive the Festival Support Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, a process that took a number of years to even apply. &ldquo;You need budget info from the last several years to even be eligible,&rdquo; Percher said. &ldquo;We were trying to scrape it together for a whole bunch of years so we could get this grant.&rdquo;

Unfortunately, the organization didn&rsquo;t receive the Festival Support grant and made the decision that the funding was simply not there to make this year&rsquo;s festival happen. As a result of that decision, ASP will have to return a grant they did receive, from the Metro Regional Art Council.

While the festival is taking a hiatus, organizers have every intention of continuing the project in the future. &ldquo;We are committed to having community meetings and catalyze a sense of personal responsibility in the communities we serve,&rdquo; said Percher. &ldquo;There are a lot of people that love the Art Shanties. If it wasn&rsquo;t clear before&mdash; we need people to step up. This free festival is not free.&rdquo;

Still, ASP isn&rsquo;t planning on going anywhere. &ldquo;We are 100 percent committed to being back on the ice in 2020. Nothing has changed there,&rdquo; said Board Co-Chair Jason Buranen. They also plan to return to Lake Harriet, he said. &ldquo;When we moved to Lake Harriet, we had said we would be there for three years,&rdquo; he said.

Two community meetings are planning for <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/273482763280608/">Tuesday, October 23rd</a>, at 6pm at Red Stag Supper Club and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/281835778971385/">Sunday, October 28th</a>, at 3pm at Can Can Wonderland, where attendees can hear more information and give input on the future of the program.

Meanwhile, Buranen said to watch out for the Art Shanties on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/artshantyprojects/">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/artshantyprojects/">Instagram</a>, as well as through the organization&rsquo;s email newsletter.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/shanties3.jpg" />

&nbsp;

All images courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects Facebook page.

The popular winter event faces a funding shortfall this year but is planning to be back in action next winter, with community meetings on October 23rd & 28th.

Art Shanties On Thin Ice: The winter festival is cancelled this year but looking ahead to 2020

When artist Mark Schoening finished up graduate school at the University of Minnesota two&nbsp;years ago, he needed some kind of project. &ldquo;I wanted to take the opportunity to champion the work of others,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It can be easy to turn all your attention and focus on yourself. I felt like it&rsquo;s good energy to start promoting the work of others and collaborate on projects with people that I normally wouldn&#39;t. In a weird way it loops back, and inspires my own practice.&rdquo;

Having just bought a house with his wife Dawn England, Schoening went about building a gallery in their home. Well, perhaps &ldquo;in&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t exactly the right word. The Porch Gallery, as its name suggests, invites visitors to view exhibitions through the fixed window on the couple&rsquo;s porch.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/porch1.jpg" /> The Porch Gallery at 3306 Park Avenue in South Minneapolis. Photo by Sheila Regan.

With exhibitions that run 6 weeks, visitors are welcome to come check out the work on the porch at any time. &ldquo;The whole gallery is just about accessibility,&rdquo; Schoening says. &ldquo;There doesn&rsquo;t need to be an attendant or that sort of thing.&rdquo;

There&rsquo;s also a large sculpture on the front lawn, a feature which began last year for Daniel Jaffe&rsquo;s exhibition, Ripe. For that show, Jaffe created a giant yellow banana sculpture for the front yard, which probably helped attract over 100 people to the opening reception, which spilled off the porch and into the street.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/porch2.jpg" /> Cyrille Conan&rsquo;s solo booth at Art Fair

&ldquo;This is the third year, so people know about it and I think are comfortable stopping up,&rdquo; Schoening says. On a weekend night, it&rsquo;s not uncommon for Schoening and England to come home from a friend&rsquo;s house and see people biking up to their porch&nbsp;or walking their dog up and taking a peek at the artworks. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s become a really fun thing for our neighbors to become involved in,&rdquo; Schoening says.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/porch3.jpg" /> Preston Drum&rsquo;s solo booth at Art Fair

That neighborly connection wasn&rsquo;t necessarily his original intention. Schoening&rsquo;s initial hope was to provide an outlet for artists, especially folks living in other cities. For example, he doesn&rsquo;t know of a venue in the Twin Cities that would be showing the work of Brian Willmont, based in New York, or Casey Gray, from San Francisco. &ldquo;I wanted to create a space to see work that maybe wouldn&rsquo;t have a venue elsewhere in the city,&rdquo; he says.

