MPLSART 2020 Sketchbook Project

MPLSART Sketchbook Project

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All images courtesy of the artist.

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

Papa Mbye: Drawing is an act of trust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Betsy Alwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

&ldquo;A friend and I were trying to find places to draw one Saturday morning in July, and just decided to sit on the Stone Arch Bridge and draw this view of the city. We were a little uncomfortable, because there were so many passersby &ndash; but we put our heads down and started drawing,&rdquo; Chong laughs. &ldquo;After a while, I got used to it again.&rdquo;&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">&diams;

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

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

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

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

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Kar-Keat Chong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for having me on board for this round. I hope this project keeps rolling.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">&diams;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How can people support you and your work?

Currently, I receive my support through my web site <a href="http://www.gordoncoons.com" target="_blank">www.gordoncoons.com</a>&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">&diams;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1ODEwMDAx/full.jpg" />

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

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

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

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Gordon Coons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

 
How can people support you and your work? 
 
A great way to support my work is by following and interacting with it on social media, especially <a href="https://www.instagram.com/allisonannecollage/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>. It&rsquo;s the main place where new work is posted, and is the easiest place to find me. There&rsquo;s a really vibrant collage community on Instagram! If you are interested in purchasing my work, I have an online shop for original works and zines as well as a print shop. There&rsquo;s also an option to subscribe to exclusive zines and other items if getting some creative monthly snail mail captures your interest! Finally, keeping an eye on Twin Cities Collage Collective and connecting with us is a good way to get involved with the collage community both locally and globally.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">&diams;

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

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

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with allison anne

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

&nbsp;

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

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

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

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

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

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

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

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

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

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

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

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

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

&nbsp;

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

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

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

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

&nbsp;

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

&nbsp;

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

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

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Q&A with Lora Hlavsa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Ron Brown

&nbsp;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond the Binary: Q&A with AK Garski

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5NTcwMDAx/full.jpg" />The mural along Plymouth Avenue features the work sixteen different artists, organized by the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum &amp; Gallery. Photo by Georgia Fort,&nbsp;from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.maahmg.org" target="_blank">maahmg.org</a>.

<h3>What was your inspiration for your Black Lives Matter letter? What did it mean to you to be part of that group of 16 artists?&nbsp;</h3>

My inspiration came from thoughts about Black education. I based my letter &quot;E&quot; on the concept of &quot;Black Education Matters&quot; by highlighting books to symbolize education, an apple to symbolize complexities and knowledge, and African elders at the bottom to represent culture within Africa.

Participating in the Black Lives Matter mural felt like finally getting a chance to breathe a little. I was blessed to be a part of this experience and thank Tina Burnside and others from the Minnesota African&nbsp;American Heritage Museum for allowing me to contribute.

<h3>You&#39;ve been doing some other mural work&nbsp;over the past two months. How many have you painted so far? And how has working on large public murals changed your approach to painting in the studio?&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>

I painted two murals. One with George Floyd&nbsp;and his daughter. The second of him in high school. Through painting these murals I was able&nbsp;to step outside my comfort zone.&nbsp;I&#39;ve&nbsp;never done any public art before, and enjoyed learning throughout this&nbsp;process of making&nbsp;with no strings attached.&nbsp;

Now I&#39;m back&nbsp;in the studio&nbsp;making new work,&nbsp;exploring everything&nbsp;I&#39;m feeling with a deeper sense of experimenting. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1NTYwMDAy/full.jpg" />An example of Karpeh&#39;s previous studio work:&nbsp;American 9 to 5, oil and acrylic on canvas, 62 x 100&quot;, 2018.

<h3>You also recently coordinated a mural project for kids &mdash; can you tell us more about that?&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>

The mural project was done with youth of color and immigrant backgrounds, titled &ldquo;Art Of The Times&rdquo; in response to the fight for social justice. We had 15 youth signed up to participate in painting murals on the looted CVS building near the Cub Foods in Uptown.&nbsp;

Participating youth were ages 7-18 and came from households of immigrant background.&nbsp;They all lived in the cities of Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, New Hope, and Crystal:&nbsp;areas with a high population of immigrant families and little to no creative outlets for youth to engage or experience. After the murals were completed we had a little showcase and invited their parents to attend. Some of the kids were recent graduates from Cooper High School taught by my friend/artist Claire, others were kids from my Liberian Youth Arts program. The project was amazing, and I am happy they got the opportunity to express themselves.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1NTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Karpeh, at left, with a group of young muralists and their work. Photo by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/samweebee/" target="_blank">Sam Wiebe</a>, courtesy of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lissa.karpeh/" target="_blank">Karpeh&#39;s Instagram</a>.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI1MTYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Photo by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/samweebee/" target="_blank">Sam Wiebe</a>, courtesy of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lissa.karpeh/" target="_blank">Karpeh&#39;s Instagram</a>.

