l'etoile

Twin Cities Reacts to the Passing of Sue McLean

Todd O'Dowd — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:59:19 +0000

The Twin Cities are still in shock over the passing of iconic music promoter Sue McLean on Friday night, after a long battle with cancer.

To list all of Ms. McLean’s accomplishments as one of the most powerful and pioneering music bookers in the nation would take forever. (Thankfully Jon Bream did that last year in an excellent article for the Star Tribune.) Suffice it to say that she was an instrumental force in the music scene; booking not only the Minnesota Zoo, the Basilica Block Party, the Guthrie, and more under her own aegis at various music venues around town.

Naturally, the reaction around town has been of shock, sympathy for her family and colleagues, and appreciation as to the culture of the Twin Cities.

Ms. McLean is survived by her daughter, Lilly; her brother, Terry, and his wife, Joan; her sister-in-law Marilyn McLean, and several nieces and nephews, including her niece Patricia who will be taking over the day to day duties of Sue McLean & Associates.

Services are set for 11 a.m. Friday at the Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, with reviewal beginning at 9:30 a.m. A reception will follow. A musical tribute fundraiser will be staged on another day, and details about a fund for Lilly McLean will be available later.

Cabin Fever: Northwoods Chic at RetroRama 2013

Beth Hammarlund — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:34:28 +0000

Whether it’s a great pair of jeans or a little black dress, some items of clothing never run the risk of looking dated. They stand the test of time, proving just as chic and practical now as they did when they made their debut. This year at RetroRama, the Minnesota Historical Society pays homage to the American classics, ageless pieces that never go out of style.

a look by Max Lohrbach from last year's RetroRama

This year’s featured designers include Danielle Everine, Laura Fulk, Sarah M. Holm, Max Lohrbach and Kerry Riley. Since the event’s theme has the potential to to be interpreted in very different ways, the designers consulted one another before settling on the concepts of their individual collections.

“Our [the designers'] common thread is clothing with lasting quality,” said Lohrbach. “These aren’t castaways. They’re not subject to trends. They’re clothes that endure wear and tear and you can still wear them and they look good. What came to mind for a lot of us was workwear and hunting clothes.”

a sketch of Max Lohrbach's looks for RetroRama

a sketch of Danielle Everine's look for RetroRama

Although they may have found quite a bit of common ground, expect a wide variety of looks from the designers. Everine and Fulk usually examine masculine and feminine dynamics in their work (and Everine’s sketch suggests we’ll be seeing some of her fantastic suiting), while Lohrbach’s designs are often cheeky and whimsical. Much of Holm’s work is futuristic and rooted in science fiction and fantasy, and it should be interesting to see how Riley’s charming dresses fold into the theme. (Though it appears she replaced her signature leather harnesses with a pair of leather suspenders.)

a sketch of Kerry Riley's looks for her line, Needle & Black, for RetroRama

a sketch of Laura Fulk's look for RetroRama

“We all have our own sub-themes,” said Lohrbach,” but my collection is a very eclectic grouping of things that might wind of in an old house or a cabin in Minnesota, clothes that you can dig out and wear fishing.”

Looks will be featured in two runway presentations at 9 and 10 pm. Models and guests will parade down the catwalk accompanied by tunes from local favorite, DJ Jake Rudh. There will plenty of pieces available for purchase, with vintage and designer pop-up shops from local boutiques Blacklist Vintage, Cliché, Flamingo’s Divine Finds, and Spectacle Shoppe.

But there will be quite a few elements of the retro lifestyle to enjoy outside of fashion. Nick Kosevich and Ira Koplowitz of Bittercube will be hosting cocktail demonstrations featuring Gamle Ode Aquavit at 8:30 and 9:30 pm and Chad Larson will be sharing samples of 2 Gingers Whiskey. Moustache Jim and GENT Salon are demonstrating old school shaving techniques, and guests can play retro games and enjoy live music from Straight Razors.

a sketch of Sarah M. Holm's look for RetroRama

RetroRama is held at the Minnesota History Center and goes from 8 to 11pm and tickets are available at the door for $25 ($20 for MHS members). Feeling extra swanky? The Member VIP Pre-Show kicks off at 6:30 pm for $40. In true VIP fashion, it’s MHS members only. The party will go late into the night at the after-party at Amsterdam Bar & Hall, with drink specials and retro events starting at 10:30 pm and lasting til the wee hours of the morning.

2012 RetroRama photos by Christian Erickson

Weekend What’s What: 5/16-5/19

admin — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:55:56 +0000

This weekend is all about Art-A-Whirl. Yes, there are plenty of other worthy events happening in town this weekend, but with its live music lineups, food trucks a-plenty, shopping, and (most importantly) art, art, art, there’s enough Art-A-Whirl to constitute an entire Weekend What’s What guide. It is, after all, the largest open studio and gallery tour in the United States, according to its presenter, the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association. Best of all, most of the events are free – all the more cash to buy art with, we say. So here it is, our annual AAW guide, which you can handily print off to take along with you on your Art-A-Whirling adventures, or navigate with your smart phone, and be sure to arty hard! Click HERE for our full guide to AAW and read on for more non-AAW-related happenings this weekend.

xo-l’étoile

THURSDAY, MAY 16

martinpatrick3 Behind the Brand

@ martinpatrick3
212 3rd Ave N #106
Minneapolis

5:30-10 pm / Free

You have seen it, shopped it and fell in love, but do you really know it? Of course we are talking about top Twin Cities menswear shop martinpatrick3. The dapper men’s store wants you to get to know the people behind your favorite brands with a special “Behind the Brand” event. Meet the people who stock up the store with Fred Perry, Jack Spade and Rag & Bone, get to know the great minds who brought the Australian bath and body collection Aesop to its first home in the Twin Cities, and enjoy the other manly things like clothing, accessories, grooming and haberdashery as you meet and greet the staff of martinpatrick3 and enjoy libations and bites from Butcher and the Boar. -Alexandra Katz

Click HERE for the martinpatrick3 site

THURSDAY, MAY 16

STYLEDLIFE’s Closing Celebration

@ STYLEDLIFE
3635 Galleria
Edina

4:30- 8 pm

It’s not goodbye, it’s so long for now, as designer accessories boutique STYLEDLIFE announced this week they would be closing their doors after a seven-year run. All remaining inventory, including mint-condition vintage, is now on sale at 70% off. Not to fear – the STYLEDLIFE team promises a new version of their “new, fresh, exciting and the exceptional” store in the future. Bid adieu to the store with tonight’s closing party event. -Alexandra Katz

Click HERE for the STYLEDLIFE website

THURSDAY, MAY 16

Third Thursday: Craft Brew-Ha-Ha

@ Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 3rd Ave S
Minneapolis

6-9 pm / Free

As much as we all love art here in the Twin Cities, sometimes art goes down easier with beer. Thankfully the MIA has you covered. For their latest Third Thursday event, the museum is partnering with Summit and Northern Brewer for an art and beer-fuled evening of fun. Tour the art, sip on flights of Summit, and learn about home brewing from the folks at Summit and Northern Brewer. And if all that art doesn’t liven the spirits, then the sure to be rocking set by Charlie Parr most certainly will. -Todd O’Dowd

Click HERE for the MIA site

Night Moves

THURSDAY, MAY 16-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Art-A-Whirl Weekend at the 331 Club

@ 331 Club
331 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Music starts at 10 pm Thursday, 6 pm Friday, noon Saturday & Sunday / outdoors AA, indoors 21+ / Free

During Art-A-Whirl weekend, the 331 Club is at the center of the action. Located at at 13th St and University, it sits dead center of all the happenings in the neighborhood. They have a big party every year to celebrate. This year’s festivities feature two stages indoors and outdoors, both featuring live music from more than 20 acts all weekend long. It includes som of the best local acts the Twin Cities has to offer, including the hard rockin’ Blind Shake and thought-provoking hip-hop duo Kill The Vultures on Friday; indie fuzz-rockers Prissy Clerks, the explosive improvisation sounds of Marijuana Deathsquads and psych rockers Heavy Deeds on Saturday and psych-country outfit Night Moves on Sunday. Things kick off on Thursday night’s “Start-A-Whirl” party with sets from heavy rockers Torch the Spires and the metal-rific Nightosaur. -Danielle Morris

Click HERE for the 331 Club site and full lineup with set times

THURSDAY, MAY 16

Wasted Past

@ Clubhouse Jäger
923 Washington Ave S
Minneapolis

9:30 pm / 21+ / Free

It’s another great all-vinyl DJ night at Clubhouse Jäger on Thursday with Wasted Past DJs Ron Wade, Sarah Touchstone, James Leonard, Patrick Liens and special guest Aaron Porter, who specialize in old rock and roll and early soul records from the ’50s and ’60s, plus R&B, soul, popcorn and raunchy beat rockers. Wasted Past focuses on playing music that is more about the roots of rock ‘n’ roll and soul than its later incarnations — music you’ve never heard that sounds very familiar at the same time. Anyone into oldies and our rock and roll, rockabilly or soul will definitely appreciate this event and probably learn a thing or two. Drink specials include Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin beers for $3.50 a pour. -Danielle Morris

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

THURSDAY, MAY 16

PERISH: The Funeral & The Twilight Tape Release w/ Stinging Knives + Brief Candles

@ Kitty Cat Klub
315 14th Ave SE
Minneapolis

10 pm / 21+ / Free

Why chose between a night of dancing and an evening of live shows when you can have your cake and dance with it too? Perish rotates the best in post-punk, new wave, death rock, minimal synth, industrial and experimental — and everything else under the darkwave umbrella. Prime yourself for a feast of über-dark dance-floor worthy tracks from a rotating lineup of the Twin Cities’ best darksider DJs along with a live set from the Funeral & the Twilight, celebrating a tape release. The band is known for their doom goth punk rock with a jazzy, improvised finish that continue to create explosively expressive negative tunes meant to beckon you to the dark side. They’re joined by Portland’s Stinging Knives and Milwaukee’s Brief Candles. The shadows are you friend. -Staff

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Photograph by Alec Soth

FRIDAY, MAY 17

Icebox 25: Heart & Soul

@ Icebox Gallery
1500 Jackson St NE #443
Minneapolis

5-9 pm Friday / noon – 8 pm Saturday / noon – 5 pm Sunday / Free
Exhibit runs through August 31; on view 10 am-6 pm Thursdays & Fridays, noon-5 pm Saturdays

The Icebox Gallery is celebrating 25 years in existence with a retrospective, opening just in time for Art-A-Whirl. From its first exhibit, Crystallized Phantoms, the gallery has established itself as a touchstone for the best in local and national photography. Join a coterie of 20+ photographers, filmmakers and other fine artists including Alec Soth, Ulvis Alberts and David Eisenlord for Heart & Soul, its 125th exhibit that includes selections from its permanent photography collection meant to stir the senses. -Kate Smith

Click HERE for the Icebox Gallery site

Artist Maze Wayz

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

It Was All A Dream

@ The Abstracted Gallery
1618 Central Ave NE suite #110
Minneapolis

Opening reception 5-10 pm Friday, open hours Noon-8 pm Saturday & Noon-5 pm / Free

This Abstracted Gallery-presented show features art from Bangkok-based underground artist, Chip7, freestyle psychedelic UV air brushing by Maze Wayz, killer print work from Seattle artist Pars, lovely creations from the multitalented, Rudy Fig, experimentations from illustrator/drawer, Llew Mejia and tons more. With artists hand-selected by “the king of New York street art,” former Minneapolis-based graffiti artist, Deuce 7, it’s definitely an AAW event you don’t wanna miss. Friday’s opening reception features tunes from local DJ BitsBits and the gallery will feature open hours all weekend long. -Juleana Enright

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

"Spirit of the Lake" by Melissa Grimm

FRIDAY, MAY 17

Art-A-Whirl @ VidTiger: Liminal Phase & BRONTO

@ VidTiger Studios
711 15th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Music 9-11:30 pm (art on view all weekend) / Free

Sonic Ambrosia. PowerPoint presentations. Fancy electronic gadgets. These are just a handful of words used to describe what VidTiger has in store for patrons at this year’s Art-A-Whirl jam. Wander through work from the likes of painter Melissa Grimm, whose haunting work is inspired by the watery graves of Lake Superior, and photographer Ernesto de Quesada (among others) before Liminal Phase (a band that describes its genre as “mind-bending, ass-shaking electronica-laced jazz”) takes the stage at 9 pm, followed by BRONTO, a band bringing “elation, despair, sublimeness and limited-edition merch.” Where do we sign up? -Kate Smith

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

FRIDAY, MAY 17

MCAD Visual Storage: MFA 2013 Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception

@ Northrup King Building
Gallery 254
1500 Jackson Street NE
Minneapolis

6–9:30 pm opening reception Friday / Free
On view 2-8 pm Thursday, May 16 & Friday, May 17 + Noon-5 pm Saturday, May 18 & Sunday, May 19

In a city as rich in art, artists, and knowledgeable arts patrons as ours, there’s always a hankering for what’s new, next and novel. MCAD’s rigorous Master of Fine Arts program provides a comprehensive foundation to help launch the talents of emerging artists and help them move their practice to the next creative level. The thesis projects that represent the penultimate achievement of these students’ academic program have a history of being both grand and thoughtful. The range of media represented in Visual Storage (furniture design by Beata Fleischmann, illustration by Adam Setala, comic art by Kyle Harabedian, graphic design by Shannon McCarthy and works in various medium by 19 other artists) ensures this will be a perfect Art-A-Whirl stop for those looking for an exhibition of challenging and cerebral work. -Anthony Enright

Click HERE for the MCAD MFA site

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

NEMAA Silent Auction Fundraiser

@ Northrup King Building
1500 Jackson St NE #322
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-3 pm Sunday / Free

Your one-stop shop to check out (and bid on) work from over 100 NEMAA member artists, the annual NEMAA silent auction is a vast array of styles and mediums. From sculpture to painting to jewelry to items from local businesses, there’s a little bit of everything. Not to mention, it’s a great way to focus your AAW itinerary, with studio locations of each artist noted along with their piece. Bonus: proceeds go to benefit NEMAA, the non-profit organization that produces the handy Art-A-Whirl catalog and helps promote the district year round. -Staff

Click HERE for more information

"Art for Others"

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Art for Others + Open Studios at the Grain Belt

@ Grain Belt Bottling House
79 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm / Free

See a lot of art, do a lot of good this Art-A-Whirl at the historic Grain Belt Bottling House. In addition to checking out the open studios of a plethora of talented artists that work year-round in the building, you’ll be treated to a special art sale-meets-fundraiser, Art for Others, to benefit East Side Neighborhood Services. Dozens of artists have created and donated 5″x7″ works priced at a mere $30 a piece for the sale, so get there early and score an original on the cheap! The opening reception will be held on Friday from 5-10pm and includes a cash bar provided by Common Roots Cafe, food and live tunes from the High 48s. -Staff

Click HERE for more info

Adam DeGross

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Adam DeGross Does Art-A-Whirl

@ Thorp Building
1618 Central Ave NE
2nd floor
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday / Free

Called “the only photographer that matters” by Dillinger 4′s Paddy Costello, the 25-year-old Adam DeGross has been shooting the underground punk, death metal, hardcore and crust music scene for the past five years, and as his prolific body of work suggests, Costello knows what he’s talking about. DeGross has shot a laundry list of some of the best-known underground punk acts in the country — Against Me, Bad Brains, Dillinger 4, Dropkick Murphys, Ceremony, the Misfits, False, Bane, Iceage, the list goes on — at various venues throughout the Twin Cities. His raw, high-contrast images harken back to a time of pre-digital rock photography, with all the grit, gore and energy that only 35mm can capture. He recently published his first book of images, Pay Attention: MN Subculture Photography, which sold out in its first run. It’s a great opportunity to purchase his limited-edition book and purchase new, limited-edition prints. -Jahna Peloquin

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

ANFITRIÓN: Caitlin Karolczak + Jaime Carrera Open Studio Event

@ Solar Arts Building
711 15th Ave NE #205
Minneapolis

Open studio 5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday / Free

Painter Caitlin Krolczak’s works often contain arresting images and figures that are as fragile and tactile as they are provocative and polarizing (her paintings also tend to be physically enormous). We here at l’etoile have long been fans of her work, and more than most artists, Caitlin’s studio must be seen to be believed. As a passionate collector of curious, beautiful and macabre objects Krolczak’s studio is part workspace part gallery making it a unique reflection of her artistic aesthetic. Art-A-Whirl event, ANFITRIÓN is billed as a collaboration between Krolczak and multi-hyphinate artist Jamie Carrera. Carrera will be exhibiting two limited edition photographic prints, including his infamous “Cheesus” portrait. Krolczak will have available a series of smaller works (created just for Art-A-Whirl) at remarkably affordable prices. Trust us, when these two artists get together the results are always unusual, interesting and sometimes outrageous; a must for your Art-A-Whirl itinerary.

