The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • All the News That Fits—and Then Some

    There’s an awful lot of talk about the news lately, but not, unfortunately, the sort of constructive conversation that promotes critical thinking and engages people with their neighborhoods, their country, or their world. No, what people are talking about is the media, or, more specifically, and more onerously, the business of media. The Star Tribune is losing readers, pages, and staff. (Did that venture-capital firm buy it just for its prime downtown real estate?) The Pioneer Press is facing the same challenges, and rumors have been circulating for over a year that it will cease to exist altogether. The corporate hijacking of local “alt weekly” City Pages seems finally to have succeeded, at least in a manner of speaking. (New Times indeed—just who the hell is this Hoffman character, anyway?) And it’s not just with these outlets. Almost everywhere you turn the quality of news is being questioned as resources and profits continue to dwindle. It’s just too expensive, it seems, to chase meaningful stories these days, and the competition has never been fiercer for advertising dollars.

    Enter the internet, the longtime boogeyman and sworn enemy of print media everywhere. As it turns out, it just might be the best tool any news reporter, storyteller, or publisher ever dreamed of. With more than half the U.S. now online—and two-thirds of them getting their news online—the web is suddenly a sexy proposition for all sorts of formerly hidebound print junkies. The venture capitalists are intrigued as well—you’d have to suppose that in a recessive industry, not having to pay for ink, paper, press operators, and distribution would bode well for the bottom line.

    And so, with (undoubtedly) noble thoughts and high aspirations, many Twin Cities newsies have been turning to the web as a panacea for a host of the ailments currently bedeviling the news media. Former Strib publisher and editor Joel Kramer got the attention of media insiders across the country when he launched MinnPost, his long-anticipated online news site, in November. At about the same time, erstwhile City Pages editor Steve Perry debuted his own site, The Daily Mole, which he mothballed last month after a frustrating three-month run; now he is taking the reins at the Minnesota Monitor. Perry’s new employer, like a number of other local sites (including Twin Cities Daily Planet, the Minnesota Monitor, Cursor, and MNSpeak), had been up and running on the web long before that pair of high-profile upstarts made their splash at the tail end of 2007.

    It turns out that the web, with its atmosphere of almost unbridled democracy (a sort of anarchic egalitarian free-for-all, if such a thing is possible), has breathed new life into the moribund American Dream. Freedom of speech. Free exchange of ideas. Anybody can play. People with a little bit (or a lot) of hubris can barge their way online and plant their flags. Every citizen (or non-) can put his (or her) voice out there. And anyone can hit the jackpot, which is, of course, measured in mouse clicks. (You can be sure even the gal blogging about what she had for breakfast is watching her numbers.) In the online world, clicks mean dollars.

    The trouble, of course, comes in setting up a new online economy. How many clicks for how many dollars? What’s the rate of exchange? In a world where Britney has been the top search term for six of the past seven years, and where information is expected to be free, how can anyone make news financially viable?


    Making a play with traditional journalism

    Determined to uphold professional distinction above all else (presumed translation: no Britney stories), Joel Kramer latched on to a stable of reporters cast off in the recent newsroom purges on both sides of the river and set out to create a quality local news source. With the exception of a few videos and slideshows, MinnPost’s editorial model is little more than traditional newspaper journalism distributed online (in fact, until a few weeks ago, Kramer insisted on distributing fifteen-hundred Xeroxed printouts for those committed to words on paper).

    While web-based businesses across the globe save on rent by having staff work from home, Kramer resists this as well. He is proud of MinnPost’s old-school newsroom, which features open space to encourage dialogue, an office for the business staff, and conference rooms and workstations around the perimeter. Just as newspaper reporters rush to meet an evening deadline, MinnPost contributors—drawn from a pool of fifty-six freelancers—submit stories each morning so that web editor Corey Anderson can post them online at 11 a.m. This also runs counter to standard web protocol, where news is live twenty-four-hours and reporters bypass editors by posting their stories directly on the website. “Our goal is not to exploit the web,” explained Kramer, “but to provide quality journalism.”

