The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Zoom In: Christian Nielsen

    Christian Nielsen’s paintings exist in the optic pleasure zone between literal and abstract expression. Their imperfectly repeating patterns and three-dimensional colors are familiar, yet alien. In intimate, 12 x 12 inch LP size works to 40 x 40 inch portrait-size paintings, Nielsen achieves near-photographic detail from the tightly controlled squeegees he uses to lay down the paint.

    Oil thinner and thickener help create peaks and valleys on super-flat Masonite or canvas stretched over board. The eyes undulate and pulse along translucent edges and scalloped shadows, Nielsen’s color choices recall the fantastic, nostalgic, and exotic: radioactive lemon-orange Forbidden Planet dust; Dead Sea foam, and Chinese pomegranate liqueur. The three-dimensional effect is quasi-sculptural.

    In Nielsen’s work, it appears as though the painting process itself has been captured without the hand of the maker. The mind does a double take at this (seemingly) immaculately conceived object, all the while trying to assign a name to what it thinks it sees in Nielsen’s forms. This work pushes us to make meaning of the forms we see, until language itself fails us. The literal and the conceptual are almost interchangeable, but the image refuses to settle neatly in either category. On one level we inevitably demand and create language to describe what we’re seeing, but on another, the experience of seeing Nielsen’s paintings is a wordless, purely perceptual one.


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

  • Where We Live

    I’ve been living in the same city for a long time. Maybe that’s why I crave the unusual. I abhor cookie-cutter architecture, which is just as prevalent in urban areas as in cul-de-sac suburbia. How many three-story brick condos with railed terraces have you seen constructed in recent years?

    I want buildings that curve, use everyday materials in strange ways, use strange materials in everyday ways, inspire fear, or give me pause. I like to nestle next to Moos Tower on a sunny day, bike under the Guthrie’s blue-black cantilever at night, and duck into that new box buried behind the Walker Art Center that frames the winter sky.

    I also like the dangerous: decrepit structures with peeling paint and collapsed roofs. Walking across the cracked, aging pedestrian bridge at I-94 near Augsburg College-with cars buzzing on the highway below-makes my heart beat a little faster. Crossing the Lowry Avenue truss bridge is thrilling when you poke your head out the window to look at the Mississippi River’s waves through the steel openings of this 1955 landmark. (Let someone else drive.)

    In choosing pieces for this collection, I was drawn to art that took me away from the everyday: dances, architects, buildings, and photographs of lonely places that lifted my spirits, showed me hidden beauty, or poked my face in decrepitude.

    Originally appeared in issue 19.2 of access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.

    Pictured Above: Bigelow Chapel Interior – New Brighton, by Joan Soranno
    This is a delicate building by a rising star in architecture. At Bigelow Chapel, Soranno uses five wavy curves to create a cocoon-like atmosphere for worshippers. Soranno also designed the Barbara Barker Center for Dance at the University of Minnesota and the much-heralded University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska, and is now working on the B’nai Israel synagogue in Rochester, Minnesota.

    Little Jack’s (from the Cream City series), Colin Kopp
    I love this Colin Kopp photo. It’s vaguely reminiscent of Donnie Brasco, that Johnny Depp-Al Pacino film where the undercover FBI agent and the gangster bond. And it takes me directly to an imperfect part of Minneapolis that I love: Northeast. Moss clings to the parking barrier like lost hope. The slightly opened hood of the car suggests abandonment. The white washed wall of Little Jack’s covers graffiti and a glorious past.

    Railroad Car #1, Burlington, VT, 2005, by Robert Roscoe
    It would seem easy for a preservationist to fetishize cupolas and other architectural details from decades past. Instead, Roscoe focuses on beauty in unexpected, even dilapidated, places.

    House/Home by Maggie Bergeron
    House/Home is that rare dance that works as both a story and as a metaphor. Five dancers wearing greens and browns snuggle, curl, and finally break away from their four tiny on-stage homes. Throughout the work, they return to their homes, attempt repairs, crush them and start fresh, share them with a lover/friend, push away the lover/friend, and begin again. The dance, a new work by up-and-coming choreographer Maggie Bergeron, shows our connection and disaffection with our surroundings (and our lives), expressed by a continual need to remake, remodel, and reuse. Performed in the Soranno-designed dance center at the U of M.

  • A Band of Outsiders

    At a pipe ceremony, I once teased an elder about his unorthodox way of conducting invocations. The joke (I always find myself needing to explain my humor) was that I was undermining his authority at all. I don’t even have a pipe, let alone any kind of expertise about this ceremony.

    He picked up on my musings and teased back, "Who are you, the culture cop?" What seemed like a funny comment at the moment led me to think: is that what we are doing these days? I want "culture" to be something we contemplate, something magically just out of our grasp and beyond anyone’s full ownership – not something we police.

    When one is in the moment – creating artwork or appreciating someone else’s – I find it hard to believe that one is self-consciously considering a specific cultural tradition. Did the Elder’s specific "cultural activity" start when he lit up his pipe, or was he aware of it while driving to the ceremony, or when he fed the parking meter? When I paint a painting I don’t imagine myself offering it up to the thundering machine of culture. I can choke down "culture" as a sort of catch-all term for large, systemic human activity – if it is equitably applied to everyone. But attaching the adjective "ethnic" goes too far. Who considers themselves "ethnic"?

    "Ethnic" art is suggestive of novelty, and the term carries the hint of an outsider mimicking a European tradition. It is a word with a locus, a position, a perspective. Whose art isn’t "ethnic"? Jackson Pollack’s? Belonging to the language of the dominant group, words like "cultural" and "ethnic" assume the attitude of the prevailing majority.

    Cultural concepts are handed to us embedded with agendas that don’t properly serve us. Once we realize the fallacy of glib labels, we can become increasingly sensitive about the terms we use; we can define them for ourselves and for our audiences and acknowledge their flaws a priori.

