Brian Barber Posts

Selective Focus: Downtown Duluth Arts Walk

Sep 28, 2018 No Comments

Tonight a number of galleries and artists will host the fourth monthly Downtown Duluth Arts Walk. The event continues to grow, and includes art, studio tours, music and more. This week, we hear from Amanda Hunter and Joellyn Rock, co-chairs of the group organizing the Arts Walk, and Alison Aune, artist and member of the collective. We’re also featuring some photos from past events. The Downtown Duluth Arts Walk happens tonight (Friday) from 5 to 8 p.m. at a number of venues downtown. For a list of locations, visit the website, or find a map at most of the venues.

How many studios or locations have been participating?

The Downtown Duluth Arts Collective, which puts on the Downtown Duluth Arts Walk, is comprised of 26 different arts businesses/groups, individual artist studios and cultural centers. We have two more prospective venues joining next month, and have had an average of two additional groups joining us each month since we started the Downtown Arts Walk in June. We see this as a positive sign that creative businesses and organizations in our neighborhood see the value of what we are trying to do and want to support and be a part of that endeavor.

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Selective Focus: #perfectduluthday

Sep 21, 2018 No Comments

Summer is over, but don’t fret. Everybody knows fall is actually the best season. Here are some recent #perfectduluthdays. Get out and enjoy.

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Art, Photos

Selective Focus: North Country Craft

Sep 14, 2018 No Comments

Erin Welch is an illustrator, painter and … pyrographer or woodburner. She creates game boards inspired by Duluth and Minnesota. She’ll be at Earth Rider Brewery’s one-year anniversary events Sept. 14 and 15 as part of the Art on Tap series.

Although I love to work in a variety of mediums if the inspiration calls, pyrography (wood burning) is the medium that is the main aesthetic of North Country Craft. I’ve always loved trying out new mediums and somewhat fell into working with wood and making custom wood burned cribbage boards by accident. I realized I didn’t have a cribbage board in my apartment and made one for myself one night. That spun into family and friends asking about custom boards and eventually led to launching an Etsy site which took off and launched my custom cribbage business.

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Selective Focus: Nik Nerburn

Sep 07, 2018 No Comments

Photographer and filmmaker Nik Nerburn has a show at Hemlocks Leatherworks and a show opening next Thursday at Duluth Art Institute. His photos are spontaneous glances that grab and pull you in, wondering about the rest of the story.

NN: I’m a documentary storyteller. I make movies and take pictures. Most of my work is about life in the upper Midwest, mostly rural areas, small towns, and places that are changing. I’m currently working on a photo essay about the shifting politics and culture of Duluth and the Iron Range, a documentary film called The Great American Think Off about a philosophy contest in New York Mills, Minnesota (population 1,119), and a photo book called The Grand Terrace Photo League, which is a documentary collaboration between myself and the residents of an apartment building in Worthington, Minn., which houses mostly recent immigrants who work at a nearby pork processing plant. I care about expanding the common life and finding ways to relate across great differences.

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Selective Focus: Zoey Cohen Leege

Aug 31, 2018 No Comments

Next Thursday at Red Herring Lounge, Zoey Cohen Leege has an opening reception for her paintings related to Lake Superior. She has a background in art and art history, but only over the past year has begun painting regularly.

ZCL: My paintings are acrylic on masonite. I like having a smooth surface to paint on; canvas feels too rough. Also, masonite is affordable. Each painting is based on a photo I took of Lake Superior over the last year, combined with something I find interesting, beautiful or just strange. I have an undergraduate degree in art history, so elements from ancient art and architecture are a common theme. I also love antiques, archeology and am fascinated by secret societies.

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Selective Focus: Marissa Saurer

Aug 24, 2018 1 Comment

Marissa Saurer is an artist blending photography and painting with digital tools, focusing the camera on food, nature and the environment.

MS: I am a photographer who sometimes tries to walk the line between photography and painting. I do this by bringing my images into Corel Painter®, and digitally painting over them using my own brush strokes.

I have been a food photographer for a few years now working in the restaurant and craft beer industry. While I love food, I have recently expanded into landscape photography due to my love for nature and the outdoors. Some of my work has been specifically to help environmental causes.

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Selective Focus: Joseph Nease Gallery

Aug 17, 2018 No Comments

This week we hear from Amanda Hunter, manager at Joseph Nease Gallery, about the gallery’s first year in business in Downtown Duluth and what’s ahead.

AH: As background on our history, Joe Nease, the gallery owner and his partner, the painter Karen Owsley Nease, moved to Duluth from Kansas City about five years ago after falling in love with Duluth, the North Shore and Lake Superior during many years of vacationing here. Previously, Joe ran a successful gallery for 5 years in the thriving contemporary art scene of Kansas City, MO. The first Joseph Nease Gallery carried most of the best artists in that town, many who have gone on to prestigious careers and have won important awards in the art world such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. Shows from that gallery were reviewed four times in a major national magazine.