    Can MinnPost make profitable use of an online medium without fully engaging its resources? Nora Paul, Director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the U of M, says no. “[Kramer] hasn’t embraced what’s interesting about online,” she argued, “which is the ability to create packages with a shelf-life, and that will have utility for a long time.” According to Paul, online news organizations need to find new and compelling ways to tell stories, and develop creative ways to pull together data. While most local online news sources have not availed themselves of Paul’s expertise, newspapers across the country are turning to her for the winning formula. Last month, eleven top newspapers, including The New York Times and the Washington Post, met with Paul (and five graduate students) to formulate questions they want answered about offering news on the web. What’s the best way to display video? Do news crawlers attract more clicks than breaking news digests? What’s the most engaging way to tell a story?

    Above all, the web offers flexibility. “Online, the walls should be much more porous,” explained Paul, “so that you have an evolving story-telling space.” In other words, there’s no excuse for anything static. Online news is more a process than a product; it’s created through interaction and various points of view, so stories build up almost organically, with varied perspectives, in varied forms, from varied arenas. Ideally, the end result is a much broader picture, and arguably a more compelling story than we’ve been reading on paper for centuries.

  • With Liberty and Luxury for All

    Luxury is big business these days, and not just because the world of the rich is more prosperous and populous than ever. The rest of us are also becoming avid consumers of goods and services that were once exclusive to the super-wealthy. Obviously your definition of “luxury” depends on where you reside on the economic food chain—there’s a difference, for instance, between a Dior T-shirt purchased at an outlet and an invitation to a Dior couture show. For some folks luxury might be a pair of Godiva truffles, nestled in a tiny gold box and purchased on a whim at Southdale; for others, a $4,000-a-night, two-story hotel penthouse with a baby grand piano.

    Such lodgings are now available in downtown Minneapolis, at the brand-new Hotel Ivy, ballyhooed as the Twin Cities’ first five-star luxury hotel. The saga of the tiny Ivy Tower is by now familiar: Long vacant, the 1930 landmark was destined for a meeting with the wrecking ball, but saved at the last minute by savvy developers. They made the idiosyncratic, vaguely Moorish building the centerpiece of a complex that includes a 136-room hotel, a 17,000-square-foot spa and fitness center, and ninety-two condominiums, almost all of which, remarkably, have sold.

    Curious about what exactly it means to be the Cities’ first five-star luxury hotel (and what that coveted and somewhat mysterious designation signifies), I interviewed the Ivy’s general manager, Alister Glen, who graciously made time while in the midst of hiring staff and other harried preparations for the opening last month. The Ivy is part of Starwood Hotels and Resorts’s “Luxury Collection,” a franchise of fifty-some hotels and resorts around the world. (Starwood also owns the Westin, W, and Sheraton chains, among others.) Despite this pedigree, Glen made it clear that the Hotel Ivy would appeal “to all spectrums of the market”—that is, it would even welcome those who indulge in discount Dior and Godiva two-packs.

    “I don’t want people to feel like ‘We’re going to have to mortgage our house to even go in there,’ ” he said. “Is it luxurious? Yes. Does it have the kind of rooms and feel that we haven’t seen in Minneapolis? Yes. But are we setting it up to be a bunch of snooty people with attitude? No. No matter who walks through that door, they’ll be treated like they’re staying in the hotel. Maybe you won’t be able to stay in a hotel room, but you’ll definitely be able to have a drink in the bar or a cup of coffee in the lounge.”

    Glen’s open-arms approach gets at a tricky aspect of peddling “luxury” in the current market. You can’t be snooty and uptight—or perhaps, more to the point, you can’t afford to be. Thus the emergence of terms like “casual luxe” and “universally likable luxury”; the latter was used last year in a Wall Street Journal article about an ad campaign for Lincoln, the idea being to establish Ford’s high-end automobiles as an “approachable brand” distinct from “old world” luxury or “money-is-everything” luxury.

    Why be so adamantly democratic about luxury? One thing to consider is how much of the wealth among the upper-income elite is newly minted, and how many of its holders will eschew old standards of luxury—say, the Saint Paul Hotel—and defect to the Hotel Ivy.

    Another, perhaps more important factor to consider: the rest of us. Those who aren’t wealthy can ride along, to some degree, on the coattails of those who are. In “The Snob Within,” an article that appeared last year in the Boston Globe, Don Aucoin noted the original definition of “snob”: one who aspires to membership in a class above his own. In our growing fondness for five-dollar coffees, one-hundred-dollar facials, and thousand dollar “it” bags, he observed that middle-class people are taking cues from the rich instead of fomenting class war against them. As the income gap grows ever larger, it’s as if some of the middle class—or many, really—are looking to make the leap to the expanding yet still tiny ranks of the elite.

