Show Transcript
I’m Paul Cram. For anyone outside of the Twin Cities or anyone here that hasn’t heard of it before. World is happening right now this weekend. Art-a-Whirl. I’m just going to actually read directly from their website Art-a-Whirl is the largest open studio tour in the country, which happens annually throughout Northeast Minneapolis, the third weekend of May. Over 1000 NIMA, which I believe is Northeast Minneapolis Artists Association member artists, NEMA member artists, galleries, and businesses participate across all of Northeast Minneapolis at over 60 locations.
00;00;44;02 – 00;01;13;21
Paul
Art-a-whirl. It’s a fantastic way to connect with artists in their own spaces, enjoy demonstrations and interactive activities, listen to live music and enjoy local restaurants and breweries. Art oil is free and open to the public I wound up going to the Casket Arts Building with a friend of mine, Matt. He spoke really highly of his visit there a couple of years ago, so it just made sense to to choose that that space, that spot.-a
00;01;14;20 – 00;01;40;24
Paul
So picture this walking through a warehouse that has been converted to art studios. You know, there’s hardwood floors everywhere, creaking kind of as everyone’s walking around you know, there’s a lot of people wandering, talking, looking at art. You know, there’s a fairly festive atmosphere even out on the streets outside you know, there’s just a lot of people milling about.
00;01;41;07 – 00;02;05;19
Paul
It’s it’s it reminds me a little bit of if you’ve ever been to like a parade or any kind of an event like that that just has that kind of a vibe specifically to this to Art-a-Whirl. The artists are in their spaces along with the art that they’re showing This is challenging to me because some of the pieces are just laughable in a way.
00;02;06;21 – 00;02;28;04
Paul
Not in a good way. I mean, there’s there’s some that are laughable in a good way because I think that’s the artist’s intent. But specifically, there was this one huge piece Imagine you’re walking along, you go into one of the studios and there’s the artist standing, you know, off to the side. And he says, Hi, welcome, you know, welcomes you into the space.
00;02;28;15 – 00;02;47;26
Paul
And I couldn’t see his pieces, really. So I had to, like, walk into the space and then turn and look and see them. And, you know, I said hi and and I turn around and there’s this huge piece. His pieces were like the size of a wall, like huge. And this piece looked like a penis. And it was actually an amaranth.
00;02;47;26 – 00;02;56;01
Paul
This for I think it’s amaranth. This Agapanthus Amaranth, this one of those flowers that it’s very phallic if you look it up, it’s very, very phallic.
00;02;58;07 – 00;03;24;06
Paul
Specifically, though, the way that the artist used it and then painted it and stuff, it really look like. Hmm. It looked like a comment on an anus and a penis. It was really hard to look at with him standing there next to me, kind of gauging my reaction to it. And if you’re anything like me, you know that like every thought and emotion that you have, like, washes across your face.
00;03;24;06 – 00;03;29;20
Paul
And no matter how hard you try to stop it, people can tell what you’re thinking At least that’s kind of been my life.
00;03;32;12 – 00;03;55;13
Paul
There is a part of me, there’s a snarky side to this. There’s a part of me that wonders if that was the point. Like, if the artist was, I would love it if he had like a hidden camera and was recording people’s reactions as they looked at this huge wall sized penis flower. And but with him just standing there watching, you know, I don’t know, it just seemed like we were getting punked or.
00;03;55;19 – 00;04;23;04
Paul
Hi, you’re on Candid Camera. I don’t know. It just it’s funny, the level of awkwardness to it was just so awkward. That’s actually that that’s what I think he should name it. If it is some kind of like a candid camera reality experience, it should be called, like, the level of awkwardness. I don’t know. One of the reasons that I enjoy, like, art crawls and art exhibits like this is, is really seen how the artists how they think and what they’re interested in.
00;04;23;18 – 00;04;49;26
Paul
I did see a few pieces that, gosh, if I had more money, I would buy and I want to mention them one of them was there was this really cool metal table by a metal smith named Tiny Proctor. It had like these metal. I want to say they’re almost like they almost they’re almost like the size of a I don’t know, like if you had a coffee mug or something like that, almost like a coaster, like a circular coaster.
