To lose an oak
is no heartbreak.
—No,
but to see them go
by the acre,
at a stroke,
is enough to
crack a man open,
the heart not broken
so much as stricken,
torqued at the root
and left in a thick
choke of ache.
Just so,
a whole forest’s
felling will take
faith’s poorest
dwelling down and
leave the chimney—
stark
in an open space
—like a brick
marker indicating
a once good place.
As you walk down the narrow hallway into Frank Sander’s
sunlit studio in Lowertown you’re greeted by an entryway table piled with
cables, cast-off camera bits, miscellaneous video equipment, and a couple of
discarded microphone heads.
On the walls are personal treasures the German-born artist
has picked up during his twenty-odd years of travel. He takes down a recent
prize from a wall near the galley kitchen: a weathered, conical straw hat he
bartered from a farmer on a recent trip to China’s Yunnan province. "Can you
see the sweat stains along the strap here? Look at the fine weaving work; the
swirls and patterning in the straw are just stunning. I love that this bears
the evidence of his labor, the time he spent in the fields," Sander said. "I
think it’s just beautiful, it’s so human."
Sander studied carpentry and architecture, along with visual
art, in Germany; it’s clear he’s an itchy sort of artist, resistant to the
fetters of just one discipline. Finding carpentry and architecture too precise
and measured, he turned to sculpture and painting. He’s also noodled around
with filmmaking and photography since childhood, experimenting early on with
Super 8 cameras, and graduating over time to videography and digital
photography.
In his twenties Sander wandered throughout Europe, living in
Spain for a time, then the Netherlands and Denmark. On a trip home to Hamburg
in 1979, his train was caught in a week-long blizzard. "After a couple of days,
I started to look around for ways to pass the time." He recalls wryly, "I kept
thinking, surely there’s a young woman around here who needs some company."
You can guess the rest: a fellow passenger was an attractive
American. They hit it off and Sander followed her home to Minnesota, where they
were married. That relationship eventually fizzled but his affair with the
North Star State did not.
In fact, Minnesota’s landscapes, especially the wilds of the
Boundary Waters, have indelibly marked his artwork. Sander may be best known
for his critically hailed installation, Human Nature, which premiered at the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1999 and also showed at the Daum Museum of
Contemporary Art outside Kansas City. In Sander’s landscape, fish enrobed in
resin hang from the frame of an upturned fishing boat; and scores of beaver
skulls sit in government-issue file boxes in witness to the destruction of
their habitat. The entire work was a sort of sculptural reliquary for Upper
Midwest wildlife displaced by industrialization and sprawl.
Sander, however, now has mixed feelings about large-scale
public art. "It takes so much time and money, and so much time applying for
grants, to put something like that together. No one really buys work that
large, so in the case of Human Nature it sat around on my property deteriorating
for years, just getting in the way. I’m more interested in actually making
artwork than in shopping my artwork around."
His current passion, videography and film, marries well with
his wanderlust. Currently he is documenting the tribal minorities and austere
beauty of Yunnan Province, in the mountains near the Tibetan border. Typically
for Sander, he arrived at this latest work through both luck and a Zen-like
acquiescence to the vicissitudes of his curiosity. He stumbled on these insular
enclaves last year while sightseeing in China, and, intrigued by their singular
cultural histories, struck up a friendship with a local university professor
who introduced him to some locals.
Sander was smitten with the people and their communities,
poised between agrarian life and industrial modernity. Armed with just a
camera, he returns every chance he gets. Sander’s video footage is immediate
and intimate. There’s over-the-shoulder access to the mountaintop homes of
boisterous young dancers, and walks along narrow village streets on festival
night.
With the ongoing collaboration of his Chinese partner, He
Lujiang, Sander is working to raise money for an ambitious film project that
would chronicle these peoples’ fast-disappearing stories.
"We have the opportunity to preserve something of this way
of life before it’s gone," he says. "Imagine if we’d been able to do something
similar to capture Native American life before the days of reservations. These
are communities on the cusp of modern life, and every day they lose a bit of
their heritage to the conveniences of new technologies. If I can document their
way of life, I’d like to post the whole film for free online. He Lujiang and I
want their chronicle to be our small contribution to the world."
