When Jamie Millard and Meghan Murphy graduated from college in the Spring of 2009, their hopes of launching careers in the Twin Cities publishing industry were thwarted by a difficult economy. Their response was to create Paper Darts, a literary arts magazine that combines poetry, prose, and design in ways that the local literary arts scene had never seen before. Additionally, Paper Darts is renowned for holding live events more reminiscent of a rock concert than an evening at the library. MNO On The Go attended Super Super Tuesday, the latest Paper Darts live event, to witness the magic unfold firsthand. Watch the video for more from Paper Darts and guest reader / performer John Jodzio.

Special Thanks: Nomad World Pub

MORE INFO:
Paper Darts
John Jodzio

MNO shoots this week were all over the map, with Team Melin capturing woodworking with Cecilia Schiller, painter and MNO alumni Caitlin Karolczak sitting for figural painter Luke Hillestad and Cave Paper installing their work at the Grain Belt Bottling House. Team Blahnik is back from vacation and got physical with the movers of Black Label Movement and then a little more introspective with poet Wang Ping along the Mississippi. And Team Rowe finished up their field work on violinist Chad Hoopes with an interview over at MPR. In the midst of all this production, we’ve also been prepping for next week’s studio week. The fun just doesn’t stop around here and that’s something we’re thankful for every day!

We’re also now on Instagram, populated primarily with behind the scenes action from our Director of Photography Dan Huiting. Follow ‘mnoriginal’ to see where Dan’s going to put a Go Pro next.

Treat your mother to a new episode of MNO on Sunday, May 13, featuring TU Dance and their new dance center, Kyle Fokken’s unique hybrid sculptures, the Mni Sota: Reflections of Time and Place exhibit curated by Native American artist Dyani-Reynolds Whitehawk and music from Joey Ryan and the Inks. Click here for a sneak peak and join us at 6pm on Twitter, #mnoriginal!

Links we love today:

Fuel/Friends Chapel Session #15: The Head and the Heart

On being an artist and a mother (local)

I Self Devine – Exist to Remain (local)

Rest in peace, Maurice Sendak

Overheard in preproduction: “Hide it in the cowbell.”

Click on the thumbnail below to read the recap from last night’s episode of MN Original, in which spoken word artist Guante joined us from the road, painter Christina Habibi talks about her love of textures, and sculptor Asia Ward shows off the coolest nightlight we’ve ever seen.

Click on the thumbnail below to read the recap from last night’s episode of MN Original, in which the Director of Marketing for choral music ensemble, VocalEssence, chats with us about the group’s rehearsal routines, and musician Willie Wisely joins us from across the sea while on tour in Japan.

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The Saint Paul Art Crawl occurred this past weekend in MN Original and Twin Cities Public Television‘s back yard of Lowertown. To get more perspective on the unique artists community in Lowertown, MNO On The Go spoke with four artists about their experiences at the Art Crawl, and what it’s like to live and work in Lowertown. To see more photos of artwork from Molly Joyce, Ruthie Lund, Lisa Mathieson, Alex Kuno, and Franny Hyde, check out our Flickr gallery. If you missed the Spring Art Crawl, don’t worry — the Fall Art Crawl is only six months away!

Molly Joyce: “[My work] is one aspect of fiber arts for me, installing fabric is something that I’ve been inspired by. I like to transform space and react to it. I live and work in the same space here in the Tilsner Building and it’s the first time as an artist I’ve worked in this way. Before I would have studio space I would visit.”

“It’s nice because Lowertown is like its own small community within the city. I think there was a lot of anticipation [about the Art Crawl]. Actually the last few nights before the opening you could tell people were up late working, you could hear people practicing music and tools randomly operating in the night, the elevator was still going at three and four o’clock in the night, which isn’t typical. People are really hoping to get more attention for the neighborhood and make it a destination for more people in St. Paul. We like it when there are more people in Lowertown.”

Ruthie Lund: “I do stained glass and I also do fused glass, and I also have my own line of bath and body products. Every season, getting geared up for Art Crawl, you know it’s a heightened level of excitement, maybe a little nervousness in getting ready. Every artist has the same thought process: I have to make sure my unit it ready for maybe a thousand people to come traipsing through. So we do a lot of rearranging of our own units to make it possible for people to walk through comfortably and view our art. It’s a kind of heightened level of excitement.”

“I have been here for two years at the Tilsner and I enjoy it a lot. You get to meet a lot of artists of course and then you’re able to collaborate, get a lot of good ideas, and there’s also a lot of great outlets for artists to expand themselves in the art world. [The Art Crawl] is something that we want to definitely keep going forward for years to come because it’s such an important event for the arts community in Lowertown. So with the light rail coming in and the market value of the property and we have more luxury apartment living coming in, what we want to do is preserve the artist community here, because we were the ones that made this area great. So going forward we just want to make sure we keep the artist community in tact and that the Art Crawl continues to grow.”

Lisa Mathieson: “I’m working with two different forms. I work with porcelain and I also work in glass, and I’ve been working in porcelain for six or seven years and glass for maybe half of that. And I picked up glass because it’s often like clay and there’s fire involved in both. A lot of people that do glass started with ceramics. In fact I talked to someone the other day that said inside every ceramicist there’s a frustrated glass artist, which I thought was funny. But I came upon [working in glass] entirely by accident.”

“I’ve been [working in Lowertown] about six years. [The artists community] is a very, very tightknit family. I feel like I know a lot of the artists. When I was only here two years, people would say, oh that’s Lisa, she’s lived here forever. And you get pulled into this wonderful community and everybody is so giving, and they share their knowledge. It’s a wonderful, wonderful place.”

