Exhibition on E-Block in windows of closed businesses, sponsored by Hennepin Theatre Trust . The installation of the simultaneous portraits I do with my wife Pamela are on 6th Street opposite the old arts building and near the new Cowles Dance Center on Hennepin Avenue in the heart of downtown Minneapolis U$A.. This exhibition was organised by independent curator Joan Vorderbruggen who is a tireless worker in the effort to create a better more open situation for the artists in this region. The window I share with my spouse Pamela is on the 6th street near the bus stop on Hennepin Avenue. Formerly the Borders Book Store which closed along with most of the businesses on the infamous E-Block which once was the seediest block in town and the most entertaining (Mobys, Shinder's Readmore Bookstore, Riflesport Gallery et al). In the past E-Block was my first destination downtown when it was the only place in the TC where you could get out-of-town newspapers, great underground comics and books you could find no where else. Joel Shinder the owner of the store was the first collector to buy a very large work of mine and give it to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. I have always felt that as the E-Block's destiny was a true measure of the cultural health of the TC. The obscene development on the block crashed and burned even
with enormous subsidies and tax abatements to encourage redevelopment after years of that development being a surface parking lot after tearing down the cultural and artistic soul of old Minneapolis. Minneapolis is famous for destroying it's treasures to make way for ugly generic buildings like the Multifoods Tower a true architectural ass-wart tower across the street from the E-Block.
Be that as it may Friday night the opening of MADE HERE was a truely remarkable event, a diverse community of creative people converged on the site and brought it back to glittering life. I was happy to see a peaceful and delightful reincarnation of the former entertainment block, seemingly more like the May Day Parade in Powderhorn than the sinister life the suburban denizens envisioned on the E-Block. Lots of children and strollers and old folks and diverse street musicks and entertainments. It was a thing to behold a spectacle of the creatives taking an old friend and providing a intervention with a smile and a colorful bouquet of visual delights. This is partly the efforts of Ms. Vorderbruggen the curator/community organizer and partly the generousity of the artists who are willing to loan works for several months with scarce opportunities for profit. But we do demonstrate that even a small band of creatives can bring life to a blighted area simply by drawing attention to the glaring needs for more public art space downtown. And for people here to remember this is someplace unique and full of potential. Next time they (the pols) redevelop E-Block let's have some cultural space for downtown, an indoor art park and that youth center the city promised the Northside in making the E-Block into a suburban mall?
More follows - Pamela Gaard and I have been making portraits together for several years. She is my partner in art and life and especially when the subject is portraits,we share our models. In 2006 in Hudson Wisconsin I also exhibited with Pamela, that was the first time we installed simultaneous portraits. In addition to a pair of originals we covered the bottom of the window with examples of our simultaneous portraits. We have both done window exhibitions before but this opportunity is unique because it so many people will see our work and it demonstrates what a difference art makes in the an intense urban setting . The desire to make contact through art with a non-art audience is very much at the heart of this project.