What have you learned about yourself or about Minneapolis since the murder of George Floyd, especially through creating this artwork? &nbsp;

To be honest, I&#39;m slowly&nbsp;still processing everything.&nbsp;However, I think the&nbsp;most important&nbsp;thing I&rsquo;ve learned is the definition of community.&nbsp;Since the&nbsp;murder of George Floyd, I learned&nbsp;how to&nbsp;better value and observe&nbsp;the role I play in communities. Especially communities of color, I am learning how to show up, do the&nbsp;work, and ask questions later.&nbsp; When it comes to my art work, I&#39;ve learned the power of challenging and changing narratives in art. I now have a better understanding on art&#39;s ability&nbsp;to provoke, ask questions, answer questions, and&nbsp;explore answers&nbsp;that can be a formula for change. I am also learning how to&nbsp;use art to make a big impact on history&nbsp;during times like this,&nbsp;and how I must pay attention and create work encompassing much more than just my personal experiences&nbsp;alone.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzNDcwMDAx/full.jpg" />The artist with one of her recent murals. Photo by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/samweebee/" target="_blank">Sam Wiebe</a>.

To see more of Lissa Karpeh&#39;s&nbsp;work, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://lissakarpeh.com" target="_blank">her website</a> and follow her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lissa.karpeh/" target="_blank">on Instagram</a>. Also <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B8pbENgHGEo/" target="_blank">check out when we visited</a>&nbsp;for #StudioVisitSundays last February.&nbsp;She&nbsp;is also a&nbsp;member of&nbsp;<a href="https://publicfunctionary.org/studio400" target="_blank">Studio 400</a>&nbsp;in Northeast Minneapolis. All images courtesy of the artist unless otherwise noted.

Painter and muralist Lissa Karpeh, who created one of the letters in the recent BLACK LIVES MATTER street mural, reflects on her public work, her studio practice, and what the past two months have taught her.

On Murals & Meaning: Q&A with Lissa Karpeh

Local painter Amina Harper, known for her fantastically whimsical and intimate paintings, was born and raised in Minneapolis. She&nbsp;briefly attended art school in Portland before her grandmother&rsquo;s illness brought her back home&nbsp;and has now established herself as a freelance artist in the Twin Cities. Recently&nbsp;I got to sit down with her, and in the spirit of love, we talked about intimacy, her process for creating fantastical creatures and environments, the queerness of color, and why connection is important.&nbsp;

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.&nbsp;

Gabby Coll:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2018/12/fantastically-bizarre-amina-harper-s-work-world/">MPLSART&nbsp;profiled you in 2018</a> &ndash; what&rsquo;s happened since then?&nbsp;

Amina Harper:&nbsp;So much has changed. When I did that interview I wasn&rsquo;t ready. I didn&rsquo;t have a voice. I had just started working in acrylic paint (self-taught; I worked in watercolor before), and I didn&rsquo;t have an identity as a painter in that medium yet. I was painting animals and fruits so I could teach myself those skills.&nbsp;

Now that I basically have acrylic painting down and have the skills and tools and space to make it happen, I can really paint the things I want to paint and say the things I want to say.

What are those stories you want to tell?&nbsp;

So many stories. Right now, I&rsquo;m really into queer, black, and femme stories. You don&rsquo;t see them often in the media, and because of this, I have the freedom to literally do whatever I want. They can be as fantastical, as romantic, and as exciting as I want them to be. I want people to look at the work and not be sure what&rsquo;s happening all the time. I want to create something completely new that&rsquo;s never existed before.&nbsp;

All of my work is a little fantastical and always has been, so it&rsquo;s not terribly outside of the box for me. The size and scale and composition are a little different than I&rsquo;m used to. But I&rsquo;m accustomed to building a piece from the ground up; I don&rsquo;t take photographs of figures and repaint them, I just figure draw from the ground-up. I might pose a figure a little bit, and I work from reference photos. My phone has nothing but references pulled from the internet and real life; they&rsquo;re weird and they don&rsquo;t make any sense, but they make sense to me because I know why I have them.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1MzYwMDAx/full.jpg" />Amina Harper, Reflections Eternal, acrylic on canvas, 2020.

So are most of your paintings kind of an amalgam of your fantastical ideas, these stories you want to tell, your reference photos, and your real life too?

Yeah, kind of. There&rsquo;s one painting I recently made of two women kissing. One of them is human, the other one looks like an alien of some sort. They&rsquo;re sitting in front of a large table that&rsquo;s filled with food. I wanted to take all of the Zodiac signs and turn them into meals, each sign as a different food item. The women are kissing, and it looks like they&rsquo;re on a date.&nbsp;

People have been getting really into Zodiacs lately, and compatibility, and my way of looking at it is that you really can have your pick of whomever. Your chart is just something you reference, but it really makes all of our options [in relationships] feel so vast. It was fun picking the meals, creating them and figuring out what food represented which sign. Sometimes other things like the utensils would represent the signs, like a spoon in the shape of a scorpion.