Alex Kuno: “The experience of working down here – it’s just been incredible. I love the atmosphere here, there are so many artists, that’s really what this area is about. Just to be able to see other artists at various stages of their careers, just puts things into perspective. What’s really great about it is you can kind of commiserate and everybody looks at you and says, yes we’re all here and we’re all working. So that’s been such a unique experience. So being a part of Art Crawl, just the energy of it and seeing people come in from all over the state in some cases, and from all over the Midwest just to participate it — the energy has just been so positive and welcoming and encouraging and inspiring.”

“One of the reasons that might make [the St. Paul Art Crawl] different is that the people live and work in this area. And so they’re showing things from their studio and they’re inviting strangers off the street into their homes. And it makes it much more intimate than at a fair. So it’s more participatory, and it’s more collaborative and more community oriented. And I know the stuff that’s being planned for the Fall Art Crawl will be really incredible.”

He’s currently working on a series of paintings inspired by 1950′s cinema. As you can see from our photo, DP Mike Phillips went to great lengths to capture Andre at work.

Later in the week, Team Melin learned how to reupholster a chair in a way that allows mushroom spores to fruit on it’s seat cushion in four weeks’ time, with sculptor and amateur ecologist Kate Casanova.

Also fun fact of MNO’s six degrees of separation. Kate’s husband is musician Chris Koza, whose band Rogue Valley played in our studio last year.

Did you have a chance to watch the new video blog post about the International Cartoonist Conspiracy? You can watch that video here, if spur-of-the-moment collaboration, creativity, comics, and cartoonists are your sort of thing.

On Friday morning, the MN Original staff hosted an esteemed group of arts journalists and professionals from Armenia. The group is currently touring the Twin Cities through the Minnesota International Center, and were invited through the U.S. Department of State, with the goal of helping to promote tolerance through the arts. It was a fascinating experience to sit down and discuss the similarities and differences we have encountered through promoting and covering the arts.

Look for us at the St. Paul Art Crawl this weekend, where there will be tons of arts goodness going down in our backyard of Lowertown! Tune in to tpt2 on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. for a brand new episode of MN Original. We’ll be live tweeting with almost all of the artists appearing on this Sunday’s episode, including photographer Chris Faust, visual artist Silvana Ravena, Vocal Essence, and musician Willie Wisely. So join in for the live chat on Sunday, and feel free to throw out questions to the artists appearing on the show. Don’t forget to use the #mnoriginal hashtag.

The Twin Cities are home to a large and active cartoonist scene, with professional and amateur cartoonists contributing to a humongous output of creativity and comics. Leading the charge for the Twin Cities comics scene is  The International Cartoonist Conspiracy: a gathering of cartoonists who meet up monthly at Diamonds Coffee Shoppe in Northeast Minneapolis to exchange ideas, tips, and tricks about cartooning, and collaborate to create “jam comics.” Watch this MNO On The Go video about The International Cartoonist Conspiracy to learn more about this group of supreme creatives, and watch a comic jam happen in action.

This video was filmed during the April meetup of the Cartoonist Conspiracy. Mobeius Is Dead, the sixteen-page jam comic that was produced in a four-hour span during the meetup can be found on the Conspiracy’s website at the following link: http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/conspire/?p=4143

Titles By Kevin Cannon
Special Thanks: Kevin Cannon, Steven Stwalley, Daniel Olson, Diamonds Coffee Shoppe.

MORE INFO:
International Comics Conspiracy
Nordeast Comics Summit
Big Time Attic
Steven Stwalley
Soapy The Chicken
Daniel Olson
Diamonds Coffee Shoppe

Click on the thumbnail below to read the recap from last night’s episode of MN Original, in which potter Guillermo Cuellar and visual Amanda Lovelee become new friends, painter Shawn McNulty discusses his favorite music to paint to (courtesy of Dave Campbell & The Current), and musician Hastings 3000 talks about multitasking on stage.

We launched a new blog series called Artist Day Jobs and first up is Anna Tsantir of Two Bettys Green Cleaning Service. Check out the video, let us know what you think and email us if you or an artist you know has an unusual day job!

Don’t forget to check out the American Craft Council show this weekend at the RiverCentre and visit the booths of local artists like Scott McGlasson, Josephine A. Geiger, Kelly Marshall and Fred Kaemmer.

Put your feet up on Sunday night and enjoy an all new episode featuring Guillermo Cueller, Amanda Lovelee, Shawn McNulty, and Hastings 3000 – you deserve a little break and a lot of eye candy. Join in on the live twitter chat using #mnoriginal to tag your tweets. We want to hear from you!

Links we love today:

Dumpster Cameras

Bug Memorials (local)

ARTCRANK time lapse (local)

Trumpet Kid

Overheard in the studio: “No lights can knock us out of sync.”

In 2005, Anna Tsantir had a full-time arts administration gig and no time for her art. She decided there had to be a way of making a living that also supported her true passion — and so Anna founded Two Bettys Green Cleaning Service, the eco-friendly house cleaning company she now runs. While Anna no longer cleans houses herself, she has 28 “Bettys” on staff, all of them artists, musicians, or healers.

SPECIAL THANKS:

Barstow Photography

MUSIC:

“Gypsy Blood” by Colleen Budge and Zac Spangler
“Take the Lead” by Colleen Budge, Mike Johnson, and Tim Wagner