ART
Art on a Roll
Northfield has more to offer than the “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment” of the city motto. (Aren’t there more pigs than cows there anyhow?) A city becomes a true city only when it produces outsider art. Or didn’t you know that? Well, one thing you probably do know is that small towns — particularly college towns like this one — tend to produce a lot of skateboarders. (You know — the ones getting thrown out of every plaza and park in town.) In an effort to raise awareness, support skateboarding, and raise funds for a skate park, the Grezzo Gallery is hosting Breaking the Law, local art by local skaters. Celebrate the opening tonight with DJ Joe Cruse. Renegade Board Shop, from Faribault, will be putting on a demo right in font of the gallery if the weather holds up. And be sure to buy a t-shirt (design featured to the right). All proceeds will toward The Key youth center’s efforts to build a skate park.
5:30 – 10 p.m., Grezzo Gallery, 16 Bridge Square, Downtown Northfield; 612-986-7690; free ($20 t-shirts).
Art Festivals for Everyone
The Flint Hills International Children’s Festival is this weekend, and there is so much exciting stuff happening, I just have to run down the list for you. This isn’t just for kids, people. By all means take the kids if you’ve got them; but don’t forget to be the kid, too. It’s a completely interactive affair, and it ought to be great fun. Spend the day among artists and butterflies, making your own art, watching stellar performances from around the globe, eating international cuisine, and partaking in various artistic and community events. There’s an ARTwalk exhibit with more than 615 pieces of art displayed in 155 windows in downtown Saint Paul, a festival sculpture garden, an aerial ballet piece based on the work of Chagall, a Kite Festival with a huge kite 50 feet in the air adorning Landmark Plaza, a Poster Contest presented as huge building art hanging from all of the buildings surrounding Rice Park, Movement Arts, an
ARTmoves community art parade in Rice Park, an incredible array of local performers, and international performers from Mexico, Morocco, France, and Canada. See the lineup of performers. You can’t go wrong. The amount of planning behind this event is astounding, the kids have put in a great deal of time and preparation from their part, and there’s something for everyone. Don’t miss out.
If you don’t quite get your fill of art at the Children’s Festival, there are a couple of art festivals worth attending. Now in it’s sixth year, the Red Hot Art Festival brings local artists, musicians, food vendors and restauranteurs, installation artists, and community organizations together in Stevens Square Park for a unique weekend gathering.
If you prefer your art sans community, stroll on along to the ever-so-comfortable Edina Art Fair. Enjoy work by more than 400 artists, live music, fashion shows, great food, and lifestyle demonstrations. What the heck is a lifestyle demonstration anyhow? Only in Edina!
Out on a Limb
For whatever reason, I can’t refrain from mentioning Jennifer Davis’s art opening this weekend. Davis offers, “the dilute pastels of a taffy-colored universe, where a tethered manatee drifts above a delighted crowd or a pensive youth dreams unbridled fantasies about the horse that got away.” And while it resembles art that I so often hate, it manages to express a certain strange perversity that justifies the sappiness. I want this stuff hanging in the nursery that I keep neglecting to need. I want to write a story, or a poem, to go with each of her images. I want the children I haven’t had to grow up dreaming them. I can’t stop looking.
7 p.m., Gallery 360, 3011 W. 50th St., Minneapolis; 612-925-2400; free.
BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND THEN SOME
Call It Beat, Or Simply Be Beat
When he arrived in the United States in the 1960s, then 20-year-old Andrei Codrescu tucked his transcendentalist ideals into his breast pocket and sought out the vestiges of the Beat Generation, principally Allen Ginsberg. Since then, the Romanian-born writer and thinker has elucidated American culture in myriad forms: poetry, essays, novels, screenplays, and even a National Public Radio column. In traditional Beatnik spirit — if anything Beat can be called traditional — Codrescu’s sardonic wit and thirst for the unusual, his playful defiance of all categorization, are his trademarks.
