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Minnesota Original
is made possible by
The Arts and Cultural
Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
Minnesota Original is
a new weekly series produced
by Twin Cities
Public Television.
showcase the depth and breadth
community and introduce viewers
to the many original artists
who produce extraordinary work
right here in Minnesota.
of Minnesota Original,
Alec Soth
for his compelling photographs
the spirit of his subjects.
while he prepares
at Walker Art Center.
In a world where there are,
yeah, 500,000 pictures a second
being uploaded onto Facebook,
mean to be
that environment?
Heather Doyle is a blacksmith,
a welder, and a metal sculptor.
She finds inspiration for her
work in this machinery shop.
I really, really love cogs
and sprockets
and chains in this section.
I use them often in my artwork.
John Monson and Matt Wilson
music scene since the '80s,
starting with their band
Trip Shakespeare.
It's a magical time again
for the duo,
now performing
as The Twilight Hours.
without a cause.
These artists and more...
Everything we are, for better
or for worse, is in our work.
...on Minnesota Original.
(electronic music plays)
No matter who you are,
everyone's going to say
one sentence about you.
This, my 8 by 10 camera.
He's the guy
that photographs Weimaraners.
a student of so and so.
For better of worse, this camera
sort of became my trademark.
that sentence,
but you can sort of help
determine what it's not.
actually looking through it.
really beautiful
about the way it renders space.
(woman) Alec Soth is an artist
who uses photography to really
tell stories,
but he's doing this in a way
that is not the traditional
photography.
His idea of finding the beauty
in the unexpected, looking
in out-of-the-way places for
subjects and scenes
that somehow evoked
an America or a place
that people would not
really anticipate.
In 2004, Alec was chosen
as one of the artists
in the Whitney Biennial,
which is a showcase nationally
of American artists.
the pulse of what's happening
in American art, and it includes
a spectrum of artists
from emerging to well-known,
as he was at that time,
it was a huge launching pad.
An image from his series
Sleeping by the Mississippi
ended up being the image
on the poster for the biennial.
So it suddenly went viral,
incredible moment.
Sleeping by the Mississippi
was my first project.
I mean the first one, as I said,
that I felt was somehow
worthy of more attention,
trying to get out
of the Twin Cities area.
This work was made
over a number of years.
The work itself is not,
it's not a documentary
of the Mississippi river.
look at the book,
of the Mississippi.
I'm using the Mississippi
as a metaphor for wandering
and just that kind of boyish
wandering.
This is Bonnie, she's
in Mississippi.
I met her husband,
and then he invited me to this
Thursday evening prayer service.
they invited me into their home.
I went to their house,
and she had this picture
sitting out in the living room,
attracted to it.
Like why do you have a framed
picture of a cloud?
a picture of an angel.
because she was trying
to get a picture of her.
And she kept taking this picture
and closer to me.
And I think of this portrait as
like a staring contest,
where we're engaged
with each other.
from each other.
1, 2, 3, 4.
I'm preparing for an exhibition
at the Walker Art Center.
The exhibition is
in September 2010,
which maybe sounds like
a long ways off to some people,
but it's like next week to me.
It's terrifying.
first U.S. survey.
the last 15 years of the work
and really touches on a lot of
the themes that have been
prevalent in the work since,
I bet the early '90s actually.
A really interesting one to me
33 Movie Theaters
that tells us a lot
about America
and about what's happening with
our landscape, our small towns.
So this wall over here
represents pictures made
movie theaters in Texas.
My favorite one is
this one right here.
to downtown Paris.
It's made in Paris, Texas;
one of the pictures
that I really like.
Next to it here is this one,
which is this classic
former movie theater,
which has now been turned
into a video store
and apparently
a laminating store.
And these fallen bikes.
and beautiful.
Beautiful lonely.
(steel guitar plays)
Never go away.
Sometimes I want to get
this camera off my back.
with the medium of photography.
so it's really strange
out of approaching strangers.
an incredibly limiting medium.
Being frozen in time means
you can't really tell stories.
You know?
It's very fragmentary.
500,000 pictures a second
being uploaded onto Facebook,
you know, what does it mean
to be a photographer in that
environment?
approachable
in terms of the work, I think.
It's the kind of work that
you're instantly drawn to
unexpected in it always.
There's always a pose
or an item in the picture
that takes you by surprise.
It's not traditional portraiture
that we might anticipate.
There's something that begs us
to just keep looking
and the longer we look,
in each of these.
And so I think he's an artist
who's one of the great
working today.
(narrator)
first arts video portal
with all the show's stories,
bonus concert footage,
Web exclusives, and more.
Friend us, and stay connected
to our creative community
on mnoriginal.org.
I come to Ambles Machinery
to walk the yard to imagine what
the piece is going to be like.
