Art
Selective Focus: Esther Piszczek
This week, Esther Piszczek talks about her journey from attorney and doodler to artist and teacher. Be sure to check out the beautiful documentary produced by Lola Visuals toward the end of the post to see in real-time how she makes her intricate artwork.
EP: I am a pattern artist specializing in the Zentangle® method of pattern drawing. The Zentangle method, created by Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts in Massachusetts, uses a .01 Sakura micron pen and pencil shading on a 3.5 x 3.5 inch paper tile to create intricate, beautiful, non-representational art. The method is contemplative and founded on the principle that there are no mistakes, only opportunities to create something unexpected. (more…)
Sketchbooks at Brooklyn Art Library: Steven Rodriques
I’m digging deeper into the online collection of Duluth-related Sketchbooks at the Brooklyn Art Library. (more…)
Sisyphus on a Skateboard: A Review of “To Keep Him Hidden”
I reviewed Ryan Vine’s book of poetry. It’s good! Check the review out here.
Sketchbooks at Brooklyn Art Library: Samantha Nielsen
About a year ago, Samantha Nielsen was subject of a Selective Focus on Perfect Duluth Day. She’s one of the Duluth artists in the Brooklyn Art Library. (more…)
PDD Quiz: Murals of Superior
Test your art smarts with this quiz, which explores the murals of Superior. Murals in Duluth were explored in an earlier quiz, which can be found here.
The next PDD quiz, reviewing headlines from January 2019, will be published on Jan. 27. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Jan. 24. (more…)
Selective Focus: Amber Burns
Amber Burns is a true advocate for the arts. She has worked as a dancer, choreographer, painter, teacher and is now Artistic Director of the Duluth Playhouse Family Theatre. This week she talks about her love of many types of expression, and how she builds the work of other people as well as the many disciplines of her own.
AB: When I think about my medium I more like to think about what I love to create, which is visual movement, whether it is through my choreography, directing, through sculpture or on a canvas. Sometimes my medium is paint and sometimes it is physical bodies. I am a dancer, actor, director, choreographer, and visual artist. When I was just three years old I started dancing at a studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota and when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I said, “I already am a dancer!” As I got older I developed passions for many other things, including drawing and painting. When it was time to pick a career and go to college I decided to b become an art teacher, and graduated from UMD in 2011 with a BFA in Art Education, all the while I was still dancing and teaching dance classes. At UMD I also received a minor in dance, and this is where I was introduced to the theater world.
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Sketchbooks at Brooklyn Art Library: Sam Luoma
Brooklyn Art Library claims to hold the largest collection of sketchbooks in the world with more than 41,000 sketchbooks on shelves and more than 20,000 in a digital library. Some of them reference Duluth. (more…)
Servant-Leader and Artist
Jan Carlson Carey
My friend Jan Carlson Carey and I served on the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council at the time of its immense growth. I was the at-large Duluth representative, and Jan represented the Iron Range, more or less.
In all those five years, I never knew she was a talented painter in her own right. (more…)
Selective Focus: Erin Tope
We kick off 2019 with a profile of dancer and choreographer Erin Tope, who as her stage persona Miss Tallulah Creant, keeps busy with the Duluth Dolls and other burlesque groups, is a member of the band Red Mountain, teaches, and works to make dance of all kinds more accessible to audiences and those interested in participating.
I am a dancer, choreographer, performer, and dance teacher. My mother was a dancer and dance teacher so she put me in creative movement classes at age three. By age six, I was in ballet at Minnesota School of Ballet here in Duluth. While at Minnesota Ballet I also studied Jazz and Modern dance. At age eight I started figure skating with Duluth Figure Skating Club and continued to competitively skate until age 16, when I was accepted into Perpich Center for Arts Education. There I finished my junior and senior year of high school in their Dance Department, studying Modern Dance, Ballet, Dance Composition and Dance History extensively. I moved back to Duluth after graduating and began Performing with Over The Top dance company, with a focus on Latin Ballroom Dance, mainly Salsa. With that group I was lucky enough to attend and perform at Chicago International Salsa Congress as well as learn the inner workings of producing shows. I learned most of my production, technical, and backstage lessons in those days and that has definitely shaped who I am and what I am capable of today. After the Director of Over The Top Dance moved to Minneapolis in 2011, I started dancing with Grace Holden and through her got connected with Rebecca Katz Harwood at UMD.
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Selective Focus: Jason Voss
This week artist Jason Voss talks about the art and challenges of tattooing. He recently opened a shop, Gitchee Gumee Tattoo on Central Entrance, and will be hosting a Grand Opening on Jan. 14.
JV: Tattooing is a craft that requires a lot of technical skill. Being able to control needle depth, emulate texture, and keep a steady hand over a squishy, rounded object are some of the fundamentals of tattooing. (more…)
Postcard from Tweed Gallery
This undated postcard image of the Tweed Museum of Art appears to be circa the 1970s. The text on the back reads:
Tweed Gallery
The only major art gallery in Northern Minnesota, Tweed Gallery on the University of Minnesota, Duluth campus has attracted more than 300,000 visitors since it opened in 1958. Funds for the gallery were donated by Mrs. Alice Tweed Tuohy, now of Santa Barbara, California and her daughter, Mrs. John Brickson, Duluth. Twenty shows each year feature international, national, faculty and student artists in four separate exhibition areas.
Independent Television Festival moving to Duluth
The five-day Independent Television Festival is moving from Manchester, Vt. to Duluth. ITV plans to open an office in Duluth early next year and have year-round programming. The company estimates the festival could bring more than $1.5 million into the local economy.
