Spring 2010 Poster Competition Winner: "Conny's Creamy Cone" by Claudia Kremer
This spring, the St. Paul Art Crawl begins its third-decade as one of the premier and most successful Twin Cities� arts events.
The Spring St. Paul Art Crawl, April 23-25 (Friday thru Sunday), is a self-guided tour of the City of St. Paul, spreading from its Lowertown origins to the University Avenue and Arts on Raymond sections of the city, to up and down Grand Avenue, and various locations surrounding the downtown area proper.
The Art Crawl all started back in the early 1990s when the Tilsner Artists Co-Op, Northern Warehouse and Lowertown Lofts, along with the Jax Studios, opened their live/work spaces to the public. Considered �a cheap date night� and a chance to mingle with people living in a vibrant and thriving artistic community, the event has grown into three major weekend events, as well as a series of First Friday openings in the Lowertown area.
The cooperatives of Lowertown have always been the prime spaces to start the Crawl. 200 artists alone live in this artistic downtown St. Paul hotspot off Kellogg Boulevard and Wall, Prince and Broadway streets.
This year a new challenge faces the St. Paul Art Crawl: light-rail construction. The best bet is to come down Kellogg Boulevard where ample parking can be found in the Kellogg and Broadway Street lot, directly across the street from the beautiful Tilsner Artists Cooperative.
A cornerstone for the St. Paul Art Crawl and home to 66 units of artists, writers, and musicians, the Tilsner, setup by Artspace Projects in 1993 as low-cost live/work lofts exclusively for artists, is one of the more popular venues to visit artists as they open up their studios to the public...
Meet some Tilsner artists
The Tilsner Artist Cooperative, at 300 Broadway Street, is home to a variety of working artists: glass artist Tara Tyrell Cossens; light painter Dana Maltby; stain-glass artist Bob Calton; painters Pablo Solis, Cecilia Henle, Risa Tritabaugh, Suzanne Forever Moore, Carly Beeseman, Stephanie Guidera, Theresa Crushshon; clay sculpturist Teena Jay Roberson; glass artist Lisa Mathison; jewelers Brian Struble, Kirk Skylar and Kait Schott; mixed media artists Amelia Gluba, and Nora Farrell; illustrators Bevin Holmberg, Leon Lilke, Dan Wieken, Angie Runnels; designers Shane Fatland , Paul Whitlock, and Johnny & Stacie Slocum; musicians Mark Collins, Joanna Harley, John Riddle and Donovan Seaberg; filmmakers Karl Warnke and Brian Nickila; and photographers Michael Knudsen, Ted Roseen, Jeffrey Hanson, Leon Kim, Laurel Cazin, John Peters, James Ramsay and Matthew Whitcomb.
(Dana Maltby)
Many will be displaying their works, along with a live theatre company, Upright Egg, performing in their studio/loft; plus a weekend of a variety of music in the seven-story Atrium to accompany a stroll through studios and halls lined with art and live artists.
The joy of visiting a live/work space studio is that you get to see not only the physical working environment of some artists, but also art displayed in a �home setting.� Here you can meet with artists directly to discuss their art, and sales and future commissions are an integral part of the weekend art experience.
The Art Crawl is a wonderful evening or afternoon for the family and friends, as the area surrounding the Tilsner, Northern Warehouse, Jax Studios, Northwestern Building and Lowertown Lofts is home to the Black Dog Coffee and Wine Bar, Golden�s Deli, Barrio, Trattoria Da Vinci, Station 4, Christos, Senor Wong�s, Bulldog, Bin Wine Bar, LoTo, Rumors & Innuendo, the Gopher and Kelly's Depot bars, and even a corner hot dog stand serving the best brats in town!
If you are a teacher or a student of art, it is a wonderful time to explore the working environs of an artist, to see how they live, hearing their music, and explore their neighborhood environment. The variety of mediums and the levels of artistic pursuit is an education in itself.
The St. Paul Art Crawl is completely free, except for the art you decide to buy. The Lowertown area, starting with the Tilsner Artists Cooperative, located across from the main parking lot at Kellogg and Broadway, is considered a great launching point for a walking tour of Lowertown studios. Regular shuttle bus services serve the other downtown area buildings, from the Rossmer to Landmark Center. Ample parking is found at the Arts & Raymond Galleries, Carleton Place Lofts, Hamm/Everest and ACVR warehouses, and Milton Square and Grand Hand galleries.
What an Art Crawl looks like
The St. Paul Art Crawl hours are: Friday, April 23, 6 to 10 p.m., Saturday, April 24, noon to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, April 25, noon to 5 p.m.
More information about the St. Paul Art Crawl can be found at www.artcrawl.org.
The Spring St. Paul Art Crawl, April 23-25 (Friday thru Sunday), is a self-guided tour of the City of St. Paul, spreading from its Lowertown origins to the University Avenue and Arts on Raymond sections of the city, to up and down Grand Avenue, and various locations surrounding the downtown area proper.