The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Illuminating The Word: The Saint John's Bible

    A lot of talented calligraphers lost their jobs back in the fifteenth century, once the printing press came into vogue; their vocation has, alas, never recovered from the blow. But Donald Jackson is lucky. Not only is he Queen Elizabeth’s official scribe, he’s also been commissioned to create the first new handwritten Bible for the modern age. He is relying chiefly on the same materials and techniques that his colleagues used in the Middle Ages, but is also making use of computer-assisted illuminations that incorporate flora and fauna native to Minnesota for divine inspiration–Eden as a prairie, if you will. Sixty pages of this modern masterpiece are on display for this exhibit. 2400 Third Ave. S., Minneapolis, 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org

  • Bruce Nygren

    Who among us didn’t believe, just a little bit, that our toys led secret lives, either while we slept or when we’d left the house on a quiet Saturday afternoon? The toys in Nygren’s paintings leave the domestic sphere altogether, traveling to new places while fixed in a state of “objectness.” Rendered in rich hues, his oil-on-canvas still lifes and scenes of elephants flying over various rural landscapes are imbued with a sense of calm, beautiful absurdity. 3012 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-344-1700; www.flanders-art.com

  • Bluff Country Studio Art Tour

    Perhaps it has something to do with the rising cost of studio space in the Twin Cities. Or maybe there’s a growing impulse to get out and better appreciate our state’s natural beauty, while it’s still there. Whatever the reasons, we’re seeing a boom in art barns, small-town galleries, and artists making a go of it amid the rolling landscapes in southern Minnesota’s bluff country. This is the fifth year in which artists from this region have put their work on display in home studios and galleries; among the thirty-eight participants, a host of media are represented: ink, clay, fiber, metal, wood, glass, stone, and more. You don’t get to see cows and spring fields when you’re touring galleries in the Cities, so consider this a doubly enthralling road trip through southeastern Minnesota and northeast Iowa. 1-800-428-2030; www.geocities.com/studioarttour

  • When The Earth Was New

    Two Rivers director Juanita Espinosa says that for Native Americans, the present is “synonymous with the past.” This truth of native culture runs through the works in the gallery’s latest exhibit. In a seamless mesh of tradition and modernity, various interpretations of the concept of dodem (Ojibwe for “family”) and the original clan systems (Crane, Loon, Fish, Bear, Marten, and Wolf) reconnect humanity with the natural world. For those who may not be up on their clan facts, a cheat sheet is available to bring further meaning to the paintings, intricate pencil sketches, sculptures, and dream catchers on view. 1530 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-879-1780

  • 23rd Annual Minneapolis-St. paul International Film Festival

    How does two more weeks of darkness sound? Before spring truly kicks into gear, you can happily fritter away a few wet and chilly days in a theater, catching some of M-SPIFF’S 160 films from fifty countries, which constitute the largest film event in the Upper Midwest. The festival opens in appropriately grand style at the State Theatre and continues at venues across the Twin Cities. Highlights include a tribute to French filmmaker Benoit Jacquot, who will make an appearance; “New Visions of Europe,” a collection of films about life in the twelve-year-old European Union; and several contributions (short films, features, and documentaries) by Minnesotan filmmakers. Anytown, USA stars Doug Friedline, Jesse Ventura’s former campaign manager, as himself in a film about a small-town New Jersey mayoral race. The Wild Condition, an “experimental nature film” about an elderly woman who befriends a wolf, has us intrigued, as well (any small, tasty children in the cast?). See the full lineup and descriptions of films and events at www.mnfilmarts.org/m-spiff/2005

  • Psst!

    The mono-monikered Norwegian graphic artist Jason, on whose work this production is based, apparently prefers his name to be spelled “JASON.” (Does that mean one must be extra-emphatic in speaking his name aloud?) We don’t cotton to the orthographical whims of E.E. Cummings or Bell Hooks, so we’ll have to decline Jason’s wish as well. That said, his work is impressive enough that our hometown experimental-yet-accessible theater troupe, Off-Leash Area, decided to bring his characters to life on stage. Psst! is a heartbreaking romance set in a factory assembly line and unfolding in expressionisticÑand wordless–style, using masked performers, movement theater, and music from Cat Power and Tom Waits. 1021 Franklin Ave., Minneapolis.; 612-724-7372

  • Zenon Dance Company's Spring Concert

    Marsha Palmer just so happens to be joined at the hip with Jeremy Walker. What’s interesting about this is that Palmer is Zenon Dance Company’s managing director, and local jazz impresario Walker is best known as proprietor of the dearly departed Brilliant Corners; their own relationship facilitated an otherwise unlikely union between Zenon’s hoofers and Walker’s new Jazz Is NOW! Composers’ Ensemble. With their respective organizations solidly odd-coupled, Palmer and Walker asked some of their favorite brilliant East Coast artists to brighten our corner of the world. So it is that Ted Nash (jazz composer and Wynton Marsalis collaborator) and choreographer Jeanine Durning have put their heads together to create a sometimes jagging, sometimes bopping combination of live music and dance, one that promises to be a high point of Zenon’s spring production. 528 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-339-4944; www.zenondance.org

