arts and culture : Featured Stories

This week: You've heard of "yarn bombing," knitting as a kind of graffiti (knitted cozies around trees and phone poles, yarn symbols strung through the links of chain-link fences, etc.). But how about knitting as out-there performance art? Our most fabulous local yarnmeister, StevenBe, will be doing just that on March 23rd. How will he turn knitting into performance? By weaving in stories--yarns?--from his glamorous life.

Despite a feisty ongoing effort to keep it open, Saint Paul's much-loved College of Visual Arts is slated to close--all the more reason to hurry over there to hear a talk about a fascinating Baroque artist, given by a fascinating local art historian/entrepreneur.

When Heather and Brent Fredrickson bought a modernist house in a historic Saint Paul neighborhood that was something of a midcentury architectural showcase, they had one big problem: an awkward bathroom. The remodel they did added a 21st-century environmental ethic to the whole home.

Stumbling upon the blog/online magazine that may be the one place to go if you want to know what smart young millennials in creative industries here are thinking and feeling. Hint: there's a lot of pop culture, irony, and a self-consciousness about hipsterdom that's intense but cheerful. And some serious stuff too.

This week: A greeting card in a coffee shop sends me to a Minneapolis West Bank memorial that recalls a beloved, vanished building and honors the history and traditions of generations of West Bankers.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: A multi-everything hip-hop/spoken word extravaganza organized by our coolest Lao-American diva and sponsored by the lovable Saint Paul Almanac.

When globetrotting dancers and choreographers Uri Sands and Toni Pierce-Sands, formerly of the Alvin Ailey company, decided to establish a new kind of multicultural dance school in Saint Paul, they knew where they wanted it to be: along the Central Corridor in the heart of the city.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: A celebrated, exiled Iranian artist brings her images of beauty, repression, and tragedy to Macalester's fine arts center.

The bars and restaurants in this uber-trendy corner of downtown Minneapolis draw national attention. Meanwhile, developers, community groups, and residents are turning the surrounding neighborhood into a pleasantly dense, lively, and livable urban village.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: The Walker Art Center hosts an Aussie touring show unlike any you're likely to see this year.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: A "circus" of fun-to-watch physics demonstrations at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

What is an art gallery? What should it do, not just for the artists it shows and the patrons who view and buy the art, but for the community as a whole? These are some of the questions Tricia Khutoretsky and her colleagues are asking as they prepare to debut a new, and rather oddly named, art space in Northeast Minneapolis.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: A look back at 2012 in the local lit world, courtesy of a new web site that keeps track of live poetry and prose events.

On December 7 and 8, Minneapolis' Midtown Global Market turned hyper-crafty as 96 hand-makers of beautiful, funny, and freaky objects gathered to sell their wares. It was more than a holiday craft fair--it was a celebration of the Twin Cities as a leader in the new crafts movement. Our photographer, Bill Kelley, was there.

The Theater of Public Policy, cofounded by the improbably named improv guy Tane Danger, uses comedy to probe public issues. Call it improvisational democracy, with real situations, serious intentions, and plenty of laughs.