IF YOU SPENT YOUR ADOLESCENCE MOSTLY TERRIFIED of tyrannical fashionista-types, the lovely women of l’étoile will upend those fearful preconceptions. You’ve never met a warmer bunch than those atop the masthead of this accessibly chic new fashion mag.

A small, locally produced biannual fashion magazine in publication since 2004, l’étoile has met with astonishing success. An enviable network of national and international advertisers is expressing interest in the magazine; notable fashion designers (from home and abroad) have been eager to lend their clothing for photo shoots and coverage in l’étoile’s pages; an array of contributors, stylists, and high-caliber designers are at the ready to volunteer their time and services.

You’ve got to wonder what they’re doing so right.

As committed as they are, it’s not because the folks at l’étoile have lots of free time. They’ve got day-jobs to support their magazine habit.  And it’s a good thing, too—because they’re financing this little gem themselves thus far.

The magazine itself has satisfying heft, like a book. “We don’t want anyone to recycle this,” remarks Beth Hammarlund (l’étoile’s Editor in Chief), “we want it on coffee tables.”

Like many small publications, the masthead’s list of neat titles is belied by the various tasks they each take on. Krista Stensrud (a Macy’s photo stylist—it seems like they all work at Macy’s—and l’étoile’s Editorial Manager) laughs, “Writers, photographers, event planners, customer service, damage control… Everybody does it all.”

“It’s the commitment and energy from everyone involved—all of them working on a volunteer basis. That give the magazine its heart,” Molly Roark (a member of Macy’s marketing team and l’étoile’s Creative Director) says simply.

And no small measure of hustle. “Fearless” Amy Roark (Molly’s sister, a freelance writer and l’étoile’s Managing Editor) is unafraid to pick up the phone for a cold-call to designers when she’s pursuing content for a promising photo spread.

l’étoile is tough to classify. Fashion predominates but there is also much on art and artists, local pieces side-by-side with national and international artwork. There’s coverage of music and, soon, maybe literature....

read the full profile and see the collection on mnartists.org

CLICK HERE to see some of the stunning visuals from this homegrown fashion magazine and get the full scoop on l’étoile's distinctive blend of art and fashion, and why reading this will never leave you feeling like a frumpy sidekick.

The Spring/Summer 2007 issue of l’étoile is hot off the presses and available for purchase directly from the magazine’s website or at select locations around the Twin Cities.

P.S. If Minnesota artist Matthew LaCosse is reading this (or if any of you know him), get in touch with the magazine. They’re desperately seeking him about featuring his work in a forthcoming issue. The spread will have a hip wilderness lodge theme (yeah… you heard that right) and his artwork will be perfect, I hear.

Featured images are all drawn from the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of l'etoile: Photo (top left) appears in the "Crash" spread, taken by Amy Pierce; Emma Berg is pictured in front of her mate Ben Olson's artwork (middle right) for the feature profile "Let's Pretend", photo by Amy Pierce; photo (middle left) from "Coney Island Baby" swimsuit spread by Ingrid Werthmann.

New issue of 10,000 Arts is on stands now!

A new issue of 10,000 Arts, the creative quarterly jointly published by mnartists.org and The Rake, is on stands now and, this time, the coverage centers around “art from the street.” You can pick up a copy of your own at newsstands throughout the Twin Cities and at some gallery locations throughout the state.

Call for poems: What Light: This Week’s Poem contest

Please submit up to three short, previously unpublished poems (maximum 50 lines or 300 words each) as attachments to poems@mnartists.org. You must be a resident of Minnesota and a member of mnartists.org to enter this contest. Membership on mnartists.org is FREE. What Light judges—locally and nationally prominent poets, editors, writers, and readers—will select twelve winning poems to be posted, one poem per week for the next three months, on www.mnartists.org and www.magersandquinn.com.

Submission deadline: May 15

MnArtsWeekly Issue 1.9

Photo of MN doc-makers from Suzanne Szucs's piece "MN Film"

This week’s content is all about performance: dance, poetry, drama, film. It’s all here. And don’t miss the new podcasts: Some Assembly Required host Jon Nelson interviews Orchid Spangiafora and Radio mnartists producer Marya Morstad talks with playwright Stacey Dinner Levin and actor Michael Paul Levin about their play, Autistic License, which deals with their son’s autism.

Craft

The 15th Annual Minnesota Potters of the Saint Croix River Valley Tour and Sale

Jar by Robert Briscoe

Take a tour through Minnesota Potters’ six unique rural workshops and meet twenty-one guest potters invited especially for this event. Drive through the spring landscape of the Saint Croix River Valley, and visit one or all of the studios during this two-day, self-guided event (a map of studio locations is available on the Minnesota Potters website). You can browse through samples of the participating artists’ distinctive work online.

