Writer Jay Orff wanders the aisles of Ax-Man Surplus, musing on aesthetic evolutions, beautiful ugliness, creative ironies, and the irresistible invitation to put old things to new use.

Stephanie Xenos reviews Los Cuatro Ases, an exhibition of work by Douglas Padilla, Peter Martin Morales, Xavier Tavera, and Alonso Sierralta that kicks off Franconia In the City@Casket’s second season in its NE Minneapolis space.

Celebrating National Poetry month, the podcast welcomes Todd Boss, whose 2012 volume Pitch offers a series of variations on an overturned piano, and Paula Cisewski, whose Ghost Fargo was selected for the Nightboat Poetry Prize.

A haunting new short story by our most recent flash fiction competition grand prize-winner, Hillary Wentworth.

Alison Morse checks out a variety of coworking spaces in operation throughout the Twin Cities metro and beyond, reporting back on which offers the most to people working in the arts.

Sheila Regan assesses the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ exhibition, The Sports Show, calling sports a surprisingly valuable lens through which to see the larger culture’s changing norms and mores, particularly about race and gender.

Lightsey Darst profiles Laurie Van Wieren, a busy independent choreographer who’s known as much for her unflagging support of new talent as she is for her own critically acclaimed work.

Our jazz columnist just moved back to Minneapolis from New York City. He tips his hat to a few of the fine musicians he played with there and thinks on what it’s like to come home again, when it’s not quite the home he’d choose.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s red, black, and GREEN: a blues is so far-reaching, it should sink under the weight of its ambitious message - and yet it doesn’t. Why? “It’s hard to beat engaged honesty.”