The Walker Art Center’s Target Free Thursday Nights in October are highlighted by the Walker’s annual student open house, featuring films, art labs, and music aimed at teens, on Thursday, October 6, from 5–9 pm. Also, the Walker book club, the Artist’s Bookshelf, returns with discussions on Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Thursday, October 6, 7 pm. Other highlights in October include gallery tours; the architecture talk Drawn Here: James Dayton in Conversation with Thomas Fisher, Thursday, October 6, 7 pm; a Contemporary Art in Conversation lecture between Elizabeth Alexander and Kerry James Marshall, Thursday, October 13, 7 pm; and a gallery talk in conjunction with the exhibition House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective (opening October 16), Cultures of Medicine and the Human Body, Thursday, October 20, 7 pm.
Target Free Thursday Nights are made possible by Target.
Target Free Thursday Nights
October 6, 13, 20, and 27
Galleries open 5–9 pm; special events follow.
Free
Thursday, October 6
Gallery tour, 6 pm
Sketchy: 2005 Annual Student Open House
5–9 pm
Join us for a night of free films, art-making, and music celebrating that good old-fashioned star of the art world—drawing.
Check out the Chuck Close exhibition, then follow it up by creating your own large-scale self-portrait in the Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab; groove to the sounds of KFAI’s DJ Jennifer in the Cargill Lounge while working with graf artist Roger Cummings to finetune your letters and style; or perfect your drawing techniques with artist Clea Felien, letting the works in galleries 2 and 3 serve as models. Free classes begin at 6, 7, and 8 pm at all three locations; limited to 20 people per class.
Don’t miss a rare chance to view Sadie Benning’s early films created on a Fisher Price Pixelvision camera. This groundbreaking work launched her career. Lecture Room.
Join other young artists in our Art Swap. Put your artwork on display and take home another. Bazinet Garden Lobby.
Presented by the Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council.
Walker Teen Programs are made possible by the Surdna Foundation and Best Buy Children’s Foundation.
The Artist’s Bookshelf, 7 pm
Conference Room
Free, reservations required; call 612.375.7600.
Offering group discussions about literature that shares themes with art on view in the galleries, the Walker book club meets to talk about Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. In this new novel, a semi-autobiographical character sets out to rediscover himself and his history after losing portions of his personal and emotional memory from a stroke. Visual clues are sparked by the discovery of childhood artifacts in his parents’ attic. Richly illustrated, the book centers around themes of self-identity and the creation, or re-creation, of self-image. For another exploration of self-image, visit the Walker exhibition Chuck Close: Self-Portraits, 1967–2005.
Books for The Artist’s Bookshelf can be found in the Walker Shop, the Friends of the MPL Bookstore, and at the Minneapolis Public Library (www.mplib.org). Presented in partnership with the Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library.
Drawn Here: James Dayton in Conversation with Thomas Fisher
William and Nadine McGuire Theater, 7 pm
Free, but a ticket is required; available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk one hour before event.
The Walker’s new series of conversations with Minnesota-based architects and designers explores the depth and breadth of the state’s acclaimed and vibrant design community.
As a recipient of a 2005 Young Architects Award from the AIA Minnesota, James Dayton has earned a reputation for innovative architecture that combines an inventive palette of industrial materials in a collage of complex forms. Returning to Minneapolis after five years working in the office of Frank Gehry on projects such as the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Dayton received important commissions such as the Minnetonka Center for the Arts, a competition-winning project for the St. Paul waterfront, and the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis. His office in the Minneapolis warehouse district is next door to two other projects: the completed conversion of the 1916 Bookmen Building into residences and the neighboring Bookmen Stacks. Join Dayton and Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota, for a stimulating discussion about the way that this design office is reshaping the architectural language of the Twin Cities.
Thursday, October 13
Gallery tour, 6 pm
Contemporary Art in Conversation
Elizabeth Alexander and Kerry James Marshall
Cinema, 7 pm
Free, but a ticket is required; available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk one hour before event.
In her recent book of essays, The Black Interior, poet/scholar Elizabeth Alexander writes about African American figurative painting: “Regardless of the artist’s intent, he or she is painting against a history of deformation and annihilation of the black body.” Artist Kerry James Marshall actively engages with this challenge through his vivid canvases that depict African American life while resisting stereotypes and teasing with traditional folktales, African and Haitian parable, and American iconography.
Join Alexander and Marshall for an illustrated conversation on the notion of the “black interior” and the expansive landscape of contemporary African American cultural thought.
Elizabeth Alexander is the author of four collections of poetry, including American Sublime, available in October from Graywolf Press. Kerry James Marshall is a painter, printmaker, photographer, and installation artist. His work can be seen in the exhibition Urban Cocktail in the Medtronic Gallery.
Thursday, October 20
Gallery tour, 6 pm
Gallery Talk: Cultures of Medicine and the Human Body
Meet in the Lecture Room, 7 pm
Several of Huang Yong Ping’s works reference practices of traditional Chinese medicine. Concepts such as Ch’i, the energy that flows through all existing beings; yin-yang; and the body as a microcosm for the cosmic universe are expressed through various symbols and materials. Join a Chinese medicine practitioner and a Western medical doctor for a discussion about perceptions of healing from different cultural perspectives.
Thursday, October 27
Gallery tour, 6 pm