    The following collection ranges from work by those who romantically embrace their "nativeness" to those who make art without many obligations to their native identity. That said, the impetus for curating a collection of artwork solely around the ancestries of the artists is inherently problematic. I don’t promote an artist’s work because their ancestry is an interest-generating novelty to others. I also don’t want to perpetuate the idea that art created under a vast, imaginary pan-category, such as "Native American," can articulate a single aesthetic inclusive of all tribes.

    All I ask of any viewer is that you question your own assumptions – not that you fully accept mine.

    Originally appeared in issue 22.2 of access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.

    Pictured above: Mashkode Pijiki by Arion Poitra
    Arion Poitra muscles animal forms out of raw materials as if, between the iron pours, welding, sanding, and burnishing, Poitra has wrestled the animals himself. In Mashkode Pijiki (Ojibwe for "buffalo") almost every sculptural decision is symbolic, from the way the metal oxidizes over time to the tight cage sculpted around the curves of the bison’s body, representing the confinement of this once free-to-roam animal. This piece was done in collaboration with artist David Swenson.

    The Renegade by Jim Denomie
    Jim Denomie is an image marksman, adept at making work that is profoundly engaging. In his painting the Renegade (part of his Renegade Series) Denomie renders mesas and plateaus as reservations that empty onto the abyss of stolen land. An angry cavalry flanks the renegades on flying horses.

    Buffalo by William Ambrose, oil pastel on paper, 2006
    William Ambrose’s sexy, gestural work combines a pop art sensibility with hard lines and the use of words to supplant other symbolic forms. Ambrose seems to be drawn to urban culture and native signifiers in a cool, distant way—not invested fully in either but partaking in both.

    Untitled portrait by Frank Big Bear, 13.75” x 9.75,”
    prisma color pencil on paper, 2000
    Frank Big Bear’s portraits sink into fractured environments that cut into his figurations. Some of his subjects are shrieking and baring gnarled teeth, others sit thoughtfully. Like waking from a dream and piecing the memory of it together in a linear, sequential order, things overlap, intersecting in many places at the same time. Yet, unlike a dream’s recall, marred by lost details, Big Bear’s work explodes into color and allows the viewer time to peer into his dream’s image.

    Odalisque by Lori Greene
    Lori Greene has found a way of intersecting her many identities through mosaic sculptural forms. In Odalisque, Greene pairs a red reclining nude figure with Ophelia-like flowers. An “odalisque” is a female virgin slave who aspires to become a harem concubine or even a wife. Many of her adorned objects hint at the feminine body, children, and the sacred, coupling the celebratory quality of decoration with the freight of role and responsibility.

  • The House that Art Built: New London's ARThouse

    A couple of blocks off Main Street, an eager crowd waits in front of a
    turn-of-the-century farmhouse. As the clock approaches the top of the
    hour more visitors steadily appear, gathering near the door of the
    residence. Soon the door is opened and the crowd enters, warmly greeted
    by their hosts. Within the space the visitors discover videos,
    paintings of television characters, floating lights, and colorful
    sculptures throughout the rooms, spilling onto the front lawn and
    hovering above the house. Throughout the coming hours, more guests
    arrive to view the work, meet the artists, and converse with their
    neighbors by the warm campfire.

    New London, Minnesota is a small
    town two hours west of the Twin Cities, known more for its ski team and
    lake resorts than its contemporary art scene. Andrew Nordin and Lisa
    Bergh first conceived of ARThouse shortly after relocating to New
    London in the fall of 2005. A few evenings each year, Andrew and Lisa
    convert the first floor of their home and front yard into an exhibition
    venue. Both are working studio artists with extensive gallery and
    museum experience, and they were anxious to realize their dreams of
    starting an exhibition space of their own. After ruling out more
    traditional gallery formats due to cost or other practical concerns,
    the couple decided to begin by using their own home. ARThouse is the
    result: an ephemeral art gallery, a temporary exhibition space offering
    one-night art events.

    Phantom galleries are gaining popularity
    with many artists and curators looking for alternative venues and
    exhibition formats (e.g. Will Work for Food, Placement Gallery, The
    Occasional Art Gallery). With the financial and institutional
    structures of traditional galleries and museums removed, phantom spaces
    like ARThouse have the freedom to foster an environment of
    experimentation, performance, and inclusiveness.

    ARThouse openings
    are events both eagerly anticipated and stumbled upon. Neighbors may
    notice the spectacle of a lighted chandelier floating above the
    treetops or a white glowing snowmobile on the front lawn, and then find
    themselves stopping by, unconsciously drawn towards the activity for a
    closer inspection. However, many of the visitors are active members of
    a statewide art community, traveling from the Twin Cites, St. Cloud,
    and beyond to search for interesting work, regardless of its location.
    Perhaps because of this diverse audience, ARThouse openings percolate
    with energy, offering a welcome respite from the stale sameness of the
    kind of work on display in many established, more traditional
    institutions.

    "The idea to do this really germinated from our belief
    that viewing artwork, contemplating art, is, and should be, an activity
    for people not just in metro areas, but rural areas as well," explained
    Andrew. For Andrew and Lisa, the residential phantom format, the
    merging of art opening and a neighborhood block party, was a perfect
    strategy to introduce contemporary art to their local community.
    "ARThouse events are based on the idea of the open house," said Lisa,
    "a common social gathering in small towns and rural communities.
    However, instead of celebrating a birth, graduation, or anniversary, we
    create an art happening. The setting is intended to be laid back,
    friendly, and far less formal than a traditional gallery or museum
    reception. You can come for the art or just come to visit and catch up
    with your neighbor."