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Painting by Nicholas Harper

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Go Rogue

@ Rogue Buddha Gallery
357 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday party, open Noon-8 pm Saturday & Noon-5 pm Sunday during Art-A-Whirl / Free

Legendary Northeast art gallery, the Rogue Buddha, has a myriad of visual delights on deck for Art-A-Whirl weekend. Not only will you get to lay eyes on a retrospective of owner Nicholas Harper’s work throughout the gallery, but you’ll also experience the candy-coated paintings of Rudy Fig, the labyrinthian shrines of assemblage artist Michael Thomsen and the delicate, steampunkish jewelry of Trinkets & Gears. Additional artists include Renata Palubinskas, John Langford, Kurt Melancon and Kyle Fokken. A special private party happens Friday night so if you’d like to get on the list, hit up roguebuddha@hotmail.com to request an invite. -Staff

Click HERE for the Rogue Buddha Facebook page

Detail of sculpture by Michael Thomsen

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Michael Thomsen/Keith Holmes Open Studio

@ 607 Studios
607 22nd Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday (After Hours Party on Saturday 8 pm-midnight) / Free

We’ll for sure be stopping by l’étoile featured artist Michael Thomsen’s studio and workshop this Art-A-Whirl Weekend (peek our print ad in the AAW catalog featuring a piece from Thomsen’s Catechism series). Likely the most detailed, ornate assemblage sculpture artist in town, Thomsen’s gilded gothic shrines are filled with hidden compartments, curiosities and magical beings that hide within shrouded vignettes. These glowing baroque monuments incorporate antique statuary, vintage furniture parts, hand-painting and stenciling, mirrors, crystals, velvets, and flourishes of the most decadent variety. Also on display in the studio is photographer Keith Holmes, whose poignantly beautiful installations deal with political and social issues in Croatia. Additional photos by Holmes will be on view including an especially fascinating series on the 1980s punk movement in San Francisco. Return to 607 Studios on Saturday night from 8 pm to midnight for a BYOB after hours party that will include participatory live music and good conversation with interesting artists. -Staff

Click HERE for Juleana Enright’s interview with Michael Thomsen leading up to his AAW studio opening for l’étoile’s The Culturator

Click HERE for the Facebook event

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Perfect Strangers: Photographs by Stephan Fäerber

@ Studio A
607 22nd Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday (After Hours Party on Saturday 8 pm-midnight) / Free

Come face to face (photographically speaking) with some of the most interesting strangers you’ll ever meet, as Minneapolis-based, German-born photographer Stephan Fäerber exhibits his fascinating body of work, Perfect Strangers. Before you ask, no, Cousin Larry and Balki aren’t included in this collection of striking portraits, but they could definitely fit into the hodgepodge of subjects who run the gamut from civil war reenactors to WWII vets to farmers to lowrider car enthusiasts to French drag clowns and oh-so many more. Based on the premise that a camera is a means of communication beyond simply what’s experienced visually, Perfect Strangers delves into the lives of people of all different walks of life–all of them with a story to tell. Check out Fäerber’s work and meet the ever-charming proprietor of Studio A, Aaron Neumann, who is loving known around the district as “Mr. Northeast.” Return Saturday night from 8 pm to midnight for a BYOB after hours party complete with participatory live music and artsy fun. -Staff

Click HERE for the Facebook event

Scott Seekins

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Scott Seekins is Ubiquitous

@ Various locations
Northeast Minneapolis

Could any other Minneapolis artist get away with a walking art gallery during Art-A-Whirl besides Scott Seekins? The man in black (or white, depending on the season) is traveling with his book of art prints to over 20 locations in a show fittingly dubbed Ubiquitous, including Chowgirls Catering (1222 2nd St NE), the Thorp Building (1618-1620 Central Ave), Smart Set Print Studio (1209 Tyler St NE) and more for the second year. We’re probably most curious about his debut on the Art Ark (docked at Sheridan Park), a “floating museum” on a 60-foot houseboat that’s curated by sculptor Zoran Mojsilov. -Kate Smith

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Kitsch

@ Rosalux Gallery
1400 Van Buren St NE #195
Minneapolis

AAW hours: 7-10 pm Friday, May 17; Noon-8 pm Saturday, May 18 & Noon-5 pm Sunday, May 19
On view through May 26; regular gallery hours: noon-4 pm Saturdays & Sundays

With the democratization of taste, the word kitsch seems to have lost it’s punch, either as a pejorative or conversely as an ironic stance, but that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t still ripe for artistic interpretation. Rosalux Gallery has created a special exhibition for Art-A-Whirl this month entitled simply Kitsch. The show challenges and subverts the meaning of artworks created for mass appeal and attempts to elevate them through the thoughtful renderings of a group of talented local artists. With abstracted dog portraits by Shawn McNulty, delicate yet subversive sculpture from Amelia Biewald, re-imagined mass produced art prints by Laura Stack and not quite still life floral arrangements of Terrence Payne, Kitsch aims engage and entertain viewers while sparking new ideas about the lines between good taste and bad. With so much contemporary art existing in the realm of the self-reflexive, the meta and the ironic, we’re excited to see where the artists go with this fascinating concept. -Anthony Enright

Click HERE for the Rosalux Gallery site

"Existing Varieties"

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Existing Varieties Opening Reception

@ Fox Tax
503 1st Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm reception Friday, May 17; open 11 am–5pm Saturday, May 18 & Sunday, May 19 / Free
Exhibit runs through June 30; on view during business hours, 10 am-4:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays

The mini gallery at Fox Tax takes a unique approach to Art-a-Whirl weekend with a show of, minis. Local artists, curated by Hannah Frick, were invited to create new work in their own style, but measuring no more than a 4” square. Highlights include Jesse Draxler (see l’étoile’s review of his recent opening at HAUS Salon), Garrett Perry, Nick Howard, Justin James Sehorn, Adam Turman, and many more (see a full list of participating artists here). And if you can’t make it this busy weekend, don’t fret: this miniature show will be on view until June 30th. -Nathaniel Smith

Click HERE for the Fox Tax site for a full list of artists

Leg Up Studio

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Inked Up: Members’ Exhibition

@ Leg Up Studio
681 17th Ave NE, Suite 119
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, 12-8 pm Saturday, 12-5 pm Sunday / Free

For all the beginning collectors our there, the members of Leg Up Studio, a studio whose mission is to provide the artist community a place to print and further their printmaking education at an affordable rate, will celebrate Art-A-Whirl by selling the prints of members past and present. Artists on display include Kit Leffler, Jon Reese (pseudomanitou), Johanna Whiting, Brent Erickson, Edie Overturf, Gilpin Matthews, Joshua Norton, Lauren Schuppe, Liz Adamsick, Erik Farseth, Shannon Joyce and Kick.stand.press. There will also live letterpress and t-shirt printing happening frequently throughout the weekend, as well as food trucks nearby for when all that Art-A-Whriling makes you hungry. -Maggie LaMaack

Click HERE for the Leg Up Studio site

Detail from "Dzine: Victory"

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY MAY 19

AAW @ Public Functionary: Jerry Saltz + Dzine

@ Public Functionary
1400 12th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Artist discussion with Jerry Saltz + Dzine: 7-8:30 pm Saturday, $8 student, $12 member, $15 general admission
Artist discussion with Dzine: 1 pm / Free
Open hours: 6-11 pm Friday, 11 am-6 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm / Free
Dzine: Victory is on view through May 31; 2-7 pm Thursdays, 6-11 pm Fridays & & Noon-4 pm Saturdays

This weekend new, buzz gallery Public Functionary welcomes New York Magazine’s senior art critic, Jerry Saltz to participate in a public discussion of contemporary art and modern gallery culture in the context of their inaugural exhibit, Dzine: Victory. Joined in the conversation will be Public Functionary Director and Curator, Tricia Khutoretsky and exhibiting, Chicago-based artist, Dzine (Carlos Rolon). On Sunday, Dzine returns in open Q&A about art, culture and music with Khutoretsky and Kevin Beacham (DJ Nikoless of Rhymesayers) framed by a screening of Dzine’s short doc, “Posse.” Plus, all weekend-long enjoy free outdoor activities and gallery open hours. -Juleana Enright

Click HERE for Juleana’s interview with Public Functionary’s Tricia Khutoretsky for l’étoile’s The Culturator

For tickets to attend the Jerry Saltz + Dzine discussion, click HERE / Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Print by Burlesque of North America

1101 Stinson Art-A-Whirl Alley Party

@ Co Exhibitions
1101 Stinson Blvd NE
Minneapolis

Alley party 6-10 pm Friday, open studio Noon-6 pm Saturday / Free

The alley next to a building: the perfect place to party, right? At CO Exhibitions it sure is, especially when it comes to Art-A-Whirl tomfoolery this Friday. There you’ll find live demos, hands-on art projects, live music, and delicious food, all sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon. If you’re a Burlesque of North America fan, you’ll have your chance to encounter limited edition posters and prints and live screenprinting. Chris Poor and the Arms & Armor team, who’ve been making (what else) armor and various dangerously awesome weaponry, will be hammering daggers and spear heads with a forge right before your eyes. Joining them are Continental Clay and Artist Built, who each respectively will provide clay to make your own medallion and fine, unique leather goods. Finally, screenprints from 1101 Stinson resident artists Landland and Quinine Design along with Burlesque will be on display and available for purchase. -Alicia Neubauer

Click HERE for CO Exhibitions’ website and Click HERE for the Facebook invite

JDim Media, Disobey. Artwork from the Corrosion Maintained series

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Art-A-Whirl: Dim Media

@ Turbo Tim’s Anything Automotive
2319 1/2 Jackson St NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, 12-8 pm Saturday, 12-5 pm Sunday / Free

For the 18th annual AAW, Twin Cities-based multimedia collaborative Dim Media is taking over Turbo Tim’s with a slew of artwork on display including select pieces from their Corrosion Maintained series and new pieces from the Wallpaper Original series. The ensemble combines the styles and talents of Charles Denton, Blaine Garrett, Ivy Sendrijas and Joe Lipscomb for a eclectic mix of illustration, painting, animation and writing. Also on display will be artwork from guest exhibitors’ print artist Ash Marlene Hane and Sarah Morrison. -Juleana Enright

Click HERE for more info

FRIDAY, MAY 18 & SATURDAY, MAY 19

The Anchor Fish & Chips Art-A-Whirl

@ The Anchor Fish & Chips
302 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Noon-9 pm / Free

Okay, besides having the best fish ‘n’ chips in town – I’ll fight you on that one, folks, there ain’t a one that comes close – the Anchor is also run by folks with great music taste. Their Art-A-Whirl offering is full of great bands, with the best stuff on Sunday – Ashtray Hearts, Magic Castles, Valet and Romantica are all performing that afternoon/evening, and if you’ve not heard Ben Kyle’s Romantica yet, you probably should – he’s a tremendous songwriter with a real gift for live performance. Saturday features Fuck Knights, Nightinghales and the Tinkers. The entire she-bang is presented by Guiness, which means, you know, Guinness and Fish & Chips, which is never a bad thing. -Jon Hunt

Click HERE for the Facebook invite and full lineup

FRIDAY, MAY 17 & SATURDAY, MAY 18

Art-A-Whirl at 612Brew

@ 612Brew
945 Broadway St NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, 3-10 pm Saturday / 21+ / Free

I haven’t been to 612Brew yet, but I’ve heard great things about the Northeast brewery and their craft beer – it’s a cool space and the guys there seem dedicated to keeping things cool and not sellout and weird. Their Art-A-Whirl event features 7 food trucks (food trucks are the future), beer (natch) and beer-related visual art. Plus a great lineup of bands including American Revival, French Kiss of Bel Air, Duenday and Carnage on Friday, and French Kiss of Bel Air, Hunting Club, Author, Meme, Kristoff Krane and the terrific No Bird Sing on Saturday. Did I mention beer? It’s right on the corner of Central and Broadway in the heart of Northeast, so make it one of your stops. -Jon Hunt

Click HERE for the 612Brew site

Photo by Brock Davis

FRIDAY, MAY 17

SMART Opening Reception

@ Light Grey Art Lab
118 E 26th St #101
Minneapolis

7-10 pm / Free
Exhibit runs June 7; on view noon-7 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, noon-5 pm Sundays

Whenever we read the word SMART, as in Light Grey Art Lab’s newest exhibition, we can’t help but hear it the way Casey Affleck says it in Good Will Hunting: “smaht.” Maybe even wicked smaht. Is it because we’re told the exhibit is meant to showcase its 36 artists’ “quick wit and subtle sense of humor” using “puns, ingenuity and guile,” or is it because we can see it plain as day in the work of Danamarie Hosler, Kayla Wasil and Richie Pope? Trick question: it’s both. See it for yourself on Friday night at the opening reception, which includes a huge display of work from featured artist Brock Davis’ 2012 iPhone Series, print giveaways and fun brain teasers (natch). -Kate Smith

Click HERE for the Light Grey Art Lab site

FRIDAY, MAY 17

ASID MN Showcase Home Gala and Tour

@ ASID MN Showcase Home
325 Dayton Ave
St. Paul

Gala May 17 / 6-11 pm / VIP $100, GA $75
Tour runs May 18 – June 9 (Closed June 1 for a private event) / Wednesdays through Sundays 10 am–4 pm / $20 at the door, $15 at ASID Minnesota, Bachman’s, The Bibelot Shop, D’Amico & Sons, Hirshfields, Intersource, Nina’s Coffee Café, Patina, Rubble Tile, Surdyk’s Liquor & Cheese Shop, Today’s Bed

This year’s ASID MN Showcase Home, sponsored by Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, features the transformation of a 9,000-square-foot St. Paul mansion into a bed and breakfast and private residence. Transformed by 39 ASID interior designers, the home, soon to become the St. Paul bed and breakfast, includes 22 public and private spaces that will be open for viewing May 18 through June 9, with events running throughout the tour. Set in the same neighborhood F. Scott Fitzgerald once resided, the Opening Night Gatsby Gala will kick off the tour this Friday, with an opportunity for guests to be the first to view the renovation of the historic mansion. There will be cocktails and live entertainment, not to mention all the latest trends in home decor. Also probably some sequins. -Staff

Click HERE for the Mpls.St.Paul Magazine site

FRIDAY, MAY 17

RetroRama

@ Minnesota History Center
345 Kellogg Blvd W
St Paul

8-11 pm (shows at 9 pm & 10 pm) / $25 ($20 members) - for a $5 discount, use the code work “Alist” during online checkout

Celebrate your love of vintage at Minnesota History Center’s RetroRama. With two fashion shows showcasing vintage pieces and work from local designers, you can get your fill of everything past trends had to offer. Featured as Project Runway alum Danielle Everine’s art-inspired designs, Max Lohrbach’s wearable art, Sarah M. Holm’s femme-fatale looks, the edgy, modern designs of Kerry Riley of Needle & Black, and Laura Fulk’s inspired designs. Dress-up if you please in your chicest vintage wear and enjoy the best looks from the past, plus classic cocktail demos, live music from Mustache Jim & the Straight Razors, and a DJ set from Jake Rudh. -Alexandra Katz

Click HERE to see the Minnesota History Center website

Carol Burnett

FRIDAY, MAY 17

Carol Burnett

@ State Theatre
805 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis

8 pm / $53.50-$63.50

There’s a reason why her first television show was called The Entertainers. While theatre geeks may have a justifiable love/hate relationship with her, everyone agrees that Carol Burnett is a great entertainer. Her versatility as a performer combined with her natural wining personality made her (and The Carol Burnett Show) a comedy and television legend. For her return to the Twin Cities (coinciding with the release of Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story, her autobiographical tribute to her late daughter, writer Carrie Hamilton), Ms. Burnett will ape part of the format of her eponymous television show; the entire evening will be a question and answer session where she answers questions from the audience. (Click here for a montage of her Q&A sessions from the show.) Known for her hilariously off-the cuff responses, this is a very rare opportunity to have an audience with one of the greatest entertainers of our time. -Todd O’Dowd

Click HERE for tickets and more information

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19 (CONTINUES DAILY THROUGH THURSDAY, MAY 23)

