Art Hounds

Arts advocate Patrick Moore of Montevideo was inspired by Nicole Zempel’s nature photography currently on display at the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council’s gallery in Marshall.

Zempel’s up-close photographs of mushrooms, lichen, moss, and slime mold blend science and art in a way that is both familiar and otherworldly.

“I just kind of get blown away by these photos,” said Moore. “I can't believe that these are real, that this is something that you will find within 10 miles of my house. She has an exceptional eye.”

The exhibit runs through June 25, with a virtual tour available on YouTube.

Theater director Addie Gorlin-Han recently attended Fawzia Khan’s “Becoming Visible” exhibit at Hopkins Center for the Arts. Khan received a 2020 Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant to interview 12 Minnesota women with a broad range of identities.

In several works, women’s eyes framed by rectangles are embroidered onto dish towels, “a symbol of traditional gender roles,” according to a statement by the artist. Viewers learn about the women through written and video first-person accounts.

“The reason the piece is so moving is the way in which Fawzia has successfully made each of these Minnesota women and each of their stories visible,” said Gorlin-Han. Additional sculptures grapple with questions of gender-assigned roles and immigration as well as the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. 

The exhibit runs through June 19 at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. An accompanying video is on YouTube.

Minneapolis photographer Wendy Blomseth appreciates the work of visual artist Anne Pryor, on display at the Everett & Charlie Gallery in Minneapolis.

Blomseth is fascinated by how Pryor makes her work. A former watercolor artist, Pryor now uses alcohol ink on acetate. After adding the ink, she manipulates the color on the canvas by blowing it through a straw, “and makes the designs and shapes by moving with her breath.” She then adds essential oils, which add texture and scent to the works.

“So you get the tactile effect on the painting but then you also get the scent,” Blomseth said.

Pryor will be demonstrating her process at Everett & Charlie from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Correction (June 11, 2021): The date of Anne Pryor’s demonstration was incorrect in an earlier version of this story. The article has been updated.

For the first time in well over a year, this week’s Art Hounds recommend three live, in-person only performances.

McKnight choreography fellow Darrius Strong is excited to see live dance on stage again, and his pick this weekend is the show “60/40” by BRKFST at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.

“They use the foundational steps of breakdance,” Strong said, and they “find ways to bend, flip that, collaborate that with contemporary movement.” He appreciated how the St. Paul-based collaborative dance ensemble works together as a cohesive unit on stage, as well as their stated goal, “to expand awareness on topics that address marginalized and underserved populations.”

This show has been in the works for two years, after COVID-19 delayed production. Featuring choreography that explores loss, fragmentation and contradiction, the show includes original music composed by troupe member Renee Copeland. “60/40” runs Thursday through Sunday at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. Thursday night’s tickets are pay-as-able. Face masks are required, with socially-distanced seating in the theater.

The annual short film competition Z-Fest is back and screening films in-person this weekend. Minnesota filmmakers, veteran and emerging, compete by creating films that are at most seven minutes. Minneapolis writer and director Owen Royce didn’t submit a film this year, but he credits past comedy and drama shorts with helping boost his visibility early in his career and allowing him to explore new genres in a low-stakes environment.

“I owe a lot to Z-Fest in the sense of helping me galvanize my friends and colleagues in making short films.” Royce said the creative focus of Z-Fest helped revolutionize the Minnesota film scene.

The screenings are Friday and Saturday at 7 and 9 p.m. at Emagine Willow Creek in Plymouth, Minn. The theater will be operating at full-capacity seating, with masks required.

As music concerts return to in-person venues, Simon Calder, host of Back to the City Minneapolis Music Conversation on YouTube, recommends the music of StoLyette, an innovative Minneapolis-based group performing Friday night at 10 p.m. at Icehouse.

Part of their distinct style, Calder says, evolved as bassist Ben Clark created a way to recreate guitar and other nonvocal components of a band using one instrument. It’s a complex process that involves a delay pedal, multiple amps, and “a pitch shifter or two,” said Calder. That couples with Irene Ruderman Clark’s vocals in both English and Russian.