I&rsquo;m curious about your process. I was looking on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/amina.harper/" target="_blank">your Instagram</a>, and you share many phases of your drawings which then turn into paintings. What compels you to do this in your practice?&nbsp;

I love the behind-the-scenes stuff. I actually like seeing that more than the finished product. The final product is never going to change that much, whereas the behind the scenes is always a work in progress, it&rsquo;s always alternating and moving to fit the vision. I am interested in how the process moves.&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s also a really intimate process to share. I think that&rsquo;s what people like about my Instagram. I&nbsp;show you literally how I start from the transfer and step-by-step all the way to the final piece. You get to watch it and grow with it, and it feels like you&rsquo;re participating in the piece.&nbsp;

Another big thing about this process of my work is that I have a record of where I started, so if I have to protect or maintain a line while I&rsquo;m in the process, I can go back to reference it.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxMjIwMDAy/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxMjIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Top:&nbsp;Preliminary sketch the artist&nbsp;shared on Instagram. Bottom:&nbsp;A Pocket of Light, acrylic on canvas, 2019.

Your work is fantastical, humanistic, it&rsquo;s about relationships&hellip;we also talked about food and Zodiacs. You say you have all these ideas of what to create; how do you select the subject matter for your next painting?&nbsp;

My goal is intimacy. The more touch, the more eye contact, the more intense or romantic a piece is, the more interested I am in realizing it. I used to do solitary figures exclusively. Now I&rsquo;m acknowledging that what I want in my life are relationships. I recently learned about the Seven Greek Loves and thought &lsquo;wow, that is a very decolonized, queer way of looking at love and relationships.&rsquo; I liked the idea of not having to look for one type of person who is supposed to be the most important and who validates all of our everything all at once. We have to validate ourselves. A lover should not complete you. They should give you something extra. I want to create those types of ecosystems in my art.

We live in a very lonely time. Work makes us lonely. But it&rsquo;s also how we frame relationships. We work toward the ideal of something that doesn&rsquo;t really exist: the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect partner who wants to have the perfect family with us, and who wants to be with us forever until we both die. That&rsquo;s kind of insane. That&rsquo;s a lot to expect from one person and why so many relationships fall apart.&nbsp;

I firmly believe in using social media to create real-world relationships. The goal is to build a foundation that we take into the real world.&nbsp;It&rsquo;s hard, we all do it, we all alienate ourselves. But we also do need those connective relationships and people.&nbsp;The art changes to reflect that &ndash;letting new people in. Right now it just all looks kind of sexual [laughs]. Not everything, some stuff that doesn&rsquo;t, some stuff is just sweet.&nbsp;

Tell me about that line between erotica and intimacy; the nuance of those kinds of relationships. You&rsquo;ve talked about queerness too; I&rsquo;m curious about what you&rsquo;re interested in exploring in your work.

I love intimacy. I love seeing it, experiencing it, and I enjoy portraying it. Hands are my favorite thing to draw. They&rsquo;re one of the most intimate tools we have. In my paintings with multiple figures, everyone is touching. It&rsquo;s joyous touch, it&rsquo;s consensual touch.&nbsp;

I think that people are afraid of stuff like this, scared because they want it so badly. It involves vulnerability and courage. It involves setting yourself up to be rejected and we all want to be powerful in our relationships. That might be a Western thing, but it&rsquo;s very exhausting. We all feel like we want to be powerful but what we really want is to be loved. And we feel like we have to manipulate or fight our way through it somehow.&nbsp;

This plays into the alienation (from ourselves, each other). It&rsquo;s frustrating. Being in relationships with people where you feel like you aren&rsquo;t valid. Black women experience this. It took me so long&hellip;outside of my family, growing up, I never felt seen, or beautiful, or valid or important to anyone. Once I got outside into the world, I was invisible, or so visible that I was objectified. It taught me that this was my only value.&nbsp;

White supremacy has a way of disconnecting you from yourself and from your community. It disconnected me from other black women and queer and femme people. Everything around me told me that this body, and everyone else who inhabits one that is similar to it, are undesirable and unworthy. That if I want to be desirable and worthy, I have to attach myself to the bodies of people that are. I am moving my way towards getting over that. Thank god.&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s painful to be disconnected from yourself and from your tribe in that way. I think painting black women for me has become a way of connecting. Those women are me. They&rsquo;re also other women and other queers and other femme people like me.

Tell me more about how you&rsquo;re working through that in your work.

I just needed to see people who looked like me being valued and validated. The sad part is, the reason they&rsquo;re always mythological creatures is because I can&rsquo;t see other humans doing it. The reason why this werewolf is here is because humans don&rsquo;t love black women, but this werewolf does.&nbsp;

Basically, I&rsquo;ve created a world where the people who are the least loved get the most love in the most magical and fantastical ways. I will create a love that is the most magical, the most powerful, the most intense, the most romantic and wind-sweeping, wave-crashing, epic love that I can think of. Because if I see it and can show it, then maybe that will change something.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE1MzkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Amina&nbsp;Harper,&nbsp;Euphoria, acrylic on canvas, 2019.