Where: Various studios in the Saint Croix River Valley, MN

When: Saturday and Sunday, May 12 and 13 from 10-5 pm both days

Tickets: FREE and open to the publi

Dance

Faustin Linyekula

Dancer/choreographer Faustin Linyekula of Kinshasa, Congo (and the Walker’s AfricaNOW Artist in Residence) is one of the foremost figures in contemporary African dance, acknowledged not only for the power and artistry of his work, but also for his commitment to connecting art to African communities. His 30-minute solo installation/performance piece deals with themes of displacement and circulation that reference the dark part of his heritage and the commerce of colonization, decolonization, and organized tourism.

Where: The Walker Art Center (Gallery 4), Minneapolis, MN

When: May 17, 7 pm

Tickets: FREE and open to the public

Maggie’s Farm: Silent Auction and Barn Dance

The newly formed Maggie Bergeron & Company, dedicated to modern dance and collaboration, will celebrate locally produced food and dance at the Gibbs Museum. Family attractions such as farm animals, children’s games and local food and produce vendors will start off the event. A silent auction, bonfire, and barn dance featuring music and entertainment by Eva and Linnea Mohn, the Shim Sham Shufflers and the Como Avenue Jug Band will end the evening. Excerpts from House/Home will be performed throughout the evening in various locales on the historic Gibbs Farm.

Where: The Gibbs Museum of Pioneer and Dakotah Life, Saint Paul, MN

When: May 19, 5 pm

Tickets: $10 ($5 for children). All proceeds will benefit Maggie Bergeron & Company and the Gibbs Museum of Pioneer and Dakotah Life

Fashion

Still In Style: (Live) Wax Fashion Show

Photo by Christina Rimstad, courtesy the Thrifty Hipster

Local fashion luminaries, artists, boutiques, and stylists are uniting to create a living wax fashion museum. This is anything but a standard runway show: the second level of Trocaderos will be transformed into a museum with display areas, velvet ropes, through which guests will be led. Meet the artists, enjoy the live model “wax” displays, and get a novelty pic taken in the unusual surroundings yourself. Downstairs, you’ll rock out to live music, dance performances, video displays, photo booths, and other surprises. It’ll be a hipsterrific hoot.

Where: Trocaderos, Minneapolis, MN

When: May 26, beginning at 9 pm

Tickets: $15 in advance ($18 at the door); 21+ only.

Festivals

Art-A-Whirl

Art-A-Whirl is an eagerly anticipated annual open-studio and gallery tour of Northeast Minneapolis that welcomes local and regional visitors who want to see the art being produced in this vibrant neighborhood. Visitors can see work in studios, storefronts and cafes from the more than 400 artists who participate in Art-A-Whirl: potters, tile makers, painters, sculptors, musicians, photographers, glass blowers, printmakers, and textile designers. Beyond art, there will also be live music, food and drinks, and a bunch of attention-getting ancillary events (this year there will be a skateboarding competition!). There is a trolley that transports visitors along a centralized route through Northeast so that everyone can hop on and get off where they would like to. Can you think of a more inviting way to inaugurate the outdoor art festival season?

Where: Various studios and galleries throughout Northeast Minneapolis, MN

When: Friday, May 18 (5-10 pm); Saturday, May 19 (12-8 pm); Sunday, May 20 (12-5 pm). See the NEMAA website for details on Art-A-Whirl-related parties and special event info.

Tickets: FREE and open to the public

A MOMbo Mother’s Day Celebration

Photo from last year's Mother's Day celebration courtesy MOMbo

This Mother’s Day, Twin Cities families can put Mom on a pedestal—literally—during this free celebration of mothers and motherhood courtesy the locally produced public radio show and podcast, by mothers and for mothers, MOMbo. Radio host Nanci Olesen and friends will honor moms with an hour of live music, storytelling, poetry and puppetry, including a reading of the “Mother’s Day Proclamation for Peace” (written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870) by Twin Cities actors Thomasina Petrus and Leslye Orr. After the show, families are invited to put their moms on an actual pedestal and snap a keepsake photo.

Where: Lake Harriet Bandshell, Minneapolis, MN

When: Mother’s Day, May 13, 2-3 pm (rain or shine)

Tickets: FREE and open to the public

BlackArtsFusion: A Soulful Celebration of Excellence

Photo courtesy BlackArtsFusion

Blending dance, spoken word and music, BlackArtsFusion represents the collective effort of several civic groups and features both emerging and established Twin Cities artists.  Youth from local schools and community programs (including Plymouth Christian Youth Center) will perform; the work of young visual artists will be on display. The event will also feature an indoor, African-style “mini-marketplace” that will offer wares by local vendors. Ten percent of event proceeds will benefit TruArtSpeaks, a developing non-profit organization founded by Latisha "Tish" Jones with the sole purpose of creating positive social change within the community and using the arts and education as a means to do so.

