Minneapolis, November 7, 2011— The Walker Shop and mnartists.org present mnartists.marketplace, a new opportunity for Minnesota artists, collectors, and patrons. Opening on Thursday, November 17, mnartists.marketplace is a mini-store within the Walker Shop devoted to the presentation and sales of local art, artistic wares, and art inspired objects. It is co-curated by mnartists.org and the Walker Shop.
In addition to a curated selection of artists’ works, artists are invited to submit designs for a twice-annual juried call, providing an opportunity for artists of all disciplines to produce a limited edition of designed objects to be sold exclusively in the Walker Shop and promoted through mnartists.org and the Walker Art Center.
The first edition of artist-designed objects is a series of pint glasses featuring the work of six Minnesota artists. The sets of pint glasses will be available when mnartists.marketplace opens Nov. 17 in the Walker Shop. Each set of six pint glasses comes with a voucher for two complimentary beers at Gather by D’Amico.
mnartists.marketplace Limited Edition Pint Glass Artists:
Michon Weeks
Stingray
2011
Ink on paper, 7″ x 9″
Michon Weeks is a visual artist living in Watertown, Minnesota. She received her master of fine arts degree in drawing and painting from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and her bachelor of arts degree from Iowa State University, Ames. In 2011, Michon was awarded a Minnesota Art Legacy Grant to create 20 etched glass drawings for the windows of the Marshall- Lyon County Library in Marshall, Minnesota. She has developed a distinct drawing system in which she transforms objects by constructing them in isometric perspective within an irregular grid. www.michonweeks.com
Craig Eliason
Ambivalent
2011
Digital Image, 3” x 3”
Craig Eliason founded a digital type foundry, Teeline Fonts, in 2010. The Ambivalent design uses his Ambicase Fatface font (2011), an experimental typeface in which each letter combines its traditional lowercase and uppercase forms into one. Eliason is a professor of art history at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. His research centers on the history of type design and typography, and that informs his work as a type designer. http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/foundry/teeline_fonts/
Christy Johnson
Babe The Blue Ox
Digital Image, 3″ x 3″
Christy Johnson’s work is a representation of her life experiences, as well as the emotions and senses she’s tuned into at the time of each piece’s creation. She designs with her computer and with her hands, creating illustrations, greeting cards, mixed-media shadowboxes, digital collages, and pastel and colored-pencil drawings. Her background in graphic design, illustration, photography, and writing helps keep her creations varied. Johnson finds inspiration in type, color combinations, patterns, travel, and music. www.redshoes26design.com
Steven Lang
Receipt
Digital Image, 3” x 3”
Artist and writer Steven Lang received his BFA [extra period here] from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has recently exhibited at Rosalux Gallery, Soo Visual Arts Center, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and was included in the 2009 Milkweed Editions anthology Fiction on a Stick. Lang lives in Minneapolis. www.stevenlang.net
Max Mose
Fruit Tree
Pen and Ink drawing, digitally colored, 6” x 6”
Max Mose is an independent cartoonist and illustrator based out of St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a recent MFA graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies, which is located in dreamy, picturesque, slightly dilapidated White River Junction, Vermont. His self-published comics work has often been described as “deliberately weird.” www.maxmose.wordpress.com.
Andy Ducett
Untitled (Careful, now)
Found imagery on found photograph, 3.5″ x 3.5″
Andy DuCett received his MFA from the University of Illinois and BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Stout. He currently teaches at the College of Visual Art in St. Paul, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the University of Wisconsin-Stout. His work has been shown in galleries in Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, Milwaukee and Honolulu, as well as many Twin Cities locations. He has been published in New American Paintings, Vita.mn, Paper Darts, The Portland Mercury, Illiterate Magazine, DailyServing.com, as well as publications in Toronto, Berlin, Tokyo, and London. He received a 2009 Minnesota Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, allowing him to travel to Tokyo, Japan and has been featured on MN Original and interviewed by PBS. His next project is a solo exhibition at The Soap Factory in Minneapolis in the fall of 2012. http://andyducett.com.
Additional mnartists.marketplace Artists:
Fantastic Toys
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Materials: Wool Felt
Fantastic Toys brings out the antsy pants feeling of being a kid in a toy store. It may be just a smile or giant squeals of delight, but they make people happy. Inspired by Japanese crafts, these kawaii (Japanese for super cute) soft toys are the latest spin of the indie plush craze.
Timothy Haugen crafts his Fantastic Toys with the highest attention to detail and with real wool felt.
Frippery Factory
Northfield, Minnesota
Materials: Polymer Clay
Seventeen-year-old Amelia Schmelzer has been sculpting miniature food for almost half of her life. What started as smooshing clay into little pies according to the directions found in a library book has evolved into a small business that is now her high school job.
One of Schmelzer’s guiding principles as an artist is to play with the connections we all have to food. Conjuring memories of an idyllic Saturday breakfast or a favorite birthday cake is the magic the miniature food performs. From miniature tater tots for dollhouse collectors to cannoli earrings for Italian food fanatics, her tiny food can be found in private collections around the world. She hopes to evoke good times and good eats by creating tiny, eye-catching, versions of real dishes.
