The Walker Art Center’s Target Free Thursday Nights in September are highlighted by the first in the Walker Design Department’s new series on local and national design trends, Drawn Here: Contemporary Design in Conversation, featuring architect Julie Snow on Thursday, September 8, at 6 pm. Also, author Harry Mathews will discuss his latest book, My Life in CIA, at a Free Verse event on Thursday, September 15, at 7 pm. Other highlights in September include Art Lab activities on September 15, 22, and 29, allowing participants to create a collective, large-scale portrait in the style of artist Chuck Close; screenings on September 15, 22, and 29, from the Walker’s monthlong Global Lens series, featuring challenging new work from developing countries around the world; and a Gallery Tour of Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967–2005, led by exhibition curator Siri Engberg and photographer JoAnn Verburg on September 22.
Target Free Thursday Nights are made possible by Target.
Target Free Thursday Nights
September 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29
Galleries open 5–9 pm; special events follow.
Free
Thursday, September 1
Gallery tour, 6 pm
Thursday, September 8
Gallery tour, 6 pm
Drawn Here: Contemporary Design in Conversation, 6 pm
Julie Snow, Julie Snow Architects
Launching the Walker Design Department’s new series on local and national design trends, Julie Snow discusses the work of her Minneapolis-based firm.
A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Snow is known for her refined sense of materials, elegant detailing, and a multidisciplinary curiosity. Coming off the successful opening of the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis, which involved the adaptive reuse of a former church on Diamond Lake Road, the firm is at work on several projects including a new entry commons for Breck School, a new U.S. Border Station in Warroad, Minnesota, and a renovation strategy for the Soap Factory building in Southeast Minneapolis. Past projects include designs for light rail stations in Minneapolis, the Humboldt Lofts and Park Avenue Lofts along the Mississippi riverfront, and the Koehler Residence, a double-glass box dwelling in New Brunswick, Canada. Julie Snow Architects recently named Connie Lindor and Linda Morrissey as partners in the firm and saw the publication of their eponymous monograph by Princeton Architectural Press. A book signing will follow the presentation.
Thursday, September 15
Gallery tour, 6 pm
Art Lab: Drawing on the Grid, 6–9 pm
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab
To create his large-scale portraits, Chuck Close overlays a smaller photograph with a numbered and lettered grid. This technique, devised by Renaissance masters, allows the artist to reproduce the image block by block with resounding clarity of detail. Paint a collective, large-scale portrait in the style of Chuck Close or draw your own enlarged image using digital photography and the grid.
Free Verse: Harry Mathews, 7 pm
Gallery 8 Café by Wolfgang Puck
Free, but a ticket is required. Tickets are available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk one hour before the program begins.
In a startling riff on the theme of self-portraiture, legendary expatriate writer Harry Mathews—reputed to be a CIA agent due to a series of improbable coincidences in the early 1970s—decided to act the part. In his latest novel, My Life in CIA, Mathews documents the year 1973 as seen through his would-be agent’s eyes, using his inimitable, experimental style to make the journey both fascinating and fun.
Mathews is the only American member of the Oulipo, France’s famed “Workshop for Potential Literature.” This group of writers and mathematicians, which included Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, used writing techniques often based on mathematical problems. Mathews is the author of numerous works of prose and poetry, including the acclaimed novels Cigarettes and The Journalist, and the constricted journal 20 Lines A Day.
Free Verse is co-sponsored by Rain Taxi Review of Books.
Global Lens: Daughter of Keltoum, 7:30 pm
Cinema
Raised in Switzerland, Rallia returns to Algeria for the first time since infancy to confront her birth mother about why she was given up for adoption.
Thursday, September 22
Gallery Tour: Chuck Close: Self Portraits 1967–2005
Meet in the Bazinet Garden Lobby, 6 pm
In the 1970s, Twin Cities photographer JoAnn Verburg created a visiting artist program for Polaroid Corporation that introduced Chuck Close to the newly-invented large format Polaroid camera. Join Verburg and an exhibition curator for a talk about Close’s large-scale photo work and a discussion of the artist’s self-examination over time. Verburg’s photographs are collected by institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, where she will be having a retrospective in 2007.
Art Lab: Drawing on the Grid, 6–9 pm
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab
(See September 15.)
Global Lens: Hollow City, 7:30 pm
Cinema
A boy orphaned during an attack on his Angolan village is airlifted to the big city, which he finds to be just as dangerous as his war-torn home.
Thursday, September 29
Gallery tour, 6 pm
Art Lab: Drawing on the Grid, 6–9 pm
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab
(See September 15.)
Global Lens: Kabala, 7:30 pm
Cinema
Failing his initiation into manhood, a boy in West Africa is ostracized, but upon his return, he proves himself using a skill developed during his exile—drilling the town’s communal well.