    However unlikely their chances of success in that endeavor, these strivers make for a huge market, and in an era of growth-at-all-costs global capitalism, why wouldn’t purveyors of luxury seek to exploit them? Hotels, for instance, generate considerable revenue outside of renting rooms; to maximize profits the Hotel Ivy needs to welcome locals for coffee, cocktails, or a spare-no-expense dinner. Its spa needs loyal customers, as do its meeting and banquet facilities—especially as it’s moving into an increasingly crowded “new luxury” market that includes the Graves 601 and the Chambers, and later this year, the W Minneapolis at the Foshay.

    As luxury-for-all goes, high-end hotels are distinct from goods like couture, cars, or mansions. A hotel is a place where you can experience a posh lifestyle without a long-term investment of cash. Regular folks will be tolerated—or even, as Glen insists, welcomed. “New luxury” hotels are one of a dwindling number of places that serve both the rich and those who enjoy rubbing elbows with them. Elite night clubs used to have the same function: In the heyday of Studio 54, street kids and hustlers could mingle with socialites, as long as they were good-looking, enterprising, or just plain interesting (even freakish). But as a recent story in New York magazine complained, with VIP everything and de rigueur “bottle service,” the top nightclubs have become the exclusive province of rich kids with platinum cards and assholes partying on expense accounts.

    Glen is an affable, thirtyish native of South Africa, and prior to coming onboard at the Ivy he was a manager at Barnsley Gardens, a luxury resort outside Atlanta. I noticed during our interview that he was wearing a Polo sweater—a perfect “new luxury” symbol. It’s well-known that Ralph Lauren grew up Jewish in the Bronx—which perhaps made him the perfect interpreter of wealthy WASP lifestyles. The designer is a great pretender, and so are his legions of fans around the globe, whether they buy Polo as part of “the ultimate retail experience” at the Rhinelander Mansion flagship on Madison Avenue or forage for it in a bin at Costco.

  • Ad Man

    Not long ago, Colle+McVoy, the second-oldest ad agency in Minnesota, was thought to be a stodgy place; mostly it created ads for agricultural products, a decidedly un-sexy category. But last fall, observers got to scratching their heads when the agency won top honors at “The Show,” an annual awards ceremony from the Advertising Federation of Minnesota, for its work for the Erbert & Gerbert’s chain of sub shops. Colle+McVoy also walked away with the most awards, sixty-nine in all. As it turns out, a coup took place a couple years earlier, when Mike Fetrow, formerly an award-winning art director at Fallon, Minnesota’s most famous agency, signed on as Colle+McVoy’s executive creative director. Now the agency has won a host of hip clients (including August Schell Brewing Company, Aveda, and Wolfgang Puck Catering and 20.21), and recently relocated from a Bloomington office park to a fashionable address in Minneapolis’s warehouse district. We recently sat down to shoot the breeze with Fetrow, a forty-two-year-old father of two, about the tumultuous industry in which he works.


    The Super Bowl is coming up on February 3. Are the ads still a big deal?

    I don’t think so. Going back ten, fifteen years, they were the thing. From a client standpoint, it was the place to be. And from a creative standpoint, it was a career-maker; you were on the big stage. Now advertising has changed and clients have changed their vision of how to use advertising. It’s hard to justify the one-time appearance on a Super Bowl spot when you can use other media and have a consistent presence.

    So it’s not a bad sign that no Minneapolis agency has a Super Bowl ad this year?

    I think it’s reflective not only of the state of advertising but also of some of the transitions Minneapolis is going through.

    Is it safe to say Minneapolis is still an advertising town?

    I think so. The city is and always has been a really artistic place. But I think the sands are shifting, and it’s natural that cities and agencies should go through that … the advertising agencies we’re going to be hearing about will have different names.

    What kinds of advertising or marketing strategies actually work in today’s media-saturated environment?

    We’ve had success with ideas that exist in a lot of different media at the same time. We create an idea that is a print ad and a poster and sometimes an event and a website. So if we create an event where people get a poster or a T-shirt, the event might happen just one day but the T-shirt will be around for months. It continues to be active, versus a one-time ad in the Star Tribune.

    With Erbert & Gerbert’s, for example, we cut up a coupon for a free sub into four different ads in the newspaper. One quarter of a coupon really didn’t make any sense. But four or five pages later, you’d see another quarter of the coupon, and another. If you were curious enough and cut them all out and taped them together, you’d find a coupon for a free sub. It’s something that people can interact with.