The medium may vary, but Sander’s consistent theme is
preservation. His is the proverbial (and literal) voice in the wilderness
urging us not to forget who we were and to be mindful of the natural wonders
being sacrificed for the manufactured comforts of modernity.
Hendrickson’s handiwork is a mélange of burlesque camp,
cowgirl grit, and Victorian flourish. She’s undeniably influenced by ’70s pop
design and ’80s album covers, but this North Dakota girl also mixes in a
frontier spirit straight out of a nineteenth-century Sears, Roebuck catalog.
But make no mistake, the work has some bite: Hendrickson’s all-American blonde
pigtails are more Minnesota RollerGirl than Little House on the Prairie.
If you go to rock shows around Minnesota, you’ve seen
Hendrickson’s posters on the walls around you; she’s been at it for years.
Since she moved to Minneapolis and set up shop at First Amendment Gallery with
some other artists, her sly grrrl-power designs have been garnering more and
more notice. And no wonder-with all the elements she unabashedly draws
from, Hendrickson’s design savvy has the hook of a catchy pop song, tweaking
familiar styles with unexpected juxtapositions and cheeky flair.
Looking back, she says it makes sense that she was drawn to
this kind of work. "When I was a kid, I loved flipping through the images in
catalogs. I always noticed album covers and ad designs and movie posters," she
remembers. "There’s all kinds of inspiration out there if you know how to
look."
Originally appeared in issue 18.1 of access+ENGAGE.
All artists come from a foreign country, in some sense.
Where “originality” is essential, each artist becomes a world in him- or
herself, with zealously guarded borders. But what’s it like to be an artist who
makes a home in a distant land? The answers to this and a thousand other
questions are different for each of the artists interviewed below. It turns out
that “émigré artist” is not a category, only a door into a very large world.
Manjunan Gnanaratnam
Sri Lanka’s civil war drove Manjunan from home at
twenty-one, in 1983. He arrived in New York to study music, saw Merce
Cunningham perform, and found his calling as a composer for dance. His current
projects include plans for a 2008 performance that includes dance projected on
the walls at the Weisman Art Museum; he’s also recreating composer Karlheinz
Stockhausen’s work Ceylon.
Manjunan never spoke publicly about leaving Sri Lanka until
recently: “I couldn’t talk about the effects of war until war came here—you
can see wounded young people in the airports now. I can speak now about the
innocence that was lost and people will understand.” He feared that if people
knew of his exile, it would overshadow his work—which is not about exile
or nationality, but the relation of human bodies and sound.
“In some ways,”
remarked Manjunan, “I’m more at home musically here than in Sri Lanka; the
avant-garde music community here understands what I do. I have a home inside my
music, inside my relationship to dance, to the optimal performance environment
… that is, in some ways, my true home.”
However, on returning to his home country after twenty
years, he realized he had missed “the vibrations of the society that produced
me. Sri Lanka has five hundred years of colonization, by India, England,
Holland. The music contains all these traditions, church music, Hindu music,
Buddhist, rock ’n’ roll—and so in some sense everything’s allowed. My
physical home is in Minnesota, but my emotional home will always be Sri Lanka.”
“My work as a composer for modern and postmodern dance and
performance art is easily accepted in the East and West coasts and
internationally,” he noted; “however, I would say Minnesota lags on this.”
So when asked what he feels he brings to the mix of the arts
in Minnesota, Manjunan responded with a smile and another question:
“Adventure?”
Gladys Beltran
A painter who arrived here in 1993 from Colombia, Beltran
has a BFA from the University of Antioquia in Medellín, and won a McKnight
Fellowship in 2006. It took her several years to learn English and feel at
home, but now, she says, “the process of growing old and the hope of growing in
the spirit through my work is taking place here.” But she misses her sisters,
her parents—their faces, how they change over time, their jokes and
laughter. “The absence of our loved ones is a temporal death. It is horrible
when you can’t hug them.”
