Year: 2005

It’s not unusual for artists to work with a number of media, but painters who go in for a multiplicity of styles are rather uncommon. Minneapolis artist Jason Sandberg has four distinct styles of painting. He does realism, impressionism, abstractions, and pop. His eye wanders from scenes that have a distinctly local feel, such as a lonely ring of warehouses surrounding an even lonelier dive bar; to the Eiffel Tower, which he renders almost photographically; to shimmering forests, wild horses, and other scenes from the natural world. In short, Sandberg seems to be hungry to paint anything and everything. 2201 Second St. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-706-7879; www.creativeelectricstudios.com

The “ready-made” of the title refers to Marcel Duchamp’s infamous urinal that shocked the bourgeoisie in 1917. It’s impossible to shock most folks these days, of course. So Yamada goes in for the cool, sleek beauty of porcelain and the soothing effects of repetition in these sculptural installations. In fact, what appear to be advanced abstractions are really duplicates of the molds used to make toilets and other porcelain fixtures at Kohler, the Wisconsin manufactory where Yamada lived and worked as an artist-in-residence. About My Wife is So Proud of Me, the installation by Lars Gerlach and Helen Stringfellow (aka “tectonic industries”) that is also on display—well, we won’t assume that either artist has an obsessive-compulsive disorder. We’ll just say that if someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder decided to clean up his yard, this is probably what would result. 1021 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-872-7494; www.franklinartworks.org

A few months ago, at a Fitzgerald Theater appearance, poet Gary Snyder explained that he lost interest in religion as a young boy after his Sunday-school teacher told him that “non-human beings aren’t included in the drama of redemption”—a notion he found intolerable. It’s likely that Gary Bastian, Georgia Mrazkova, Ray Rolfe, Carol Strait, Allison Stout, and Dan Toomey feel similarly; in fact, they’ve invited all creatures great and small to attend the closing party for their Animal Instincts exhibition on July 9. Creatures of all kinds, as long as they have acceptable social skills, will mingle among contemporary paintings of cats, dogs, ferrets, roosters, and the other animals that people connect with on a daily basis. 1010 Park Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-3435; www.outsidersandothers.org

A fresh breeze from the East. Over thousands of years, from the time of the five magical emperors who ruled earliest China through the end of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Chinese artists have gracefully rendered cranes, tigers, dragons, apple blossoms, and smiling ladies with painfully tiny feet on vases, scrolls, and bits of jade. But what have they done for us lately? Those working in the modern era—shall we call it the Bling Dynasty?—still respect their country’s art traditions, but they have also looked to Western movements like expressionism and abstract art for inspiration. The results can be stunning, as evidenced by this large sampling of works from the collection of Hong Kong-born artist and art dealer Pat Hui. Included are works by many of the most important Chinese artists, including expressionist painter Lui Shou-Kwan and Wucius Wong, whose emotional landscapes are controlled though elements of graphic design. Although Hui is a significant figure in the Chinese art world, she makes her home in Minnesota, so we have the good fortune of seeing many works that have never before been shown in the United States. 405 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-624-7530

Early on the afternoon of the Northern League exhibition season opener, Midway Stadium is bustling with activity. The Rolling Stones are blasting from the public address speakers, and players are already stretching and running in the outfield grass. Underneath the grandstand, in the cramped bunker that serves as the offices of the St. Paul Saints, the phone is ringing off the hook and the atmosphere is one of jovial chaos. The Saints command center is decidedly short on the streamlined ambience and formal atmosphere of most offices. It looks, in fact, like it could be the reception area of a thriving small-town automotive garage.

Mike Veeck has commandeered someone else’s spartan office, and is looking uncomfortable perched behind a desk. The ringmaster most often associated with the unlikely and phenomenal success of the Saints, he’s clearly a guy who likes to be in motion. Even sitting down, he never quite manages to sit still. Veeck’s a fidget, with the wild eyes of a man who has a lot going on in his head. In fact, he is ridiculously busy these days. He’s promoting his new book—Fun is Good: How to Create Joy and Passion in Your Workplace and Career (Rodale Press)—and has a full slate of speaking engagements. And then there are the six minor league baseball teams he operates and owns (along with such high-profile partners as Bill Murray and Jimmy Buffett).

Right now, Veeck is in the middle of writing a giant pile of thank-you notes, by hand, to every Saints season-ticket holder, and conversing with a visitor, while people keep wandering in and out of the tiny space—some simply to say hello and others to check on some detail related to the upcoming season. One guy comes in to look for a VCR that has apparently vanished. A question blurts from the office’s intercom: “Who recorded the song ‘Bus Stop’?” Veeck pauses mid-sentence to answer (the Hollies), then picks up the conversation right where he left off.