    Who has time for that? Personally, I find it irritating that advertisers should want me to do all that work.

    If ads make the assumption that people care, you’re right, people are offended. They know the brand is trying to get them to do something, and it’s sort of insulting. You have to make sure that if it’s going to take time, it’s something people want to find. It’s something people want to pass to their friends.

    What ads out there right now do you find remarkable?

    There was a viral thing for a show about a serial killer [Showtime’s Dexter]. You [go to a website and] type in the name of a friend and a little fact, and the friend ends up getting [an email about] a news report that says “Serial Killer At Large, He Always Leaves Clues To His Next Victim.” It’s absolutely brilliant. As the person getting the email, you’re totally convinced you’re the next one to die. It’s so entertaining and so engaging you can’t help but participate.

    OK, we’ve all heard about “viral” this and “viral” that. Can you define “viral” in this context?

    “Viral” has become an easy-seller catchphrase, because in truth you can’t make something viral; it either becomes viral or not. But the definition is something that kind of catches on with consumers and gets passed around and starts to spread out.

    Do you have to do anything in your work that’s really awful—things in total opposition to your tastes and values, just because they work for the client?

    Not anymore. There is that in advertising; sometimes you’re selling a product that you know is not as good as you’re trying to get people to believe. But we find a way to love our clients’ products—people around here wear Red Wing shoes. And we just started working with a hip-hop record label, a local, small one called Rhymesayers. That was just a passion we have. So sometimes we try to follow our passions and let success come as a second. But when it’s the client who comes to us first, we try to find a passion within them.

    To what do you credit Colle+McVoy’s recent achievements?

    Well, few agencies value personality as much as talent. I didn’t really come in to change the work we were doing; I came in to change the personality of the agency.

    What was its personality before you arrived?

    It was a confident, professionally strong agency—but it was just quiet. For the first few hires I purposefully chose people who were really passionate and loud. Ramon Nuñez [a broadcast producer] was one of the first and he’s really big-chested, loud, listens to Cher.

    How important is the physical environment at an ad agency?

    It’s huge. Advertising is sort of messy; anything creative should be. So our new space is open. You can’t hide. And I don’t think people want to hide, because it’s more fun.

    How do you feel about the cubicles?

    It was funny coming to this new space; everyone had offices out in Bloomington and was really worried about cubes. We went so far as to not say the word “cube”; we said “personal workspace.” And in truth, they’re cubes. They’re fine. Nobody complained.

    Do you think ad agencies ever over-romanticize their creative cultures? Can there be too much foosball?

    I guess there’s a point where it could go too far. But as much as we are a business, we’re on the play-fringe of business. People expect us to bring that excitement. For a lot of clients, this is their exciting appointment of the week; they get to come in and it’s kind of crazy.

    The ad industry is famous for how many ways it awards itself. What’s the purpose of so many little trophies?

    The main one nowadays is to attract talent. I don’t know whether we’re in the same sort of environment that Fallon grew up in. Fallon was able to use awards to really show clients they were doing breakthrough work. It was a new message at the time. But now there’s so many award shows, and clients have gotten hip to it. It doesn’t have the same sort of punch.

    What would you be doing for a living if you weren’t doing this?

    I feel like I’m the luckiest person alive. I stumbled into advertising and I don’t think I would’ve been good at anything else.

    I understand you love graffiti art.

    Yeah, that’s a huge passion. I do some things in my basement on plywood boards and stuff.

    Were you a tagger as a kid?

    Unfortunately, I found graffiti when I was a little too old. And I think I’d embarrass my kids if I got caught.

  • Crispin Glover — What Is It?

    I should have known better, having so many questions about a film
    with an elusive question for a title — and cult actor Crispin Glover as
    writer, director, and supporting character. I know, I know. But Glover describes What Is It?, a film
    featuring a number of actors with Down’s Syndrome, as "the adventures of a young man whose principal
    interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home," all while
    being tormented by his "hubristic, racist inner psyche." You say you’re
    not dying to know more about his creative process? I say you’re a liar.

    While making his controversial debut feature (which first screened
    in 2005), Glover had the sensual, surreal work of auteurs like Werner
    Herzog     and Stanley Kubrick specifically in mind, though that
    doesn’t fully explain a theatrical trailer that features him in a fur
    coat and flowing wig among naked women in animal masks — and, of course,
    all those snails, one of which is voiced by Fairuza Balk. So, really,
    what is it? Thankfully, Glover flew in to elaborate: starting tonight
    at 7 p.m., and running all weekend, the as-yet-unreleased What Is It? makes its Minnesota premier with a special live performance and a Q&A session with the man himself.

