David Beard
Worden Day in Metropolitan Museum, via Julie Nunull Marshall
Another item at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is this item donated by Julie Nunull Marshall of Duluth. (I can’t find any records about her easily, beyond the record of generosity and taste.)
In the 1970s she donated Arcana II, 1969, by Worden Day to the Metropolitan.
Worden Day is now deceased, but immortalized by the generosity of a Duluthian.
Winifred E. Higgins in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
A huge collection of world art is available online at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This “charger” (which won’t do anything for my cell phone) was owned by Winifred E. Higgins, who lived at 2401 E. Second St. in Duluth.
The charger was manufactured by the Kalo Shops, which Wikipedia calls “the leading maker of Arts and Crafts movement silver in Chicago.”
(I didn’t know either — a “charger” is a plate that sits under the other plates. Your server places your salad plate atop your charger, then your soup bowl atop your charger, then your dinner plate atop your charger, before the charger is removed for dessert.)
Kathy McTavish named an inaugural Jerome Hill artist fellow
The Jerome Foundation has announced the first recipients of the new Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships program. Duluth-based artist Kathy McTavish was among the artists chosen from 1,172 applications. (more…)
No Empty Bowl?
WDIO tells me Empty Bowl is off, this year. I own five bowls, and I have probably broken five more — these things get used in my home. I love useful art, and Empty Bowl fills my heart and home with useful art.
Colleagues who throw pots as an art form worry that Empty Bowl hurts the market for pottery, but I would say that the twenty bucks I spent there would never have been spent on something in a gallery — it is the confluence of art and charity that makes Empty Bowl magic.
What is next for Empty Bowl? I don’t know, but I hope it returns.
Split Rock Review, Spring 2019
Issue #12 of Split Rock Review is available. My favorite piece is “Transfers” by Hava Zitlalik.
Tim Kaiser – “Organelle”
Tim Kaiser appears to be reorganizing his recordings on SoundCloud, and so this gem appears on my feed. (more…)
Entangled lives: Poles and Jews; Europe and Africa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iha3OS8ShYs
University lectures showed me quite a bit about the entangled lives of the past that shape our present. Last Thursday, Dr. Deborah Petersen-Perlman gave a historical tour of Poland. She opened with a video that shows the borders of European nations, beginning hundreds of years before the invention, even, of the nation-state. (more…)
Duluth Blogs: How to Collect Baseball Cards
Today, I point to another blog by a Duluthian, this time John Boucha. You can tell because his name is the URL. (more…)
Duluth Blogs: Sister Scotland
I’ve been discovering blogs by Duluthians lately. Sister Scotland collects the observations of a Superior student as she studies abroad. Some observations, about the taste of haggis … well, I will never be okay with food cooked in a stomach. It feels like duplication of effort; we only need one stomach in this process. But others, they are just playful thoughts on life. (more…)
Sketchbooks at Brooklyn Art Library: Daniel Levar
Daniel Levar was a Duluthian in Minneapolis at the time he submitted this sketchbook to the Brooklyn Art Library. (more…)
A Tributary
I’ve been working on a medical humanities project. Some Duluthians are part of it, including local author Avesa Rockwell.
“As I child I could run out the backdoor and leap over tumbleweeds and sagebrush like a jackrabbit. By the time I reached tenth grade my body lost its buoyancy, and the open spaces around my house and in my mind were being leveled, fenced off, and cul-de-saced. I felt trapped by the prefabricated structures of school and its social hierarchies.”
Read the article at repository.stcloudstate.edu.
Rivers
I’ve been working on a medical humanities project. Some Duluthians are part of it, including local artist Rob Adams.
Read the article at repository.stcloudstate.edu.
Sketchbooks at Brooklyn Art Library: Steven Rodriques
I’m digging deeper into the online collection of Duluth-related Sketchbooks at the Brooklyn Art Library. (more…)
Dementia: Shifting Mystery to Meaning and Management
I’ve been working on a medical humanities project. Some Duluthians are part of it, including communication instructor Daniel Egley and his partner Beverly Egley. (more…)
After the Endoscopy …
I’ve been working on a medical humanities project. Some Duluthians are part of it, including poet Zomi Bloom.
“After the endoscopy … while living in limbo, every attempt to eat led to unbearable burning and the inevitable blowing up of the balloon on my right side. I drifted in and out of waking dream‐state such that dreams became nightmares and shifted back into dreams of fantastic sweetness.”
Read the poem at repository.stcloudstate.edu.