Where: The Capri Theater, Minneapolis, MN

When: May 11 and 12, performances begin at 8 pm

Tickets: $8

Literary Events

Ashberry on the Bridge: Poetry in Public Space

Photo of the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge courtesy the Walker Art Center.

One of John Ashbery’s finest poems is strung across the bridge that connects the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden with neighboring Loring Park. Designed by artist/architect Siah Armajani, the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge dramatically inserts poetry into the public sphere. In this talk, Rain Taxi Editor/poet Eric Lorberer offers a guided visual tour of the structure, showing how the poem and the architecture work together as public art and also examining ways that this commissioned text informs Ashbery’s poetics.

Where: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

When: Thursday, May 10 at 7 pm

Tickets: FREE (Tickets will be available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby beginning at 6 pm)

Music

Saint Paul Civic Symphony Presents: Nirmala Rajasekar

Photo courtesy the artist

The Saint Paul Civic Symphony is offering an eclectic Mother’s Day concert to finish out their 2006-07 season, featuring Johann Strauss’s “Emperor Waltz” and Jan Gilbert’s original composition, “Suite for South Indian Veena,” with the virtuosic Nirmala Rajasekar on the veena accompanied by the Orchestra. You’ll also hear Dvorak’s “Symphony #8” and a rousing performance of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes” to finish out the afternoon’s concert. It’s also worth noting that this will be the farewell performance for the SPCS’s beloved Music Director of 37 years, Eduoard Forner.

Where: The Landmark Center, Saint Paul, MN

When: Sunday, May 13 at 1 pm

Tickets: FREE and open to the public

New Media

Nature Does What Nature Does; People Do What People Do

Fate of Innocence, Phase 3 by Ashley Wilkes

The full title of this exhibit is a mouthful: Nature Does What Nature Does; People Do What People Do: A World of Morphing Environments and False Senses of Security. And this collection of digital artwork from young artists is equally ambitious—the pieces in this show push against the conventions of visual design while tackling immense geopolitical issues with the angry certainties and passions of a young artistic vision. The work is unsettling and raw and it offers a valuable lens through which to see how it feels to grow up with the War on Terror as the backdrop to your youth.

Where: Perpich Center for Arts Education, Minneapolis, MN

When: Exhibit runs through June 10.

Tickets: FREE and open to the public (Proceeds from art sales go to Perpich Center for Arts Education)

Metaphor: New Online Mag Devoted to Spoken Word

Matt Peiken (seasoned arts writer for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press) has founded Metaphor, a new multimedia online magazine devoted to the culture of poetry in performance. This new e-mag takes full advantage of the flexibility of online publishing: with video and sound clips capturing riveting performances from spoken word veterans across the country and lively first-person storytelling about the key players on the scene. It’s a site dedicated to verse, but you may well find more to listen to and watch on Metaphor than you will to read. Peiken has ambitions for this to be “the Rolling Stone of performance poetry,” and our first forays through the site were exciting enough to hold out hope that he may just succeed.

On the web: www.metaphormag.com

Theater

Theatre Pro Rata Presents: Quills

Played out in the Marquis de Sade's final days at Charenton Asylum, Quills explores the boundaries of artistic expression, the dangers of censorship, and the need to create, procreate, and annihilate within structured society. (This show contains strong language and nudity)

Where: The Loading Dock Theater, Saint Paul, MN

When: Performances run through May 20. Click here for specific performance dates and times.

Tickets: $14-28 (sliding scale)

Bright Eye Productions Presents: Future/Now

“…Because the future is never very far away.” Bright Eye Productions, an emerging performance company that combines political imagination and the power of performance, present an original collaboratively-created piece, Future/Now, which tells the story of seven people who find themselves stranded in a Las Vegas hotel. As strange weather conditions become impossible to ignore, they struggle to maintain a sense of normalcy in a time of impending crisis. Written, directed, and performed by Margot Bassett, Crystal Brinkman, Emma Nadler, Byrd Shuler, Molly Van Avery, Jeff Wells, and Vanessa Yancey.

Where: Bedlam Theatre, Minneapolis, MN

When: Performances are Thursday-Saturday, May 17 through June 2. All shows begin at 8 pm.

