The Nester

In an effort to seek out and engage multiple voices and viewpoints from the local arts community, we occasionally will present on The Thousandth Word postings by "Vicious Guests" — that is, writings by various artists, curators, guest critics, journalists, art experts, art lovers, and other essential members of the arts community who have a […]

One Day, One Night, Saturday's Alright

AMONG THE GREAT unanswerable questions that haunt our city is this one: Why is there a giant, crappy K-Mart superstore sitting in the middle of Nicollet Avenue? For a city that is second-to-none in making catastrophic urban planning blunders, surely the decision in the late-‘70s to plop down a strip mall in the middle of […]

The New Dada

Part the first — History Is the Past   History is something that happens to other people. -Anonymous   WELCOME STUDENTS. I’d like to begin today’s seminar with a pop quiz. (No groaning, people!) Please take out your Bluebooks and answer the following two-part question: 1. Identify the following historical era: In the early years […]

Dried Blood and Dandelion Wine

(Header image credit: "Conversation with Death" by Gabriel Combs) In an effort to seek out and engage multiple voices and viewpoints from the local arts community, I will present in my space on The Thousandth Word occasional postings by “Vicious Guests” — that is, writings by various artists, curators, guest critics, journalists, art experts, art […]

Serious Art

Here’s a truism of modern art: Every new generation of emerging young artists is convinced it will reinvent the culture. And, strangely enough, they all go about this reinvention pretty much in the same way: By making a bunch of meaningless noise. Think of Tristan Tzara here, and his poems that go nowhere. Think of […]

The Paintings Have Been Drinking (Not Me)

Travel back with me, if you will for just a moment, to those happy, halcyon days of the year 2001. Oh, what a time to be a young American artist it was! The world waited breathlessly for the final bombshell in Matthew Barney’s Cremaster film cycle to drop (spoiler: Gary Gilmore did it!), and your […]

Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits, 1905 – 1920

A revealing and fascinating set of images snapped by an untrained eye have been making the rounds through museums around the country and finally makes a stop at the Minnesota History Center starting July 4. "Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits, 1905 – 1920", a photographic series of newly arrived immigrants taken by an Ellis […]

Oh Man, Look at Those Cavemen Go!

On my first pass through the 2008 Carnegie International, the massive, just-mounted edition of the 112-year-old international art survey that runs through next January at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, I eighty-percent hated the show. It started with the forced theme, "Life on Mars"–the first time ever that the show has had a […]

If you don't like this blog then you are a BOOBIE

photo by Jessica Hegland, Hair by Jon Richards. Make up by Leilani Baker, Make up Artist Goddess. Wardrobe from Melly’s Closet of Phases: Dress-BADGLEY MISCHKA-purchased at the DAYTON’S 2day warehouse sale during my lunch break at KSTP TV. Price for me to know and you not! Shoes: don’t have a clue because someone stole them […]

Nurses, diesels and douchiness

(Pictured. Douching device (not to size). May also be used for urea replacement in your diesel. Read below). Do me a favor. Take the snarky tone of my blog (is it? oh, is it? please!) and put it aside for a minute. I mean create an Obama and the Preacher (aka bigot) wall between my […]