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.

Best Seat in the House

By Jennifer Poenix

This Saturday on Between You and Me with Heidi Holtan, we're talking about furniture. Maybe it was something you grew up with. Maybe it's a piece you love to use now.

My parents got married in 1979, and they furnished their brand new house exactly as you'd expect. Macrame plant hanger. Long, tweed curtains. Brown somewhat shag carpet. Velvet-y rust colored couch. TV stand with room to store LPs, which got played on the long stereo, designed to look like a really fancy wooden cabinet.

And then there were the chairs. Two plaid armchairs - that same "rust" color with brown accents. One was sort of tall and skinny. The other shorter and wider. Like Bert and Ernie. There was a matching hassock too. You may have called it an ottoman. We called it a hassock.

As the story goes, my dad would sit in one of them every night, and he would take off his newly acquired wedding band and set it on the arm of the chair. The dog would often sit with him.One night, the ring was gone. Vanished. My mom always maintained that the dog ate it.

Many years later, after the chairs no longer matched the house's decor, my grandpa moved to a nursing home. A few of them actually, and in a few different towns. (Grandpa was not an easy man to please, you see.) He ended up with one of the plaid chairs. The chair probably traveled at least 250 miles in this whole process.

When it came time to finally dispose of the chair, my dad decided to look for his ring. He took the chair apart. I mean, he really demolished the thing. Way, deep down inside of that chair, he found his wedding ring. Ta-da!

Every piece of furniture has some kind of story, and I hope you'll share yours this Saturday morning on Between You and Me, from 10am-noon.

Guido's deep thoughts on the Movies

Movies: What It Is

by Steve Downing

            Following up on Heidi Holtan and Julie Crabb’s ‘Between You & Me’ program on Saturday, 3/5: I’m old enough to remember the time when moving-picture technology had not yet transcended use-your-imagination. Meaning: I was watching when guys who got shot in black-and-white westerns simply tipped over and stopped moving. That’s what we did out in the back yard, too, mimicking those movies. No blood. No fatal-wound histrionics. No loose body parts.

            Today, you see the full-screen black hole of the gun’s muzzle, the bullet leaving the barrel in slow motion, the bullet entering the guy’s eyeball and turning it to glue, then exploding out the back of his head in a spray of hair, blood and brains.

            You know this did not happen. Similarly, you know that Jack Nicholson didn’t really get his nose ripped open in “Chinatown”. Willing suspension of disbelief: what it is. From Aeschylus and Shakespeare right on through to TV and the modern movie industry, our day-to-day reality relies in part on theater, on just-pretend; i.e., on unreality.

            This all underscores the two ways of willing suspension of disbelief. We know what they’re doing in the movies isn’t real. The movie-makers know what they’re doing isn’t real. They know we know they know it isn’t real. And so on. Amid all this pretense, the old philosopher’s question, “Why is there something rather than not-something?” gets turned on its ear. The question becomes not “Why?” but instead: “Is there something, anything, real?” Really.

Guido is a regular commentator to Between You and Me.  You can hear his essay here....

Pete Seeger's Log

The first real interview I ever did for KAXE was with Pete Seeger. My husband Dennis and I had gotten press passes to attend the 1984 Winnipeg Folk Festival as brand new KAXE volunteers. We hauled in a huge (by today’s standards) old Marantz cassette recorder, signed up to interview several different performers, and tried to enjoy the festival as we nervously began to prepare for a series of interviews that were to begin the next day.

But that night, at the main stage concert, someone came to get us. “Pete Seeger would like you to do the interview now,” she said. We were stunned. We weren’t ready. And Pete Seeger to boot—by far the most famous person on our list of interviewees!

We needn’t have worried. At that time Pete already had been performing for 45 years. He had been one of the original founders of the Almanac Singers and the Weavers. He had written “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and “If I Had a Hammer” and “Turn, Turn, Turn.” He had met and worked with Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Josh White. He had been subpoenaed to come before the House Un-American Activities Committee where he had refused to testify. He had been blackballed, had played at FDR’s White House, and had been one of the key people responsible for the folk song revival in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Throughout his entire life, Pete Seeger consistently stood for civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism.

Pete Seeger had participated in thousands of interviews over the course of his career as a musician and social activist. As much as Dennis and I were nervous, he definitely was not.

One thing Pete said during that interview will always stick with me. He said, “We’re all trying to roll a big log up a hill. No matter what the cause—peace, justice, environmentalism—and no matter where you grab on, we’re all pushing that same log.”

I’ve never forgotten about that log. It’s big alright, and the bark has picked up a lot of dirt. And the rolling of that log up Pete’s hill just doesn’t happen without a lot of sweat and effort. It’s slow; incremental. It takes lots of hands and lots of guts and lots of heart.