Tickets: $15 (Thursday performances are pay-as-able)

Hardcover Theater Presents: The Savage Joy of Breaking Things

Photo by Steve Schroer of Katie Guentzel (the Gypsy Girl) exerting her powers over Terri Bly and Perry Thrun (Blue Eyes and Turkey)

The Savage Joy of Breaking Things, based on Lucy Lane Clifford’s strange story “The New Mother,” is, on the surface, merely a tale about two children who pay a terrible price for misbehaving. Examined more closely, however, the yarn becomes more complex and mysterious, with echoes of the Biblical fall from grace and the myth of Pandora’s Box. Hardcover’s adaptation is a dreamlike play full of love, longing, violence, and magic—David Lynch meets Mother Goose.

Where: The Playwrights’ Center, Minneapolis, MN

When: The play runs from May 17-June 3. Thursday-Saturday, performances begin at 8 pm; Sunday shows are at 2 pm.

Tickets: $18 ($15 students or with a Fringe button)

Visual Arts

Warren MacKenzie: Legacy of an American Potter

Photo of one of MacKenzie's pots, courtesy the Rochester Art Center

Recognized as a true master of 20th Century ceramic art, this comprehensive retrospective presents seminal works produced by Warren MacKenzie over a fifty-year period (1948-2005). This exhibition pays tribute to Warren MacKenzie as one of the leading pioneers in the studio pottery movement in America today, with his own unique vision where art and life are one, and where the presence of the potter’s hand is felt and touched through the utilitarian pots that are produced for use in everyday life.

Where: Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN

When: Exhibit opens May 19 and runs through August 16. There will be a panel discussion at 3 pm (including the artist, Warren MacKenzie), and an opening reception from 7-10 pm on May 19.

Tickets: $3 ($2 seniors); Opening reception admission is $12 ($10 for RAC members)

Ephemerality in Ephemeral Space

Eyes That Open and Close by Mary Gibney

If you’ve been following the trend toward re-imagining what constitutes “gallery” space (to wit: the intriguing, transient Will Work for Food collaborative shows), you’ll appreciate the concept behind Ephemeral Space. For one night only, a building is transformed into artistic exhibit space which then plays host to a one-night-only party celebrating an equally ephemeral juried 2- and 3-D art exhibit. The upcoming show, curated by the Weisman’s Associate Curator Diane Mullin, features a formidable lineup of talent: Angela Zammarelli, Cheryl Wilgren Clyne, Dan Tesene, Ellen Fitzgerald, Emily Darnell, Emily Smith, Eric William Carroll, Grace Park, Gregory Euclide, Jeff Thompson, Jeremy Szopinski, J M Culver, Jocelyn Chase, Jonathan Williams, Jon Renzella, Jyni Koschak, Kate Anderson, Mary P Gibney, Mitchell Dose, Teresa Cox, and Tony Wagener.  

Where: Tonnage Studios, Minneapolis, MN

When: May 12, beginning at 8 pm.

Tickets: FREE and open to the public

Electric Eyes—New Music and Media Festival

Featuring five premieres of Southern-commissioned, cutting-edge work uniting music and electronic media

Photo by Erin Belling

SPECIAL for access+ENGAGE readers:

mention code “access” when purchasing the THREE-SHOW PASS and receive an additional $5 off the already discounted package! 

The performance lineup:

Todd Reynolds with R. Luke DuBois

Still Life with Microphone: A View from the Microscope

Charles Campbell and Elliott Durko Lynch
I Can Walk! Appliance Songs from Dr. Strangelove's Return

Electropolis, Anne Elias and Xelias Aerialists
Between the Head and the Hands: A Transformation of Metropolis

VJ Neverwas

Cinemix and Tangoslave

J. Anthony Allen with the Cantiamo String Quartet

Kinesthesia

What: Electric Eyes—New Music and

Media Festival

Where: The Southern Theater, Minneapolis, MN

When: May 11-20. Please also join us for the electric-I art installation opening and pre-performance reception, May 11, 6-7:30 pm. Wine and appetizers will be provided by Spill the Wine.

Tickets: $15 (1 show), $27 (2 shows), $35 (all 3 shows). With the a+E mnAccess discount, you can see three shows for only $30. All discounted three-day passes must be purchased by calling the Southern box office at 612-340-1725.

Red Hat designed by Anna Lee, photo by Danielle Gernes, hair and makeup by Anna Boman.

Anna Lee, founder of Ruby 3, designs outlandishly gorgeous hats and otherwordly fashions. Lee is also the driving force behind the annual rock-meets-fashion spectacular Voltage: Fashion Amplified and MN Fashion, an emerging nonprofit dedicated to cultivating professional resources for Minnesota's growing fashion design community.

Photos appear courtesy Anna Lee