Mason Riddle, Writer
Mason Riddle writes on the visual arts, architecture and design. She has contributed to publications including Artforum, Metropolis, the Star Tribune, and the Pioneer Press. She is guest editor for the upcoming Public Art Review #39: Between Rural and Urban, which explores public art in the suburbs.
Art-a-Whirl 2009: Now with 20% more art and 33% more whirl!
What do you get when a few thousand people for three days gravitate to a certain neighborhood like zombies on steroids to move through a half a dozen huge warehouse buildings just to look at art? That annual cult classic: Northeast Minneapolis’s Art-a-Whirl. And just like those propagating zombies, each spring there always seems to be more and more Art-a-Whirling. More art. More places. More people. MORE »
VISUAL ARTS | From the AZ to the CVA, art that's ready for prime time
Exhibitions of art by graduating college students have much in common with college basketball: they may not be as good as the pros, but they sure can be more exciting. Such is the case with Inhale, the 2009 exhibition of thesis work by graduating College of Visual Arts students. Split between two spaces, the show at CVA’s Selby Avenue gallery closed May 9; work by 19 of the 37 seniors is still on view through May 31st at the AZ Gallery in Lowertown. MORE »
St. Paul Art Crawl: Good (and getting better), clean (and getting cleaner), cheap (well...) fun
Searching for the good, the bad, and the ugly? The beautiful and the strange? Even…the outrageous? All can be sussed out this weekend at the 27th St. Paul Art Crawl (SPAC). The self-guided largely pedestrian tour includes 370+ artists’ studios and galleries in more than two dozen buildings including the Northern Warehouse, 262 Studios, and the Lowertown Lofts cooperative. The doors are also wide open at numerous bars and restaurants such as the Black Dog Café, the Bulldog Lowertown, and Golden’s Deli. Music seems to infiltrate the entire event. MORE »
VISUAL ARTS | James Kielkopf, unsung hero of local art, gets his due respects
A mini-retrospective of sorts at Thomas Barry Fine Arts, James Kielkopf: Then and Now showed the depth and breadth of one of the Twin Cities’ unsung artists. Kielkopf, an MCAD student in the mid-1960s, started showing his work right out of the academic gate with works juried into biennials at the Walker Art Center in 1966 and the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1967. His work was also included in the Walker’s impressive 1970 Drawing Exhibition. MORE »
Iraqi artists star in Powderhorn exhibit
With the exhibit Voices in Art from Iraq, the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP) hopes to correct Americans’ misperceptions about Iraq. Moving beyond the daily news broadcasts of the war, beyond the images of the destruction and loss of life in a desert landscape half a world away, IARP wants Minnesotans to understand that Iraq is a country with a rich history, where people do many of the same things that we do. MORE »
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