Art Hounds

Opera singer Jennifer Lien of Duluth, Minn., recently saw Tia Keobounpheng’s public art installation “Unweaving,” in the Sister Cities Park in Duluth. The art consists of four large, bright yellow looms strung with woven fabric. The loose ends of the weaving catch the light and billow in the breeze by the lake. Lien found the installation peaceful and was moved by the purpose behind it.

The work is a meditation on lost family history and past historical trauma that is passed along the generations. Keobounpheng’s grandmother was part of the “Red Exodus,” when thousands of Finnish speakers emigrated from Minnesota and the Lake Superior region to Karelia, Russia, in the 1930s, with the goal of forming a Finnish-speaking utopia.

Many were killed in Stalin’s regime, and those who returned to the U.S. generally did not speak about the experience. In an artist’s statement, Keobounpheng said she designed the installation to explore how communities become “unwoven when we are disconnected from our foundation of ancestral history; i.e. when we don’t know our stories or when truths are suppressed.”

Lien connected personally with the art. As a child and grandchild of immigrants who fled the Japanese invasion and the rise of communism in China, Lien said that the installation “spurred me to think more deeply and to start asking questions about my own family’s historical trauma … and how to unweave those threads in my life through my own particular artistic expression.”

“Unweaving” runs through October.

Writer Russ Stark recommends seeing the “Rainflower Project,” a public art installation designed to draw attention to mental health and to those who die each year by suicide. Artist Damien Wolf of Plymouth created 675 individual ceramic flowers on steel stems, arranged in a grid on the ground.

The project is steeped in symbolism. Each flower is unique like each person lost to suicide. The leaves form the infinity symbol, meaning that people who die are not forgotten. The colors of the flowers, too, are carefully chosen. White flowers represent remembrance and hope, yellow is light and energy, and black for crisis.

Stark was moved by the effect of the colors together. The few black flowers are surrounded by yellow and white, reminding him of the community needed to support mental health and wellness.

The Rainflower Project is on display in Plymouth through this weekend.

Young adult novelist Lana Wood Johnson is looking forward to attending Rain Taxi’s 20th annual Twin Cities Book Festival, which this year will take place entirely online.

The free festival is a draw for readers and writers alike, with talks and exhibitions by authors and publishers. This year’s lineup of writers features major national names, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar in conversation with Dessa and Kwame Alexander with James Patterson, Kate DiCamillo, and Naomi Shihab Nye among the speakers. Together with local writers, their work spans literature for children and adults. Eight of the events will be interpreted live on-screen in ASL.

The Twin Cities Book Festival runs Thursday through Saturday.

Janet Zahn of the Capri Theater encourages people to see the quilt exhibition at the Textile Center in Minneapolis: “Gone but Never Forgotten: Remembering Those Lost to Police Brutality.”

“What I felt as I looked at the exhibit was the presence of the quilters,” Zahn said. “Through their stitches and the fabrics and the color, they were teaching me, and they were reaching out to me and all of us to help us understand and feel more deeply the human destruction that is caused by injustice and inequities and racism in our country.” She adds the work helps her to “keep learning” and “to be inspired to be a better citizen in my neighborhood, in my city and in the world.”

The juried quilt show is part of a larger series called “We Are the Story” by the Women of Color Quilters Network. “Gone but Never Forgotten” at the Textile Center runs through Dec. 24. You may visit virtually and by appointment. “We Are the Story” is on display at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis through Nov. 1. Signing up for a time on ASIM’s website is required.

Anna Ostendorf of Art Reach in Red Wing is looking forward to this weekend’s Red Wing Arts Festival.

The juried outdoor arts festival is now in its 54th year. Organizers adapted to the pandemic by reducing the number of artists and spreading them out in multiple locations across Red Wing, creating an arts walk atmosphere for visitors. Masks are required. The event promises an array of artistic styles and mediums by artists across the state. The festival is Saturday and Sunday.

Singer and composer Emily Youngdahl Wright appreciates the artistry and humor of printer Andy Kahmann of A to Z Letterpress in Montevideo. Wright loves the look and feel of Kahmann’s cards, calendars, and stationery. His work employs hand-set type and is hand-printed on fine paper. Kahmann produces a “Bad Andy” line of cards with such wry phrases as “Blood is thicker than water / adjust recipes accordingly.”

