Art In Bloom at the Minneapolis Institute of Art - Blooming Spectacular!

Art In Bloom has been happening annually at the Minneapolis Institute of Art since 1984, but this was the first year I've been able to attend (these are the silver linings of my missing my Venice life dearly as I'm here taking care of my family). I took my Mom for opening day, and it was nothing short of breathtaking. Spectacular! *(I've been so busy lately between caregiving and other writing that I haven't been able to share many stories here, apologies. THIS demanded its own spotlight for sure though).

Floral artists make arrangements to accompany many of the works of art in the permanent collection at MIA, and there were MANY to see.  We were determined to see them all - and did - over a full afternoon of discovering the flowers scattered throughout the entire museum. 

Each was more gorgeous than the next, and it was very hard to choose a favorite ... so I'm going to share many of them with you. 

As flowers perish, the exhibit is on only this weekend, through Sunday, so I encourage all in Minnesota this weekend to get there, and all the rest of you get to see them virtually, because I know you'd love it too. 

The only thing I can't share is the marvelous aroma enveloping the museum ... ahhhh. 

It sounded like the process for choosing artworks to honor was a little haphazard, as each artist I spoke to had a different experience of how they wound up with the one they got. One guy just decided to make a floral replica of the Notre Dame football stadium, and find an artwork to match later! He also got extra credit because his glass vases were hand-blown! Wow.

 

I was amazed to learn that many of the pieces were done by amateur flower arrangers! One lady was a lawyer that likes to arrange flowers, several were retired and fill their days with flowers, and some were from real deal florists from all around the Twin Cities. ALL were glorious. 

MIA has such a vast and diverse collection that each room is different than the last, and the flowers followed suit. Materials from nature, and the creativity that resulted in these fantastic creations was truly moving. There is so so so much talent in this world! 

There were tours going on, but we opted to go it alone ourselves and revel in the magic of discovery. Several of the artists were on hand, often seen watering or adding flowers and making sure their work was perfect. 

 

That was nice because you could ask questions and hear all about their process ... to the point where now we kind of want to try our hand at it ourselves next year - anyone can! 

It was fun to see some of my favorite permanent pieces so honored, like the Native American costume with its top hat and photographic lining beautifully replicated in flowers. 

Some artists played it very literal with their recreations ... 

 

 

 While others did more of an abstract representation ... 

 

 

 No matter what they chose to do, we loved every one of them and hoped that they all go to good homes when the show wraps on Sunday. They should auction them off to a good cause, I know I'd be bidding on several just to cheer up the home for a few days. I'm really not sure what happens to them when it's over. 

 

I learned a lot yesterday listening to the artists, about technique, brush strokes, post-Impressionism, realism, structure, all kinds of stuff that came just from asking about flowers. You truly could spend the whole weekend there and still have more to listen and learn from. 

 

It was so packed yesterday that we didn't really linger with any one piece, and that would be fun to do, but there's just so much ground to cover, and people to dodge.

 

We'd wait our turn to get in close for a second, then scoot away to let someone else in. This would be the one to get locked in for a night at the museum!

 

 

I LOVED this one, florally ...

... and then seeing what it represented just felt so joyous. 

In these rather bleak times - both weather and world-wise - flowers bursting out everywhere and the good feeling it gave everyone was very heartwarming. 

It would be very hard to maintain a bad mood with all this beauty around. Beauty, Art, and Nature truly SAVE. It gives us HOPE. 

 Look at these whimsical pink shoes! 

Look at the Frank Lloyd Wright hallway piece! 

 

Look how they did her black stockings! 

Look how good this coat is!

Oh wow, look how they represented this nude woman!

Mom, check out this chair one! 

Look how this one is exactly the painting! 

 

I love how the flowers match his jacket!

Oh, I want to crawl inside this one and live here forever! 

The above was pretty much a verbatim recording of me enthusing about everything yesterday. We truly enjoyed it so much, and hope that as many people as possible will be able to get to MIA this weekend. It's supposed to rain all weekend, so I can't think of a more perfect way to go cheer yourself up and give the gift of this beauty to your soul. 

 

Thank you to MIA and all of the artists involved, both with their work in the museum collection and the artists who worked with flowers. You truly lifted our spirits ... and what is better than that? I'm going to bring in Yeats (snippets from Ode on a Grecian Urn) to explain the feeling of this beautiful show ...