Gentry Night Studios
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Materials: Felt, Thread
Influenced by her mother and both of her grandmothers, Stacey Thompson learned to sew, cross-stitch, crochet and make jewelry at a very young age. She and her sister always had plenty of craft items surrounding them growing up and Stacey credits her dad for buying them all of the craft supplies they ever needed. Her first introduction to a sewing machine was when she was eight years old and her mother taught her and her sister how to sew their own shorts. She remembers how much fun it was to pick out the fabric for their custom clothing.
Today Thompson creates whimsical creatures and objects as Gentry Night Studios, named after her favorite nephew. One day he told her sister, “Mommy, I’m an orange owl and my name is Gentry Night.” Her nephew loves owls and so does Stacey. Her first creation was, of course, an orange owl named Gentry Night.
The Medium Control
Duluth, Minnesota
Materials: Flocking on Wood, Screen printing, Canvas
A product of the snow/skate culture, designer Tommy Kronquist decided to channel his creative inspiration into various mediums. In 2001, a collection of t-shirts was released and The Medium Control was born.
As a designer, he continues to create through multiple mediums: identity creation, web design, and product design. Today, Kronquist and his wife, Kristy, get their hands dirty screen printing their goods in Duluth, Minnesota. The ever-growing collection of designed inspired goods includes apparel, prints, bags and more.
Raine Design
Moorhead, Minnesota
Material: Concrete
Chelsea Raine Thorson is an Architectural Designer who recently graduated with a master’s degree in architecture. Surrounded by a family of artists, she has been getting her hands dirty since day one. She found her passion for concrete in the early years of her architectural education, captivated by the idea of creating solid where once was void. As the architectural coursework became more complex, Thorson found comfort in the straightforwardness of casting small-scale objects in solid concrete in her own time. After graduation, the decision to pursue handmade concrete jewelry and concrete object design came naturally, as the alternative seemed to be staring at a computer screen drafting someone else’s designs. With the belief that design should be an intimate, personal, hands-on experience, Thorson started Raine Design, a small business dedicated to simply designed, handmade jewelry and modern housewares in her home studio.
The “Tiny City” series of concrete houses is a modern look at architecture and the western idea of “home.” Investigating the icon for “house”, in the American sense, began shortly after returning to Minnesota after a stay in India. The set reflects on the consistencies and differences between cultural imagery and sense of place
Dan Sattler-Reimer
St. Paul, Minnesota
Materials: Felted Wool
Dan Sattler-Reimer has difficulty pinpointing what in his life directly influenced the things he creates: Was it growing up in a developing country surrounded by hardship? Or was it encountering a personal brand Sattler-Reimer believes now is that more often than not, the problems that we think we have can seem pretty insignificant when the bigger picture comes into view. In other words, life can be taken a little too seriously. Sattler-Reimer finds it helpful to have small reminders of that around. His felted creations are meant to have a spark of levity to them, to bring a smile. They are happy critters, solving problems in creative ways or just being a little goofy. The hope is that they bring joy to others.
Sixdot
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Materials: Porcelain, Glaze
Jeff Longtin has been making pots since 1980. First using the potter’s wheel, he soon turned to hand building, and then to slip casting. In the process of slip casting the artist makes a plaster mold and uses the mold to cast the piece.
Over the years Longtin has exhibited his ceramic ware in shows locally and nationally. He introduced Sixdot Braille Products in 1997. Braille mugs are collected by customers around the world, most notably the Helen Keller National Center, in Sands Point NY, and the American Council of the Blind of Ohio. The mugs are made of porcelain clay with a lead free glaze.
Smiling Tree Toys
Lamberton, Minnesota
Material: Wood
Justin and Kathleen Smith are fun-loving kids at heart with a deep appreciation for living simply, being kind to Mother Nature, and creating thoughtful, handmade gifts. They handcraft Smiling Tree Toys in their family woodshop in rural, southwestern Minnesota using local and sustainably sourced hardwoods.
All Smiling Tree Toys products are finished with a homegrown blend of organic camelina oil and beeswax, both grown on their family’s land. Former Peace Corps Volunteers, the Smith’s donate to Peace Corps worldwide youth projects for every toy sold.
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About mnartists.org
The mission of mnartists.org is to improve the lives of Minnesota artists and provide access to and engagement with Minnesota’s arts culture. mnartists.org is an online database of Minnesota artists and organizations from all disciplines. It offers Minnesota-based artists a central gathering place, marketplace, and community hub on the Web. It offers the public a new way to explore art and get to know artists. In addition to providing artists and organizations with a Web page containing images and information, mnartists.org provides news and features about the local arts scene from a variety of sources. mnartists.org was developed as the result of a survey of Minnesota artists conducted by The McKnight Foundation, which revealed the survival struggles of individual artists. The McKnight Foundation partnered with the Walker Art Center’s New Media Initiatives group to develop mnartists.org.
mnartists.org is a project of The McKnight Foundation and the Walker Art Center.