Actor, singer and director Ben Lohrberg is looking forward to hearing the show “Understood” from Trademark Theater. The theater has adapted its 2018 stage play into an audio production, and Lohrberg looks forward to hearing how the COVID-accessible format changes the show. The play takes on the timely topic of how we connect with people with whom we disagree. It follows a young, separated couple who each start relationships with individuals who share very different political views. Written by Tyler Mills and directed by Tyler Michaels King, it’s a show about navigating relationships and finding common ground. The audio play streams from Thursday through Nov. 4. Pricing for digital tickets is pay-what-you-choose.

Photographer Jacinda Davis is planning to visit the Hutchinson Center for the Arts to see the new exhibit “Malaise” by fiber artist Liz Miller and beadwork artist Chris Allen. The title of the show reflects the uncertainty of the times, but Davis says she finds the bright colors of their work energizing. Liz Miller uses knotted ropes to make large sculptures, while Chris Allen’s fine beadwork creates textures on a smaller scale. The show runs through Nov. 13.

Theater artist Ariel Johnson of Burnsville, Minn., loves the work of Minneapolis singer/songwriter Hannah Bakke, who writes folk and comedy music for mandolin and acoustic guitar. Bakke describes herself as “three shots of espresso with a dash of nutmeg; energetic, sweet and will remain fresh for up to nine months if stored properly.” During the pandemic, Bakke has been performing “little free concerts” outside of people’s homes in the Twin Cities area, which will continue as long as weather permits this fall.

Correction (Oct. 1, 2020): A previous version of this feature incorrectly reported where Hannah Bakke is based. The story has been updated with the correct information.

Theater-maker Madeline Wall looks forward to the Greenway Glow Arts Festival on Saturday. Art installations and performers will be spread out over two dozen stops along a 5-mile stretch of Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway. Masks are required and social distancing members will be in place, with no more than 25 people allowed to congregate at one time by a single art installation.

The free outdoor event runs from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. VIP passes help raise funds for the Midtown Greenway. VIP members also may attend virtually.

Playwright Tyler Mills of Minneapolis enjoys the podcast “Good Luck, High Five” run by two Minnesota improvisors, Meghan Wolff and Maria Bartholdi. In the weekly podcast, the two friends discuss the digital card game, Magic: the Gathering, and then digress. Mills says they set a welcoming tone, and their podcast helps increase the representation of women in the online community. He also likes the connections made between the specific world and what is going on outside of it.

“One of the jokes in the Magic community is that part of what makes Magic: the Gathering special is ‘the gathering,’ and that gathering has not been possible” during a pandemic, Mills said. “It’s nice to have a place like a podcast to feel like you are interacting with people.”

Musician and beginning glass-maker Janis Froehlig of Mendota appreciates the glass creations of Derek Hostetler. His whimsical, abstract work involves a great deal of color and unique combinations of shapes, and Froelich says she finds looking at Hostetler’s work to be a balm in the current political and pandemic environment.

These creations are not designed to serve an everyday purpose, such as a vase or bowl. “Although bits of his pieces would probably hold water,” Froelich says, “they were not intended to hold anything except your attention. And his technique is stunning.”

Hostetler’s work is on display at the Foci Minnesota Center for Glass Arts in Minneapolis, where he teaches.

Quilter Terri Charlsen of McGregor, Minn. is sharing the word about the Community Canvas, an art exhibit at the Jaques Art Center in Aitken. The Arts Center distributed blank canvases of varying sizes to anyone who wanted to participate, and the resulting collection showcases the talents of residents young and old. There are just under 200 canvases this year and they’re painted, beaded, quilted and more. Charlsen said part of the fun is “searching for who did what.”

Community Canvas will be on display through Oct. 24.

Art lover Jessica Bergman of northeast Minneapolis appreciates the paintings of Geordin Crist of Falcon Heights. Crist paints in different styles, but since the start of the pandemic, they have been experimenting with paint pours and posting the results on Instagram multiple times a week. Crist creates paintings without the manipulation of brushes. Bergman finds that these abstract works sometimes evoke the sea or flowers, and she’s drawn to Crist’s bold colors and contrasts.

Editor T. Martin Crouse of Minneapolis is looking forward to an improv/burlesque fusion event, “Whose Bra is it Anyway?” at 8 p.m. Saturday. The Zoom audience chooses the music before the performance, leaving the performers just minutes to create a routine. This event used to take place quarterly and in-person but will now happen over Zoom.

