Year: 2007

The St. Paul Cultural Garden, an installation of seven poetry-inscribed sculptures, isn’t easy to find. There is no signage or parking, and it’s on the way to virtually nowhere. The tiny plot of anonymous green space, perched one hundred feet above the Mississippi River atop a municipal parking ramp, is hemmed off from the rest of downtown by a forbidding promontory, the red-brick fortress-like Ramsey County Government Center, the concrete arches of the Robert Street Bridge, and the intimidating-to-pedestrians traffic corridor of Kellogg Boulevard. Given this discreet locale, it’s no wonder most people haven’t heard of this public art treasure.
Sculptor Cliff Garten and a team of poets (Sandra Benitez, Soyini Guyton, John Minczeski, David Mura, Xeng Sue Yang, and Roberta Hill-Whiteman) unveiled the project in 1996 as a way to honor the various communities that have contributed to St. Paul’s culture and commemorate the 150th anniversary of the city’s naming. (Christened by Father Galtier in 1841 to coincide with the opening of a church of the same name, St. Paul replaced Pig’s Eye, the moniker adopted by early settlers that referred to a blind-in-one-eye distiller whose moonshine shack was the area’s first business establishment.)
Although tricky to access, the garden is appropriately located near the sites of the metropolis’ founding structures: above the hillside where St. Paul’s Church once stood and the old Fountain Cave where Pig’s Eye long ago built his shack. (Both cave and hill are gone now, having been blasted to make way for the railroad.)
It is also situated at the center of a bustling transportation corridor—a dramatic continental crossroads through which the Natives and migrants who built The Mighty City on the Mississippi once traveled. From the lofty vantage of a prose-engraved fence, visitors today can experience the combined chorus of almost every form of modern transportation: jets roar toward runways on the flood plain; diesel barges groan and churn in the roiling waters of The Great River; thunderous freight and Amtrak locomotives lumber along the bottoms toward Chicago and Minneapolis; semi-trucks and automobiles scream across the ribbon of I-94 between the grand white bluffs of Chief Kangi Ci-stin-na’s Kaposia village and the Dakota/Hopewell Mounds. The resulting din is a harmonious wash that inspires a sense of otherworldliness similar to what one might feel at a Japanese garden.
Strolling along the snaking granite paths and archways of Garten’s creation, the interplay of sculpture and verse dictate the pace of movement in ways no ordinary stanza break could achieve. To read Roberta Hill-Whiteman, one spirals on a stonework trail, stopping four times at carved marble chunks, alternately facing the sweeping river valley—where the poet’s Dakota ancestors once prospered—and the forbidding downtown skyline:

In my voice the wind holds
onto visions.
Sorrow grips my heart:
twelve cents an acre,
Kangi Ci-stin-na’s tears.
The old ones speak
in thunder,
in the roots of the Great Wood

This river remembers its
ancient name,
Ha-ha wa-kpa.
Where young and old
danced in harmony
before trade became more valuable
than lives.

“Eveningwear made comfortable”: Those are the operative words this season for Katherine Gerdes, the twenty-five-year-old designer best known for her appearance on Project Runway. The artist has successfully parlayed that exposure into businesses offering custom fashion and ready-to-wear, both of which bear the signature of Gerdes’ casual aesthetic. The avid snowboarder requires a loose fit from her own wardrobe, and has always designed for comfort as well as form. Last year at DIVA, she unveiled wrinkle-resistant gowns that could be packed into overnight bags. Now, a rainbow’s worth of jersey fabrics are stacked in Gerdes’ new downtown Minneapolis studio, destined to be made into a line of elegant but relaxed-looking dresses. Those gowns will premiere at the upscale DIVA gala, then reappear next month at Voltage, the fashion show geared to urban looks and streetwear. “These dresses will work well for both,” she pointed out.

Saks, Marshall Field’s, and the Minneapolis-based clothier Kuhlman have all produced menswear designed by Jason Hammerberg. But these days the thirty-three-year-old veteran has gone global as an independent apparel designer. Right now, for instance, he’s working with a manufacturer based in Istanbul, putting pen to paper for an “iPod-friendly” line for young men. But Hammerberg doesn’t do any of the stitching in his Golden Valley home/studio—instead, he sends sketches and representative images from magazines to the manufacturer, which then creates a pattern at the factory in Turkey. The versatile Hammerberg also meets with local clients desiring custom menswear—usually tailored jackets, pants, and suits akin to the dandy ensembles he’s dreaming up for the DIVA runway. And in his spare time, he designs baby onesies printed with punchy graphics and slogans, sold locally under the Brand New Baby Wear label. Why dabble in infant fashions? His twelve nieces and nephews are an inspiration. “I became an uncle when I was twelve,” he explained. “I love kids, been around them my whole life.”

“I liked the really cool things I was seeing in GQ and other magazines, like Versace,” said Russell Bourrienne, recalling his adolescence in the 1980s. “But most fourteen-year-olds can’t get their hands on that stuff”—especially if they are growing up outside St. Cloud. So he taught himself to sew, and now central Minnesota’s most fashionable teen has grown into an honest-to-goodness couturier, working out of a compact studio in Minneapolis’ Lyn-Lake area. One side is a showroom; the other is packed with fabrics, sketch books, a worktable, and no fewer than ten sewing machines, some state of the art, some vintage, one still in its box. “I’m very into the ’70s,” said Bourrienne, by way of characterizing his elaborate creations. That translates more specifically as menswear with exaggerated, often elongated silhouettes, done up in bold geometric patterns. For DIVA, his “English-Asian confusion” looks are inspired by the 1937 flick Lost Horizon, in which a plane full of Brits crashes into Shangri-la.

The DIVA MN benefit unfolds on March 3 at International Market Square, 275 Market St. in Minneapolis. Tickets at 651-209-6799 or divamn.org.