Art
Last Boo on Grandview
This is the last year the house on Grandview in the Chester Park area will be haunted. After 25 years, that’s sad, but thanks to the owners for such good times. Glad it was your house and not mine.
Selective Focus: Ancestry
Brian Barber, “John Barber: Service station owner, school bus driver, Mayor, Parnell, MO”
This week’s theme offers the opportunity for a p.s.a.: have prints made of the images you’re making now, or we might not have the kinds of memories shown here. Digital media storage changes so quickly that having our memories in tangible form may vanish. Anyone still have a floppy drive on their pc, or a pc for that matter? (more…)
Updating Technology, Advancing Careers
On Oct. 15, 11 individuals from Duluth were awarded funding from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council for its Technology/Equipment Grant Program. These grants are for individual artists seeking funding for technology needed to advance their career and body of work. (more…)
Arts & Economic Prosperity in Duluth
A study released on Monday suggests the nonprofit arts and culture sector in Duluth generates over $36 million annually in total economic activity. Arts & Economic Prosperity in the City of Duluth, MN is a follow up to the statewide study Creative Minnesota: The Impact and Health of the Nonprofit Arts and Culture Sector. Highlights are above, fine print is below, and the full text of both studies are linked in the sentence previous to this one. (more…)
Selective Focus: Black and White
Brian Barber, “Bandit”
Black and white photography is most often anything but. Degrees of tone exist in a broad spectrum within what we reductively deem either/or. I’ve argued before that its use as an aesthetic device is antiquarian, retrogressive- that the medium has grown past the limitation, yet there remains an appeal in seeing images pared to their essence, without the ersatz mediation of hdr and hyper-saturation. (more…)
The “Portrait of an Artist” Art Opening at the Duluth Art Institute
This is the Oct. 15 art opening of Sarah Brokke’s show, “Portrait of an Artist.”
Video Archive: Chainsaw Artist John Gage
Video produced by Margo Devich and Nathan Steigman for UWS Studio 2; shot in Two Harbors on Sept. 17, 1995.
Selective Focus: Coming Home
Paul McIntyre, untitled
The idea of “coming home” propels nearly all our endeavors, knowing we are tethered to other people, to familiar, comforting things. For anyone lacking a stable, sane place, or those exiled by circumstance, the capacity to venture is stunted while the desire to find moorings never leaves us. Emily Norton’s “Family Motto” (below) states well this simple, not easily-attained aspiration. (more…)
Art and Literature about the Environment
One more post about art and literature this week … some poetry readings and some paintings about the environment, in different ways.
I attended the Wolf/Flow art opening, hosted by Stephanie Johnson and Angie Arden, at the Zeitgeist Arts gallery.The work shimmers with the energy of collaboration, with passion for the natural world, and with exploration of a variety of media. And, if you contributed a line to the community poem at Wolf/Flow 2, you may be happily surprised to see what became of it. (more…)
Lift Bridge Facelifts
Found on Tumblr, Lift Bridge Facelifts – “A study in removing Duluth’s iconic Aerial Lift Bridge out of the endless logos where it dwells.”
Duluth Arts in Perk Place and in the MIA
I got lucky today and stopped by Perk Place at the time that Naomi “Sundog” Yaeger-Bischoff was completing her exhibition of recent photographs. Naomi operates the Duluth Daily Photo blog), where some of these works first appeared. (She is also the guiding vision behind the Budgeteer.) The picture above is of the artist and the support staff (daughter) who made the exhibit possible. Swing by and take a look. (more…)
RoofTop Fable featuring the Spin Collective – “Fighting the Current”
Duluth rockers RoofTop Fable team up the Spin Collective fire dancers to create this unique visual experience. “Fighting the Current” is off the band’s debut album, Chapter One, which will be released Nov. 21 at R.T. Quinlan’s, where the band holds a monthly residency rocking the downtown stage every third Saturday of the month. (more…)
Halloween Banners
Time to send ’em in. Your creepy, comical, kooky Halloween banner photos, those long skinny photos at the top of the page. Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to banners@perfectduluthday.com
Selective Focus: Duluth
Tamara Jones, “Full moon over the Lake”
There is no way to comprehensively describe Duluth with an inane little photo feature, but I do think this week’s image’s alternations between grandeur and ruin say something about this place; what we value, what we’ve let moulder. Duluth is a place where our failures aren’t hidden. Its broken roads and crumbling industries, all set on that capricious gem of a lake impress the psychic landscape, and inform our present strivings. (more…)
Glensheen: the Musical
Glensheen, a musical based on the book by Jeffrey Hatcher and music and lyrics by Chan Poling, opens at the History Theatre in St. Paul on Oct. 3 and runs through Oct. 25.
