Selective Focus: Aaron Kloss
Aaron Kloss is a Duluth-based landscape painter with a distinctive, contemporary style. He draws inspiration from the natural world, particularly North Shore forests and wildlife.
Aaron Kloss is a Duluth-based landscape painter with a distinctive, contemporary style. He draws inspiration from the natural world, particularly North Shore forests and wildlife.
See how many of this month’s headlines you remember with this week’s current events quiz!
The next PDD, coming your way on April 10, will look ahead to the Homegrown Music Festival. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by April 7.
To the Mayor of Duluth and the City Council: I propose that the city stock Lake Superior with seals, and a community of orcas to keep the seals in check. This plan increases annual tourist revenue by $300,000,000. I outline my proposal below with expenditures.
Seals can live in freshwater. The only population of exclusively-freshwater seals is native to the ratchet Lake Baikal in Russia, the Baikal seals. But geopolitical issues preclude obtaining breeding pairs. Therefore we need to look closer to home: Quebec has harbor seals in a couple lakes, a subspecies of the common seal called the Ungava seal. But, the Ungava is endangered so if we import them, we should establish a breeding program, increasing expenses.
Fortunately, Iliamna Lake in Alaska has a population of common seals trapped there. I suggest we capture and import specimens from that population to get ours started. Technically saltwater seals, the common seals’ adaptability to freshwater has been proven which will give them a head start in Lake Superior. I’ll throw in a couple Ungavas on the house to increase genetic diversity. Estimated cost of capturing and importing 100 breeding pairs of seals from Lake Iliamna: $3,500,000.
The new music video from Cloud Cult was made by artist Annabelle Popa. It features sped up footage of handwritten lyrics and accompanying drawings — with band leader Craig Minowa faded into the background.
A live performance of a new original song by Duluth-based electro-folk artist Ingeborg von Agassiz.
“Lookout Point” is probably meant in a generic sense in this postcard, as in “a lookout point.” And if the illustration is based on what a specific piece of Lake Superior shoreline looked like roughly a century ago, that shoreline has obviously changed in appearance over time.
From the woods of Wisconsin, Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult performs three songs from the band’s recently released album Metamorphosis. Shot for the Soundcheck podcast on a balmy 30-degree day, the three clips feature Minowa playing in the snow with an acoustic guitar, with the rest of the band on backing tracks.
Picture from last winter skating at the Slip by the tugboat Lake Superior. Paul Scinocca broke the story with a photo of the wreck on his social media. The boat had been out of service for some time, and will be so yet, I reckon.
Twenty years ago today — March 21, 2002 — the band Japancakes released its album Belmondo as volume 19 of Darla Records’ ambient Bliss Out series. The album features the track “Duluth 7.5.” Note, however, that the tune gets second-class status among music that references Duluth because the band is from Athens, Ga., and therefore is almost certainly referring to Duluth, Ga.
“Chickbone George” Alan Sparhawk of the Black-eyed Snakes encouraged the crowd to “dance against tyranny” Saturday at Duluth Cider during the “Stand with Ukraine” concert. Charlie Parr opened the show.
All names have been changed in this essay, not for each person’s privacy — just for fun.
I’m under the impression, based on the stunning aggregate of books, songs, poems, movies, and even body sprays about the subject, that I’m not the only person who truly was at a crossroads at age 17. By way of possible explanation, for many more years of my life than I’d like to admit, I labored under the very firm and very erroneous impression that I needed to be perfect in order to deserve love. What is even more absurd is the fact that, to preserve this external façade of imperturbable perfection, I believed I had to hide, disguise, or elaborately lie about most of who I was.
But by 17 years old, this had reached something of a fever pitch, the world having grown so much more complex and rife with nefarious but terribly desirable options. For example, I was a newly-minted cigarette smoker, having discovered that cigarettes were the missing piece in my anxiety repertoire. They created a self-reinforcing feedback loop in my neuronal network in which I smoked to relieve anxiety, and then smoking made me more anxious — a glorious oscillation that kept me jangly and on the edge of my seat, but also hiding episodically in the Harbormaster’s bathroom during school lunch to smoke, so no one would know I was a smoker.
Sadkin | Mirage
Mirage, Sadkin’s new single, is out on all major streaming services, including Bandcamp. We cordially invite you to have a listen.
Carl Gawboy’s exhibit “New Paintings, Old Stories” is on view at the American Indian Community Housing Organization’s Dr. Robert Powless Cultural Center on Fridays from 4 to 6 p.m. until May 27.
Sarah Krueger’s musical project Lanue has a new five-song EP titled Fire in My Mind coming out April 15. The lyric video for the title track was directed by Krueger.
