Video preview for Mass Portrait at XYandZ Gallery

Our pals at XYandZ Gallery just tweeted out a studio visit video with artists Anna Tsantir and Dan Luedtke, interviewed by Robyne Robinson. We're super excited to see this exhibit, which opens Friday with a reception from 7-10pm.

We love a good time lapse...

Eyeteeth does a nice post on the new mural behind the Modern Cafe/331 Club on 13th Avenue, with the below time-lapse video and the background of the process. The mural was created by local artists Broken Crow (Mike FitzSimmons and John Grider) and visiting street artist Over Under (Erik Burke) from NYC.

Don't miss Over Under the XYZ Gallery show Building on Building, opening the this Saturday, May 28th at 7pm.

Broken Crow / Over Under. from Broken Crow on Vimeo.

Artsy Vid o' the Day: Frank Gaard

Our bffs at CO Exhibitions just released a nice little interview with artist Frank Gaard today. A solo show of Gaard's work will open on Saturday, May 7th at the gallery. Peep the Facebook invite here!

MIA curators answer your questions online

Ever wanted your pressing questions about art answered by a high-falutin' curator from a major museum? Well, today is that day. From 1-3pm the Minneapolis Institute of Arts' curators will be online and answering your questions as posted on the museum's Facebook wall. The q&a sesh is inspired by last year's "Ask a Curator Day" on Twitter, during which 360+ curators from museums the world over spent the day answering questions via the social networking site. Cool, eh?

The MIA cites examples of possible questions such as: What is your favorite 'back story' about a masterwork at the MIA? What advice would you give college students who aspire to be curators? What’s your favorite work of art at the MIA, or in the world? And so on and so forth. Ask away!

Click HERE for the MIA's Facebook page. Curators will be online from 1-3pm today, February 3rd.


Submitted by @TheIverson

Monster Drawing Rally returns this weekend

One of our favorite arts fundraising events of the year returns to Midway Contemporary Art this Saturday night! 50 local artists are set to create original works - live - while collectors and art lovers hover anxiously, trying to snare coveted pieces by their favorites before someone else gets to them first (for a mere $35 a pop, no less). The competition is often fierce but it's worth it - scoring sweet deals on works by top notch locals is the perfect way to start or add to your art collection. Not to mention, your moola goes to help support a local gallery. Win-win!

The Walker Blog has more details, including the list of participating artists and their time slots HERE.

Video from the last Monster Drawing Rally via 3-Minute Egg:

Artist Rob McBroom shared his plans for the Rally on Facebook. Each of these little "monsters" will be recreated on cardboard with McBroom's signature glitter, rhinestones, wing-dings, hoo-haws, and miscellany. Rob will be drawing in the last quadrant of the Rally, after 8pm.

Submitted by @TheIverson

MN Identity & The Arts video recap

If you missed last night's stellar salon-style forum on arts and identity presented by the Minneapolis Arts Commission and Works Progress, no need to shed tears. The smarty pantses at MN Original stepped up to the plate and posted a video of the discussion, which features four awesome guest speakers including Wing Young Huie, Chuck Olsen, Ananya Chatterjea, and Adam Levy, followed by a q&a session.

This event was definitely the who's who of the local creative scene and included some great dialogue from and about MN artists! Definitely worth a watch.

via Secrets of the City

Watch live streaming video from mnoriginal at livestream.com

Submitted by @TheIverson

WAMarchy has been declared!

OMG! This is going to be E-P-I-C.

Join our sister site l'etoile magazine and the Weisman Art Museum as they declare WAMarchy! They'll be celebrating the year-long closing and impending expansion of the Frank Gehry-designed museum with a art-tastic blowout that will break all the rules!

Music from punk rockers Off with Their Heads and the God Damn Doo Wop Band; participatory graffiti wall led by artists Rogue Citizen, Claire Monet, Biafra, Metrik!, Hellmouth, and Erin Sayer; a vivid, Weisman-inspired projection art installation by local artist, Clement Shimizu; complimentary appetizers and free red wine tasting, complimentary Surly Beer (while supplies last), a cash bar and more!

Full details on Facebook HERE.

Tickets go on sale Wednesday, November 3rd and are $20 ($16 for WAM members and students). Visit weisman.umn.edu or call 612-624-2345. Tickets are limited, so act fast!

Project M "welcomes home" residents of the Whittier 'hood

An LOL/OMG tipster clued us in on a neat guerrilla art attack that happened this weekend! Project M is a group of art school kids who distributed over 300 "Welcome Home" mats in the Whittier neighborhood early Sunday morning. The project is intended to "bring a sense of home community and pride, belonging and to send a creative urban message within Whittier." We think that's pretty cool -- and we really wish we would have gotten one of their arty mats on our doorstep!

Follow Project M on Twitter here.



Submitted by @letoilemagazine

Immortalize yourself in the SooVAC Loo!

This is clever fundraising at its finest! The Soo Visual Arts Center posted via Facebook that now through September 1st -- for a mere $150 (tax deductible) donation -- your face (or the face of your friends, kids, pets, what-have-you) can be immortalized on a bathroom tile at the cool uptown gallery!

Soo says, "Commission your likeness in bathroom tile and take control of your image while you help Soo Visual Arts Center finish building our walls. Suzy Greenberg will paint a tile based on your submitted photo—of you, your child, your pet, your whatever. It will take a place of honor in the highly trafficked, much talked about SooVAC bathroom."

To learn more or to snap up a tile of your own click HERE.


