Month: November 2005

Don’t let the title fool you: This show based around animal imagery is, if anything, more cryptic than cute. Among its nine artists are the eccentrically folky Juliette Oken, a local; New York-based Larissa Bates, whose mythological landscapes are, according to one art magazine, selling as fast as she can make them; Robert Marbury of Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists fame, who creates funny and frightening beasts from old stuffed animals; and Mark Hosford, who makes prints and drawings and also oversees the International Museum of Dog Food. 2640 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-871-2263; www.soovac.org

Gustafson was an integral part of the Minnesota art community until his early death in 2003. Because of his sensitivity to light and nuance, he was the natural choice of many local artists when it came to having their work photographed. Over the years, the relationships he built among artists in a host of mediums helped him amass an astounding collection. Highlights from this trove make this exhibit an eye-opening survey of the region’s talents; also included in the show are works from Gustafson’s own portfolio, which reveals that his affections for France were as strong as his Minnesotan roots. 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org

We waited all year for a surprise like this. Provocative, global-minded, warm, and even uninhibited pieces make up this juried show of works by twenty-six artists from around the state. Compelling discoveries include the super-psychedelic Georgie Girl Hart, by Andy Messerschmidt of Ely (pictured), and Plymouth resident Chuck Avery’s Separation, a photograph of concrete blocks and gravel piles that recalls seventies land art. Though this biennial focuses on two-dimensional media, its photographs, prints, paintings, and drawings are anything but flat. We’re already anticipating next year’s biennial, devoted to works with that utterly transformative third dimension. (The artists will share a little back story at a “Slide-o-Rama” slide-show event on December 8.) 50 W. Kellogg Boulevard (at Market Street), St. Paul; 651-266-1030; www.mmaa.org

The tradition of grand and inaccurate predictions about the future of prefab houses goes back almost a hundred years, to the first sales of Sears mail-order kit homes in the early 1900s. Now, though, prefab home designs seem actually to be getting somewhere, both in terms of the number being produced and home builders’ desire for them (stoked in part by countless stories in design and lifestyle magazines). When it comes to organizing an exhibition on this trend, the Walker is a natural–not just because of its design pedigree, but because several prefab home designers operate right here in the Twin Cities. Its show explores a full range of prefab concepts, from tiny, remotely situated cabins to chic two-story homes in the city. The homes share a simplicity in design, but there’s nothing generic or homogenous about them; the thought that has gone into them suggests that eternal hope of architects: better living by design. (An architectural tour of Twin Cities prefabricated houses is planned for February 2006; details to be announced.) 612-375-7622, www.walkerart.org

The century-old Enstrom photo studio is located on an out-of-the-way street in the tiny Iron Range town of Bovey. An otherwise modest wooden building with a flat front and a new addition jutting out from one side, the studio’s most distinguishing feature stretches across its second story: an enormous hand-painted black and white mural of a bearded man at a table, his head bowed in prayer. Before him rests a book, a loaf of bread, a bowl of gruel, and a pair of wire eyeglasses. The painting is a little rough, the angles aren’t quite right, the loaf is too big and the book too small. But none of that matters. The image is unmistakable, iconic, a familiar fixture in the kitchens and living rooms of grandparents everywhere. Underneath the mural are the words, in careful cursive, “Home of the Picture Grace.”

For a town of around six hundred people, Bovey has drawn more than its share of publicity over the years. Its former police chief, Terry Wilkey, who died in 1998, wrote a column for the local weekly called “Streets of Bovey,” in which he recounted the goings on of the town. There were entries like, “Found an unlocked door at a business. We locked it.” The column was cheeky, funny, and widely circulated. For a while in 1994, it was broadcast as a regular series on MPR.

But, by far, Bovey’s greatest fame has come from its affiliation with the Picture Grace, a painting that began as a photograph. In 1918, an elderly man named Charles Wilden came by the studio of Eric Enstrom, a dapper photographer who favored a bowler hat, in hopes of selling a foot-scraper or two. The salesman intrigued Enstrom. As he later explained in an interview, “There was something about the old gentleman’s face that immediately impressed me. I saw that he had a kind face … there weren’t any harsh lines in it.” Enstrom, it turned out, was preparing a collection of work for a state photographers’ convention. “I wanted to take a picture that would show people that even though they had to do without many things because of the war, they still had much to be thankful for.”

