Art
Moving Image Impressions – Headlong into the Void
An Impression of Kathy McTavish’s Video/Audio Mixed-media Installation Chance
Destroy the binaries. That was the phrase echoing in mind after considering Kathy McTavish’s new site-specific installation, Chance, at the Tweed Museum. McTavish is a cellist and media composer who works in the often underrepresented world of multichannel video and sound environments, or digital, code-driven works of art. She uses layered, interchanged information in order to “create cross-sensory, polyphonic landscapes,” combining digital elements of animated video patterns and sound in a kind of seismic virtual collage. (more…)
Selective Focus: Sugar on Top Sweet Shop
Kristina Amys makes elaborate, detailed cakes and baked goods. After stumbling into success with her decorating skills, she left her corporate job to build a business based on food and art.
KA: My main medium is sugar! Whether it’s buttercream, fondant, gum paste or chocolate, I make art out of food! How cool is that job right? I actually started decorating cakes in 2009 when I was planning a very special baby shower for a dear friend. I had my heart set on a very specific cake and after much debating decided to take a stab at it myself. It turns out I was pretty good at it and I uncovered a hidden talent that I didn’t even know I had. After that word of mouth spread like wild fire and people started asking me to make cakes for their special occasions. Never in a million years did I think I would be making cakes for a living!
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Selective Focus: Dudley Edmondson
Dudley Edmondson is a photographer, videographer, writer, and a proponent of the great outdoors. This week in Selective Focus, he talks about what drives him to dig into a project, and some of the special projects he has worked on.
DE: I like to think of myself as working in many mediums from video, still imagery, written and spoken word. Media is my medium. I have always been a visual learner though. It’s very obvious to me that my brain translates a lot of things I hear or read into images for me to be able to fully understand and comprehend. I particularly like good writers (Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut) who can create visuals in my brain with their writing style. Unfortunately I don’t think I have that gift yet but I am always working on it. (more…)
PDD Gift Guide 2017
With an abundance of local craft fairs and new shops featuring local artists and products, supporting and buying local seems to be getting easier and easier in Duluth. With that in mind we bring you the annual PDD Gift Guide, a list of ideas with a local connection. As in previous years, we’ll kick it off with 15 suggestions. If you have your own ideas, or if you’re a local maker, feel free to add products and links in the comments.
(more…)Selective Focus: Phil Davidson
Phil Davidson is a designer who co-owns Creative Arcade, a design and marketing studio with Jeff Ruprecht (featured previously). He talks about what makes him eager to get to work every day, and how their company is growing.
PD: As a business owner, I have to wear many hats, but at my core I’m a graphic designer. As a graphic designer I get to work in mediums ranging from print to web/digital to motion graphics/video and beyond. To me, the variety of work and mediums is what makes this industry so exciting. Professionally, I’ve been working as a designer for over fifteen years. (more…)
Selective Focus: Bailey Aro Hutchence
Bailey Aro Hutchence is a photographer who uses her sense of composition and color and attention to detail to create specialized gift boxes. She talks about the overlap between her two businesses, and heading into her first holiday retail season.
B.A.H.: I own two creative businesses: White Spruce Market, where I create beautifully-curated gift boxes, and Bailey Aro Photography, where I capture full-of-life wedding, boudoir, and branding images. A creative soul to my core, I also have a strong entrepreneurial heart, and love bringing big visions to life. (more…)
The Films of Lance T. Karasti
[This post originally contained an embedded video that is no longer available at its source.]
Duluth’s Lance Karasti makes “micro-budget feature films” shot in his hometown. The video above is a montage of his work from five different productions. Warning: Grisly violence at the end. (more…)
Duluth artist Dean Kegler wins walleye stamp contest
Duluth artist Dean Kegler has won the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ 2018 Minnesota Walleye Stamp contest. His painting was selected by judges from among 11 entries. (more…)
Thank You for Your Service
Still from Thank You for Your Service
This is partially a reflection on a movie seen at the Duluth 10 Cinema, partially a survey of important Duluth resources, and partially a reflection on the way I wish the world would be. (more…)
Selective Focus: Joellyn Rock
Multimedia artist and digital art professor Joellyn Rock has been combining traditional graphic art techniques, classical imagery and storytelling, and video and digital technology to create animations, interactive installations and other experiments. Her art takes advantage of and blends quickly evolving technical opportunities, and her curiosity draws her into constant new challenges.
