The Cities Category Archive: Arts

Maine a preview of MN's marriage vote?

Posted at 7:00 PM on May 11, 2012 by Sasha Aslanian (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , Livability, Marriage amendment, Minneapolis, Politics, Religion

Anyone interested in Minnesota's vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage this November will find the documentary Question One intriguing.

Filmmakers Joe Fox and James Nubile got extraordinary behind-the-scenes access to both sides of the debate over Maine's 2009 referendum on marriage. In an interview from his office in New York, Fox explained he "wanted to tell the human story of the people caught up in the fight that would change their lives."

Fox will be in Minneapolis for screenings of the film May 14-19 at 7 p.m. at the Mall of America Theatre as part of the Twin Cities Film Festival.

For three months, the film crew embedded "war-room style" as Maine voters considered whether to repeal a state law that had legalized same sex marriage. (Spoiler alert: Maine voters repealed the law, but it's headed for a rematch this November.)

So what are the lessons for Minnesota?

Fox says to expect the same playbook. The Yes on One campaign was run by Frank Schubert, a Sacramento-based PR consultant who also led successful campaigns for Prop 8 in California, in North Carolina last week and is working with Minnesota for Marriage.

Even knowing the outcome, the film is dramatic. Right up to the vote, the No on One side was polling ahead. Why did they lose? The No on One campaign director wonders in the aftermath, "People lied in the polling, and that's been eating away at me."

Looking back, Fox remembers a portend. In the phone bank room, Fox overheard Yes callers telling people who were supporting gay neighbors or friends that gays and lesbians already had their civil rights and they didn't need marriage. "When I heard those calls, there was something in my gut--and the person changed their mind during the course of the call--that I felt perhaps the No side would not win."

Lesson number 2:

"Never underestimate the passion of people," said Fox. "I went into this thinking the passions would mostly come from a religious base and yes, that was true, but the passions went beyond that," said Fox, reflecting on the winning side. "These were people that felt they were being ignored, their voices weren't being heard and there was a rage that was brewing inside of these people that their leaders weren't listening to them."

Lesson number 3:

Conversations matter. "I saw how people's minds were changed through one knock on the door and the hello that followed," said Fox. "You're not fighting an issue. It's all personal."

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Free museum pass program to end

Posted at 6:00 AM on May 12, 2012 by Jon Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , Education, Minneapolis, St. Paul , Suburbs

(The Museum Adventure Pass display at the East Lake library in Minneapolis.)

One patron wrote about her experience at the Hennepin History Museum's historic shoe exhibit. Another wrote that she planned a Russian-themed outing around a visit to the Museum of Russian Art, stopping first at Moscow on the Hill restaurant in St. Paul.

Those are only two stories of free visits to local museums and cultural centers posted by library patrons on the Museum Adventure Pass website. But after six years of distributing free passes to local museums at about 100 libraries in the Twin Cities metro area, the Museum Adventure Pass program is ending as of Labor Day.

Sally Lederer is the community relations manager for the Metropolitan Library Service Agency (MELSA), which runs the program.

"We wanted the program to be a way to introduce library users to all these great programs in the state," Lederer said. "Fortunately for us, we have these generous cultural organizations that were willing to do this."

Lederer said many of the organizations didn't have an issue with the lack of revenue they earned from the program, but that others were hit hard by the recession. When the program started, 24 organizations took part. This year only 17 were participating.

A lot of money is at stake. In the last quarter of 2011, the program handed out 14,000 sets of free passes to the Minnesota Zoo. That's 28,000 admissions. Without the pass, an adult ticket to the zoo costs $25.75.

Hennepin History Museum Executive Director Jada Hansen said the program has been "phenomenal" for small organizations like hers.

"I know opinion really varies from small museum to large museum, but as a small institution, it literally doubled our attendance," Hansen said. "It's really improved our visibility, and now we have some people that will continue to come back."

The good news is that MELSA is working on a new program that will help library patrons explore local cultural institutions. Lederer said details of the new program should be out by the time the adventure pass program ends.