  • Jerome Bel, The Show Must Go On

    There’s no better way to sell a show: “This production contains nudity,” warn press materials for French provocateur Jerome Bel’s American debut. Known for his spiciness and experimental dance techniques, Bel has created a pop music-inspired extravaganza; sponsored by Walker Art Center, “The Show Must Go On” includes David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer,” promising more than a little foot tapping in the audience. And possibly some eye popping too, as one male dancer breaks ranks from the troupe to perform a striptease (seen below) to Reel 2 Real’s danceteria hit “I Like to Move It.” 710 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-339-7007; www.hennepintheatredistrict.com

  • Creamy Vouvray

    Home is where we start from. That’s why different things appear perfectly natural to different folk. For much of the Near East it is not democracy that is natural but the milet system of the old Ottoman Empire, where no one had votes, but each minority was responsible for itself under an Islamic umbrella. For me it is the English countryside before the Great War, the Old England of Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill.

    For most middle-aged Americans I suppose it is, for better or worse, the Eisenhower era: the wonders of modern science, Detroit dragons, and America as Top Nation forever more. No one now (apart, apparently, from Mr. Rumsfeld) thinks the world is, or ought to be, as simple as it seemed then in the black-and-white pages of Time magazine. Many of us never thought it was.

    Ask your pets what their world looks like. Your cat knows your neighborhood quite as well as you do, but what he has marked on his mental map is entirely different. Poor Kit Smart wondered at the wisdom of cats and they put him in Bedlam. You see a crack in the neighbor’s siding. Your cat sees the Gate of Mouse and watches with the full-bore attention of Ernest Hemingway gazing at the gate through which the bull will enter the arena to meet its matador.

    Your dog, too, he has a consciousness that makes intelligent distinctions mostly on the basis of smell—a sense most humans (except, of course, connoisseurs of wine) are well on the way to losing. I have seen a pack of beagles follow the trail of a hare through a mink farm without faltering. This is a serious feat of discrimination, since aroma algebra teaches us that mink equals skunk squared. How much we must be missing. One wonders what gave the animals in that Sinhalese nature reserve early warning of last December’s tsunami, so that they made their way inland and escaped the deadly waves.
    In the ancient world, it was the Stoic philosophers who were the great exponents of the notion that there is a hidden sympathy that links all physical phenomena. If the Stoics had known about Tokyo and Texas, they would certainly have asserted that a butterfly clapping its wings in the air over the Japanese capital could cause a tornado over Austin. Even spiritual things were exquisitely refined matter, and so were subtly and physically linked. The soul was like gold to airy thinness beat; the whole round earth was every way bound with golden chains too fine for human sight.

    It was these connections that made things beautiful. If each person and thing lived in accordance with its own nature, it would become perfectly adapted to its environment, indeed, to the entire universe of which it was a part. Beauty could be discerned wherever things were well-proportioned to one another, above all when they displayed a mathematical symmetry, like the colonnaded frontage of a Greek temple.

    Just such a Stoic combination came my way the other evening. It involved a crumbly English cheese called Blue Shropshire (like Stilton, but golden instead of white) and a 2002 Vouvray (costing little more than $12) called Masbon, which is French for “good estate,” though I guess it is simply the name of the shipper. (The experience would probably have been as good, just different, with many another cheese, perhaps best with Wensleydale, that crumbly white poetry from the Yorkshire Dales, home of James Herriot, the horsedoctor and raconteur.) For a vehicle there was good crusty bread; ideal would have been Bath Oliver Biscuits, as eaten with hard-boiled eggs by Dan and Una in Kipling’s Puck.

    Vouvray is a white wine from the Loire Valley, southwest of Paris. It is made from the Chenin Blanc grape, which means that it is somewhat sweet; (“off-dry” is the pundit’s word). 2002 was a fine hot year but this wine is not oversweet; it has the characteristic Vouvray edge. One bottle had an aftertaste I was personally not keen on (a little like a McIntosh apple), but this was well-masked by the Blue Shropshire cheese.

    Looking for the link that made this wine and cheese such a successful combination required serious research—that is to say, repeated, careful consumption. In the end I decided the connection consisted in a concatenation of creaminess. Nothing excessive, you understand—nothing in excess was a common Stoic motto—but a gentle connection catalyzed by the consumer. As Charles Williams wrote—it is National Poetry Month—“How good the universe can be, what now?”

  • Artists in Trouble

    Certainly, the Varsity has come a long way since 2 Live Crew took the stage in the early 1990s to belt out “Me So Horny.” Now managed by the steady hand of Jason McLean, the man behind the nearby Loring Pasta Bar and the Kitty Cat Klub, the long-ailing Dinkytown landmark has been restored to its original Deco glory and then some. Part cafe, part theater, part art space, the stunning new Varsity this month hosts the rock ‘n’ roll musical comedy, “Artists in Trouble,” a Half Cast Production starring Heidi Arneson, Lawrence Huters, Matt Panschar, and Charlie Braden. These actors/artists-in-trouble might not be quite as horny as 2 Live Crew, but, depending on their troubles, could be just as likely to get arrested. 1308 Fourth Street S.E., Minneapolis; 612-604-0222; www.varsitytheater.org