To lose an oak is no heartbreak. —No, but to see them go by the acre, at a stroke, is enough to crack a man open, the heart not broken so much as stricken, torqued at the root and left in a thick choke of ache. Just so, a whole forest’s felling will take faith’s … Read more
As you walk down the narrow hallway into Frank Sander’s sunlit studio in Lowertown you’re greeted by an entryway table piled with cables, cast-off camera bits, miscellaneous video equipment, and a couple of discarded microphone heads. On the walls are personal treasures the German-born artist has picked up during his twenty-odd years of travel. He … Read more
Hendrickson’s handiwork is a mélange of burlesque camp, cowgirl grit, and Victorian flourish. She’s undeniably influenced by ’70s pop design and ’80s album covers, but this North Dakota girl also mixes in a frontier spirit straight out of a nineteenth-century Sears, Roebuck catalog. But make no mistake, the work has some bite: Hendrickson’s all-American blonde … Read more
All artists come from a foreign country, in some sense. Where “originality” is essential, each artist becomes a world in him- or herself, with zealously guarded borders. But what’s it like to be an artist who makes a home in a distant land? The answers to this and a thousand other questions are different … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
The Hold Steady are well known for tossing hosannas to the Twin Cities’ landscape and music scene, past and present—from name-checking the “Grain Belt bridge” and Payne Avenue to sonic nods to all manner of local bands. Never mind that frontman Craig Finn, a native of Edina, decamped to Brooklyn some seven years ago—the Twin … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more