Despite his acutely ironic sense of humor and his archetypal Jewish wit, Codrescu seems an odd proposition for the Minnesota Public Radio’s American Humorist Series. “For years now I have published my poems in funny magazines / So that nobody would notice / How sad they were,” he writes in his 1980 “Paper on Humor.” More than a humorist, Codrescu is one of our nation’s leading proponents of critical thought. Fearing that our literature, particularly poetry, was suffering from lack of public debate, Codrescu founded the Exquisite Corpse literary journal in 1983. A decade and a half later, he had become one of the first online-only publications, understanding, before many, the distribution value of the Internet. There’s no denying this man’s dominion. With more than 38 published works and endless public presentations he continues to find new outlets for his obsessive learning impulses.
Friday at 7 p.m., Fitzgerald Theater, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul; 651 290-1200; $22-$31.
While seeing Codrescu is sure to be quite rewarding, living like Codrescu is perhaps even more admirable. You’ve got an opportunity to do so each day of the weekend. The beats were certainly not the first to bring poetry together with music and dance (thought they did it so well), and they’re certainly not the last. Watch words collide with spoken artwork re-colored by choreographers this Saturday in Embedded With Mangoes in the Garden of Dueling Delights, a TalkingImageConnection reading featuring Shá Cage, Carla Hagen, Julia Klatt-Singer, Haley Lasché, Sam Osterhout, Annette Schiebout, and special guests Three Dances.
Saturday at 8 p.m., Soap Factory, 518 2nd St. SE, Minneapolis; 612-623-9176; free.
And if you still have a little more beat in you left on Sunday, stop by the 331 Club at 6 p.m. the Lit 6 Story Stage’s Ginsbergian beat poetry day.
DANCE
The Language of Silence? Really?
Sure, poetry with dance is cool, but let’s face it, sometimes you just just need to shut out those words. Explore the gestures of Arabic letters and poems of 13th century mystic Muhammad Jalaluddin Rumi in silence, or at least Close to Silence. Tonight the Minnesota Dance Theatre showcases the premiere of choreographer-in-residence Wynn Fricke’s Close to Silence, a piece that crosses cultural boundaries by combining modern dance with traditional Islamic dance.
8 p.m. (Sundays 7 p.m.), The Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-340-1725; $32 (students and youth $17).
DANCE, MUSIC, AND OTHER GREAT STUFF
Forget Grand Old Days, the Insanity Starts Here
Minnesota Public Radio is on a role this weekend. Follow up the Friday’s Codrescu presentation with a vaudevillian extravaganza on Saturday. Seventeen distinctive acts will perform as part of Vaudevillian Stages. Yes, this is real vaudeville — musicians, dancers, comedians, acrobats, and freak shows. Get a load of this line-up: Mongolian acrobats Circus Manduhai, singer Isabella Dawis, The Twin Cities Harmonica Trio, pianist Michael “The Hook” Deutsch, 21-string banjo master Paul Metzger, savage comedian Brian Beatty, Jared “Yodelboy” Mason, manualist (don’t ask) Scott Richardson, tap dance sensations The Ausland Brothers, aerialist Risa Cohen, vocal jazz stylists Rio Nido with singer Prudence Johnson, guitar luminary Tim Sparks, ethereal musical ensemble Dreamland Faces, host Tom Lieberman, and even Ned Beatty (though, strange as he is, I don’t see how he possibly fits in with this motley gang).
Saturday at 8 p.m., Fitzgerald Theater, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul; 651 290-1200; $27-$31.
MUSIC
Diggin’ on Them Roots
Maybe it’s the railroads that have tied Minnesota so tightly to the folk music scene since the ’40s. Or maybe it’s the good old Midwestern working-class mentality that permeates the back roads and smaller towns throughout the state. Regardless, our imprint on contemporary folk doesn’t stop at Bob “Zimmerman” Dylan. Hailing from Dylan’s hometown, and clearly influenced by much of the same music as his forebear, Charlie Parr has been quietly shaking the Americana music scene with his authentic rendering of Piedmont-style blues. With the storytelling finesse of Dylan and Woodie Guthrie, the finger-picking mastery of Rev. Gary Davis and Dave Van Ronk, and the raw soul of Robert Johnson and Brownie McGhee (is that enough name-dropping for you?), Parr builds on a strong tradition of American folk and blues while addressing the very real issues of the contemporary Midwestern working man. Anyhow, it’s a hell of a lot better than going to see Styx play at Myth! I mean, come one; they weren’t even that good in the ’80s.
Saturday at 8 p.m., Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; $9.
Ok. Now quit reading and go DO!
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