Calder said Ruderman Clark moved from the Soviet Union when she was 11. Calder learned in an interview with the musician that when she was 12, “suddenly there was this moment of clarity when she could understand what her schoolmates were saying. And I feel that especially as we're shifting between different registers and even languages, it is almost as if the listener or the audience is invited to experience that shifting.”

Minneapolis theater maker Shanan Custer is excited about the soap opera “Duluth”, which premiered Sunday on the World Improv Network YouTube channel.  The show runs for 24 consecutive episodes, airing live at 2 p.m. Sundays. It’s all improvised, with only a plot arc for the cast to follow.

The improv actors are working across time zones and borders, coming together from Minnesota, Mexico and the U.K. as they dive into mystery and scandal.

“It’s inspired by soap operas that you may recall from the past, like ‘Dallas’ and ’Dynasty,’ ” Custer said. “And it features characters as broad and hilarious and amazing, as you saw in those kinds of shows.”

The key difference:  It’s set against a backdrop of iconic Duluth images — opening credits feature the Aerial Lift Bridge.

The last performance that actor Shad Olsen saw on stage before the pandemic was by Collide Dance Theater Co. in the Twin Cities. Now he can’t wait to see their new live production of “WonderLand.”

“They tell stories in such an emotional, visceral, real way that you end up going on the journey. It’s really exhilarating,” said Olsen. With a mix of dance styles set to a modern blend of music, “the energy is through the roof.”

The characters of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel encounter each other in a psychiatric hospital. As the doctor treats the White Rabbit’s anxiety or Alice’s body image, the show examines the concept of being “normal.” Artistic director Regina Peluso wrote the script to help de-stigmatize mental health conditions.  She had mental health professionals review the script to make sure the audience would not miss the message of acceptance.

The 70-minute show takes place outside of the James J. Hill House in St. Paul this weekend, and outside the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis June 5-20.

Healing is also the subject of an exhibit by physician and painter Semerit Strachan. Behavioral pediatrician Andrew Barnes of Golden Valley traveled to Granite Falls to see the show in person. He says he thought about the exhibit for days afterward. Strachan is a leader with the Cultural Wellness Center in Minneapolis.

The 25 paintings in Strachan’s exhibit “Consciousness Beyond Form” employ symbols of healing and transformation drawn from Egyptian culture and the African diaspora. Often, Barnes says, faces and forms appear to emerge from the paintings, the way one might see a face in the trunk of a tree while walking in the woods. Placed together in a gallery, the paintings appear to be in conversation with one another.

The exhibit at the K. K. Berge Gallery runs through June 19, with an artist reception and walking tour June 5. 

St. Paul composer Adam Wernick looks forward to the Rimon Artists Salon series — and in particular, the world premiere of a new work by composer and vocalist Anat Spiegel.

Spiegel is a Dutch-Israeli composer who now makes her home in the Twin Cities. Rimon executive producer David Harris saw her work as a Cedar Commissions fellow and commissioned Thursday’s performance. 

“I would describe her music and her performances as bold, theatrical, hugely imaginative — and always surprising,” Wernick said.

The Zoom event is entitled “I Once Was a Boy: on the Edge with poet Anna Margolin.” Spiegel’s song series puts music to poems written in Yiddish by Anna Margolin. The evening includes a conversation between Spiegel and vocalist Sarah Larsson about the Yiddish language, poetry, and music. The event Thursday at 7 p.m. is free, but registration is required.

Landscape painter Joshua Cunningham recently made a trip to Duluth, Minn., to get a sneak peak at the Great Lakes Academy of Fine Arts’ first student show. The school is a four-year program that teaches a classical style of art. The first graduating class was in 2020, but the pandemic prevented the academy from putting on a year-end showcase. This year’s show includes work by the first two graduating classes as well as current students. 

Cunningham was intrigued by both the showcase and its location; the school is housed in a decommissioned Catholic church, with pews turned into easels surrounded by original stonework and wooden scaffolding.