    Using creative and inexpensive methods,
    Andrew and Lisa effectively market the ARThouse events through sites
    like Flickr and mnartists.org, free arts calendars, email lists, and
    word of mouth. Flickr is particularly effective, allowing ARThouse to
    post images of past events and to communicate with a broader network of
    similar ephemeral spaces and alternative galleries. However, the most
    interesting marketing tool Andrew and Lisa have devised gives something
    back to their audience. For each event, the exhibiting artist is asked
    to create an edition of fifteen small pieces. The pieces are then given
    away as door prizes to the first fifteen people who arrive at the
    ARThouse opening. The word is out and at the last opening the door
    prizes lasted for only a few minutes.

    It’s time for full disclosure
    of my personal connection to ARThouse. I grew up in the New London area
    and most of my relatives still live there; I also exhibited my work at
    ARThouse this past October. Actually, my wife can attest to my anxiety
    prior to the event. It felt as if I were back in high school again. My
    worries evaporated shortly after the opening began and my experience
    demonstrates just what distinguishes an ARThouse show from those of its
    larger counterparts. A few local students, neighbors, and a couple of
    my brothers lined up at the door near opening time, and all left a
    while later clutching a small painting as their door prize. Throughout
    the evening, people I knew, people I should have known, and complete
    strangers asked intriguing, challenging questions, and studied the
    work. It was an intimately engaged environment unlike any exhibition
    I’d been part of before.

    Later in the evening, I talked to
    Minneapolis artist and New London native Jonathan Gomez Whitney, who
    confirmed that my homecoming anxiety was not unique. Whitney’s stunning
    installation at ARThouse last summer floated a chandelier above the
    house, casting wonderful golden rays on the front yard.

    This
    year’s ARThouse season is an intriguing mix of regional and local
    artists; you can see what I’m talking about for yourself. In April,
    Chicago artist Ashley E. Towne presented elegant and formal mixed media
    works on paper. She will be followed in July by St. Cloud-based
    multimedia artist Bill Gorcica. They’ll close out the year with a
    collaborative installation by Duluth artists Kristina Estell and David
    Bowen in October. Along with this impressive line-up of artists in
    2008, Andrew and Lisa hope to build upon the success of the first year,
    expanding their offerings to include more educational programs related
    to the exhibitions. The response from the community to the ARThouse has
    been overwhelmingly positive thus far.

    Lisa observes, "Andrew and
    I have been pleasantly surprised at the sincere gratitude people extend
    to us for bringing such dynamic art and artists to the community. The
    most common feedback we receive is ‘Thank you. This is so great for our
    community.’ As an artist, I find that response incredibly meaningful.
    It tells me that my community appreciates new experiences in the visual
    arts and understands the power of art to positively impact communities.
    The city of New London is working hard to increase tourism and create
    new opportunities for artists, performers and audiences. We are proud
    to be part of that process."

    Concept Drawing for ARThouse Croquet Project by Bill Gorcica, the ARThouse featured artist for July, 2008.

    Prelude to a Claptrap (Prussian Field) by Andrew Nordin, oil on panel, 61" x 97"

    Bait by Lisa Bergh, mixed media on paper, 25" x 41"

  • Cherry on a Spoon

    What she didn’t understand, Miriam thought, what she really didn’t understand was this stupid cherry on a spoon. The huge sculpture sat there in its lake, its bright red cherry poised happily on the grey spoon-bowl’s ridge, a symbol of Minneapolis. What about it excited people? What, exactly, was the point? She sat on the grass by the pond, head tilted upward, mulling it.

    Miriam was a museum studies major, although she had started college doing studio art. During that long first year, she spent more time in the art supply store than actually making art. She loved to touch the taught canvases and read the names of all the colors of paints. Ochre seemed to promise sex, cerulean undiscovered planets-every object was expectant, waiting. But when she set up an easel in her room or in class, the brush made primitive, directionless marks, unresponsive to her oblique desire to paint something. In the hours just before an assignment was due, she would chew on the dead ends of her long brown hair or the handles of her wooden brushes. Finally, she understood why someone might throw a bucket of paint over herself and then run hard into a wall one hundred times.

    But self-abuse wasn’t art.

    When she expressed that opinion in her art history seminar-having by then cut her hair into a blunt bob and changed her major-the professor shook his head. “What, then, is art, Miriam?” Allowing a short pause, he then pressed the forward button on the rickety slide machine with greater than usual verve, as if having made his point.

    If self abuse was art, Miriam had thought, freshman year of college had been a post-modernist masterpiece of cheap keg beer and dubious sexuality, encapsulated in the nickname that still made some of her old friends laugh. Before learning about “Black-out Sniper,” Miriam had never thought about her liaisons buffered by alcohol and darkness as being anything but normal-at least normal within the realm of freshman year. At parties everyone was drunk and looking, scanning dimly lit, crowded rooms with hopeful and later glazed eyes for another pair of eyes with the same idea. Every tasteless poster on her guy friends’ walls validated that practice. Beer Goggles, one read, getting ugly people laid for fifty years! She was under no illusions about her appearance, and was in fact more critical of herself than anyone else.

    She reminded herself of a painting by Goya; her face pale, eyes big, chin receding just a little, like those inbreed Spanish aristocrats. Arrested by her face, people were often surprised by the solid, almost voluptuous frame that contrasted sharply with the fragile tint of purple under her eyes.

    The cartoon man on the poster gave her the thumbs up and smiled, holding his frothing pint out in a gesture of toast. Go for it, he seemed to say. So how could she be doing the wrong thing when, drunk at a party, if she met someone she liked, she stuck with him until the party was dying down, and, if he was willing, took him back to her dorm room? It was true, the guys she picked up usually turned out to be way more intoxicated than her, having proven their manliness by doing beer bongs and 40’s, and they rarely remembered her the next day. But that suited Miriam just fine-they had both gotten what they wanted, after all, and it wasn’t like anyone was watching.

