THANKS TO MRS. FIELD, A GREAT TEACHER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE at Normandale Community College, I spent my twenties reading most of the American canon — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Mark Twain. Mrs. Field, being the solid sage she was, advised me to read slowly and without interpretation, to fall into each story as if I were talking with a friend. She wasn’t at all…

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GET TO KNOW THE FOLKS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD? In the case of two theater companies, Bedlam and Mixed Blood Theatres, it means bringing members of the community together to create a new play. In that spirit, Ku soo Dhawaada Xafadeena (Welcome to Our Neighborhood), which will be performed at the Cedar Cultural Center this month, is a collaboration between the two theaters, playwright…

ECLECTIC EDGE IS, AS ITS NAME SUGGESTS, a company of various moods, all based in jazz. More specifically, all these moods derive from a performative, tightly choreographed, smiley, lyric style of jazz, most familiar to Twin Cities audiences from Danny Buraczewski’s Jazzdance. This past weekend, I saw the ensemble’s Send in the Jazz line-up. I’m going to be frank: terrible things can happen in this style…

THE GARAGE AT 3310 15TH AVENUE S. LOOKS LIKE ANY OTHER in South Minneapolis. It has a wide bluish-grey door with prominently placed house numbers and sits next to a tidy wooden fence that encloses the adjacent yard. If you were walking by on your way to Powderhorn Park you probably would not think anything of it. But, come July, a sign and a doorbell will designate this common domestic structure as…

I ALMOST LEFT MIDWAY GALLERY AFTER KARL RASCHKE’S OBFUSCATION. It was the first piece I saw, and I’d gotten a little lost in it, immersed myself in a way that seemed unfair to the other photographers in the 2010-2011 McKnight fellowship show, and to the 2009-2010 fellows, whose work, mounted at Franklin Art Works, I was supposed to view next. All told, I’m sure I spent at least a half hour with the…

LAST MONTH, I PERSUADED SEVERAL OF MY ARTS JOURNALISM STUDENTS to join me in viewing Czech-Canadian artist Jana Sterbak’s infamous meat dress, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, at the Walker Art Center. The simple sleeveless sheath, stitched from 60 pounds of flank (or skirt) steak by Walker assistants in 1994, is part of the ongoing Midnight Partyexhibition. Sterbak’s 1987 original, 50…

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…