Good lord. (more…)
Where in Duluth? #132
Time for another installment of Perfect Duluth Day’s ultra-thrilling photo-trivia sensation. Where in Duluth was this shot taken?
Selective Focus, “Community”
Ashley L. Behrens, “The Joys of Color”
Even though we might not feel a part of it, or intentionally cast ourselves to the margins, we live- without choice- within communities. What we do to broaden, to expand that meaning defines us; how many and of what sort we’ll include. Let’s celebrate here the pulling together, the belonging, and the recognition that no one, as was said, is an island. (more…)
Local artists and organizations receive grants
Kathleen Mctavish will partner with the Duluth Art Institute to provide a year-long, hands-on digital lab and series of workshops to explore, experiment, create, and share new media tools and processes.
Duluth artists and organizations received a total of $58,820 in arts funding from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council to produce projects and creative learning opportunities in the local community. There are many wonderful projects to look forward to in Duluth this year such as the installation of Mary Plaster’s puppets at the Duluth Children’s Museum, or the workshops Kathleen McTavish will be leading at the Duluth Art Institute. Duluth is fortunate to have so many creative people and organizations producing projects and events that engage with the local community. (more…)
Fall Reading List: A Hillsider and a Buried Man
Two books lead the list of recommended local reads this fall: One is a new book by Duluth’s outgoing mayor, which will no doubt generate tons of attention before anyone fully reads it. The other is an impressive memoir published back in March by a humble Lakesider, which deserves to be held up next to Duluth’s highest ranking literary office. (more…)
Selective Focus: Fringe
Jason Linus, untitled
Where’d we be without the square pegs, the odd ducks, and the outliers? Blaine, probably. Feels like I’ve landed somewhere that not only appreciates, but cultivates individuality. Not eccentricity for its own sake or ostentatious outrageousness; still, there is a climate of mutual support here, and a community that values unconventional ways of approaching life, accommodating people and schemes that yield weird, unanticipated, often gratifying things. (more…)
Putting Duluth on the map
Posting the Duluth Fire button to the Duluth Button Collection recently made me think of the Duluth Experience logo, which reminded me that Perfect Duluth Day briefly had an on-the-map logo at the end of 2003, before the official and current logo was developed in 2004.
Are there other logos putting Duluth on the map? And yes, I did notice the mark on the Duluth Fire map seems to be placed over Floodwood. I also think the old PDD logo artist intentionally made it look like the tip of Lake of the Woods was broken off.
Duluth-area Theater Primer 2015-2016
Theater season is upon us, and the Duluth/Superior area has you covered. There are a variety of shows happening every month, ranging from comedy to drama and something for the kiddos. (more…)
Something for a rainy day
I’d heard about Rainworks quite a while ago and filed it away in my mind as something awesome that I’d never be lucky enough to see. And then they had a Kickstarter. I’ve already made my pledge, in the hopes that they reach their goal and I can put up some rain activated artwork in my neighborhood but I think the Twin Ports would be a great candidate for lots of this … something to make us look forward to rainy days instead of dread them. However, there are only seven days left in their Kickstarter and there is a ways for them to go!
Teachers and parents, think of the potential for you! Anyone really. If enough of us got this set up, you could have rainy day scavenger hunts all over Duluth or Superior.
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain.”
Chatting with Artists
In the past few weeks, I have had too much coffee with artists.
Deer Woman: A Vignette, edited by Allie Vasquez and written by Elizabeth LaPensée featuring art by Jonathan Thunder. Winner of the Awesome Foundation Portland’s Peoples’ Choice Award. (more…)