    Or that was what she had thought. As she was leaving a party one Saturday night, a drunk friend grabbed her elbow and whispered, “‘Black-out Sniper.’ Get it?” For a moment, she didn’t get it. She looked around her, trying to figure out what her friend was talking about. The she turned to look at the boy she was with-his drunkenness was suddenly far more apparent. Miriam felt nauseous as the heat of embarrassment mixed with the alcohol in her stomach. She left the boy standing by the door and fled to her empty dorm room, her eyes burning and itchy from tears she wasn’t yet shedding. In the silence of that night, as the alcohol wore off, Miriam’s emotions moved from shock and embarrassment to shame to anger and indignation, then back to shame that felt like anger until the emotions couldn’t be distinguished. That she should have to feel this shame was more than a betrayal of privacy. It was a betrayal of the mantra, the promise, that had helped her, helped them all, get through high school. The promise that when they got to college, the holding back, the fear of discovery, the claustrophobic family dinner table at which nothing could really be hidden, would be gone. No one would be watching them anymore.

    But people were still watching.

    Exhausted and still awake as the sun came into her dorm room window, Miriam decided that she was done. Done with college boys who couldn’t handle a woman taking what she wanted without becoming a needy mess afterwards; done with girls who called you a whore if you tried. After that party, Miriam stopped hooking up with guys and stopped drinking anything except for good wine. After all, she reasoned, she couldn’t be in the art community without learning to like good wine and despise the swill served at openings.

    Miriam had left freshman year and the Black-out Sniper behind her, but she was still of the opinion that if you waited for a man to make the move, you would end up watching hundreds of fucking piano concerts and contracting cancer from second hand smoke in shady music venues. That was why she had sat down on Jason’s piano bench, and why she had held his hand in the light rail, and why she had finally suggested that they move from the couch to the bed.

    Jason. He was probably still sitting in the coffee shop with a stupid look on his face, his forgetful fingers clutching his coffee mug.

    Her eyes filled with angry tears and she was back in the sculpture garden.

  • The Neglected Breast

    He
    couldn’t help glancing at her legs. It wasn’t just that they
    were long and slender and perfectly tapered, or that she had swung one
    over the other and now tapped the air with a sling-back stiletto, or
    that they were smooth and tanned and flawless, but that they were bare.
    Like so many young professional women down here, she did not wear stockings
    and for a man of his age and tradition, he found that slightly crass
    and sexy as all get-out.

    She
    had dark eyes and olive skin and over-the-shoulder black hair — too long,
    he felt, for a marriage counselor, although she usually had it in some
    kind of bun or twist or something that held it up. Today, she
    was wearing a pencil skirt, navy blue, a white silk blouse, and
    black-rimmed glasses. He fancied her tossing those glasses on
    to her desk and in one fluid motion, reaching back and releasing that
    bounty of hair. But hell, he thought, even if she had, what would
    I     do about it?

    "Mr.
    Raffort? Mr. Raffort, do you agree with what Mrs. Raffort just
    said?"

    "Art,"
    Mrs. Raffort said. "Doctor LaMetti is speaking to you.
    Arthur!" she jabbed him.

    "What?!"

    "Mrs.
    Raffort says your affection for her has waned."

    "Aw,
    Jesus. Do we have to talk about everything?"

    "I’m
    trying to help you understand each other, Mr. Raffort. I’m not
    asking these questions out of idle curiosity."

    "Right.
    How old are you, anyway?"

    "I
    don’t see the relevance of that."

    "What
    difference does it make, Art?"

    "I
    want to know. For the last month, we’ve been answering every
    little thing she’s asked about us. Can’t I ask one question
    of her?"

    "I’m
    thirty-seven."

    "See?
    I told you. She’s not even Mimi’s age. I’m not going
    to sit here and discuss our love life with a total stranger, especially
    one who’s not even as old as our youngest child."

    "Mr.
    Raffort," she said, taking a breath. "Is it true what Mrs.
    Raffort said about your affections waning?"

    "None
    of your business."

    "It
    is, Doctor. He hardly ever makes love to me anymore, and when he
    does, he never touches me. Not like he used to at least."

    "What
    are you talking about? Of course I touch you when we’re having
    s– Aw, geez, can’t we just get out of here?"

    "Mrs.
    Raffort, would you like to tell Mr. Raffort what you mean by ‘not
    touching you like he used to’?"

    "No,
    she wouldn’t."

    "Well,
    for one thing, he never touches my left breast."

    "My
    God, Helen."

    "Well
    you don’t!"

    "Do
    you have anything you’d like to say to that, Mr. Raffort?"

    "Yes.
    ‘Goodbye.’"

    "Please,
    sir. Sit down. Go ahead, Mrs. Raffort."

    "Well,
    that’s it, really. He touches the right one, but never the left
    one. It’s as though he’s intentionally neglecting it."

    "Oh,
    for Christsake."

    "Ever
    since I had that lump removed."

    "I
    didn’t want to disturb the sutures."

    "They
    were taken out over a year ago, Art."

    He
    glared at his wife, his face reddening.

    "I’ll
    be in the car," he said, and against their pleas, he walked out.

    The
    heat rose visibly from the blacktop as he crossed the parking lot, never
    mind that it was the dead of winter. This was Naples, Florida
    and if it wanted to be 85 degrees with 90 percent humidity in mid-February,
    then by God, that’s what it would be. He opened the car door
    to a plume of hot air, reached inside for his cell phone and saw that
    he had a message. It was the call he had dreaded, or at least
    it had been before he’d had these few days to try on the possibility.
    He pressed ‘call-back’ with an air of acceptance.

    "I’m
    sorry, Art."

    "You’re
    sure."

    "Yes.
    You’re free to get a second opinion, but–"

    "No,
    I figured as much. Well, shit."