That&rsquo;s what I was going to ask; is this you creating this world as a vision for the future? Or is it a survival tactic? Or both?&nbsp;

Probably all of it. I like the idea of creating worlds that no one has ever seen before and that people don&rsquo;t get to see often. That opens the world up a little bit more to these ideas and these stories.

I&rsquo;ve had people who flat out don&rsquo;t understand the work. I can&rsquo;t do anything about that, but it&rsquo;s made me more cautious about who does understand, and that those people are valuable. They are valuable because they understand that experience. That&rsquo;s who I make the work for besides myself.&nbsp;

I&rsquo;m curious about your writing; tell me about the relationship between writing and art-making.&nbsp;

I incorporate the two. Before I paint anything, I write down what the piece is, what all the characters are going to look like, where they&rsquo;re going to be in relation to each other. Writing happens the whole way through. If I have an idea in my head and it&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;ve never seen before, I&rsquo;ll write about why it needs to exist, or why I want it to exist. To give it that extra tangibility, that validity; it&rsquo;s real, it matters because I want to make it real.&nbsp;

Anything else you want us to know?&nbsp;

I feel like people are afraid to ask me weird questions. I think there&rsquo;s not enough weird, intimate art in this state, specifically. I think people want to see it; they crave it. But it&rsquo;s not normalized.

Color is super important to me. It&rsquo;s extremely queer: color, rhinestones, flowers, glistening water that&rsquo;s the color of sapphires&hellip; people are freaked out by that. They think it&rsquo;s tacky or gaudy or campy. To me, those are the queerest things you can be. Show out. Show people the world is bigger than beige. Be as grand as you possibly want or dare to be. Inspire other people to do the same. I think everyone wants to do that, but the world says no because white supremacy shames all of those things: color, queerness, drama, beauty, romance, desire. But all of this is what makes us intrinsically human.&nbsp;

To see more of Harper&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://aminaharper.wixsite.com/aminaharper/" target="_blank">the artist&#39;s website</a> or follow her on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/amina.harper/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>.

Banner image: The Acquiescence of April (detail), acrylic on canvas, 2019.

Queer, black, and femme characters find intimacy in this painter's wild world which, in her words, is much bigger than beige.

The Most Love: An interview with artist Amina Harper

I&#39;m standing with abstract painter Annie Hejny at the top of an old wooden staircase that is blocked by a chain. The stairs lead down to the Mississippi River underneath Minneapolis&#39; beloved Stone Arch Bridge. Those chains are usually meant to deter people from entering, but hey, why not live a little? She steps over with ease, and I stumble over, immediately realizing the probable reason for the chain: the boards that would make up the middle of the stairway have found their way into the dirt underneath. She makes her way across easily as I carefully put my boots on the remaining pieces of wood to get down the path.

&nbsp;

We&#39;re there so she can collect water from the river and some of the earth on the shore to use in a future painting. This part of her process is what she calls honorable harvesting. As we follow a path that&#39;s been made by constant foot traffic, she takes in her surroundings.

 
&ldquo;I&#39;ll choose a location for my project and go out to that site, whether I&#39;ve been there before or not,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;It&#39;s a new experience every time. So I first have to prepare myself and kind of calm myself down. And I do that by having a short walk through the woods to get to the riverside.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/ah_hike2.jpg" />

&nbsp;

She has a backpack and two pails with her. One is for harvesting water and the other I soon find out is for picking up litter, and there&#39;s enough here to fill it up. It&#39;s one of her ways of giving back to a place from which she&#39;s about to receive.

&nbsp;

The water and earth she gathers from this area will turn into another unique piece of abstract art, mixed with acrylic paint to create Hejny&rsquo;s moody, ethereal paintings. She&#39;s only been focusing on this kind of art in the past few years; art wasn&#39;t even her focus until she was an undergrad at St. Thomas pursuing elementary education.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I feel like I really only dreamed of becoming a professional artist in the last five to ten years,&rdquo; the 28-year-old recalled later after we returned to her shared studio at the Casket Arts Building. &ldquo;That dream started when I was an undergrad and had to add on a second major.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Hejny veered from her main area of study and started taking art classes at St. Kate&#39;s, and after one class she was hooked. She was surrounded by all different forms of art when she was younger and always preferred to be alone creating things. But she never imagined she could make it her profession. And so far she has no complaints.

 
&ldquo;I love the lifestyle it provides. I love the engagement with the community I get to have,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;It&#39;s such a rich necessity for our culture, and for ways of living. And I choose to be immersed in it all the time, every day.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/ah_studio.jpg" /> Hejny&rsquo;s studio in the Casket Arts Building

&nbsp;

Back at the shoreline, after a little walking through the wooded area, including a bridge with a great view of both ends of the river, she finds a spot that she likes. She starts by unpacking and setting out all the tools she&#39;s going to use: a gardening trowel, a plastic garbage bag for the dirt, a notebook, and some ceremonial objects.