Thirteen years ago, Veeck moved to St. Paul to help launch the Saints in the fledgling Northern League, a confederation of professional teams that intended to operate outside the umbrella of Major League Baseball. At the time he was in a gambling frame of mind (actually, he’s always in a gambling frame of mind). He had recently given up an advertising career to help resurrect a floundering minor league franchise in Florida. That stint with the Miami Miracle followed more than a decade in exile from professional baseball, after he was essentially blackballed following his role—okay, it was his idea—in the now-legendary Disco Demolition promotion at Comiskey Park in 1979. That stunt, which involved blowing up thousands of disco records between games of a White Sox doubleheader, resulted in damage to the field, a near riot, and Chicago’s forfeiture of the nightcap. Collateral damage notwithstanding, the episode was a classic Veeck production. The games were sold out, and it was estimated that tens of thousands of fans were turned away.

Veeck, of course, has a first-class baseball pedigree. His grandfather was a Chicago sportswriter who became president of the Cubs back in 1917. He was the man who had the idea to grow ivy on the walls of Wrigley Field. Bill Veeck, Mike’s dad, was one of the most colorful and innovative entrepreneurs in baseball history, and is in the Hall of Fame. At various times in his life, he owned and operated major league franchises in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Chicago, where he pioneered all manner of ballpark promotions and amenities. Most famous for once sending three-foot-seven, sixty-five-pound Eddie Gaedel to the plate for an at-bat with the Browns (he walked on four pitches), Bill Veeck also introduced the exploding scoreboard at Comiskey Park and was the first owner to put player names on the backs of jerseys. He loved mingling (and drinking) with the fans, never had an unlisted number, answered his own phone, and had a wooden leg with a built-in ashtray. Mike Veeck is an apple that didn’t fall far from the tree (he wrote Fun is Good while recuperating from a broken leg sustained, he said, while “playing basketball on my bike”), but he was a late bloomer. When he accepted investor Marv Goldklang’s offer to run the Saints, he was moving into his forties and had a wife and two kids (including a son named Night Train). He was strapped, and maybe more than a little desperate.

“I bet every nickel I had on this thing, and I was scared to death,” Veeck said. “Everybody thought we were nuts.”

Veeck’s original marketing plan for the Saints consisted of exactly three words: “Fun is good.” Everything else followed. “We wanted to run a ball club with people who didn’t have preconceived notions about how things work,” he said. “We wanted to foster an environment where people loved to come to work, and where they were appreciated for what they did. And we were going to put all of our energy and attention into creating an atmosphere that ensured that when fans came out to the ballpark, they had a good time and went home happy. Is that simplistic? You bet. But I don’t think you’ll find that attitude in a lot of companies.”

That simple philosophy—and a constant string of unpredictable and sometimes insane promotions—have turned Veeck’s and the Goldklang Group’s initial investment into a collection of minor league teams with an estimated combined value of thirty million dollars.

Veeck’s book argues that humor can be an asset in any company. “You can’t force or fake this stuff,” he said. “And I know that corporate America has never been tremendously receptive to this sort of philosophy. They do, though, always have an interest in anything that works. It’s a competitive world, and now more than ever there’s a direct correlation between the attention people receive and their satisfaction with an experience. That’s as true of employees as it is of customers. A lot of people, from the top on down, are starting to realize there are going to have to be some changes.” —Brad Zellar

With its low ceilings, faint sawdust smell, wood paneling, and seventies-era earth tones, Jim Fiorentino’s front office is what you’d expect of an old garage door company. Going into the larger warehouse, however, is like entering some kind of a fairytale world. It’s not just the massive, hundred-year-old Belgian band organ, decked out with painted roses and latticework—the walls of this palatially proportioned room are covered with wooden clocks, carvings, and phonographs.

“I’ve never really let on that it’s kind of a museum in here,” said Fiorentino, who closed his Minneapolis garage-door business fifteen years ago. While the surrounding Warehouse District was going condo-crazy, Fiorentino was remodeling his old workplace into a showcase for his hobbies. He walked among rows of display cases filled with World War I-era bayonets; nearby, shelves swayed under the weight of woodcarvings from Polynesia, China, Thailand, and other myriad corners of the globe. Pointing to the top of a bookcase, he noted several renderings of horses done by his father with a pocketknife.

