Hattie Peterson, untitled
I would rather see a photograph of pencil shavings than a high resolution Hubble space telescope image of some distant star cluster. Maybe that’s because I am already profoundly aware of my own insignificance, and therefore hold the inconsequential beauty of ordinary things closely. Reality doesn’t require hypermediation, and I would dearly miss all that’s sensual in what is close at hand if I were somehow, someday deprived of it.
In the first episode of Season Two of Curb Your Enthusiasm (2001), Larry David is trying to sell cars for the first time in his life. Duluth comes up in his spiel.
Customer: What kind of gas mileage am I going to get?
Larry David: Fifty-two.
Customer: Fifty-two in the city.
David: Depending on the city, of course. Duluth is a city, it’s considered a city, but it’s not as big as Brooklyn or whatever.
Customer: Okay.
Aaron Reichow, untitled
My grandpa Mohrbacher moved to Duluth in 1928 and was a tenant at the Traphagen home, which was gutted by arson the week before I arrived here. I was lamenting this loss to a sauerkraut maker I’d met at a cider pressing who told me he’d lived there in the 70s when the home became the Redstone Apartments, and that he had some interior photos. They were beautiful. I could picture my grandpa in the same sun room, occupied by a new friend over 50 years later.
Artist Jan Kather, who teaches photography and video art at Elmira College in Elmira, N.Y., recently produced this video memoriam for worshippers killed in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
Local relevance: An image from the 1920 Duluth lynchings is included.
Kip Praslowicz, “Crowd. 4th of July Parade. Superior, WI”
This was a tough theme, and it’s gratifying to see how each of you broadened it: Richard’s 50th Anniversary of the Wright gas station in Cloquet and the 25th Beargrease, Kip’s shots from the 4th of July, or Kyle celebrating a month of Jane’s being cancer free. I went conventional, with my folks’ belated anniversary honeymoon. We mark time in many ways.
Brandon Wagner , “Hawaiian Punch”
Paul wins the horse race from the 30 or so photogs who snapped Kip’s birthday shots last week. And I’ve included a black and white photo, because as Van Gogh asserted, they’re colors too; though pedants would argue that in a subtractive color space, white is the absence of color. I bristle.
An artistic collaboration between Jeremiah Brown, Brian Barber and Banksy. T-shirts go on sale never.
Awesome creative writing from local creative type Lucie Amundsen.
Check it out!
Excerpt:
Drifts (from Portland Review)
It’s just past midnight and my 13-year-old is not back from her babysitting gig. Abbie’s a couple of hours late now and the parents’ cell rolls directly to voice mail. Likely it’s just drained of charge from the weather. It’s that cold. Days of Arctic fronts have animated our newscasters, who brandish their arms over the Minnesota map as they issue dire warnings. The air is more than raw, it’s dangerous. …
I saw my friends Dana and Michelle yesterday, and they reminded me that this is one heckova week for art outdoors.
Bente Soderlind, untitled
As a Catholic in exile, I am grateful to have found a far less-dogmatic refuge in Quaker meetings, where silence is a central tenet. These suited the syncretic nature of my beliefs, and afforded somewhere to weekly “center;” to hear that inner voice, or to just mutely chant the Meow Mix jingle (“I want tuna, I want chicken, Meow Mix flavors keep me lickin…”). But as is evident this week, there are many ways to calm the din, and places to find quiet.
Duluth needs a community ceramics studio, and we need your input to start making this happen. You can help by filling out this seven-question survey. It will take less than three minutes and will provide invaluable information to get our pelotes rolling. We know nobody gets that reference but it stays. You can totally look it up.
We encourage you to complete the survey regardless of your interest in ceramics. Thanks much!
Aaron Reichow, untitled
Many very good submissions this week, and I’m especially happy with all the unusual vantages points: Brian’s empathetic portrait, or that lovely flower in Gaelynn’s hair. I was also moved by the shots of crowds, after all music is as much about how it is received as it is about how it is made.
A cool story crossed news desks yesterday. Duluth is once again on the national radar as a very special place. Last year Outside magazine gave us kudos. Now it’s Livability.com. Here are the details.
The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council awarded the following grants and fellowships to the following applicants, many from Duluth. If you see these artists, congratulate them.
Jeremiah Brown, “Heiko”
Mirthful man that he was, Nietzsche wrote “it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” There’s a recognition there that being human is a difficult endeavor, and that taking ourselves too seriously is one of the ways we compound the difficulty. Thanks to all who braved letting down their stoic fronts this week.