This happens all the time
at Ambles.
I'll see something and be
like, what was it?
What could it have been?
I can tell it was a shovel
for a backhoe or something.
looked at it, I saw a sleigh.
So it could be a sleigh next.
My name is Heather Doyle,
and I'm a metal sculptor
and a blacksmith, and I teach
and blacksmithing
at Minneapolis Community
and Technical College,
and I am also very soon to be
the artistic director of the new
Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center
in South Minneapolis.
There isn't a lot of opportunity
for uberfashion in my life
from like, mom to metalwork.
So the fashion sense comes out
and weird socks.
to go whoosh, so...
(whoosh!)
(whoosh!)
That's a forge,
and we're using
7 pounds of pressure,
up to about 2300 degrees,
which will bring our metal
up to a nice orange
in just a few minutes.
I'm gonna be flattening the ends
to connect to the bottom
of the typewriter.
And I'll just drill through
the flattened portion then
and use the existing screws
that are
to fasten it together.
I found this typewriter
about 20 years ago,
and it's been a tool for me,
kind of a cathartic tool
to process through ideas
that were spinning in my head.
I don't actually record, there's
no paper in the typewriter.
I just type on it
just because I like
of the typewriter itself.
for a really long time,
grown up with this typewriter.
asked me if she could have it,
so I decided to make it
into a table for her,
some schwoopie legs for it
that will support a tabletop
that will go to my daughter.
(loud metallic tapping)
forging you stay really closely
connected to the material.
So move that.
the most signature element
is the Art Nouveau schwoop.
schwoop action if you ask me.
of industrial elements--
cogs and sprockets
and that type of thing,
the combination of the two.
This is my favorite aisle,
I really, really love
chains in this section.
I use them often in my artwork.
something in this aisle
will inspire me, it always does.
So this is
my very favorite aisle,
and I have spent hours,
hours literally
yeah, finding cool stuff!
Very nice.
we think of in this culture
and immovable, and it's not.
organic and flowing
and beautiful to work with.
It's a lot more plastic,
a lot more like clay.
this metal sculpture realm,
it's been male dominated.
that involves 25-inch biceps.
(laughs)
Not that I don't have pipes.
I do have pipes.
I think that it is
very empowering.
It is really inspiring to women.
Just try it, just try it,
and if it strikes
a chord with you,
your heart beat faster,
it's completely attainable--
just start!
Edward Elgar: Salut d'Amour)
I don't think you could ever
play the same note twice
just because every person
is different,
every instrument is different.
I pick up the violin,
it doesn't feel the same.
a very, it's a live thing.
I love St. Paul.
It's a city that's not a city.
It's busy, but it's not so busy
that there's constant noise
and distraction.
Small coffee. Thank you.
coffee is the catalyst.
in the world.
I can do anything--
at least I think I can!
I'm a plein air painter,
for open air painting.
Actually, when I'm doing this,
I'm getting into the day.
It's like
if you like to work out
exercises.
in the right place.
Putting out the color,
about the paintings yet.
from a contemporary painter.
When Larry Byrd makes
that 3-pointer
from outside the circle,
he said,
the whole world collapsed.
that mark on the canvas,
you're the only one
that sees it.
Carreau used a phrase.
Painting a painting,
if you're doing it well,
is like blowing up a balloon.
Every time you blow in a breath,
you work the whole thing.
The goal obviously is
to be anything alike.
value, and what I'm trying to do
is intuitively orchestrate it
in a beautiful way
and create a harmony with it
that is a subjective truth,
I guess you'd call it.
And when it's done magically,
when you can combine the beauty
of observation
the beautiful things
that make everything
so exquisitely different,
that you feel it intensely,
to leave something behind
that really is yours.
With painting, every stroke,
every mark, counts.
That means you have
a responsibility
to what's in front of you.
there's this wholesale idea
that your idea of something
is everything.
I love concepts, I love ideas,
but they don't keep you warm
at night.
I never thought you had to
re-create the English language
to say something new.
something to say.
To me, to find beauty
in a place where
most people don't
pay attention
more exciting.
I jokingly say God was tired by
the time he got to Minnesota.
All the bluffs are the same size
and shape and the same color,
for California
and the coast of Maine, I think.
But it's here, you know.
of the taconite plant,
to me that's very beautiful.
I was with a couple of artists.
outside of Duluth in Superior.
to go to Beaver Bay,
and the sun was shining
of this fresh pile of taconite,
and me in my incredibly
bizarre sensibility,
I said Stop the car
immediately, I'm getting out!
And they dropped me off,
and I froze my tail off.
absolutely spoke to me
of everything that is Minnesota.
It's absolutely utilitarian,
yet it's absolutely beautiful
in it's utilitarian quality.
is us.
it's a mirror,
whether you like it or not,
very much.
that everything we are,
is in our work.
