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M I RESTAURATEUR AND CHEF M O L L Y M I T C H E L L AND E G G Y D I N G A R T I S T S A N D C R E AT I V E S I N T H E M I D D L E O F A M E R I C A
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MN ARTIST C Y M WA R KOV
The lives and work of artists, activists, writers, designers and creative entrepreneurs in the middle of America.
L E T T E R F ROM T H E E DI TOR “I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of ‘posturing’—all the ways we ‘perform normalcy.’ I’ve been asking myself, ‘How do we contort our identities to fit in? How do we establish a deep sense of belonging in both the digital and physical world?’” Detroit-based artist Ellen Rutt shares with me as we plan our collaboration on the fashion story in this issue highlighting her garment work. On the road, immersed in the creative output, spaces and communities of the artists we cover, I find this question is ever-present in my mind. It feels relevant to me in regards to ALIVE and also to this moment in which we live. Should we posture and perform our curation and imagery to become Instagram famous? Should our photographs reflect the latest trends? Isn’t Marrakesh more photogenic? Won’t celebrities sell more copies? And how does the lens this question is viewed through shift the answers across culture, class, media and from inside and outside the academy, the scene and the city? Filled with doubt, I yet slip easily into my process of documentation. I ask myself, “Am I honoring the land that has given us so much? Am I honoring the sacredness of these artist’s homes and lives?” I want to take care that something present in the images will express the days, years and hours that I know they have toiled in the physical space in which their vision becomes creation—and the emotional space where they struggled with their doubts, sought their joy and considered their practice. In this issue, we share the ways in which these artists express their art and have designed their lives. Their work sustains us, and this work sustains us. Cym Warkov feels grounded in a return to her roots. As she makes with clay, the weight of earth becomes deceptive, metamorphosed into gossamer light in her hands. In poems and essays, Hanif Abdurr aqib archives through cultural criticism that maps where we are, have been and may go. Molly Mitchell and Eggy Ding serve meals that nourish bodies, communities and themselves. Painter Patrick Quarm examines his sense of hybrid identity and reveals our own. Ellen Rutt’s improvisational mark making is both a record and a translation of our physical world. Using a language of color and shape, her explorations suggest alternate ways of engaging with identity and place. At the Anderson Center, Stephanie Rogers honors an arts legacy with a thoughtful mission to promote equity and access. Join us at Playground Detroit on July 20 for “This Must Be The Place,” Ellen Rutt’s solo show during Detroit Art Week (detroitartweek.org). Maybe we’ll have a chance to meet and talk about these artists and questions.
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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
MINNESOTA
14 Artist | Cym Warkov OHIO
20 Poet and Author | Hanif Abdurraqib MICHIGAN
24 Restaurateur and Chef | Molly Mitchell and Eggy Ding MICHIGAN
30 Artist | Patrick Quarm MICHIGAN
36 Artist | Ellen Rutt MINNESOTA
62 Director and Artist | Stephanie Rogers KENTUCKY
80 Poem | Amelia Martens
COVER PHOTO
Uribi Alexandra in Ellen Rutt, Detroit, Michigan RIGHT
Painting by Patrick Quarm, Detroit, Michigan B AC K C O V E R
Ellen Rutt’s studio, Detroit, Michigan Photography:
Attilio D’Agostino
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MN
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INEV ITABLE INTUITION
Ceramic ar tist Cym Warkov returns home to St. Paul. by JORIE JACOBI / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
If you were to walk into ceramicist Cym Warkov’s pottery studio in downtown St. Paul—Lowertown, to be exact—you’d see an amazing view of the State Capitol building from her west-facing window, and a small hillside of trees. Minnesota can somehow pull off greenery in its populous urban areas. You’d find a slab roller, various tools and her beloved dog, Birdie. You’d also see a range of pale-colored clay vessels made of porcelain in various states of completion, sumptuous and precise, shaped into visual suggestions that the objects could be something more pliable, like fabric. “Typically I don’t glaze the outside, because I love the way porcelain looks and feels—and how strong it is,” she says. “I think it’s so beautiful.” Her story is like the coalescence of more than one life. Warkov grew up across the river in Minneapolis, and both of her parents were artists. Her father worked as a photographer, and her mother was a painter, which led Warkov to a childhood of exploration: making things, dabbling, playing, grabbing ahold of the many forms of creative expression and seeing how they worked.