People are pushing that log right now. They are clamoring for freedom in the Middle East, fighting to keep their collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere, and working in every way imaginable to alleviate people’s suffering and make a better world, or sometimes just to take care of their families.

It is my job to ask for your help with KAXE’s interest in that log, which is to keep public broadcasting alive and well in the United States and in Minnesota. If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is zeroed out in the federal budgeting process, those cuts will fall hardest on rural stations like KAXE, which receive a bigger portion of their budget from government sources. People say that once the CPB is gone, there is little chance that it will ever come back. Likewise, we have to tell our story to State lawmakers who are considering additional cuts. This will require some activism, but nothing as hard as putting your body on the line as some in the world are doing—what KAXE needs are letters and phone calls of support to our elected officials. More than once. Maybe all the way until the end of September.

It looks like the US House and Senate might be unable to reach agreement on the budget, so they may keep the government functioning piecemeal, week by week or month by month for the rest of the year. Every time a “continuing resolution” comes to a vote, new cuts may accompany it. The budget question over the CPB might drag on for weeks and months or even through the entire rest of the federal fiscal year. In Minnesota, we’re gearing up for AMPERS’ Public Radio Day on the Hill on April 27^th. All in all, it’ll be a long haul. Our effort has to be sustained, like pushing that log.

Pete Seeger will be 92 years old on May 3rd of this year. His interview is on an old cassette tape "archived" somewhere in a big plastic bin in the closet under our stairs. It's good to think about that interview and to remember Pete's log and his advice--that where good causes are concerned we're all in this together. We just have to grab on wherever we can and do our part!

Maggie Montgomery, General Manager
Northern Community Radio

Ione and Katherine - and the trouble they caused

by Robert Jevne

My lifelong addiction to movies began, not surprisingly, when I was a child, a time when suspending belief comes easily. Having more idle time than I knew what to do with, and an over active imagination, I got a lot of practice at suspending belief. It all started with "The Morning Movie with Ione,"  a program which combined a classic movie from the thirties or forties with a hostess named Ione. Ione would do stretching exercises during the commercial breaks...in leotards. Ione would do wacky skits. There was a call-in trivia contest. A fake fish would drop from above with the prize attached - usually seven dollars. And Ione would stretch...in leotards. It was hard to determine the focus of the show - Ione or movie, movie or Ione. Sometimes Ione would run a little long and the movie would be brutally cut - like the last ten minutes or so, but I was there...all the way there.
   There were several factors involved in my altered state. As the name implies, the "Morning Movie" aired in the morning when I was normally in school. I got to watch it when I was home sick. I was home from school and my Mom was letting me watch TV! What could be better? I'd watch these old movies through the fever and fog of illness. And these movies were old. They dropped into the present like time travelers with important messages about the distant past. That they were in black and white only added to their otherness. In a scene from the Philadelphia Story involving a late night swim, Katherine Hepburn gazes up at Jimmy Stewart, her eyes glistening, her her face shining silver with no color in it whatsoever. Just silver and shadow. Oh, the otherness. I was just a midwestern kid. She was a shimmering light-creature from elsewhere on whom even the cameraman could only focus softly. I knew nothing about love, but there she was all love and confusion, fever and fog. She was drunk. I was drunk.I was swimming in deeper waters. I hardly knew what it meant, but I knew how it felt.
   And then reality would come crashing in. The spell would be broken. Ione would interrupt. I became fickle and was annoyed with her. Leotard schmeotard. As much as I loved Ione, I loved Katherine more and I wanted her back. I was yearning. I was learning something about love, there in the safety of my living room - alone. Whether this was healthy or not, I don't know, but that was what movies could do. I only had to let go of reality, that's all. My heart could be broken, but only in make believe and only briefly, only as long as the commercial break. Then the movie would come back on and I would dip back into the depths, into the mystery beneath the surface of the screen. Suspended.

Culturology Calendar: March 3 Edition

by Travis Ryder

The Culturology program is not on the air every Thursday at 8 a.m., at least not yet.  Right now, we're heard roughly every other week.  But there are great events and worthwhile historical anniversaries every week of the year, so we're committing to bringing you notes from these areas Thursdays around 6:50 a.m. on the "off-weeks".

Another great batch of First Friday events will unfold this Friday afternoon and evening in Bemidji.  Natalia Himmirska and Paula Swenson are among the artists who have new exhibitions. See the Bemidji Community Art Center site for the list.