But there is freedom even in this sorrow. “As a painter it
is liberating not to be with some members of my family who love me, I know, but
who cannot understand why I have to paint. Being away, I do not have to explain
over and over why: I have to paint if I want to breathe in peace. I have to
paint because I do love to exist.” She says it’s too soon to know people’s
reactions to her work: “My work is like a baby, and people always like babies.
I haven’t done 1/30th of my project.”
Artists, she believes, are similar everywhere. “I brought my
hungry soul. I can say it is more what I took from you than what I brought,
because I am taking your cities to paint them, I am taking your spaces to
navigate in them with my paintbrushes over the canvas. In other words I will be
taking over your country to paint it, to love it.”
Personally, I don’t think of it as much of a competition. But by virtue of both former Star Tribune editor and publisher Joel Kramer and former City Pages editor Steve Perry being inspired pretty much simultaneously by the collapse of print journalism in the Twin Cities and then deciding to bust sod for a credible alternative, the two men find themselves launching their much-anticipated websites within days of each other.
Kramer, who has received far more attention, recently announced that MinnPost.com will open for business on November 8. Perry, in a conversation this morning, believes there’s a chance the full public debut of The Daily Mole can match or beat that. Not that there is any direct head-to-head competition, you understand.
For those of you who have not been hanging on every cyber-whisper in this duel, if they were cars, MinnPost would be the Oldsmobile sedan with a box of Kleenex in the rear window to Perry’s tricked out ScionB, with the neon ground effect lighting and Borla exhaust. Plenty of style with not much horsepower. MinnPost has signed up something like four dozen local journalists, some stars, some solid veterans, some head-slappers and some unknowns. Perry, who says he has only recently begun to seriously work his network for money, will rely heavily on himself, his wife Cecily Marcus, and a handful of trusted wits like Jimmy Gaines and John Busey-Hunt, for the launch and (hopefully) build his cast of characters incrementally.
The Daily Mole has been in private, behind-password, beta mode for a couple weeks now, and, granting the common sensibility of those invited to look in, the reviews have been pretty good. If the real thing can deliver more of the same … with a boost in substance/value … it’ll be a must read, or must see, since Perry’s interest in original, funky, comic video is high.
Says Perry, “What I told Kramer at the outset when we had coffee, is that it is in our interests that both succeed.”
His point being that traditional advertisers can see as well as you and me that print newspapers are sorry, struggling beasts, shedding content and readability as fast as profit margins. What advertisers are waiting for is something credible to take their place. “With both of us out there trying to tell advertisers that online sites are for real we each get a boost. I think we’ll complement each other.”
Kramer, caught on the way to a luncheon speech of some sort, says MinnPost’s beta phase will begin very soon and run for about a week prior to launch. “We don’t expect things to be perfect at launch, but we hope readers understand and bear with us.”
The chattering class take on this duo is that Kramer must avoid recreating old school ink journalism on the web, adjust his “filter” properly to provide a genuine alternative to what is still being published in print and build a revenue stream rapidly enough — within the next six months — to take full advantage of his “staff” of freelancers before their severance checks from the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press have been lost to casinos, booze and mortgages. Perry’s challenge is to quickly develop a steady flow of bona fide content to match his video and audio cleverness … and find significant investors to keep him afloat for the year or more it’ll take to bring The Mole to some level of maturity.
As has been reported previously, Kramer’s freelance cast will be earning marginal compensation at best for their contributions. (The sliding scale for blog-type posts up to “featured” news pieces is a little confusing, but it is safe to say no one will be buying into a hedge fund with their MinnPost earnings.)
Kramer acknowledges the “ticking clock” of the severance checks on his Strib and PiPress staffers indirectly, saying, “What is a concern to us is the concern of trying to do daily journalism with a freelance staff.” Most of his writers are veteran and experienced enough to self-edit. But given their need to diversify their work loads with other endeavors, there’s no guarantee Kramer and MinnPost will have their full concentration when he needs it most.