The 14th annual festival is scheduled for Oct. 9-13. It showcases episodic television shows for TV executives, agents and producers from outlets like Netflix and Bravo, but is also open to the public. The goal is to discover new television programs created on independent budgets. (more…)
Selective Focus: Naomi Christenson
Naomi Christenson has been featured here before as a dancer, this week we get to see her work as a painter. A self-described “detail junkie” she gets inspiration from unusual places, including fungus and lichen. Her paintings are filled with immaculate detail and vibrant colors, abstraction and pattern.
NC: I primarily work in acrylic paint, though I’ve also worked with oil and gouache for some projects. When I started painting, it was in a classroom and we worked primarily on still lives. The instructor set up a backdrop with a diverse collection of objects in the foreground and we painted it. In that setting, I found myself most drawn to the complex objects with lots of detail. An old gumball machine with its glassy top, red metal body and shiny silver flourishes springs to mind as one of my favorite objects to paint. Beyond classes, the more I painted the more my style came into view. For example, I found myself happiest with paintings that not only had a lot of detail but also a lot of color. Years later I discovered my love of natural patterns and the mix within my work became more interesting. (more…)
“Anyone’s life is smooth from far away. Anyone’s life close up is cracked.”
Julie Gard’s new poetry is awesome.
“This piece consists of 51 texts I sent to myself first thing in the morning during the 2016 presidential election season. Hopefully some of them will speak to you,” says Gard, describing her work in Superstition Review.
Selective Focus: #northernminnesota
A few views of the area via Instagram. (more…)
Selective Focus: John Heino
This week in Selective Focus, we hear from photographer John Heino about his work, and how he he balances his ever-growing creative wish list as well as evolving travel and equipment wish lists.
JH: I began as an old-school film photographer in the early 80’s as an art student at UMD. With the advent of digital photography, I made the transition from darkroom to computer. I was a bit skeptical about digital in the beginning, but it’s incredible how the technology has evolved over the last ten years. (more…)
PDD Gift Guide 2018
Find something for everyone on your gift-giving list with PDD’s annual curated gift guide. It’s a bit different than most gift guides in that it’s not a list of stores that advertise with PDD — it’s a list of items created in our region, chosen simply because they are nifty. (more…)
(Former) local author Michael Fedo, Well-Reviewed
Former Duluthian Michael Fedo’s new book is reviewed on the arts and literature website Open Letters Review:
For all readers interested in the workaday writing life, it’s fascinating to follow Fedo through his many adventures, from writing an authorized biography of Garrison Keillor vehemently opposed by its subject to interviewing Cloris Leachman about starring in a play about Grandma Moses (which flopped).
I enjoy this book well enough, it inspired my Spring syllabus for Writing Studies majors.
Selective Focus: Ice and Frost
This week, some cold and icy scenes from around the area. (more…)
Selective Focus: Richard C. Johnson
This week, photographer Richard C. Johnson tells how he looks for and catalogs special locations to come back to with his camera, how and why he has switched between ways of making images, and the advantages of Flickr over Instagram.
RCJ: I have lived and worked as an artist in Duluth for more than 35 years. My education and training as an artist was in both printmaking and photography. I have always thought of myself as first and foremost a photographer, even through those times I was not actively photographing. In the latter half of the 1980s, I found myself without access to a viable darkroom, and was living in a house that had no suitable place to build one. I spent a few years working with collage, mixed media, and assemblages, with varying degrees of success. In 1992 I purchased a Mac computer along with a flatbed scanner. For the next 8 years I worked exclusively within the realm of digital montage. When I did photograph, it was to make images to be part of a montage, not as singular works in themselves. By the turn of the century, 2000-’01, I felt a bit burned out with this work, spending too much time in front of a computer, and living too much in my head. I felt that what I needed was to return to photography, and reconnect with the world. (more…)
Selective Focus: Kip Praslowicz’s video blog
This week in Selective Focus, we’re going to tune in to Kip Praslowicz’s YouTube channel. You may remember Kip from such films as “Memory Card Dump #14,” “Memory Card Dump #11” and “The Story of Homegrown 2016.” He’s a prolific photographer, and his YouTube feed is a combination of tutorials on working with film photography, behind the scenes documentaries about his ongoing photo projects, and photographic experiments. Even if you’re not really needing instruction on loading 120 roll film into a decades-old camera, there’s plenty of other wisdom and fun. Here are a few samples along with a brief bit of background from Kip. Take a look, and then “smash that subscribe button.”
KP: Before I did photos, I was into making music. Before I was making music, I was into making weird videos. This was also when I was about 11 and used a big VHS camera with the only concept of editing being by starting and stopping the tape. (more…)
Elevators at Duluth
Date unknown, artist unknown.
Nominations for Arrowhead Arts Awards
Help the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council celebrate the best artists and arts advocates in the region. Many of us know an artist or arts advocate who deserves a little more recognition. Nominate that special artist for the Arrowhead Arts Awards. ARAC wants to recognize those who contribute to the arts in the region with two prestigious awards, which include cash awards. The deadline to nominate an individual is Dec. 7. (more…)
Selective Focus: Jim Richardson
Jim Richardson is an artist, a writer, a snorkeler and outdoorsman, a video blogger — in other words, a modern day renaissance man. He has a show of his cartoons opening tonight (Friday, Oct. 5) at the Red Herring Lounge. This week in Selective Focus, we get a preview of the show, and hear about some of the other projects he has up his sleeve.
JR: My current show at the Red Herring features recent cartoon illustrations I’ve done for transistormag.com, so I am wearing my cartoonist cap. The Perfect Duluth Day community knows me primarily, if anything, by the work I do as Lake Superior Aquaman. But cartooning has been with me the longest. I have always been a committed doodler. (more…)