This week’s issue of MnArtsWeekly includes new dance, veteran photographers, and furniture design, as well as much more.
The sterling annual dance series at the Southern Theater, Momentum, which presents the work of young local choreographers, has been good this year, says Camille LeFevre. This week she reviews Cathy Wright and Off-Leash Area and is impressed by their intensity. See also links to previous years’ Momentum performances; a little history of avant dance.
Mason Riddle reviews Water Being Water, a book which served as an exhibition catalog in conjunction with Art/Science, a 2005 exhibition of photographs by Minneapolis artist David Goldes. The book is currently available at the Minnesota Center for Photography. Mason also spoke with Susan Kismaric, the curator for photographer JoAnn Verberg’s show at MoMA, which runs til November of this year (later—in January 2008-- it will come to the Walker Art Center). Read the conversation for more on how Verberg’s work ended up at MoMA. And tune in next week for Riddle’s review of the show.
What Light, our poetry publication project, this week features Kathryn Kysar’s poem “The Fruit,”in which a naïve young woman imagines how it is that she became pregnant. Kysar’s evocation of the mysteries of the body is affecting and edges into humor. She’s published a book -- Dark Lake--and her poems have been heard on “A Writer's Almanac” and published in many literary magazines.
Our podcast by Marya Morstad, Radio mnartists, this week features Paris Renfroe, a designer and craftsman of sleek modern furniture and devices. Listen in for more on this interesting maker.
Our other podcast, Some Assembly Required, is Jon Nelson’s exploration of sample-based musics. Episode 181 features musician/record producer/sound collage artist Steve Fisk. With over fifty albums to his name as a record producer as well as a dozen outings of his own, Fisk is well known as a musician, artist and producer. He’s worked with everyone from Steven Jesse Bernstein, Boss Hog, The Geraldine Fibbers, Damien Jurado, Low, Nirvana, The Posies, The Screaming Trees, Soul Coughing, Soundgarden and The Wedding Present (and those are just the artists I’m familiar with).
Jean Sramek attended the production of Cats at the Duluth Playhouse. It was enlivened by choreography by Allen Fields, former director of the Minnesota Ballet, and a great set design by Kevin Seimes. Our reviewer was somewhat weighed down, however, by the fact that the musical was still “Cats.”
Chris Atkins contributes a review of the show of McKnight Visual Arts Fellows work at Minneapolis College of Art and Design: David Bartley, Gladys Beltran, Jan Estep and Chris Walla.
In addition we’re reprising last week’s review of John Orth’s show at the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, on the University of Minnesota campus. Orth’s solid retropective is both deep and broad.
And in another of our digs through the rich archives of mnartists.org, we found a December 2002 interview about the relationship of art and media: Chris Godsey interviewed Brad Nelson, journalist and musician, and Allen Fields, then director of the Minnesota Ballet, about their take on the eternal struggle of artists to get coverage. This question becomes more pointed as resources for traditional media get scarcer and the numbers of artists increase; read this for a couple of takes on the question.