As corporate promotions go, this one’s pretty darn admirable, offering as it does a glimpse of what’s new and different on the art scene. Each year, the eponymous mint manufacturer enlists a keen-eyed panel of folks (such as Walker Art Center’s Douglas Fogle) to help it purchase a couple dozen pieces from emerging artists, many … Read more
Emerging photographers Hock and Reinhardt, from Minnesota and New York, respectively, find the cure for homesickness through the lens of a camera. The pictures from this itinerant pair reveal a constant search for home and its comforts, familiarities, and reminders of loved ones. Finding home when you’re away is a strange, backward way to travel, … Read more
This traveling Seussentennial exhibition, honoring the beloved author’ hundredth birthday, lands in Minneapolis. Dr. Seuss introduced us to the Grinch, to Horton and Yertle, and to sneetches; he made us wonder what green eggs and ham would taste like. But here’ a chance to see work that didn’ make it into his children’ books, including … Read more
Whether they recognize it or not, almost everyone has a personal gallery of oddments and artifacts stuffed in a closet or arranged on a shelf. Maybe these things are consciously collected, or maybe they tell a story about the time or person or place they came from. And maybe they deserve a wider audience–some of … Read more
Contrasting the new Walker with New York’s almost-as-new Museum of Modern Art gives us yet another reason to love living in the Twin Cities. MOMA still tells the authoritative history of modern art, and does so more efficiently by funneling larger hordes through its expansive galleries. The Walker couldn’t be more different. Lingering, wandering, and … Read more
Only in the bluegrass world is an eighty-three-year old expected to keep touring as a matter of course. Then again, why not? Doc’s music is in the full flush of an ongoing bluegrass revival. He recorded a new album last year, and doesn’t seem inclined to retire anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean it’s not … Read more
If this is a trend, then we see no problem with being called trendy. As soon as people discover the happiness-enhancing and near-addictive qualities of really good cupcakes–not to mention their portability–there will be cupcake shops popping up all over the city. It worked so well with coffee, after all. While we’re writing our business … Read more
It would be hard to find a more alluring summer show than these luminous, glittering waterscapes. Painter May Stevens first came to prominence in the sixties with pop-inspired, politically charged works, but the expansive canvases here couldn’t be more different. They hang freely, like tapestries, to envelop viewers; trickling across them are gilded words, often … Read more
I have a friend who is a stylist in New York; it’s part of her job to read magazines, from the trashiest of titles (In Touch Weekly) to more esoteric fare like Italian Vogue and Surface. When I’d visit, she’d often load me up with back issues, which I’d browse on the way home. Sitting … Read more
Browsing through Spot On: The Art of Zines and Graphic Novels at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts was something of a jarring experience. As someone who spent (or lost) more than a decade of the prime years of my life as a service sector drone, haunting independent record and book stores, and scribbling furiously … Read more