Bert Stern: Original Mad Men

@ St. Anthony Main Theatre
115 SE Main St
Minneapolis

Various times / $6 matinees, $8.50 evenings

As Don Draper sinks further into the depths of whatever dark transformation he’s currently involved in, we can’t help but wonder what actually became of the high rolling stars of Madison Avenue’s heyday. New documentary film Bert Stern: Original Mad Man provides a revealing look at the life and career of original “bad-boy” photographer and cultural icon Bert Stern. After working alongside Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine, Stern became a Madison Avenue icon, his images helping to create modern advertising as well as solidify the concept of “star” photographer. Chronicling both his meteoric rise to photographing the world’s most alluring women (Audrey Hepburn, Bridgette Bardot, Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe all came under his lens) as well as his dramatic fall from grace; the film is a wild story of self-creation, rise, fall and reinvention. A fascinating look at the real history of the “Golden Age of Advertising” that’s sure to thrill all of us Mad Men fans. -Anthony Enright

HERE for info & tickets

FRIDAY, MAY 17

Rebel Rebel! Rock For Pussy X. A Musical Tribute to David Bowie

@ First Avenue
701 1st Ave N
Minneapolis

8 pm / 18+ / $10 advance, $12 door

The single entendre that allows them to say the name of this on the air, of course, is that “pussy” in this case means “cats” — the entire event benefits Feline Rescue. If you’ve been around at all, you know the drill – a night of David Bowie music, performed by a tight band of great players and a spate of marvelous guest stars almost too numerous to name, including Babes in Toyland’s Lori Barbero, Liam Watkins (First Communion Afterparty) Phil Solem, Chris Perricelli aka Little Man, Janey Winterbauer, Christian Erickson (Blue Sky Blackout), Laurie Lindeen (ex-Zuzu’s Petals) and about a billion more. John Eller leads the band, and trust me: they’re damn near perfect at reproducing Bowie’s always interesting and complicated arrangements, and the singers aren’t shy about throwing their own spin onto things (as well as dressing up – David Campbell’s Ziggy-era tribute last year was both frightening and wonderful). Well worth the price of admission for Bowie fans or, you know, fans of pussy. -Jon Hunt

Click HERE for the First Avenue site and tickets

FRIDAY, MAY 3 (plus various dates through May 31)

Marijuana Deathsquads presents “The River”

@ Icehouse
2526 Nicollet Ave S
Minneapolis

11 pm (10:30 pm doors) / 21+ $8

Friday night is the continuation of Marijuana Deathsquads’ month-long residency at the hot new venue in town, Icehouse. They are a taking over the stage for five nights in the month of May alternating between Friday and Wednesday nights. This isn’t the first time MDS has set up camp in one spot, as any TC music fan remembers, Deathsquads Wednesday nights at Nick and Eddie was the stuff of legend. Each night has a different “theme” as well as special guests and openers that will be announce shortly before each of the nights happen. This Friday’s event features opening sets from Dream Weapon, JSSWHTNY, and a DJ set from Madden. This is an event not to be missed. -Danielle Morris

Click HERE for “The River” Soundcloud site for a preview of what to expect and Click HERE for the Icehouse site

FRIDAY, MAY 17

A.D.D.: Espada + Neuport

@ First Ave Record Room
701 N 1st Ave
Minneapolis

10 pm / 18+ / $3 advance, $5 door

Feeling the need to blow off some steam after a long work week? Looking to let some of that post-finals energy come out in the form of insane dance moves? Come out to A.D.D. – a monthly dance party that promises to get your undivided attention. Local luminary DJ Espada will be throwing it down on the 1’s and 2’s and you better believe he is ready to get down with some nasty hip hop tracks. Another local DJ, Neuport of Wak Lyf fame, will be bringing his take on hip hop as well. Whereas Espada came up with folks like Atmosphere and Brother Ali – a brand of hip hop that is tried and true in Minnesota – Neuport spent the past year touring with up-and-coming NYC-based rapper Le1f who is of the more high fashion new wave of rappers. Either way come prepared to get down for one of the best monthly parties this side of the Mississippi. -Lizzy Shramko

Click HERE for the First Avenue site

The Melismatics

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Judson Street Fest 2013

@ Judson Church
Harriet Ave S & 41st St W
Minneapolis

11 am-8 pm / All ages / Free

Live music includes Cosmoline Dymaxium, Jack Brass Band, Stereo Confession, Kinda Kinky, Trailer Trash, The Melismatics, and lots more including local choirs and the grand finale of The Mad Ripple Hootenanny. Also check out art vendors, a silent auction, musical petting zoo, children’s games, plus get super jealous as your kids enjoy the moon bounce and inflatable slide (don’t act like you don’t want to still jump around in a jump castle), and lots more to see and do. Kings Wine Bar provide food and drinks and join fellow music sponsors Twin Town Guitars and Erik Brown Homes. All proceeds go to benefit Judson Baptist Church and King Park playground, so help out fellow Minneapolitans while enjoying music, food, and fun. -Alicia Neubauer

Click HERE for the event’s webpage

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Grumpy’s NE Art-A-Whirl 2013

@ Grumpy’s NE
2200 4th St NE
Minneapolis

Music starts at noon / 21+ / Free

It’s Art-A-Whirl weekend again – aka the best neighborhood party of the spring. Not only is it a celebration of the rich arts community in NE Minneapolis, it has become one of the best local live music “festivals” in town. Grumpy’s NE always has a stellar line up featuring some of the best local music on their outdoor patio. This year’s punk and folk-centric lineup is headlined by local punk heroes Dillinger 4, and rounded out by the likes of Seawhores, L’Assassins, Still Pacific, Germaine Gemberling and more. It’s important to know set times so you can spend your day running around the neighborhood and still not miss your favorite acts. -Danielle Morris

Click HERE for the Facebook invite and set times

Painting by Samuel Bjorgum

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Mushotoku + Materials Opening Reception

@ The Fisk Building
1601 E Hennepin Ave
Enter the door on the west side of the building (1122 16th Ave SE)
Minneapolis

Minneapolis

5-10 pm / Free

Art-A-Whirl has many different sides, depending on who you are asking. While some trades and craftspeople look forward to the weekend for making up the majority of their Spring business, many artists have noticed that the event can often bring many people, but not necessarily sales. Rather than trying to cash in on this year’s ‘Whirl, Minneapolis-based painter Samuel Bjorgum is experimenting with a new formula that questions the value of art, both to the artist and the viewer. Basing his new, free-form abstractions on the achievement of a Zen-like state of Mushotoku (or a way of living without attachment to results), Bjorgum will be offering pieces for the price of the materials used to create them. Besides being a perfect chance for those art enthusiasts looking to start their collections (as many of his beautiful large-scale works will be offered at prices ranging from $50 to $200), Mushotoku + Materials should be a unique exhibition, slightly off the beaten Art-A-Whirl trail. -Nathaniel Smith

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Punk poet Paul Dickenson at the Turf Club. Photo by Sharyn Morrow, courtesy of Riot Act Reading Series

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Riot Act Reading Series: Art-A-Whirl Edition

@ VidTiger Studios
711 15th Ave NE
Minneapolis

2 pm / Free

It all began in a more innocent time — 2006, to be exact. The Riot Act Reading Series was started was poet Paul Dickinson and cohort Laura Brandenburg as a once-monthly gathering of new and established writing talent in the Twin Cities. This time around, Mary Mack, a regular to Riot Act and a consistent crowd-pleaser, is featured alongside Dickinson – and reportedly the last time the pair got together at AAW, the pair covered a Judas Priest song in a freight elevator, so you know you’re in for something good. -Alicia Neubauer

Click HERE for the Facebook event

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Alter/Nation @ Minnesota Goes Green

@ St. Paul Union Depot
214 E. 4th St.
St. Paul

9 am-5 pm (fashion show at 2 pm) / $5

Change up your wardrobe and get your alterations done all in one place. Alter/Nation is an all-day clothing swap in which participants can bring up to 20 garments that can be exchanged for the same number of items. Also as an extra perk, you can bring in two garments for free alterations. As if that wasn’t good enough, 15 minutes prior to the end of the event, all participants will be able to take an unlimited number of items. Leftover clothing will be donated by MN Goes Green to give back to Goodwill. From 1 to 3 pm make sure to check out styles by B. Resale and Second Debut Renewed Fashions on live models. See how you can make your look more environmentally friendly. -Alexandra Katz

Click HERE for the Alter/Nation invite

Photograph by Wing Young Huie

SATURDAY, MAY 18

We Are the Other: Wing Young Huie Opening Reception

@ Third Place Gallery
3730 Chicago Ave S, Studio B
Minneapolis

7-9 pm opening reception Saturday, May 18 / Free
Walking tours 11 am-12:30 pm & 3:30 pm-5 pm Saturday, May 18; Sunday, May 19; & Saturday, June 8

One of the few art-related events happening outside of Art-A-Whirl this weekend, acclaimed photo documentarian Wing Young Huie throws caution to the wind and invites you to come celebrate the debut of his latest project. A public installation on Chicago Ave between 32nd and 38th streets, We are the Other includes over 100 photographs exhibited within 19 storefronts (and on windows, walls and ceilings). The premise of the exhibit is to reflect the rich diversity of the Chicago Avenue corridor and connect people to each other in unique ways at the same time. Saturday’s opening will include live entertainment from Hal the Singing Barber, Scott Farrell, Antonio Duke, and Samm Farrell and Herb Abrams. Bonus: Ping pong and karaoke after 9pm (this is our kind of art opening!). Walking tours of the exhibit will be led by Wing on three dates throughout the exhibition’s run. -Staff

Click HERE for the Wing Young Huie site

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Psycho Suzi’s Art-A-Whirl Neighborhood Get-Together

@ Psycho Suzi’s Motor lounge
1900 Marshall St NE
Minneapolis

12-10 pm / Free

If you like puppies, Psycho Suzi’s is the place to be on Saturday. Their Neighborhood Get-Together will feature their first annual Puppy Fashion Show, complete with a Puppy Kissing Booth, if you’re in to that. There will be cash prizes for the best in homemade costumes and fancy doggy hairdos, and a rescue shelter is even bringing some dogs for those of you that show up without a furry friend. In true Psycho Suzi’s fashion, there will be tropical drinks, “food that’s deep-fried locally,” a beer garden featuring 3rd Street Brewery and live woodcarving demonstrations. We would imagine there will also be some good dog watching. There are limited spots for the doggy festivities, so register early by calling 612-788-9069. – Maggie LaMaack

Click HERE for the Psycho Suzi’s site

SATURDAY, MAY 18

First Annual Stanley’s Craft Beer Festival and Block Party

@ Stanley’s Northeast Bar Room
2500 University Ave NE
Minneapolis

Doors: 1 pm – 10 pm; Fest: 2pm – 5 pm / 21+ / $59, or $10 designated driver ticket

Get the chance to shove your choice of 100+ beers in your face while building a pretzel and hammering nails into a log, all in the comfort and luxury of Stanley’s parking lot in Northeast this Saturday afternoon. The 18th year of Art-A-Whirl will be blessed with the first annual incarnation of Stanley’s Craft Beer and Block Party; for 59 bucks, you get a sample glass on a lanyard, a $15 gift card to use after the 18th, the opportunity to slap together a pretzel of your own design, and lots more. To stay busy in between beer samples, there’s Hammerschlagen, the food truck, cigar-rolling, and live music including Capitol Sons and Orange Whip. If you’re the awesome and responsible type, AKA a sober driver, you get in for $10, you wonderful person. -Alicia Neubauer

Click HERE for tickets and information

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Rockers Spring Social

@ Clubhouse Jager
923 Washington Ave N
Minneapolis

1-9:30 pm / 21+ / Free

Saturday at Clubhouse Jager celebrates warm weather season with a very cool motorcycle show hosted by Ton Up Minneapolis. The features a moto show with prizes and encourages everyone to bring down their wheels weather is be a scooter/moped, vintage or classic bike or a modern version. There will be food vendors, beer sponsors Djs and live music featuring Rachel Resist with The Violent Shifters. Come down check out all the bike swag on one of the classiest patios in town. -Danielle Morris

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

"Bad Art Installation"

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Bad Art Installation: Community Collectors Trunk Show

@ American Swedish Institute
2600 Park Ave
Minneapolis

1-3 pm / Free (with $7 museum admission)

Ever wondered how that truly terrible landscape your Mom bought you at a thrift shop (which you have stowed in the basement and retrieve only when she visits) stacks up against the bad art everyone else has hidden away. This weekend you may have the rare chance to find out as all those embarrassingly tacky pieces find their way to the ASI’s Osher Gallery for a cacophony of eyesore art. Part of ASI’s International Museum Day programming, Bad Art Installation: Community Collectors Trunk Show Bad Art Installation: Community Collectors Trunk Show invites visitors to bring aesthetically questionable artworks to hang on the wall for a juried selection process where the patrons will winnow out 5 works while collaboratively discussing the definitions of bad or good art, and parsing the nuances of what makes a piece either what’s ugly or aesthetically acceptable. You know you have a worthy piece tucked away somewhere, time to share it with (or perhaps unleash upon) your friends and neighbors. -Anthony Enright

Click HERE for the American Swedish Institute Site

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Day of Familia 8

@ Familia Uptown
2833 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis

7 pm / All ages / Free

Skaters might not seem like they care about the clothes they wear but one thing they definitely do care about are their kicks. Case and point: this Saturday local skateshop, Familia, is celebrating the release of their latest set of kicks a collaboration between DC and Familia. You better believe there will be a line around the block of kids with their boards in tow just waiting to cop a pair for themselves. In honor of the release Familia has kindly organized some skate friendly events throughout the day: there will be a free skate jam at the Familia HQ skatepark and an art show at their Hennepin Ave location featuring paintings by Todd Bratrud. After the daytime festivities are completed they are throwing an after party at Hell’s Kitchen to make sure that everyone stumbles home in a drunken stupor. So whether you actually known how to skate or you just think the sneakers look cool, come out and enjoy a day of skating and debauchery that Familia has put together just for you. -Lizzy Shramko

Click HERE for the Familia site and HERE for the Hell’s Kitchen site

Father You See Queen

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Father You See Queen + c. Kostra + Fort Wilson Riot + Me & My Arrow + Kill to Kill

@ The Sound Gallery
414 3rd Ave N
Minneapolis

10 pm / 21+ / $10 suggested donation

If you are in the mood for weird music this weekend then look no further. Father You See Queen, local art rock weirdos (that’s a compliment for those who are wondering), are headlining a show at Minneapolis’ Sound Gallery, home of all shows DIY and avant garde. Their single “We Give and Give…” garnered a Pitchfork review… and survived unscathed. They are part of a different generation of local music that is deeply Minnesotan yet simultaneously universal in their ethereal reference points. c. Kostra, aka Ryan Olcott, will be churning out self-described “solo improvised shoegaze guitar. Fort Wilson Riot, another Minneapolis band adept in sound amalgamation, will also be playing, along with the Me & My Arrow and Kill to Kill. So art school kids, music lovers and weirdos alike come out for a night that will most definitely weird you out. In a good way. -Lizzy Shramko

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

DJ Fundo

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Hands High

@ Honey
205 E Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis

10 pm / 21+ / $5

Hands High is one buck-wild dance night at Honey and the DJs play all the best hip hop, R&B and party bangers. With Plain Ole Bill out of town, this month Minneapolis’ favorite gampo, DJ Fundo, is back behind the decks after a few months out touring with Prof, and he’s ready to kick out the jams. Be sure to get there early, this event always packs it in. -Danielle Morris

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Lady Heat Spring Fling

@ Clubhouse Jäger
923 Washington Ave S
Minneapolis

10 pm / 21+ / FREE

Groove freely to Lady Heat’s rock ‘n’ rolling mix of funk, R&B, garage and old school soul when they make their Clubhouse Jäger debut this month. The Lady Heat dance night — featuring DJs Christy Hunt, Danielle Morris and Sara Jean Hanson — spin the best vinyl from their collections within the cozy, charming confines of everyone’s favorite clubhouse. If dancing the night away to stylish, über-talented and ultra-cute DJs on Jäger’s dance floor isn’t your thing (how couldn’t it be?), you can always sidle up to the bar, where hottest bartenders in town (as voted by Vita.mn users in 2011) will be slangin’ delish drink all night. -Staff

Click HERE for the Clubhouse Jäger site

SUNDAY, MAY 19

The Good Thing Part 1

@ Clubhouse Jäger
923 Washington Ave N
Minneapolis

4-10 pm / 21+ / Free

Two words set nearly every single Twin Cities resident’s heart a-flutter when uttered aloud: “patio season.” After surviving one of the lamest and longest winters in recent memory, celebrate the appearance of sunshine and disappearance of snow at Jäger to kick off the beginning of their patio season. A grab-bag of seven-inch vinyl join host DJs King Otto and Tarik Thornton along with Freddy Fresh, Superbrush 427, creator of Hot Pants Rambo Salinas, barbecued meaty treats, and super cheap drink specials to get your day-drink on within your budget. It may rain Sunday, but who cares when the temps are above freezing and there’s tons of vinyl and cheap booze everywhere? -Alicia Neubauer