The gallery&rsquo;s first show this season is titled <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/art-fair" target="_blank">Art Fair</a>, an ambitious 24-person show that, judging from the installation photos, marks a massive expansion for The Porch Gallery&hellip;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/porch4.png" />

&nbsp;

Normally MPLSART.COM doesn&rsquo;t use spoiler alerts, but after getting the inside scoop on Art Fair, we didn&rsquo;t want to give too much away for those that want to be surprised.

Looking at photographs of the different installations which will be included, you might mistakenly think that the u-shaped booths mimicking what you&rsquo;d see at a contemporary art fair were life-sized. Well, surprise: they&rsquo;re not. These are miniature works, made in 1/12 scale. They are doll-house versions of what you might find at some place like Art Basel in Miami or the Armory show in New York.

&ldquo;When I came up with this, and as I was talking about what it was, I didn&rsquo;t like to think that I was being intentionally deceptive,&rdquo; Schoening says. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a combination of how much you know that makes it interesting, but I don&rsquo;t know what that line is.&rdquo;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/porch5.jpg" /> Seneca Weintraut&rsquo;s solo booth at Art Fair

The impetus for the show sprung from the observation that more and more, people experience visual art online, rather than in person. Over the past year, Schoening says, &ldquo;I started to see that artists were taking work they were making and photoshopping it into spaces&hellip; creating this illusion that their work was operating outside of their studio.&rdquo;

At the same time, Schoening observed that there&rsquo;s a certain importance among contemporary artists to have work shown in a solo booth space. &ldquo;I thought, well, why don&rsquo;t I take this model of this image of how people are presenting their work, which is basically the model of the contemporary art fair, and build 1/12 scale galleries.&rdquo; Then Schoening invited 24 artists to participate. He shipped them each a flattened box, so that they could each set it up in their studio.

&ldquo;This is by far the most ambitious show here, trying to corral 24 artists around one project,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I think a lot of people excitedly said yes in the beginning, and then once they got it and were working through it, they were like, &lsquo;this scale is really hard to wrestle with.&rsquo;&rdquo; There was a lot of emailing back and forth with the artists along the way, as they worked to make their scale models, updating him along the way. &ldquo;I teach drawing and painting at the University. At times it felt like I had a group of students and the assignment was to make the booth project. It was incredible to see,&nbsp;and&nbsp;get these unpacked the last couple of weeks. In some cases I had no idea what was coming.&rdquo;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/porch6.jpg" /> Erik Benson&rsquo;s solo booth at Art Fair

The show offered an opportunity for some of the artists to try new things. For Casey Gray, who makes paintings that are stencil based, he got to try doing something sculptural on a small scale. Another artist, Eric Benson, has worked as an art preparator, so for his piece, he made a miniature version of what an art fair booth would look like after the paintings have been taken down. &ldquo;He meticulously worked with cut acrylic paint,&rdquo; Schoening says of Benson&rsquo;s work. &quot;He cut all the tape down to scale as it would be, so there&rsquo;s some really delicate gestures within this.&rdquo;

For the people that have seen the work so far, Schoening has noticed most people lean over to see each miniature booth, in order to take in the details. &ldquo;Rarely do I see an audience physically reacting to the work that way,&rdquo; he says.

At the same time, Schoening recognizes that more people will see the work online than in person, and that&rsquo;s okay. Whether people experience a surprise when their perceptions of the work&rsquo;s scale are challenged, or if they simply marvel at the delightful details that each artist has come up with, it&rsquo;s a show that has a life&nbsp;in person and in pixels.

&nbsp;

Art Fair opens Saturday, June 2nd, from 8-11pm at The Porch Gallery and will be on view through July 14th. For more info, check out the event listing <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/art-fair" target="_blank">here</a>. 