J.R.: My creative medium has shifted dramatically over the years, evolving from traditional art forms like painting, drawing and ceramics to digital media formats such as web narrative, experimental video and interactive installation. One thread of continuity: I seek new ways to tell old tales. I often borrow from fairy tales and mythology, choosing to update an old story with social commentary or a revisionist spin. For me, old tales provide an anchor when working in digital media, offering the viewer a cozy narrative, reinvented for the distress of our digital age. I use a visual vocabulary that harkens back to the storytelling on ancient pottery or vintage children’s books … graphic compositions, intense colors, set off by crisp silhouettes of characters in action. Those familiar forms get remixed, layered with historical references or contemporary ephemera, juxtaposing ancient story with modern dilemma, part comfortingly old-school, part shock of the new. (more…)
PDD Halloween Banners
Got any spooky, silly or stupid Halloween photos you’d like to share with the world? It’s time for our annual call for Halloween banners for the top of the page. Keep in mind, the photos get cropped to extreme horizontal proportions. If you want to crop ’em yourself and send them, that’s fantastic, or you can send them uncropped and I’ll do my best to make them fit.
Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to banners@perfectduluthday.com. We’ll put them in rotation in the next few days.
Duluth Ferry by Francis Chapin
Lithograph published by the Walker Galleries of New York, circa 1938.
Selective Focus: Eric Dubnicka
Eric Dubnicka is an artist working in multiple materials with fascinating abstractions and textures. It’s always fun and surprising to see what pops up on his Instagram feed.
E.D.: Currently my artworks are focused on the energy that exists and interacts between two people, which has been a fun challenge to conceptualize and the result is a series of paintings of ephemeral core bodies with a carved sculptural element demonstrating the connection between them. I’m fascinated by the process of abstraction and my works have run the gamut of sardonic caricatures to field color paintings, but the underlying concept is the energy that drives us as individuals or in relationships. The forms I’m working with currently lean heavily on the biomorphic lines, have a human anatomical subtext and are relatable to microscopic snapshots that can be found in nature or among the stars. I enjoy allowing for broad interpretations of my work and allow the materials to speak and interact, creating surfaces that are tactile, textured and carry an aesthetic strength that allow accessibility. (more…)
Duluth Pottery is back in Duluth; grand opening Oct. 21
Remodeling of the former P&J Paint building is complete and Karin Kraemer is ready to launch her new Duluth Pottery studio at 1924 W. Superior St.
The shop opens at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 21. A grand opening reception starts at 5 p.m. with Kraemer’s art on display along with works by Luke Krisak and other friends of Duluth Pottery. Live music by Cousin Dad begins at 8 p.m. (more…)
Crystal Spring Gibbins and Holy Cow at Twin Cities Book Festival
On Saturday at the Twin Cities Book Festival, Gary Boelhower, Joan Henrik, Miriam Karmel and Crystal Gibbins celebrated the 40th anniversary of Duluth’s Holy Cow! Press.
The panel, moderated by Jim Perlman, was basically short readings followed by a book signing. It was great to see friends at this celebration of literary culture.
North shore photographer finds permanent home downtown
Ryan Tischer, whose work can be compared to noted photographers Jim Brandenburg and Craig Blacklock, will open a gallery at 5 W. Superior St. next month.
A new art gallery showcasing the natural beauty of the region has found a permanent home just off the busiest corner in Downtown Duluth.