Click HERE for the event on Facebook

Kristin Hersh

SUNDAY, MAY 19

Kristin Hersh

@ Icehouse
2528 Nicollet Ave S
Minneapolis

9 pm / 21+ / $16

You can pretty much point to the formation of Throwing Muses and their contemporaries (and 4AD labelmates) the Pixies in the late ’80s as the moment when American indie music shifted from the “college rock” that was so prevalent in the previous decade (see: the Cure, Echo, etc) to the stuff that would pretty much rule the earth in the ’90s. Kristin Hersh’s Muses were a terrific band, giving Hersh’s always sharp songwriting a jangly, angular sound that pretty much cemented them as the influence/model for the multi-gender rock band of the ’90s. Hersh has been through god knows what in the ensuing years, from marriage to motherhood to mental illness, and come out alive and kicking – her writing has, if anything, sharpened, and she’s still writing magnificent songs that deserve to be canonized. Come check her out in the intimate setting of Icehouse, which is one of the best places locally to see music (great food, great drinks, good sightlines – what more do you want)? -Jon Hunt

Click HERE for the Icehouse site

/// WANT MORE ART? ///

Click HERE for a listing of ongoing art openings

Weekend What’s What: Art-A-Whirl Edition!

staff — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:00:07 +0000

xo-l’étoile

Painting by Samuel Bjorgum

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Mushotoku + Materials Opening Reception

@ The Fisk Building
1601 E Hennepin Ave
Enter the door on the west side of the building (1122 16th Ave SE)
Minneapolis

Minneapolis

5-10 pm / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Photograph by Alec Soth

FRIDAY, MAY 17

Icebox 25: Heart & Soul

@ Icebox Gallery
1500 Jackson St NE #443
Minneapolis

5-9 pm Friday / noon – 8 pm Saturday / noon – 5 pm Sunday / Free
Exhibit runs through August 31; on view 10 am-6 pm Thursdays & Fridays, noon-5 pm Saturdays

Click HERE for the Icebox Gallery site

Artist Maze Wayz

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

It Was All A Dream

@ The Abstracted Gallery
1618 Central Ave NE suite #110
Minneapolis

Opening reception 5-10 pm Friday, open hours Noon-8 pm Saturday & Noon-5 pm / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

"Spirit of the Lake" by Melissa Grimm

FRIDAY, MAY 17

Art-A-Whirl @ VidTiger: Liminal Phase & BRONTO

@ VidTiger Studios
711 15th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Music 9-11:30 pm (art on view all weekend) / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Punk poet Paul Dickenson at the Turf Club. Photo by Sharyn Morrow, courtesy of Riot Act Reading Series

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Riot Act Reading Series: Art-A-Whirl Edition

@ VidTiger Studios
711 15th Ave NE
Minneapolis

2 pm / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook event

FRIDAY, MAY 17

MCAD Visual Storage: MFA 2013 Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception

@ Northrup King Building
Gallery 254
1500 Jackson Street NE
Minneapolis

6–9:30 pm opening reception Friday / Free
On view 2-8 pm Thursday, May 16 & Friday, May 17 + Noon-5 pm Saturday, May 18 & Sunday, May 19

Click HERE for the MCAD MFA site

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

NEMAA Silent Auction Fundraiser

@ Northrup King Building
1500 Jackson St NE #322
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-3 pm Sunday / Free

Click HERE for more information

"Art for Others"

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Art for Others + Open Studios at the Grain Belt

@ Grain Belt Bottling House
79 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm / Free

Click HERE for more info

Adam DeGross

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Adam DeGross Does Art-A-Whirl

@ Thorp Building
1618 Central Ave NE
2nd floor
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

ANFITRIÓN: Caitlin Karolczak + Jaime Carrera Open Studio Event

@ Solar Arts Building
711 15th Ave NE #205
Minneapolis

Open studio 5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Painting by Nicholas Harper

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Go Rogue

@ Rogue Buddha Gallery
357 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday party, open Noon-8 pm Saturday & Noon-5 pm Sunday during Art-A-Whirl / Free

Click HERE for the Rogue Buddha Facebook page

Detail of sculpture by Michael Thomsen

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Michael Thomsen/Keith Holmes Open Studio

@ 607 Studios
607 22nd Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday (After Hours Party on Saturday 8 pm-midnight) / Free

Click HERE for Juleana Enright’s interview with Michael Thomsen leading up to his AAW studio opening for l’étoile’s The Culturator

Click HERE for the Facebook event

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Perfect Strangers: Photographs by Stephan Fäerber

@ Studio A
607 22nd Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday (After Hours Party on Saturday 8 pm-midnight) / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook event

Scott Seekins

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Scott Seekins is Ubiquitous

@ Various locations
Northeast Minneapolis

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Kitsch

@ Rosalux Gallery
1400 Van Buren St NE #195
Minneapolis

AAW hours: 7-10 pm Friday, May 17; Noon-8 pm Saturday, May 18 & Noon-5 pm Sunday, May 19
On view through May 26; regular gallery hours: noon-4 pm Saturdays & Sundays

Click HERE for the Rosalux Gallery site

"Existing Varieties"

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Existing Varieties Opening Reception

@ Fox Tax
503 1st Ave NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm reception Friday, May 17; open 11 am–5pm Saturday, May 18 & Sunday, May 19 / Free
Exhibit runs through June 30; on view during business hours, 10 am-4:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays

Click HERE for the Fox Tax site for a full list of artists

Leg Up Studio

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Inked Up: Members’ Exhibition

@ Leg Up Studio
681 17th Ave NE, Suite 119
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, 12-8 pm Saturday, 12-5 pm Sunday / Free

Click HERE for the Leg Up Studio site

Detail from "Dzine: Victory"

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY MAY 19

AAW @ Public Functionary: Jerry Saltz + Dzine

@ Public Functionary
1400 12th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Click HERE for Juleana’s interview with Public Functionary’s Tricia Khutoretsky for l’étoile’s The Culturator

For tickets to attend the Jerry Saltz + Dzine discussion, click HERE / Click HERE for the Facebook invite

Print by Burlesque of North America

FRIDAY, MAY 17

1101 Stinson Art-A-Whirl Alley Party

@ Co Exhibitions
1101 Stinson Blvd NE
Minneapolis

Alley party 6-10 pm Friday, open studio Noon-6 pm Saturday / Free

Click HERE for CO Exhibitions’ website and Click HERE for the Facebook invite

JDim Media, Disobey. Artwork from the Corrosion Maintained series

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Art-A-Whirl: Dim Media

@ Turbo Tim’s Anything Automotive
2319 1/2 Jackson St NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, 12-8 pm Saturday, 12-5 pm Sunday / Free

Click HERE for more info

/// SHOPPING ///

FRIDAY, MAY 17-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Art-A-Whirl Shopping

@ Northeast Minneapolis
various locations

5-9 pm Friday, Noon-8 pm Saturday, Noon-5 pm Sunday / Free

Art-A-Whirl, one of the largest studio crawls in the country, is best-known for the visual art, but it also provides some great shopping opportunities from local jewelers and textile designers. Over in Thorp Building, handcrafted jewelry line Carrier Pigeon by local jeweler Lauren Neal is made from fine metals in original settings inspired by nature. (Thorp Building, 1618 Central Avenue NE, Studio #215). Also in the Thorp is Needle and Black designer Kerry Riley, known for her hand-tooled leather wristlets, patent belts, harnesses and holsters and one-of-a-kind pieces available for purchase and special order She’ll also have a belt bar as well as limited edition Needle & Black tote bags and a fabric sale benefiting the Old Arizona youth fashion program (Studio #223). Known for creating dynamic looks made of natural components like wood, shells, fine metals and semi-precious stones, ROX Jewelry by longtime Minneapolis news anchor Robyne Robinson mixes earthly elements with Robinson’s travels around the world. During her AAW event, take advantage of her new affordable pieces including $40 earrings and $25 leather wrap Evil Eye bracelets, plus if you bring your unwanted jewelry in, you can receive 20% off your ROX purchase (California Building, 2205 California Street NE, Studio #403). Over in the Northrup King Building, jewelry lines 3 Jäg Design by goldsmith Betty Jäger uses only high karat gold and sterling silver accented with texture and colored diamonds in her designs; she’s joined by studio mates, jewelry designer Britta Kauppila, Eileen Ferguson of Eileen K Photography, and potter Meg Brown (Northrup King Building, 1500 Jackson Street NE, Studio #435); Susan Frerich’s line Susan Elnora, who’s debuting a new collection of skull-inspired necklaces, at the studio of jewelry line EC Design by Emily Johnson (Studio #436). For the home, Omforme returns with a popup shop featuring one-of-a-kind and vintage for you home like Adrian Pearsal from the mid century, MasterCraft, Molteni and Knoll. -Alexandra Katz

Click HERE to see the Art-A-Whirl website

/// LIVE MUSIC + PARTIES ///

While we wholeheartedly believe the focus of Art-A-Whirl should be on the art, it doesn’t hurt to mix in some live music, beer and other outdoor shenannigans.

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Grumpy’s NE Art-A-Whirl 2013

@ Grumpy’s NE
2200 4th St NE
Minneapolis

Music starts at noon / 21+ / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook invite and set times

Night Moves

THURSDAY, MAY 16-SUNDAY, MAY 19

Art-A-Whirl Weekend at the 331 Club

@ 331 Club
331 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Music starts at 10 pm Thursday, 6 pm Friday, noon Saturday & Sunday / outdoors AA, indoors 21+ / Free

Click HERE for the 331 Club site and full lineup with set times

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Psycho Suzi’s Art-A-Whirl Neighborhood Get-Together

@ Psycho Suzi’s Motor lounge
1900 Marshall St NE
Minneapolis

12-10 pm / Free

Click HERE for the Psycho Suzi’s site

SATURDAY, MAY 18

First Annual Stanley’s Craft Beer Festival and Block Party

@ Stanley’s Northeast Bar Room
2500 University Ave NE
Minneapolis

Doors: 1 pm – 10 pm; Fest: 2pm – 5 pm / 21+ / $59, or $10 designated driver ticket

Click HERE for tickets and information

FRIDAY, MAY 18 & SATURDAY, MAY 19

The Anchor Fish & Chips Art-A-Whirl

@ The Anchor Fish & Chips
302 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis

Noon-9 pm / Free

Click HERE for the Facebook invite and full lineup

FRIDAY, MAY 17 & SATURDAY, MAY 18

Art-A-Whirl at 612Brew

@ 612Brew
945 Broadway St NE
Minneapolis

5-10 pm Friday, 3-10 pm Saturday / 21+ / Free

Click HERE for the 612Brew site

/// AAW PARTICIPATING BUILDINGS & GALLERIES ///

Open Studio Locations:

Architectural Antiques Building
1330 Quincy Street NE, 612-332-8344.

California Building
2205 California St NE, 612-788-5551, www.californiabuilding.com

Casket Arts Building
1700 Madison St, 612-788-5551, www.casketarts.com

Grain Belt Studios
77 & 79 13th Ave NE, 612-465-0235.

Northrup King Building
1500 Jackson St NE, 612-363-5612, www.northrupkingbuilding.com

Thorp Building & Central Business Center
1618 & 1620 Central Ave NE, click HERE for more info

Q.arma Building
Open studios and “Formed by Nature,” ongoing at Altered Esthetics Gallery.
1224 Quincy St NE, 612-623-3782, www.qarmabuilding.com

Van Buren Building
1400 Van Buren Street NE, www.vanburenbuilding.com

Art-A-Whirl Hours: 5-10 p.m. Fri., Noon-8 p.m. Sat., Noon-5 p.m. Sun. Visit www.nemaa.org for more information.

/// WANT MORE ART? ///

Click HERE for a listing of ongoing art openings

The Niles Files: The One That Got Away

Niles Schwartz — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:40:23 +0000

Writing about The Great Gatsby might be like making a film of it. I can hear Mickey Rourke in Body Heat telling me, “There are 50 ways to screw up when you’re doing Gatsby. Figure out half of those, you’re a genius.” And I’m no genius.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby

I do love F. Scott Fitzgerald and his heralded novel, though I’m not sure I love it for the same reasons a lot of other people do. Reviews of Baz Luhrmann’s new and mostly faithful adaptation of Gatsby are divided, sometimes condescendingly hostile, sometimes suspiciously defensive (they kind of sound like me talking about Godfather III). There’s an inconsistency to what works and what doesn’t, what Luhrmann should have done vs. what he did do, and a lot of it goes back to critics’ impressions of the novel. Did Luhrmann respect the text, or did he trivialize it? My conclusion is that he respected the plot and incidents, but a refusal to let the story breathe along with ignorance to the novel’s stinging ironies and textures has resulted in a gross, even insulting, trivialization.

The themes of Gatsby are repeatedly thrown around: the Jazz Age, class, lost love and lost time, the frenzy before the storm of the Depression, and “America,” whatever that is. Then there’s the iconic symbols and images like the Green Light, the Eyes of Dr. Eckleburg, the Valley of Ashes, the new rich of West Egg vs. the old rich of East Egg, and the unforgettable description of Myrtle Wilson’s detached, floppy breast. There’s the familiar cast of Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), George and Myrtle Wilson (Jason Clarke and Isla Fisher), spread widely apart in a web of passion across New York and then tragically tied together in the final act. Fitzgerald’s novel carries intimations of transcendence while wearing the costume of hopeless romanticism. It’s about accomplishing aspirations and moving beyond the confines of a given identity, the hero as shape-shifter. It centers on the boy/man “child of God” who moves mountains to win the girl/woman he loves, while she embodies the fantasy anyone may have of being so loved that another would do anything to be with them.

The child of God about his Father's business

Because of that, Gatsby is misinterpreted as a love story, a kind of Jazz Age Tristan and Isolde (which, with the novel’s references to mythic and medieval images, was probably on Fitzgerald’s mind) with the poor boy trying to win the rich girl, climbing high, grasping for satisfaction, and failing, the lovers foiled by the mores and structures long held in place. Certainly this is pertinent to the tale, especially when one thinks about The Great Gatsby as being set in a world of tribes dictating identity and what a person can legitimately accomplish, an American ideal that is nevertheless repulsive to the ruling class who seem transplanted from European nobility, and who’ve evolved alongside the infrastructures of power.

My assessment of the film might not be fair, because we’re judging something apart from the book, and whether it’s Kubrick’s The Shining, Cuaron’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Davies’ The House of Mirth, or Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (which addresses a similar point about remakes), the film must be ingested and processed by virtue of its own integrity and consonance.

The problem is that films don’t exist in vacuums, and Gatsby brings with it some great baggage as, um, one of the main contenders for The Great American Novel. Luhrmann relishes the big city verve and delectable vice while neglecting the significance and lost simplicity of the whole nation behind the extravagance — the place that all of these characters are from, and from which they’re running. Luhrmann is also telling a sincere love story, when Gatsby was undermining a love story. A number of critics have alleged that the fault of this film is that old tired trope of “style over substance,” but that’s crap. Even if Baz Luhrmann’s style never hits the right register for Fitzgerald, the problem is his calibration of the (quite) abundant substance.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, back home in the town he described as "boring as hell."

Bluntly (and with apologies for the cliche), Luhrmann doesn’t know the music, but he certainly knows the words. The aforementioned films, most particularly The Shining (detested by author Stephen King), effectively built atop their source material to become richly fascinating independent organisms, yet Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby refuses to free itself. The writing is literally scrawled out for us and several passages are spoken with Tobey Maguire’s sludgy narration as Nick Carraway — ironic, because Fitzgerald’s Gatsby could be interpreted as a story about the insufficiency of words, which we use to capture lost time in a script (Daisy must repeat Gatsby’s dictated words to Tom: I never loved you). The structure, even repeated flashbacks, is scrupulously in accord with Fitzgerald’s eight chapter chronology. Luhrmann fetishizes Fitzgerald’s particular details, such as the curtains at the Buchanan residence which blow through the room “like pale flags twisting…toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea,” while literalizing others, like when Nick says that he’s both inside and outside of the decadent world of New York, looking out over the city with the camera falling onto him looking up from the street. Luhrmann throws in most of the plot points, even some details and dialogue from other Fitzgerald stuff (such as “The Crack-Up,” selected letters, biographical data, and Gatsby‘s inferior early draft, Trimalchio) but he fudges with the nuances in between the incidents. It can perhaps be defended then as a dazzling auteur statement, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, but it’s rather infuriating when you consider how the filmmaker panders for an audience that indulges in blindness and illusion (and yet again — a postmodern reading here justifies this Gatsby entry, what with its 3D cinematography and the motifs of seeing and blindness taken from the book, even including Jack White’s cover of U2′s “Love is Blindness”).