&nbsp;

Before she does anything she performs a ceremony. She usually brings &ldquo;something that I can burn as sacred smoke,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;So, whether sage, Palo Santo, or incense to offer an initial introduction and blessing to the river. And then I have a journal with me and I start writing about the river, either a message to the river, for the river, or something that I&#39;m doing to connect with the river.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

She also documents what&#39;s going on around her. That could be everything from notes about the weather, time of day, colors she sees, and more. &ldquo;It&#39;s usually pretty brief,&rdquo; she says, adding that she also takes photographs for future reference as she&#39;s imagining what the painting could look like.

 
She then takes one of her pails and walks across the river on some fallen logs. She finds the right place in the middle and begins harvesting the water. She never takes more than she needs unless she&#39;s preparing for the cold months or has taken a longer trip outside the city. She goes back to her workspace on the shore, puts the half-filled bucket down and prepares to gather the dirt. She spreads out the plastic bag and begins shoveling several scoops of dirt into her bag. Again, she never takes more than she needs. When she&#39;s done, she sprinkles some tobacco onto the ground to give back to the earth from which she took.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/ah_offering.jpg" /> The artist burns wood as part of her honorable harvesting process. 

&nbsp;

These ceremonies come from many different places. Recently she&#39;s been inspired by a book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. &ldquo;She&#39;s an indigenous woman and an ecologist,&rdquo; Hejny explains. &ldquo;And so she is bringing this whole perspective of science and spirit that is something I totally resonate with. She is the one who introduced me to the honorable harvest.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

She&#39;s also inspired by Zen Buddhism, Yoga teachings, different native cultures, and other artists as well. Some ceremonial aspects she also creates herself. &ldquo;I&#39;m creating this to be my own.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

After she got her teaching license, she realized teaching in a public or private school classroom wasn&#39;t the way she wanted to reach kids. Three months in LA as an intern with TOMS One For One taught her the corporate environment was not for her either.

&nbsp;

She moved back to the Twin Cities for another year in which she waited tables, saved money, started painting in her dining room, and got more involved in the arts community. She applied for different art shows and attended many exhibit openings.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I tried to set up a schedule and a lifestyle where I could have art making, art experiencing, and then the job,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I had to go to work.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

The turning point in her artistic career would be a move to Chicago for a year in the fall of 2013 that happened on a whim. She got another job as a waitress but was determined to get into the Chicago art scene, securing an internship at Jackson Junge, one of the local galleries whose owner and wife had roots in Minnesota.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I just thought it&#39;d be a good way to expand within the midwest,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;And at the same time I really didn&#39;t have a lot of experience.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

She&#39;s kept in touch with them and now has gallery representation there. The overall experience for her in the Windy City was not only positive but also very important as she learned a lot about who she is and the environment she prefers.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;That&#39;s where I started realizing how much I needed nature and needed water in my life,&rdquo; she says. Whenever things got crazy she&#39;d bike over to Lake Michigan as an escape.

&nbsp;

Living in the Windy City was also a turning point for her style. When she first started painting she was working realistically: specific cityscapes, buildings, and streets. She was still paying attention to her environment, but it materialized on her canvas in a different way. She noticed the city was full of abstract art, and she decided to push her style in that direction: her buildings turned into abstracted lines and squares. Then a realization hit.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I realized I was painting about water,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;And I wanted to add the intentional materials of using the actual river water and actual earth to paint about the environment.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

When she moved back to the Twin Cities in the fall of 2014, it was time to get serious about being a professional artist. She started renting her studio space, reading more artist biographies, buying more art materials, and consciously paying attention to how she was drawn to art. She also got involved with the <a href="https://www.thewarm.org/">Women&#39;s Art Resources of Minnesota</a> (WARM), enrolling in its mentorship program that pairs an emerging artist with an established, mid-career artist. Luckily, Hejny found a mentor who was as dedicated to the mentorship as she was: Deborah Foutch, a mixed media artist also based at Casket Arts.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I took the mentorship really seriously,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;And every meeting Deborah and I had together I had an agenda, I had questions, and I had done research. I was ready to go for our one-on-ones.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

She says Foutch was her &ldquo;accountability buddy.&rdquo; In between each one-on-one, she set her mind to work hard so she could show how she was progressing as the mentorship went on. Just as it proved immensely helpful for her, Hejny says a resource like WARM is very important for female artists. It gives women the opportunity to build their voices within their art practice, providing opportunities for exposure at the same time.

