THE CONCEPTS OF CHARITY, AID, AND ASSISTANCE often bring to mind a tableau of long lines, desperate individuals, and dingy, dilapidated surroundings. One step into the new Center for Changing Lives (CFCL) in the Phillips neighborhood dispels those images immediately: a modern, beautiful building, it houses a myriad of social service providers under one roof, including those specializing in adoption…

LAST WEEKEND, ALL MY RELATIONS ART GALLERY CELEBRATED their grand opening on Franklin Avenue with Frank Big Bear: From the Rez, to the Hood, to the Lake. This exhibition marks the Anishinaabe artist’s first painting show since the 1970s when the artist was 23 years old. “I stopped painting, because I was working,” Big Bear says simply; he drove a cab for 31 years, and when he retired in 2006, he started…

IT’S AN INTRIGUING TITLE FOR A BOOK OF POEMS: But You’re Wearing a Blue Shirt the Color of the Sky. The front cover features a photograph of the author, 94-year old Lucille Broderson, smiling, posed unpretentiously in a lightweight aluminum lawn chair, her left hand steadying a coffee cup against her crossed leg. In the background, two ducks drift on a Minnesota lake. It’s a placid summer day. This is a…

IF YOU TALK ABOUT GEORGE CARTWRIGHT WITH AN IMPROVISING MUSICIAN from out of town, that person will invariably say, “George Cartwright lives in Minnesota?” Known for holding down the Knitting Factory in New York with his group Curlew in the 1980s and 1990s, saxophonist/composer Cartwright is an improvising monster in our midst. In a recent interview for All About Jazz, Gordon Marshall called him “part…

ABOUT A DECADE AGO, THE REDESIGN AND CULTURAL RENAISSANCE of the downtown Minneapolis riverfront surged with the renovation of the Washburn A Mill into the Mill City Museum, followed by construction of the new Guthrie Theater and MacPhail Center for Music, and buoyed by ongoing waves of loft, retail, and hotel construction. Accompanying this re-visioning of the Mill District came renewed public…

ART MARKETING IN THIS SMALL NORTHCOAST CITY is pretty well served by its galleries (starting with Lizzards, Waters of Superior, and Sivertson Gallery, and also in nonprofit galleries such as the Duluth Art Institute, and more), but there are many other venues in Duluth where artists may show and sell their work, with varying degrees of professionalism and artist support, and number of sales. These…

ALEC SOTH, PHOTOGRAPHER AND SUBJECT OF A RECENT MID-CAREER RETROSPECTIVE at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, sells zines on his website, and that’s exactly what he calls them. Not “art publications,” not “self-published books,” but zines — like a 1990s-era punk band, or a kid behind the merch table at an all-ages rock show. In most circles, that particular word fell out of use sometime around the end of…

WHY AM I GOING TO ART BASEL AGAIN, FOR THE THIRD TIME? I’m not showing anywhere, the rich don’t care about me, the art world outside my hometown barely knows I exist, and I refuse sponsorship for this annual trip (but thanks again mnartists.org for helping me almost break even). However, with my two shows up in Minneapolis garnering a few sales, and thanks to lodging, courtesy of my friend Cindy, how…

VANESSA VOSKUIL AND JOHN KOCH HAVE DONE A GREAT THING in starting the Minnesota Dance Film Festival. Dance film is a hot and growing genre, one that the Twin Cities, with its thinky dance and vibrant indie film scenes, seems naturally poised to excel at. The festival’s main event, the Dance Film Project, an unjuried screening of dance films made in the past year, draws enthusiastic responses from all…