00;04;49;26 – 00;05;11;00
Paul
But it’s made out of metal and they’re all soldered together to make a coffee table. And because they’re circular and they’re solder together, there’s a really cool pattern that when light shines through the ice in between these metal circles, it creates like a diamond pattern on the floor. It was just really it was clever and it was cool Yeah.
00;05;11;00 – 00;05;44;05
Paul
You can find you can actually find his work. This medal Smith named Tony Proctor. It’s super easy. Just at Tiny Proctor, dot com. There was another piece. This was a this was just a visual art piece. That was it was pen and watercolor by artist. Margot McCreery. And it just had this really fun, sort of almost like a like somebody was doodling, you know, like they’re having a dream and doodling what they see And it just was really it was fun, playful, yet it was really balanced.
00;05;45;04 – 00;06;12;23
Paul
You can find her at Margo McCreery Dicom M.C. C, r r White, Margot McCreery, The last piece that I would have that I would have purchased again, it was an oil painting of I think it was oil, actually. I would have to double check but there was it was an oil painting of birch trees. And it had like this really sort of soft, impressionistic vibe to it.
00;06;14;02 – 00;06;33;02
Paul
Like it didn’t look like the artist labored over it. It’s like, oh, just something pretty. And it had an ease to it. It was by artists Katie Kelley known and I looked up, I looked at other pieces that she’s had, you know, in the studio. But the one with the birch trees I really liked. She does like this really interesting thing, too.
00;06;33;02 – 00;07;05;16
Paul
That’s kind of it seems like layers of almost like iridescent washes of paint that kind of build up on each other. And it makes this really cool kind of pearl pearl lesson type thing. It was cool. Yeah. So you can find her at Katie Kelley noun dot com There. Actually, there’s one more too. I thought her work was cool because a friend of mine, my little bestie and my best friend, she took a recently took a printing class.
00;07;05;16 – 00;07;44;20
Paul
And so there’s this artist has nothing to do with my bestie but her name is has Kendra GABA and she does like woodblock printing, which is obviously a little bit different than just a printing class. So forgive my little digression there, but Kendra Darby she does all these woodblock printing things that are how do I describe them? It’s kind of like if you if you took like rice paper paper that that, you know, like kind of like a really heavy, heavy artistic paper and you would do a woodblock on it and then you she made them into lights, like she actually put light bulbs in them and wrap the paper so they would stand up
00;07;44;20 – 00;08;08;21
Paul
on their own. And it was just really beautiful. Like if you want to turn the light on and you have like print printing of like again, trees, nature, that kind of a vibe. But with the light behind it, it just they were very pretty, very cool. So you can find her at Kendra Gharbeia dot com. And if you have any trouble spelling these everybody now check the show notes.
00;08;08;21 – 00;08;27;25
Paul
I will include links. There is also an artist I wanted to mention actually there’s a couple more I wanted to just mention that stood out to me. One of them was Kim Heitkamp. She does like these paper structural pieces she has kind of a lot of thought to them. I think there’s some some of the art I saw today, I was like, oh, that’s really pretty.
00;08;27;25 – 00;08;51;03
Paul
You know, it’s it’s something that would be really beautiful to just hang on your wall and. Well, I like that kind of decorative art. Like, I do lean towards that quite a bit. What I thought was interesting about Kim’s is that while her paper structural pieces like they’re really beautiful and they’re pretty and they look great, like as a, as a piece in someone’s home, she has like a she put some thought behind it.
00;08;51;03 – 00;09;06;15
Paul
And you can see it in the pieces. Like it’s not just pretty, you know, you know what I’m saying? It’s not just decorative. She was she was talking to me and Matt a little bit about a piece that she has. It’s huge. Like most of her works that were there today would fit like just on a living room wall.
00;09;06;27 – 00;09;33;29
Paul
But she has this one piece that is just monstrous. And it’s all this white paper finely cut. And it’s at the American Swedish Institute right now for a little while. And it has to do with kind of the inspiration underlying it was like the Scandinavian mythology that like, the gods are among us, but they’re sleeping like they’re you know, and it’s a really cool I get the reference.