Enstrom’s was an old-fashioned brand of Christianity, rooted in humility, a far cry from what often passes for the religion today, especially among right-wing evangelicals—a Darwinian incarnation that says the rich are rich because they are favored by the big man upstairs. Enstrom intentionally posed Wilden before a meager offering. The bow to prayer came easily. “The man doesn’t have much of earthly goods,” Enstrom explained later, “but he has more than most people because he has a thankful heart.” The photograph spoke elegantly and powerfully, first to the citizens of Bovey, a community of loggers and iron workers.

“I grew up in this area,” said Mark Hanson, the current co-owner of Enstrom Studio. “My mother was from Bovey. The Picture Grace has been a big part of my life.” That’s not simply due to its celebrity, Hanson said. “It captured the feeling of the area, this town’s Christian background. Bovey is a very blue-collar community, and what Enstrom captured was someone being thankful for a very humble meal.” Being grateful, he added, “resonates with the people here.”

Admirers from all over the country began buying the photograph. Demand grew for a color version, so Enstrom’s daughter Rhoda made an oil painting based on the portrait. Today, that’s the image most people recognize. “I have seen the photograph,” said Hanson, who supposes the originals to be quite valuable. “People in Bovey have them, old people in this area.” Hanson said that, color aside, the photo and the painting look almost exactly alike. “You have to understand that she had Enstrom there to talk to. She could ask him what color the guy was wearing. Both of them convey the exact same message. She did a great job on the painting.”

By the 1940s, the picture had become so popular that Enstrom Studio could no longer satisfy demand. In 1945, it sold the copyright to Augsburg Publishing House, though people still stop by the studio, especially during summers, to admire the mural and purchase the print, which hangs among photos of high school graduates posed on logs and wielding electric guitars. Because the picture was taken so long ago, the copyright has since lapsed and ownership has moved into the realm of public domain. There is no telling how many prints exist out there. The Picture Grace, appropriately, now belongs to everyone.—Jennifer Vogel

Maybe you’ve seen the new billboards on Snelling, Grand, or Highway 94: “Banana Chips Can Cause Figure Skating,” and “Fun-Size a Cow”—ads enjoining us to rediscover or reconsider the meat snack, those salty mystery sticks most of us save for camping trips or are storing for the apocalypse. Those tough, pungent treats most of us last ate in junior high school.

Beef. It’s what’s dried, sheathed, and vacuum-packed for dinner?

The Atkins years were good to America’s meat snack industry; the sector’s smokin’ hot sales climbed steadily in the 1990s, fueled by carb-free fiends hoping to reach ketogenic nirvana. Mintel International Group reported that in 2004, meat snack sales exceeded $2.65 billion. But those beefed-up numbers can’t climb forever, and as Americans reclaim their carbohydrates, the meat snack industry has scrambled to expand its consumer appeal. Reporter Michael Browne noted in a recent Convenience Store News article that meat snacks, “once strictly the province of blue-collar, rural male customers … have taken off in the past few years among a wider consumer base. Women, Baby Boomers, younger people, and Hispanic customers have all taken to snacking on meat in all its forms—jerky, sticks, nuggets, and bites.” I couldn’t recall recently snacking on meat in any of those forms, but was interested to learn that others of my gender might be nibbling their brains out, attracted by new, “softer textures, bite-sized pieces and milder meat flavors [that clearly favor] the new female user.”

The meat snack masters have apparently experimented with pastel packaging, sweeter honey ham sticks, other light meats like turkey, chicken, and even emu, and the seemingly irresistible reclosable bag!, all in an effort to lure the fairer sex.

I decided it was time to poll the ladies.

Girls, what would it take to get you into a meat snack today? In any of its forms—jerky, sticks, nuggets or bites? I asked around.

“The one time I purchased and ate a Slim Jim, I had an allergic reaction to the MSG in it, which caused my throat to nearly swell shut,” reported Lynn. “So, as much as I love a smoky, meaty treat, they will have to reformulate the recipe before this lady will bite again. Unless, of course, I learn to do tracheotomies on myself.”

Anne suggested making meat snacks vegetarian. (Done, done, and done, ladies!) “Or maybe tout them as something you eat when you have PMS?” she added. (Though much industry attention has been paid to impulse and point-of-purchase displays, it is worth noting that no one has yet thought to put beef jerky next to the tampons.)

Michele offered that meat snacks might be more appealing if they were not made from “meat flavored meat stuff,” or “meat-like items,” or meat from “the jungle.” They might also be more attractive to the female palate if they were “made from candy.”

None of the women I polled found pastel packaging to be a selling point, although Melanie, an architect, had this to say: “The more I think about it, meat sticks are usually in heavy-colored packaging—blacks, browns, reds, maroon. Maybe if they went with a lighter color—even a tan—it could psychologically make people view them as less heavy foods. All of the lower fat meats are lighter in color—chicken, turkey—and I equate dark-colored meats with high fat. How many grams of fat are there per serving of beef jerky anyway? Shit, I love beef!”