Clocks, however, are a particular passion of Fiorentino’s. By way of instruction, he held up a photograph of a carved French clock, comparing its “shoddy workmanship” to the sharper edges carved by more detail-oriented Germans. “Sloppy!” he said, shaking his head at the photo. A motley collection on the warehouse’s longest wall—some 140 feet—includes ornately carved “gingerbread” clocks that adorned American kitchens a hundred years ago, and a single, amazing nineteenth-century Japanese model that vaguely resembles a cuckoo and keeps time using the sun.

An awe-inspiring assortment of cuckoos, many of which Fiorentino restored himself, dates back to 1840. The most prized ones hang in a small corridor off the main room. “These are all cuckoo and quails,” Fiorentino said, maneuvering the hands of one clock to show how it would produce the wail of a quail every fifteen minutes, and a cuckoo on the hour. Another string of cuckoos, made in Germany during the late 1800s, features images of strung-up pheasant and chamois carcasses. “I get people in here saying ‘I don’t like the dead animals on that clock!’” Fiorentino said, a bit peevishly. “But the folks who made it were hunters. That’s how they survived. This is what they knew.”

He brightened up after turning toward a festive clock, one of the largest in the place. “This here is my lady friend’s favorite,” he said, running his fingers across its leafy ornamentation and pointing out a sprightly, avian version of a nativity scene. “She likes the birdies in the nest there.”

Returning to his front office, Fiorentino admitted that “some of my friends call me cuckoo Jim.” But when it came to explaining why he’d bothered to amass such a collection, he struggled. “I just … how should I say it … I like cuckoo clocks!”—Christy DeSmith

The other day, customers entering the Office Max in St. Paul’s Midway
were greeted by bold signs bearing an urgent message: “Avoid Identity
Theft. Protect Personal Information.” Next to them were sprawling
displays of home paper shredders, all bearing names intended to invoke
fear, awe, and consumerism: The Sentinel. The PowerShred. The Paper
Monster.

Lynne, a short, bespectacled Office Max employee, shuffled by and
offered packets of coupons to customers. Mail-in rebates on shredders
were among the deals. Sales were brisk last month, she said. And for
good reason: A section of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act
that went into effect June 1 requires all employers to shred the
redundant personal information of all employees. This law isn’t just
for haughty CEOs, however, or even neighborhood record stores—it’s for
you, if you hire anyone for any purpose, like a babysitter, lawnmower,
or housecleaner.

Lynne doesn’t own a shredder. She tosses bills and credit-card receipts
in the trash, without even tearing them up. She’s not losing sleep over
it, either. But others are, and shredding companies, concerned
businesses, and advertisers have capitalized on this. Consider
Citibank’s ad blitz that features victims speaking with voices of
identity thieves, describing the merriment of truly risk-free spending.
Couple the new law with these rising fears, and you find a booming $350
million shredding industry prospering both in offices and at home,
where the paper trail, despite the wonders of online billing and
communication, continues to grow.

No technology seems able to render paper obsolete. There’s been a ten
percent increase in the volume of workplace paper during the last
decade, in defiance of “experts” who expected its use to drop
dramatically with the rise of networked computers. Ironically, email is
the main culprit. The irrational impulse to send much of your inbox to
the printer has been the biggest boon to the pulping industry. As a
result, the average cubicle farmer uses ten thousand sheets of copy
paper each year. Print. Read. Repeat.

All those reams generally end up in two places, trash or recycling,
which creates security headaches for business espionage experts (yes,
people have this job). Similar headaches exist for individuals, with
dumpster diving celebrating several years of legalization. Thus
shredding, once limited to the paranoid, the neurotic, the
ultra-responsible, and the occasional chief executive scoundrel, is
becoming wildly popular.

Now that the shredder is destined to acquire a domestic status
somewhere between the refrigerator and the waffle iron, drab just won’t
do, and on the consumer level, there are hip home alternatives. Michael
Graves has designed a lustrous, smiling basket that is sold at Target,
and there are handheld personal shredders for on-the-fly jobs. But even
the most expensive consumer-level shredder can handle only a dozen
sheets at once, and this causes difficulties, since paper must be fed
manually, with all paper clips removed.

For the really epic, corporate scandal-level jobs, there are the
professional shredders. Shred-N-Go, a company in Plymouth, owns
specialized mobile shredding units—trucks—that can demolish three
hundred pounds of paper in less than four minutes. That’s about two and
a half tons of confetti in an hour.

There are several other local companies with equally fanciful names
(could you think of a better one?), including Document Destruction in
Lakeville and Minnesota Shredding in Edina. As they are happy to point
out, their services are inexpensive, considering the estimated cost of
identity theft for a typical individual is around fifteen hundred
dollars. Plus, according to Document Destruction’s testimonials, the
“professional, yet fun” employees leave everyone “totally pleased.”

