The Rake Magazine

Author: Susannah Schouweiler

  • Art Market: Gather around art and home

    In an age when we can fill our homes with an abundance of uniform, sleek, inexpensive, mass-produced goods, the gracious imperfections of handmade objects provide a particularly human comfort. A few artisanal pieces incorporated here and there into your living spaces, whether it’s a simply constructed paper pendant lamp or a bit of ornate whimsy for your yard, lend your surroundings the warmth of a maker’s hand. And with the variety of lovely, functional objects offered up by Minnesota’s talented craftspeople, the hunt for just the right piece for your garden or living room may prove almost as gratifying as the pleasure you’ll get once that one-of-a-kind treasure has taken up residence in your home.

    Music Stand by Ross Peterson, wenge, quilted maple, Goncalo Alves.
    This elegantly crafted music stand by Ross Peterson, for which rare figured woods have been re-sawn and laid out to showcase the natural grain, is similar to one commissioned from the artist by President Bush as a gift for Japan’s Emperor Akihito. www.mnartists.org/Ross_Peterson


    Cocktail Cart (top) and Treadirondack (bottom), by Dean Wilson
    Wilson’s whimsical cart offers a playful, stylish home to the booze that sits atop it. His retrofitted lawn chair-cum-vehicle will be the envy of your friends. www.mnartists.org/Dean_Wilson

    Neruda Pendant by Claire Moyle, recycled paper, 2006.
    Claire Moyle’s contemplative play on word and light is a thoughtful accent for any reading nook. www.mnartists.org/Claire_Moyle

    Ellipsoid Table by Tim Gorman, maple, walnut, bird’s-eye maple, bubinga veneer, ebony, oak, birch plywood, brass, 2006.
    This opulent, Deco-inspired table by Tim Gorman would be equally at home in sleekly modern or eclectic, antique-filled living spaces. www.mnartists.org/Timothy_Gorman

    Birdhouse by Mari Newman, wood and paint.
    The homey charm of Mari Newman’s rough-hewn birdhouse is designed to warm up any garden corner. www.mnartists.org/Mari_Newman

    Jack Splash Lotus by Holly Anderson Jorde, glazed stoneware & acrylic painted wood, 12"h x 24"w x 16"d
    Jorde’s beautifully executed ceramic sculptures are both elegant and fanciful like childhood toys refashioned for grown-ups. www.mnartists.org/Holly_Anderson_Jorde

    Perpich Bench by Glenn Gordon, Mesabi black granite, steel, curly redwood, 2004.
    This bench, constructed in 2004 in honor of Rudy Perpich, is made from black granite native to Perpich’s Mesabi Iron Range and
    an extraordinary plank of highly figured curly redwood recovered a few years back from a lightning-struck stump left standing by 19th century redwood loggers. www.mnartists.org/Glenn_Gordon

    Modular Media Shelves by Keith Moore, birch, 2002
    These funky shelves offer functional storage with playfully fluid lines.
    www.mnartists.org/Keith_Moore

     

  • Zoom In: Michael Thomsen

    Michael Thomsen was born into a line of circus people and performers and, in a way, he’s continuing in the family business. Thomsen grew up in Austin, Minnesota, "in the shadow of the Hormel meatpacking plant." His first job as a kid involved sorting through the junk drawers and closets of the recently deceased for his grandfather, the proprietor of a successful carnival midway business who worked as an auctioneer in the off-season. "I loved going through those old drawers," he says. "It is powerful to touch all those small, personal things-keys, playing cards, watches, little odds and ends. After all that handling, they have life in them. In fact, some of the things I pocketed back then still show up in my work."

