Paul Schmelzer's blog

Posters spotted in Minneapolis:

It's World AIDS Day, and there's room for cautious optimism on the AIDS front: HIV infection rates are down 21 percent worldwide since a high 14 years ago.MORE »

Mexican artist Pedro Reyes, who's been shooting a video series called Baby Marx at the Walker Art Center, recently removed the program's key characters -- puppet versions of Karl Marx and Adam Smith -- from the exhibition MORE »

For Soap Factory director Ben Heywood, what's most surprising about the installation of Crowd Pleaser -- Ukrainian artist Nataliya Slinko's giant steelwool rendering of Karl Marx's beard -- is how few visitors seem to recognize it.MORE »

The artist Swoon's ties to Minneapolis run fairly deep: She helped launch the Miss Rockaway Armada from the Mississippi shores here (and did some wheatpaste pieces around town) in 2006; her work was part of the Minneapolis Institute MORE »

The ever-prolific Broken Crow (Mike Fitzsimmons and John Grider) recently finished another mural: A gigantic piece showing running cheetahs that's viewable from the light rail train as it passes north through Cedar-Riverside en route to downtown (update: John tells me they're not cheetahs, but servals).MORE »

Perhaps you've heard: The State of Minnesota's government has shut down.MORE »

As I write this, chairs are gathering along Minneapolis' Hennepin Avenue in anticipation of an observation tonight of the 100th day of artist Ai Weiwei's arrest MORE »

Minneapolis yarn artist HOTTEA emails about a new project on Nicollet in South Minneapolis which, like the last one, goes away from straight yarn throw-ups (for lack of a better word) of the artist's tag:MORE »