All photos provided by the gallery unless otherwise noted. Banner image: Geoffrey Todd Smith&rsquo;s solo booth at Art Fair.

One humble gallery space takes on the scale and substance of the all-powerful art fair, opening June 2nd with work from local, national, and international artists.

Thinking Outside The Booth: The Porch Gallery’s Art Fair

In the Somali language, the word for milking a goat or a camel is also the word that means wealth. That the word &mdash; &ldquo;soo maal&rdquo; &mdash; would have both meanings is perhaps not surprising in a historically nomadic culture that was traditionally based in farming practices. It is also the word a group of Somali artists chose for an art collective whose aim is to support and raise up Somali artists in the Twin Cities: Soomaal House of Art. Mohamud Mumin, who acts as a curator for the group, explains that &ldquo;soo mal&rdquo;, which is the root of the word Somali, &ldquo;is the essence, the sense of identity&rdquo;.

Soomaal strives to support Somali artists, giving them a sense of ownership in their representation, as well as their growth as artists. &ldquo;It seemed like we were always being put in certain boxes,&rdquo; says Mumin, who has garnered a national spotlight as an individual artist outside of his work with Soomaal. &ldquo;Especially if artists are not in the mainstream, they are usually put in the box: &lsquo;Stick with this kind of art or that kind of art.&rsquo;&rdquo;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/soomaal1.jpg" /> Soomaal&rsquo;s founders: Khadijah Muse, Kaamil Haider, &amp; Mohamud Mumin at the exhbition Receptacle, 2017. Photo by Ridwan Omar

Mumin shares the organizing work of running Soomaal House of Art with artists Khadijah Zahra and Kaamil Haider. All three attended the University of Minnesota, although they didn&rsquo;t meet there. They became acquainted at exhibitions and in the art community around the Twin Cities. Of the three, only Haider studied art in school. Zahra, who majored in Sociology, and Mumin, who studied Chemistry, discovered after college that they wanted to focus on their artistic practices as part of their career. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like quicksand,&rdquo; Mumin says of his experience being an artist. &ldquo;The more I got into it, the more I got sucked in. I&rsquo;m in a place where I can&rsquo;t get out.&rdquo;

Zahra, an installation and sculpture artist, doesn&rsquo;t feel her work changed since she recently started calling herself an artist. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m still rooted in my sociology background, and that&rsquo;s how my projects come about,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Now they take a physical form.&rdquo;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/soomaal2.jpg" /> Mohamed Hersi preparing for Receptacle, 2017. Photo by Ridwan Omar

There are around 30 artists that are part of the collective &mdash; Zahra says that all of the artists that have participated in Soomaal&rsquo;s programing are a part of the group, though the three organizers do the heavy lifting in terms of administrative work.

Soomaal&rsquo;s first exhibition, Anomalous Expansion, took place in a mosque located in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis in 2016. Showing work in that setting meant that no figurative work could be shown, a restriction both Zahra and Mumin say benefitted the art in the show. &ldquo;The more restrictions you can get around, the better for the art,&rdquo; Mumin says.

Instead of anything anthropomorphic or resembling human figures, the artists showed abstract and geometric art. One artist created a piece that referenced prayer, which Mumin says was the closest they came to pushing the envelope.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/soomaal3.jpg" /> Mohamud Mumin&rsquo;s installation at Receptacle, 2017. Photo by the Mohamud Mumin

According to Zahra, showing work in religious spaces has been positive. (The group has subsequently shown work and held events at other Islamic centers in addition to art and community spaces). &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a great experience to move around because it kind of teaches you to be in other peoples&rsquo; spaces,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Having that challenge to be responsive to that space is really cool. It&rsquo;s not just an open gallery with white walls.&rdquo;

In addition to the two annual group shows Soomal has put together, the collective has also in the last year hosted a monthly series called Spearwave, featuring art, performance, and discussion.