Luhrmann’s made a Gatsby that’s more palatable for audiences, his renowned (or infamous) PG-13 Ken Russellfied visual audaciousness hushed by textual cowardice. The Great Gatsby becomes a Moulin Rouge! tempered love story, a big city tragedy with East Coast decadence doubling for the TMZ Kardashian madness of the 21st century where we’re pretty sure who to root for. The full story, framed by the original device of the now morbidly alcoholic and depressed Carraway writing his reminiscences of 1922 at a sanitarium months after the 1929 crash, warmly blankets the wounds of a crippled and hungover nation after its expired Gilded Age. The titular Gatsby here is indeed, as the final moments emphasize, great — and not “great.” What would originally conclude with a hushed death rattle of wasted melancholic futility before the future, where longing leads nowhere, is now reverent and consoling.

Gatsby's Grail and Golden Girl: Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan)

The problems of the novel — the amoral character of Daisy, the ambivalent presence of Henry Gatz and Gatsby’s relationship to his origins, the symbiotic relevance of George and Myrtle Wilson in relation to the question of marrying for love, Nick’s questionable sexuality and how his adoration of Gatsby might be, as Tom Buchanan tells him, based on the same kind of blindness that’s trapped everyone else in the narrative — are worked out for us or ignored.

In the film, the love between Gatsby and Daisy is total and mutual, without her apathy, privilege, or his resentment that flows between the tenders of his affection. In truth, Gatsby doesn’t simply want to love Daisy, but he wants to control her, an adoring and adored puppet of flesh and blood representative of a world that’s been denied him because of his station. He lied to seduce her initially, and he schemed his way with a variety of other fronts to “earn” her as a wealthy man. There’s a lot of contempt for the object of desire in The Great Gatsby, and one might remember that Fitzgerald wrote it while nursing wounded pride, recently discovering his wife Zelda was having an affair with an aviator (he also apparently called his first love, Ginevra King, the primary influence for Daisy’s character, “an unprintable verbal insult” when they met again). “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says to Nick about Daisy in the novel, something carefully omitted by Luhrmann, a director who wants his (mostly) female audience to identify with her, when in fact her privilege makes her something of another species from the worry-laden lives of Gatsby and Nick — and us.

Different class, different species: Gatsby and Buchanan

In the novel, Nick deducts that Daisy is turned off by Gatsby’s West Egg party with the wild outsiders who come without invitation (“She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented ‘place’ that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village–appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand”). Not so in the film. Nick also believes that she’s responsible for Gatsby laying off his servants (“So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes”). Again, this trait which would make us feel differently about her is left alone. And while we know that it’s her behind the wheel, crashing Gatsby’s yellow car into Myrtle, not only does Luhrmann’s Gatsby plan on taking the fall, but he also verbally says in the film repeatedly, “It was my fault.” Luhrmann cuts to a flashback of the accident and amidst the confusion of the wheel, with Gatsby grabbing it away from Daisy at the crucial moment, we are invited to believe him. Luhrmann also gives her the benefit of the doubt that she’d be tempted to call Gatsby after the accident. No longer does she show off her daughter Pammy as a plaything who is handled by silent servants, but Daisy attends to the child in her closing moments, carefully preparing Pammy for a journey the Buchanans will take. Luhrmann’s Daisy gets a free pass, and I call total bullshit.

The aspirant glory of the Green Light loses its magic for Gatsby when it appears he’s won Daisy back while Daisy, though not happy with Tom Buchanan, isn’t unhappy. She’s contented enough and electively vapid, devoid of responsibilities while suffering Tom’s infidelities. Her lack of concern for her daughter, who emerges as a plaything to show off to Gatsby, demonstrates a present weightlessness. Time isn’t a burden for her. The Daisy Gatsby loves is in those fading words and promises in Louisville, five years before, a ghost roaming the West alongside the diametrically opposed ghosts of the rejected father, Henry Gatz, in North Dakota and Minnesota. It’s a faint echo that tantalizes while refusing to materialize into clarity.

Clever or cowardly: Fitzgerald's Anti-Semitic creation Meyer Wolfsheim recast as Amitabh Bachchan

All this kind of makes me wish that, with Luhrmann’s pop soundtrack sensibilities, the filmmaker would have included Jarvis Cocker and Pulp’s “Common People” from the Different Class album, a song about a privileged girl who wants to walk with the bohemians and stragglers, but will never understand them. (I also can’t help but feel Arcade Fire’s Suburbs album, where the sprawl of youth becomes spoiled with passing time, would fit in better with Gatsby than Jay-Z, Fergie, Jack White and others on this soundtrack, but maybe that’s just my stupid taste). Class is more tribal than race, and just as there have been theories of Nick Carraway’s bisexuality, there are literary theories that Gatsby is black. I don’t necessarily believe it, but there is definitely a racial subtext in the book, beginning with Tom’s praises for eugenic pseudo-science which predicts the end of civilization with the ascendancy of African descendents, and images like the black individuals riding in a limo–driven by a white man. The implication is that anything is possible on this side of the world.

Later on at the Plaza Hotel, Tom relates a roughneck like Gatsby romancing Daisy to “intermarriage between black and white.” This is in the film, followed by some original dialogue where Tom differentiates Gatsby from everyone else in the room, based on his poverty, but Luhrmann omits something Jordan says after Tom’s insinuation: “We’re all white here.” It’s something she doesn’t have to say, obviously, or which the narrator Nick wouldn’t have to remember. But it’s there for a reason, and the irony of Jordan’s line – of which she’s probably unaware – is that for Fitzgerald, the rich are different from “us,” or as Warren Beatty points out in Bulworth (a film remembered this week because of political happenings in the Obama Administration), “Rich people have always stayed on top by dividing white people from colored people. But white people got more in common with colored people than they do with rich people.” For a viewing audience, the world of the Valley of Ashes feels much more alien than the Buchanan residence. I’m also not sure how I feel about Luhrmann’s casting of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan as Jewish gangster Meyer Wolfsheim, which is partially a playful reference to deceiving fronts cutting across tribal boundaries, and has been admired by critics as a way of bypassing the perceived anti-Semitic stereotype Fitzgerald created in the novel, Wolfsheim being a stand-in for real-life gangster Arnold Rothstein (played by Michael Stuhlbarg in Boardwalk Empire and Michael Lerner in Eight Men Out). But it also feels like another refusal of Luhrmann to confront the troubling aspects of Fitzgerald. Is Fitzgerald, who elsewhere seems so sensitive to racism in the book (two characters use the word “kike”: the intolerant Tom and decidedly unlikable Mrs. McKee), the anti-Semite, or is Nick? Or is Wolfsheim’s conspicuous Jewishness another tribal marker in the chaotic power-grab of Gilded Age New York, his illiteracy and barriers requiring him to use the “fine breeding” of Jay Gatsby as his front?

Making matters easier for us, Tom becomes a bigger jerk, less humanely drawn. Fitzgerald certainly doesn’t allot him much sympathy in the novel, but Tom is still unexpectedly grief-stricken when Myrtle is killed, and hurt when confronted with the possibility of Daisy never loving him. Such feeling isn’t afforded him in the film, certainly when the talented Joel Edgerton plays him like a cartoon. There’s a telling alteration in the story during Gatsby’s party, with Tom becoming entranced with a movie actress and following her inside Gatsby’s castle for some certain debauchery (earlier with Myrtle, he is quite loud and impolite with his lovemaking as Nick awkwardly sits and stares at the couple’s dog — in the book he’s more discrete). The scene is different in the novel, as a drunken and suspicious Tom stumbles apart from Daisy and Gatsby’s flirtations. It’s Daisy who has her eye on the actress, the only familiar face for her at the party, and instead of Tom salivating over her it’s the actress’ producer, whose gaze falls closer and closer on her, as if spellbound — and rendered ridiculous — by an obscure object of desire. It’s an image that would be so wonderful for a Gatsby film, reinforcing the story’s paradoxical themes of gazing and blindness, of moth-to-flame obsession with an ungraspable surface of beauty, like a celluloid screen gem or wealthy and beautiful person (Daisy to Gatsby, Tom to Myrtle). But no, obviously there’s still some ambivalence about Tom for Luhrmann, so he makes the hulking husband more of a douche.

Common People?: Nick (Tobey Maguire), Gatsby, Daisy, Tom (Joel Edgerton)

And so, faded are complexity and ambiguity. The villain is made worse while the damsel in distress and her knight are made better. A token tip of the hat is given to expectation that the rich are assholes, while the devastating disparity between wealthy and poor remains unexplored. Our ideals of pure love (while it may be quashed by social mores) are validated and unquestioned. Then there is an all-star cast, a pop soundtrack, the dynamic fast-moving rhythm, and clothes, clothes, clothes that set tabloid radio and TV talk shows afire with delight. How are we not surprised that Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is adored by audiences and a solid hit in spite of its reviews?

It’s not that filmmakers can’t lick Gatsby. This new movie is well loved by some, and a commercial success — as was the listless and gauzy 1974 adaptation directed by Jack Clayton and starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Bruce Dern (who, despite his lack of physical similarity to the book’s Tom, gives an incredible performance that’s leaked into my subsequent readings of the book). Sumptuously dressed and melodramatic, these two films aren’t Gatsby. They refuse to focus on the mystery of Gatsby and the distance of Fitzgerald, needing us to get close with Gatsby and Daisy through either lovely and romantic montages or scenes of awkward dialogue. The filmmakers can justify this by citing Fitzgerald’s own dissatisfaction with the way he treats Gatsby too vaguely, and yet, if you read Trimalchio (which inspires the new Gatsby with a revealing scene between Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom), you see why the mystique of the final draft works. Breaking through the walls to bring us closer to Gatsby, one wishes Luhrmann had completely reframed the story — which means taking it away from Nick Carraway. Luhrmann should have “betrayed the novel to be true to it,” as David Cronenberg repeatedly says of his adaptations, or as Milan Kundera simply told Philip Kaufman regarding the adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (another seemingly unadaptable book), “Eliminate.”

Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in Jack Clayton's 1974 "Great Gatsby"

The truth is several filmmakers could probably give us the Gatsby Fitzgerald deserves, but if you look at my suggestions (Sofia Coppola, Terrence Malick, Terrence Davies, Andrew Dominik, David Gordon Green, Andrea Arnold, and considering the Before trilogy, particularly Before Midnight, Richard Linklater) it’s clear that — what I consider the appropriate sensibility anyway (excluding possibly Martin Scorsese, whose The Aviator with DiCaprio is a fantastic film about predestined apart-ness amidst the whirlwind of a luxurious in-crowd, so akin to Gatsby) — audiences wouldn’t bite and probably be turned off.

I also think of David Fincher’s most divisive of his recent films, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was deplored by many moviegoers and critics as overblown Oscar-bait courtesy of Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth, humorously castigated on both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report as a bore in December 2008 (meanwhile, both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been quite welcoming to Luhrmann’s Gatsby). Adapted from a Fitzgerald short story with which it has virtually no similarities other than the bare premise (Benjamin Button is born an old man and ages backwards), Fincher and Roth nevertheless were drawing from the author’s well, particularly Gatsby, the golden girl lead (Cate Blanchett) named Daisy, as the film is in tune with Gatsby’s desire to repeat the past. Kent Jones writes about it, “Every second of Benjamin Button, every shot and every cut, every gesture and every facial expression, every turn in its narrative and every visual effect, is devoted to the contemplation of time’s passing.” He adds, “[It] is easy to imagine the film directed by someone else, anyone else apart from Fincher, and made into a poignant love story about two people who ‘meet in the middle,’ set against the backdrop of the American century. I’ve ready many descriptions of this phantom movie, Roth’s script as directed by Ron Howard or Nora Ephron. They are very far from the mysterious and troubling film Fincher has actually made.”

The Blind Clockmaker in David Fincher's troubling "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Fincher’s Button may have its flaws, but Jones is right about how it captures the passing of time, in addition to the “troubling” film Fincher has made. Like Fitzgerald, Fincher dresses up the film as an inspirational “poignant love story,” but reading the film closely reveals a journey toward entropy, about the omissions people make in their reminiscences and the lies they tell themselves in pursuit for an everlasting moment. As Benjamin (Brad Pitt) moves into youth with the future, he throws off connection to the past. A masterly display of digital cinema, Fincher’s Button is about the digital, the posterboards of Citizen Soldiers and inspiration (“You can accomplish anything”) underwritten by the ghastly silence in the final images, a Hurricane swallowing the Blind Clockmaker (Elias Koteas) ‘s clock, alongside the the dissolved memories of Benjamin. As readers misinterpret Gatsby as a love story, so did viewers misinterpret the misanthropic Fincher’s film as inspirational woo-woo, labeling it a Forrest Gump retread. His next film also seemed to cover Gatsby ground more effectively than what other Gatsby films have offered, as cyborg Mark Zuckerberg invents a virtual world after being rejected by a woman in The Social Network.

Almost totally excised along with ambiguities about character is the memory of the “Middle West,” the haunting breeze of which gives the novel its wistful ache, a great tangible space that doubles for the prospects of a country and of a romance, though it’s empty with the echoes of what-could-have-been. “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.” With that excision of space goes the sense of loss and longing, Luhrmann working on the more familiar and snazzy turf of the Big City, with which Luhrmann relies on a popular pastiche associated with Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age. This Gatsby is more like one of those flapper parties local fashionistas organize than Fitzgerald’s novel. And in presenting us a party, Luhrmann also refuses to make us feel the downside of excess, like the incoherent drunks who people the novel, unable to walk or communicate, their resentments uninhibited. Luhrmann will give us “Owl Eyes,” the old man in Gatsby’s library, but he’s not the bewildered coot from the book, but a funny looking old man who wants to bathe us in the amazement of Gatsby: “He doesn’t exist,” he says in the film, while in the book “Owl Eyes” is overwhelmed by how this “theatrical production” is, in fact, real, as he inspects the volumes on the wall.

Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby"

Behind the allure of decadent parties and modernity, though, is the Frontier, the hallowed thing around which the American Romanticism of Whitman and Emerson developed, or the river of Mark Twain, leading to a vast elsewhere of possibilities and freedom. With Gatsby, Fitzgerald not only prophesied the end of the time for which he was a sparkling representative (the Crash was four years after the novel’s publication), but, I think more importantly, he sees the end of that Frontier’s possibilities, the emptiness in a space that’s been conquered and canvassed by pilgrims who moved westward against midnight and exhausted themselves with dreaming before tidally curving back to the Eastern shores where they initially landed, or as Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway puts it so much better than I ever could, “I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes–a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither stood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The Great Gatsby is the death knell of American literary Romanticism.

The “green breast” the Dutch see parallels the Green Light Jay Gatsby associates with his much longed-for Daisy, a woman so disparate from his origins and temperament, yet the only person who can unlock his intimacy. Courting and making love to Daisy in Louisville is presented as a memory of religious significance, a consecration with the moon looking on in benediction, the woman compared to the “grail.” As a grail myth, we can wonder if Gatsby is the fool Parzival, suddenly conscious of himself and searching for the grail castle that’s disappeared from his view, or the Grail King Amfortas, who was overwhelmed with a dream of glory and triumph with the grail instead of humility. The grail is lost and, imprisoned in his own castle, he is maimed and permanently is discomfort, restless (Nick notes how Gatsby is always jittery, never at ease), the resultant world a “Waste Land” much like Fitzgerald’s “Valley of Ashes,” where George and Myrtle Wilson are used and forgotten — by the Buchanans, and by Baz Luhrmann. The rich display vicious negligence with the bodies and souls of others. Romantic desire isn’t sentimental but amounts to corpulent selfishness and excesses of countless shirts, mistresses, servants, and opulence. The rapturous promise of new discoveries is married to some diabolical transgression. Fitzgerald’s epilogue reminds me of the prologue of Terrence Malick’s The New World, where the wide-eyed enthusiasm of Europeans and Native Americans at the Jamestown landing is scored to Wagner’s Das Rhinegold prelude, referencing the dwarf Albrecht’s theft of the Ring of Power, setting the Ring Cycle into motion, and soon later scores the recognition of love between John Smith and Pocahontas. It’s a dangerous and unquenchable love that can only exist in “the forest,” the magical Frontier. The toll of this enthusiasm will be, on a grand scale, thousands dead, and on an intimate one, broken hearts stirred to look both forward and back to a horizon that beckons silently.

