Art
Selective Focus: Artistic Kids
Cheryl Reitan, “Black Cat”
Many thoughtful people have rightfully lamented the gutting of funding for arts education to privilege more “useful” studies. But there are also the limitations we impose on ourselves, and the diminishment of what many of us once so much enjoyed (“I loved to paint and draw as a kid…”). Art too often becomes something we let go to follow well-rutted roads, to conform, and to not stand apart. (more…)
Comics on my Mind
Local artist and design teacher Darren Houser presents on his work, among other presentations at the Martin Library at UMD, organized by Pat Maus.
A recent event at UMD spotlighted comics as a scholarly and artistic pursuit. (more…)
Grocery Evolution
There is an evolution of grocery shopping that occurs during a lifetime, if you didn’t grow up on a farm or hunting shack living off the land. It starts when you’re a kid and your parents drag you along to the Piggly Wiggly, Red Owl or wherever.
They try to ram you into that cold metal seat on the cart, facing the opposite direction of traffic, but it never quite works out. It doesn’t take much kicking and screaming to get mom to let you loose, so you can scamper all over the store and knock things over.
It’s not your fault. You don’t want to be there; you were brought against your will. A tantrum is to be expected.
Also, as long as you are being held hostage on this mission, it only makes sense to grab all the low-hanging snack food and try to use it as a bargaining tool. If mom will simply buy a box of individually wrapped corn syrup wads, you’ll stop tugging on her pants to constantly beg for them. It’s a fair deal.
Eventually, of course, your parents smarten up and lock you in the car. Soon you become old enough to be left home alone, and it’s at that point you enter a long period where you never go to the grocery store. Food is just delivered to you and magically appears in cupboards. This is the halcyon period of your sustenance-acquiring existence. (more…)
Selective Focus: Dirty Snow
Hugh Reitan, “Snowmen”
We’ve had prettier Selective Focus features, but there can be an unusual beauty in ugliness, even humor, as Hugh Reitan’s image above demonstrates (or there’s just abject horror as with Aaron Reichow’s current submission). (more…)
Gaelynn Lea to appear on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series
Duluth musician Gaelynn Lea has been chosen as the winner of National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk Contest. NPR asked musicians from across the country to send a video of an original song, performed behind a desk. Specifically, the contest was seeking “a song and a sound that felt original and a performance that felt inspired.” Among 6,100 entries, Gaelynn Lea was the favorite. Below is her audition video.
“The melody of this song wouldn’t let go – it just stuck with me, it stuck with all the judges. It conveys an overwhelming emotion of yearning and love that’s unforgettable,” said Bob Boilen of NPR Music — whose desk has served as the stage of more than 500 Tiny Desk performances. “What we look for in the contest is an artist who has something singular about what they do, something unique to them, something no one else is doing. Gaelynn Lea has that, and that simply won our hearts.
In the Mourning
Max Haben shot this video “one cloudy Saturday morning in Duluth without much direction.”
Off-Broadway ice fishing
Nice Fish, Mark Rylance’s play based on the poetry of former Duluthian Louis Jenkins, made its off-Broadway debut at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn on Feb. 14 and continues its run through March 13. An article in The New Yorker notes Jenkins’ poems, “which are syncopated reveries about bologna sandwiches, sea lions, and the meaning of life, are integral to the Nice Fish script.”
Rylance won an Oscar on Sunday for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the Steven Spielberg film Bridge of Spies.
Short Shorts Film Festival 2016 Winners
The PDD documentary Honeycomb Hideout won First Place this weekend at the Duluth Playhouse’s annual Short Shorts competition.
See the first, second, and third place winners after the Read More link.
(more…)
I don’t believe in God, yet she is always with me
I was on a trail run the other day in the woods near my house when God spoke to me. He said, “Who cooks for you?” When I didn’t respond he said it again, “Who cooks for you?” So I replied, “We eat out a lot.” Yes, on that particular occasion God was a Barred Owl. (more…)
Creep. Weirdo.
I can’t remember ever knowing who I am or believing I belong.
Moving story, bro, but what’s your point? A lot of people occasionally wonder who they are. We all sometimes feel out of place.
Right. But I mean I have no idea who I am. I mean I have never (literally not ever) felt like I belong among other humans. Oh, and sometimes when I’m trying to figure out that stuff I feel like part of me was from Duluth — from this place — long before I started living here. That’s pretty weird.
