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.

Ryan Tischer's evocative photography

by Travis Ryder
The December 9 edition of Culturology features an interview with Northland-area photographer Ryan Tischer.  Justin Cook caught up with him at the recent Gifts Worth Giving event.

Tischer finds inspiration in the woods and waters of his home region, but also shows proficiency capturing the magic of the American Southwest.  "When you sit and you watch a sunset over the ocean, or over Lake Superior, there's that emotion," Tischer says.  "There's that feeling that you get deep inside, and it's really hard to convey that in words.  So what I always try to do is capture the emotional essence of the scene.  I don't try and just capture things literally, what the camera says is there, because that's never going to be what you feel."  Tischer hosts an open studio event this weekend, Saturday and Sunday from 11 to 5 at 315 North Lake Avenue, Apartment 403, in Duluth.  The interview will be posted to the Culturology page and ampers.org.

Ben Moore and 'Boom Drawings'

by Travis Ryder

Luther College assistant professor of art Ben Moore is primarily a painter.  His new work at MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids departs from that form, with silkscreened images from past parties he has attended intermixed with exceedingly subtle pencil drawings of explosions and dust clouds.  They're called "Boom Drawings", and he says the images portray "calamity, things that are about to go wrong.  That moment right when you know something bad is going to happen."

Double Head

Don't Be Jealous

These works and many others are hanging until Thanksgiving week at the center in downtown Grand Rapids.  I speak with Ben about his new images Thursday morning in the 8 o'clock hour.

Visual art on the radio, 10/7, 8 a.m.

Strom's Mother and Child

by Travis Ryder

It's a particularly visual-art-heavy edition of the arts, culture, and heritage segments brought to you every other Thursday morning.  These images might make the whole experience more rich and rewarding.

  

Jon Strom can make a lot of things from wood: from spoons and bowls to entire homes to amazing fine-art sculpture.  He lives in the northwoods in an off-the-grid log house of his own design.  His sculptures most often depict people and the relationships between them.  He was part of a group exhibition at MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids this past June, and we'll hear his comments about his work from the opening reception.

Voss' Reading Chair

Then, Paula Brandel of MacRostie Art Center joins us to talk about the October exhibitions there.  Professional artist Todd Voss has a prodigious display of oil paintings.  Subjects run the gamut from still life studies to exteriors of modest homes, waterfronts, pastoral scenes, and one of a donkey.  I'm taken by the use of light and shadow in the piece shown to the left, Reading Chair.  I also wonder about what's out of the frame - what's out the window, the apparent light source to the right?  Where did the reader go after leaving the book on the seat?  Did the phone ring?

Cowboy Job ponders salve for his skin sores

Reasor self-portrait

Itasca Community College art instructor Mick Reasor spent his most recent sabbatical on a couple of projects, the more Biblical of them being a retelling of the Old Testament book of Job in cowboy verse.  He wrote the charming, rhyming poetry and painted the illustrations with shades-of-grey gouache.  Reasor's son-in-law, Justin Cook, interviews him for us.  We also hear Reasor recite excerpts from the book, which is available for preview and/or purchase here.

The originals of these illustrations, as well as Reasor's other project depicting tractors, are on display in the hallways of Davies Hall at the ICC campus in Grand Rapids.

These segments and more will air at 8:10 a.m. Thursday, October 7 on 91.7 KAXE and streaming live at www.kaxe.org.  Archives of these segments will appear in short order on the Morning Show page.

These segments are made possible with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Morgan's new photos, Jug Band Boogie

by Travis Ryder

Vivienne Morgan is from England, but she has lived in the US for over thirty years. Her latest photography project explores the line between visitor and native resident through images of her home area of Beltrami County with a similar region in England called Cumbria.

See her work at http://lakestolakes.com and hear from her this morning on KAXE. Find the story of her work in progress archived at kaxe.org and ampers.org.

I was at the Effie Jug Band Boogie a couple weekends ago, and my girlfriend snapped these shots of the Procrastinators out of the Twin Ports area.

Hear about the Boogie, and from a member of this group, this morning on the Morning Show or pull up my story at KAXE.org and ampers.org.