&ldquo;Something magical always happens with the audience with the conversations,&rdquo; Mumin says. &ldquo;Sometimes we curate that, but a lot of times it takes its own life, and it&rsquo;s like, okay, this is what we are talking about. That usually depends on who is in the room.&rdquo;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/soomaal4.jpg" /> Performance by Mohamed Samatar, Spearwave, 2018. Photo by Mohamud Mumin

For the Spearwave events, the art being shown isn&rsquo;t the main focus. &ldquo;The objects are not the end goal in a way,&rdquo; Zahra says. &ldquo;As visual artists, it&rsquo;s hard to get away from the object being the final product, but really what is at the heart of everything&nbsp; is the conversation and what it generates.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s because the community piece is so important to what Soomaal is all about, in terms of shaping what contemporary art means within the context of the Somali community.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/soomaal5.jpg" /> Khadijah Charif&rsquo;s installation at Spearwave, 2018. Photo by Mohamud Mumin

Mumin likens the process to an ant colony. &ldquo;It goes back to who is the one that defines art?&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We want to illuminate, not define ourselves in our own corner. The more you have a staying power, and the more these conversations are happening, the more people you invite into this art colony, the more our ideas also spread out.&rdquo;

Soomaal will take a break from the Spearwave series over the summer, as the organizers get ready for their third annual group exhibition, featuring a dozen or so artists. Mumin says the plan&nbsp;is to include international artists this year, as Soomaal continues to expand its focus.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/soomaal6.jpg" /> Khadjiah Muse at Receptacle, 2017. Photo by Mohamud Mumin

&nbsp;

To learn more about Soomaal House of Art and its organizers and participants, visit <a href="http://soomaalhouse.com">soomaalhouse.com</a>.

The Twin Cities-based Somali collective offers resources for emerging artists, a platform to connect communities, and award-winning contemporary art

Community Profile: Soomaal House of Art

MPLSART

As you walk into Alyssa Baguss&rsquo;s studio in the California Building, you walk past two stream tables. One filled with light colored sand and the other with black sand, the tables mimic the process of erosion as water flows through the sand over time. Eventually the sand becomes saturated enough that the water starts running down in a continuous loop. Using them now as an educational tool, Baguss knows she&rsquo;ll use the stream tables in some fashion in her art work, but she&rsquo;s just letting their mesmerizing process percolate for a while.

Baguss is at heart someone who draws, but her work sprawls across disciplines. As she explores the intersections of technology and environmental science, her work draws on the natural world. But she also is just someone who has a lot of good ideas. Whether it&rsquo;s a pep rally for spring during the Super Bowl, a notary public in the middle of the frozen Lake Harriet during the Art Shanty Projects, or an upcoming battle of the marching bands, Baguss is the kind of artist that follows her intuitive sense, wherever it happens to lead.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/Baguss1.jpg" /> Wish You Were Here, hand-cut wallpaper mural, 150 x 767&rdquo;, Jerome Emerging Artist Program, Rochester Art Center, 2017

&nbsp;

Along the side wall of her studio is a detail from an installation Baguss had at the Rochester Art Center in 2017. One layer of the piece features giant wallpaper murals of idyllic landscape photography Baguss ordered from the internet. Popularized in the 1970s and &lsquo;80s, these giant murals can be found in dentist offices, massage studios, and homes. They evoke a feeling of being in a beautiful place while remaining indoors. Baguss overlays these murals with her signature paper cut-outs, which are based on data points of the landscape outside of the Rochester Art Center, appearing as sprawling geodesic patterns.

In other pieces, she uses satellite imagery from Google Earth to create three-dimensional drawings. Though she&rsquo;s employing advanced level computer software as research, Baguss ultimately creates her work through traditional practices. What starts out as a topographic map results in a pastel drawing, for instance. As a result, her work exists between two worlds, in a liminal space between data points and improvisation.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/Baguss2.jpg" /> Dead Reckoning, plumb line marking chalk on gallery walls, SooVAC, 2015

&nbsp;

A recipient of the 2017/2018 Jerome Fellowship grant, Baguss will have two projects showing this fall. She&rsquo;ll be showing work at MCAD Galleries and will also be creating a collaborative piece at the Belwin Conservancy in Afton, MN, with composer Susan Haugh. The installation will involve creating hunting tree stands in the middle of a pine forest.