Submitted by @letoilemagazine

The 30 Days of Creativity challenge starts June 1st

We love this! The latest social media challenge is one part "Make Something Cool Every Day"and one part #30daysofbiking. But don't worry, lazy bones, you don't actually have to exercise anything but your creative muscles! 30daysofcreativity.com challenges Twin Citians to do something artistic every day in the month of June and blog/Tweet/Facebook about it -- whether it's making something new each and every day or just working on/documenting one big project over the month. And we've totally signed up already! And by "signed up" we mean tweeted "We're in!" to @createstuff.

The group encourages communications and critiques via the twitter hashtag #30DaysofCreativity. So start idea-generating...June 1st is the kick off!


Submitted by @letoilemagazine

Sorgatz and Carr a la Nic Rad

Now this is brilliant arts marketing! Artist Nic Rad has painted 99 pretty amazing portraits of influential bloggers and media-types and will debut this collection at Rare Gallery in NYC on April 3rd. Cool, eh? If we know the narcissism that goes hand in hand with new media (and we do), this artist has hit the jackpot. How many of his well-read subjects do you expect have re-posted his website? We'd think if even a handful of them did, it would guarantee a packed opening and some automatic notoriety.

The local connection? Well, former Minneapolis social media dynamo/MNSpeak creator Rex Sorgatz and ex-City Pages editor and author David Carr (now of the NY Times) are both featured in the show. We know Rex has already re-posted it on his blog AND on wired.com.

Rex Sorgatz by Nic Rad (are those Tumblr girls in the background?)

David Carr by Nic Rad

Submitted by @letoilemagazine

Oh-la-la! A new gallery in Northeast!

If you're not already aware, we totally heart art! So we were especially excited to hear that a brand new arts-related incarnation will be hitting Northeast Minneapolis very soon! The new Tarnish & Gold Gallery will hold its first show in May, which means it'll be open just in time for our favorite annual event: Art-A-Whirl! There's currently an open call for their inaugural show in May, with a deadline of April 28th. Check out the deets on Facebook here.

Also, they've got a wish list for the new gallery space going, so check that out too and see if you've got any of the supplies they need lying around. It's a great way to help out even if you don't have any actual cash to donate.

Follow them on Twitter or on Facebook!


Submitted by @letoilemagazine

Link of the Day

@artsmia tweeted a link to this fun video promo for Foot in the Door 4, which opens Thursday at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The show features thousands of small works by Minnesota artists of all styles and mediums. Foot in the Door only comes around once every ten years, so be sure to check it out! Tomorrow's opening party will be especially fun with live music from Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles, DJ Jake Rudh, a cash bar, and even a "Shoe in the Door" photo booth where attendees can get their stylish shoes snapped!



Submitted by @letoilemagazine

Doug Forbes is awesome

Local blogger and artist Doug Forbes posted an awesome time lapse video of the progress of a painting he took nearly a year to complete. We heart Forbes and we want that painting!




Forbes will also be showing THIS cool painting at the MIA's upcoming Foot in the Door 4 exhibition. We want this one too!



Submitted by @letoilemagazine

Only in Minnesota...

Northeast artist Jeff Lohaus is on a mission to erect a $100,000 statue of a pierogi on Central Avenue. Yes...a pierogi. You know, the food? A nod to the Eastern European culture of Northeast Minneapolis, the "Pierogi Project" will involve Lohaus building and erecting a 17ft bronze monument formed in the likeness of the tasty dumpling, complete with a fork stuck in it.

When asked by the Strib how he plans on tying in the area's more recent Mexican and Asian immigrants, Lohaus says the answer is simple, "Filled and cooked pockets of dough are a nearly universal food. Mexicans call them empanadas. Tibetans call them momo. Nestlé calls them Hot Pockets."

To raise the whopping $100,000 he needs for the project, Lohaus is selling mini versions of the proposed sculpture. In other words, we may see the full size monument erected in 2045 or so. However, if you want to snag your very own hand-cast pierogi, you can visit the artist's website for more deets and contact info.

The comments on the Strib's online article are pretty LOL-worthy, as is the video clip in which a worker at Kramaczuk's Deli thinks James Lileks is giving her an award in the form of one of Lohaus's mini-pierogi statues.

photo by David Brewster for the Star Tribune

MIA's 'Foot in the Door' exhibit invites you to show your work!

Attention Minnesota artists! Have you dreamed about showing your work in a major museum? Well, here's your chance! Every decade since 1980, the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP ) and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts have co-hosted “Foot in the Door”—the state’s largest art exhibition—showcasing thousands of works of art by artists living in Minnesota. Anyone who considers himself or herself an artist is encouraged to submit a work of art. The only requirement for inclusion is that each work of art must fit within a one-foot cube.

Last time, they had over 1700 works submitted....help them break that record!

Registration information and additional details are available HERE.

Photo by Gina Lazar

Artist Paul Oxborough honored for painting of P.O.S.

City Pages brings to our attention this news piece about artist Paul Oxborough, whose work was recently accepted into the British Portrait Awards for his striking portrait of local hip hopper and rising star, P.O.S. CP was tipped off by the artist's daughter, Allegra Oxborough, whose name you may recognize from the P.O.S. tune "Optimist": "I made this beat for Allegra Oxborough/She taught me how to do the thing with the cups."

A solo exhibition of Oxborough's paintings are currently on display at the Eleanor Ettinger Gallery in Soho, with a definite nod to the Twin Cities that includes paintings of First Ave coat check workers, Mickey's Diner and more. You can view the entire exhibit online here. Read the City Pages article here.

portrait of P.O.S. by Paul Oxborough

Submitted by @letoilemagazine