“It's really neat because beauty endures beyond its original purpose. And so for the students to be practicing and learning in a space about beauty for a bigger thing,” Cunningham said.

As for the artwork, Cunningham said “some of those drawings and paintings will be the fruit of weeks of observation. Just think about the last time you spent weeks looking at and studying something.”  The student showcase runs Friday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.

Looking ahead to next weekend, visual artist Heather Lou in St. Paul is planning to attend the New Eyes Festival 2021: (Un)Scene. The annual festival of short plays from Theater Mu and the Playwrights’ Center will feature a series of 10-minute plays, presented virtually. This year’s playwrights are Carla Ching, Aditi Brennan Kapil, Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, Isabella Dawis, and Lisa Marie Rollins.

This year, the five playwrights respond in some way to growing anti-Asian violence in the country. Lou also appreciates that the plays explore “the ways our community can be celebrated and put in the limelight.”

Friday, May 21 at 7 p.m., you can hear from the playwrights and producer Katie Hae Leo during a “Mu-tini Hour” on Facebook live. The plays air live on May 22 at 7 p.m. and will be available on demand May 23 through May 29.

Rich Mattson, of the band Rich Mattson and Northstars, was glad to see that northeastern Minnesota’s Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is running this week. Last year, a very small, virtual version of the festival took place. The in-person events were officially called off the day before the festival’s “Field Guide” went into print. This year, the weeklong event features livestreamed and previously recorded performances, poetry, homemade music videos, a photography exhibit and more.

Music streams live from Studio A on KUMD radio and from Richard Narum’s 2104 studio — aka the living room of his Duluth home. Current and archived performances are available on the Duluth Homegrown YouTube channel. The festival runs through Sunday.

While Mattson loves the energy in downtown Duluth during an in-person festival and looks forward to its return, festival director Melissa La Tour says she anticipates that future events will continue to have some livestreaming elements, so that those who have moved away from the area or cannot otherwise access the festival may still enjoy the event.

Jacob Bases of Triple Falls Productions is a big fan of Onion Bun, a math rock band based in Mankato. Math rock plays with time signatures, counterpoint and rhythmic structures. It’s a music theory-driven style, but Bases says you can enjoy listening without knowing any of that. “It’s music that you can bob along to,” Bases says, but the more closely you listen, the more interesting it gets. Each member of this drum/guitar/bass band has a chance to shine in their arrangements.

Onion Bun released their debut EP, “Giraffodil” in April, which you can find on Bandcamp.

Rolf Erdahl of the duo OboeBass is familiar with the challenges that musicians have faced during the pandemic, and that’s part of the reason why he’s so impressed with the series flutist/composer Julie Johnson has been releasing, called “Looping in my Living Room.”

Looping is an electronic process that allows a musician to record, play back and play over their own audio — essentially to accompany themselves. Each video shows Johnson meticulously building layer upon layer of music as she plays both amplified flute and bass flute and adds distortion and special effects to create one finished piece.

Erdahl says one of his favorite moments comes at the end of her piece “Arkan,” which is based on a Ukrainian folk tune. “And at the very end, Julie has such joy and satisfaction in her face at the completion of a live piece of music, performed without a net in her living room. The joy is utterly contagious.”

Johnson’s fifth video was released this week, with a final due out later this month.

A fine arts exhibition from Courage Kenny, a one-man comedy show in Lanesboro about chef James Beard, and a pandemic YouTube special from Minneapolis stand-up comic Ali Sultan. 

Martin DeWitt of Duluth, Minn., wrote to Art Hounds about a “milestone” currently showing at Tweed Museum Art at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he is a former director and curator. The retrospective exhibit, "A Life Well-Painted: The Art of Carl Gawboy,” and the collection span nearly six decades of the Duluth resident’s art. The renowned Bois Forte Anishinaabe artist, storyteller and scholar taught watercolor and American Indian Studies at UMD and at the College of Saint Scholastica for 18 years.

