Author: rakemag

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, but it seems a goodly number of our acquaintances get their thrills by slapping around wet lumps of clay. In any of the Twin Cities’ plentiful venues for making pottery, you can find small crowds of dusty people hugging their misshapen pots and discovering their reverence for Warren MacKenzie. And there’s hardly a scenic Minnesota drive that doesn’t pass a pottery studio in the woods. This love of mud has inspired four days’ worth of pottery pondering at the Northern Clay Center, where works exhibited by twenty-six artists from around the country set the stage for lectures, workshops, slide presentations, and general worship of all things that come out of a kiln. 2424 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-339-8007; www.northernclaycenter.org

There’s art that perfectly reflects a particular era or discipline, and then there’s art that is a direct and unvarnished reflection of an individual’s mind. When viewing the strange and gorgeous prints of Donovan Durham, you are staring point blank at the workings of this man’s complex insides: his loves, his fantasies, his fears. Dubbed an outsider artist, Durham suffers from mental illness and also sickle cell anemia, the latter of which left him with a speech impairment. With much to say, the local artist’s latest collection of work–black and white lithographs and color monoprints created during a residency at Highpoint–includes portraits of famous black musicians (his Stevie Wonder is both admiring and wholly unique) and landscapes. Our favorites are his haunting portrayal of the Smoky Mountains, and a work very appropriately titled Billy the Skeleton. 2638 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-871-1326; www.highpointprintmaking.org

No, it’s not all about him–really. Still, we were intrigued by the contrast between the monumental paintings anchoring each end of this decades-spanning exhibit. In ’69, a portrait of the artist as a young scrapper looking to shake things up is rendered with stark black and white precision (this is the masterwork purchased by the Walker straight from the artist’s studio). Thirty-six years later, Close renders his likeness in sumptuous, kaleidoscopically colored “pixels,” and there’s a palpable sense of the artist as an elegant, aging, and affluent authority figure. But he’s still exploring and discovering. He talked recently about noting the strong connections between his work and traditionally female crafts like knitting and quilting–and thereby coming to realize the influence his grandmother had on his wide-ranging work. So even if Close is an egomaniac (he’s used to people thinking that), he’s an incredibly smart and perceptive one. 612-375-7600, www.walkerart.org

These captivating and surreal photographs capture a range of moods in various other-worldly northern lands. Three contemporary photographers revisti places throughout Central Asia photographed by Johannes Gabriel (J.G.) Crano, a Finnish scientist and explorer, between 1902 and 1916. While Grano’s photographs show majestic environments relatively undisturbed by his species, his modern successors encounter great changes; the juxtaposition reveals connections between art, science, and nature in images of a changing world. Stunning black and white seascapes by Taneli Eskola, scenes of destruction (a dam, a strip mine) by Jorma Puranen, and farmyard photography by Pentii Sammallahti, in which the animals seem to tell wry jokes to the camera, pay homage to the world that was, while recording the world as it is now. 216 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-624-7530

Ford has led a most interesting life, even by the inflated standards of a profession where outrageous biographies are as common as dust jacket hyperbole. He’s been a high school baseball coach, an editor at American Druggist, and a sportswriter. Then there’s his fiction, which has garnered enough critical hosannas and awards (his 1995 novel Independence Day was the first book ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award) that Ford could be forgiven for kicking back a little. Why not ride out the backstretch of his career by working the lecture circuit, teaching in MFA programs, and floating the occasional short story? It might seem like that’s what Ford’s been doing since he hit pay dirt, but he’s always been a methodical writer and something of a restless character. He has lived in fourteen U.S. states and France and Mexico, which is perhaps fitting for a man who spent part of his childhood living in his grandfather’s hotel. That footloose strain runs through all of Ford’s fiction, whether he’s writing about shiftless characters in Montana or Frank Bascombe, the beleaguered suburban hero of Ford’s best known novels, The Sportswriter and Independence Day. And time and again, it seems as if his characters come face-to-face with some version of Bascombe’s famous and troubling revelation, “There are no transcendent themes in life.” Adath Jeshurun Congregation, 10500 Hillside Lane W., Minnetonka; 952-847-8637

Bobbie Ann Mason’s straightforward, observant writing about the plain folks of rural Kentucky has generated comparisons to Raymond Carver. Like Carver, her characters are everyday non-heroes, such as a Vietnam veteran suffering from Agent Orange-related problems (In Country) and a truck driver with a road-related leg injury (Shiloh and Other Stories). Clearly, she’s got a tender spot for guys who’ve been dealt a raw deal in life: Atomic Romance, her first novel in ten years, follows a third-generation worker at a uranium-enrichment plant who comes to realize the company that he’s devoted his life to (and lost his father to, in a plant disaster) may not have his best interests at heart. But Mason does; she’s set him up with a swell girlfriend and enough smarts to concoct an inspired way out. 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 952-920-0633; www.bn.com

Watching other people eat revolting things has become a new spectator sport in our reality TV culture. Perhaps this replaces earlier entertainments like gladiator fights and public hangings, thereby satisfying some primal desire to watch others suffer. Of course, these days everyone gets to go home at the end of the show–sometimes with money. Elliot Hester eats gross things not for prizes but for fun. Or something like that. On his continuous international jaunts around the globe (his Plane Insanity recounts his often miserable experiences working as a flight attendant), he visits some of the most un-tourist-friendly countries in the world; this book chronicles his gustatory adventures in fifty nations whose citizens view insects, pets, and innards a little differently than we do.