A fresh, green breast of the new world: Terrence Malick's "The New World"

The “green breast” is trampled upon and chewed up, and finds a gruesome parallel with Myrtle Wilson’s breast, “swinging loose like a flap.” A resident of the Waste Land, she also had aspirations for social climbing and was swept up in amorous feelings congruent to that goal. Myrtle’s corpse is seen in the film, but the grotesque detail isn’t emphasized at all: yet it must be. It’s another example of Luhrmann cowering to the challenge of Fitzgerald and to confront the corporeal reality of a suffering human being. Myrtle’s “mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.” The death visage recalls Nick’s thoughts after hearing Gatsby’s reminiscences of Louisville, where he’s “reminded of something–an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.”

The inability to fully articulate a feeling, a memory and longing, the failure of words (in such a well-written novel), connects to the novel’s unbearable ache, a paralyzing longing for something one can never have. The Great Gatsby isn’t simply Horatio Alger gone wrong, but is a wrenching siren song of restless hope writhing to its last breath and beat under the annihilation of hope, F. Scott Fitzgerald interrogating his own desires and appetites, much as he did in This Side of Paradise‘s Amory Blaine and would with Dick Diver in his more ambitious Tender is the Night. Gatsby and Dick Diver are Faustian figures, exposing a devil’s bargain etched into the rock of American dreams, played out in similar variations with Charles Foster Kane, the Corleone family, Noah Cross, and Daniel Plainview. Gatsby, surrounded by “child of God” references (for example, up to “his father’s business” much like Christ in Luke 2:49, the son of God having thrown off his biological parents), is also a Miltonic figure. He’s like the Satan who cannot abide his place in the scheme of heaven, and is resolute in committed and absurd defiance. The American Paradise is lost, and in lieu of a Frontier the American Dreamer (Gatsby, Kane, Plainview — or how about Jack Torrence?) encloses himself hermetically in a self-made compound, submitting to ungraspable dreams and staring out of a magic play-set castle. Out of space, they try to buy time, or “The future!” as Noah Cross puts it to Jake Gittes in Chinatown. Laced in with the dream is dismemberment. The rich don’t only silence the poor, but what Fitzgerald observes between disparate worlds is utter destruction, rapacious, repugnant, and dismembering: literally cutting off the fleshy Myrtle’s organ of enticement.

A self constructed world built to recapture lost time: "Citizen Kane"

A defense thrown about for the film is that The Great Gatsby isn’t simply an adaptation, but is Gatsby himself, drawn up of the same imagination, hope, and enthusiasm he’s said to represent. The film’s best scene, the reunion of Gatsby and Daisy, hints that Luhrmann has this in mind when Gatsby asks Nick of the abundant flowers he’s brought over the occasion, “It isn’t too much, is it?” The director is winking, asking us the same question. The film is as garishly affective and clothed as Jay Gatsby, and it’s true that with its opening moments as the green light reaches out to us in 3D that I felt stirred by the associations Fitzgerald’s novel has cemented into my mind over several readings of the book. When Lana Del Rey’s theme song (which I admit, I kind of guiltily like) asks “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” I want to think it’s Gatsby asking, and not, as would be supposed, Daisy. His floating corpse is a blatant allusion to William Holden’s in Sunset Blvd, the dead narrating his story in the reflective palace of movie excess, quashed hopes, and faded glamor.

The film then is a glorification of weightlessness, an evasion from its source material as Jay Gatsby runs from James Gatz. Maybe that’s why Daisy comes off so well here, and Tom, his nemesis, so bad. Luhrmann is a filmmaker whose scenarios are hidden in theatrical curtains and art: the ballroom dancing of Strictly Ballroom, the modern stage of a television set that opens William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, the cabaret and written reminiscence of the poet in Moulin Rouge!, and The Wizard of Oz finding correlation with aboriginal Dreamtime and Rainbow Serpent mythology in Australia: love and war are safely enclosed in the filmmaker’s egg, his tools shamelessly on display. The Great Gatsby reminded me particularly of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation of Dracula, a deliciously over-the-top extravaganza also in love with its artifice; interestingly, Luhrmann has said Coppola — who is credited as adapting the 1974 film — advised him on how to approach writing the Gatsby script.

Gatsby wants Daisy to stick to the script.

The weightlessness, though, is aggravating when we consider Gatsby and Gatsby‘s origins, his quest to reclaim the past and fading away as Louisville drifts away into the prairie night from his train view, time and love moving quickly away as forgetfulness clouds the horizon. Luhrmann quotes most of Fitzgerald’s concluding words, “And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him–” but then he cuts the following passage, “–somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”

Hope relies on the memory of something hoped for. Luhrmann’s sin is to remove that memory, those dark fields of the republic that bore James Gatz, a shape shifter not unlike Robert Zimmerman, and with the filmmaker’s omissions and emphasis on delight, his film can’t be defended as being “Gatsby.” The obsession he’s tried to dramatize is as thin as the paper on which the depressed Nick writes in the picture. The German author Thomas Mann, whose renderings of hopeless longing were so similar to Fitzgerald’s (The Magic Mountain was published within a year of Gatsby), had his bourgeois engineer Hans Castorp pursue the cat-eyed Clavdia Chaucat while saying “Love is an adventure in evil,” later observing in Joseph and His Brothers, “Too much evidence goes to show that [man] is headed straight toward ecstasy and ruin — and thanks nobody who holds him back.” The haunting “disembodied face” that “floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs” entreating the lover Gatsby to a Danse Macabre is now just a beautiful love story and unboring melodrama — and so the fascination and danger of desire isn’t there.

String Theory: The Gilded Road to Cannes

Beth Hammarlund — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:44:36 +0000

I take it back. I no longer consider the Met Gala to be Fashion Christmas. (Read my crazypants rambling here and here.) I’m not saying it won’t ever win that title back, but after this year’s disappointing exhibit and incredibly up-and-down red carpet, my second favorite fashion event of the year is ready to step into the spotlight. No, not the Academy Awards. Not the Golden Globes. The Emmys? Ha! You’re adorable. No, I’m talking about the Cannes International Film Festival which just kicked off in Nice, France.

Why is Cannes, at least when it comes to fashion, way more wicked awesome than so many of the other annual red carpet schmancy events? I can give you three reasons:

1) It’s held on the French Riviera, so every photo, whether it’s a red carpet moment or a celebrity candid, feels lifted right out of Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief. I’ve only been to this region once on a high school French trip, and it was stunning. Like we were walking through a saturated technicolor postcard. And I totally parasailed on the coast with my friend Chaelly! Don’t tell my mom. It may have been fifteen years ago, but I still think she’d have a heart attack.

2) Unlike most red carpet events, film festivals tend to have photo calls during the day in addition to requiring red carpet appearances in the late afternoon and evening. That means that in addition to getting plenty more fashion eye candy, you also get to see stars wearing looks that would never be red carpet appropriate. Sundresses and short cocktail frocks get almost as much exposure as opulent evening gowns.

3) When they say “International,” they aren’t kidding. Celebrities who would never hit the red carpet in America make appearances (and often dominate) at Cannes. Particularly the Asian ladies. I don’t mean that Asians are the best at fashion in a racist or stereotypical way. (At least I really hope not.) I just mean that in terms of actresses making grand fashion statements, Asia’s kicking North America and Europe’s asses. See: Fan Bingbing, Zhang Ziyi, Pace Wu, Zhang Yuki, Angelababy. Insert humorous observation referencing The Princess Bride and the world’s collective inability to hold the continent of Asia in the board game Risk. (I know there are some jokes there. I’m just too lazy to find them.)

I look forward to Cannes every year, and this time around, I’m hoping that it’ll wash the Met Gala straight from my memory. And I’m looking to these two ladies, my Cannes MVPs, to bring the awesome: Diane Kruger and Fan Bingbing.

Diane’s been a serious girl crush of mine for going on ten years. In addition to having impeccable and interesting style, she acts beautifully in her native German, as well as English and French. I’ve been extra impressed by people who act well when not speaking their first language ever since I realized that I loved Penelope Cruz in Spanish films but can barely stand her in English-speaking roles. Diane started out as a dancer and then a model, and during her years modeling and living in Paris she developed a close friendship with Karl Lagerfeld. She wears a lot of Chanel, especially to Cannes, so we should expect at least one feathery Lagerfeld concoction this year.

Diane Kruger in Marchesa at Cannes in 2009

Diane Kruger in Chanel at Cannes in 2007

Diane Kruger in Christian Dior Couture at Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Chanel Couture at the 2009 amfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS Gala in Cannes

Diane Kruger in Calvin Klein at Cannes in 2011

Diane Kruger in Chanel at Cannes in 2004 with Orlando Bloom

Diane Kruger in Giambattista Valli at Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Chanel Haute Couture at amfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS Gala at Cannes in 2008

Diane Kruger in Vivienne Westwood at Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Nina Ricci at Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Versus at Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Chanel at the 2010 amfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS Gala in Cannes

Diane Kruger in Lanvin at Cannes in 2009

Diane Kruger in Chanel at Cannes in 2009

Diane Kruger in Christopher Kane at Cannes in 2009

Diane Kruger in Prabal Gurung at Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Chanel at Cannes in 2006

Diane Kruger in Roberto Cavalli at Cannes in 2005

Diane Kruger in Rochas at Cannes in 2004

Diane Kruger in Jason Wu at Cannes in 2010

Diane Kruger in Jean Paul Gaultier at Cannes in 2011

Diane Kruger in Giambattista Valli at Cannes in 2010

Diane Kruger in Chanel Couture at the Amfar Gala in Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Jason Wu at Cannes in 2012

Diane Kruger in Jenny Packham at Cannes in 2012 with Pacey

Diane Kruger in Balmain at Cannes in 2012

Fan Bingbing is another serious fashion crush of mine, though I’ve only been aware of the Chinese actress for several years. I’ve been following Diane Kruger’s red carpet choices at Cannes for almost a decade, but Fan just popped onto my radar in 2010. And the woman seriously dominates. She goes all-out glamour, wearing turbans and capes on the red carpet and carrying fans and parasols to daytime photo calls. She wears tons of Elie Saab, but you’ll also see her wearing Versace, Armani, Valentino and Louis Vuitton. She wears a lot of color, but when she does go neutral, she often eschews white and black in favor of pale taupes and putties. That may not sound like the most glamorous palette, but she makes the understated shades elegant and eye-catching every time.

Fan Bingbing in Alberta Ferretti at Cannes in 2010

Fan Bingbing in Valentino at Cannes in 2012

Fan Bingbing in Christopher Bu at Cannes in 2012

Fan Bingbing in Elie Saab Couture at Cannes in 2011

Fan Bingbing in Oscar de la Renta at Cannes in 2011

Fan Bingbing in Elie Saab Couture at Cannes in 2010

Fan Bingbing in Laurence Hsu at Cannes in 2010

Fan Bingbing in Atelier Versace at Cannes in 2011

Fan Bingbing in Elie Saab Couture at Cannes in 2012

Fan Bingbing in Valentino at Cannes in 2010

Fan Bingbing in Chris Bu Kewen at Cannes in 2011

Fan Bingbing in Louis Vuitton at amfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS Gala at Cannes in 2010

Fan Bingbing in Elie Saab at Cannes in 2012

Fan Bingbing in Atelier Versace at Cannes in 2011

Fan Bingbing in Elie Saab Couture at Cannes in 2010

Fan Bingbing in Armani Privé at Cannes in 2010

As for the rookie that of the year, I’m looking to Pace Wu. Pace’s attendance hasn’t been confirmed yet and she was spotted at an event in her native China several days ago, but I’m hopeful that she’ll make time for a Cannes appearance or two. It must have been about a year ago that she started catching my attention, and she had a pretty amazing run of looks during Paris Fashion Week. Here are a few of my favorite looks from the up-and-comer:

Pace Wu in Valentino at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Carven at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Louis Vuitton at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Chloé at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Elie Saab at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Loewe at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Chloé at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Roland Mouret at the 2013 Design Fashion Show

Pace Wu in Oscar de la Renta at a Johnnie Walker House event in Beijing

Pace Wu in Viktor & Rolf at Paris Fashion Week

Pace Wu in Giambattista Valli at Paris Fashion Week

Hopefully we’ll also get plenty of treats from Zoe Saldana, Carey Mulligan, Nicole Kidman, Emma Watson, Sofia Coppola, Freida Pinto, Audrey Tautou and Solange Knowles, who are all scheduled to make appearances over the next several days. Eva Longoria and Aishwarya Rai typically show up for a few dramatic red carpet turns, and the models really bring it too, with Eva Herzigova showing up in at least one see-through number every year.

The Culturator: Michael Thomsen’s Junk Drawer Orphanages

Juleana Enright — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:26 +0000

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or so, the saying goes…Though, from what we gather, local artist Michael Thomsen would rather skip the whole “trash” nonsense and go straight to the poetic properties of the objects he uses for his artwork, including, as he describes it, their “human imprints.” Comparing his wild sculptural pieces to “junk drawer orphanages,” he has unofficially established himself the director of abandoned objects. But Thomsen’s artistic process goes beyond mere assemblage of castaways. Best known for his intricate hand-embellished sculptures (which can be seen at Rogue Buddha and Eat Street Social as well as at his rarely open-to-the-public Northeast studio this weekend), Thomsen’s work is visually hypnotic, exposing to the viewer a world both familiar and shrouded in enigma. With a unique family background – ancestry that ranges from masons and painters to links to the Danish Royal Circus – and a fascination with religious ceremony, rituals and secret societies, Thomsen’s pieces are a testament to his diverse nature and an ode to his growing curiosities.

This year, l’étoile is pleased to have Michael Thomsen as the featured artist in our Art-A-Whirl catalog print ad. And in anticipation of this weekend’s annual affair, The Culturator caught up with Thomsen for an in-depth parley with the artist whose “crazy puzzle” sculptures we can’t help but be fixated on. Thomsen chats about his techniques and his array of influences, plus drops hints about a hushed chapter of artist-held invite-only gatherings and cues us in on what we can expect from him during his open studio event this weekend.

Artist Michael Thomsen*

l’étoile: In your artist statement, you say that nostalgia is a big part of your art. How so?

Thomsen: Well, I tend to think that nostalgia is a very powerful emotion. The objects I use in my sculptures come from all over the place: thrift stores, garage sales, flea markets…sometimes people even give me their own heirlooms to incorporate into my work. Each object has a human imprint and a personal energy about it. I like to refer to my pieces as “junk drawer orphanages” because, while the items may have been cast away or unwanted, they can still come together to form something new. In essence, my works are shrines to our past; they hold a familiarity for people because they so often include recognizable objects.

l’étoile: Do you plan out a piece before you create it, or is the process organic?

Thomsen: It always starts with one object: a cool old table, a vintage radio cabinet, statuary, etc and from there I can visualize what I want it to turn into, but the process is always very organic. That initial vision is always the anchor for any given project, but the details often change several times before I finish the piece. It’s like putting together a crazy puzzle. I can always build more in, down to adding lights, fabric, mirrors, secret compartments and more. There’s a sort of wild and unbalanced yet symmetrical element to it all that always seems to come together at the end.

l’étoile: Along with the found objects and thrifted treasures that go into your work, you also do a lot of hand embellishing. What are some techniques you use?

Thomsen: I do a lot of hand-sanding, varnish and patina techniques. I also like to find unusual things like decorative plastic fans and die cut tin to create stencil effects in addition to doing hand painting, clay sculpting and carving. I often use a French Curve set which is a vintage tool for creating designs and flourishes. Also, I work part-time at Danish Teak Classics doing mid-century Danish furniture restoration; I’ve picked up a lot of special design and structure techniques from working with a highly skilled group of comrades.

l’étoile: What are some of your primary influences?

Thomsen: Well, I’ve got a pretty interesting family background that is definitely an influence on my work. One of my grandfathers was a mason and a shriner on top of being and an auctioneer. Over the years, secret societies have been an underlying theme in my sculptures, which is something I’m going to be bringing a bit more to the forefront in my next body of work. I also had family in the Danish Royal Circus, an uncle who ran a traveling carnival, and another grandfather who is a painter and violin maker.

l’étoile: In some of your works there seems to be a religious undertone, can you elaborate?

Thomsen: In early 2012 I went to Rome and visited so many beautiful churches and saw so much amazing art. Some of my favorites were Michelangelo’s Moses at the San Pietro in Vincoli, Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria and the Capuchin Crypt. When I returned I immediately launched into creating a series entitled “Catechism” which includes religious iconography and themes. Overall, I find the ceremonies and rituals of religion very fascinating. When I was a child, friends from a large Irish Catholic family brought me along to sunday mass, and even then, I remember being struck by the elaborate, surreal magic of it all. It was all quite a departure from the small non-denominational church that my father would drop me off at each Sunday–though that place was far from boring in it’s own right, and definitely a story for another day!

l’étoile: What are you working on now?