The law is clearly on the side of the shredders. A few weeks ago, the
U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Enron’s accounting
firm, Arthur Andersen, whose shredding spree was thought to be an
obstruction of justice. It turns out that it’s completely lawful for
higher-ups to instruct employees to regularly shred or otherwise
destroy incriminating documents. This holds perhaps the most important
lesson for novice shredding enthusiasts. If you’re shredding documents
because you know they could be deleterious to you, then just lie—and
make sure you’re shredding something valuable every day.—Brian Voerding

The blond woman grabbed the shiny brass pole and, with a single
athletic move, flipped her body upside down, her legs splayed—toes
pointed, mind you—on either side of the pole. As she slowly slid down,
she stared at her audience with confidence. Christina Aguilera’s
“Dirrty” blared from the sound system. Heading down to the hardwood
floor, the instructor talked over the music. “All it takes to do moves
like this is practice and being comfortable with the pole.”

Nicole Zivalach teaches “Pole Basics” at a new studio and gym for women
called Stripped. Bedecked with red velvet curtains, the studio is
situated on the delivery side of a Plymouth strip mall, behind Domino’s
Pizza, Hairtopia, and It’s a Pet’s Place.

According to experts who keep track of these sorts of things, pole
dancing is a popular new fitness trend for women, both in this country
and in Britain. In Plymouth, at least, the classes are outwardly
chaste—think chakras instead of skank. The dance style is supposed to
be “exotic” and “sensual” rather than sexual, and is aimed at women
“from 18-98,” according to Stripped’s brochure. Elsewhere, Bally’s
Total Fitness is offering “Cardio Striptease” and the Learning Annex
has a class on “The Art of Exotic Dancing.”

Back at Stripped, Zivalach righted herself and explained that this
brand of dance is “a way to get fit and enjoy our bodies.” It does not
involve getting naked. Sensual dance is “not to share with strangers,”
she said, “because that squashes our soul.” She is adamantly opposed to
women stripping for money, and there is absolutely no male ogling of
her students as they attempt to get sensual. Men are barred from
classes; however, Zivalach smiled as she whispered that students don’t
seem to mind the opposite sex shopping in the “Goddess Lounge”
boutique. It’s a good thing to have “a little male energy swirling
around occasionally,” she said. The rest of the studio is a comfy,
supportive women’s-only enclave. With stripper poles.

A chime tinkled when I opened the glass door to the Goddess Lounge for
my first “Pole Basics” session. Nine women stood around the room, their
arms stretched out, fingers nearly touching. “It’s okay if you touch;
it’s all about connection!” Zivalach said. Next, it was all about hip
circles. The class pushed its collective pelvis front, right, back,
then left, following the movement of Zivalach’s slim hips, which were
wrapped in tight black shorts that said “Stripped” across the butt. She
told students to pretend they were spatulas scraping a mixing bowl. As
they scraped, Aguilera sang, “You are beautiful, no matter what they
say … .” Then they were snakes, slithering and undulating from down low
to up high. They were almost ready for the pole.

The students started with a hip-swinging walk, and by the end each was
grabbing at her pole and swirling to the ground. Here, it was all about
the chest, butt, or hips: “One of these leads every move,” said
Zivalach. Walking around to check on each student, she was met with
looks of intense concentration. “Come on!” she remonstrated. “You’re
sexy kittens!” But learning to be free is hard work, and it did seem
strange to be dry-humping a brass pole in a well-lit studio and
receiving encouragements like, “Wow, you’re a natural at ‘the
waterfall.’”

Zivalach said, “What we’re suggesting to women is that they can reclaim
their sensuality and their feminine spirit in American sensual dance,
and they can bring it back out and dance in their homes and dance in
the streets just like they do in other cultures.” Plymouth may not be
ready for pole dancing in the streets. Yet.

After class, I became curious about how the pros do it. During a
relatively off-peak weeknight happy hour, I visited a local strip
joint, whose stage was outfitted with a red velvet curtain and two
poles. A handful of men sat around the bar, played pool, and generally
stared at the performers; their male energy was not just swirling
around the place, it was stifling. One performer ventured nowhere near
either pole, but instead squirmed on the floor, almost face to face
with patrons seated around the bar. “Super Freak” blared from every
speaker. Her name was Paige, she told me after her performance.

