MINNEAPOLIS —Hennepin Theatre Trust will launch its tenth round of Made Here with Avenues: Made Here on Wednesday, June 20. Avenues: Made Here commemorates and reflects upon the last five years of Made Here by showcasing a collection of previous Made Here artists that have participated since its inception in 2013.

Made Here’s Artist Advisory Panel curated this unique round, inviting at least one artist from each of the past nine runs of Made Here to create a showcase that explores the theme “avenues” through window displays and large-scale photography exhibits on the exterior of downtown buildings. Avenues will also include the new Made Here Alumni Gallery in the PNC Encore Lounge at 900 Hennepin, featuring works by 11 past Made Here artists.


For a more information on artists, please visit HennepinTheatreTrust.org/Made-Here. Avenues: Made Here will be on display through Nov. 5, 2018.

Through public art and community-inspired activities, the Trust establishes Hennepin Avenue as a place of possibilities with Made Here. The work focuses on five high-volume blocks from Fifth to Tenth Streets that are anchored by the Trust’s historic theatres.

Made Here fills windows and other underused spaces throughout downtown twice per year with works by local artists. It has grown from visual displays in windows to live performances, artist markets, pop-up galleries and more.

Launched in 2013, Made Here is the largest project of its kind in the country.


A grant from The McKnight Foundation allows supplies and resources for artist payment and artistic practice. Additional Made Here sponsorship support is provided by Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis.

Avenues: Made Here artists include:


Showcases

Ta-coumba Aiken was featured in Block E, the first run of Made Here in fall 2013, and is a Twin Cities artist, arts administrator, educator and community activist who focuses on public art and collaborative projects. He has acted as an advisor on the arts for both the City of St. Paul and the City of Minneapolis, and has been the recipient of awards including a Pollock–Krasner Foundation Fellowship and a Bush Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. His works can be found in public and private collections including those of the Walker Art Center, The McKnight Foundation, General Mills, Herbie Hancock, Taj Mahal, and Maya Angelou.

Quinn Rivenburgh an artist and art therapist who was featured in Made Here: Summer 2014. Quinn’s experience ranges from participatory social practice parades, to geriatric clients with dementia diagnoses, to K-12 age students, to survivors of trauma and violence.

Erik Pearson was featured in Brilliance: Made Here in winter 2014. Erik has completed sixteen public murals, and four placemaking installations, working on projects with Bloomington Theatre and Art Center, South Loop Creative Placemaking/City of Bloomington, Lanesboro Art Center, Forecast Public Art, Irrigate (Springboard for the Arts) and Arts Council of Indianapolis.

Sayge Carroll + Katrina Knutson were featured in Intersections: Made Here in spring 2015. Sayge Carroll creates art in a variety of mediums, including pottery, photography and installation art. Sayge created the art education program at Franklin Art Works Gallery and founded the Women of Color Artist Gathering, as well as showing her work extensively throughout the United States.

Katrina Knuston is an artist and educator who plants her feet firmly in radical politics, street art and hip-hop. Currently, Katrina designs and teaches workshops and classes to youth across the Twin Cities at galleries, art centers, libraries and schools. She is an active community muralist and works on her own studio art, especially during the long cold winters.

Anthony Chapin + Erin Lavelle were involved in Reflections: Made Here in winter 2015. Erin Lavelle creates, curates and produces participatory art through installations, performance, and set/costume design. Utilizing site-specific locations, immersive techniques and interactive elements, she assembles stages within which the art, artists and audiences reside, blurring preconceived boundaries and promoting connection.

Anthony Chapin is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, design, puppetry, performance, and photography. Anthony has collaborated with many partners, including Northern Lights.MN, Bedlam Theatre, and Barebones Productions.

Soozin Hirschmugl is a puppeteer, theater director, visual artist, and spectacle/pageant director who participated in Represent: Made Here in spring 2016. Soozin has received a fellowship with the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary and a Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant, and is a co-founder of Barebones Productions.

Sarah White is a documentary photographer who was featured in Spirit: Made Here in fall 2016. Sarah’s photography has been featured on the cover of City Pages and in publications such as Pollen Midwest and Minnesota Monthly, and her work has been exhibited in galleries such as International Center for Photography (NY), Public Functionary (MN) and Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts (NY). Her portfolio of work includes iconic performance moments by Zuluzuluu, Lauryn Hill, Moses Sumney, Erykah Badu, James Blake, Future, The Roots and more.

Richard Yang is a photographer whose work was featured in Future: Made Here in spring 2017.

The Illuminated Reef Collective is a group of public artists in Minneapolis/St. Paul area who were featured in Energy: Made Here in winter 2017. The collective developed the Illuminated Reef for the 2016 Northern Spark Festival. The Reef has since been invited to Indianapolis for the INLightIN festival and is currently on display at Cancan Wonderland in St. Paul.

Kulture Klub Collaborative is a community organization that that brings together artists and homeless youth in the Twin Cities. Through multi-disciplinary workshops, open mics, artist residencies, and art outings (ArtView), KKC brings dignity and respect to these special young people as they enter adulthood. KKC is a valued member of the homeless youth serving community, with numerous partners in the metro area, and thousands of dollars of in-kind donations.

Juxtaposition Arts is a community organization that develops community by engaging and employing young urban artists in hands-on education initiatives that create pathways to self-sufficiency while actualizing creative power. The organization combines art & design education and youth empowerment with a social-enterprise business model.

Minneapolis MADDADS is a community organization that has an active presence in downtown Minneapolis, engaging with at-risk and homeless youth, presenting themselves as positive role models who are visible in communities. Learn more at minneapolismaddads.org.