Thomsen: I’m working on my largest floor sculpture to date. It’s kind of the kick-off for my next body of work. I’ll keep the specifics under wraps, but if you come to my studio over Art-A-Whirl you may get a sneak peek of the framework. I’ve also got a film in edit, the full-length version of a short I put out a couple of years ago called Cento. This year I also intend on creating a book, sort of a field manual for an unnamed secret organization. It will be sculptural in nature with written and visual elements.

l’étoile: Can you tell us more about the film?

Thomsen: Well, Cento is a sort of art film meets documentary that revolves around my sculpture work. It combines nature, ambiance, sound and shots of my work incorporated in unique ways. It’s pretty much a stroll through my subconscious. An editor I work with, Jason Schumacher, is helping me with the technical editing aspect of the project and it should be completed soon. Stay tuned for screening info! The initial short won “best short” award at the Highway 61 Film Festival and was also chosen to be showcased on IFP’s MNTV Short Film Series. I plan to make a bigger push with the full length on the festival circuit both locally and nationally.

l’étoile: We’ve heard rumblings about something called the Roma Key Club…what is it?

Thomsen: The Roma Key Club is what I’d call a “progressive dream tank.” I helped co-found the Northeast Minneapolis chapter in late 2011, however the mother temple has been active for quite some time. We hold very small, secret-invite gatherings that include guests that range from artists to curators and maybe even a local celeb or two. It’s all very hush-hush though, so I dare not reveal the details.

l’étoile: Your studio will be open during Art-A-Whirl Weekend, which is a treat because you’re very rarely open to the public. What can people expect?

Thomsen: My studio is a bit off the beaten path, but worth the trek. It’s located in an old brick schoolhouse at 607 22nd Ave NE (just up the street from Grumpy’s Bar) and there will be some fun goings on over the weekend. I’ll open up my workshop and display a wide array of work as will my studio mate, photographer Keith Holmes. In the basement, Studio A will be showcasing the work of Stephan Faerber as well. We’ll be open regular Art-A-Whirl hours but also plan on having a late-night party on Saturday with live music until Midnight. On top of all that, you can also check out some of my larger floor pieces and other works at the Rogue Buddha Gallery on 13th Ave and also on display at the Northeast Social restaurant.

All images courtesy of the artist

For more info on artist Michael Thomsen, visit his website and keep up with his future projects and exhibits by “liking” his Facebook page HERE.

ADDITIONAL LINKS: Check out an MN Original episode featuring Michael Thomsen:

Michael Thomsen’s studio is located at 607 22nd Ave NE in Minneapolis. Open hours are Friday 5-10 pm, Saturday noon-8 pm, with a late night party on Saturday the 19th from 8 pm until midnight, and Sunday noon-5 pm. Additional work on display over AAW Weekend at the Rogue Buddha Gallery and the Northeast Social.

For a full schedule of NEMAA’s 18th Annual Art-A-Whirl, visit their website HERE.

What’s What: Ongoing Art Exhibits

staff — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:51:21 +0000

While our Weekend What’s What always attempts to present the best weekend events, it focuses mainly on music concerts, art openings and theater openings. With this special edition, we’ll feature ongoing art and culture events that are ongoing – and highly recommended by the l’étoile staffers. So make a day of catching all the art openings you may have missed, or taking in some of the best local theater the Twin Cities has to offer.

CLOSING

MAY 10-18

Kaleidoscope: 2013 U of M BFA Exhibition

@ Katherine E. Nash Gallery
Regis Center For Art
405 21st Ave S
Minneapolis

On view 11 am-7 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays / Free

The Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the U of M presents Kaleidoscope, a group exhibition of 33 artists about to complete the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the Department of Art at the U. The artwork represented is created in a diverse range of media including, ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, textiles and video. With a selective process for entry and a rigorous program of coursework, the BFA program consistently produces a batch of talented young artists whose cups runeth over with fresh ideas. This is typically both a survey of young talent and a tightly curated show,so you’re sure to see some unique and impressive work in this diverse group exhibition. -Anthony Enright

Click HERE for the Katherine E. Nash Gallery website

ONGOING

Fritz Haeg, Edible Estate Regional Prototype Garden #12: Budapest, 2012

MAY 11-NOVEMBER 24

Fritz Haeg: At Home in the City

@ Walker Art Center
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Medtronic Gallery
1320 Lagoon Ave
Minneapolis

11 am-5 pm daily except 11 am-9 pm Thursday, closed Monday / $12 admission, $10 seniors, $8 students, free for members

The Walker has long championed the notion that urban park space can be more than just a respite from the concrete jungle. The 25 year experiment in urban green space that is the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden helped transform the neighborhood around the museum into a vibrant, vital and many would argue essential stitch in the fabric of the city. Opening this weekend is the residence of artist Fritz Haeg entitled At Home in the City. Through a series of projects in a range of disciplines—architecture, performance, design, education, gardening and ecology — Haeg challenges the community to re-imagine our everyday relationships to the land, the home, the city, and each other. Currently housed in the Sculpture Garden, Foraging Circle (May–October 2013) provides a newly created area of wild plants native to Minnesota. Situated at the center of this garden, an artist designed geodesic dome structure serves as a headquarters for public workshops, conversations, meals, and events related to gardening, food production, and urban farming. Far from seeing the Sculpture Garden as a static construct, the Walker seems to endlessly find new and unique ways to ensure it engages the community. -Anthony Enright

Click HERE for the Walker Art Center site

Sarah Crowner, "Kurtyna Fragments," 2012

HOTTEA courtesy the artist

MAY 10-JULY 7

HOTTEA: Inner Workings

@ Burnet Gallery at Le Méridien Chambers
901 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis

On view 11 am-9 pm daily & by appointment

The master of intricate graffiti art even your grandma would approve, local yarn-bombing artist, MCAD grad Eric Rieger – HOTTEA – takes his string creations from the chain link fences of the streets and alleyways inside the Burnet Gallery this weekend. Known for his signature yarn typography spelling out the letters HOTTEA, Rieger’s bright string style has been seen locally, in museums in the form of large-scale installations and across the country for nearly five years. The only thing better than stumbling upon a delicately suspended neon yellow yarn explosion while walking through the city is being underneath one of his amazing 14,000-string installations, gazing up into its mesmerizing, tangled complexity. -Juleana Enright

Click HERE for the Burnet Gallery site

MAY 11-JUNE 22

Everything Is Entrance: Lori Esposito

@ SooVAC
2638 Lyndale Ave S
Minneapolis

An art exhibition that plays off the idea of a reverse Rorschach test appeals to us for several reasons. First: if you’ve seen artist Lori Esposito’s work, you know her drawings depicting the “habitual gestures of every day life” make even the most subtle arm or leg movement look damn sexy. Especially when those actions, when depicted by Esposito, are described as being on acid. Second: These pieces are reversed, meaning instead of the more traditional Rorschach that is interpreted by the audience, Esposito’s work is interpreting us. She calls the work a kind of “immersion into the kinesthetic rhythms of the mind, body and motion,” but we’re thinking of it as a more highbrow way to work out our inner demons. How’s that for revealing? Finally, Esposito will demonstrate the method of the body as painting implement in a performance of her piece “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Digital” during Saturday’s opening reception. “When we don’t recognize something, we understand it as being other, mystical mysterious, transformative,” says Esposito. “I’m seeking that for myself.” Us, too. -Kate Smith

Click HERE for the SooVAC site

MAY 11-JUNE 22

Convolution: Wil Natzel

@ SooVAC
2638 Lyndale Ave S
Minneapolis

Explore artist Wil Natzel’s grand-scale, architectural phantasm Convolution. Though the materials used in the work are about as mundane as you can get, this installation is surely far from banal. Natzel uses plain brown cardboard to create a fluid and immursive sculptural experience that invites the viewer to investigate each graceful twist and turn throughout the space. The artist has a background in architecture (he holds a masters degree, in fact) so this meticulously constructed “spatial graffiti” will showcase both extraordinary creativity and top notch craftsmanship. -Staff

Click HERE for the SooVAC site

Mathew Metzger, "Anthropometry, Untitled," 2010

MAY 11-JUNE 7

Mercury Theater + Early Touch

@ The Bindery Projects
708 Vandalia Ave
4th floor
St. Paul

On view 10 am-7 pm Mondays, 10 am-4 pm Fridays & by appointment

Trek over to the Bindery Projects this Saturday to check out two new exhibitions, Mercury Theater and Early Touch. Both exhibits are curated by Matt McAuliffe and include a group show featuring artists Luke Aleckson, Jeff Burton, Taha Belal and Mathew Metzger as well as a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Nick Doty and Savannah Lampley. The Bindery Projects is an alternative exhibit space whose mission is to “Show dope work and validate practice through dialectical democratic social discourse” so expect to be challenged and intrigued by whatever they have cooked up this Saturday. -Staff

Click HERE for the Bindery Projects site

MAY 11-26

Kitsch

@ Rosalux Gallery
1400 Van Buren St NE #195
Minneapolis

On view noon-4 pm Saturdays & Sundays (extended hours during Art-A-Whirl)

Click HERE for the Rosalux Gallery site

Art by Jesse Draxler

ONGOING

Jesse Draxler: When the Target Is as Big as Everything

@ HAUS Salon
4240 Nicollet Ave
Minneapolis

This idea that mass consumption has the possibility to create mass output is the strength of the collage medium, as well as Jesse Draxler’s work, and is the reason that both are uniquely positioned to introduce art to areas where it is currently being ignored in favor of forgettable pop-culture and celebrity distractions. It is also the idea behind the name of the exhibition. If the target (influence, audience, possibilities in combinations) is as big as everything, it becomes impossible to miss, even when re-imagining everything everyone has ever seen before. -Nathaniel Smith

Click HERE to read Nathaniel Smith’s interview with Jesse Draxler for l’étoile

Click HERE for the HAUS Salon site

ONGOING

Useless, Useless

@ California Building
2205 California St NE
Minneapolis

An untitled photo of a shirtless man wearing a welding helmet; a piece called “One night stand with a lamp” that captures a young blonde holding a glowing plastic bunny; a woman holding a hand to her painted face in “A Nod On Hold” – these are just a few of the 17,000-plus photographs from the “Useless, useless” Flickr photostream that, in curator Tim White’s words, “reveal the merit and dignity of our trivial daily doings.” The “You are not a dinosaur” photography collective’s exhibit displaying these pieces kicks off this Friday when guests open the event literally by tearing apart parcels containing more work from international contributors. “I’m imagining something like a mad birthday party,” White recently wrote on the event’s Facebook wall. Which probably explains the emphasis on treats – vegan dishes from One Dish At A Time will be available as part of an ancillary potluck. That’s not to diminish White’s vision for this exhibit opening, however. He explains it in three paragraph statement that can be boiled down to this: “The works we’ll share assert the value of things near to use that may seem ordinary, but that hold vast potential to positively impact the people we love, and the communities we belong to. Nothing we do should ever be diminished or derided as useless.” -Kate Smith

Click HERE for the Facebook invite and HERE for the You are not a dinosaur site

Artwork by Chris Houltberg

MAY 4-26

Art(ists) on the Verge 4

@ Soap Factory
514 2nd St SE
Minneapolis

On view 2-8 pm Thursdays & Fridays, noon-5 pm Saturdays & Sundays / Free

A collaboration with Northern Lights.mn, the fourth edition of Art(ists) on the Verge features new work by five Minnesota-based emerging new media artists. Presented by the Soap Factory, “AOV4 is an intensive, year-long, mentor-based fellowship program co-directed by Steve Dietz and Piotr Szyhalski fellowing artists working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology and digital culture with a focus on interactive practices.” This year’s on the Verge includes installation work by Chris Houltberg, large-scale landscape installation from Asia Ward, playful ruminations from Sarah Julson, space reflective pieces from the Mad King Thomas collective and intricate networks of computational and sculptural strategies from Anthony Warnick. -Juleana Enright

Click HERE for the Soap Factory site

APRIL 27-MAY 30

Thor Eric Paul

@ Shoebox Gallery (sidewalk gallery)
2948 Chicago Av S
Minneapolis

Shoebox Gallery is technically a misnomer, as it’s not a gallery, but rather a window display box connected to Robert’s Shoes (“Hardly A Foot We Can’t Fit” being an indelible slogan along Lake Street for decades). Started by artist and curator Sean Smuda, Shoebox has long been a unique art showcase, as well as an early adopter of some of the more advance guard emerging artists in the Twin Cities. Recently named one of the Ten Best Galleries in the Twin Cities, Smuda welcomes painter Thor Eric Paul into his window and studio this Saturday. Using acrylic paint, Thor Eric mixes visual layers, color, thick lines and vaguely recognizable signifiers, he will create a collection of “reasonable monsters” for this exhibition. -Nathaniel Smith

APRIL 18-JUNE 30

MAEP presents Posture is Everything & Verbatim

@ Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 3rd Ave S
Minneapolis

Artist’s Talks: 7-9 pm Thursday, May 16 / Special Guests: 7-9 pm Thursday, June 20 / Free
On view 10 am-5 pm Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays & Saturdays, 10 am-9 pm Thursdays, 11 am-5 pm Sundays

The two newest exhibitions at the MIA are both by local artists, thanks to the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP). Kristina Estell has created Posture is Everything, a site-specific installation on a grand scale. Estell creates new landscapes in sky blue silicone sheeting, which she accomplished by painstakingly painting and curing liquid silicone into thin sheets. The process allowed her to create on two levels: the material itself and the scapes that she used it to build. Allen Brewer’s exhibition Verbatim is site-specific as well, but in an extremely different way. For several months, Brewer collected descriptions of numerous pieces in the MIA that were written by different guests. By taking these descriptions home with him to create new works of art only inspired by the writers’ words, he attempts to remove his own intentions from his work. The resulting pieces are a thoughtful exploration of artistic objectivity. -Beth Hammarlund

Click HERE for the MAEP Galleries page on the MIA site

Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, "Act 00136," 2009

APRIL 18-JULY 14

The Museum of Non Participation: The New Deal

On view 11 am-5 pm daily except 11 am-9 pm Thursdays and closed Mondays / $12 adults, $10 seniors, $8 students, free for members

Thanks to various social media tools, television and the Internet, the amount of data and talking heads we’re subjected to on a daily basis is more readily available than ever — as our platforms on which we have political discourse. But despite our freedom to discuss politics on Twitter, post op-ed blogs, create socially-conscious memes, protest things we’re against, and vote, how much are we truly participating? That’s the question posed by The Museum of Non Participation, an ongoing conceptual project from London-based artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler that makes its U.S. debut this weekend at the Walker. Through a sensory-engulfing mix of live performance, video, text, sound and interactive installation, the pair aim questions what social spaces encourage or discourage political involvement, and how art can represent or intervene in the process. A central feature of the exhibition is a live production set that allows Twin Cities artists to workshop, rehearse and stage Bertold Brecht’s short “learning play” about corruption, exploitation and injustice, The Exception and the Rule. -Jahna Peloquin

Click HERE for the Walker Art Center site

SATURDAY, APRIL 20

Dzine: Victory Opening Reception & Inaugural Exhibition

@ Public Functionary
1400 12th Ave NE
Minneapolis

8-11 pm opening reception / Free
On view through May 31 from 2-7 pm Thursdays, 6-11 pm Fridays & noon-4 pm Saturdays

The wait is over. After months of rumors and only a website with oblique quotes regarding art, community and engagement to speak for itself, Public Functionary introduced itself with an ambitious (and successful) Kickstarter program to become Minneapolis’ newest arts exhibition space. This Saturday will be the official unveiling of this public-supported endeavor, as they welcome Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Carlos Rolon, better known as Dzine. Aiming an unbiased eye on the inherent dichotomy of the scramble and display of wealth amongst the nation’s poorest, Dzine mines his rich Puerto Rican heritage, Kustom Kar culture, fingernail decoration and murals to create an aesthetic that is flashy yet noble in its form over function value. There will also be special programming Friday nights through the run of the show including live music, lowrider cars, panel discussions and more. -Nathaniel Smith

Click HERE for Juleana Enright’s interview with Public Functionary curator Tricia Khutoretsky for l’etoile’s The Culturator

Click HERE for the Public Functionary site

FEBRUARY 2-OCTOBER 27

“Painter Painter”

@ Walker Art Center
Burnet Gallery
1750 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis

Related: Studio Time with Joe Smith: Thursday, February 7, 6-8 pm, free
Hours: 11 am-5 pm daily, 11 am-9 pm Thursdays, closed Mondays / $12 adults, $10 seniors, $8 students, free for Walker members & free on Thursdays

Much of this exhibition focuses on the idea that painting as a dedicated art form is returning, or never left, or left but never lost its hold, etc., etc. In the Walker’s first group painting show in over a decade, the only thing that seems to matter is not the context but the quality of the work. Painter Painter features work by 15 U.S. and European artists (most under the age of 40) who currently focus on work in the expanded field of painting, famed local artist Jay Heikes among them. -Nathaniel Smith

Click HERE for l’étoile arts columnist Nathaniel Smith’s review of the show

Click HERE for the Walker Art Center site

MARCH 21-JUNE 9

More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness

@ Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 3rd Ave S
Minneapolis

On view through June 9: 10 am-5 pm daily except 10 am-9 pm Thursdays, 11 am-5 pm Sundays, closed on Mondays / $12 weekdays, $14 weekends, free for members / Visit artsmia.org/more-real for related events

The museum’s latest reality-bending exhibit, More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness features work by 28 of today’s most accomplished and innovative international artists.