“People hear ‘burlesque’ and they think ‘stripping,’ but it’s not; it’s undressing with humor, and that really elevates it to an art form that is just surprisingly invigorating,” Crouse said. “The burlesque community is very body-positive, and really embraces the LGBTQ community. You’re going to see a lot of colorful characters of all shapes and sizes. I can’t stress the comedy enough.”

Minneapolis-based artist and educator Nooshin Hakim Javadi is looking forward to the Twin Cities Iranian Culture Festival. The festival includes Iranian music, visual art and food. While largely online this year — including numerous music concerts and a virtual art gallery — two events allow American and Iranian cultures to connect over food.

One food-based connection opportunity is a virtual tea house or chaikhaneh, which allows people in Minnesota and Iran to share tea and conversation over Skype.

People also may sign up to attend or host socially distanced backyard picnics through the month of September. The Iranian Cultural Collective will provide Iranian food and music for cross-cultural conversation and celebration in your backyard.

Retired educator Bill Fried of Spring Grove is looking forward to visitors — both in-person and virtual — to the first Spring Grove International Film Festival, which runs Friday through Sunday. The festival includes 50 films that range in style from comedy to drama to documentary. Both shorts and feature-length films are included. Films will run throughout the day on Friday and Saturday at three Spring Grove locations or available online with a festival ticket. 

Actor Ed Asner has a film in the festival and will attend in person. He’ll take questions following his film early Friday evening. You’ll need a ticket to attend. Moviegoers may know Asner as the voice of Carl Fredricksen in the Pixar film “Up.”

St. Paul actor Greta Grosch recommends catching a roof-top production of “My Funny Quarantine” from Theater Unmasked this weekend. Husband-and-wife team Jen Maren and Peter Simmons wrote and will perform the 40-minute show about surviving quarantine with your spouse day after day after day. It’s a lighthearted comedy, complete with music and sword-fighting. Grosch calls the interactive show “kid-friendly and parent-approved.”

You can see the show on the newly refurbished green roof of the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at 5:30 p.m. The show is free, though reservations are required to ensure social distancing. Theater Unmasked requests $5-15 per person donations, with 20 percent going to the Bakken Museum.

Art collector Jeannie Hintz of Buffalo recommends the mixed-media paintings of Mary Catherine Solberg.

Hintz said the Fridley-based artist paints “eyes in her portraits so that you feel like they’re peering into your soul.”

Solberg creates portraits of people and animals in the style of religious icons or Renaissance painters. She uses metal leaf, beeswax, acrylic, plaster and more unusual materials that Hintz said she hasn’t seen other artists using right now. Solberg’s exhibition “Quarantine” at One Division Art, where Hintz is gallery director, has closed, but Solberg has a website of her work. Solberg’s studio/gallery is located in the Casket Arts Building in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District.

Poet Mary Jean Mulherin appreciates the work of St. Paul painter Rosemary Ruffenach. Her watercolor, oil, and pastel paintings vary widely in subject, from floral arrangements to people to landscapes near and far. Mulherin describes her work as “cozy” during the stressful times of a pandemic. She particularly recommends Ruffanch’s landscapes from her many travels abroad as a way to take a vicarious vacation.

Artist Geordin Crist is into the work of Trisha Spectacle, whose “draglesque” performance Crist calls “a bridge between drag and burlesque communities.”

Crist appreciates that “Trisha speaks to the drag community in a way that is very new.” They point out that Trisha Spectacle doesn’t wear pads or shave chest hair to create a man-dressing-as-woman drag character. Instead, their performance continues to challenge gender norms in a way that Crist calls “subversive for 2020.”

Find Trisha Spectacle on Instagram and as a cast member of Queerdo Mpls.

Eric Heukeshoven, an assistant music professor at St. Mary’s University, is preparing to drive to Rochester, Minn., this Saturday for the first-ever Minnesota Music Video Menagerie.

The battle-of-the-bands-style event features all kinds of music, with opening live performances by rapper Jae Havoc and Fires of Denmark. The free drive-in event takes place from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday at the History Center of Olmsted County with a rain date on Sunday. The videos will play after dark on the big screen, with sound streamed on a local FM station. The event is capped at 100 cars in order to allow for social distancing, so make sure to register before you go.