In this interview, Baguss talks about being both an arts administrator and an artist, the ways technology can connect us to the natural world, and following her passions.

&nbsp;

Sheila Regan: You have this dual role of arts administrator and artist. Has that always been the case? 

Alyssa Baguss: I have my work work and I have my art work. It&rsquo;s always been this way but in the last couple of years, I don&rsquo;t compartmentalize my work and my art work. I think that&rsquo;s easier for me, but also my work involves so many conceptual threads that I deal with daily at work. I just see it as one big thing that&rsquo;s kind of a mash-up.

I&rsquo;ve always been in arts administration. I love organizing people in time, and I love programming in a very community sort of way. I love coming up with big ideas and driving a team. I don&rsquo;t know if that&rsquo;s normal, but who cares? I gave up on normal a really long time ago.

For the past 9 years, I&rsquo;ve been the arts program manager at Silverwood Park [in St. Anthony]. We use art to teach about environmental science. We do about 600 programs a year, and that&rsquo;s everything from art in the gallery or drop-in craft activity for families.

I have a staff of naturalists and a staff of artists and they work together to create these programs. I&rsquo;m always by a scientist and biologist. I love these people. I love interdisciplinary work. Before I was at the park, I was doing residencies with Northside middle schools using art to teach about math and science, so it&rsquo;s kind of how I got into that role.

My artwork is about technology and the environment, how it influences the way we experience the outdoors, how it shapes the expectations of the landscape, and how you never have to leave your home to go anywhere. You have all the information on your phone. I&rsquo;m working with mapping specialists or GIS specialists and environmental scientists to think about these works conceptually. So it mimics what I do during the day.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/Baguss3.jpg" /> Course, hand-cut Tyvek, 90 x 360&rdquo;, Kiehle Visual Arts Center, St. Cloud State University, 2016

&nbsp;

SR: Do you think your job has influenced your direction as an artist? 

AB: Definitely. I&rsquo;ve always had some of these threads in my work, but I&rsquo;m just so immersed in it there. I just sort of have this little gem of a space in the city every single day. I feel like I&rsquo;m in the middle of nowhere, but I&rsquo;m really in the city. And I have access to conversations with water quality specialists and wild life managers and people who are constantly interpreting what they see outside. And then I have the public coming in and engaging with the park. I&rsquo;m, at the heart of it, really interested in people&rsquo;s behavior in the environment. I&rsquo;m just a behavioral scientist wannnabe.

I am fascinated and so curious. Some people are so comfortable in the outdoors, or the opposite, where we get people who want everything very manicured, viewed from a safe distance. There are people who are overly concerned with things like ticks, or people have sensory issues with grass touching them or [with] silence. I&rsquo;m never presenting judgement necessarily on this. I just find it really interesting the broad spectrum of levels of comfort and understanding and expectations when people go outdoors.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/baguss4.jpg" /> Snowscreen, Silverwood Park, 2018. The artist built a projection screen wall out of snow and hosted a public screening of the film Grumpy Old Men.

&nbsp;

SR: How does that fuel your work? 

AB: The park is such a direct experience for people in this small green space, and I wonder how our lives would be if we didn&rsquo;t have direct experience with the environment &mdash; if we only had this textureless abstraction of experience with the outdoors. I am thinking about it on the opposite spectrum of how machines are seeing and sensing for us. If you don&rsquo;t have the texture of an experience, if you think touching is believing &mdash; what does that mean? I am such a hands-on person, if I can&rsquo;t see it or touch it, I&rsquo;m not sure if it&rsquo;s real. In [my studio] I&rsquo;m using remote sensing devices and satellite imagery of topography and viewing the landscape from a very comfortable distance out in space&hellip; I&rsquo;m questioning that direct versus abstract experience.