 "Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

         For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd

For every (painting), and for ever young; 

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

 

 

 Art in Bloom is on now through this Sunday at MIA.

Art In Ice By MIA - A Winter Treasure Hunt

Minnesotans think of all kinds of cool stuff to keep being cool in the winter, and I've been really impressed by the creativity I've witnessed here since being back home to help out my family. No one lets winter slow things down much at all, and no one is afraid to be outside, as the old adage here goes, there is no bad weather, just bad clothing. So, I bundled up my Mom the other day and went all around Minneapolis to find Art In Ice, the ice sculptures of famous art works put on by the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Minneapolis Park Board (site of my Mom's recent exhibition, Foot In The Door!) We decided to make a big circle around the city, and started with Longfellow Park, which featured Veiled Lady by Rafaello Monti done in ice. It was easy to find because there was a crowd gathered around the beauty, taking photos as it gently started to drip under the quickly warming conditions (Hurry if you go search for them! They're up til the 28th, but I don't think they'll last that long.). It was lovely, but we couldn't linger long if we wanted to find them all in the daylight. Off to Boom Island! 

I'd never been to Boom Island Park there on the banks of the Mississippi in downtown Minneapolis. The skyline outlines the park, and it's a lovely little bit of peace in the middle of the city. A little crowd had gathered there too, around the Aphrodisiac Telephone by Salvador Dali. The original lobster phones (?) created by the Surrealist actually worked. I'd have liked to have been privy to the meetings where they decided which MIA works they were going to create out of frozen water ... and I like that they went with funkier, less obvious choices. Like a lobster telephone. 

Our big circle took us next to North Commons Park in North Minneapolis, where the Celestial Horse was right there next to the parking lot - Mom didn't even have to get out to see it. The heavenly horse was done in bronze for a Chinese Emperor to be escorts to the afterlife. The ice version was so clear that I had to wait for people to get out of the way because you could see them perfectly through it. How do they get it so clear, I wonder? It was beautiful, and I believe it tied with the Veiled Lady for top in my heart. 

We were losing light, so raced on over to the park right across from MIA, the Washburn-Fair Oaks Park. There they featured Van Gogh's Olive Trees, but this time it was really just the picture in an ice frame. I suspect it is not the original. We spent the least time here, though were tempted to pop into the museum again. But our light was waning, so to Lake Bde Maka Ska we flew. 

There were a lot of people gathered around Your Dog by Yoshitomo Nara there at the end of the lake where they have the rentals and things, and the brightly painted Adirondack chairs. Everyone loves dogs, and this one was probably the most popular among viewers ... so popular, in fact, that someone had broken off the dog's tail, and replaced it in the middle of its back like a strange growth. It was still cool, and we particularly enjoyed the dog's little red nose. 

We did it! We saw them all in one afternoon, and greatly enjoyed being out of the house seeing art out there in our neighborhoods, and SO many people appreciating it. Minnesota - cold nose, warm heart. Thank you to MIA for another excellent curation of accessible art for the people of Minneapolis. We really enjoyed it, and very much look forward to seeing what you get up to next. You're cool.

{I hear the dripping of icicles off of our eaves right now as I type and the sun shines outside, telling me that you have increasingly less time to go see these ice sculptures as they were meant to be, and not puddles. Chop chop!}

Foot In The Door 5 at MIA - AKA My Mom's Museum Debut!

I could not be more thrilled to announce the opening of my Mom's first museum showing in the Foot In The Door 5 exhibit held every ten years at the Minneapolis Institute of Art! The idea is that once a decade, MIA opens its doors to artists from the area, with the only criteria being that their work must fit within one square foot. This year's extravaganza of paintings, photography, drawings, prints, mixed media, sculpture, and textiles has to be held virtually due to Covid, which is a big drag, but super cool nonetheless that my Mom is in her first museum show at age 80! 

To know Marilyn Gronner is to love her, and no one knows her or loves her better than me. This is because yes, she's my Mom, but also because I have seen her work so hard and sacrifice her entire life - always with grace, always with an eye toward helping others, and always with a smile on her face. She was a music and art double major at Augsburg College (our whole family's alma mater), and was (is!) a beautiful painter and musician (trumpet, piano, and pipe organ!). She met my Dad, got married, had three kids, and figured she'd raise us and work on her art and that would be her perfectly happy life. 