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/ah_riverriver3.jpg" /> River River No. 3 acrylic, collected Mississippi River water &amp; sediment on canvas; 36 x 36&rdquo;; 2016 

&nbsp;

When one uses the the natural world to create their pieces, it&#39;s impossible to ignore topics such as climate change and what&rsquo;s happening to the environment. The change is something she has noticed firsthand as she documents the state of the local ecosystems she visits.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I walk the river in all seasons, and in the winter it has not been as frozen, as cold, as snowy as in years past,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;So I&#39;m looking and noticing physically what&#39;s happening a lot with our environment.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

It&#39;s during these turbulent times that she&#39;s felt the activist part of her come out in different ways. During the recent Water Action Day at the capital she cleared her schedule and went to participate. Among the training was a lesson on how to properly talk to your legislator. And she thinks her work can help be her voice.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I&#39;m just one part of that conversation,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;And I think that turning it into abstract paintings is a really unique way of being a voice.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

She wants to be an example and model others can follow, because she can&#39;t do all the work on her own. &nbsp;Everyone has to do their part to clean up our rivers. And she hopes that if she talks about it and how it matters to her art and everyone&#39;s well-being, then maybe things can change.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I hope that I will spark a different type of thinking and decision-making as consumers,&rdquo; she says.

&nbsp;

As she progresses in her career as an artist, she&#39;s also gaining experience as a curator by turning her home garage into an art gallery called <a href="http://www.annie-hejny.com/gallerythree/">gallery three</a>. The idea was conceived two years ago out of her need as an emerging artist to show her work and get feedback on it. She cleaned it all out and renovated it into a brightly-lit, three-wall exhibition space.

 
&ldquo;It feels really good to provide a space for underrepresented artists,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;and artists who are maybe wanting to experiment with something different.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/ah_gallery3.jpg" /> Water Commoning installation at gallery three

&nbsp;

Her last event at gallery three had a great draw. It was held on a cold, wet day in April for Earth Month, and she collaborated with Camille Gage of Fierce Lament for an exhibit centered around environmental awareness. They selected two female artists with an age gap of over 50 years, which resulted in a very diverse group of supporters.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;It was a freezing cold day, and we had a fire going,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;The artwork was incredibly sophisticated and the art talks that the artists gave were so eloquent, but it&#39;s in a garage. So it&#39;s this beautiful experience in a very alternative environment.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

She wants to do at least one more gallery three event this summer, but she&#39;s also also going to be spending some time southeast of the cities in Lanesboro at an artist residency. She&#39;ll be living and working in a studio apartment above the St. Mane Theatre right in town. She&#39;ll spend the entire month of August immersing herself in the community.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;It&#39;s all about community engagement,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It&#39;s mostly about how will the community get to also experience my paintings and my artwork. So we&#39;ll be doing an event at the Root Riverside, pouring and painting together.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Not only will they be learning to paint with her, they&#39;ll be partaking in the honorable harvesting process as well. It all ends with a goodbye showcase during the last week of her residency.

&nbsp;

&ldquo;I can&#39;t wait to see and meet the community there,&rdquo; she says.

&nbsp;

Hejny is always thinking about the future. She wants to go to the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca for a look at the source of the river. She also has plans to try working with different materials, such as natural dyes and textiles, to be as organic as she can. But no matter which media she explores, painting will always be her forte, her way of channelling the energy of the rivers she visits.

&nbsp;

As she puts it, &ldquo;I&#39;m trying to bring the earth&#39;s voice forward.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/ah_Annie.JPG" /> The artist in her studio

&nbsp;

Annie Hejny&rsquo;s work can be seen in the upcoming exhibit Our Water: River Paintings by Annie Hejny, on view May 31st - September 8th at the <a href="https://www.mhealth.org/locations/buildings/university-of-minnesota-physicians-mill-city-clinic">Mill City Clinic Gallery of the University of Minnesota</a>, 901 S 2nd St, Minneapolis, MN 55415. For more info, visit <a href="http://annie-hejny.com/">annie-hejny.com</a>.

 
Banner image: River, River No. 1 [detail]; acrylic, collected Mississippi River water &amp; sediment on canvas; 36 x 36&rdquo;; 2016

Local painter Annie Hejny draws more than just inspiration from rivers and lakes, combining water, soil, and ceremony to create her acrylic abstractions.

Take Me To The River: A Profile of Artist Annie Hejny

Local painter and current MCAD MFA candidate, Leslie Barlow has a lot going on right now, from shows to grants to residencies and even NFL-sized commissions. &nbsp;She took time out of her busy schedule to talk with us about maintaining a successful studio practice, the secret to effective grant-writing, and how her work addresses identity and otherness. 
&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/LeslieBarlow_DSC6757.jpg" /> Leslie Photo by Rik Sferra