So if you have
inability to open,
if you have a fear of risk,
if you have a fear of
commitment, any of those things,
but it's absolutely true--
part of getting better
as a painter
is developing as a human being.
that's very dicey,
to talk about,
about a lot, but it's there.
Because once you get
with your craft,
and your color
and your value
and all those things,
and what you do with that.
Try to understand.
to understand.
Don't disconnect me
from your plan.
all down to
getting some soul across
and saying something meaningful.
about 25 years ago,
together ever since.
The first band that we had
where we were really working
on our own stuff
was Trip Shakespeare.
That band started in about 1985,
which is kind of amazing.
many other artists
who have managed to do that.
I failed to hear her speak
of many things.
my brother,
to come back from San Francisco.
We toured our butts off and
played all over the Midwest
and the East coast.
We just kind of kept doggedly
pursuing our dream
of what the music should be,
and sure enough, these guys
started coming around
We're going to sign you up
and make you stars.
these 5 recordings.
Lulu, we put it out,
and it was flowery,
and meanwhile the whole world
(John) Seattle.
Kurt Cobain and this much
grungier thing than us.
it kind of died, right?
Or it didn't do a damn thing
in terms of commercial...
It didn't find
an audience.
a big boy, and I was like hey,
it's like, you do what you do,
and I love the record,
this big, huge third of me
quietly just crushed.
Meanwhile, Dan, my brother, and
John and a friend Jake were--
it was kind of as I was becoming
maybe less tolerable
and a little wiggier,
were working on Dan's songs.
And Dan was starting to flower,
just kind of stopped,
and Semisonic just kind of
jumped right out of that.
I know who I want
to take me home.
I know who I want to
take me home.
When we started playing
together, and most recently,
we were just going to be a duo.
It's going to be John on upright
bass, me on acoustic guitar,
and we would just do whatever
we could do with that,
and limit ourselves like that.
And pretty soon there's drums,
a little electric guitar.
John got rid of the upright,
and he's playing electric bass,
to the same phantom sound
that we've chasing after
for years and years.
Try
to understand.
Try to understand.
Don't disconnect me
from your plan.
Stereo Night, when we were
making the record, The
Twilight Hours didn't exist.
It was just kind of what we were
working on at the time.
But we put together this band
The Twilight Hours, and I think
about this band now
this special new thing,
and it's alive,
and it's a collaboration.
a new life.
I want to tell you how I came
to be a broken man.
I was livin' with a singer
in a local band.
Such a sweet situation,
I don't understand
how it could end up
in sorrow.
(John) Now the band has kind of
evolved a sound.
So you bring in this new song,
and the band
makes it alive.
It very quickly becomes
just a living work of art.
is unpredictable
and uncontrollable, and really,
it's really exciting.
I got a job
as a dime store clerk,
and now our song is on
the speaker every day at work.
where she lives today.
Keep hopin' I could see her
when she comes to play.
are you? I wonder.
No number. No number.
are you? I wonder.
No number. No number.
I went through a period
when John was off,
doing so well in Semisonic,
and I was kind of becoming again
what my next path was,
and the part about I got a job
as a dime store clerk,
speaker every day at work,
you know, that's kind of
like a (both laugh)
Semisonic experience.
that all about?
through that little device?
Take it how you will.
Plan on tomorrow.
Even though our paths have
diverged from time to time,
we've found compelling things
about our partnership
and reasons to come back
and do music together.
I think the main one being
that it's pretty fun.
(loud applause & cheers)
(Matt) Thank you!
(narrator) On the next edition
of Minnesota Original...
Our knowledge of a space,
especially a big space,
and the outside.
at the beautiful light,
but we go back and forth.
Is it possible to make a drawing
and outside?
(playing jazz)
(woman) 1, 2.
1, 2. And 1, 2.
Certainly when I was growing up
in Calcutta and now here too,
the most common experience is
running for the bus, you know?
in my sari,
okay, what do I need to do?
I think about that
and how that will mesh
with this very clear classical
position here,
falls the dance.
And in the coming weeks
you'll see more art.
For me to put myself in my
model's place is huge and to
realize that they are very
vulnerable.
something that's
and you just need
to let them know that they're
in good hands.
(narrator) And more music...
When I was still teenager, I had
this one riff I really liked.
It goes like this...
(plays Love is the Law)
All right!
There's certain songs like
Love is the Law that are
the most fun to play.
And I swear I think
Love is the Law
is the one that lives the
longest though, I think.
It just sounds fresh to me
every time I play it.
on Minnesota Original.
(electronic music plays)
CC--Armour Captioning & TPT
(woman)
is made possible by
and Cultural Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
(orchestral fanfare)