There's an opening reception Friday evening for the new exhibits at MacRostie Art Center, Grand Rapids. Deborah Splain produces three-dimensional mixed-media paintings; Jackie Solem’s photography will be paired with Loree Mitich and Susan Hawkinson’s poetry, with calligraphy by Meredith Schifsky.  See these works through the end of March.

Calendar with secret box

The annual photography exhibition and workshops, called ‘Picturing’, is Saturday at Q Gallery in the Franklin Arts Center, Brainerd. Registration starts at 8 a.m., workshops from 9 to 4, reception at 5. The reception will honor Photographer of the Year Kelly Humphrey of the Brainerd Dispatch.

Next week, the eighth annual Range of the Arts series comes to Virginia venues. The Lyric Center in Virginia hosts the first three events: Mon. March 7: Words and Lyrics event with authors Deborah Gordon Cooper, Ryan Vine and Francine Sterle. Tuesday at 6:30 is the opening of a visual art exhibit featuring bead and fiber artist Betsey Harries, wood block printer Beckie Prange, and wood carver Fran Starich. Then it’s a public art walk starting at noon on Thursday. All the details can be found on the Lyric Center’s site.

Hibbing Community College art instructor Daryn Lowman presents a photography Lecture & Demonstration in conjunction with this month's exhibition starting at 6 p.m. Wednesday at MacRostie Art Center; it's free & open to the public.

Also Wednesday: touring gypsy jazz guitarist Frank Vignola and his Quartet perform with opening local gypsy jazz act Clearwater Hot Club, 7:30 p.m. at Myles Reif Performing Arts Center.

Historical Aztec calendar

HISTORY NOTEBOOK
March 3, 1849 Minnesota Territory is signed into existence by President James K. Polk. At that time, the territory stretches west to the Missouri River and has a population of about 15,000, 2/3rds of them Native American.

March 1, 1881 The first state capitol building burns. Saved were the occupants’ lives and the Historical Society archives, but the building and law library are a total loss. A second capitol is built on the same downtown St. Paul site, but is replaced by the present capitol in 1905.

March 1, 1921 Patrick Des Jarlait is born on the Red Lake Reservation. He made fine-art images of Ojibwe traditional life, and also did commercial work including the Land o’ Lakes butter maiden and the cartoon bear from the Hamm’s beer commercials! Des Jarlait died in 1972 and three of his children lead active art careers.

March 4, 1941 Goalie Sam LoPresti has a landmark performance with his Chicago Blackhawks. A native of the Elcor mining location just east of Gilbert, he makes an astounding eighty saves. But you know how it is: if a goalie stops eighty and lets three through, they’ll still call him a bum. Chicago loses to the Boston Bruins 3-2.

March 4, 1942 Tammy Faye LeValley (Bakker) is born in International Falls. With her husband, Jim Bakker, she would help found three of the largest Christian television networks in the world, including the PTL ministry.

March 1, 1994 The Minneapolis group Soul Asylum wins a best rock song Grammy for "Runaway Train".

The Mom of Pop Culture and Movies: a relationship deconstructed

by Julie Crabb

I don't know the exact moment or even the exact film it was when I knew we were meant to be. The we, of course, is me and movies. I remember as a child the usual suspects: Bambi (soon to be released in blue ray and hi-def), The Sound of Music in all its' grandeur and in cinemascope, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and the old movies from the 30's, 40's, and 50's at 3:00 o'clock every afternoon. All these set in motion an enduring relationship to film. 

I began to take it seriously in the 9th grade when I saw my first foreign movie at the Ken theater in San Diego California. The movie was The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, in subtitles. I was drawn to the sad tragedy of the story and enamored of the beauty of the brilliant Catherine Deneuve.  The small, dark quiet of this indie theater became a refuge. The movies there enveloped all my senses the way music sometimes can. This movie made me want to see more french films: Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut) and Au Revoir Les Enfants (Louis Malle) to name a couple. You follow the genre and it takes you places. 

Consider the next big movie that really moved me: The Pawnbroker (1965)-Rod Steiger won the best actor academy award for this haunting film, directed by a fairly young Sidney Lumet. Now, look ahead in Lumets' career:Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and the most recent addition, Until the Devil Knows You're Dead. Just follow the trail of credits in movies you like, it will inform you and steer you. 

Fast forward 47 years and I'm still taking refuge in small dark places to have my heart broken (Rabbit Hole-2010), my mind blown (Inception-2010), my soul stirred (Winter's Bone), my sense of joy rise (The Fighter), my anger fueled (Inside Job) and, I've been surprised (remake of True grit). Go see a movie today.

And tune in this Saturday March 5th for Between You and Me - we want YOUR stories of movies that moved you.  10-noon every Saturday morning on KAXE.