“IT BEGINS WITH AN ‘A’.” Claire Witt traces the thin, mosaic tiles forming a loopy capital A with her finger, and then she moves slowly around the base of a large mosaic planter, reading aloud, “‘A long, long time ago.’ This one is about the past.” It is the first of a trio of mosaic pieces along a walking path in Harmony Park, Long Prairie. She shades her eyes and squints at the serpentine mosaic bench fifty…

MILK SOURS AND MAKES YOU SICK. Honey crystallizes and shatters your sweet tooth when you least expect it. Our idealistic dreams were eventually (and quite effectively) dashed, too, but before that happened we got by for nearly a week on nothing more than music, marijuana and some basic survival skills we’d seen demonstrated on cable TV. Even if we never speak to each other again, we’ll always have our…

LAST FALL I WROTE ABOUT A FIRST VIEW of Hijack (local duo Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder) and Heron’s (Scott Heron, of New Orleans) Smithsoniansmith, with a promise to revisit the show this year. Last weekend, Hijack and Heron remounted Smithsoniansmithat the Open Eye Figure Theatre, and I went. First, I should start by making the case for revisiting, in general — rereading, re-seeing, returning. After all…

You might find yourself here unexpectedly, with neither direction nor intent. Say you are just passing through, no fixed address, and the less you say about where you’re from the more at ease others seem to be. Say your wife found the letter you had intended for the eyes of another, or that other received the words intended for no one. Now you lie in the in-between, locked out of that other part of…

THE LILACS ARE IN FULL BLOOM, AS IF ON CUE.  Duluth’s Deborah Gordon Cooper is reading tonight from her new book of poems, Under the Influence of Lilacs, and people are streaming into the Congregational Church on Superior Street for the event.  Local folk hero, Sara Thomsen will also sing during the program, and to add to the pleasures of the evening, upon entering the the church, attendees are greeted…

IN A STATE KNOWN TO SOME AS “THE LAND OF 10,000 GRANTS,” a McKnight Fellowship is one of the most desirable honors an artist can receive. While its $25,000 stipend is nothing to sneeze at, the one-year fellowship also supports outstanding midcareer artists with public recognition and professional development opportunities, culminating in an exhibition and catalogue. Last year, the McKnight Foundation…

DEBORAH STEIN: 5‘4”. Minneapolis-based playwright. Recipient of many awards including two Jerome Fellowships and the Bush Foundation Fellowship. Self-described as collaborative theater girl, loudly thoughtful and gently opinionated. Member of the Workhaus Playwrights Collective in Minneapolis. SOLVEIG HOLUM: Called Suli. 5‘2½”.  A theater artist (performer, writer, director), based in Brooklyn, New York who has…

UTE BERTOG WAS BORN IN A SMALL TOWN IN SOUTHWEST GERMANY and resettled in the United States in 1998. Though initially trained in business and economics, this move provided her the impetus to follow a life-long dream of becoming an artist. Infused with hidden texts, her paintings present themselves as a built-up process of working and reworking as a means of muddying lines of communication between…

MAKING AN INFORMED ASSESSMENT OF TARGET FIELD is a daunting undertaking. And it’s not just because of the local hoopla surrounding the ballpark’s opening, during which it suddenly seemed, around April 1 or so, that every eye in the state of Minnesota was fixed on the place. Nor is it because of the weight of the outpouring of praise for the stadium that has been offered up by all manner of local…