Culturology: Tim Burn's Burlwood Sculptures

Discover and get involved with the broad and deep world of arts and culture in Northern Minnesota. Each edition features profiles of artists from a wide spectrum of creativity, from painters, potters and sculptors to fine-arts and heritage musicians, authors and poets.

Tim Byrns' Burlwood Sculptures
Northeast Minnesota artist Tim Byrns coaxes out amazing forms from hunks of burlwood and discarded lumber. KAXE's Justin Cook brings us more. Read More...

Cultorology is heard select Thursdays on 91.7 KAXE.

Listen/read to more features on the Culturology page.

Culturology 12-30: Tim Byrns' burlwood sculpture

by Travis Ryder
 
Tim Byrns finds chunks of recycled lumber, burlwood, and other items and transforms them into incredible shapes.  Justin Cook interviews Tim on Thursday's edition of Culturology.  Also, the culture calendar and This Week in Minnesota History.  Tune in select Thursdays at 8:10 and visit the Culturology page to find archived segments.

This week in Minnesota history:

Dec. 26, 1862 The federal government hangs thirty–eight Dakota men in Mankato in the wake of the U.S.–Dakota War.  It’s the largest mass execution in American history.

Dec. 30, 1884 The first white settler in the International Falls area, fur trader Alexander Baker, secures his land claim.

Jan. 1, 1893 Workers nail the final spike in the Great Northern Railroad, connecting St. Paul to the Pacific Ocean.

Roseau and Mahnomen Counties are established this week in 1894 and 1906, respectively.

Dec. 28, 1909 W. E. "Pussyfoot" Johnson, the federal liquor law enforcer on Indian reservations, leads a raid on the saloons of Park Rapids.  These establishments were illegally serving residents of White Earth Reservation.  Johnson and a trainload of U.S. marshals gather every bottle they can find and demolish them on Main Street.

In advance of the New Year’s holiday in 1957, Governor Orville Freeman announces that Minnesota will crack down on "drinking drivers." He urges sheriffs in the state to resist local pressures to reduce drunk driving charges to charges of careless driving.

On New Year’s Eve 1957, University of Minnesota president James L. Morrill announces that the university will expand westward across the Washington Avenue Bridge into a "blighted area" of Minneapolis. A key part of the plan is a new double-deck bridge.

Jan. 1, 1969 The Coast Guard closes Split Rock Lighthouse after fifty-nine years of service. It becomes a state park the following year.

Dec. 30, 1977 Legendary sports broadcaster Halsey Hall dies in his Minneapolis home at age seventy-nine. Known for his cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking style, Hall was broadcaster of Twins games for many years and the first to use the phrase "holy cow" during a broadcast. He also coined the adjective "golden" to describe the University of Minnesota's sports teams.

The Culture Calendar includes:

Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm has the exhibits 'Iron Stories', through Jan. 2, and the veterans' exhibit 'Letters From Home', closing Jan. 16.

Iron Range Repertory Players present the dinner theater event 'Murder Rides Again', Thursday and Friday, Dec. 30 and 31, 6 p.m., at the Coates Hotel in Virginia. Reservations: 741-5577.

Bovey/Coleraine family New Year's Eve celebration at Longyear Park, Coleraine. Skating, sledding, hot chocolate & tube steaks 4-5 p.m., singalong, fireworks 6 p.m.

Northland Flavor preparation sessions, for artists seeking retail buyers at the Feb. 28 Duluth event.  Prep sessions Jan. 6 in Virginia 10 a.m. and Duluth 5:30 p.m. Preregister: carmenb@entrepreneurfund.org or 218-623-5738.

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.