    Thomsen’s creations-lying somewhere between collage, sculpture, and painting-are self-contained marvels of both engineering and art, peopled by found objects and laden with dream symbols. In Thomsen’s wonderlands, you get to be Alice. Turn a nondescript crank on the side of Clock and the tinny melodies of a hidden music box emerge; peer closely into the crystal ball at the center of Roundabout and you’ll find a tiny painting tucked inside. The imagery of Thomsen’s work hails straight from the carnival lurking in the recesses of our childhood wishes and fears. Menace lives cheek by jowl with the sublime. Harlequins and fortunetellers, cherubs and horned beasties, mirrors and gears-they all bark for your attention. "To me, the little worlds in these pieces have the same balance of light and dark that the outside world has," Thomsen explains. "Everything’s there-the good and bad, ugly and beautiful. The real world doesn’t always make sense to me so, in these pieces, I arrange things in a way that reflects how I see things, by the rules that make sense to me."

    Excerpted from a profile published in access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.

  • Zoom In: Susan Hensel

    I’m greeted at Susan Hensel Design Gallery by the gallery’s namesake, a small, ebullient woman who is a nationally recognized book artist and recent Minnesota transplant. “I’ve had friends here for years, my son was away at college—it was time,” she explains. As for her gallery, “I wanted the opportunity, not only to show my own work, but to find new work by emerging artists with guts, who have a story to tell—a story that might not be commercial, but that needs to be seen.”

    Pick up any of Hensel’s own artwork, and it’s apparent that she’s an inveterate reader and an avid (perhaps even obsessive) journal keeper. Her smaller pieces are clever plays on paper and form, rich in wordplay and visual wit; larger works, whether “narrative sculptures” or installations, are endeavors for which her extensive reading on a subject serves as fodder. Hensel’s talent lies in what she calls “taking the personal and turning it into gestalt.”

    As we browse through her intriguing “literary sculptures,” the artist observes: “We are a story-making species, no matter what. When we see artwork, we need to assign it meaning, a narrative. My installations include sound, scent, light, image, and words to help get you into the arena. But once you’re there, the experience of the story is all yours.”

    Originally published in issue 16.1 of access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.

  • Zoom In: Richard C. Johnson

    Richard Johnson’s photos of weathered storefronts,
    thrift-store castoffs, and tattered religious iconography in northern Minnesota
    serve as an astute chronicle of the erosion of small Midwestern towns. He grew up in Cloquet, which he
    describes as “an OK place,” one with “a slightly higher-than-average number of
    churches as well as per-capita consumption of distilled spirits, and the distinction
    of lending its name to a big forest fire.” After developing a severe allergy to
    chemicals used in processing film, for years Johnson turned to collage instead.
    (Happily, digital photography eventually allowed him a chemical-free way to
    return to the craft.) “I was an inveterate collector of ephemera anyway,” he
    explains. “I haunted flea markets and rummage sales for old books, magazines,
    marbled papers, objets de junk, and assorted crap.”

    Not one to merely dabble, he dove into the medium, producing
    a large collection of gorgeous, offbeat assemblages. “I used so bloody much
    rubber cement that I began experiencing peripheral nerve damage. I kid you not,
    the tips of my fingers developed a constant tingle. God only knows what it did
    to my brain.”

    The stuff certainly didn’t detract from Johnson’s eye for
    imagery. His work, whether in collage or photography, packs a visceral punch,
    one that reflects the artist’s wry humor and keen insight.

    Originally appeared in issue 20.1 of access+ENGAGE.

  • The Man from Hamburg

    As you walk down the narrow hallway into Frank Sander’s
    sunlit studio in Lowertown you’re greeted by an entryway table piled with
    cables, cast-off camera bits, miscellaneous video equipment, and a couple of
    discarded microphone heads.

    On the walls are personal treasures the German-born artist
    has picked up during his twenty-odd years of travel. He takes down a recent
    prize from a wall near the galley kitchen: a weathered, conical straw hat he
    bartered from a farmer on a recent trip to China’s Yunnan province. "Can you
    see the sweat stains along the strap here? Look at the fine weaving work; the
    swirls and patterning in the straw are just stunning. I love that this bears
    the evidence of his labor, the time he spent in the fields," Sander said. "I
    think it’s just beautiful, it’s so human."