Kramer hints that compensation may very well change over the first year as some of his contributors prove themselves to be more valuable than others.
MinnPost’s editing “filters” are another point of curiosity. Everything will be run through his full-time editors, with posts getting less of a work-over. His chosen filters are all experienced, meticulous and cautious. Maybe too cautious. It seems to me a vital quality of the new media is the willingness to take at least one step, (and probably a half dozen steps) further than a daily newspaper in terms of “reporters” offering what they believe to be true. (Along with clearly distinguishing what is “true” from what is bullshit “balance”.)
“Edgy” is a very tired word. But none of Kramer’s editors have ever been accused of “edginess”.
I asked Kramer if he worried about getting tagged with the “old school” label?
“No. Our primary goal is quality. We think we’ll have some elements that will be entertaining. But ‘edgy’ is not a priority. Quality comes first.” He adds that a lot of people think of the Internet in generalities — “edgy”, etc. — but that there are sites, he mentioned Salon and Slate, where solid journalism regularly trumps snark and cool. He wants a slice of that crowd.
Kramer did assure me that video and audio production will be a facet of MinnPost … at launch. And that this is not going to be the cheap version, with reporter/writers toting camcorders. “This will be professional video shot by professionals. I’m not saying on every story. But it will be there at the launch.”
The MinnPost vs. Daily Mole “battle” is not a zero sum game. There is no reason both can’t succeed … or fail. Kramer is carrying much more overhead, something close to $1 million a year, while Perry is playing a variation on the “low expectation game”, as in, “Hey, look what we did with squat and duct tape.”
I wrote a piece on Scandinavian furniture/design a while back and, unfortunately, it came off as slighting one of the finest sellers of Scandinavian wares in all the TC land: none other than Danish Teak Classics. This is the place where your visions of a stylish, modern living area can come into focus. Sure, the prices aren’t in line with what you’ll find at cheap-and-cheerful (and chintzy) Ikea. For starters, their stock of furniture has already seen a good fifty years. And from the looks of things, the average DTC piece will enjoy a healthy hundred more. The Rake’s promotions depot is hosting one of its fabulous Gallery Grooves events at Danish Teak Classics on Thursday eve. Check it: Marinade your decorating ideas in a showroom full of vintage-modern chairs, desks, tables, and lighting fixtures. And the event comes replete with fine wine, food, visual art, and jazz to boot. But no vin rouge on the lounge chairs, please. I heart the pink one at left.
For more than fifteen years, the gap between my two front teeth has been a source of self-loathing. This is usually how that went: I pore over women’s magazines, never pausing at the pencil-thin thighs but rather marveling at the models’ perfect smiles. Next, I stare at my reflection, puzzling over whether my gap makes me look European (Vanessa Paradis), lusty (Lauren Hutton, Madonna), punk-rock (Mick Jones of The Clash), or just plain hideous. When I see photos of myself, I fix upon the gap-toothed grin rather than, say, the double chins. Call me superficial if you must, but believe you me: Diastema can cramp a girl’s style.
In 1997, an unfortunate accident involving sangria, polka, and a good-looking Brit left me with a deadened front tooth. One root canal, a crown (which left the gap intact), and ten years later, the Chiclet started to show signs of wear. So, I figured, how harmless would it be to finally close the gap, since I would be replacing my crown anyway? My only complaint is that food sticks to my smile nowadays, whereas I certainly didn’t have that problem before. In any case, je vous presente me and my new, improved front teeth:
The Hold Steady are well known for tossing hosannas to the Twin Cities’ landscape and music scene, past and present—from name-checking the “Grain Belt bridge” and Payne Avenue to sonic nods to all manner of local bands. Never mind that frontman Craig Finn, a native of Edina, decamped to Brooklyn some seven years ago—the Twin Towns (and their suburbs) remain a key inspiration. Of course, influences outside our city limits also filter into Finn’s songs: hints of Jersey boy Bruce Springsteen (OK, maybe not just hints) or Ohio’s Guided By Voices, not to mention shout-outs to dive bars and shopping malls stumbled across on countless and lengthy tours. So we asked Finn what he’s listening to these days, now that his geographical horizons are wide open.