Which is good, because though the industry has tried to introduce ostrich, alligator, and chicken jerky, beef remains its best seller.

The upshot seems to be that meat snacks, be they jerked or kippered, in nuggets or resealable bags, are still enjoying a decidedly survivalist and masculine profile.

“It’s a rare day when I purchase a meat snack,” my friend Jess weighed in. “And usually it’s to accompany a trip to a cabin up north with some Knob Creek in hand.”—Shannon Olson

The Mother-Goose-does-Vegas tone of the TCF Holidazzle Parade seemed at odds with my method acting background. With more than two hundred and fifty lighted characters brought to life by a different group of volunteer actors each of the twenty-one evenings the parade marches between November 25 and December 23, a cohort of dressers, lighting technicians, and radio-equipped pacers is assigned to line up the characters and move them out, and with utmost efficiency: The cast goes from its minivans to Liberace-esque splendor in a mere forty-five minutes.

The lure of revealing my inner gingerbread boy via twenty-four volts of colored lights proved too much. I recruited a friend and her neighbor, too—like me, they are both highly artistic individuals committed to a brave and honest representation of whatever characters we were assigned. Most roles are filled by employees of the corporations that sponsor of the parade, but every night extra costumes are assigned to standby actors like ourselves.

As everyone knows, relaxation is the foundation of “The Method.” Without this foundation, the technique sinks into the quicksand of chaotic convention. It was hard to relax as the best roles were claimed—Cinderella, the suit of cards, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and my favorite, Bo Peep. Adding to the tension, many of the characters seemed to come in pairs—Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, the King and Queen of Hearts—but there were three of us. Giddy groups of amateurs swarmed the mezzanine level of the Minneapolis Hyatt and joined the fray in a conference room-cum-staging area. As check-in time came and went, the anxiety became insupportable. Recalling my training—“the actor is encouraged to release tension in the neck and throat with a long, sustained aaaaaahhhhhh or a short, staccato HAH!”—I executed the latter just as I leaned over the registrar’s shoulder to glimpse what roles remained on the list. She apparently was not accustomed to working with professional actors.

“You three, sign here, get your costumes. The parade starts in fifteen minutes,” she said with an edge of peevishness. We signed next to the Three Little Pigs and went wee wee wee all the way to the costume room, where we each were fitted with sixty pounds of uncomfortable and inescapable pigwear.

The premise behind method acting is to avoid acting. Rather, you inhabit the character. You find the truth and own it, as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and James Dean did. I didn’t know which truth to own (straw, sticks, or bricks) but quickly discovered there was more to this modern interpretation of the pigs than a healthy appetite and rounded hocks, and it started with a twelve-pound battery pack.

Let me give credit for our stunning performance to our personal dresser, without whose succinct, if terse, directions there would have been no Three Little Pigs. She literally took us by the hand through the cacophony—the scampering blind mice, costume racks, coat stacks, cables, tables, techies, and yards of fake fur—to the battery station. With the incredibly heavy batteries strapped on suicide-bomber-style, I felt a great hazard to myself and others, not only for the danger of electrocution but also because once in motion, I was powerless to stop the momentum. It would not do to bowl over innocent merrymakers in my debut performance.

A proper pig has a pink fur pajama body with built-in hoop belly, a light-encrusted chest plate in the shape of a bow, trotter shoe covers, three-fingered hoof/gloves, and a head like a vintage deep-sea diving helmet. I obediently put feet in holes, held arms out, stood still, and tried not to panic as I lost touch with the boundaries of my body one extremity at a time. With the placement of the gloves and, finally, the cavernous head, I couldn’t hear, see, or scratch. A bit of light came through a four-inch circular screen in the pig’s mouth. It opened downward, but by bending back, a slightly more forward view was possible. The one-size-fits-most head was supposed to rest on the shoulders, but, mine being narrow, it fell all the way down, pinioning my arms and completing the vertebrae compaction initiated by the battery pack. Three blind pigs, we were led to the back door of the Hyatt where we had our picture taken with a police officer.