Sketchbooks at Brooklyn Art Library: Samantha Nielsen
About a year ago, Samantha Nielsen was subject of a Selective Focus on Perfect Duluth Day. She’s one of the Duluth artists in the Brooklyn Art Library. (more…)
Sketchbooks at Brooklyn Art Library: Sam Luoma
Brooklyn Art Library claims to hold the largest collection of sketchbooks in the world with more than 41,000 sketchbooks on shelves and more than 20,000 in a digital library. Some of them reference Duluth. (more…)
Servant-Leader and Artist
Jan Carlson Carey
My friend Jan Carlson Carey and I served on the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council at the time of its immense growth. I was the at-large Duluth representative, and Jan represented the Iron Range, more or less.
In all those five years, I never knew she was a talented painter in her own right. (more…)
One last late night before the holiday
I spent Saturday at the Marcus Duluth Theater, which is on the lake [in the DECC]. For point of wry comparison, the Marcus Lakes theater is in Hermantown, near no obvious lake. My sweetheart Zomi and my friend Kate and I hoped to see Holmes and Watson. (more…)
A Second Late Night at the End of the Year
So a drip coffee is free at Barnes & Noble until the Dec. 23 after 8 p.m., so I am back. The people watching is better tonight, maybe because it’s Friday. (more…)
Late Night at the End of the Year
I’m at Barnes and Noble, which is open until midnight through the Dec. 22. And I’m reflecting on the past year. (more…)
Thoughts on Anchorage: Community makes self-reliance possible
In the late 1990s, before it reorganized in bankruptcy, Sun Country Airlines flew out of the Humphrey Terminal at Minneapolis/St. Paul. It ran specials on undersold planes, and I received an email alert, I think, about round-trip tickets to Alaska for $300. It seemed so far away for so little money. I was a graduate student in the College of Agriculture on the Twin Cities campus; I was making $12,000 a year. This was cheap, it was an extravagance, an adventure, a story to tell.
I boarded the plane in Bloomington and disembarked in Anchorage. (It was the first time I had been to an airport with signage instructing passengers how to check and reclaim your gun.) The bus took me downtown, and I looked for a hotel. In the years before travel websites and mobile phones, this was hard — I had to walk toward hotel signs and hope for vacancies. There were few; the flight was cheap, but the hotels were booked; I spent twice what I spent on my ticket on my hotel, at what felt like a dive for the price.
I was young and weighed less than half what I weigh now, so I started walking. I walked to Cook’s Inlet, which was muddy. “Captain Cook” was not a real person to me, and so his inlet meant little. So, too, did Mt. McKinley mean little to me — Mt. McKinley, also called Dinale or Denali or Bolshaya Gora/Большая Гора, Densmore’s Mountain. The history of its naming means more to me than the mountain. I was more interested in a business dedicated solely to pull tabs. (more…)
“Anyone’s life is smooth from far away. Anyone’s life close up is cracked.”
Julie Gard’s new poetry is awesome.
“This piece consists of 51 texts I sent to myself first thing in the morning during the 2016 presidential election season. Hopefully some of them will speak to you,” says Gard, describing her work in Superstition Review.
Holiday Traditions next to Red Kettles
The Red Kettles are out, and the adorable man next to the adorable eagle is my friend.
The teddy bear on the left is Tim Broman; “Earnie” the eagle on the right is Cara Ellis. As you might guess from the fairly cheesy pun in “Earnie,” Cara is a mortgage specialist at Northern Communities Credit Union, where Tim is a customer service representative.
They are standing outside Cub Foods, where I bought some tasty sushi yesterday, inspired by the PDD post about Wasabi.
I didn’t realize that local businesses partnered with the Salvation Army in this way. I appreciate the generosity of NCCU, I shame my friend Tim for making the lady wear the costume (a gentleman would have worn the scratchy sweaty suit) and I wonder whether any other businesses and organizations partner in this way in the holidays. Post below if you will be ringing this season, please?
(Former) local author Michael Fedo, Well-Reviewed
Former Duluthian Michael Fedo’s new book is reviewed on the arts and literature website Open Letters Review:
For all readers interested in the workaday writing life, it’s fascinating to follow Fedo through his many adventures, from writing an authorized biography of Garrison Keillor vehemently opposed by its subject to interviewing Cloris Leachman about starring in a play about Grandma Moses (which flopped).
I enjoy this book well enough, it inspired my Spring syllabus for Writing Studies majors.