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She also discovered early on that living on an artist’s income was inconsistent, at best. “We didn’t have a lot of money, so when I got older, I was like, ‘I’m not going to be an artist. I’m not going to be poor,’” she says. She found work as a hairdresser, a craft that required an artistry similar to what she draws on to make ceramic pieces, as she absorbed the foundational principles of texture, color, shape and form. Eventually she landed a job with hair-care giant Aveda, where she ascended up the ladder until she was traveling alongside the brand’s president and creative team all over the country. The company moved her to L.A., where she met her now ex-husband, a film cinematographer, and stayed for 28 years, doing hair and makeup on film and music-video sets. She raised her two children there, now both in their 20s. “They had the whole California experience. They went to Santa Monica High School and all of that. But we kept them away from the film industry, and neither of them wants to move back to L.A.,” she says. “It’s a place where you see what happens when there’s such extreme excess. The materialism, the lack of real values, parents who aren’t paying attention. They want their daughters to be the next ‘It’ girl, and that’s what they think of as successful. That’s not what I want for my daughter. I taught my son to open the door for women, to say things like ‘Yes, ma’am’ and have manners. Generally, kids just aren’t raised like that there.” She lived all over greater Los Angeles—in Hollywood, San Fernando Valley, Venice Beach. The latter was her favorite; she still has a home nearby in Mar Vista, and it was there that she learned how to surf in her 40s. It was also out on the ocean, in all its inescapable honesty, that she realized she and her husband were not a match. “Something in me knew it was time to separate,” she says. “There’s something about being out in the middle of the ocean that’s incredibly spiritual.
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And I was out there one day, and it was so clear to me that I wasn’t really living my life. That feeling of authenticity is what I’m always trying to get to, and in some ways that’s what ceramics is doing for me. I get so much fulfillment from working.” Earlier this year, she went back to visit her son, who was living in Ventura—about two hours north of L.A. “That was the single best thing I did as a mother: get my son surfing,” she says. A paramedic, her son is often confronted with some of humanity’s most painful moments. While living in Ventura, he surfed almost every day, as though physically cleansing the trauma. With her son now settled in Sacramento and her daughter an East Coaster at New York University, Warkov is back home in the Twin Cities. She moved in October of 2017, as she had always intended to do, after having been away for almost three decades. A lifelong creative, she’d worked in ceramics before having children, and she found her way back in St. Paul, where she moved in with a friend before finding her own apartment. “L.A. had become a place that really wasn’t great for my creativity,” she says. While her first winter back in Minnesota was one of the most challenging the state had seen in recent years, she still felt a wave of relief upon returning home, jumping right into the process of making. Now in her 50s, she loves the timely nostalgia of Midwestern seasons, the quiet ease of living, the greenery, earnestness, honesty and, perhaps most of all, space—where she can lie, daydream and make without care for what her life looks like through anyone else’s eyes. “Something that happens to you when you get older is that the bullshit starts to fall away, hopefully. You want to be more and more yourself, and your filters come off.” There’s no need for flash or pomp here. Grounded, in reality, life is decidedly rich.