“Gawboy’s watercolors, his favorite medium, are transparent by nature, layered spontaneous color and gestural, like a dance, and reveal precious recollections of time and place,” said DeWitt. “Thirty-eight of Gawboy’s watercolors, acrylic paintings and relief sculptures serve as visualizations of stories that depict his Ojibwe and Finnish heritage, cultural and family memories so critical to the Minnesota historic record and collective memory of us all.”

Tweed is closed to the general public due to the pandemic, open only to UMD students, faculty and staff. The rest of us may see a selection of Gawboy’s works in the exhibit on the Tweed’s YouTube channel, along with Gawboy’s personal recollections and stories of growing up in northeastern Minnesota.

Writer Katie Hae Leo and an actor friend recently talked about how typecasting limits careers. She was particularly interested in the showcase “Re-Cast” from Theater Latté Da, which invited a handful of local theater actors to perform a song they love that they were not likely ever to be cast to perform for reasons of age, gender, race or other. In this show, an adult sings a favorite song written for a child, a woman performs a role written for a man, among the acts.

The performances are interspersed with personal storytelling, as the actors discuss why their chosen songs are important to them. “It’s about actors being given a chance to show everything that they are able to do,” Leo said.

“Re-Cast” is part of Theater Latté Da’s Ghostlight series, virtual shows that stream through Aug. 31 and showcase more than 40 Minnesota artists.

Courtney Selstad of Minneapolis loves to discover new artists. One of the artists who popped up on her Instagram feed was painter, Katherine Story-Sutter, an acquaintance from 15 years ago. “Oh my gosh, I know her, and look at this beautiful stuff that she’s making,” said Selstad.

Based in St. Louis Park, Minn., Story-Sutter creates portraits, landscapes and dreamscapes in paint and ink. Her portraits are “raw, almost aggressive,” says Selstad, and her landscapes “are like little memory flashbacks,” whose colors and movement create the sense of a precious moment, captured.

Story-Sutter is donating most of her proceeds to the George Floyd Memorial Foundation. “It’s a great example of someone using their tools and their art to give back to the community,” Selstad said.

Singer Marie Woodward lives in upstate New York, but she was able to watch Minnesota Opera mezzo soprano Mia Athey’s new vocal showcase “Self-Love: My Remedy in the Pandemic.” The two met while performing together at the Glimmerglass Opera Festival two years ago.

Woodward admires how Athey created, directed, filmed and edited — not to mention sang —her one-woman showcase. As the title suggests, the songs follow a restorative journey for those stuck home during the pandemic.

Athey is in her second season of the resident artist program at the Minnesota Opera. The 42-minute showcase is part of the opera’s “Apart Together” series, and it is available for free on YouTube through Saturday.

Katherine Kelly of Minneapolis follows the work of a number of artists who inspire her to be bold and creative. One of those artists is Minneapolis-based illustrator Tori Hong, whose work ranges from whimsical “bunny affirmations” to recent artwork expressing solidarity with the people of Myanmar following the February coup. One project that Kelly was particularly excited to share is the “Growbook,” co-created by Hong and Cori Nakamura Lin. It’s an activity packet designed to spark conversation, healing and discovery.

The “Growbook” functions as an artist-created journal, complete with two coloring pages. Eleven pages of prompts invite the user to map their strengths, skills, views on conflict, and even recipes that have gotten them through the pandemic. The book is free to download and is designed to be shared in conversation with others. You can find the Growbook here.

In this self-care-themed Art Hounds episode, we can’t leave out laughter. Trish Foster of St. Louis Park was one of several Art Hounds who wrote in about The Danger Committee, a comedy performance trio whose unique set of skills includes knife-throwing as well as juggling. Foster says both the adults and children in her family have enjoyed past performances by the troupe.

“The fun thing about a Danger Committee show is that they love to do improv, and they are so skilled at it. You never see the same show twice. And the jokes are just flying at such a rapid pace. It’s so much fun.”

The Danger Committee’s “Back to the Lab” performances at the Lab Theater in Minneapolis run Thursday through April 25. In compliance with health guidelines, the theater will operate at 25 percent capacity. 

