Arts & Culture

UMD student Nick Beck's love affair with Italy and the Italian language began with a dream - a literal dream - about being forced into a Fiat, while everyone around him was speaking French but it was really Italian (you know how dreams go).

The irrepressable Nick Beck tells his story of refusing to speak English, heartbreak, Italian pop star Tiziano Ferro, and weeping into his coffee cup.

You can see the official video for “Ti Scatterò Una Foto” by Tiziano Ferro here.

While some artists and galleries are trying to adapt their work to an online platform, others are actually designed for it.  For instance, this exhibit, SURPRISINGLY THIS RATHER WORKS, the first in the König Galerie's virtual space, König Digital. (Oh, and you access the exhibition through an app!)

Looking around, it's hard to know where to start.

Worries and fears about physical safety, economic safety - your kids, your parents, your job ...

When Tom and Elizabeth Peacock started Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing, one of their goals was to create Native children's books for all audiences, written and illustrated by Native writers and artists.

The Duluth Art Institute is announcing Response. a spring 2020 online exhibition presenting work - completed or in progress - that's a response to our current situation.

The DAI is also looking toward the future with optimism and inviting artists to submit proposals for the 2021 exhibition season.  More information about the application and proposal process is here.

Zoongide’iwin is the Ojibwe word for courage and this is one of our grandfather teachings. Zoongide’iwin means to do what is right when the consequences are unpleasant, to do what is right even when you’re afraid.

This is the time for courage. This is the time to stay strong. The virus is depending on you to bring it to others and we cannot let that happen if we can help it.

What started last year as a 100-day challenge and then a way to reach out to friends on social media has become physician-turned-shamanic-healer Sarah Bamford Seidelmann's new book.

Although her creative process - spending some quality time with her spirit animal, Alice the Elephant, and asking for messages to share - is admittedly unconventional, the ebullient Seidelmann would have it no other way.

Jennifer Brady started speaking Spanish as a child in Denver, so she could play with the other kids in her neighborhood.

But it laid the foundation for a life-changing experience a few years later ... and the discovery of her life's work.

Jennifer Brady read "Aurora" by Federico García Lorca.

Most students, parents, and teachers aren't huge fans of distance learning, but for Indigenous students and tribal colleges, it's alot more than just a nuisance.

The Great Lakes Aquarium needs to feed - and entertain - their animals during this time and art is playing a major role.  Animals might not be singing for their supper, but they are painting for it. And Aquarium educator Emma Pardini is creating a Quarantine Animal a day.

Annie says:

Deborah Appleman loves the quote from Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

Without capital punishment in Minnesota, says Appleman, who teaching college-level language and literature courses at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, "we keep (inmates) alive - now how can we keep them human?"

So much to enjoy on-screens and off this week:

Chris Monroe's Chico Bon Bon Netflix series drops May 8...    

Enjoy the Homegrown Virtual Edition courtesy of Joe Klander, a local artist whose daily drawings are a source of delight....

  “A great sickness has been visited upon us as human beings. This happened to us as Native people a long time ago and it devastated us and killed us by the millions. It took our elders and our babies alike and there was nothing we could do.