To lose an oak is no heartbreak. —No, but to see them go by the acre, at a stroke, is enough to crack a man open, the heart not broken so much as stricken, torqued at the root and left in a thick choke of ache. Just so, a whole forest’s felling will take faith’s … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
All artists come from a foreign country, in some sense. Where “originality” is essential, each artist becomes a world in him- or herself, with zealously guarded borders. But what’s it like to be an artist who makes a home in a distant land? The answers to this and a thousand other questions are different … Read more
The Hold Steady are well known for tossing hosannas to the Twin Cities’ landscape and music scene, past and present—from name-checking the “Grain Belt bridge” and Payne Avenue to sonic nods to all manner of local bands. Never mind that frontman Craig Finn, a native of Edina, decamped to Brooklyn some seven years ago—the Twin … Read more
“I’m home!” Lydia cries out. “Dov’è la biblioteca?” says Lyle. He’s at the stove, his back to her, tossing something into a pot. His voice is steady, reassuring, as seductive as the all-night jazz radio host who inhabits the parallel universe that of late has revealed itself to Lydia—a world populated with graveyard shift workers, … Read more
Last spring brought a nasty shock. I was walking down a leafy side street off Como Avenue, hoping to admire in passing the jolly gingerbread woodwork around the eaves of the tumbledown duplex where my POSSLQ and I shared our first Minnesota home. The place was in pretty poor nick when we rented it twenty … Read more
What could be your key to fame and glory, the secret to a happy marriage, and the only way to make it through the entertaining season with grace and aplomb? Why, it’s the cocktail party, dahling. Libations aside, the best reason for hosting this type of gathering is that success doesn’t depend on a mass … Read more
Patricia Olive has no children. So you’d think she’d be spared that dinnertime nightmare: This one hates vegetables, this one eats only bologna sandwiches with ketchup, this one weeps about dead animals every time you serve beef. But when the Guthrie Theater staged Six Degrees of Separation in 2003, the veteran props manager got a … Read more
You can argue whether globalization is good for the planet or good for workers, but when it comes to gastronomy, the influx of foreign flavors has definitely enlivened the local dining scene. Mention fusion cuisine nowadays, and people are likely to think of the high-end stylings of celebrity chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. … Read more