"Sometimes you get into the mode of rehashing each year the same thing you did the previous year," Lederer said. "This year we have to get a little more creative."

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Minnesota Idea Open announces semifinalists

Posted at 11:30 AM on April 18, 2012 by Laura Yuen (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , Education, Food, Immigration, Livability, Race

A statewide call for creativity on how to build relationships across faiths and cultures produced a staggering 600 ideas.

That set a new record for the Minnesota Idea Open, which is in its third year.

Which ideas rose to the top? An interactive food truck, a charity flash mob, multicultural barn-raisings, and a mobile app for "culturally curious Minnesotans" were among the 25 semi-finalists announced today. You can read about the individual pitches here.

An eight-judge panel of media professionals and community and faith leaders will whittle the finalists to five in May. Then the competition will open to the public for voting, "American Idol"-style. Three winners will each receive $15,000 to implement their ideas.

Created by the Minnesota Community Foundation, the challenge aims to engage the state's residents to learn about critical issues and develop new solutions. This year's challenge is working across ethnic, racial and religious lines in a state that's becoming increasingly diverse. Our three-part series "The Outsiders" grew out of this initiative.

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Wrecking ball will likely claim Minneapolis mural

Posted at 12:00 PM on April 13, 2012 by Dan Olson (5 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , Minneapolis

The news that downtown Minneapolis-based Merit Printing is moving caused me to wonder what will happen to the building's mural. Here's a photo I snapped on a rainy morning this week. Not even the gray sky can hold back these colors!

A Merit spokesman says the mural goes when the building is demolished to make way for housing. No easy way to save a mural on an exterior masonry wall.

Got me thinking about murals, and, wow, what a long and colorful history. My colleague Nikki Tundel has collected some of the best images of murals around the Twin Cities.

Mural creation probably reached a historic peak in Minnesota during the Great Depression with federal tax dollars funding Works Progress Administration projects.

Here are images courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society about the WPA Federal Art Project in a book by Minnesota by Thomas O'Sullivan.

And then there's muralist Richard Haines. He created works portraying Minnesota's first residents, American Indians, being affected by and then displaced as a result of white settlement. Here's a 1940 image courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society image of one from the Fort Snelling Round Tower.

If you click the above link you'll see Haines' amazing resume. By one account, the Richard Haines Fort Snelling Round Tower murals do not survive. They were destroyed several decades ago.

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Coen brothers hold Minnesota casting call

Posted at 11:30 AM on March 23, 2012 by Sasha Aslanian (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts

The Coen brothers are shooting their current project INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS in New York, but don't cha know, they need one car scene shot in Minnesota this weekend.

The film website IMDb describes the movie like this: "A singer-songwriter navigates New York's folk music scene during the 1960s."

Casting director Debbie DeLisi says they're bringing the car here, but not the actors, and that's why they need help from some locals:

Coen Brothers film, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2nd unit) seeks PHOTO DOUBLES in MN. Should be available Sat, 3/24, Sun, 3/25, &/or Mon, 3/26. Submission instructions below (deadline: ASAP! FILMING THIS WEEKEND).:

-- ROLAND TURNER (John Goodman): SALT & PEPPER GOTEE/MOUSTACHE! 6'1'', 275-300lbs (Jacket-57. Pants-56 waist. Shirt-20/35).
- LLEWYN DAVIS (Oscar Isaac): Dark brown thick to black hair, longer on top/shorter in back, TRIM BEARD/MOUSTACHE, some facial hair. 5'8", 165-170lbs (Jacket-40R. Pants-34/32. Shirt-15.5/32).
- JOHNNY FIVE (Garrett Hedlund): Dark blonde/light brown hair. TRIM MOUSTACHE/SLIGHT GOTEE, some FACIAL HAIR, incl sideburns. Ht- 6'2", 178lbs (Jacket-41L. Pants-33/33). * MUST BE COMFORTABLE DRIVING W/O EYEGLASSES (may wear
contacts) & have valid drivers license.

There is PAY.

Men w/longer hair & facial hair/beard welcome to submit! Must be willing to cut/trim, as appropriate (to match our actors/reference
photos).

