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On the wrong side of the tracks in Fergus Falls, we drive past homes patched together by peeling paint, and climb up through the cement factory’s back lot. At the top of the hill, there’s a silver mailbox: C. Beck. A trail of faded wood steps carries us through the woods, over a ravine; the path becomes a bridge, the bridge becomes a porch lightly dusted by snow.

Among the firs is a driftwood-colored Bauhaus-style house. Charlie Beck comes to the door in a worn flannel shirt. He has the freckled complexion of a farm boy, faded into a pale chamois and framed by wild white hair.

Beck’s studio is much like any garage workshop in rural Minnesota. Cluttered work benches are pigeonholed with drawers, and punctured boards on the wall hold hooks for hanging tools. Duck decoys in various stages of disrepair congregate on a shelf. At one end of the room, light from a skylight spills onto a single woodcut print of winter poplars, illuminating a pattern of notched trunks. I notice a note on the woodcut reading "Cathedral." This is the road less taken, where tiny panes of light glimmer through the crisscrossed branches.

Beck is not so different, on the surface, than his deer-hunting, farming, small-town neighbors. As poet Mark Strand put it, Charlie Beck is "a modernist in regionalist camouflage." It is autumn when we talk: open fields of turned earth, the startle of a cloud, wisps of snow between the great skeletons of trees. Quarreling geese resolve on point, and the ancient gilded light lingers over bent grasses. "It’s this," Beck waves his hand at the world around him: the trees, the fields, the little barns on hills. "It’s a feast. The temptation [to create art] is everywhere."

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

Michael Thomsen was born into a line of circus people and performers and, in a way, he’s continuing in the family business. Thomsen grew up in Austin, Minnesota, "in the shadow of the Hormel meatpacking plant." His first job as a kid involved sorting through the junk drawers and closets of the recently deceased for his grandfather, the proprietor of a successful carnival midway business who worked as an auctioneer in the off-season. "I loved going through those old drawers," he says. "It is powerful to touch all those small, personal things-keys, playing cards, watches, little odds and ends. After all that handling, they have life in them. In fact, some of the things I pocketed back then still show up in my work."

Thomsen’s creations-lying somewhere between collage, sculpture, and painting-are self-contained marvels of both engineering and art, peopled by found objects and laden with dream symbols. In Thomsen’s wonderlands, you get to be Alice. Turn a nondescript crank on the side of Clock and the tinny melodies of a hidden music box emerge; peer closely into the crystal ball at the center of Roundabout and you’ll find a tiny painting tucked inside. The imagery of Thomsen’s work hails straight from the carnival lurking in the recesses of our childhood wishes and fears. Menace lives cheek by jowl with the sublime. Harlequins and fortunetellers, cherubs and horned beasties, mirrors and gears-they all bark for your attention. "To me, the little worlds in these pieces have the same balance of light and dark that the outside world has," Thomsen explains. "Everything’s there-the good and bad, ugly and beautiful. The real world doesn’t always make sense to me so, in these pieces, I arrange things in a way that reflects how I see things, by the rules that make sense to me."

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

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.}

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.

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"