    "We
    need to get you in for surgery right away. It’s just on the
    edge of the pancreas, so there’s a chance–"

    "No,
    I’m not having any surgery. No chemo either."

    "But–"

    "I’ve
    already thought this through. Look, my wife’s coming.
    I’ll call you later. Not a word of this to anyone, you understand?"
    and he flipped the phone shut.

    "Well,
    that was the rudest display of behavior you’ve ever exhibited,"
    she said as she approached.

    "I’m
    sorry, I just can’t– Why are we doing this anyway? All these
    years, we’ve been able to solve our own problems and now you want
    to share our most intimate moments with some kid who’s not even–"

    "She’s
    not a kid; she’s a woman. And she’s trying to help us."

    "She’s
    a kid. She says like all the time and sooo.
    ‘I’m like sooo proud to be like
    working with you.’"

    "She
    does not. She never talks that way, and even if she did, so what?
    Every generation has its idioms. God knows ours did."

    "I
    feel as though I’m talking to the grandkids, to Billy. When
    I disagree, I half expect her to say, ‘So sue me.’"

    "Quit
    being ridiculous. Besides, none of this excuses your rudeness."

    "I
    said, ‘I’m sorry,’ OK? Let’s just go home."

    "I
    have to pick up my medication."

    "All
    right. I’ll browse the liquor store."

    "We
    have enough booze."

    "I
    said, ‘browse.’"

  • Enter the World of Brian Andreas and the Story People

    Once upon a time there was a young girl who wandered in search of a very specific story. She looked in bookstores and couldn’t find it. She walked through library stacks but never found it. Finally, she went to the storyteller himself. He was sitting in a park, waiting for her. He seemed eager to help. But when she asked, he said he had never heard such a story.

    "But you wrote it!" said the girl. "It had a grandfather and a granddaughter who were fishing on a lake in a blue boat."

    "That doesn’t sound like any of the stories I’ve ever written," the storyteller said.

    So the storyteller ruffled through a stack of his hundreds of stories. As he flipped through, pictures of pink and orange and blue and red people streamed by. Some looked like monsters. Others grimaced like mad clowns. But they all — every one of them — looked like they were having a fine time indeed.

    "Stop! That’s it!" the girl yelled. "That’s the one."

    It was her story all right. But there was no grandfather, no granddaughter. There was no lake, no fishing, and no blue boat. The storyteller and the girl laughed at the strangeness of it — but really, these things aren’t all that uncommon, are they?

    At least that’s how the storyteller tells it. Brian Andreas remembers this scene occurring one summer at an arts festival in Baltimore over a decade ago, but many people who visit the workshop of the storyteller and artist in Decorah, Iowa have this same kind of encounter. They are fans looking for a specific story that has touched them. But they get their facts wrong. The details are all off. What they have done is imprint their own lives on his stories.

    In 1993, Andreas created a collaborative art company in Decorah, Iowa to produce a line of contemporary craft products based on these highly adaptable stories. He called it the Story People. The heart of his business remains the stories themselves, which have been published in six slim, paperback volumes, but the Story People produces a multi-million-dollar line of art products that includes furniture, sculpture, and prints populated by strange and otherworldly creatures that are rearing their heads at almost two dozen galleries across Minnesota.

    Stories are everywhere. Increasingly, they flood consumer culture in the form of advertisements presented in narrative form. Corporations and organizations are tapping into the power of story to transform lives, or at least to embed themselves in your mind. And though he knows he has as much to gain as anyone else from the entrepreneurial use of story, Brian Andreas finds something wrong with the way corporations harness the elements of story to sell us more stuff.

    "It’s like the sorcerer’s apprentice," Andreas said. "They don’t really know what they are playing with."

    But that is exactly what Andreas has done. He sells these stories in the form of prints, or stamped on sculptures made of recycled barn wood, to a growing base of collectors of American craft art, and to a cult-like following of fans who appreciate his view of life as a string of funny and odd moments. Others gravitate to the illustrations, which seem not a rendering of the stories, but an extension of them.

    "Brian has this way of writing that connects to the soul of people," said Matthew Johnson, an artist and friend of Andreas who has worked in the Story People sculpture studio for 14 years. "His stories are open enough to touch anyone who reads them."

    At its basest, what Brian Andreas does is the same feat of alchemical wordsmithing that card companies have been trying to accomplish for decades. He taps into what ties us to each other in fewer words than it takes to introduce two friends. But the product that emerges from that connection is infinitely less cheesy.

    Technically speaking, what Andreas writes are not stories, at least not in the classical sense. They rarely feature conflicts — unless you consider trying to get an old man off a couch major drama. At roughly 30 words or less, they are too short to be a short story, or even flash fiction or nanofiction. They present anecdotes from Andreas’s life cast in the warm glow of his writing voice, which is wise and conversational, like an old friend passing time on a front porch swing. If they are anything to be pinned down, they are prose poems — slightly irreverent, deceptively wise, and impish at their core.

  • Franco-American Relations, Indeed

    A smattering of bonjours and soft smiles accompanied the light, nervous energy that breezed through the Alliance Française this particular Monday morning. Huge croissants and berries lay untouched on the table as hosts and hostesses pinned tricolored nametags to their jackets and blouses. A few people wandered absently around the meeting room, grazing past the old upright piano against one brick wall, peering at French books aligned on bookshelves against each other, or craning their necks to inspect the ragged charm of the weathered cracks near the ceiling. "We are still waiting for our guest of honor," a tall woman with dark wavy hair whispered. Her nametag revealed her to be Peggy Linrud, the Alliance board president.