To submit: Send email to Debbie DeLisi, CD, at ildextras@gmail.com. In subject line put: "MN PD / character name - Your first & last name." Body-of-text must include: Your name, contact info, hair color, ht/wt, sizes/measurements. Also, measure your torso (while sitting on a flat surface, measure from surface to top of head, along backside. You must confirm you're willing to shave or trim hair/facial hair, as needed. Note if you are union (indicate which) or non-union & available all three days. You must include two CURRENT photos (as of TODAY!), one face & one full length. Do NOT send headshots. Informal, quick snapshots are best!

* "Johnny 5" character submissions must confirm having valid drivers license/comfort level driving.

Please do not submit or inquire about other roles, as we are shooting in NYC & casting is complete. Inquires of this nature will automatically be deleted.

You may FWD this email. But please do not fwd this email with your contact info as the "casting director" or any such related claim or title. We are the official casting representatives. Any other claim is fraudulent.

Thank You & Best wishes!
Sincerely,
Debbie DeLisi, Casting Director
Kati Batchelder, Casting Associate
Adam DeLisi, Casting Asst.
646-335-0629

Best of luck to all Minnesota doppelgangers of John Goodman, Oscar Isaac and Garrett Hedlund!

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Minnesota's 'forgotten Tolkien' died Friday

Posted at 5:31 PM on March 19, 2012 by Jon Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , Minneapolis

Image courtesy of the Tékumel Foundation

Sixty-thousand years in the future, a planet called Tékumel is settled by space-faring humans. They terraform the land and atmosphere, transforming it into a sort of interstellar Club Med. But a group of powerful aliens knock the planet into an isolated pocket universe. The planet falls into chaos.

That's the premise of the pioneering role-playing game created by Minneapolis resident Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker, who died in home-hospice care Friday at the age of 83. He is survived by his wife, Ambereen.

Barker, who was known as Phil to his friends, was a gamer, novelist, linguist and former University of Minnesota professor. He used all these influences to create Tékumel, a world with its own languages, geography and cultures.

A 2009 article in the German magazine Der Spiegel called him "the forgotten Tolkien," a reference to the author of the Lord of the Rings fantasy series.

Image courtesy of the Tékumel Foundation

Barker started developing Tékumel as a child. In 1975, one year after the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons was released by TSR Games, the company released Barker's "Empire of the Petal Throne," based on the Tékumel world.

The series itself never reached the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons. That was partly because it was based on Barker's professional explorations of eastern and South American cultures rather than more familiar northern European myths like goblins and elves, said Bob Brynildson, partner at Source Comics and Games in Falcon Heights.

"Tékumel stands by itself," Brynildson said. "In Tékumel, there were in-depth cultures, it was elegant, you moved around in a cultural system defined by politics and history and religion."

According to Brynildson, Barker pushed forward the concept of role-playing games, and may have invented a predecessor to fantasy-based video games.

Much of that world-building centered around Barker's interest in languages. In the early 1950s, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study languages in India. While there he became a Muslim. He was a professor in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies from 1972 until his retirement in 1992, according to the University of Minnesota.

Image courtesy of the Tékumel Foundation

For the games and handful of novels that fleshed out his world, Barker created at least three languages from scratch, including one called Tsolyáni, said Victor Raymond, chair of the Tékumel Foundation, which formed in 2008 and seeks to preserve Barker's legacy.

Raymond gamed with Barker for almost three decades, spending Thursday nights with a group of friends in a basement room set aside in Barker's south Minneapolis home.

"This is a man who never let challenges stop him, he took each one on with relish and gusto and he made sure he lived life to the fullest," Raymond said. "He had deep and abiding interest and he followed those interests, and that shaped his life."

The Tékumel Foundation is hoping to reprint Barker's novels originally published in the 1990s and 2000s. They're also digging into Barker's vast collection of unpublished materials.

"It will be years, if ever, before we're done exploring just what a creative mind he had," Raymond said.

