I AM NOT PRONE TO UNIVERSAL STATEMENTS, but I think everyone has a complicated relationship to their hometown. I know I certainly do. Like anyone, my hometown has been the arena for my bad decisions, regrets, failures, embarrassing moments. That’s not important, though. I am not uniquely inept or unlucky. I am just alive, and like all of us who are alive, I do more stupid things than smart things. I lived…

WHEN THE THREE OF US DECIDED TO START A LITERARY MAGAZINE after graduating from the University of Minnesota in May of 2009 — with no jobs, no prospects, and no clue how to turn our respective English, Art, and Art History degrees into anything useful — it was a concept born of passion, and maybe a little desperation, too. Like a lot of people launching a creative start-up, my friends and I had colossal…

MATT OMAN RECENTLY GRADUATED FROM UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-DULUTH with a history degree, but his house is a work of art.  His very ordinary home has become, through his sowing of books, images, arrangements of objects, and more, a kind of machine for mindfulness, a way of externalizing and developing ideas. It’s a three-dimensional materialization of a mind. He’s compiled his interests in physical form…

A WELL-RESTED WOMAN WHO CLOCKS seven or eight hours every night, I’ve always resented the oft-repeated notion that creatives think best at 3 a.m. At the same time, I must admit I’ve always been intrigued by the sleep-deprived set. On occasion, I’ve even been persuaded to join them in their nighttime excursions — for part of the night, anyway. “I could walk all night,” I say, strategizing the night’s plans…

WE’VE REACHED AN INTERESTING MOMENT in the Twin Cities’ physical/alt theater scene when a show as clever and accomplished as Shawn McConneloug and Kira Obolensky’s Force/Matter can seem unremarkable. Performers bat raw eggs back and forth with ping-pong paddles while carrying on devastatingly awkward seductions; they deliver surreal lines of supreme ennui or reckless collage while rolling around…

JAKI BYARD. Anything written about pianists needs to mention Jaki. He will probably come up again, actually, even though this piece is primarily about Marcus Roberts and David Berkman, two pianists I have been listening to a lot lately. Roberts is noted for a career in which he’s deliberately moved through the whole history of jazz piano, from ragtime forward. There are plenty of people who have…

WHEN ARTISTS DREAM OF SUCCESS, they probably dream of showing at the Walker, the Met, the Tate, Musée National d’Art Moderne — not the java joint down the street. But on the road to the big-time, those little coffeehouse shows can be important stops along the way, providing a safe platform for artists to practice the tricks of their trade: how to produce enough work for a show, create a cohesive…

IN 2006, NORTHERN LIGHTS.MN founder, president, and artistic director, Steve Dietz, helped organize the first Zer01 SJ biennial, a seven day festival of art highlighting the theme of “the interactive city,” which took place in San Jose, California. The event was a huge success, featuring the work of more than 250 artists representing over 40 different countries and drawing in excess of $9 million dollars…

WHAT DO WE GO TO PERFORMANCE FOR? Why leave our cozy homes to venture out in the dark among strangers, to sit, cold and uncomfortable, silent and still, for an hour or two? Why pay for this dislocation, confinement, mutual isolation? There is something to see, maybe: shapes leading our mirror neurons a dance. But there is also something to be: there are gestures to clothe and form inchoate desire; looks…