Arts and Culture : Featured Stories

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: Check out a mashup of comedy, improv, belly dancing, and scary knowledge this Sunday.

Far from simply decorating the light-rail route, Saint Paul's Central Corridor Public Art Plan is redefining art in the public sphere.

Mike Fitzsimmons and John Grider, AKA Broken Crow, explain how the Irrigate initiative helped get their intense, stylish animal images up on a University Avenue business--helping that business to stand out during light rail construction.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: a pair of highly unusual--as in flamboyantly libidinous--eco-activists bring their film-in-progress to town.

Saint Paul's music-loving mayor wants a city with a scene--a dynamic downtown with the special energy that only art and music provide. Last Thursday he shared some successes, some hopes, and some rock-concert memories with The Line.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: Midway Contemporary Art's library, a genuine hidden treasure.

Our yearly onstage carnival of the odd, the eloquent, the poignant, and the perverse is over for 2012. Bill Kelley was in the audience at the Rarig Center and Intermedia Arts to record six of the 163 shows that took the Fringe stages between August 2 and 12. From a raucous burlesque version of a classic TV sketch to Chinese dance to a surreal Dust Bowl fable, here are images of performance at its edgiest.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: Irvine Avenue, Saint Paul's street of mystery.

With a new school year approaching, we take a look at three unique programs that show how Minnesota has become a "thought leader" in developing--and funding--positive alternatives for youth.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: a lunchtime celebration of local Japanese food.

How are Minnesota and the Twin Cities doing as film production centers and locations? There have been some major disappointments recently, but new moves give us reason to hope we can lure Hollywood back.

It's Saint Paul's--and Minnesota's--biggest celebration of African American life, commemorating the Rondo neighborhood, which was largely bulldozed away to make room for Interstate 94 in the 1960s. This year, lensman Bill Kelley followed all the festivities.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: The sublimely glittery Peace House mural is headed for destruction--and a kind of resurrection.

The massive renovation of the Minnesota Orchestra's home is far from over, but that doesn't mean we can't tour the completed Orchestra Hall digitally.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: A wild chalkboard mural full of literary allusions enlivens the SubText bookstore's subterranean Saint Paul space.