by Paul Lundgren   July 20, 2005 �I wanna love you like Spam, so mooshy it�s gross.� You can bet those words didn�t come from the poetry of a slender, middle-aged man with a moustache and a corduroy sport coat. No, it�s from the work of Shane Hawley, a 24-year-old, hoodie-wearing slam poet who transfers stock by day from his lonely Wells Fargo cubicle. At night he prowls the stages of the Twin Cities…

by Anna Pratt   July 13, 2005 When Theatre de la Jeune Lune�s Artistic Director Robert Rosen recently gave instructions to �create the universe� for the show he didn�t intend it philosophically, like words of encouragement penned optimistically on a graduation card. Instead, Rosen wanted a model of the universe to peek through the bay windows of a medieval mansion. He didn�t give any further…

by Dean J. Seal   July 5, 2005 The Theater Garage is by its nature the home of medium avante theater. It is ideally located in the avante-Lyndale area (at the corner of Franklin and Lyndale). It�s bigger than a breadbox, or black box, and it is cheaper than the Music Box. It was home to Eye of the Storm for over four years, until Casey Stangel pulled the plug and moved to LA. It has wandered about lately…

by Paul Lundgren   June 29, 2005 Richard Gruchalla has been raku-firing pottery on the fourth floor of the Corner of the Lake Building in Duluth for nearly two decades. This summer, his kiln might be homeless. Gruchalla and a handful of other artists have been served with eviction notices by the building�s new owners, who are considering whether to renovate the century-old structure or demolish it in…

by Shannon Gibney   June 28, 2005 Sometimes, you can�t see the battlefield for the Matthew Barney installation. This was the pearl of wisdom that tapped my cranium as I walked out of the Walker Art Center�s recent forum on art and civic engagement. The institution received a $65,000 grant from the Bush Foundation in 2003 to explore the ways in which local communities engage with the museum, and…

Juliet Patterson interviews Kelly Regan Barnhill, two of whose poems were chosen by the judges of our Poem of the Week program. Both interviewer and interviewed find insights into the process of writing in this exchange. You’ll like it. Kelly Regan Barnhill has been writing steadily since the early nineties, though she has discovered a number of methods of supporting herself. She has been a…

by Quinton Skinner   June 21, 2005This critic comes to the theater from the book world, and as such has had to make adjustments for the ephemerality of the stage and the particulars of the craft that make it possible. When one writes a novel, you see, it may or may not be read by many but it will continue in the world, in its codified form, for as long as copies of it exist. It�s a different bag for the…

by Camille LeFevre   June 14, 2005 It began with a tone of quiet desperation. As fine-arts critics and editors from around the country riffled through their registration packets at the inaugural National Critics Conference, May 25-28 in Los Angeles, we found an article from the by Scott Timberg titled �Critical Conditions.� The oracular subhead: �Once almighty arbiters of American taste, critics find…

by Kelly Barnhill   June 14, 2005 With my underwear drying on the hot stones by the fire, instead of clinging decently to the curves of my body my skin was free of cotton aching for air, for moonlight and I was alone in the dew drenched, wind swept field with my sweatshirt brushing my knobbed knees, my body still damp from hours of swimming in the red iron waters pumping through the upper mississippi…