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Selective Focus: Duluth and Northern Minnesota Film Photographers

Aug 10, 2018 No Comments

Photo courtesy of Kip Praslowicz

There’s a show currently hanging at Blacklist, photography all shot on film by area photographers. The pieces come from members of the Duluth and Northern Minnesota Film Photographers, a group that meets monthly to discuss the process, challenges and variations of shooting on film. The evening will be both a reception for the show and one of the monthly meet-ups.

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Selective Focus: The Big Lake

Aug 03, 2018 No Comments

This week we hear from Abby Tofte who recently opened the Big Lake, a store in Grand Marais selling “approachable” regional art — screenprints, cards, pottery, prints and more. Abby tells the origin story of the Big Lake and how her shop fits in with the mix of other shops in Grand Marais.

AT: The Big Lake is an approachable art gallery and gift shop with products that reflect the unique culture, lifestyle and beauty of the North Shore or Lake Superior. We carry regional and locally made jewelry, pottery, paintings, prints, cards, books and more, all within an affordable price range.

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Selective Focus: Ashley Wereley

Jul 27, 2018 No Comments

Tonight (Friday, July 27) is the opening of Peter Pan, Jr. at the Depot Family Theater, and next week, the Toxic Avenger opens at the Underground on Thursday, August 2. This week’s Selective Focus subject is the scenic designer for both productions.

AW: My name is Ashley, of Ashley Wereley Design, and I am a scenic designer, exhibit designer, scenic painter, exhibit painter, muralist and commissioned artist.

I stumbled into scenic painting while in art school when a friend at a local church asked me to paint some scenery they were building for a youth camp. I was immediately enthralled, and decided to stay on for a year at the Oaks Fellowship in Red Oak, Texas, as scenic charge and an assistant scenic designer.

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Selective Focus: #perfectduluthday

Jul 20, 2018 No Comments

A post shared by The Modern Jedi (@hart0812) on

It’s time for a midsummer check on what makes a #perfectduluthday.

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Selective Focus: Derek Montgomery

Jul 13, 2018 No Comments

Derek Montgomery has shown us the world through his lens as a photojournalist, and he also does portraits and weddings. He’s worked for the Duluth News Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio, and he tells us how shooting news is different from shooting a bride and groom.

DM: I’m a photographer who specializes in wedding, news and sports photography. That may seem like a lot, but it’s a pretty narrow scope. Weddings is pretty obvious what that is about. I do a lot of work in northern Minnesota with Minnesota Public Radio reporters and have been a part of many stories and projects over the years. And the sports side involves working with the athletic department at the College of St. Scholastica to document their sports teams. Along with my work at CSS, I do a ton of team and individual sports work for hockey, baseball, volleyball, lacrosse and other teams, clubs and programs in Duluth. I’ve been a professional photographer for 12 years now and have been wandering around with a camera for 16 years.

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Selective Focus: Trampled by Turtles at Bayfront Park 2018

Jul 08, 2018 No Comments

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Selective Focus: Warrior Printress

Jul 06, 2018 No Comments

Warrior Printress Letterpress and Design is a partnership between two creative entrepreneurs, Janelle Miller and Stacie Renné. Janelle, the original Warrior Printress, started the printing business in 2010 after apprenticing and working for Rick Allen at Kenspeckle Letterpress (featured previously on PDD). Stacie Renné, a graphic artist experienced in brand identity, advertising, and corporate communications, joined forces with Janelle this summer. This week in Selective Focus, they tell us what they have planned for Warrior Printress.

WP: The heart of our business partnership is the shared love for place, for the lake, for paper, for type, for the clank of the press, for the hiss of the ink on the press rollers, and shared passion for creating a quality impression. Couple all those things with a desire for delivering simple, creative designs that communicate clearly, and you have Warrior Printress Letterpress and Design. We fuse contemporary design, technology, and techniques with old world, quality printing processes to create a product that, as we like to say is, “as unique as you are.”

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Selective Focus: Naomi Christenson

Jun 29, 2018 No Comments

Naomi Christenson dances, paints, designs and more. On July 13th and 14th, she’s dancing in Dances on the Lakewalk in Lake Place Park at 7 pm, an event organized by Doris Acosta of Freshwater Dance Collective. This week in Selective Focus, she tells about the event, and how her visual art and dancing abilities work together.

I work in a variety of mediums, from painting to fabric design to dancing. At the moment, I’m all about tap dancing! I’m not 100% clear how I first knew I wanted to tap, but I suspect it had something to do with watching someone else do it and thinking “That looks SO fun, I want to do it too!”. I’ve taken all kinds of technique classes in tap over the years, but only in the last few years have I worked on my own choreography in it. I think the more you create in any art form, the more you’re able to see your unique voice and style develop. I would say my tap style is playful and rhythmic.

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