St. Paul music lovers are spoiled for choice in the summer months, particularly when you consider that much of this season’s live performances are not only plentiful, but free, in the form of outdoor concerts: Minnesota History Center has “Nine Nights of Music;” there’s the Twin Cities Jazz Fest and Ordway’s Summer Dance series, not […]
Article · September 5, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
Aaron Dysart‘s work plays on the tension between human-made and “natural,” reflecting the uneasy interplay between the built and wild spheres. Like his voyage on the U.S.S. Soap Boat down the Mississippi to “clean up the river” a few months ago, Dysart’s work is instantly recognizable for its tongue-in-cheek trickiness and incongruities: he has put […]
Article · September 3, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
“I love starting things. I love the challenge of building something new that really works,” says Matt Peiken, longtime arts journalist and founder of a new online hub for Minnesota classical music coverage, MNuet.com, which is set to launch September 4. The impresario behind MNuet, a new online classical music resource set to launch September […]
Article · August 22, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
When Lisa Brimmer reads her poems on stage, she doesn’t just speak the words, she grooves – rhythm and meaning intertwined, delivered in apparently effortless alto cadences, punctuated by the occasional staccato of syncopated wordplay. Her spoken word performance style is already so musical, when you hear her read against the sounds created by her […]
Article · August 20, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
Since their opening just a couple of months ago, the folks at SubText bookstore in St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood have hit the ground running, hosting a slew of events with some of the area’s most notable literary talent. Recent appearances include award-winning authors like Ed Bok Lee and Charles Baxter; fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes; […]
Article · August 15, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
By the time August rolls around, Twin Citians can pick and choose among an embarrassment of (often free) cultural riches. On any given night, there’s live music or dancing in some park or another; there are likely a few outdoor film screenings and a neighborhood festival or two as well. For more information, visit www.spnn.org/youth. […]
Article · August 13, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
I’ve been seeing Edward Curtis’s photographs of Native Americans my whole life; we all have, I suspect. I’d be hard-pressed even to say when I first encountered them, so deeply embedded are his iconic portraits in the warp and weft of our nation’s story of itself – a grade school history text? the natural history […]
Article · August 8, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
Photo courtesy of Connie Shaver publicity and Circus Juventas We’ve just had one of those bittersweet, end-of-summer weekends in the Twin Cities. The seasons plainly pivoted in the last two days: not only did the air turn a little cooler, along the river I saw an early-turning tree, half ablaze with orange already, as if […]
Article · August 6, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
Five years ago today, on August 1, 2007, the 35W bridge in Minneapolis suddenly collapsed during the evening rush hour, sending everyone driving on it — all those people running end-of-day errands and singing along with the radio and thinking about what to fix for supper — plummeting into the Mississippi River below. Thirteen people were killed […]
Article · August 1, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
Toby Sisson moved from the Twin Cities to Massachusetts a few years ago, but she returned home this month, as Air Sweet Air‘s visiting artist, with a solo show of new encaustic paintings, “Into the Black,” now on view at the gallery. Toby Sisson, “Natural History,” encaustic monotype, 12″ x 12″, 2012. Image courtesy of […]
Article · July 30, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler
Cover image courtesy of Thirty Two magazine Did you happen to catch the flurry of articles in the past few weeks revisiting Richard Florida’s “creative class” theories? You may remember: Florida made his name in the early 2000s with a string of bestsellers (including “The Rise of the Creative Class,” “Cities and the Creative Class,” […]
Article · July 25, 2012 by Susannah Schouweiler