    After another ten minutes of waiting, in which nobody dared to venture an inch toward the food, the anticipated guest of honor walked down the cramped hallway and into the room. The small group of people moved smoothly toward his tall frame, a flutter of grays and blacks and browns settling around him like a flock of birds. It seemed quite an understated welcome for the Ambassador of France: the smallness of the room, the lack of ostentatiousness, the presence of a mere two press figures. But perhaps that is what made it so very-well-French?

    From this perspective, the Alliance Française seemed to be the natural stop for Monsieur Vimont. Although it is simply a small space tucked into the Warehouse District next to Theatre de la Jeune Lune, it is perhaps a dominant hub for the French community of Minneapolis. Native and nonnative speakers gather for language classes and cultural events. A few of the Alliance’s French instructors were among those present at the intimate breakfast.

    Monsieur Pierre Vimont has been traveling around the country since President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed him to the Ambassadorship last August. Refusing to stay cloistered in Washington, DC, he has been speaking at university and public functions, generally about Franco-American relations. "I try to get a little bit away from Washington…to get a complete picture of the country," Vimont smiled warmly, craning his neck and leaning inward, barely heard above the buzzing conversation around him. "I travel to visit the country, but also the French community, wherever it is. I meet the people. I also meet with the business community." He states that France’s relationship with the United States is "improving" and that he is working to enhance it—especially the interaction of our economic policies.

    Mayor R.T. Rybak    , who escorted the Ambassador to the Alliance, chimed in more loudly in his agreement. "Minnesota has always had a strong connection to France," he declared. "French explorers were the first ones to come to Minnesota. Culturally, we have Theatre de la Jeune Lune." He gestured in a vaguely southward direction. "I like to think that Washington Avenue could be the Champs d’Elysées of Minneapolis."

    The mayor’s and ambassador’s ensuing conversation, punctuated by the obligatory PR photos, was genial and optimistic, marked by comments about public transportation and sustainable initiatives, including the recent Northwest-Delta merger (NWA currently offers non-stop flights from the Twin Cities to Paris). Vimont nodded and smiled, his unflinching posture only broken by occasionally tapping the table with the tips of his fingernails—whether a nervous gesture or just plain habit, it was difficult to tell. Consul-general Alain Frécon beamed nearby, accepting congratulations for the French Legion of Honor he was about to receive that afternoon (for "exemplary service," Vimont explained). The other attendees gradually broke off, their glow of meeting a national figure a bit dimmed by now. They ventured toward the croissants.

    One of the older women defied the otherwise muted garb of the bustle, smiling broadly through her bright, shimmery blue and fuschia makeup. She turned out to be Marie-Rose Adams, a language teacher at the Alliance. Sweeping two younger instructors to her, one in each arm, she declared, "She is a teacher. She is a teacher… and I am the grandma of them all." As they laughed and squirmed slightly, she wryly announced, "I started the school, if you wanted to know."

    Adams proceeded to educate me about the history of the Alliance, then moved on to French food; with my croissant in hand, I made a faux pas by reaching for the butter and the marmalade. "Oh, non, non, that is not done in Paris," Adams yelped. She explained how much butter there already is in a true croissant. "But you Americans always have to have your butter!" Later on, I truthfully admitted to myself this might have been the most notable thing I learned about Franco-American relations that morning.

    After lunch, I walked into my supervisor’s office at my day occupation, who knew where I had been earlier that day. "Hey, I think I saw your ambassador on the street," he said.

    "You did?" I was confused and mildly impressed. "How do you know what he looks like?"

    My boss shrugged matter-of-factly. "He looked French."

    Ah, Franco-American relations, indeed.

  • The Films of Carlos Reygadas

    The
    screen is black. A mass of ambient sounds emerges to pull the viewer
    into an immediate state of hypnosis. Crickets and a plethora of other
    insects are making their voices heard. Cattle and roosters join in,
    birds chirping, all while the camera slowly spins around with the grace
    of a Hitchcock film. At first a bit disorientating, soon it’s evident
    we’re looking at the nighttime sky onscreen, clouds and stars all
    together to form a perfect symbiosis with the soundtrack. The camera
    settles, and some light appears on the horizon. As the sun rises, two
    trees prominently frame the scene. The camera pulls in slowly to take
    in an amazing image of a rural Mexican sunrise over a vast field of
    farmland — the color palate a hybrid of Van Gogh and Monet landscapes
    in one single, real-time, breathtaking moving image. It is now morning, and the film begins.

    Award-winning
    writer/director Carlos Reygadas’s latest film, Silent Light (Stellet
    Licht)    , gushes with pastoral beauty from its memorable opening shot.
    No cold, distant, computer-generated trickery on display here, simply
    the natural world photographed impeccably. The film had its Minnesota
    premiere screening, followed by a Q & A with Reygadas, Friday, April
    25, as part of Cinemateca: Contemporary Film
    from Latin America     at the Walker Art Center.

    Reygadas,
    Mexico City-born filmmaker, began his university career in Brussels,
    studying and practicing law. During his time in Brussels, he would often
    go to the Museum of cinema to see as many as three films in one day. Heavily
    influenced by the works of Tarkovsky, Rossellini, Bresson, Dreyer, Ozu,
    and Kurosawa, he eventually decided he had to go to film school to be
    surrounded by the tools he needed to become a filmmaker. Pushed by a friend
    to make short films, and given a super-8 camera, Reygadas learned how
    to use the tools of cinema by "doing." He immediately knew what he wanted
    to shoot and was full of ideas.

    From
    1998 to 1999, Reygadas made four short films, learning how to draw storyboards,
    produce, write, direct, shoot, and work with actors. He honed
    his style during his early works: Adult (Adulte – ’98), Prisoners
    (Prisonniers – ’99), Birds (Oiseaux – ’99), and
    Super Human     (Maxhumain – ’99).