The dresser handed us off to a pacer, a harried stage manager of sorts, who steered us down six scary steps and a curb onto Nicollet Mall. Rousing band music and a general hubbub of cheering and whistles indicated we were onstage and the show had indeed started for those at the front of the parade. It struck us at once—the lights were on, the crowd was shiny-faced and delirious, expecting action. I sensed this was the time for bold strokes of pigdom. We three pigs had just touched noses for a shouted collaboration when the pacer broke in with this artless direction: “Just keep moving, high-five the kids, and wiggle your tails every once in a while. They love that.” Consummate (though non-union) professionals, we withheld the abuse this rube deserved. At any rate, a combined modality of high-fives, wiggling (we saw this as an enlightened pig truth), and sassy circle dancing was formulated. And well received. Eight blocks fully wired and attired is but child’s play to the trained actor, though I hereby report that pigs do sweat.

While the critics cast aspersions about the validity of burlesque and pointed out that the audience was stoned on hot chocolate, the Three Pigs were alight with the love of our craft, of life and fake fur, and of our adoring audience as we rode the bus back to the Hyatt. It’s all about the work.—Sarah Barker

The floor of Ms. LaVie’s School of Loving Arts, inside the Golden Valley Wellness Center, is spread with cheap blankets and plush pillows. Fifteen pajama-clad students sit in this “cuddle puddle” nodding solemnly as Marcia Baczynski explains that dry humping, or “basically pretty much having sex with your clothes on” is not okay here (Rule Number Seven). Here, we are allowed to press together firmly, but each cuddler must remain still from the waist down; under no circumstances should there be any grinding, gyrating, or pulsing. Pajamas must stay on the whole time (Rule Number One), and there will be No Sex (Rule Number Three). Because this is not your parents’ love-in. This is a cuddle party.

Marcia’s cotton pajama pants are blue with yellow bath ducks. She and Cuddle Party founder Reid Mihalko are serving as “cuddle lifeguards” for Minneapolis’ first-ever cuddle party, the adult eventertainment phenomenon sweeping the nation.( I use this cliché purely for dramatic effect. While cuddle parties are increasingly popular in New York, Los Angeles, and, randomly, Ontario, the nation—as well as its northern neighbor—remains intrigued but largely unswept.) Translation: Two spiffy young cuddling professionals have flown in from New York to put on this thing where a bunch of strangers pay forty-nine dollars each to sit on blankets and touch each other from six to ten o’clock on a Saturday night.

“Can I kiss you?” A curvy woman in her early forties smiles at me.

“No.” I wink and lean forward. “Can I kiss you?”

“You’re good at this.” She giggles and looks at her hands. “I mean, no.”

The purpose of this partnered exercise is twofold: We “cuddle monsters” are honing our rejection skills while practicing being rejected.

“In this room,” Reid announces to the circle, “‘No’ is a complete sentence.” He explains the importance of being able to say “No” without qualifiers or apologies. “It’s very empowering.”

Four people ask me for hugs during the next exercise. I reject each of them with an unqualified, unapologetic “no.” I do feel empowered, but there is no time to bask. It is time to hit the floor.

Fifteen adults crouch on their hands and knees in a tight circle, heads in, butts out, mooing. There is an attractive couple in their early thirties, looking for an “interesting shared experience”(his idea); a P.T.O. mom wanting to explore “positive touch” after encountering some “not-so-positive” touch; a hot-ish twenty-ish guy wanting to “be touched”; a burly couple hoping to “teach him to cuddle” (her idea); and an otherwise eclectic assortment of divorcees, new-age peaceniks, social misfits, and sexual pioneers. Some are lonely, some are curious, and one or two are definitely hoping to get laid. Hips and shoulders pressed firmly against the cuddle monsters to my left and right, I open my mouth and moo.

“Cow tip!” calls Reid from somewhere in the circle. Like dominoes, we collapse into a coordinated heap. “This”—Reid and Marcia exchange smug looks—“is how we trick you into your first cuddle!” It’s true. Lying on our sides, each of us is awkwardly spooning our neighbor. On my left, Barbara and Mike remain curled in their collapsed-cow positions. The cuddle puddle rumbles with murmured conversation:

May I spoon you?

Yes.

May I hold your hand?

Yes.

“May I cuddle you?” Reid’s sexy surfer smile is wider than my face. “No.” Damn, I think, as he walks away. I should have had more wine. Alcohol is not allowed at cuddle parties, but I stopped for a glass of Pinot Grigio on my way to Ms. LaVie’s. I’m not sure how far I’m willing to go for this story; I haven’t yet decided whether lying in the arms of a complete stranger—multiple strangers—is kinky-bold and risqué, or simply sad and icky.

Barbara and Mike are engaged in a complex cuddle-positioning conversation:

So, your bottom fits in the small of my back … while my bottom rests on your stomach … They agree upon a position, and thank one another for being willing to sit up and discuss the matter face to face.