I come from people who lived in Duluth for a while and loved it and contributed to it and died and are buried in dirt here. My maternal great-grandpa, George Beck, was Duluth Central principal for about 30 years, then helped found WDSE-TV. Mom grew up in McGregor and often came over on the train to visit him and great-grandma (Leila) Beck. Mom got a Duluth Business University degree and worked at the air base for a while. Dad graduated from UMD in 1970, the same year I was conceived at 927 West Fifth Street. Great-grandma died in ’81; Great-grandpa went in ’91; their bodies are at Forest Hill Cemetery.
When my mind was forming itself, Mom and Dad brought my younger brother and I here a few times. They also told us a lot of stories about this place: Mom’s tempting, terrifying girlhood dream about diving into the canal; Dad and some college buddies — they’d gone to watch a storm — helping authorities haul up the body of a diver who died trying to rescue two doomed boys from currents between the canal’s piers; Mom going downtown for movies and snacks and shopping with her grandma, and gazing over The Lake from Central’s clock tower with her grandpa; Dad’s UMD professors (some stuffy, some hip) and roommates (rowdy); and on and on. (more…)
Selective Focus: Simple
Paul McIntyre, untitled
Who would have that thought simplicity should be so difficult? What we leave out of a picture says volumes over that which we cram into one, at least according to my aesthetic principles. Given the visual clutter I’m daily exposed to, my preferences would seem to be in the minority, so it was gratifying to see some consonant souls this week. (more…)
Holy Hootenanners – “It’s Time to Let it Go”
Check out the new video from the title track of the Holy Hootenaners album It’s Time to Let it Go. The song was written by Colleen Myhre and the video was produced by Paul Marvin Arts.
Abortion Contest
In 2003, George W. Bush was running for re-election. (I don’t want to talk about whether or not this was a re-election campaign or an election campaign, after the Florida funny business. I’m just glad he’s not the president now.) The campaign was ugly. The issues were suddenly intensely divisive and personal — particularly where Roe v. Wade was concerned. You couldn’t turn the radio on without hearing ferocious, fervent diatribes surrounding the issue of legal abortion. I was accustomed to avoiding the conversation, and, hopefully, allowing each person to reconcile their own reproductive decisions between themselves and God or whomever they like to reconcile themselves to.
But it was all over the radio and television, in conversation overheard in bank teller lines and grocery stores, and, it turns out, on the playground. My son was only 9 years old. I’m not sure how the political pogwank wove itself into playground diatribe — perhaps between games of four-square and soggy rectangle pizza slices, the little ones polarized and debated the benefits and disadvantages of prison reform and estate tax in hissed, lispy whispers. Anyway. I think it was sometime around October? The campaign rhetoric was bitter, loud, and everywhere. I fielded ten kabillion questions from my son about everything from homosexuality to terrorism, providing spanky PBS answers, neatly avoiding genitals, hate, and murder. Then, one day, as I drove us to the grocery store, my son piped up, “Mom, what’s an abortion?” (more…)
Selective Focus: Elders
Christine Dean, “Shuffleboard”
Last year my folks moved into senior housing. While it must have been traumatic to leave a home of 45 years, to abandon treasures from a lifetime of travels, and to part with thousands of photographs, they’ve created a miniature version of the life they knew, and found friends who were similarly diminished — but not lain low. (more…)
Review: Ken Bloom’s Public Domain
Should we think about these photographs or their subjects? Yes. Do we consider the art of them or the culture they depict? Yes, both. And perhaps composition or feeling? Again, yes.
Ken Bloom’s exhibition Public Domain: Street Photographs of Japan 1976-78 at the Duluth Art Institute shows three years of his work from the mid-1970s in city areas of Japan. Most are black and white; a few later ones are in color. The compositions are tight. The subject is people in their time and environment. Movement (striding, shopping, riding, jumping, talking, gazing) and waiting (for the ferries, for the trains, for the kids, for the work day to begin) are the subjects of many. (more…)
Drain Duluth
This is fascinating and frightening. It’s from “Draining Zenith City” a blog entry by Dan Turner, a photographer, urban explorer and historian. The name of his blog is Substreet. The picture here is Chester Creek, somewhere under the Rose Garden. Turner has also documented other places around Duluth and Superior, and industrial and abandoned spaces across the country.
A journey along the edges of the Land of Wonder
At the Duluth Art Institute, right now, exists a portal into other worlds and an alternate way of being. Head on over to Ed’s Big Adventure for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into artist Shawna Gilmore’s art studio, images from this show that appeals to children and adults alike, and more. Also included is Shawna’s painting that’s featured on Charlie Parr’s next album cover, due out on April 15.
Bicycling the Hillside
The climb feels endless. Tattered concrete fills my field of vision — taunting and mocking my painfully slow bike ride up the hill. My legs ache and are starting to shake. My lungs burn and seem to collapse a bit more every time I turn the pedals over and try to suck in a great, heaving gulp of oxygen.