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IN THE K EY OF HOME, A SONG FOR COLUMBUS
The impor tance of creature comfor ts with Hanif Abdurraqib. by JACQUI GER MAIN / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
The red block lettering of Pierce Cleaners’ outdoor sign is a staple of Columbus’ popular High Street. The sign, perched a few yards from its related brownshingled storefront, offers a new joke or lighthearted pun each week, as it has for the last few decades. For acclaimed poet, New York Times bestselling author and Columbus native Hanif Abdurraqib, the cheeky phrases are a reliable and welcoming beacon after weeks on the road performing shows across the country. In the face of rapidly encroaching gentrification, the city’s familiar features are things Abdurraqib has come to treasure, inspiring a sense of nostalgia and evoking an interest in documenting the changing of landscape and experience. “In my work, I’m interested in the act of archiving,” Abdurraqib explains. “I’m not just talking about gentrification here, but I do think to watch the landscape shift—and then to watch parts of it vanish—pushes
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my urgency towards archival, too.” While a new visual landscape begins to develop and stretch across Columbus with an eye on the future, Abdurraqib’s work tends to reach back through time. Memory is a common fixture of his poetry, music criticism and essay writing, often using poignant past moments to offer the reader an unexpected take on an old idea or a sharp insight into the human condition. His style of storytelling makes his work distinct across genre and form, but despite the overwhelming praise and his success today, that wasn’t always the case. Abdurraqib got his start as “kind of a bad freelance journalist writing bad reviews for things,” covering underground bands for small zines and blogs. The punk-music scene—and punk music, in general—was a pillar of his teen years, and getting into music writing was his excuse to consistently write about a community
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and a genre of music that defined much of his life. Abdurraqib’s tendency toward flowery prose and poetic language was the subject of regular criticism from editors who preferred a more straightforward approach. Poetry, then, became the most logical medium to explore next. Why work against his natural inclinations, right? But writing poetry—and writing poetry well—would take work, and Columbus’ own poetry scene was already full of talented poets. Trying his hand at poetry offered a real opportunity to fail in public—in front of the people and poets he admired. Thankfully, Abdurraqib found himself surrounded by writers who embraced him, creating a welcoming and encouraging community to build his own experience and voice in verse. “To come up in Columbus was to come up in the arms of many people who all had an investment in my writing. And I think it’s because Columbus isn’t a city where everyone is trying to make it,” says Abdurraqib, reflecting. “The goal with poets in Columbus was—and I think still is, to some extent—if one of us does well, it makes all of us look better. There’s celebration in that.” As he continued writing and performing in Columbus, he looked to other contemporary poets and writers of earlier generations to read and study. Unsurprisingly, the more he wrote, the more his music roots bubbled to the surface to inform everything from his poetic syntax to his editing style. “For me, the writing process and the editing process have always been about music. Editing and writing are both sonic experiences that should be honored as such,” he explains without missing a beat. “I want to honor the fact that with words comes the opportunity to rub language together and have it make different sounds, and that’s a real gift that we have—the fact that we can place different words next to different other words to create a different clashing of music. I really want to honor that more than anything.” By 2015, Abdurraqib had a burgeoning poetry career
and decided to return to music criticism on a whim. The essay that marked his reentry, “In Defense of ‘Trap Queen’ As Our Generation’s Greatest Love Song,” opens with a Bruce Springsteen quote and unfolds into a three-part ode to faith, Motown-era love songs, the haphazard romance of the song itself and the realities of love in times of struggle. To say it went viral is an understatement. Abdurraqib’s telltale weaving, poetic style struck a resonate chord, and his career took off. Since then, he’s published four books: a full-length poetry collection and limited-edition chapbook—“The Crown Ain’t Worth Much” and “Vintage Sadness,” respectively—an essay collection called “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” and his New York Times bestseller nonfiction book “Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest.” He has published essays in The New York Times and Pitchfork, was a columnist at MTV News for a year, has two more books in the works and, in his downtime, manages to travel around the country sharing his writing and teaching poetry nearly year-round. And yet the ease and familiarity of his hometown remains a steady backbeat. Here, the book deals and his 63,000 Twitter followers are barely present, more like distant notes in the background of a song he knows by heart. “For most of my life I’ve been just a part of the larger world of Columbus and not a poet or a writer or a notable anything,” he offers. “And there are pockets of my life here where that hasn’t shifted at all. My closest friends here are proud of me, but they were also proud of me before I wrote anything. And to some extent, they don’t necessarily care what I work on as much as they care that I’m taking care of myself.” On the phone during our interview, he’s checking his mail after having been on the road for a week. He remarks that getting mail is another one of the small but reliable joys of being home, similar to the neighborhood streets from his childhood and a retro red-lettered sign in the center of the city. Alas, he has none—yet. It’s still early, he jokes. It’s snail mail, after all—there’s no rush.
