‘Miscellany’ Archives
Art Pollinators engage neighbors:creating art, connecting across barriers, increasing safety, and embellishing beauty
by Patrick Cabello Hansel How can we make our community safer and more beautiful? How does art build connections across barriers of language and culture? What are the key issues facing Phillips? These are some of the questions that young artists with St. Paul”'s Lutheran”'s Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts will be asking this summer. They will be interviewing residents and decision-makers in Midtown Phillips about how they see their community and environment, and how they interact with their community and environment. These youth artists will be serving as “art pollinators”, engaging neighbors in creating art for their neighborhood. From mosaics on planters and garbage cans, to photo exhibits to the 3rd issue of The Phoenix of Phillips. Are you interested in being a pollinator of the arts? For more information, e-mail stpaulscreate@gmail.com, call 612-724-3862, or come to St. Paul”'s Block Party (2700 block of 15th Avenue) on [...]
In the Heart of the Beast Theatre Company Talks With Community About Its Future and “Home”
BY LINDSEY FENNER “This is the place” The sparkling Kasota stone façade catches the hot summer sun, reflecting back the colorful buildings nearby: mint-green; peach-pink; and the green, red, and yellow traffic lights of this busy and vibrant stretch of South Minneapolis. A mural meets the stone at the round white and black striped marquee, accented with strips of neon color, at the corner of 15th Avenue South and Lake Street. The marquee is a landmark on a bustling street, an Art Deco vision of the future, a tower of human light reaching to the sky. Inside, the lobby is a cool respite from the heat. The building is quiet, between the busy MayDay build, and the fall and winter stage shows. The green-trimmed doorways are framed with a Pete Seeger quote. A long table along the length of the lobby is bare, except for a paper-mache blue jay head and a pair of hands, each much larger than life. At one end of the lobby is a shrine and thank you for the gift of water: a [...]
In the Heart of the Beast Theatre Company Talks With Community About Its Future and “Home”
BY CORRIE ZOLL Over the past winter, HOBT decided that it was time to start a conversation with our community about the future of our organization and our home in the Avalon Theater. We appreciate that The Alley is here to help us have that discussion. The discussion is not new. The Avalon was a distressed building three decades ago when the community worked together to make the building into a home for HOBT. Now the building is 30 years older, and needs a level of care and investment that HOBT has been unable to provide. As the building continues to age, an inability to meet its increasing needs could threaten the ongoing existence of the building, of the organization, or both. Though the issue is serious, we do not consider it to be a crisis. HOBT estimates that we have two to five years to work toward a long-term solution. We have time to make a decision that best serves the many communities that will be affected by it.  More than a year ago, the HOBT board began to [...]
