The Drawing and Withdrawing Room

“There are hidden energies in a home. And you can’t predict them; you’ve just got to find them.” Two years ago, Anna Lee was settling in to a new apartment in Northeast Minneapolis. The now-thirty-year-old milliner and producer of local fashion shows attempted to set up the spare bedroom as her studio, lugging her desk, various canvases, and large fabric bolts there from the living room. “But the funny thing,” she recounted, “is how everything found its way into the living room.”

Lee now submits to the living room’s auspicious powers as the place where she feels most inspired. An aluminum work lamp illuminates a display of her sculptural hats on one wall. One that resembles a Native American headdress is pinned at the wall’s center while others, such as a trio of feathered, Moulin Rouge-inspired colossi, are balanced on mannequin heads lined up on a long worktable. Scattered among the headwear are fashionable keepsakes and artworks: portraits featuring a favorite model, Anna Boman, wearing one of Lee’s showgirl-style creations; and Balance, a mixed-media piece by the local artist Jennifer Davis, which includes a prominent image of a flapper. Everywhere, stacks of paperwork and sketches have been mounting as two fashion events approach: Voltage: Fashion Amplified, the rock ’n’ roll runway show Lee produces annually, and the Minnesota History Center’s RetroRama, a vintage-inspired affair that is not only produced by Lee but will also feature some of her original wares.

Despite all of the work-related material, the space still functions as a living room, too. A matching sofa and easy chair—bought secondhand from one of her coworkers at Target corporate headquarters, and upholstered in a cobalt velour with a vine pattern—look especially luminous in the glow of two simple wooden lamps. “I try to surround myself with things that make sense to me—things with beautiful colors and details. And if I’m going to have it around, it better have a story behind it,” said Lee.

In fact, the room brims with storied objects. Many involve Lee making peace with her past. Some solar etchings she made are based on an old photo of her grandfather in which the then-pint-sized child, in top hat and tails, holds a cane and stretches his arms out alongside his partner, a little girl in a tutu. “He was a vaudeville performer in Fargo when he was ten,” Lee explained, “a tap dancer at the Fargo Theatre.” For years, she said, her resemblance to this man, and the rest of her family for that matter, escaped her. But she has since grown to revere the artistic clan of North Dakotans from which she comes. Elsewhere, both an artwork made from black kimono scrap, a gift from a former boss Lee had in Fargo, and a photo of the daughter Lee bore and placed for adoption while studying at Moorhead State hint at a rich and, at times, painful personal history. As Lee noted: “I haven’t invited many people here. It’s been my little hideaway, my Alice-in-Wonderland house.”

First Avenue hosts Voltage: Fashion Amplified on April 11; for more information, www.voltagefashionamplified.com.

RetroRama takes place at the Minnesota History Center on April 26; visit www.mnhs.org for more information.