    Super
    Human    , a six minute, 20 second short, deals with suicide (a popular subject in his features) and Reygadas’s own questions regarding
    God. It opens with a narration. The main character remembers a conversation
    he had with his mother: If you commit suicide should you go to heaven?
    (Reygadas has said in interviews he feels it’s a great human capacity
    to end our lives if we want.) His mother responds by telling him that what
    God gives us, only He can take back.

    —Yes, but if God were
    perfect he would not test us.
    —Life is a
    gift not a test.

    I admired my
    mother, but wasn’t satisfied with these explanations.

    The rest of
    the short plays out a scene at a beach, and shows a man tying himself
    down to be taken by the tide as a boy and his mother discuss an old
    story she used to tell him—leading to more frustration for the
    main character. Throw in an odd sexual encounter with the mother and
    the climactic death of the man on the beach, and you have the beginnings
    of a filmmaking talent whose career knows no bounds.

    Japan
    (Japón)    , released in 2002 and screened at the Walker in 2003, won
    the Golden Camera Special Distinction at the Cannes Film Festival. The
    film, shot in grainy 16 mm, highlights many of Reygadas’s strengths:
    shooting landscapes — it is shot in cinemascope (he got the idea from
    Gaspar Noe’s I Stand Alone, the first film Reygadas saw shot
    with 16 mm in scope) with an anamorphic lens, squeezing the image and
    showing off the beautiful Mexican countryside and rolling mountains;
    his insistence to work only with non-actors and his ability to pull
    natural, realistic performances from them; big, biblical themes that
    ruminate in nearly every scene, but are culled from the minutia of everyday
    people living fairly simple lives; long takes that pull the viewer into
    the reality of the characters; little use of score, mainly using ambient
    sounds or diegetic music for the soundtrack; graphic sexual encounters
    featuring actors not typically seen in films having sex (i.e. old, unattractive,
    and fat people); focus on characters over story, and characters full
    of contradictions. All of his films feature extremely memorable opening
    and closing shots that resonate in the mind of the viewer and are inescapable
    from memory.

    In
    Japan     and his other two features, its obvious Reygadas has a fondness
    for his actors, and their characters in the film. But he also has deep
    respect for the audience, and isn’t the least bit pretentious. He
    uses his films to speak truths about the human condition and reveal
    his philosophy on life, but never speaks down to the audience, instead
    choosing to show the action and let the viewers come away with their
    own interpretation.

    Another
    common theme is his films’ enigmatic titles. Reygadas hates titles,
    but realizes they’re a necessary evil. He wanted to call Japan
    Untitled, like some of his favorite works of art, but couldn’t bring himself to do it because he thought
    it would be "pretentious and horrible." He finished the film, concluding that
    it was about light coming after dark and the cycles in life, like the
    sun rising again. Three countries came to mind: Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.
    Ultimately, he thought Japan had the most significance to rising sun
    in the minds of an audience, so he went with that.

    Japan
    follows a character known only as "the man" (played by Alejandro Ferretis,
    whose untimely death at age 59, in 2004, remains shrouded in mystery),
    a painter from the city looking to end his own life. He speaks bluntly.
    When asked in the opening why he wants a ride to a mountain he responds:
    "To commit suicide." When he meets a religious old woman named Ascen
    (Magdalena Flores) and asks to stay at her farmstead, a loving bond
    quickly forms. We never understand fully why the man wants to kill himself.
    After several unsuccessful attempts at suicide (the last one featuring
    a wonderful 360 degree helicopter shot on the peak of a mountain), the
    man finds solace in helping Ascen (her name short for Ascension, which
    she says is short for Christ ascending to heaven without any help) fend
    off family members who want to tear down her barn wall and transport
    it elsewhere.

  • Meet Local Filmmaker Jon Springer

    Local
    filmmaker Jon Springer’s new film The Hagstone Demon will be
    shown as a free sneak preview Thursday, May 8, at the Riverview Theater.
    The film stars Mark Borchardt, the subject of the Sundance award-winning
    documentary American Movie, which made him a cult celebrity of
    the indie film set.

    This
    locally produced film — presented by Flat Earth Brewery, Copycats,
    Cine-o-matic, and the MN Film & TV Board — will screen at the Minneapolis
    theater, located at 3800 42nd Ave S. Cast, crew, and guests
    are invited to an informal reception in the lobby beginning at 6 p.m.
    General admission begins at 7 p.m. Mr. Borchardt will attend the screening.

    Jon
    Springer is an award-winning horror writer/director with regional and
    national acclaim, and is regarded as an established cult filmmaker.
    Ain’t it Cool News described Springer’s film Living Dead Girl
    as a "hilarious silent-movie spoof…a grotesque, full-color, Romero-style
    gore fest," and in 2003, Film Threat called him "a filmmaker who
    sees nothing as taboo and whose imagination is something to behold."
    City Pages has described Springer as "the state’s most audacious narrative
    filmmaker." Springer was recently awarded the 2007 McKnight Filmmaker
    Fellowship.

    An
    after party will take place at the new Nick and Eddie Restaurant and
    Bar     (1612 Harmon Place, Mpls 55403.) JUST ANNOUNCED: It has been confirmed
    that Grant Hart of the legendary post-punk band Hüsker Dü will be
    performing live at the after party.

    The
    following is an interview I had with Springer regarding the film:

    The Rake: What is the
    film about?

    Jon Springer:
    I guess you could say "The Hagstone Demon" is about a person who
    discovers his own free will. This character, Douglas, is confronted
    by his past and literally attacked by it. It seems to me that anyone
    confronted with a situation, especially a traumatic or even a horrific
    situation, are then faced with a set of choices on how to deal it. So
    here’s a guy who doesn’t think there’s a choice because he’s
    been so traumatized and so complicit himself. He thinks it all comes
    down to fate and that he has no power to change anything. But at the
    crucial moment he discovers that he does have that choice and that power
    and he acts on it. In the case of Douglas, he makes the discovery simply
    because someone else in his life gave a shit, and that person had the
    strength and the courage to show him the way.

