MINNESOTA-BORN ARTIST CHERITH LUNDIN FUSES SUBTLE EXPLORATIONS of the banal with a profound formal intelligence and a soft, aesthetically refined touch. Adjusting the scale of her pieces according to that of each installation site, Lundin’s practice involves multiple media formats, but her primary focus continues to be painting and drawing, employed as a means of exploring dualities like the known…

THIS PAST DECEMBER I WENT TO SEE MINNESOTA DANCE THEATRE’S NUTCRACKER. The Nutcracker is a sentimental favorite; I don’t go expecting revelations. Melanie Verna was dancing the Sugarplum, and while I was looking forward to seeing her — Verna is an extraordinary dancer — I didn’t think she’d be at her best. Every time I’d seen Verna in a classical ballerina role in the past, she’d looked like a lesser…

A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, I WAS AMONG 150 “Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals” who, in about 25 minutes, generated 527 solutions to thriving in a world without oil. Woot! It was an “Epic Win,” said Jane McGonigal Ph.D., “an amazing gift to the world.” The charismatic game designer guided us in playing her online alternate-reality project, World Without Oil, during the College of Design conference “Disruptive…

THE FRENCH PAINTER ODILON REDON NEVER VISITED THE STATE OF MINNESOTA in his lifetime. He was born in Bordeaux in 1840 and spent most of his life in Paris, where he died in 1916. During his career, he was responsible for some of the best-known Symbolist paintings of the late 19 and early 20 centuries — The Cyclops, most famously, but dozens of others as well. His work was not exhibited in America until…

START PONDERING THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ART AND ECOLOGY, and you find yourself confronting a complex web, which, depending on your point of view, could look like a stairway to heaven (where art and the rest of life seamlessly connect) or a deathtrap, where good work goes unrewarded, unseen, unappreciated. Might either one of those descriptions match your view of the Minnesota art community? Ecology, the…

This is the end of minutiaeand the beginning of a sortof cruise. You won’t quite recognizethe climate. Some people find thistroubling, but try to roll with it.If you taste brine, if you hear gulls,if the wind comes at you from anunlikely quarter, don’t panic.You’ve always been a landlocked soul—acreages, volts, miles per gallon;the sea will take getting used to.Go for long walks past the lounge…

EVERY TIME I WALKED INTO AN ELEVATOR at the 2009 Associated Writing Programs conference — an annual gathering of thousands of writers, poets, and writing teachers from all over the country — I heard the strangest muzak: a tinkly synthesizer riff, crowd murmurs, then a disembodied voice reading a poem. At the same time, on a tiny video screen above the elevator buttons, the words of the poem scrolled…

FOLK WISDOM HAS IT that it takes 21 days to develop a new habit, like staying away from sweets, exercising, avoiding caffeine — and reading John Jodzio’s new collection of short stories If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home (Replacement Press, 2010). To abet your new habit, Jodzio has helpfully provided 21 stories, one per day, each one a sugarcoated pill of literary yum. The story collection sits well…

HER DEAD BODY LAY TWISTED TOWARD THE WALL. Her skin, onion thin, draped over the high, bold cheekbones she passed to me through my father. Deep ditches cut through her square jaw toward her lips — evidence of respirators recently removed. Her white hair matted and uncurled. The week spent dying made her frail and thin, as dying can do. Her mouth lay open, all breath — both natural and forced — now gone. Her…