Art Hounds: A healing circus, a multiracial family story and expressive prints
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From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.
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‘Touching Two Worlds: Reality’
Koreen Valdovinos runs Open Minds Fusion Studio. She met Sherry Walling when they were both training to be aerial arts instructors 10 years ago, and Valdovinos is looking forward to seeing Walling’s next circus production, “Touching Two Worlds: Reality.”
Walling, who is also a clinical psychologist and author, partners with circus performer Lynn Lunny to create circus shows whose narratives focus on mental wellbeing. Shows are March 13 and 14 at Luminary Arts in Minneapolis, with a Circus Experience option that allows ticketholders to try out some circus arts for themselves on Sunday.
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Koreen says this circus show revolves around themes of loss, embodiment, and healing through movement.
Koreen says: One of the greatest parts about watching good aerial dance performances is the shared feeling--almost like co-regulating with the people in the audience and the performers.
— Koreen Valdovinos
World premiere of “Abuelita”
Theater artist Tinia Moulder is a big fan of Prime Productions, which mounts plays featuring roles for women over 50. She’s looking forward to the world premiere of Nathan Yungerberg’s play “Abuelita.”
Directed by Shá Cage, the show runs at the Capri Theater in Minneapolis March 14-29 (preview night March 13).
Tinia says: I'm drawn to this show because not only is it featuring, four women of different races over the age of 50, but it's also a story of a multiracial family, and it's written by a man who is part of a multiracial family through adoption himself and through raising his own children.
And that reflects my own family as well. [The play takes us] to Spanish Harlem, summer of 1983, and there is a white Midwestern grandmother who wants to expose her mixed-race grandson to his Puerto Rican culture. So we have women that are trading wisdom and laughs and trauma and reflections from the past and looking forward to the future.
— Tinia Moulder
Eric A. Johnson’s “Periphery: Paintings + Reduction Relief Prints”
D’Mitry Lewman is an artist in Fargo, North Dakota, where he partners with Ted Martin at Ted Martin Art. He recommends seeing Eric A. Johnson’s exhibit “Periphery: Paintings + Reduction Relief Prints” at the Rourke Art Gallery and Museum in Moorhead, Minn. The show is on view through April 12 with an artist talk March 22 at 2 p.m.
D’Mitry says the wavy lines and clever titling of Johnson’s work invokes Vincent Van Gogh. To make reduction relief prints, Lewman says, “You take the initial block of wood and you carve away at it, you print on that, and then you continue to reduce it down into basically nothing.”
D’Mitry says: I just really feel like I connect with his work through his colors and his expressive lines. On display will be not only his printmaking, but his experiments within abstract art.
There are these beautiful, intricate gradients that almost look like squares of quilts and really engaging pieces all around.
— D’Mitry Lewman