Russ White: You are currently in your second year as an MFA candidate at MCAD, you just had a show at the Hopkins Center for the Arts, you&rsquo;ve participated in the most recent Made Here project, you have both a group show and your Thesis Exhibition coming up at MCAD, you just won a MN State Arts Board grant, you are planning for a fall residency in Spokane, Washington, and you are currently finishing up a commission for the Minnesota Vikings. &nbsp;That is a lot of irons in the fire! &nbsp;Can you tell me a little bit about your studio practice? &nbsp;It sounds like you must basically just sleep and paint, but there has to be a lot of admin-type work as well to stay ahead of deadlines and put proposals together. &nbsp;How do you balance that work with your painting? 
&nbsp; 
Leslie Barlow: My studio practice is insane. I wouldn&rsquo;t call it a well-oiled machine, but my schedule is pretty regimented to make sure I fit everything in and still get ample studio time. &nbsp;There are some days so packed that I have to actually schedule in times to eat or else I&rsquo;ll forget! &nbsp;I&rsquo;m hoping once I finish graduate school the schedule cramming will be a bit less severe, but I know that because I like to be involved in a lot of different things, I kind of have to accept the fact that I&rsquo;m busy all the time.&nbsp; 
I wish I could just sleep and paint (that sounds like the dream), but yes you&rsquo;re right, a ton of admin work is involved to apply to shows and set up studio visits and manage a website, etc, not to mention the time it takes getting out to other art shows and talks regularly to see what your fellow people are doing and making. &nbsp;A teacher gave me some advice back in undergrad about the admin side of things- he said that you have to spend almost the same amount of time &ldquo;managing&rdquo; your art as you do actually creating the art. &nbsp;And it&rsquo;s crazy because it&rsquo;s kind of true. &nbsp;However, if you go into it knowing that the admin work is half the battle, and specifically allow time in your schedule to do it, it doesn&rsquo;t seem as so much of a burden. 
&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/lb_pic5_thoughtsinawinterkaleidoscope.jpg" />Thoughts in a Winter Kaleidoscope, 48&quot; x 60&quot;, Oil, gesso, and charcoal on panel, 2016

 
RW: What is your process like when you start a painting? &nbsp;Do you usually have a good idea of where you&rsquo;re headed when you begin? 
&nbsp; 
LB: I think the answer is yes and no. Because I am a representational painter, I always have a sense of what the painting will look like because I need a source or model to directly work from. &nbsp;So whether I&rsquo;m working from a live subject or working from a photograph I took of a subject, that informs what the pose, expression, or composition in the painting will look like. &nbsp;But many times I will deviate from the source imagery (this is especially true for the variety of colors I use in my work) or work from a few different images to compose one painting. &nbsp;Or halfway through the painting, I&rsquo;ll change the trajectory entirely. &nbsp;For me it&rsquo;s important to have a direction, but also allow space to alter that direction if the original idea isn&rsquo;t working. 
&nbsp; 
I am always researching and reading and taking in the world around me, and these things manifest themselves in my work. &nbsp;Many times it is deliberate: I want to depict a specific idea or particular event or a childhood memory. &nbsp;Other times I try to let the narrative work itself through the piece as I&rsquo;m creating it, or I want things to be a bit more ambiguous. 
&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/lb_pic4_identity_series.jpg" />Installation view of Identity Series, 20&quot; x 16&quot; each Oil on Panel, 2015

 
RW: Can you tell me about your proposal for the MN State Arts Board grant? &nbsp;Will your project be all new work? 
&nbsp; 
Yes, the project will be all new work, but definitely in the same vein as the work I&rsquo;m currently creating. &nbsp;I&rsquo;m going to try not to get too long-winded here&ndash;&ndash;but I&rsquo;m very excited about my project proposal, and there are quite a bit of layers. &nbsp;My MN State Arts Board grant project will be a series of 8-10 large scale portraits (think 3 feet to 8 feet in size) featuring interracial families to highlight the 50th year anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case, which will be commemorated in 2017. &nbsp;I will be hosting a couple of public studio events during the months creating the series, and through the work and research, the paintings will be realized in a solo exhibition in the Twin Cities in early 2017, with a public artist talk and forum to follow.&nbsp;

Much of my current work uses the figure, narrative, and symbolism to talk about issues related to multiculturalism, &ldquo;otherness&rdquo;, and identity. &nbsp;I wanted to have a narrowed focus for this new body of work, and tie it into that historical event- Loving v. Virginia. &nbsp;Initially inspired by the controversial, racist backlash surrounding the 2013 General Mill&rsquo;s Cheerios commercial featuring an interracial family, I realized it was extremely important to visually represent interracial families and people of mixed race as they are: normal and very much present. &nbsp;The Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case has been a moving and important part of my understanding the culture of discrimination surrounding interracial relationships and mixed race people. &nbsp;As I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re aware, anti-miscegenation laws were a part of America since before the U.S. was established, and remained so until ruled unconstitutional in the 1967 court case. &nbsp;The case was brought by Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Unfortunately many racial tensions that were present during the case in 1967 are still present today. In addition, with the recent Supreme Court legalization of gay marriage, the questions of who we can love, what makes a family, and how equality is defined is even more relevant.