Paige is a single mom, a student, and a saleswoman at an upscale
clothing store. She spoke in a caffeinated, rapid-fire manner, and
everything she said ended with, “Okay, what next?” She was adamant that
stripping is not her profession. She does it for quick cash. “Men will
pay a hundred bucks for a lap dance,” she said. She wrinkled her nose
in disgust when she was asked about the pole. “I used to use it, but
never again, not after I realized how dirty they are.” (Let’s just say
that the typical stripper pole is less hygienic than your average bus
seat or subway strap.) Paige did confirm that the secret to success is
“confidence,” but suggested that this is often achieved by way of a
stiff drink or two, rather than an awareness of one’s inner sensuality.

Paige’s successor on stage did work the pole eventually, using some of
the moves that Nicole taught. But after about thirty seconds, she was
back on the floor. I took another chug from my beer and felt like I was
a million miles from Stripped’s Goddess Lounge. Even though I wasn’t
sharing my sensuality with strangers for cash, Nicole’s words echoed in
my head and clashed with the garish eighties rock. My soul did feel a
little squashed.—Kelli Ohrtman

A few weeks ago, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty set tongues wagging
when he vetoed a bill that would have created a state poet laureate.
The position would have required no public funding, but would have
acknowledged a longstanding tradition that is observed by thirty-three
other states and the federal government. In a world of civil compromise
and checks and balances, titles matter. Even when they are strictly
ceremonial, they reflect the public’s values and its will. By the time
they land under the governor’s pen, they are not frivolous. Thus many
people saw the guber’s gesture as a blatant middle finger directed at
poetry specifically, the arts in general, and even at the state
Legislature at large, which had voted overwhelmingly for passage.

Displaying an alarming aptitude for both arrogance and ignorance in one
deft move, the governor seemed to say he has no interest in the arts,
and that he considers interpretive dance and pottery to be good punch
lines. Of course, Mr. Pawlenty has received the ridicule he deserves.
Who would defend such pointless boorishness? But it is worth
considering how the normally nimble, boyish politician developed this
blind spot. It was an involuntary expression of the contempt certain
people have for anything that isn’t written on a spreadsheet.

To a person like that, poetry is frivolous mainly because no one gets
rich writing it, reading it, or selling it. Compared to doing real work
like, say, consulting with telecommunications companies and
test-driving ATVs, poetry is sloth at best, elitist narcissism at
worst. Regular, honest people like James Lileks have no truck with
poetry. If God thought poetry a virtuous human activity, he would have
proven it by making poets rich and Republican. Also, Psalms would have
been written in iambic pentameter.

True, it would be unfair to impugn the governor’s party. Republican
Barb Sykora of Excelsior was one of the poet laureate’s key sponsors,
and red-blooded Republicans in both houses voted with their effete
Democratic rivals. In fact, this bill provided a rare moment of
agreement in an otherwise contentious legislative session. Until it
reached the governor, the whole episode was the mirror image of last
year, when inexperienced lawmakers deliberately introduced contentious
sallies into reverse-engineering on social issues—through stunts like
reintroducing the death penalty and constitutionally banning gay
marriage, issues that have no value other than their power to divide.
On the contrary, the bill to institute a poet laureate not only brought
everyone to the table, but gave a symbolic nod to the highest
expressions of civilization. It was a noble, positive gesture met by a
graceless, negative one.

There was something perversely exciting about Mr. Pawlenty’s
imperiousness—that Minnesota will have no state poet laureate merely
because Mr. Pawlenty does not see any merit in poetry. In these times,
values are always confused with value. Every public conversation is
dominated by a paradigm of “return on investment” and “relief” from the
burdens of public expenditure. But even these have become disingenuous
arguments, because there is no longer any true impulse of conservation
among state and national leaders who gaily pass the costs of civil
society down to cities and counties, and from there on down to our
grandchildren. By these arguments, the arts have always been a favorite
bogeyman of the accountant and the utilitarian. The romantic myth of
the starving, parasitic artist has numerous beneficiaries, but it is a
myth that needs permanent debunking.

A person who lives and works in the Twin Cities cannot fail to see the
value of the arts in our community. Despite the rumor, it is a resource
that can be measured at the cash register. St. Paul receives six
hundred million dollars each year from patrons of the arts. In
Minneapolis, more than 110 arts organizations draw nearly five million
visitors and audience members each year. The arts have created nearly
ten thousand full-time jobs in the City of Lakes. They generate eight
million dollars annually for the city’s coffers, and nineteen million dollars
in state revenues. So when our leaders say they cannot afford to invest
in the arts, they have the rhetoric exactly backward. The arts can no
longer afford to invest in them.