    In the meantime, I got to volley a few of my burning inquiries off
    the actually very affable Glover. He answered none of them, at least
    not directly, because he wants you to decide for yourself—again, how
    could you not want to?

    Q: WHY DID YOU ULTIMATELY DECIDE TO MAKE THIS FILM?

    CG: I was approached by first-time writers to act in a film they had
    written. I told them I would be interested in being in it if I could
    direct it and do some re-writing, and that if I directed it I would
    like to have a large majority of the characters be played by actors
    with Down’s Syndrome. David Lynch agreed to executive produce the film,
    and I went to one of the larger corporate entities to see if I could
    get funding but they told me they were concerned about having a
    majority of the characters be played by actors with Down’s Syndrome. I
    decided to make the script into a short film in order to promote that
    this was a viable concept, but when I edited it together, it came in at
    85 minutes. I realized that, with some more work, I could make it into
    a feature film.

    And yes, most of the actors do have Down’s Syndrome, but it’s not
    about Down’s Syndrome. It’s a psychological reaction to the corporate
    restraints that have happened within the film industry in the last 20
    to 30 years. Anything that can make the audience member uncomfortable
    will not be corporately financed or distributed. The audience member
    sits back in their chair, looks up at the screen, and asks ‘Is this
    right what I’m watching? Is it wrong? Should the director have done
    this? Why am I here? What is it?’ That’s the name of the film-What Is It?
    is my psychological reaction to that situation. The only way that
    education can happen in film is for something considered taboo to be
    referenced. Unfortunately, there are groups of people that [make
    statements] like ‘Well, we wouldn’t want to say that…’ Nothing at all
    is being asked. Anything that’s a reference to a reference to a taboo
    subject is excised instead of being necessarily talked about, and I do
    think that’s very damaging.

    Q: WILL IT EVER BE RELEASED ON DVD, OR WILL YOU JUST CONTINUE TO TOUR WITH IT?

    CG: The normal business model for art films is to release them in
    several of the largest cities and use that element as advertising until
    it comes out several months later on DVD and makes more money. I do my
    live dramatic narration of eight different books I’ve made over the
    years, I have a slideshow will the illustrations behind me and then I
    show the film and have a Q&A period and book signing afterwards. What Is It?
    is [discomforting], but what’s important is to get over a concern with
    taboo elements so other genuine thought processes can be explored. I
    consider these films educational, because unusualness can be some of
    the most educational material around. People [won’t] be attacking me
    for exploring uncomfortable areas—[I want to] get into a thoughtful
    experience and have true communication.

    Q: WHAT IS THE REASON BEHIND THE YOUNG MAN’S JOURNEY? WHERE IS
    "HOME" FOR HIM?

    CG: Well, the film won Best Narrative Film at the 2005 Ann Arbor
    Film Festival, which I always take to heart when I hear people call it
    non-narrative. I would argue strongly that it is because it
    shows the archetypal journey a hero must go on. They start in a normal
    world but it’s disrupted in some way, so they must enter a special
    world, go into a series of meeting friends and enemies, trials and
    tribulations…then there is the eventual come-up, and some kind of moral
    has been brought back into the original world that has been either
    righted or not righted. To me, this was a very straightforward way to
    have a film dealing with the particular issues I was trying to
    illustrate. There can be different nuances, but it’s better to let the
    viewer interpret things on their own. It’s not me trying to be
    obtuse-it violates a goal of mine if I start dictating to people what
    they should be thinking, seeing or understanding.

    Q: WHAT IS THIS HUBRISTIC, RACIST INNER PSYCHE THAT AFFLICTS THE OUR HERO?

    CG: Again, I think there are things that are good to see within the
    context of the film. I believe very much in filmmakers and other
    artists being really quiet. On some level, I believe in not saying
    anything about the film. When I step in front of an audience after a
    screening, I notice a certain amount of unease. I could say that’s
    good, but because of the context the film is released in, people often
    feel there’s randomness to it. This was not done in a random or
    haphazard fashion. I’m very committed to letting people know that it’s
    a reaction to corporate restraints in cinema of the last 20 to 30
    years, so it then becomes about how they choose to interpret those
    nuances.

