Art-A-Whirl Art Crawl

Ms. Muse and I along with one of my friends went to the infamous NE Minneapolis Art-A-Whirl (an art crawl) this past weekend. During the foray sometimes I pushed and prodded Ms. Muse to join me in the studio and at other times, she excitedly swept into the space and squealed with delight at her new discoveries. Unfortunately my friend was so engulfed with the new experience; I did not have time to get her together with Ms. Muse for any in depth conversation.

What I did notice was Ms. Muse’s total lack of enthusiasm for anything created as a flat two dimensional piece. I was absolutely shocked how quickly she tired of the black and white photography. I did manage to get her into a couple of studios in the beginning of the day, but now that I think back on the whole Art Crawl expedition, she literally wanted to run by them. No, wonder I never had any real success in creating new exciting work with the medium. What she commented on was the total lack of creativity she found in photographing yet another dilapidated building, barn or some rusty Minnesota prairie icon. At one point I caught her reflection in the glass of a framed photographed barn and she placed her index finger against her nose and twisted in the American Sign Language symbol for boring, stuck out her tongue at me then ran off into the hallway completely mesmerized a huge hanging wire fish mobile installed in the hallway.

When we began the crawl, she fell in love with a lovely eclectic prayer card and it is now hanging upon my refrigerator. At another point we talked with an artist who in her own words was jokingly “squatting” in the warehouse corner. She was actually teamed up with another member in the NE Artist Association. This "squatting" artist introduced us to Christians in the Visual Arts organization (CIVA) and Ms. Muse whispered in my ear, “Perhaps there are more visual stories we can wrap around these Christian ideas?”

During two points of the trip she discovered a hopscotch grid and tried to engage a game for our amusement. One hopscotch grid was in a very large two dimensional mixed media piece, which she enjoyed because it had three dimensional found objects affixed to it. The other hopscotch was actually chalked on the steps to on of the warehouses entrance and she did hop, hop double hop her way into and out of the building.

All in all Ms. Muse was extremely satiated and our “Feed the Eyes” art crawl outing for the NE Minneapolis Art-A-Whirl art crawl.