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MOLLY MITCHELL and EGGY DING The power duo leading Rose’s Fine Food. by JORIE JACOBI / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
Molly Mitchell’s current interpretation of the classic neighborhood diner is a bit different than what she grew up loving. The Detroit-based chef and restaurateur worked at a local eatery in her small hometown of Howell, Michigan, about an hour outside of Detroit. “You’d see so many different kinds of people together: high school kids, construction workers, young families, retirees. And they were all being taken care of, eating something delicious,” she says. Mitchell became passionate about the casual community vibe of traditional diners—each one its own hallmark of Americana, complete with a cast of characters and stories with the potential to become lore. So much so that she co-founded Rose’s Fine Food in 2014 with her cousin and fellow restaurateur Lucy Peters and developed a menu with a mixture of recognizable staples like pancakes, egg platters and breakfast sandwiches alongside dishes with an eclectic twist. There’s the vegan pesto sandwich, breakfast noodles and the egg sandwich, which comes with cheddar, local
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greens and aioli, served with pickles and grits or potatoes. An adventurous diner could even pair it with a side of kimchi. Scan the beverage menu and you’ll also see chocolate milk and Coke coexisting alongside hibiscus iced tea and Topo Chico mineral water. While Peters has since left Rose’s to focus on her family, she connected Mitchell to the highly artistic baker and chef Eggy Ding. Rarely seen without her glasses and a knitted cap or bandana, Ding bakes majestic, detailed birthday cakes that are a favorite of Detroit’s locals, and she pays equal attention to one of Rose’s specialties: house-made bread. Ding makes it from scratch based on a recipe she learned while studying at the San Francisco Baking Institute, crafted using stone-ground organic flour from Michigan’s Ferris Organic Farm. A Cincinnati native, Ding originally studied fine art in college before moving to Detroit. “I had some friends who lived here, and when Lucy [Peters] approached me about Rose’s, I was working at a bakery in the suburbs. I had to be there at 3 a.m., so I’d be driving to work when everyone’s
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leaving the bars. I thought, ‘I’ll take any job where I don’t have to be on the highway at 2 a.m.,’” she says. Though Ding was still making art at the time—mostly in her apartment—the true cost of attempting to make life work as a visual artist took a toll. “I was making these weird objects in my home, which I had no intention of showing to anyone, and they cost a lot of money to make. I just kept thinking, ‘Where do I go from here?’ and ‘Why am I spending all of my money on this?’” Ding was originally hired to work as a server but gravitated toward the kitchen and remained there without pushback. She remembers being asked to make corn salsa one day, and it wasn’t until years later that she eventually confided in Mitchell that she had no idea how. Mitchell has now perfected the affectionately named Grandpa Richard’s Pancakes, adapted from a recipe developed by her grandfather. Also made with organic stone-ground flour, the dish incorporates Michigan maple syrup, cultured butter and a generous helping of eggs, for a creamy, custardy end result. “My grandpa was a cop in Detroit for years. When he retired, he moved about four hours up north and made pancakes and perch almost every day for breakfast,” Mitchell remembers. “They were famous in our family. I remember when he’d make them—his fingers were huge, like pickles.” This philosophy, grounded in the earthy tones and flavors of story and legacy, is the foundation of Rose’s Fine Food. From the beginning, its proprietors sought to use the local organic ingredients and pay employees a living wage—a noble yet expensive business model. “We started with these high-minded philosophies but were naive about how to pull it off,” says Mitchell. “There were a couple of years there where it felt like
