Artspace and Franklin Arts Center give artists a place to live/work

by Travis Ryder

Franklin Arts Center

This week's installment of Culturology covers the story of the rise of Artspace, the Minnesota-based, pioneering nonprofit developer of living, working, and performance real estate for artists and other creative people.  Established in 1979, Artspace grew out of a program of the Minneapolis Arts Commission that had more modest goals of connecting artists to existing affordable studios and apartments.  But they soon moved into redeveloping or building their own properties.  Now, their list of 36 complete and in-progress properties stretches from coast to coast, including the Washington Studios in Duluth and Franklin Arts Center in Bemidji.  We'll hear about Artspace in general from KFAI's Dixie Treichel and then get into a talk between our own Heidi Holtan and Aaron Hautala, creative director of an ad agency located in the Franklin.  Hautala talks about what the center means to Brainerd.

CULTUROLOGY CALENDAR
Many artists at the Franklin will have their studios open to the public this Saturday from 10 to 4: it’s the regular Second Saturday open house. Also at the Franklin this Saturday: the Flipside youth art session will expose young people to working with acrylics. Maria Thompson Seep will be the instructor from 10 to noon.  And the annual ‘Picturing’ photography exhibition is up in the Q Gallery.

The Lyric Center for the Arts continues their 'Range of the Arts' events series with visual art and music events now through Sunday.  The schedule is here. 

The original Steve Saari comedic play 'Mere Image' will take the stage at the Wild Rose Theater, in the Bemidji Masonic Temple.  Showings are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 2.

Also in Bemidji this weekend, the bluegrass group Monroe Crossing performs at the Chief Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Friday night at the Chalberg Theatre of Central Lakes College, it's a tribute to Motown and Soul music by the central Minnesota band, the Fabulous Armadillos.  More information is here.

The West Range Country Show comes to Greenway Auditorium in Coleraine Sunday night at 6 p.m.

Also Sunday night, the Reif Center in Grand Rapids stages the musical 'All Shook Up', at 7:30 p.m.

Advance warning: next Saturday, March 19, the acclaimed Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus will perform in Bemidji for the first time.  They'll appear at the Thompson Recital Hall on the BSU campus and tickets are on sale now through Hobson Memorial Union.

HISTORY DATEBOOK
Territories of the future state of Minnesota west of the Mississippi went from French to US control in an official ceremony, held in St. Louis, Missouri, March 10, 1804.

The Leech Lake Indian Reservation is formed from three smaller reservations in the area in a treaty signed this week in 1863, and revised in 1864.  Ojibwe from other areas of the state are required to move to the expanded reservation.

Minnesota troops publish an early forerunner of The Onion while occupying the town of Berryville, Virginia on March 11, 1862.  The First Minnesota Regiment found the print run of the local paper half completed.  Members of the company print their own four-page edition, which contains humorous news about the army and the war. Copies of this paper are rare and valued Civil War memorabilia.

On March 8^th and 9^th, 1892, a severe blizzard hits Minnesota, with winds clocked at 70 miles an hour. The drifts are so tall in Duluth that many people must exit their houses through second-story windows.