    Q: WHAT ABOUT ALL THE SNAILS?
    WHAT ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO SYMBOLIZE?

    CG: The strongest reaction I get from any audience is always about the snails. It’s unusual if I show the film and don’t
    get questions about the snails. Some of the imagery does deal with
    taboo specifics, but I’ve made it a rule not to dwell on them. The
    truth of it is that that’s not the reason I made this film. The snails
    do symbolize something very specific to me, but I’m very careful to not
    say…people say many different things to me about what they
    think it means and they’re always very interesting. Sometimes they’re
    related to mine and sometimes it’s something quite different. I’m glad
    the movie works in that way-that was a goal of mine. I am dedicated to
    not violating that element, but I will say that the snails play a very
    important role in the visceral emotionalism that exists in the movie.

  • Art Market

    Not all fashion designers consider themselves artists, but there is certainly a fine art to developing an exciting and cohesive line of clothing, a one-of-a-kind gown, or, for that matter, a sock-monkey bikini. Just five years ago, when home-grown clothing was paraded on First Avenue’s stage at the first Voltage fashion show, resources in the Twin Cities—for designers and their customers—were just beginning to emerge. Five years later, the response and outpouring of support speaks volumes about the growth, both current and future, for local fashion.

    Russell Sheets is best known for the tailored, high-quality, vintage-inspired looks in his Russell Bourrienne menswear.

    Forts, foolery, dioramas, ugly hats, and god’s eyes are just some of the inspirations Crystal Quinn uses in her clothing and collages.

    Hat by Anna Lee; see more details on Lee in author’s page.

    Women love Katherine Gerdes’s designs for their mix of casual comfort and cocktail style.

    Rebecca Yaker’s designs are fun yet luxurious plays on baseball jackets, sock monkeys, and other all-American icons.

    Bright prints and plush fabrics are hallmarks of the energetic, chic House of Henry designs by Michele Henry.

  • Spearthrower

    We piled off the bus—field trip!—
    my teacher saying, suggestive and disinterested, “Just look.”
    The Minneapolis Institute of Arts free and full of kids,
    Chinese jades, gods and goddesses from everywhere,
    room after room of very old faces looking back at us.
    And here this one naked man
    so tall and alone in his own room,
    “The Spearthrower” though he’d lost his spear long ago
    along with the hand that held it. Such a serious look
    on his face, his cheeks and lips worn down, misty,
    naked for so long! His stomach sticking out
    with a little hip shimmy, from the side he was
    sort of a blockhead. His cock and balls
    gone, we giggled and pointed and I felt the little cock
    in my pants and felt funny still circling him,
    like I was naked too.
    Nobody said don’t stare. I stared,
    the Roman looking out over me. I think
    I was aware in a cloudy but not confusing way
    this body was a made thing,
    the mottled gray-white marble, smooth but not soft,
    somebody made it long ago, hand and chisel to stone.
    He seemed to step forward, out into the room
    the same step for so many years.
    I circled him to see where he stared,
    circled and somehow it was better
    than trips to look at the monkeys and tigers at the zoo.
    Maybe I spun around, maybe I flapped my arms,
    maybe I struck a pose too, imaginary spear in my left hand.
    He wasn’t getting back on the bus with us
    but still mine to keep, this way to stand—
    right foot sneaking forward for balance
    me and my Roman ready, come what may.

    Note from the poet: I wrote “Spearthrower” to honor a moment of being a child and blown away by a work of art. I don’t recall being “prepared” for the museum or what I might see, just set loose. It was an early experience of being pulled out of my body (or maybe deeper into it) toward something larger, something old, beautiful, and strangely compelling.

    For more poetry, see “What Light: This Week’s Poem” on mnartists.org

  • 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.

  • Noises Underground

    It must be something in the water. One hundred years after Saint Paul experimental composer Arthur Farwell dissected Native Indian melodies and piled up unrelated tonalities, a core of dedicated underground Minnesota sound explorers is still sampling, mashing-up, and otherwise taking musical liberties. Although largely unsung in this state of above-ground musical champions, there is a rich vein of experimental music that runs from Sauk Rapids to Duluth and Rochester, and through both of the Twin Cities.

    Music lovers often assume that such nonconformists are simply out to be belligerent, making unlistenable noise in order to annoy and make a mockery of the true musical family. Actually, thumbing our nose at all that is good, tonal, and Pulitzerian is rarely in our minds; experimental musicians are just curious about sound and will stop at nothing to hear where that might lead.

