Secrets of the City

Click HERE to check out more of Debra Fisher Goldstein’s State Fair photos at BeyondTheStick.com!

I grew up listening to Curtis A playing all over town, Beatles Beatles everywhere (and then some), so when I moved back to Minneapolis five years ago, it was comforting to see him still around, his daughter in the audience, but not much had changed.

This time, there’s change, big news on the Curtis A front. He’s going from audio to visual. Booya!

Minneapolis rock legend, Curtiss A, makes the transition from music to visual art with his first solo show at Gallery 122. The exhibition, entitled Something To Do Until The End Of The World, features over 70 of Curtiss’ large collages created over the past 10 years. The gallery walls are packed with images of Curtiss’ personal mythology, making the space overwhelming and definitely worth seeing.

Check out John Megas’s article on MplsArt.com.

The work consist(s) of delicately cutout figures placed in front of layered backgrounds. Some of the images were taken from art books, magazines, and history books … but the vast majority are from comics. He compares his collages to sampling (which strangely he is dubious of). At times Curtiss transcends collage and adds his own marks to modify a figure or create the illusion of transparency, drawing in part of what is pasted under it. These surfaces are so well worked that you can’t help think the word “obsessive”. But they are also strangely beautiful.

Curtiss’ subject matter fits into two major categories: the end of the world and UFO abduction. Often the two coexist. In the end of the world scenario, his scenes often depict the very moment when the Earth is at the brink of ultimate destruction (which is sometimes caused by UFOs). Here we see superheroes rushing in to rescue humanity. Alongside them are often the nation’s forefathers, 20^th century celebrities, and religious figures. Whatever it takes.

[via PiPress]: The university granted Pepin Heights Orchard an exclusive license to grow and sell the apple. In 2006, Pepin Heights formed a cooperative, called Next Big Thing, comprised of 45 growers who would produce SweeTango apples grown on Minneiska trees. An exception allows Minnesota orchards to plant the trees, but with restrictions … That limits growers like Sandvick to selling their crop at the farm, in farmers markets and roadside stands, or direct to a grocer. The problem, growers say, is that few grocers will do business with individual orchards with small crops. The only way they can survive is by combining their crops to sell to wholesalers, which the contract prohibits.

IIRC, previous U of M apple hybrids have also been commercially released with the same stipulations and restrictions. But, after the gigantic success that the Honeycrisp has become, more growers want an earlier “in.”

The pharmaceutical industry and other business sectors operate in a somewhat similar fashion: cheaper, generic versions of, say, a drug (e.g. Viagra) cannot be marketed until after the expiration of the originating patent. This window allows the developer to, among other things, recoup some (most? all?) of their R&D costs.

Should similar restrictions or covenants be put in place for product development (and, yes, that’s what an apple is) that was paid in-part with public funds?

MPR’s Bob Collins points us to a Star-Tribune report about the potential effects climate change will have on our state’s wonderous Boundary Waters:

“[A] ‘perfect storm’ of wind storms, invasive species (including earthworms), and climate change will lead to the ’savannafication’ of many northern areas, which will become grasslands with scattered trees and brush rather than forests, and will resemble parts of central Iowa or even Missouri.”

Iowa? IOWA?!

“Some tree species will largely die out in Minnesota, [U of M Center for Hardwood Ecology director Lee] Frelich said. Jack pine, black spruce, balsam fir and aspen already are at the southern edge of their growing range in the state, he said, and can grow in the thin northern soils only because there is just enough rainfall and relatively low temperatures. As average temperatures rise only a couple of degrees, those trees will be lost.”

Click HERE to check out more of Debra Fisher Goldstein’s State Fair photos at BeyondTheStick.com!