The world doesn't always work out for you like you think it's going to, sadly. My Dad died of cancer at 33, and left Mom alone with three kids to raise. Painting and music were pushed to the back burners, as Mom focused her full attention on us, doing any and all creative jobs she could to keep us fed, clothed in what all the other kids were wearing, and with a happy enough childhood to not really notice it was different from most of our friends' families. But best believe that our graceful swan of a Mother was scrambling her legs hard and fast under the surface to make sure we all stayed afloat. And we always have.

Years passed, I moved away, always encouraging Mom to pick up her paints again, but never really seeing it happen. Last year I came back home to help Mom after she tragically lost one of her scrambling legs due to a vicious infection. She moved into an assisted living facility, where we thought she could finally return to her passion for painting. That didn't happen, because their big activities were like Bingo and junk like that, and Mom was miserable in there. That was not going to be the rest of her life on my watch. 

We got Mom out of the awful home just in time, about a month before the world began to lock down for Covid, and we would not have even been able to visit her! Once home, I was going to make sure that Mom's life was happy and creative again, and we went out and got her some tiny canvases to get to work on, thinking that the smaller sizes would be less intimidating for her to complete. I had never even heard of the Foot In The Door exhibits at MIA in the past, and then I saw an announcement for it in City Pages one day (RIP, City Pages!). The art had to be fit within one square foot, and here Mom was working in exactly that size and smaller!

I secretly submitted my favorite of Mom's new pieces, Peace of Wood Lake, because Wood Lake means so much to me, she had painted it as as gift to me for springing her from the dreadful prison of a nursing home, and because I thought it was the best of her recent work. I waited about a month, and then received the happy news that Mom's work had been accepted, and she would be in her first museum show at 80 years old! I literally jumped up and down all over the house when I heard, and Mom just laughed at me, not really getting the big deal of it, but happy to see me so happy for her. 

I could not be prouder of this lady, truly. Her attitude on life has always been so positive ... but this is the woman who told the doctors that she'd like to walk into her surgery to remove her leg on her own two feet one last time - and she did. The strength that took (and the pain she must have felt!) has been an inspiration not just to her kids, who adore her unconditionally, but to people the world over. This is the woman who did not want to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair watching daytime t.v. - she wanted to return to her creative life, and be better than she ever had been before. She has a new enthusiasm for her work, which had been dormant for decades, and this has been rewarded by having her first new piece of art accepted into a show at an internationally renowned museum, that also happens to be one of my favorites anywhere (especially this last year with their groundbreaking show like Hearts Of Our People and When Home Won't Let You Stay, plus Ai Wei Wei's awesome installation last winter!). My Mom is in MIA!!! How extra cool is that?!?!

Please attend Foot In The Door 5 online, and don't forget to click on the little heart next to my Mom's work as one that you love, as we continue to encourage her to keep it all up! I wish we could really see it on the walls of the actual museum ... but we're going to aim for Foot In The Door 6 for that! Thank you to all involved for giving my Mom the recognition and encouragement she has earned through her lifetime, and for giving her the opportunity to show her work. This proves that you are never too old to be doing something you love, and that doors will always open to you when you follow your heart and your deepest passions. She would also like you to know that she's accepting commissions! That's right.

Congratulations on your Museum debut, dear Mom! Wow. 

Foot In The Door 5 is virtually on display now through January 10, 2021 HERE! 

 

The Labor We Wear And The Enduring Soul At MIA - Art To Make You Think

The Minneapolis Institute of Art was my last real outing before the Covid quarantine lockdown began last Spring, when I was super impressed with the immigration exhibit, When Home Won't Let You Stay. Well, MIA is back open, and back with another excellent, eye opening exhibit called The Labor We Wear, by artist Rachel Breen. 

 

The show serves to bring attention to the relationship between garment labor workers and the fashion that we wear - and very much take for granted. 

My Mom is both an artist and a seamstress (her day job most of her life), so this was a perfect show to bring her to, and the perfect situation to get her out of the house for. MIA is great for social distancing, we barely saw another soul the whole afternoon. You must have a reservation at a given time slot, you must wear a mask, and it all felt very safe - plus the art is great! 

The show is a couple of rooms, both festooned with large-scale installations of parts of clothing. You never think about button plackets, but you do when there's an entire wall of them.