Artist Anne Labovitz of St. Paul recommends painter Heidi Jeub’s exhibition Far Away / So Close: Old Friends and New in Little Falls, Minn. Inspired in part by the way the coronavirus has affected our interactions with others, Jeub conducts Zoom conversations with friends old and new, then uses those conversations to inspire abstract paintings on repurposed cardboard sheets.

Passers-by at Great River Arts will see a mix of finished paintings and blank cardboard hung on the wall. The finished paintings will be revealed over the course of the exhibition period, inviting onlookers to continue to pay attention. Art lovers outside of Little Falls can track the exhibition’s progress here. It runs through Sept. 26.

Ron Pearson of St. Paul says he appreciates using art as a reason to safely leave the house during the pandemic. He is enjoying the Sidewalk Concert Series put on by Everett and Charlie, an art gallery in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis.

An eclectic variety of Minnesota musicians perform Thursday through Saturday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. through September, weather permitting. The concert series is free, though the musicians accept tips. Pearson says you can also enjoy the music from the patio of Harriet Brasserie next door, or browse the art hung in the alley. Or, mask up and venture inside Everett and Charlie to browse art from more than 60 Minnesota artists.

Musician and dancer Sharon Stephens of White Bear Lake, Minn., recommends a theatrical production, available for streaming, “Angry Black Woman & Well-Intentioned White Girl.” The play was written by Minneapolis playwright Amoke Kubat, who acts in the two-woman show along with Jennifer Johnson.

Stephens called the play “brilliant, passionate and memorable” with moments of humor alongside painful truths. Written in 2016, the explorations of microaggressions in a land of “Minnesota Nice” feel deeply current, Stephens said. The 90-minute production is available on Vimeo and comes with a tool kit for self-exploration and post-play discussion.

Actor and playwright JuCoby Johnson is looking forward to attending the “Shine a Light” installation at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis. It’s an outdoor, multimedia show that consists of window installations and wall projections. “Shine a Light” is a platform for artists who make theater, including costume, lighting and set designers, to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and the uprisings following the killing of George Floyd.

The event is free and open to the public. It runs Thursday through Aug. 30, with projections running Thursday evening through Sunday from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Mikaela Bagley of Eagan, Minn., embraces a different kind of theater in her home. She gathers with friends through virtual escape rooms from Minnesota-based Trapped Puzzle Rooms. Typically, an escape room is a timed, group puzzle-solving experience. These virtual escape rooms rely on the art of Gabe Gomez of St. Paul to set the scene and unlock the next clues.

“It was so different from a normal escape room,” said Bagley, “but it was so much fun, and it almost felt like we were there.” A minimum of three players are required, and there are three rooms available: “Heist, Heist Baby,” “Prehistoric Park” and “Super Squad.”

Music blogger Jon Behm recommends the Illusion Theater’s Fresh Ink New Work series, which is streaming online through August. It’s a series of three shows by artists of color. The shows contextualize this moment, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the uprisings that have followed the police killing of George Floyd in May.

Behm is particularly excited about the first show, “In this Moment,” which draws together spoken word, visual art, music and other performances in one setting. The second show, “Acting Black,” is a one-man show, and the third, “Serving Black Futures: Loving Black Artists,” is an evening of poetry.

Poet and art-lover Mary Jean Mulherin enjoys the work of St. Paul artist Emily Talley. Talley uses the shavings of her wax pastels to create vibrant, colorful abstracts and portraits that respond to the pandemic and celebrate Black Lives Matter. Mulherin particularly appreciates the way Talley makes her process public. She posts works in progress as well as finished pieces on her Facebook page.

Taherah Shamsulbahri-Cobb looks forward to attending the student-led StoryArk Festival at 4 p.m. Sunday. The free online festival from Stillwater is the culmination of student summer work that features short films, podcasts, poetry, fiction and visual arts. The event will be emceed by a student comedian, with music by the band Nunnabove, recently featured on “America’s Got Talent.” Shamsulbahri-Cobb says this isn’t the kind of Zoom event that you just sit back and watch. “Being student-led and student-initiated, they were very mindful about wanting to create a very hands-on, interactive experience, so it’s going to be like you’re right there with them,” Shamsulbahri-Cobb said.