    Sander studied carpentry and architecture, along with visual
    art, in Germany; it’s clear he’s an itchy sort of artist, resistant to the
    fetters of just one discipline. Finding carpentry and architecture too precise
    and measured, he turned to sculpture and painting. He’s also noodled around
    with filmmaking and photography since childhood, experimenting early on with
    Super 8 cameras, and graduating over time to videography and digital
    photography.

    In his twenties Sander wandered throughout Europe, living in
    Spain for a time, then the Netherlands and Denmark. On a trip home to Hamburg
    in 1979, his train was caught in a week-long blizzard. "After a couple of days,
    I started to look around for ways to pass the time." He recalls wryly, "I kept
    thinking, surely there’s a young woman around here who needs some company."

    You can guess the rest: a fellow passenger was an attractive
    American. They hit it off and Sander followed her home to Minnesota, where they
    were married. That relationship eventually fizzled but his affair with the
    North Star State did not.

    In fact, Minnesota’s landscapes, especially the wilds of the
    Boundary Waters, have indelibly marked his artwork. Sander may be best known
    for his critically hailed installation, Human Nature, which premiered at the
    Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1999 and also showed at the Daum Museum of
    Contemporary Art outside Kansas City. In Sander’s landscape, fish enrobed in
    resin hang from the frame of an upturned fishing boat; and scores of beaver
    skulls sit in government-issue file boxes in witness to the destruction of
    their habitat. The entire work was a sort of sculptural reliquary for Upper
    Midwest wildlife displaced by industrialization and sprawl.

    Sander, however, now has mixed feelings about large-scale
    public art. "It takes so much time and money, and so much time applying for
    grants, to put something like that together. No one really buys work that
    large, so in the case of Human Nature it sat around on my property deteriorating
    for years, just getting in the way. I’m more interested in actually making
    artwork than in shopping my artwork around."

    His current passion, videography and film, marries well with
    his wanderlust. Currently he is documenting the tribal minorities and austere
    beauty of Yunnan Province, in the mountains near the Tibetan border. Typically
    for Sander, he arrived at this latest work through both luck and a Zen-like
    acquiescence to the vicissitudes of his curiosity. He stumbled on these insular
    enclaves last year while sightseeing in China, and, intrigued by their singular
    cultural histories, struck up a friendship with a local university professor
    who introduced him to some locals.

    Sander was smitten with the people and their communities,
    poised between agrarian life and industrial modernity. Armed with just a
    camera, he returns every chance he gets. Sander’s video footage is immediate
    and intimate. There’s over-the-shoulder access to the mountaintop homes of
    boisterous young dancers, and walks along narrow village streets on festival
    night.

    With the ongoing collaboration of his Chinese partner, He
    Lujiang, Sander is working to raise money for an ambitious film project that
    would chronicle these peoples’ fast-disappearing stories.

    "We have the opportunity to preserve something of this way
    of life before it’s gone," he says. "Imagine if we’d been able to do something
    similar to capture Native American life before the days of reservations. These
    are communities on the cusp of modern life, and every day they lose a bit of
    their heritage to the conveniences of new technologies. If I can document their
    way of life, I’d like to post the whole film for free online. He Lujiang and I
    want their chronicle to be our small contribution to the world."

    The medium may vary, but Sander’s consistent theme is
    preservation. His is the proverbial (and literal) voice in the wilderness
    urging us not to forget who we were and to be mindful of the natural wonders
    being sacrificed for the manufactured comforts of modernity.

  • Zoom In: Amy Jo Hendrickson

    Hendrickson’s handiwork is a mélange of burlesque camp,
    cowgirl grit, and Victorian flourish. She’s undeniably influenced by ’70s pop
    design and ’80s album covers, but this North Dakota girl also mixes in a
    frontier spirit straight out of a nineteenth-century Sears, Roebuck catalog.
    But make no mistake, the work has some bite: Hendrickson’s all-American blonde
    pigtails are more Minnesota RollerGirl than Little House on the Prairie.