1. “Enjoying Myself,” The 1990s
We are taking this band on our upcoming tour. Their live show backs up the claim of the song, that they like enjoying themselves. One line I particularly like: “I’m glad we had the party at your place.”
2. “Shirin,” Jens Lekman
I read a negative review of his new record that said Lekman was “condescending,” which might be true. But if it is, it might be one of his best traits.
3. “I’ll Be Your Bird,” M. Ward
This song is an older one, but it’s perfectly creepy and beautiful, and sounds rooted in no particular decade, which is a songwriting feat.
4. “4% Pantomime,” The Band
Every few months I get stuck on the Band. The version I am loving right now is a demo, where Van Morrison stops midway through, offers some advice to the group and tries it again, with Rick Danko taking the first verse this time.
5. “Crazy For Leaving,” Catfish Haven
George Hunter has one of my favorite voices in indie rock. These guys are soulful in the way that Creedence was. We took them on tour and would hear this song every night, and I would wake up singing it every morning.
6. “Thrash Unreal,” Against Me!
It seems that every article I read about this band is about punk-scene politics, but no one seems to want to talk about how massive these songs sound, especially with a chorus of a few thousand excited kids singing along.
7. “Fear and Whiskey,” The Mekons
My friend told me that the Mekons’ live show is “even better than The Replacements.” A big claim, to be sure, but the Mekons sure delivered.
8. “Louisiana 1927,” Randy Newman
Newman is tender and humorous here in a way that almost no one else can be. His songs are often more like character studies, and stunning in their depth.
9. “Elvis Cadillac,” Rickie Lee Jones
Her record this year knocked me on my ear, not only its droney, Velvet Underground-style backing band, but also its confessional tone. I think this is the record I listened to the most this year, and this is the most charming song on the record.
10. “Knock ’Em Out,” Lily Allen
After seeing every “important” band in the world on the European summer festival circuit, I saw Lily Allen on my last night in London. Her live show beat everyone I had seen all year, just by the sheer fun of it. She even did two Specials covers. In this song she coolly turns down potential pick-up artists as quick as they arrive.
What are the essential songs for a first-rate jukebox?
If you were to find yourself locked up for the rest of your days with a trio of fourteen-year-olds and a bunch of musical instruments and amplifiers would you join the band or bash out your brains with a tambourine?
Have you ever heard clearly conspiring voices outside your bedroom window at four a.m. and felt yourself utterly devoid of curiosity or alarm?
Was there, I often wonder, a great pioneer of profanity? Who coined all those marvelous curse words, or first used them in a pejorative sense? I’d like to make that asshole’s acquaintance. I’d love to have known that fucker. I’d be proud as hell to shake that shitheel’s hand.
Chandler or Hammett?
Chaplin or Keaton?
Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart?
Fitzgerald or Hemingway?
Basie or Ellington?
Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett?
Rolling Stones or the Beatles?
Charlie Watts or Ringo Starr?
Replacements or Husker Du?
Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges?
Wodehouse or Waugh?
Spring or Fall?
Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly?
New York or Paris?
Sherman or Grant?
Sam Phillips or Phil Spector?
Lewis or Martin?
Williams or Dimaggio?
Mantle or Mays?
Leonard or Duran?
Mitchum or Lancaster?
SCTV or SNL?
Maurice Sendak or Dr. Seuss?
Baseball or football?
Beethoven or Bach?
Mozart or Mahler?
Joe Strummer or Mick Jones?
Costello or Presley?
Milton or Dante?
Nancy or Sluggo?
Pepsi or Coke?
Cat or dog?
Now or later?
Friend or foe?
Yes or no?
This or that?
Who or who?
What or what?