My main goal through this project is to make a body of work that articulates these themes and incorporates and represents our evolving community. Minnesota is changing. While we are not nearly as ethnically diverse as other states, diversity is at an all time high. According to the 2010 census, about 14% of residents are people of color, and about 2.4% of Minnesota&rsquo;s population is multiracial, which is a 51% increase over the past decade. I wish to make visible a community that is the changing demographics of Minnesota, educate Minnesotans about families that are not the mainstream story, and bring attention to the important court case and civil rights moment in the racial history of the US. &nbsp;Using and working within the history of portrait painting allows me fertile ground to push the boundaries of our known visual language and inject that history with a new generation of faces and stories. 
&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/lb_pic6_dissolve.jpg" /> Dissolve, 30&quot; x 22.5&quot;, Charcoal and gesso on paper, 2015

RW: Do you have any insider tips on what you think makes for a successful grant proposal? 
&nbsp; 
LB: Clarity of direction. &nbsp;I&rsquo;ve applied for funding before and have not received it, and I think that was my biggest downfall. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s important to be clear about what your idea is, why you want to do a project (why is it important to you as well as the community/people funding it), and how you are going to achieve the goals of your project. &nbsp;No extra jargon or unnecessary details that may take away or dilute your proposal. 
&nbsp; 
RW: &nbsp;The social implications of racial and gender identity are topics of much discussion these days because of police shootings, presidential campaigns, and a much more vocal resistance to normalized privilege. &nbsp;Have these recent events and conversations affected your work? &nbsp;What do you see as the relationship between art and activism? 
&nbsp; 
LB: Of course! These things ALL affect my work greatly! I think as an artist, I cannot help but reflect the world around me in my work. &nbsp;I&rsquo;m making artwork in this time, in this place, and as a young woman of color from the Midwest. There are all of these lenses there.&nbsp;

As far as the relationship between art and activism...there&#39;s a lot of directions I could go with this question, there&#39;s a lot there, and maybe more than I&#39;d like to get into right now. &nbsp;Art and activism historically have gone hand in hand, and socially-engaged/social-practice artwork is on the rise right now. I think it&#39;s hard to not make work reflective of the times that you&#39;re making the work in, and well, the times right now are tense. &nbsp;More then ever we need work that connects people, makes people question the status-quo, and represents historically marginalized voices and stories. &nbsp;I&#39;m not sure if this really answers your question, but I think about the relationship of art and activism a lot and I just don&#39;t have a concrete answer or position... just a rambling stream of thoughts. 
&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/lb_pic2_do_not_cross.jpg" />Do Not Cross, 24.5&quot; x 20&quot; oval, Oil and photo transfer on panel, 2015

RW: As a working artist about to finish graduate school, do you see yourself making art full time in the future?&nbsp; 
&nbsp; 
LB: I would love to be able to make art full time, that&rsquo;s the goal. &nbsp;But even so, I still want to have my hands in a bunch of different projects outside of my personal studio practice. &nbsp;The relationship between art and community is very important to me, and I like to work directly with people. &nbsp;I currently work at a newer gallery (we&rsquo;re going on two years!), Waiting Room in the Loring Park area downtown Minneapolis, and I love that I get to assist other artists regularly and help facilitate meaningful conversations with visitors and the community. &nbsp;I definitely want to continue working in art spaces, or arts non-profit, and I could see myself teaching in the future as well&hellip;&nbsp; 
&nbsp; 
RW: Overall, what do you think of the Twin Cities art scene? 
&nbsp;LB: It&rsquo;s tight-knit, supportive, and vibrant.&nbsp; 
&nbsp;

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/lb_two_grandmas.jpg" /> 
Two Grandmas, 84&quot; x 48&quot;, Oil, acrylic, charcoal, and photo transfer on panel, 2015

RW: Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what did you think of Episode 7? &nbsp;(This can be off the record if you prefer, just curious from one Star Wars nerd to another.) 
&nbsp; 
LB: This better not be off the record!! Ha! This is obviously the most important part of this interview. I mean, I don&rsquo;t think I can accurately describe my excitement and feelings for where Episode 7 is leading us in the Star Wars universe, but yes I freaking loved it (even if it felt a bit too &quot;familiar&quot;, I&#39;m happy it actually felt like a Star Wars movie), and yes I&rsquo;m thinking about how to incorporate something from Episode 7 into my cosplay rotation this year. &nbsp;I don&rsquo;t want to give any other details away&hellip; just come find me at Wizard World&rsquo;s Comic Con. 
 
-&nbsp;<a href="http://russ-white.com/" target="_new">Russ White</a> 
 
See Leslie&#39;s&nbsp;latest work, among others, at the <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/mcad-mfa-thesis-exhibition" target="_blank">MCAD MFA Thesis Exhibition</a> opening Friday May 13th. She will also be a part of the next Made Here&nbsp;series as well as having work at All My Relations Gallery in June for the exhibition Reframe&nbsp;Minnesota: Art Beyond a Single Story. More details on these exhibitions and events soon. &nbsp;Visit&nbsp;<a href="http://www.lesliebarlowartist.com/" target="_blank">lesliebarlowartist.com</a>&nbsp;for more of Leslie&#39;s work and to learn more.

Insights from MCAD MFA candidate Leslie Barlow on her painting, her success, her activism, and her cosplay.

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