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Finding poetry on the sidewalks of St. Paul

Posted at 12:20 PM on March 13, 2012 by Madeleine Baran (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , St. Paul

A sidewalk next to a Taco Bell entrance in St. Paul offers a bit of poetry for the gordita-chomping pedestrian to consider.

The sky
fell on
my
toes
and
I was
a fast
runner.

The poem, by Diego Vazquez, Jr., is one of 36 verses pressed into concrete on St. Paul sidewalks as part of a five-year-old public arts project, Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk. The project aims to turn sidewalk maintenance workers into literary publishers. So far, they've added poems to nearly 500 sidewalk panels.

This year's contest for sidewalk poetry begins this week, and runs through April 13. I asked the program's creator, St. Paul artist-in-residence Marcus Young, what makes a good sidewalk poem.

"I think it makes you stop and it makes you think about your life as you're going about your everyday business," he said. "And it has to touch really deeply through the very average medium of sidewalks, and be short."

Among his favorites:

A dog on a walk
is like a person in love --
You can't tell them
it's the same old world.

And:

A puddle,
where a moth
can shake the sky.

The contest, judged by a panel of artists and writers, is open to all St. Paul residents. Young expects to receive as many as 2,000 entries. Out of those, the panel will select five winners.

Most of the community reaction has been positive, according to Young, although a few homeowners have opted their sidewalks out of the program. (The poems are installed when a sidewalk needs to be replaced. Homeowners have the right to opt out.)

"You'd be surprised about how some people don't want poetry in front of their house," Young told me.

But, he added, those requests are few compared to the number of homeowners excited by the prospect of free poetry.

Dave Hunt, spokesperson for the city's public works department, said the project has already proved more successful than he ever imagined.

"We had some doubts initially if it was going to last this long," he said. "We thought that people would welcome something like this, but you never know. There are a lot of naysayers out there."

When asked to choose the most memorable poem, Hunt selected a rather dark verse.

A tourist
in the cathedral
of your silence
I am reverent
for all the wrong
reasons

"That line, 'the cathedral of your silence,' has always stayed with me," he said.

(Photos courtesy of the St. Paul Public Works Department)

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Free fun with Finns

Posted at 1:55 PM on January 18, 2012 by Dan Olson (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , Immigration, Livability, Minneapolis

This photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society has former governor Orville Freeman standing next to Finland's prime minister Reino Kuuskoski at a 1958 event in Minnneapolis.

The prime minister is presenting Freeman with a handwoven Finnish rug typical of the art and craft of the country.

Finnish textiles will be among the items on display at an event that is a true antidote for the midwinter blahs.

The Good Design Is Forever event takes place in south Minneapolis, Saturday, Jan. 28.

First of all, the gathering is inside a work of art - Christ Church Lutheran - a national historic landmark designed by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen with an addition by Eero, Saarinen's son.

Besides textiles, there'll be exhibits of Finnish glass along with music, films and food.

There'll be art projects for the kids.

You can tour the church.

Did I say free?

Finns are fun. Besides great design, they have a fascinating, if challenging, language.

Put "terve" (hello, or good health to you) in your collection of greetings - (TARE veh and roll the "r" with gusto) - when you visit the Saturday event and hold on. Native speakers will turn to look at you, correct your pronunciation, and help you learn some other amazing words.

Finns are a smaller but influential ethnic group in Minnesota. Lots of them came to work in the mines on the Iron Range.

More recently, a fellow named Osmo has helped take the Minnesota Orchestra to new levels of artistry.

Years ago, my colleague Mary Losure and I did a piece on the Finns in Minnesota.

Have a listen.

I wonder whatever became of the rug?

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Northside tornado photography exhibit at the U

Posted at 2:48 PM on December 28, 2011 by Jessica Mador (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts , Education, Minneapolis

Of Sadness and Hope: Images from the Northside Tornado is a youth-produced photography exhibit aimed at raising awareness and money to support those still affected by the May 22 tornado.

Many of the young people, who attend elementary and middle school at Nellie Stone Johnson and Jefferson Schools, live in north Minneapolis and were directly affected by the disaster.

The show presents their photos of the devastation at the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center Gallery on Jan. 12 from 5 to 7 p.m.

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