I know we’ve had ridiculously frigid temps around here in the last week, but if you’re a Minnesota artist, you’ve got a compelling reason to start thinking about summer. The Walker Art Center and mnartists.org (where, for my dayjob, I work as editor) plan to make their popular artist-designed mini golf an annual tradition. These courses have been, until now, an occasional, ad hoc sort of novelty – something presented every few years on the center’s hilly green space.

“The Ames Room”: One of two holes developed and created as part of the University of Minnesota’s Site, Environment, Community class, led by artist Chris Larson. The distorted “Ames Room” design utilizes theories of perceptive psychologist Adelbert Ames to create an optical illusion of depth, distance, and variance in size for viewers. The effect is particularly convincing from the fixed vantage point of the attached viewfinder.

But last year’s mini golf courses, installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden as part of the park’s 25th anniversary celebration, proved to be such a crowd-pleaser that they’re bringing it back to the garden this year, and indeed expanding the program, with an eye toward making it a Twin Cities summertime staple.

A call for proposals just opened: Any Minnesota-based artist (or collaborative team) is eligible to submit mini golf hole designs for inclusion in the course. The 2014 course will expand from 16 to 18 holes: 10 holes will be held over from last year, leaving eight open spots for local artists to fill for this summer. Any local artist or collaborative team is welcome to pitch an idea — “artists, architects, engineers, landscape architects, furniture designers,” and so on, are all welcome. If your design is selected for inclusion in the 2014 course, you’ll receive $500 for your efforts and the pleasure of seeing your idea come to fruition.

There is no specific theme to the course this year. Design entries will be judged on: originality of concept and aesthetic cleverness; playability (i.e. an “appropriate balance between challenge and fun for players”); safety and accessibility for players of all ages, abilities and skill levels. Durability and feasibility of design proposals will be particularly prioritized in the selection process going forward. The sculpture garden anticipates 50,000-plus people will again play through the course over the summer months, so each of the mini-golf holes must be designed so that they can be economically executed and sufficiently durable to withstand that heavy traffic without needing constant repair or maintenance.

“Mega Golf,” the second hole designed by Chris Larson’s U of M art class students for the 2013, inverted players’ relationships to both the game and garden. Players entered into the giant golf ball and then putted around, through, and over a scale model of the Walker campus complete with the Spoonbridge and Cherry and Jim Hodges’ boulders.

For artists, that also signals a welcome change: artists will still create designs for the course, but once a concept has been selected, Walker staff will take over, seeing to the actual fabrication, installation and maintenance of each mini golf hole. In years past, the artists and design teams have been responsible for construction and upkeep during the months-long program run. Given the thousands upon thousands of players using and abusing those mini golf courses from Memorial Day to Labor Day, that’s been no small commitment. According to the call for artists: “Our intent is [that] the change will allow more artists, designers and architects to participate in the project [who] may not have the time, skill set or resources to construct a mini-golf hole themselves.”   There’s an information session on Tuesday, December 10 at 6 p.m. at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for artists and collaborative teams interested in submitting a design for the 2014 Artist-Designed Mini Golf Course at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The 18-hole course will be open from May 22 to September 2014. Deadline for design submissions is Friday, January 10, 2014. Find the full call for artists at www.mnartists.org/minigolf.