we were trying to land a crashing plane.” When asked how they made it through, she responds candidly. “Honestly, I don’t know. I will say that Detroit is really special in that people here are really into patronizing small businesses. There’s a strong community that supports that.” It may have been touch and go there for a bit—as Mitchell recounts—but we’re tasting Grandpa Richard’s Pancakes as the team at Rose’s is on the upswing. After years of pressing onward moment by moment, Mitchell was finally able to purchase the building on Detroit’s East Jefferson Avenue this year. Now she truly owns the restaurant. “After five years of living my diner fantasy I own this tiny green building!” Mitchell posted excitedly on Rose’s Instagram account. In the photo, Mitchell wears a crisp spring outfit: white pants and a light-pink jacket, with blonde hair and wide smile. You can see the interior of Rose’s; its signature green walls and a countertop lined with black stools look like a scene from an old movie. In the intervening years, Mitchell and Ding have solidified into a persistently jovial dynamic duo that has withstood the bevy of challenges that new businesses—and new restaurants in particular—often face, including staff turnover and maintaining an old building, not to mention navigating how the heck to run a fledgling business. “Don’t get a broken heart. Be persistent. Things will sometimes be terrible, and then they’ll be great again,” says Mitchell. The pair are friends and neighbors. Their dogs are best friends, and they both love plants and produce. Now it’s like they are winning a game they were never invited—or intended—to play. But moment by moment, with a mutual gleam in their eyes, they could not stop asking themselves, and then each other, “Why not?”
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Grandpa Richard ’s Pancakes Yield: 6 to 10 pancakes The batter can be refrigerated for two days if you can’t eat them all in one sitting.
Ingredients
Instructions
2 cups pastry flour
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Whisk together the wet and dry ingredients separately.
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Gently fold the two mixtures together, being careful not to over-mix. A few lumps are fine.
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Let it sit 30 minutes to one hour in the fridge for the flour to absorb the liquid.
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Melt some of the butter in a griddle or cast iron pan. When the butter foams, spoon the batter into the pan a half-cup at a time.
5.
When a few bubbles form in the pancakes and the edges begin to dry, flip the pancakes and let them cook on the other side (around one to two minutes per side).
6.
Eat with tons of butter and real maple syrup!
3 /4 tsp salt 1/4 cup sugar 3 /4 tsp baking soda 1/3 cup olive oil or other neutr al oil 5 eggs 1 cup buttermilk 1 tbsp butter, for frying
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W H AT IT IS TO BECOME THE ASTONISHING ART OF PATRICK QUARM. by KEA WILSON / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
Even when you stand completely still, you are changing. But when you move across the room—or to a new continent—the legacy of that former self still clings to you, a ghost whispering in the ear of the person you’ve become. Whether that’s a comfort or a curse is the open question of Detroit-based mixed-media artist Patrick Quarm’s work. Born in post-colonial Ghana to a family of nine and educated in Western-style classical painting, Quarm has wrestled with questions of identity throughout his career, excavating the legacies of influence on his home nation alongside the more universal questions of what it means to bear a body that persists through time and space, even as the self is a state of constant flux. But when Quarm attended Texas Tech to pursue a master of fine arts degree—and came to live in the U.S. for the first time—it opened up his practice to a whole new realm of questioning. And it took his
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work to an astonishing new level. We spoke with Patrick Quarm about hybridity, migration and why Detroit is the perfect place to maintain his art practice. Your work explores the idea of hybrid identity: the person you once were holding space within the body with the person you’ve become; the identity you had in one country merging with the identity you take up as you acclimate to another. Could you tell me a little more about that, and how your decision to do your masters degree in the U.S. shaped this direction in your work?
Moving to the U.S. was a big transition; really, this was me moving from one social space to another, totally different one. And I also went to Texas, which is more of a conservative space than what I was used to.
