End-of-September Musings
On a rainy day in late September I removed the screen from the window of my attic studio, cranked the casement open as wide as it would go, leaned out and took a picture of my back garden, with the crabapple tree just beginning to turn. I do love a wet garden.
I’m enjoying a little breather after the LoLa Art Crawl, which takes place here in Minneapolis on the weekend before the equinox. During the weeks leading up to LoLa, I become quite immersed in making zines and other preparations and always tell myself I should have done this or that sooner why did I not start making these things in July? Oh, yeah: I was finishing up the Useful Calendar. At least that is something I no longer print and cut and assemble myself, which is why I can make a lot of zines after sending the calendar off to my local printer.
What I like most about this small neighborhood art crawl, besides that it means I am done with madly making things, is the conviviality. While people certainly do come out to see and buy art and handcrafted items, a good many of them are also paying social calls to local artists with whom they’ve become acquainted because of this annual event.
I live in the Longfellow neighborhood, and the all-volunteer group that somehow manages to pull this off every year since 2009 (except in 2020) is the League of Longfellow Artists—hence: LoLa.
I set up my table of wares with a clutch of 15 artists at a spot called The Toolbox Collective.
The Toolbox
The building was originally an auto mechanic’s garage, then a children’s play space called Betsy’s Toolbox, and now an art space with a handful of studios arranged in an open floor plan in some of the former garage bays, with an adjoining sitting and teaching area that’s rearranged to make room for guest artists like me during LoLa. At some point during this transition, most of the concrete surrounding the building was replaced with a garden featuring native plants, curving brick walks, a small patio and a gazebo, all surrounded by a picket fence. It’s utterly charming. I hope to be back there for one or two of their Makers Markets, one of them on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and possibly one more. I’ll let you know if and when that’s confirmed. (You can sign up for my not-quite-monthly e-mail letter, which includes a discount code for my webshop this month and next, at the bottom of this page.)
In Other Art News . . .
My spouse and I managed to get out to a few art exhibitions over the summer. In July, shortly before it closed, we viewed Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910 to 1945 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. We were wowed by the power of the works displayed and moved by the text on the signs providing artistic and political context. Many of the pieces were banned when the Nazis took over the government, not only for their messaging, but also for not conforming to an approved aesthetic. The relevance of it all to the current political climate was lost on no one, as evidenced by the comments other visitors wrote in the guest books provided in a lounge area at the end of the exhibition.
In early August we visited ALTR Gallery, run by the Otherworldly Arts Collective, for a show called Paleo, which featured a large variety of artists depicting, well, mostly dinosaurs, in often surprising ways. We had never been to, nor even heard of this gallery before. It’s in an old warehouse building in Northeast Minneapolis that also houses the Norseman Distillery, which we were not aware of either, even though it’s been open since 2013, according to their website. In such moments, we realize that we really need to get out of our usual stomping grounds more often.
I loved a cross-stitch titled Pink Plesiosaur (pictured above), so I bought it. When we came back two weeks later to pick it up, we had pizza and drinks at Norseman, outside on the loading dock-turned-deck on a perfect 75-degree evening.
Norseman Distillery, on the loading dock/deck
At the end of August we viewed The Radical Act of Having Each Other’s Back, an exhibition of art inspired—or perhaps a better word is provoked—by last winter’s ICE occupation in Minneapolis. It was housed in a rather large showroom that’s part vintage furniture store and part gallery called FindFurnish.
We were blown away by these mostly large-scale works depicting the resistance, both literally and symbolically (more than one loon, our state bird, was included), culminating in a monumental work modeled after Picasso’s Guernica.
The Guernica-inspired work included interactive elements, such as large eyes that could be placed anywhere on the piece (as witness?)
Speaking of Never Forget . . .
“There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.” —Hartley Shawcross (1902–2003), barrister, politician, and lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal
Eighty years ago today, on October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal concluded its trials of Nazi government officials for crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, war crimes, and conspiracy to commit those crimes. The court convened at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, because Nuremberg had been a center of Nazi propaganda rallies and the Allies wanted the trials to symbolize the end of Nazi Germany.