Left to right: Roy G. Guzmán, photo: Kai Coggin; torrin a. greathouse, photo: Tarik Dobbs; Marlin M. Jenkins, photo: Dan Marshall; Sun Yung Shin, photo: Dan Markworth.
Target Free Thursday Nights
June 3, 10, 17 & 24
Enjoy free gallery admission from 5-9pm. Tickets must be reserved in advance.
Hillside Jazz: Present Tense: Irreversible Entanglements featuring Moor Mother
Thursday, June 3, 7 pm
Next generation jazz visionaries make their Twin Cities debuts and chart new pathways forward. They each capture the virtuosity, passion, and commitment to racial and social justice that has driven the jazz vanguard for decades. Offering the sound of tomorrow through some of the most vital voices of today in a free outdoor summer concert series on the beautiful Walker hillside.
Featuring Philly’s electrifying poet Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), the free-jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements has forged a presence fired by deep-dive improvisation and searing poetic narratives of Black trauma, survival, and power. The message is the music, wild and tightly woven. Working in profound communion, the quintet (saxophonist Keir Neuringer, bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, and drummer Tcheser Holmes) addresses history and tradition, while insisting on a future of aesthetic and political liberation. The group formed after meeting at a 2015 rally against police brutality in Philadelphia where they were performing separately.
SculpTour 2021
June 10, 6 pm & 7 pm
SculpTours are back! SculpTour is a workout/dance tour of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden designed by choreographers Abigail Whitmore and Annika Hansen. This 40-minute, all-abilities program will give you a kinesthetic interpretation of the sculptures in the Garden while showing you moves to shake it out. SculpTours will take place the second Thursday of the month in June, July, and August.
Groups with limited capacity will be spread out and masks are required for participation. If you forget yours, we’ll have one for you. The starting point will be right outside of the Walker front entrance on Vineland Avenue.
SculpTours are free, but registration is required.
Open Air Art for All
June 17, 6–9 pm
Drop-in on the Walker hillside for a choose-you-own-adventure art-making experience! Local artists will be stationed across the hillside with materials and instructions for creative activities open to all ages and experience levels. Try kite-making, a meditative mandala coloring session, or create your own sculpture with natural materials. Instructions available in English and Spanish. Open Air Art for All will take place the third Thursday of the month in June, July, and August.
About the Artists
Cadex Herrera is a multidisciplinary artist who brings awareness to humanitarian, social, and environmental injustices by championing his culture, history, people of color, immigrants, and marginalized peoples. Herrera aims to create art that empowers the viewer and elevate the subjects and themes that he explores through his work.
Claudia Valentino is a freelance artist specializing in the co-creation of murals, painted and mosaic, that are driven by intensive community participation. Together with various artists, she creates systems and networks of connection with the community to express the desires, challenges, or messages that people want to express in each mural.
Fireweed Community Woodshop (Formerly known as Women’s Woodshop) fosters community and individual growth through woodworking classes, fabrication, volunteering, and celebration. Their inclusive and exploration-centered approach empowers women and nonbinary makers to build a new culture in woodworking.
Tachianna Charpenter grew up in Northern Minnesota and now spends much of her time advocating for voices and experiences not recognized as powerful. Charpenter makes art in many mediums including oil and acrylic painting, glass and ceramic tile, ink, sharpie, poetry, and digital art. She has a BA in anthropology from Hamline University.
June Green Roof Poetry
June 24, 7–9 pm
The Twin Cities is home to some of the most prominent poetry publishers in the nation. Green Roof Poetry brings together some of these dynamic literary houses for a live poetry reading series in the Walker’s upper garden. Relax on the hillside for an evening of live readings by four poets selected by four different literary organizations: Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, Milkweed Editions, and Mizna. Grab your picnic blanket and quarantine bubble buddy, we’ll see you on the hillside!
The June event features local poets Roy G. Guzmán, torrin a. greathouse, Marlin M. Jenkins, and Sun Yung Shin. Find about more about each of these creators below!
Black Garnet Books will have a pop-up shop starting at 6 pm.
The Green Roof Poetry series will continue throughout the summer on the fourth Thursday of the month in July and August.
About the Poets
Roy G. Guzmán (they/them) is the author of the poetry collection Catrachos. They received a 2019 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Raised in Miami, they live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
torrin a. greathouse (she/her or they/them) is a transgender cripple-punk and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and has received fellowships from Zoeglossia, the Effing Foundation, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Their work is published in Poetry magazine, Ploughshares, and Kenyon Review. Her debut collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound was published by Milkweed Editions in December 2020.
Marlin M. Jenkins (he/him) was born and raised in Detroit and currently teaches high school in Minnesota. The author of the poetry chapbook Capable Monsters (Bull City Press, 2020) and a graduate of University of Michigan’s MFA program, he has worked as a teaching artist, a university lecturer, and a bookseller. His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published by Mizna, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Waxwing, and Kenyon Review, among others.
Sun Yung Shin (she/her) is the author of poetry collections Rough, and Savage and Skirt Full of Black, which won an Asian American Literary Award. She coedited the anthology Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, and is the author of Cooper’s Lesson, a bilingual Korean/English illustrated book for children. She has received grants and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bush Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and elsewhere. She lives in Minneapolis.