Arts & Culture

Award winning writer Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, and essayist. She has written extensively on the natural world, and indigenous perspectives on nature and knowing.

What is democracy?  Are its underpinnings being eroded?  Is it being threatened?  What, if anything can we do about it?

The first of the spring ephemerals have popped up in the woods, the vernal ponds are flourishing and things are greening and budding all over.

Larry Weber says the walk you take today won't be the same as yesterday's or tomorrow, so you'd better make sure to get out as often as possible.

Maybe it's the rain and gloom, but Annie Dugan's thoughts are turning to the dark side of art these days. 

Chances are, if you pay $450 million dollars for a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, you expect it to actually be painted by da Vinci.

Find out more about the disappearing Salvator Mundi here: A Clash of Wills Keeps a Leonardo Masterpiece Hidden (New York Times, April 11)

“I don’t want you to get the impression we’re just putting you on a medicine to hide your problems. Having depression is more common than you know. Continuing to see the counselor is important. These medicines are safe and really have minimal side effects. They don’t make you look at the world through rose colored glasses and needing them is not a character flaw and taking them is not a sign of weakness.

Mary Casanova knew that there was talent and artistry - and mental illness - in her gene pool.

So in her third Rainy Lake historical novel, she spent some time at the St. Peter State Hospital Museum, creating a character who was not only a talented painter - she'd been committed to an insane asylum by her family, a widespread practice at the time that pioneering journalist Nellie Bly wrote about first hand in 1887.

It seemed unfair to have a poetry series celebrating poets who represent home to people who aren't "from here" originally and exclude Canadians.  So environmental and social justice advocate Jamie Harvie was pressed into double duty this morning.

Virtual opportunities to enjoy art abound again this week with a couple of in-person chances as well.

Clare Cooley has lived through sexual assault, the suicide of a family member and the drug addiction of another.

But all the way back to a troubled childhood, she learned that imagination and creativity were the keys to a way out.

Cooley prides herself on trying to find the good in difficult situations, and perhaps the most obvious example is using the pandemic lockdown as an opportunity to write a book about overcoming tough times through creative expression.

The Joseph Nease Gallery has just the ticket for a chilly week to come: the live, in-person (but by appointment only) opening of a new exhibition in their gallery, A Warm Reset, featuring Tara Austin, David Bowen, James Brinsfield, Cary Esser, Liz James, Matthew Kluber, Kathy McTavish, Allen Killian-Moore, and Tim White.

Annie Roseen is the director of Duluth's  BOLD-choice Theatre Company.

  I think back to a year ago. There was an entire household with multiple generations living together and they were too sick to come to the clinic for COVID-19 testing. Three of our nurses selflessly volunteered to go to them. They put on personal protective equipment and went in and
tested everyone there. That single act of love and dedication will always define medicine for me.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies is a book that was written first for Ojibwe speakers - not even those fluent in the language but, like her, who are learning.

And she had specific hopes for her Anishinabe readers as well: that it would affirm their experiences , provide comfort, and that they would feel better for having read it.

There's always been some ... tension .... between art and "crafts."  Not "craft," mind you, but "crafts."

Resolve the tension with coffee and eggs Sunday at the Virtual Fika & Slöjd: Folk Art Eggs session, Sunday at 1pm courtesy of the Nordic Center.

Explore the craft of art and the art in crafts while learning how to make painted, folk art Easter eggs.  Or BYOC (bring your own craft).

Historian Brenda Child has been on a mission since she read Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969) by Vine Deloria Jr.