00;09;33;29 – 00;09;54;04
Paul
If anybody’s watched Hilda on Netflix or read the Hilda graphic novels, you’ll know what that kind of is referring to. Yeah, but you can find her at Kim Heitkamp dot com. You can see some of what she’s been up to now. I do want to I’m going to wrap this up here, but I wanted to mention not everything was beautiful and pretty and great.
00;09;54;04 – 00;10;23;25
Paul
There was actually and I do appreciate this, I, I walked into another, another space and there was a, it was like a vinyl. It was obviously a printed vinyl signage piece that was used probably recently within the past couple of years as a social commentary piece on the racial injustice that has happened. And it and it juxtaposed two things.
00;10;23;25 – 00;10;50;16
Paul
It had a photo, a black and white photo that was shot in Duluth, Minnesota, in the early 1900s when a group of white men lynched a black man and it’s a I’ve seen the photo over the course of time and it’s very sad but it’s very poignant I think too. And they had that coupled up against a photograph of the officer that murdered George Floyd.
00;10;51;02 – 00;11;23;05
Paul
And they wrote in the middle of that they wrote Minnesota nice for over a hundred years or it was it was something along those lines and I thought it was a powerful thing like I was like that is I get why that exists I get kind of why it’s here and I appreciated it. So I just wanted to mention that I don’t I didn’t see a name associated with it, but yeah, whoever whoever that whoever did that, thank you.
00;11;23;09 – 00;11;46;23
Paul
It was it gave me pause and it made me think and I appreciated that it was in the space there was also lastly, there was a troubling one to me, somewhat like I still am just like, huh? I walked into a studio and there was it was I at first I was intrigued as like, oh, what is this?
00;11;46;23 – 00;12;08;17
Paul
You know? And there’s like all of these huge portraits. They look like they looked like photographic portraits of animals that were dressed up in like regal costumes. You know, think think of like, old world oil paintings of, like, aristocracy. And it’s but, but turn it on its head and it’s animals. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. And then I slowly dawned on me.
00;12;08;17 – 00;12;39;28
Paul
I was like, Wait a minute, those animals are real. Those aren’t like fake. And then I looked around the studio and I was like, Oh, my gosh, there’s taxidermied animals everywhere in here. Like, there was a flamingo and a lion and a dog and a house dog looking dog. And like animals of all sorts, they all were taxidermied, which which on one hand, taxidermy is kind of like, I get it like it’s not really my jam, but it’s like, oh, OK.
00;12;39;28 – 00;13;16;23
Paul
Like, you know. Yeah, for some reason, fish taxidermy and like, trophy taxidermy is what I’m more used to I’m not accustomed to seeing taxidermy, actually, even trophy animals, I’m not really they’re not really around a lot, but what I what was I can’t totally put my finger on it, so I’m just going to talk over, shoot from the hip, I guess it was a little unsettling, like seeing the textured animals for one, and then to see the taxidermy and animals all dressed up I was like, OK.
00;13;17;09 – 00;13;39;28
Paul
But then to see like these photographs where there were they’re taking the animals and like putting them into these scenarios and scenes and it’s it’s it just made me look at them and I was like, I don’t understand maybe what’s going on here. And I’m not sure that I want to like there’s just something about it that’s disconcerting to me.
00;13;40;07 – 00;14;09;09
Paul
I wasn’t really sure what the intent was behind it. Like, I, I didn’t really get it, I guess because to me it just seemed grotesque in a way. And I, yeah, I don’t know, it wasn’t something that I enjoyed, but I don’t know. Yeah. Anyways, I, I hope that you guys are getting out and enjoying some of what art overall has to offer.
00;14;09;13 – 00;14;31;04
Paul
I loved there was, there’s lots of food, lots of food trucks. I bought a little blueberry pie, which is tasty. I got some, I got some cookies. They had some fresh baked cookie cookies. There’s actually a church, Antioch church, in northeast Minneapolis, and they were baking cookies and giving them out to people, which I thought was a nice touch there.
00;14;31;11 – 00;14;48;10
Paul
I hope people are enjoying art, a world and yeah, if you want to know any more information about me, you can always go to my website, which is Paul Cram, actor dot com. I always love hearing from you guys and people and everybody. So feel free to reach out to me there if you want or give me a shout out on social media.
00;14;48;27 – 00;14;52;07
Paul
And yeah, let’s keep being kind to each other.