Click HERE for exhibition info

Abraham Cruzvillegas, "La Curva," 2003

MARCH 22-SEPTEMBER 22

Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites

@ Walker Art Center
Target & Friedman Galleries
1750 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis

On view: 11 am-5 pm daily except 11 am-9 pm Thursdays & closed Mondays / $12 adults, free for members & children, $10 for seniors, $8 for students

For those of you who were left wondering what was going to fill the void at the Walker left by the Cindy Sherman exhibit the wait is over. The Walker Art Center has unveiled a riveting body of work by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas examining what he calls autoconstrucció, or “self-construction.” The exhibit consists of 30 to 35 individual sculptures and installations constructed of found objects and informed by sociopolitical contexts of Latin America. Cruzvillegas’ sculptures are built with his methodology that everything is in a constant state of transformation. -Peter Black

Click HERE for the Walker Art Center site

"Untitled," paint on corrugated cardboard by inmate artist Bill Fergus

APRIL 12-MAY 16

Out of the Abyss: William Murray and the Prison Art Project

@ Bloomington Center for Art
1800 W Old Shakopee Rd
Bloomington

Panel discussion: 4-5:30 pm April 16 & 7 pm May 16 / Artist talk: 7 pm on May 8
On view: 8 am-10 pm Mondays-Fridays, 9 am-5 pm Saturdays & 1-10 pm Sundays through May 17 / Free

If the old adage “a picture says a thousand words” holds true, then William Murray’s Prison Art project exhibition should have a whole lot to say about the prison industrial complex. As the first full-time state-employed art instructor in the country, Murray has been working as an art instructor with the Minnesota Department of Corrections at Stillwater State Prison for over 30 years. Over the years Murray has helped inmates express themselves through the arts, and has amassed a significant collection of inmate art himself. The exhibition will be divided in two sections: one with art by Murray’s inmate students and the other with Murray’s own artwork. As the country with the highest incarceration rate, and with Black and Latino men incarcerated at disproportionate rates, we are expecting a lot of sociological commentary to accompany the art at this exhibition. And with the incarcerated population only expected to grow over the coming years, we hope that more programming is put in place for men and women behind bars across the country, because for some of them, art is the only outlet they are given to express themselves. -Lizzy Shramko

Click HERE for the Bloomington Center for Art site

ONGOING

Namaste Cafe Presents: Noah Harmon & Jeff Klingel

@ Namaste Cafe
2512 Hennepin Ave S
Minneapolis

Art shows have been popping up everywhere lately, including Uptown’s Namaste Cafe. This month’s show features two young up-and-comers, Noah Harmon and Jeff Klingel. Known for his penchant for colorful palettes and uni-browed, slightly obese — albeit endearing — everyday Joes, Harmon works primarily with cheeky illustration and graphic design. Also showing is MCAD grad Klingel, who dabbles in everything from etching and watercolor to pen and ink with a hyper-realistic style. -Staff

Click HERE for the Facebook invite

MARCH 30-JUNE 2

#NameThisExhibit: 1200 Birchwood Plaques

@ American Swedish Institute
2600 Park Ave
Minneapolis

On view: Noon-5 pm Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays & Sundays, noon-8 pm Wednesdays & 10 am-5 pm Saturdays / $7 adults, $6 ages 62 and above, $4 ages 6-18 and full-time students with ID

Add a little kitsch to your weekend with the #NameThisExhibit folk-art collection opening at the American Swedish Institute. 1200 unique birch board pictures once housed in private homes, restaurants, tourist information booths, gift shops, cultural clubs and meeting rooms throughout Sweden will be displayed in the form of a contemporary art installation and memory wall. The exhibition’s plaques were sold as tourist souvenirs in the mid-1900s, and represent a cultural heritage of people who rarely traveled but took pride in documenting the few journeys they actually made. Guests are encouraged cut and paste their favorite scenes, using reproductions of postcards from the collection, and add a plaque of their own to the display. The Institute is also asking for guests’ help in naming the exhibition through the hashtag #NameThisExhibit and the American Swedish Institute Facebook page. The full collection comes from Borghild Håkansson and Staffan Backlund, Swedish artists and curators who present these items to provoke exploration of the question, “What is art? And, where better to pose a question about the merits of kitsch than right here in Minnesota? -Maggie LaMaack

Click HERE for the American Swedish Institute site

JANUARY 8–JUNE 30

MNTV 2012

@ Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis

Screenings during gallery hours / Free with admission / $12 adults, $8 students, free for Walker members, free on Thursdays
Hours: 11 am-5 pm daily, 11 am-9 pm Thursdays, closed Mondays

Short and sweet. Walker’s annual series of short films MNTV showcases the finest works made by Minnesota filmmakers during the past two years. Carefully selected from more than 65 entries, Walker associate curator Dean Otto, Max Becker from IFP Minnesota and local curator Marlina Gonzalez have selected the best of the best for three one-hour programs to be presented daily in the Walker’s Best Buy Film/Video Bay. The films range from the story of a Hmong hip-hop MC, spoken word poet and community organizer (Travel in Spirals by filmmaker Justin Schell) to the story of the writer R.M. Brusse, a post modernist outsider who methodically strips from her life that which interferes and distracts (Little Words by filmmaker Ann Prim). -Emily Cain

Click HERE for the Walker Art Center site

JANUARY 18-MAY 26

“Redefining, Redesigning Fashion”

@ Goldstein Museum of Design
364 McNeal Hall
1984 Buford Ave
St Paul

On view: 10 am-5 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 1:30-4:30 pm Saturdays-Sundays / FREE

Being green is all the rage, which is why you should check out this exhibit at the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Museum of Design. Learn about the creation of sustainable clothing while designers respect environmental, economic and social concerns, via over 200 submissions from students, faculty, and apparel professionals all over the world. Guest curators Marilyn DeLong, Barbara Heinemann and Kathryn Reiley judged the designers on craftsmanship and creativity alike. Celebrate all things green with this show, which opens with an appropriately stylish reception tonight. -Chelsea Streich

Click HERE for the Goldstein Museum of Design site

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Check out our Weekend’s What’s What every Thursday for this weekend’s art openings

#MSPtweeps — Jason DeRusha

Maggie LaMaack — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:16:14 +0000

#MSPtweeps is a weekly interview series featuring some of the best and brightest Twin Cities tweeters; the ones who continually make us LOL and OMG!

WCCO’s Jason DeRusha is equal parts reporter, foodie (he has a separate Twitter account for eating!) and man about town. He tweets from @DerushaJ for news, @DeRushaEats for eating, and also serves as a restaurant critic for Minnesota Monthly. Thanks to his Good Question segments and involvement in all things local, Jason was named the twelfth most followed Twin Cities media individual on Twitter last December, a pretty impressive feat considering, well…there are lot of people on Twitter.

Jason joins us this week in #MSPtweeps to talk food, drink and Jason DeRusha Day:

LOL/OMG: We would imagine Twitter has become a useful resource when it comes to choosing your Good Question segments. How has social media changed your job over the last few years?

JD: I get instant feedback from the moment I put my Good Question for the night online. People tell me it is indeed a Good Question, people tell me it’s a dumb question, people suggest better questions. And people help guide me in directions I would have never considered. It’s awesome. I get experts for my stories who come to me because they see me talking about the story I’m working on. I get feedback when I nail a story, and feedback when I fall short.

The biggest change is that I feel like I’m always working. I’m responding to and reading tweets and Facebook messages around the clock. When I started on Twitter, the day after the 35W Bridge collapsed, I only have friends as followers. Now I have more than 19,000 people. I would have never imagined!

LOL/OMG: This year, you were named one of the Business Journal’s 40 under 40. What’s the secret to success in the Twin Cities?

JD: The secret to success in the Twin Cities is immersing yourself in the Twin Cities. I was interviewing Mayor Rybak on WCCO radio a year ago, and he stopped at the beginning to tell the listeners how often we run into each other. I live in the suburbs, but I absolutely love our cities. I’m patronizing the local businesses, I’m fundraising for local charities, and through that you meet a lot of people. Plus, people here want you to be more than just the guy on the news, or the person at the finance firm – they want to see you at the concerts and festivals and art fairs.

LOL/OMG: There seems to be new restaurants popping up all over the city these days. In your eyes, how has local eating and drinking changed over the last decade?

JD: We went from a good not great restaurant scene when I moved here ten years ago, to a vibrant, more risk-taking, exciting restaurant scene. We’ve got food trucks that serve arepas and fine dining chefs who open awesome family-focused restaurants like Brasa. We have under-the-radar places like Corner Table cooking at a caliber that equals the quality in Chicago, and places where you feel like family like The Strip Club in St. Paul. The cocktail scene here is as exciting as in the larger cities, at a fraction of the cost. It’s amazing. I’d eat out every night if my waist-line could handle it.

LOL/OMG: You have a day named after you! What do you do every year to celebrate?

JD: I keep the Jason DeRusha Day proclamation on my desk at work, and every year on Sept. 21 I look at it and think back to how crazy it was when that all happened. It started as a story on How “things” become an official day. That morning I posted the idea on Twitter, and people in my network started making posters and tweeting pictures of them, someone created an online petition, another guy made a JasonDeRushaDay.com website. A couple weeks later, the mayor made it happen. Pretty incredible.

LOL/OMG: Incredible indeed. List time! Give us your top three of each:

Local Twitter accounts
1. @_taylor_
2. @WCCORosen
3. @tniver

Non-local Twitter accounts
1. @carr2n
2. @Brianstelter
3. @Beardfoundation

Favorite local restaurants:
1. The Strip Club
2. Brasa
3. Black Sheep Pizza

Favorite Good Questions of 2013
1. Is success genetic?
2. Is caffeine hazardous to our health?
3. Is telecommuting a failure?

We Will Rock You: Local Review Roundup: Germaine Gemberling, Dan Israel

Jon Hunt — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:09:42 +0000

Today’s We Will Rock You catches up with a pair of local releases by great singer-songwriters: the north country’s own Germaine Gemberling (ex-of SMUT) and the erstwhile man-about-town Dan Israel.

Germaine Gemberling, Generator

In country music (as in R&B and soul, its close relatives) far too often artists fall back on maudlinity for an easy heartstring-yank and a quick buck. It’s easy, goes the theory, to snag people when you make ‘em cry. Play it super slow, sing about how shitty life is, bang goes the sad pedal steel, and whammy! – you’ve got ‘em. Therefore, it’s always nice when country artists buck those trends, big time, like Germaine Gemberling does on Generator. While there are occasional melancholy and contemplative moments (what artist doesn’t have those?) this is, flat out, a damn happy record. She sings it straight off the top, too — “Here’s To Happiness,” an ode to feeling, y’know, good in your life; being in a place where loneliness and misery are waving goodbye in your rear-view.

That ain’t a bad thing, either, country fans. What that means in the real world is this — snappy tempos. Gemberling is in love with that kind of hopped-up rockabilly-tinged country that’s just spittin’ distance from flat-out rock and roll. Dig the deleriously chipper, mid-period-Byrds-ish “Reelin’,” for example, which is all whip-ass strumming and gorgeous harmonies, or the rockin’ (yeah, I dropped the “g” — it seems appropriate) “Dive Right In,” which, in another world, could be a Mike Nesmith song. Partner-in-crime Rich Mattson wraps these songs in careful, stacked arrangements that are somewhat removed from his usual reckless country rock, drenching everything, even the up-tempo stuff, in layers of gorgeous pedal steel that give everything a nifty, dusty iron-range sound.

That doesn’t mean everything’s up, though, folks; there are some damn gorgeous slow numbers here as well, though even those are colored by a comfortable feeling of hearth and home. I like the sultry waltz of “Windmills (Welcome Home)” particularly, with its mood of warm evening contemplation, and the the gorgeous “Hard and Plain,” an ode to band life and its ups and downs.

And let me talk for a minute about Gemberling’s voice. She was, let’s remember, originally the frontperson of SMUT, and she hasn’t forgotten the lessons learned from punk rock — namely, don’t half-ass your singing. She’s got a sweet but damn bold singing voice, which is equally capable of caressing a turn of phrase as it is of belting the fuck out it. And it sits quite nicely as part of a two-part harmony stack with Mattson in a kind of reverse Parsons/Harris thing (and why shouldn’t the male voice take a subservient role more often, dammit? You know that song that goes “I’ll be your Emmylou and I’ll be your June, if you be my Gram and my Johnny too?” Basically implying that she’s happy to play second fiddle and sing harmony atop a male singer? Bleh, I say!).

So, Generator is happy. Does that make it a less-effective country record? Maybe a less traditional one, or a less easy one, but certainly no less effective. It’s full of tremendous songwriting, great and snappy tunes, some lovely arrangements and Gemberling’s powerful voice. It is, essentially, the perfect early summer driving record. Give it a spin on your next trip up north and see how it catches you.

Dan Israel, Live On

Dan Israel, it is fair to say, has never been trendy. While I think this has maybe bugged him at times (understandably!), he wears it lately like a point of pride; a bit of a fuck-you to the cognoscenti who are always on the lookout for the hot new thing to slap the imprimatur of “hip” upon. And damn straight, too — Israel is that thing that has never been trendy but has always been necessary, the Songwriter, capital-S. He writes great, plain-spoken songs that wear their hearts on their sleeves (their? sleeves? I couldn’t even begin to properly structure that sentence), and if that ain’t “hip” in the age of Vampire Weekend being called the saviors of rock music (WTF?), seriously, who gives a fuck?

Awesomely, though, people are starting to stand up and take notice that Israel has carved out a cool little niche in the local scene for himself as a guy who is always honest, plays it straight and sings really good songs that he wrote and arranged himself, and good on ‘im, too. Live On, his latest, was funded via Kickstarter and a groundswell of popular internet support, and like all great Kickstarter projects it’s a total labor of love. He’s assembled a great backup band for this one, including Rich Mattson (who is literally everywhere this week, and produces this as well) and awesome drummer Dave Russ, and collected a great set of great songs — no surprise, then that this album is, in fact, quite damn great.

If you’re looking for a local correlate, think first of someone like Kevin Bowe, who has also carved a niche out by playing great songs that don’t fit into any genre or sub-genre particularly other than maybe “slightly folky rock and roll.” Then think of someone like David Beckey from Autumn Leaves, who has a similar way of structuring songs within that folk genre, sings in a similar timbre (on the low end of things) and also sings quite articulately about his feelings, particularly the bad ones. Stir in a bit of Bob Dylan (Israel’s voice does similar things, now and again) and you’re getting pretty close.

Live On is full of great songs, from the niftily jangly “Ain’t Gonna Let The World” to the country-tinged and piano-dappled “Until You See A Sign” to the damn pretty “The Heart Of Me.” Israel’s mood is, primarily, melancholy, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t sing longingly about love as on the self-depricating “Falling Short,” or about optimism on the Replacements-y “Won’t Have To Wait.” If the album has a flaw, it is simply that it’s so plain-spoken and honest that it sometimes feels like a confessional by the end — but if oversharing is a flaw, Live On wears it well. This is music, if I may resurrect an old trope that doesn’t get trotted out much lately, from the heart, which is kind of (okay, very) rare in this day and age.

Look. Trendiness and five bucks still won’t get you a case of beer. Israel knows that. Perseverance and hard work might never be the kind of shit that gets you on SNL, but it is the kind of thing that makes for a long-lasting, well-respected career, and that’s what’s happening here. People are starting to appreciate Israel for what he is — a great songwriter with a deep, abiding love of music. If that doesn’t get you spins on the radio, there’s something wrong with the system, not with this music. Live On is a nifty record, and whats more, an honest one, and that’s way more important and listenable than what’s hip right this minute.