As an introvert, I love viewing from the corner and observing what is going on. I feel like you have that advantage with technology, and then most recently I&rsquo;ve been thinking about navigation and GPS and how I don&rsquo;t know how to get places anymore. I feel like I&rsquo;m losing my sense of direction. I&rsquo;ve always felt like I was a really solid navigator. I was always the person holding the map in our family. Now I feel like i&rsquo;m getting more disconnected.

&nbsp;

SR: Where did you grow up? 

AB: I grew up in eastern, Iowa, South of Dubuque. I grew up in a very agricultural area, though I was born a towny. I like wide open spaces and a lot of wide open fields. I need to get out of the city a lot. I just get that itch, I just have to get out of here so I can ground myself a little bit. I have more of an agrarian clock &mdash; I see the seasons through what the fields look like.

I couldn&rsquo;t wait to get away from that. I escaped as quickly as possible. And now I feel like that is such a big part of who I am.

&nbsp;

SR: Did you ever formerly study technology and science? 

AB: That&rsquo;s such a good question. I&rsquo;ve always been super interested in the natural sciences. I was a mathlete, and then I liked art. I&rsquo;ve just followed my heart and things that I love.

I grew up around engineers so I&rsquo;ve always been interested in how things are put together and built.

That&rsquo;s how I learned to draw I think, drawing on the back of old blue prints, and building things. In order to understand something, you draw it or you make it, or you figure out how it works by doing, and that&rsquo;s the way I as an educator and now as someone who manages programing, that&rsquo;s how we&rsquo;re thinking all the time, using making to learn.

I&rsquo;ve never had any formal training in environmental science. I&rsquo;ve always worked in partnership with an expert. I&rsquo;m interested in people that are super passionate about what they do. That makes me really happy. People who are flat-out crazy about something. I&rsquo;m attracted to that.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/Baguss5.jpg" /> The Notary Shanty, Art Shanty Projects, Lake Harriet, 2018. Photo by MPLSART.

&nbsp;

SR: So were your parents engineers? 

AB: My grandpa was an engineer. I spent a lot of time at their place. And he would ask me on the weekends: &ldquo;What do you want to make?&rdquo; I would come up with ideas and wait for the weekend. He had a metal shop, so I had the luxury as a child to have someone who was willing to sit down and make something with me or figure out why it works the way it does. I feel like that&rsquo;s how I approach everything. I get an idea: &rdquo;I&rsquo;m going to make that.&rdquo; Whether it goes on the wall, or anybody ever sees it, I don&rsquo;t care. I have to figure that out, let&rsquo;s try that. I want to do that, and that&rsquo;s what make me happy.

Process is really important to me. I get so excited about an idea. I get so excited about research. I tear into it and I disappear and I have coffee with people who know about that and I go to an event and I&rsquo;m infiltrating weird groups of people that think about these things and figuring out why they love it. Then I&rsquo;m making things and thinking about a process that relates to that. In the end, I&rsquo;m like, &ldquo;Oh yeah, I have to make a thing for the wall.&rdquo;&nbsp; It helps for me to have deadlines and responsibilities and exhibitions or people that are counting on me, but that final piece is not what is exciting. I would much rather play.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/Baguss6.jpg" /> The artist at work inside The Notary Shanty, Art Shanty Projects, Lake Harriet, 2018. Photo credit: Shine On Photos

&nbsp;

To view more of the artist&rsquo;s work, visit <a href="http://cargocollective.com/alyssabaguss">http://cargocollective.com/alyssabaguss</a>. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Blurring the lines between art and science, Alyssa Baguss’s installation projects meditate on the math in nature and the funny ways we interact with both.

Written by Sheila ReganWebsite

NEMAA 10X10: Putting the "fun" back in fund...

Making space at Second Shift

LIE CHEAT STEAL (and Shred): Arton Erthnif ...

Art Shanties On Thin Ice: The winter festiv...

Thinking Outside The Booth: The Porch Galle...

Community Profile: Soomaal House of Art

Curious Topographies: An interview with Aly...

Community Spotlight

We can't do it without you.