The front wheel wobbles for lack of momentum, forcing me to cross back. Now I’m shamefully zig-zagging across the steep avenue, which both relieves the burdensome pitch, but quadruples the length of the climb. There is a deep desire in me, immutable by logic or maturity, to ride the whole way, steep inclines notwithstanding.
Then the moment of kinetic equilibrium arrives in which the depleted energy of my legs can no longer overcome gravity’s backward force and for the briefest moment my bike and I are stuck in suspended animation. I dismount at the very moment gravity begins to prevail. With humility washing over me, bike and I switch roles as I become the vehicle delivering the two of us up the hillside. (more…)
WITC-Superior welding students create sculpture
Superior Business Improvement District, Wisconsin Arts Board, the National Endowment for the Arts and WITC-Superior welding students unveiled their public sculpture in the vacant lot adjacent to Sclavi’s Restaurant on Tower Ave. in Superior.
The Wishing Tree is a community art participation project. Thirteen welding students of WITC-Superior, under the direction of Aleasha Hladilek, were asked to create a 7-foot sculptural metal tree. These 13 students are enrolled in the full time technical structural welding course. (more…)
Selective Focus: Sweet
Sarah Jean, untitled
Given our theme, this week’s images could easily have veered into cloying territory. Thankfully I received many uniquely interpreted shots, and some that are even exceptionally moving. I’m grateful how this feature included our older loved ones; a population often disregarded in visual art. Let’s remedy that next week by dedicating a theme to our “elders.” (more…)
Moving North
I left a good life in the City.
My husband and I had established careers and moved our young family out of our Minneapolis duplex and into our forever house in a first-ring suburb. An Atomic rambler with thick plaster walls, on a corner lot in an award-winning school district, it was lovely. Add in large, southern-exposed windows, a fireplace and a finished basement large enough to raise Shetland ponies, well, it was the “Beige Rambler of my Dreams.” Jason and I planned to watch our children grow up in their award-winning school district, as we grew old in the safety of one-floor living.
And though my husband had truly wanted this house and all its middle-class trappings, our suburban lifestyle had Jason on the verge of a boredom aneurysm.
That’s when a Duluth headhunter found him; a vulnerable adult constricted by a place where lawn maintenance was competitive sport. Given we lived on the boulevard (a term invoked with a disturbing reverence) there was pressure to perform to Olympic levels with chemical sprays, lawn services and street-long coordinated Christmas light displays. In contrast, curb appeal in the Northland is scarcely an intramural. (more…)
Selective Focus: Clean
Sharon Mollerus , “Crown Fountain, Chicago”
Clean is a construct; an aspiration more than an actuality, demanding as much scrutiny as that which we deem dirty. Each term requires criticality, and attempting to understand the world from broader contexts. Likewise, while we could use more rituals like the Roman’s annual Februa purification festival (from which I drew our theme) we could well abandon their plutocratic, militaristic ways. (more…)
God Bless Young Love
Strange-but-cute little video by Shawn Donovan.
Blacklist brewery expanding to downtown Duluth
Jon Loss, Brian Schanzenbach and TJ Estabrook, the partners behind Blacklist Artisan Ales
One of the smaller Twin Ports breweries, Blacklist Artisan Ales, is earning big media attention this week after its announced expansion into the building that previously housed the infamous Last Place on Earth head shop. (more…)
Mon Historie d’Amour avec Mon Estomac (My Romance With My Stomach)
I’m a Minnesotan in Paris. And I’m alone.
It’s not romantic. Paris with the one you love is romantic. Paris while you navigate the rain, the metro transit system, and a creative-writing residency class-load and its homework, is challenging and more than a little lonely. I’m one of the new kids here, and while I’ve made friends, it’s hard to step up to a circle and demand to know what we’re all doing tonight. I’m not built that way. I’m built for books and Netflix. I’m built for empty movie theaters and empty seats next to me on planes. I’m built for my wife. She is my co-conspirator and without her every experience feels drenched in a demi-glace of melancholy that mingles with the January mist and chills my bones.
JESUS. Chill out, Bennett. Someone’s been spending too much time talking imagery and not enough time eating.
And, since I’m in Paris, eating is a must. So I’m taking my stomach on a date. Instead of flowers, I will buy my stomach flour. We will take a long walk in the rain to a restaurant void of tourists, and the wine will flow. And, after a date like this, my stomach will totally put out.
Okay, I may have extended that metaphor too far. But, you know, that’s why I’m in school. To learn how to not make it sound like I expect my stomach to have sex with me. (more…)