Photographer Ryan Tischer and his wife Aimee secured a lease at 5 W. Superior St. and will open a gallery and workshop in the space Nov. 16. Tischer works full time as a photographer based in Duluth’s Smithville neighborhood. In the past 10 years he has built a portfolio centered on iconic Lake Superior landscapes. (more…)
Selective Focus: Kathy McTavish
Kathy McTavish is a multimedia artist who has been blending technology with art through performance, installations, sound, projections, musical instruments and coding and data input. She has several shows opening this fall. She talks about those shows and the work.
K.M.: I am a trans / media installation artist ::: a cross-sensory composer. Most of my current work is generative / algorithmic ::: multi-threaded code orchestrations. I’m a time-based artist that works with physical spaces. (more…)
Selective Focus: Makers Mercantile
A new shop has opened in West Duluth’s Spirit Valley area selling locally made goods. Makers Mercantile will host its Grand Opening on Saturday, Sept. 30, from 3 to 7 p.m. Owners Sara and Scott Clifton talk about opening and what they see for the future of the shop.
M.M.: Scott and I moved up to Duluth for college, and it didn’t take long for us to feel right at home. We love the people, the businesses, and everything the beautiful North Shore has to offer. We are creators and dreamers. Through observations and many discussions around the dinner table, our crafting ideas moved beyond creating products ourselves into creating a platform for local makers. We love the creativity and craftsmanship in our region, but started noticing that locally made goods were more difficult to find than expected, unless you went to a craft show or knew a specific maker to buy from. This observation spurred on an idea — to combine the values of handcrafted and local. We spent the last few years mulling over this idea, and decided this past winter to start pursuing it. Makers Mercantile just opened, and it is all about local, handmade goods. (more…)
Selective Focus: Karen Owsley Nease
Karen Owsley Nease paints large images of waves, capturing the characteristics of the water and its shapes with layers of transparent oils. She is hosting an opening of the work at the UWS Kruk Gallery on Oct. 5.
Tell us about the medium you work in, and how you came to work in your style.
K. O. N.: I am a visual artist whose primary medium is paint. My most recent works are oil paintings built up with numerous layers of thinly applied glazes. This particular method of painting dates from very early in the history of painting and I employ it because the rich luminosity I can achieve within the paintings from its use. My current series of paintings are intensely observed close- ups of breaking waves. This subject matter lends itself to explorations on many levels, both formally and intellectually. (more…)
My Fancy Foreign Car is a Symbol of My Idiocy
If you read my previous essay, you already know I bought a used-but-fancy foreign car and suddenly thought I was hot stuff. Now it’s time to acknowledge I’m an idiot. But before I relate my idiocy with relevance to the car, here’s a general description of the global conspiracy against me:
In my daily life I make approximately one really stupid mistake per waking hour. It is my sincere belief that half of those mistakes occur because my brain feeds me rational information for problem solving, which hinders my performance because there are maniacs out there designing products to work in ways that are contrary to human logic. The other half of those mistakes are cases in which someone tells me to do something and explains it in a nonsensical way or assumes I know something I don’t.
So, while I acknowledge I’m an idiot, I refuse to take responsibility for my idiocy. It’s society’s problem, not mine.
For example, when my wife asks me to zip up the back of her dress, and I zip it all the way up, and then she asks, “Did you get it all the way?” I say “Yes” and go about the rest of my day. Then, at the end of the day, when she takes off her dress and points out that I didn’t connect the hinge on the inside, well, I’m an idiot for not knowing there is a hidden hinge on someone else’s clothing.
But I digress. (more…)
Selective Focus: Northern Lights
We sure do love our auroras up here. There are predictions of moderate activity tonight and Saturday according to the internet experts and local astronomical legend Astro Bob.
The week of Sept. 17-23, Night Sky Week will be taking place in Duluth. Click here for more information and a schedule of events. The project is organized by Starry Skies Lake Superior, a group raising awareness of the effects of light pollution.
One of the main events will be a showing of the movie Skyglow. The trailer below is pushing some product pretty hard, but there are stunning images in it. (more…)
Nat Harvie Trio – “Nat Harvie’s Birthday”
Directed by Caitlin Nielson. Crowdfunding campaign info at indiegogo.com.