Banners

FAIR School Downtown is the Downtown Minneapolis premier community school. Rooted in arts, equity, innovation and creativity, The FAIR School provides rich programming, relevant instruction, and fosters high achievement, cultural understanding, global citizenship, and a robust network of partnerships that help engage and empower students in personalizing their learning experience.

Colin Michael Simmons is a photographer and visual artist who has had his work featured on the cover of City Pages and other publications. Colin worked for Saturday Night Live as a photographer and archivist in 2012 and 2013.

Coco Connelly is an artist and graphic designer in watercolor in the Twin Cities. She teaches workshops and classes for all ages.

Gallery

Gregory J. Rose has been teaching for Minnesota State since 2003 and is Fine Arts Faculty at Minneapolis Community and Technical College based in Minneapolis. Gregory has exhibited in New York along with many other US cities and has begun to build an International career. Namely known as a painter, Gregory J. Rose has been a creative force working in – Music (Voice Over) work in TV Commercials; The Fine Arts, Art Education and Community Engagement adding to his growing Global presence.

Caitlin Karolczak was born on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Through repeated experimentation and personal study she has become self-taught in different classical painting techniques. In addition to painting she pursues installation, sculpture, and performance art, often incorporating objects of biology and antiquity from her personal collection. Karolczak has exhibited internationally in Bogotá, Minneapolis, NYC, Vancouver, Miami, Europe and more. Her work is in numerous collections across the US, Australia, South America, UK, Canada, Israel & South Africa. She has been interviewed by art publications in Australia, South America, Croatia, & the USA.

Erin Sayer is a freelance curator, having curated over 100 art shows and events over the years, and has owned 3 galleries since 1998, and has painted over 50 murals around the US. From running galleries to traveling the country painting murals, she is constantly engaged in one artists endeavor or another. Her latest projects include assisting artist Eduardo Kobra in creating a huge mural of Bob Dylan in downtown Minneapolis, traveling with her solo show, a series of large scale oil paintings based on the novels of author Tom Robbins, and creating a new series based on the novel American Gods by author Neil Gaiman. She is involved with spearheading a grass roots effort to produce a mural mecca on the Minneapolis Greenway.

James Wrayge has exhibited his work both locally and nationally since 1976 and is in many private collections throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia as well as corporate collections. He is a 12 year member of Rosalux Gallery, the longest running artist run collective in Minnesota. Wrayge believes that the most important part of a painting is composition. Rendering and narrative are not interesting to him unless they are an integral component of the composing process. For Wrayge, a piece of art should be the result of well-considered and judicious decision-making and connote the values of the artist.

Tara Costello has extensively showed in group exhibitions and was recently included in the CSA, Community Supported Art program at Springboard for the Arts. Costello is currently a part of the arts collective Rosalux Gallery. She explores the malleability of perspective, subtle shifts in time merging to create geometric depictions of a singular point of place. Each painting functions as a map, a document of experience to vast landscapes both familiar yet unrecognizable, “The spaces are different snapshots of a day, a minute’s drive on the interstate, a set of lines in the sky.” Costello’s paintings build up layers of Venetian plaster and pigment creating landscapes of raw precision.

Ta-coumba Aiken is a Twin Cities artist, arts administrator, educator and community activist. See full description above

Steven Lang was the recipient of a Loft Mentor Award for 2013-2014 and was a writer-in-residence for Coffee House Press in 2016. His photographs have been included in Der Grief, Momma Tried, and forthcoming in Romka. Steven has been in numerous Made Here runs and has photographed all 327 of our showcases to date.

Leslie Barlow is primarily an oil painter, whose current work employs the figure and narrative elements to explore complex social issues like race, multiculturalism, "otherness," representation, and identity. She is currently an adjunct professor in painting at the University of Minnesota. She appeared in the season 7 of tpt's Minnesota Original, airing April 2016, and was published as "Artist of the Year" for 2016 in the City Pages. In 2016 and 2018 she received the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. Barlow actively exhibits her work throughout the United States and many of her pieces can be found in private and public collections.

Jim Denomie is an Annishanabe artist who has won numerous awards including fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. His work is found in the collections of the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Weisman Art Museum, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Tweed Museum, and the Eitlejorg Museum among others. His work has been shown in Germany and extensively in the U.S.

Lauren Roche is starting to build a reputation as a painter with unmistakable vision. In 2012 Roche first showed an entire body of work publicly, in a joint exhibit with Tynan Kerr and Andrew Mazorol, at the Modern Times Café in Minneapolis. A few months later she was selected as a Jerome Fellow. More group shows followed, and after the Jerome exhibition at MCAD she will be preparing for her first solo show at Bockley Gallery. Roche acknowledges she has been “whirlwinded” into the art world but says the attention has been gratifying and has both inspired her and allowed her to focus more closely on her work.

Dietrich Sieling was born in 1988 and diagnosed with autism when he was three. Inspirations for Dietrich's work include calligraphy, a fascination with animals both scary and beloved - dogs and owls were (and are) terrifying, while kudus, zebras, and giraffes are beloved. Friends, family and self are also important subjects - drawn with special attention. His aspirations include buying the old New French Cafe building, installing a spraying hose, and painting the floors with zebra and giraffe patterns.

Hennepin Theatre Trust is a nonprofit organization that creates positive change through the arts by bringing together people, businesses and organizations in WeDo™, the West Downtown MPLS Cultural District, to create and enjoy cultural experiences. Learn more about how to support our work at HennepinTheatreTrust.org.