ART
Where Cigarette Machines Go to Die
We’ve all been to the Chambers Hotel and gawked at the fabulous (or at least fabulously expensive) art lining its halls. But Ralph Burnet’s chic lodgings have another amenity that makes fine art a bit more accessible (or maybe that’s acquirable): the Art-o-Mat, described as “the world’s smallest self-contained art gallery.” Invented by Clark Whittington, these converted cigarette machines dispense original works of art for a five-dollar token. After a couple of $12 Bombay To Tokyos at the Chambers’ bar, that kind of investment is a no-brainer. Tonight, join Whittington and local artists as they celebrate the tenth anniversary of this clever machine — and find out how you, too, can become part of the Art-o-Mat stable. –Julia Caniglia
5:30 – 7:30 p.m., Chambers Hotel, 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-767-6900.
FILM
Groundbreaking Film Exposes Mexican Maquiladoras
If you don’t yet know what a maquiladora is, it’s time to educate yourself. And if you do, well then, this is your opportunity to further that knowledge. This evening, the Labor & Community Film Series presents the acclaimed documentary Maquilápolis, a film about Tijuana’s maquiladoras, multinationally-owned factories attracted by Mexico’s cheap labor and tax incentives. In an intimate and empowering new style, filmmakers Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre bring together Tijuana factory workers and community organizers “to tell the story of globalization through the eyes and voices of the workers themselves — overwhelmingly women — who have borne the costs but reaped few of the benefits.” We’re not just talking on-camera testimonials and the usual talking heads. I said “new” — and what I refer to here is the current trend of putting cameras into the hands of the subjects. This is the video logging era, folks, and filmmakers world-round are adapting to this in all sorts of manners. Covering a very real and provocative topic, Funari and De La Torre did some very smart edgy thinking to overcome one of the biggest obstacles in any kind of cultural or anthropological discourse — the scientist, the recorder — in this case, the person behind the camera. Two of the women actually created their own video diaries, chronicling their struggles. And the result is a ground-breaking film that embraces subjectivity rather than trying to deny it.
7 p.m., Waite House Community Center, 2529 13th Ave. S., Minneapolis; free.
Massive Misinterpretations
Does the Bible really condemn homosexuality? Is homosexuality wrong? Have you still not really made up your mind on this subject? Then you, my friend, are one of the “moveable middle” — the audience that producer/director Daniel Karslake has said he hopes to reach with his new documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So. The thesis of this flick is simple: that the conservative Christian community’s anti-gay sentiments are based on a massive misinterpretation of scripture. Tonight the Lagoon Cinema will host an HRC-sponsored panel discussion after their 7:30 screening. “Moveable”? Come and be swayed one way or the other. Mind made up already? Take part in the (certainly heated) debate. –Danielle Kurtzleben
7:30, Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis; 612-825-6006; $8.25.
Cinema Lounge
For those of us who have already started having family holiday-induced panic attacks, why is it that Halloween proves nothing more than a sweet distraction from our impending emotional crises? Seek preemptive relief at IFP’s Cinema Lounge, where a trio of devilish shorts and an indie trailer will ease the onset of your Turkey Day flashbacks with werewolves, giant pumpkins, and a docu-style rehash of the infamous pirates vs. zombies pubcrawl dance-off of 2006. The films are free, so pony up for another round of Octoberfest to really savor the moment. There are scant days left till the commercial world unleashes their red and green assault. Revel in the fake blood and rotting flesh while you still can. –Danielle Cabot
7 p.m., Bryant Lake Bowl, 810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-825-8949; free.
BOOKS & AUTHORS
A Portrait of Segregation
Join best-selling author Edward P. Jones this afternoon as he discusses his latest collection of short stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Bringing back some of the characters from his previous collection, Lost in The City, Jones paints a diverse and detailed portrait of Washington D.C.’s segregated neighborhoods through present day. “Through his stories we meet people struggling with the complex legacy of slavery, the challenges and disappointments of the urban promise, and the inter-racial class prejudice in the black community.” And we’re not just talking your typical fare; the cast of characters includes government workers, churchgoers, dishwashers, doctors, murderers, and even whores.
2 p.m., University of Minnesota Bookstore, Coffman Memorial Union, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-626-0559; free.