From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

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Portraits of immigration

Rachel Coyne, a writer and painter in Lindstrom, loves outdoor arts events. She’s looking forward to seeing Cadex Herrera’s outdoor exhibition on the campus of the White Bear Center for the Arts in the north metro.

“First Person Plural” features 10 larger-than-life black-and-white murals, each featuring the faces of immigrants living in White Bear Lake, where Herrera also used to live.

The installation is intended to honor the diversity of immigrants in the area and their contributions. Herrera also directed a documentary about the project, which will be on view. The exhibit opens to the public Thursday with an artist event and celebration from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.  

Rachel says: I just like the idea that, you know, this could be somebody you’re passing on the street. But also they’re a work of art.

 — Rachel Coyne

Worthington marks Dia de los Muertos 

Eric Parrish is the instructor of music and theater at Minnesota West Community and Technical College and the conductor of the Worthington Chamber Singers. He’s looking forward to a series of free events in Worthington to mark Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

Events start this weekend and run through next week, culminating in a performance by 512: The Selena Experience, a Selena cover band, on Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. Most events are held at the Memorial Auditorium in town. 

Among Saturday’s events: Puppeteer Gustavo Boada will unveil two commissioned 8-foot Catrina sculptures at noon. His performance group Little Coyote Puppet Theatre will perform “Skeletons in the Closet: A Day of the Dead Story” at 1 p.m., followed at 2:30 by a puppet-making workshop. 

The event coincides with the annual meeting of the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council, which comprises 18 counties and two sovereign nations. Art studios and public art will be open for self-guided tours.  

About 512: the Selena Experience, Eric says: This is the premier Salena cover band in the country. So it’s a really big swing for our small community.

People don’t know Worthington is one of the most diverse communities outside of the Twin Cities in the state of Minnesota. And it’s very exciting for us as a community to embrace this holiday and in this way with all the artists and activities.

 — Eric Parrish

Reflecting on water as a relative 

Diane Wilson is a Dakota author living in Schaefer, and she got a sneak peek at the art exhibit Mní Futurism at Metro State University’s Gordon Parks Gallery in St. Paul. Mní is the Dakota word for water. In this exhibit, two Minnesota-based Native American artists reflect on our relationship with and use of water.  

The exhibit is a joint show of photographer Jaida Grey Eagle, who is Ogalala Lakota, and multimedia artist Abby Sunde, of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. The exhibit opens with an artist reception Thursday at 5 p.m. and runs through Dec. 5. 

Diane says: Their work is very thought-provoking. It’s visually stimulating, and it ranges from impacts on water from pipelines, from pollution but also looking at the impacts on issues like food sovereignty and treaty rights and access to healthy water. 

Jaida Grey Eagle’s photographs, for example, evoke the beauty of some of the traditional food practices. There are photographs of wild ricing. And there’s one that is so poignant of a young boy in a canoe, and it just evokes that generational relationship to wild rice and how dependent that traditional food is on clean water.

And then Abby Sunde looks at from a little more of a critical thinking lens. She looks at, for example, some of the impacts that pipelines have had on water in her community. So there is one series of drawings that are created from rust on glass, and it’s called “Stolen Water.”

It’s about aquifer breaches that occur when a pipeline piling is driven too deep, and it breaches into the aquifer, and all this water is released that isn’t supposed to be released. It’s stolen water.  

It’s a small and intimate gallery on the first floor of the library. The work of these two women complements each other beautifully in terms of the way that they think about and portray water as a relative.

— Diane Wilson