    Thanks to the invention of the laptop, a costly conservatory education is no longer necessary for a so-called career in music. Everyone can be equally ignored or celebrated. But, just as there’s more than one way to skin a piano, no two machines will spit out the same music. That’s because in the end, it is up to the human imagination to determine what goes in and what comes out. Preston Wright, Scott Miller, and Brian Heller, to name three examples, are each blazing entirely independent digital trails.

    Being emancipated from the orchestra also sets one free from the orchestra’s usual habitat, the concert hall. The place you choose to insert your music into society, the venue you select for your compositions, can be as creative a decision as the sequence of waveforms you choose. Sound has become one of the public arts, a way to shape the environment in which people live and move—just take a shadow-walk with Viv Corringham.

    Viv Corringham on one of her “Shadow-Walks”

    Minnesota’s musical ecology is fragmenting nicely into multiple niches; while the mainstream media can’t imagine life beyond the tightrope that runs from classical to pop, the people actually making the stuff couldn’t be less bothered about such irrelevancies. Even within the body of work of a single artist, like Abinadi Meza, variations extend beyond any single genre, technique, or aesthetic: A list of pieces may include glitch, sound poetry, circuit bending, improvisation, scavenging, theatrical music, performance art, and even work for orchestral instruments… In other words, we have all had to become format-hopping digital-media sluts (“What has music got to do with sound, anyway?” asked Charles Ives).

     

    Every tribe needs people to fill a variety of functions—makers, techies, critics, consumers, and bill-payers. Several artists have discovered the joys, benefits, and headaches of being presenters as well. From the Acadia Café to Studio Z, from the online Some Assembly Required and the lavish campus-based Spark Festival to the Strange Attractors series in a former funeral home, we underground musicians are everywhere if you look and listen closely. But without these saints and other supporters of our offbeat work we’d be even deeper underground without a paddle.

    As the bandwidth widens, we are less bound by state lines and can continue to expand our communities online. There is no locus like home though, and one day our beloved state may be known as much for the Minnesota Noise as it is for the Minnesota Sound.



    Fantastic Merlins take improvisation beyond jazz

    Originally appeared in issue 18.2 of access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine.

  • The (Indie) Play’s the Thing

    While a handful of large companies give our city its national reputation, small, independent theater remains the life-blood of the local scene. Audiences are built by smaller theaters with more affordable ticket prices. Great actors have the opportunity to stretch and grow in smaller venues, without the pressures that they may experience later, in larger productions. Most important, baby theaters grow up to be robust adult theaters. Jeune Lune began in small venues, and the Jungle Theater got its start doing shows in a store front. Some of us can even remember the ’60s, when the Guthrie was a modest, one-theater venue. What was true then still holds true: the Twin Cities theater scene gets its ongoing vitality by fostering little companies and offbeat or challenging performances.

    So which tiny theater will grow into the next big thing, with
    burgeoning audiences and plusher venues? Will it be Nimbus Theatre?
    Live Action Set? Torch? Wouldn’t it be exciting to watch for yourself
    as it happens?

    In just a few short years, Jon Ferguson has shown himself to be one of the Twin Cities’ best directors. If you wonder what Jeune Lune was like in its early days, Jon is your man. He’s gained quite a cult following and has uniquely talented actors at his disposal. To see one of his shows is to see beauty, humanity, and surprise; to be engaged, touched, and to leave the theater more fully yourself. (Pictured below: Ferguson’s Ligustrum Vulgare, a “dark tale of suburban brutality” created in collaboration with actors Tim Cameron, Adam Hegg, and Katie Kaufmann.)

    Pillsbury House Theater is committed to the surrounding Powderhorn community, but its audiences come from all over. They produce raw, gutsy plays about the gritty stuff of life. (Above: John Shuman in 2007’s Glen Berger’s Underneath the Lintel: An Impressive Presentation of Lovely Evidences.)




