Archive Articles
257 Items
EC
Articles
The Nine Lives of the Internet Cat Video Festival
Paul Schmelzer & Scott Stulen
Mar 1
The world’s first Internet Cat Video Festival brought 10,000 people—some in costumes, others cradling kitty companions—to the Walker’s lawn last August. Since then, the event has spawned other lives: a national tour, more media interest, and the just-announced 2013 edition. Festival producer Scott Stulen discusses cat culture, viral trends, and how the Internet is the cat lover’s version of the dog park.
EC
Articles
This Is Not a Trojan Horse
Steve Dietz
Feb 27
Steve Dietz, founder, president, and artistic director of Northern Lights.mn, deconstructs Open Field 2010 artists-in-residence Futurefarmers’ process, practice, and motivations.
PA
Articles
Forecasting Change: A Meteorologist and an Artist on the Climate Crisis
Paul Schmelzer
Feb 27
Paul Douglas considers himself an “albino unicorn.” A moderate Republican, he’s also a meteorologist who believes climate change is real. Music-theater artist Cynthia Hopkins decided to make art about the crisis after a 2010 Arctic expedition. In a recent interview, the pair discusses global warming and ways that art, science, and spirituality can work together to change minds about a changing planet.
PA
Articles
Talking Drums: Glenn Kotche and Martin Dosh
Doug Benidt
Feb 11
Swapping roles as interviewer and interviewed, percussionists Glenn Kotche (Wilco) and Martin Dosh (Dosh, Andrew Bird) share a bit of common time to ruminate on influences, matters of style, and “Ah-ha!” moments. Repeat performers at the Walker—Kotche at Rock the Garden 2003 and Dosh at a festival in his honor in 2008—the pair opens an insider’s window into the world of the professional drummer.
PA
Articles
Love Song to a Clement World
Julie Caniglia
Feb 5
During a 2010 trip to the Arctic, Cynthia Hopkins serenaded a sailing vessel, the Noorderlicht, that carried her and other artists on what she calls a “lucky, life-transforming” journey. First sung with ukelele accompaniment on the ship’s deck, the song is now part of Hopkins’ new climate-themed music-theater work, one she characterizes as a “love song to the miraculous clemency of our world.”
VA
Articles
Painter Painter: Reframing a Medium
Julie Caniglia
Jan 30
The resolute materiality of painting continues to attract artists, says Painter Painter co-curator Eric Crosby. “It’s a vivid contrast with our daily routine, where we experience so many images by using a cursor. Painting resists this kind of experience,” he adds. “A lot of artists today embrace that notion, going where the materials take them, not where the history of painting tells them to go.”
FV
Articles
Handmade Spirits: Chris Sullivan’s Ethereal Animated Worlds
Kathie Smith
Jan 29
Fifteen years in the making, Chris Sullivan’s painstakingly hand-crafted film Consuming Spirits peers into twin ethereal realms, lurking familial ghosts and the inebriating spirits that haunt its characters’ lives. But while the themes are otherworldly, Sullivan stays grounded in the concrete as his film’s animator, screenwriter, director, editor, composer, and actor, as Kathie Smith discovers.