My cuddle buddy is a divorced man in his mid-sixties. “May I rub your head?” he asks. Swallowing hard, I provide the requisite verbal “Yes,” and turn, cross-legged, to face him. There is a small thump as his right hand makes contact with my skull. “Tell me if it’s too much!” he calls, cheerfully scrubbing my head like a bathroom floor.

Within ten minutes, the hot-ish twenty-ish guy is working the knots out of my shoulders while a frustrated young wife uses the arch of my left foot to demonstrate a simple massage technique. My cuddle buddy has just gotten the hang of giving a head rub when something incredible happens. All at once our energies align, and six hands are moving on my body in perfect synchronicity. Every movement; every twist, every thrust, every swirl—in Reid-and-Marcia-speak, I am Blissed. Out.

And then someone burps, and the moment is gone. There are six too many hands touching me; the snack table is calling my name.—Julie Bates

 

Mainstream is attending the Episcopal Church. Non-mainstream is practicing Zoroastrianism. Mainstream is owning a golden retriever. Non-mainstream is breeding Rhodesian ridgebacks. In the universe of non-mainstream things, it’s hard to conceive of two things more arcane than Michael Barone’s passions: pipe organs and Citroën automobiles.

The host and producer of public radio’s Pipedreams, Michael Barone is also the past president of the Citroën Club of Minnesota. On a typical workday morning, the bearded and amiable Barone leaves home and climbs into the front seat of his 1978 Citroen 2CV, a tiny, growling, twenty-eight-horsepower French imported model that is sometimes nicknamed “the Tin Snail” and “the Duck” by the collectible car community. Vulgar persons say it is reminiscent of a pre-1974 Volkswagen. The 2CV has paper-thin metal doors just slightly thicker than a double layer of heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap, a canvas umbrella for a roof, side windows that fold in half rather than retract, and a tiny, flat windshield. A two-minute spin in this automobile is enough to tell even the most careless person that this is, hands down, the least crashworthy car ever made.

Once he parks the Citroën on one of the lower floors of the garage at the Minnesota Public Radio studios in downtown St. Paul, he sets about his work for the day. His cluttered office is located deep within the cavernous stacks of compact discs and vinyl records that compose MPR’s on-air music library. There, inside the vault and surrounded by millions of classical music tracks, he produces the two weekly radio programs he hosts: Pipedreams, a classical music program focused on organ music, and a show called New Releases, for which he fastidiously selects the latest in classical music.

Radio production can be mentally exhausting, so Barone occasionally takes a break by playing his own, personal pipe organ, which he keeps in the apse of the Catholic church next door to MPR’s headquarters. It’s an arrangement that works out for both Barone and the church—the parish has access to a fine instrument and Barone has a nearby place to play it.

Besides being odd anachronisms, do Citroëns and Wurlitzers share something else in common? Perhaps the link is that both were once the state of the art in mechanical engineering. “The Citroën is an auto that has always encapsulated a higher degree of engineering ingenuity than the average car,” Barone told me. “Citroën had the first front-wheel drive cars, the first unibody construction, the first torsion bars, and, at one time, they handled better than any other car on the road. Similarly, pipe organs are curious mechanical devices, simple and complex at once. They were, before the industrial revolution, the most complex engineering construct in the human imagination.”

Barone said that each organ has its own distinct sound, a consequence of its construction, its material composition, and its location. When I asked him where to find some of his favorite instruments, he rattled off several local organs.

“The Fisk Organ at the House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul is, for me, the most intellectual and satisfying instrument around. Another great organ is the one at the Catholic Church of the Maternity of Mary in St. Paul. It is a small organ with just twenty-two ranks of pipes. But it has an energetic, powerful, and scintillating tone.”

The biggest organ in the Twin Cities, and one of the largest in the world, is at Wooddale Church (sometimes called the “rocketship church” for its modern steeple) in Eden Prairie. Nearly as large as the instruments at Westminster Abbey in London and Notre Dame in Paris, Wooddale’s Visser-Rowland organ is enormous. Enormity in a pipe organ is often measured by how low you can go. “It has thirty-two-foot-long pipes that sound a sixteen-hertz tone that is felt or sensed rather than heard,” Barone said. Other organs worth hearing include the theater organs at the Phipps Auditorium in Hudson, Wisconsin, and at the Heights Theater in Columbia Heights. Barone also recommends the organs at the University of St. Thomas and at St. Andrew’s Church in Mahtomedi. As for catching a glimpse of a Citroën, you may have no choice but to camp outside the studios of MPR.

Barone said, “The idea of something being complex, intricate, and having a beautifully coordinated disparity of energy is marvelous, astonishing, and delightful.”—William Gurstelle