    Mu Performing Arts     is one of the leading Asian arts organizations in the country, so this theater, growing by the year, is not exactly “small.” Each year they do a Taiko drumming show (very cool) and three theatrical productions combining Western and Eastern, ancient and modern (very, very cool). Rick Shiomi has recently taken on board Randy Reyes, a smart and energetic young director who moonlights with Workhaus Theater. (Pictured: Isabella Dawis and Sara Ochs, from Mu’s production of The Walleye Kid)

    Expect most anything from Bedlam’s slightly punk brand of theater. The company recently celebrated the first year in their brand new space on the West Bank. It’s a cool spot for hanging out, with a flexible theater, a bar in the lobby that could be in an old Western, and a rooftop patio. (At left, Bedlam’s “fifth” of The Wizard of Oz, an annual Fringe Festival event in which five theater companies deconstruct a classic script.)

    Adapted from issue 14.2 of access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine.

  • The Renegade

    Billy X. Curmano, performance artist and provocateur, doesn’t care much for the conventional wisdom that says artists must live in a large city. He may have grown up in Milwaukee and spent time in the East Village and other urban centers of art, but ultimately he decided to make his base of operations a picturesque corner of rural southeastern Minnesota. From there, he plans extravagant performance pieces and publishes wry, pun-filled newsletters, all of which dare the audience to face a fundamental question: “What the hell is art, anyway?”

    Curmano’s work also challenges the idea that grand adventure is the exclusive right of those who can afford it. Billionaires might be traveling around the world in balloons and paying to get towed up Mount Everest, but they’ve got nothing on Billy Curmano. He decided it’d be an eye-opening performance project to swim the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca to New Orleans, an undertaking he accomplished over eleven summers, landing in the Big Easy on “Billy X. Curmano Day,” 1997, thus culminating Swimmin’ the River, his best-known and most grandly scaled performance.

    “I like the idea of getting out to different audiences and doing work that intrigues them, whether they understand it as art or not. I like tweaking them,” Curmano says on the phone. When we talk, he’s in the midst of a massive move from his studio space in Rushford, which suffered extensive damage during the Winona-area floods last summer. “I think about it the way I think about homosexuality—if someone’s secure in their sexuality, they aren’t homophobic. I feel secure enough about my work that I like to get a response from the audience, but if it’s not the right response, I don’t mind. If you’re doing work just to please other people, you’re not getting at the root of your soul as an artist.”

    An overview of Curmano’s career indicates that, for all of his wide-ranging work, he has indeed stayed true to his roots. The twin poles of his work have always been to raise perceptions and have a little fun. These aims are evident from his early anti-Vietnam war installations at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he trained as a sculptor; his forty-day “performance fast” in the Mojave during the Y2K freak-out; and his Buried Alive project, in which he spent three days entombed near Winona in an effort to bring art to the dead. For that matter, his Swimmin’ the River project managed to make an environmentalist statement, an individualist argument, and a decade of entertaining summers all at once.

    “The Coast Guard came after me just past St. Louis,” he recalls, thinking about one of the most intense days of the swim. “It was a really tough run through a major shipping center, about one-hundred miles with coastline and barges. I yelled at them, ‘I’m okay, fellas, thanks for checking.’ Through the megaphones, they yelled back, ‘It doesn’t work like that.’”

    Despite losing his studio to the floods, the move has provided Curmano with new opportunities (including the offer of a dehumidifier from FEMA). His new space is a complex that includes a personal studio; a home for his New X Art Ensemble, which features a rotating cast of musicians; and performance and gallery space that can serve as an alternative to destinations in the Cities. The Ensemble performs frequently both at home and in the Twin Cities, and Curmano is also working on other projects like an annual “Anti-Shakespeare Festival” to run in conjunction with Winona’s Shakespeare Festival; the first, two years ago, ended with Curmano having to canoe around an island looking for campers that had spent the night. And he continues to shoot videos, craft sculptures, and design sets for his performance work. Overall, his tendency to mix the ephemeral with the lasting allows him to shift freely between performance and visual art. For a guy dedicated to flouting art-world “rules,” Curmano is serious about his dedication to leaving something of himself behind through his work. “As I began working … the term ‘traditional artist’ doesn’t really apply, but I made objects,” Curmano recalls. “The sculpture department at my college didn’t take real kindly to performance art. It wasn’t heavy enough. But one professor I had, he once told me, ‘Billy, we were always proud of you, because you didn’t lose sight of the object.’ And I haven’t.”

    A portrait of the artist on the last day of a forty-day performance fast in the Mojave desert

     

     


    Two pieces related to Curmano’s magnum opus, Swimmin’ the River: Aqua/Terra, from 1993 (bottom); and from 1994, Still Swimmin’, a lithograph with a vial of water from Lake Itasca (top)