Sleeves took up another whole wall, and were accompanied by stories of historical disasters in both Bangladesh and New York City that killed thousands of garment workers trapped by fire. 

It's awful to think about, especially when you realize that those workers were being paid pennies so that you could go get a cheap, disposable shirt - that in turn poisons the environment. 

We've sure got a lot of work to do in this world to make it better for everyone ...

The toll that the garment industry takes on both humans and the environment is something that we really have to figure out. I LOVE clothes, and I definitely share in the blame of participating in throw-away fashion, and am actively trying to be better about my shopping choices. Thrifting, upcycling, clothing swaps, donating, and investing in pieces that can stand the test of time are a few of the ways we can do better by our global citizens and planet. We can always be better. 

MIA has a massive collection of art, and there is a lot to cover. We had also booked a time slot at the Walker Art Center on this Art Day, so we couldn't fully dig into all that MIA has to offer, but we did get to check out another great show currently on display at MIA - The Enduring Soul. This exhibit by African and African American artists shows the relationship between ancestors and the living, and between the seen and the unseen.

With all that has been going on in Minneapolis this year in the name of racial equality and social justice, this show also couldn't be better suited or timed for the moment. MIA impressing yet again. Carrying on with the fabric theme, The Enduring Soul opens with a huge piece called Carousel Merge, 1971 by Sam Gilliam. Its drapes and flexibility suggests the improvisation of jazz, a major influence on African American artists of the time. Hep! 

We loved Soundsuit, 2010 by Nick Cave (not the musician). The soundsuit is meant to create a protective layer for the wearer, to protect them from prejudice. Though they look like a lot of fun, with jack-in-the-boxes and other kid noisemakers, the intent behind it is actually quite dark - and shows yet another example of how we all can and must do better for our fellow world citizens.

Thank You Jesus for Paul Robeson (and for Nicholas Murray's Photograph - 1926, 1995 by Emma Amos examines the Black body as a source of power and beauty. A gorgeous piece, that draws inspiration from the Civil Rights struggle that we are still very much actively fighting. 

Kevin Beasley's Queen of the Night, 2018 was a multi-media sculpture of the sort I love - the description said, "Housedresses, kaftans, do-rags, Tshirts, CDs, hair rollers, clothespins, hair extensions (tumble weave), fake gold dookie chain, resin" - all serving to conjure up images of the strong Black females in the artist's life. It also references the "Burney Relief", a clay relief from ancient Babylonia - only that nude, winged goddess did not get to have a halo made out of cds. 

Kwame Brathwaite showed his awesome Untitled (Black Is Beautiful Poster from 1970), 1970 (printed 2018), and the photos backed up the statement they created. Beautifully.

An Egungun ceremonial outfit, 1930-1950 by a Yoruba artist hung from the ceiling, with its multiple strands of fibers symbolizing strands of DNA as it serves as a manifestation to their ancestors. Cool.

African Americans have been through so much in this country - and it continues to this hour. There is nothing we can do to make it up to them, not even reparations would make a dent in the collective trauma inflicted on this entire race of people for the entirety of this nation's history. But we can start trying. We can celebrate their art, their traditions, and their very lives - because they MATTER. SO MUCH. It's heartbreaking to think that we are still having to take to the streets to demand racial equality at this stage of our history - but here we are. And we won't stop. Crossroads Marker with Little Hand, Reaching, 2015 by Renée Stout reminds us of the slave passage, and the voyages to this country that began in chains. Watching the nightly news reminds us that these chains are still unbroken - and it's up to all of us to destroy them together. Heavy ... but necessary to confront. NOW.

Mom is a fan of the classics, and we had about 20 minutes to run upstairs and see some of her old favorites, like Olive Trees, 1889 by Vincent van Gogh ...

... and a beautiful Tahitian Landscape, 1891 by Paul Gaugin.

There was so much more to see, and I made a solemn promise to Mom that we would return on a gloomy day to take it all in, but we had to get to the Walker for our next art time slot! Art Day! I love MIA, and I love that they have been bringing such great, thought provoking art to the People - for free - and doing such a great job of having IMPORTANT shows, not just fluff for the masses. I truly appreciate it, and I know I'm not alone. And I can't wait to see what you'll do next! Thanks, MIA!

The Labor We Wear -  July 18, 2020 - November 1, 2020 MIA

The Enduring Soul - October 26, 2019 - April 4, 2021 MIA