    The Rake: How did you
    get the idea for the film?

    JS:
    The idea for the story came from two sources: my co-screenwriter Harrison
    Matthews said he began with the image of a man vacuuming a long hallway
    in an old apartment building. The story expanded from there. Harrison
    happens to be a caretaker of a Brownstone in Powderhorn Park, where
    most of the film was shot, and I really fought hard to get that location,
    because it was essential to the character of the film. But the point
    is that the character of Douglas was autobiographical from the very
    beginning for Harrison. My own interest in the story stemmed from reading
    the Joris-Karl Huysmans novel "La Bas", in which the author
    includes an infamously vivid description of a Black Mass that he attended
    while living in Paris, during the Occult Revival of the late 19th
    Century. I believe that this actual excerpt from "La Bas"
    was used in the obscenity trial of Oscar Wilde, who was a contemporary
    of Huysmans. Anyway, I had an intense interest in filming such a ritual,
    using Huysmans’ description as a starting point, and from my other
    research. But I should say that the location itself was an inspiration
    for the story. The inside of this thing is amazing, with cracked plaster
    and exposed pipes running everywhere, like the insides of an organism.
    So the idea was that this organism is situated at what might be called
    a confluence of negative spiritual energy that both feeds Douglas and
    slowly destroys him.

    The Rake: Whom did you
    work with on the film? How big was the crew and budget?

    Where did you get funding for
    the film?

    JS:
    The film was self-financed, as were all my other films. This is my eighth
    film and my second feature. I like to work with the same small group
    of people for my crew. I find that I can achieve about twice the visual
    detail of other films in this budget range by using a small, mobile
    crew. It’s like shooting with a MASH unit. We were doing company moves
    in less than 45 minutes. As far as cast, I worked with Mark Borchardt
    on my short Living Dead Girl back in ’04, and at some point
    I thought he might be a good choice for Douglas, although that was not
    the original intention. I remember seeing Nadine Gross in a few local
    films in which she was horribly directed and under-utilized; I saw the
    potential she had and I asked her to play a multiple character role
    in my short Heterosapiens back in ‘02. She is an incredibly
    versatile and technically competent actor. In fact she is one of the
    best character actresses in town…probably the
    best. Diablo Cody was interested in the part of the succubus at one
    point back in ‘06 and we set up a meeting. Her agent found out and
    quickly nixed the idea, citing her many writing deadlines (in retrospect
    I can see that was probably true). Hagstone definitely would have been
    a different movie because Diablo is not an actress per se…but of course
    the film would probably already be in distribution.

    The Rake: Is this your
    first full-length feature? What other films have you made or been a
    crewmember of?

    JS: I don’t usually
    crew on other people’s films anymore. I started out back in the early
    90’s as a commercial and movie cinematographer. I am a DP at heart.
    And I actually relish the thought of going back to shooting movies for
    other directors – which would allow me to concentrate on the photography,
    which I love and not worry about anything else. But I don’t get much
    work as a DP anymore because I think in part most directors don’t
    want another director shooting their film. Although I must say I would
    never try to direct someone else’s film. The strength of a good DP
    is not only the technical competency and ability to make stunning pictures,
    but also the experience to get a director through a 22-day feature schedule,
    for example, or the ability to successfully mount the director’s vision.
    Many first time directors search for a DP and are wowed by a technically
    fantastic reel, but overlook these other aspects.

    The Rake: What films
    and filmmakers inspire and have influenced you?

    JS:
    That is always such an academic and boring discussion.

    The Rake: Who are some
    local filmmakers you like (either working with or their own work)?

    JS:
    I thought Todd Cobery’s trailer "The Dead Won’t Die" was refreshingly
    competent and showed his love for the zombie genre, which I share. I
    shot Jesse Roesler’s "Secret of the Symmetrical Gentlemen" which
    was the Minnesota entry in the National 48-hour Film Contest, and I
    shot Chris Gegax’s "Forgotten" which won the local Screenlabs
    Competition. I thought both of those films were well directed. I liked
    "Sweetland" and was impressed by Ali Selim personally the few time
    I’ve spoken with him. I also share an office with Matt Ehling and
    have great respect for his documentary work and for him personally.

    The Rake: What kind
    of equipment did you use (camera, sound, etc.)?

    JS:
    We shot the film in 720p/24 with the JVCHD110 camera. I used a set of
    Nikon film lenses I had laying around and a Redrock adapter. I did some
    very detailed macro photography in this film, and I also used a film
    grain/dust plug-in in my Avid that was excellently subtle and the results
    were amazingly convincing on an HD display. The company who authored
    the Blu-Ray at Cine-O-Matic in Minneapolis actually thought it was transferred
    Super-16mm – and these people look at different formats and codecs
    all day long. So I was able to fool the experts…and that was a good
    sign!

    The Rake: What is your
    hope with this film? Where do you see it reaching its biggest audience?
    Who is the audience for this film?

    JS:
    Well first and foremost this is a serious horror film. Secondly, it
    is a film that stars Mark Borchardt as the main character. And I’m
    sure both Mark and I would both consider it in such a manner. If you
    watch Mark’s film "Coven", you will see that it is a serious horror
    film, yet Mark’s humor shines through the seriousness of it. There
    is a reason why Roger Ebert loved "Coven" and invited it into his
    festival back in the 90’s. He liked it for the same reason he liked
    "Dawn of the Dead" – because the film took itself seriously, and
    because Mark is an interesting person to look at and listen to. People
    just like to watch Mark…especially in a good, creepy low-budget horror
    film. Hopefully they will like him in this film.

    The Rake: What kind
    of films do you want to make?

    JS:
    The kind that can support me and allow me to remain in the Midwest.