    If you go to rock shows around Minnesota, you’ve seen
    Hendrickson’s posters on the walls around you; she’s been at it for years.
    Since she moved to Minneapolis and set up shop at First Amendment Gallery with
    some other artists, her sly grrrl-power designs have been garnering more and
    more notice. And no wonder-with all the elements she unabashedly draws
    from, Hendrickson’s design savvy has the hook of a catchy pop song, tweaking
    familiar styles with unexpected juxtapositions and cheeky flair.

    Looking back, she says it makes sense that she was drawn to
    this kind of work. "When I was a kid, I loved flipping through the images in
    catalogs. I always noticed album covers and ad designs and movie posters," she
    remembers. "There’s all kinds of inspiration out there if you know how to
    look."

     

    Originally appeared in issue 18.1 of access+ENGAGE.

  • Zoom In: Dona Schwartz

    Spend a few minutes with photographer Dona Schwartz and you’ll start to see a bit of grandeur hiding beneath humble day-to-day routines. “I want to see what’s amazing that’s right under my nose,” she explains. “To me, that’s really compelling. But to photograph daily life, you have to first really see it. You have to be really quick and really observant.”

    And so began In the Kitchen and Soccer Mom, two series that document, respectively, the comings and goings of family and friends in Schwartz’s own home, and parents at their kids’ soccer matches. Seen through Schwartz’s lens, these snatches of family life are surreal and evoke the changeable nature of parent-child relationships. Occasionally they’re funny; sometimes, they’re uncomfortably frank.

    “I think about how I can incorporate my photography into the life I lead,” Schwartz explains. “I can’t entertain the idea of leaving—photographing across the country or around the world for long stretches of time. I have these children, and I love these children. I can’t just go off and leave them. But I don’t think it’s trivial to look at things closer to home. To me, part of the challenge is to say, ‘Look at just how amazing and complex these things you take for granted are.’”

    For Schwartz, photography is about finding a good story and telling it as best you can. “Meaningful work doesn’t have to have exotic subject matter, ” she argues. “I can tell you this,” she says, leaning in. “It’s a ridiculously euphoric experience when you lock a truly decisive moment within the frame. It’s like recognizing your own thoughts crystallized in an image.”

     

    This article originally appeared in issue 15.1 of access+ENGAGE.
    Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.

  • Zoom In: Lori Greene

    Mosaic on a Stick hums with chatter from neighbors coming in to browse for supplies, gossip, sign up for classes, and admire new pieces on display. In the three years since mosaicist Lori Greene and her business partner Maria Ricke opened “The Stick” in Saint Paul’s Midway area, they’ve put down solid roots through neighborhood art collaborations—like the project that resulted in ten community-created, mosaic-embellished planters along Snelling Avenue. Greene’s personal work, which she creates in a studio behind The Stick, is steeped in imagery from her African and American Indian ancestry; her totems to femininity and motherhood, while beautiful, often betray an ambivalence and even fear of motherhood, too.

    In her most peculiar, powerful work, babies and dolls appear as regal and even somewhat frightening figures.

    Greene’s public work is no less intimate, focusing on the power of heritage and generational ties. Divination Systems, the series of large statues commissioned by the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis, is particularly stunning. “They gave me a lot of freedom,” she said, “and I’d been dreaming of those pieces for years.” For Greene, art is no solitary affair, but rooted instead in personal relationships, neighborhoods, and family. “I’m not really even sure what all these pieces mean, to tell you the truth,” she shrugs. “But I can’t imagine not doing this work. It’s who I am.” —Susannah Schouweiler

    Detail from Sangoma by Lori Greene, photo by Usry Alleyne

     

    This article originally appeared in issue 13.1 of access+ENGAGE.
    Subscribe to this free arts e-journal at mnartists.org/accessengage.