Verlena Flournoy Matey-Keke has long enjoyed the work of the Black Storytellers Alliance in Minneapolis. This year marks the 30th Black Master Storytelling Festival, which will livestream on April 10, 17 and 25.

The free series of events will include music and storytelling by artists from Minnesota and around the country. Danielle Daniel emcees. Nearly half of the 14 storytellers are from Minnesota.

Matey-Keke loves history, and she appreciates the role that storytelling has long held in passing down Black history and lessons. Having once taken a class with the Black Storytellers, she says she has learned best storytelling brings characters to life.

Actor T. Mychael Rambo calls our attention to a virtual play from the History Theatre that celebrates the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul. “Diesel Heart — Part 2” follows the life of Melvin Carter Jr., who grew up in Rondo, joined the Navy, and returned home to serve as a police officer for over 25 years. His son, Melvin Carter III, is the mayor of St Paul. The play was written by Brian Grandison in collaboration with the elder Carter. It’s directed by H. Adam Harris.

The first act of “Diesel Heart” originally premiered as a virtual show, and “Diesel Heart — Part 2”  includes several new scenes in Act 2 on Carter’s law enforcement experience. Tickets are available here. The reading of the show is available for streaming Monday through April 18.

This week marks one full year that the Twin Cities Jazz Festival has been livestreaming concerts. Jazz singer Connie Evingson has performed at one such streamed event in the past, and recommends upcoming shows. This Thursday at 7 p.m. the Mac Santiago Quartet performs, with Santiago on drums, Dale Alexander on piano, Aaron Hedenstrom on sax and Billy Peterson on bass. Their performance will stream live from the Dakota stage.

Up next Thursday: the Twin Cities group Ticket to Brasil plays “bossa nova, samba, and all that wonderful stuff that makes you want to move,” Evingson said. Performances are free, with donations appreciated.

Painter Dan Wiemer of Red Wing, Minn., has long appreciated the work of Two Harbors, Minn., painter Dave Gilsvik. Gilsvik paints scenes of the Northwoods, with vividly-colored trees and lakes that reflect the sky.

“He is so authentic because he truly paints what he knows,” said Wiemer, who encountered Gilsvik’s work because both painters have work at the Sivertson Gallery in Grand Marais, Minn. Gilsvik paints in what Wiemer describes in a style that arose among artists working in Canada in the 1920s that has a “chunky, rustic, stylized look.”

Wiemer said Gilsvik’s skill in painting winter landscapes inspires his own work. “I didn’t like to paint winter until I saw Dave’s paintings, and the amount of color he puts in a winter scene, it blows you away.”

Jay Melchior and his 4-year-old son have a standing date on Saturdays to watch the livestream of “Noodle Pie Island” from Daleko Arts in New Prague, Minn.

The interactive kids’ show has his son singing and shouting along with the actors. Viewers are encouraged to write their name on the “Noodle Board” — the YouTube chat — and that allows Captain Laroo, played by the show’s creator Lauren Anderson, to call the kids by name during the show.

The adventure includes a craft time, with the crafts incorporated into the adventure. As a special education teacher, Melchior likes how the show incorporates social emotional learning, including in an episode that explored gratitude. Past episodes of “Noodle Pie Island” are available on YouTube.

To watch the show live at 11 a.m. on Saturdays, sign up at Daleko Arts through their “Home Invasion” series.

Butch Roy, executive director of HUGE Improv Theater, recommends seeing the Blackout Improv group any time you have a chance, and the next chance is Friday.

Blackout is an all-Black comedy troupe based in the Twin Cities, and like many performers they’ve shifted their shows onto Zoom as a way to continue interacting with audiences.

While an improv show by its very nature is different every time, Roy said their performances are invariably “heart-felt, funny, [and] timely.” He’s seen the improv actors respond to the moment with engaging social commentary along with humor.

Editors note: Denzel Belin, an MPR News employee, is a member of Blackout Improv, but is not cast in the show above.