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During that adjustment, I started asking myself questions like, “Who am I?” America has a lot of issues with race. When I’d encounter that, I’d ask myself questions like, “Why is it that I’m being defined that way? Why is it that I’m being seen that way?” I started investigating my history and my family’s Ghanaian history. Through colonial rule, African culture and Western culture came together, and there was a new breed of culture which the modern African represents. The Africans living within that third space create a culture that is not always recognized, in part because it keeps evolving over time. That’s how I started thinking about hybridity.
the contradiction comes in, because the process involved in making the fabric originated in Indonesia, and through trade, this process ended up in Africa. We took the process and put our designs into it, and called it the African print fabric. But today, the companies that actually manufacture the fabric are all Western companies. So through globalization and trade, the fabric picks up this dual identity. But within each space, it changes. I think of this in the same way as the hybrid individual. Depending on the space, the hybrid redefines itself based on its history. That’s what excites me about these fabrics whenever I use them as a material in my work.
It seems like the kind of cultural hybridization you’re talking about—and the powers that initiate it, like colonialism and
Let’s talk about another migration. You moved to Detroit
migration and interracial conflict—carry a really specific charge
pretty recently—partially to be closer to family there, and
in the context of U.S. history. How does your work seek to
partially to start the Red Bull Arts Detroit artist residency.
complicate the idea of the hybrid, beyond what, for many of
How has that new setting impacted your work?
us, might be knee-jerk associations of violence and erasure?
Detroit is interesting, right? As much as its history is complicated, with the [financial] crash, it has this vibrant arts scene, and this is one thing that I realized was important me. Most of the artists you think of as creating, at least in part, for money, but in Detroit it was different. It’s pure passion. They do it because it’s the culture; they do it because that’s what they love to do.
One thing I notice is that when you talk about hybridity [in the U.S.], people think of that as an end point. Or when you’re talking about history, people see it as a completed thing. For me, these things are constantly evolving. You’re constantly evolving and growing into a new realm, a new reality, redefining who you are. I’m trying to present the hybrid as the kind of individual who is able to camouflage him or herself in any space they come across. If you take a look at my process, I actually cut into the painting, right? I’m excavating history. I’m digging into the history of the hybrid, and I’m revealing all the nuances there. I want you to question what is true and what is false, and whether history is complete or if it’s layered. I see hybridity as this combination of past and present, as a way to redefine what it is to become.
So I moved down and just started exploring the spaces around here, talking to galleries, connecting with the art community. I realized that this is such a great place to be as an artist. If I moved to New York, the city would be a distraction; there’s so much going on at the same time. But being in Detroit, it’s this place where I can have my quiet time, my peace of mind to create the best work ever, and from there, I can show it to the world. What’s next for you? I know you might be showing at Art
Let’s talk about that process a little more. I’m interested
Basel, and you’ve got exhibitions coming up in New York
in your use of African fabrics and your decision to paint
and in museum contexts, too.
directly on them and then manipulate them as a method
It’s an exciting time for me. I was telling a friend of mine, “Man, it feels like I was born at the right time.” I got to the point where I’m pushing my career to the next stage, and at the same time, artists who are of African descent or African American descent are the new talk of the art world. Everything is working out; the attention is coming.
of excavation, as you say. How did that material become a part of your practice?
I’d start by considering the history of the fabric, because it’s not just a fabric. I see the material as this entity on its own. It’s a being. It’s called an “African print” fabric, but that’s where
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A N Y THING TH AT C A N BE PA INTED THE SINGUL AR VOICE OF MIXED-MEDIA ARTIST ELLEN RUT T. by KEA WILSON / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
What won’t Ellen Rutt paint? When you ask this question of Rutt herself, she repeats it a few times, considering it carefully. “I think I would paint almost anything,” she says, finally, with an air of, ‘But isn’t this obvious?’ “Yeah. Any surface that could be painted, I am down.” When you look at Rutt’s portfolio, it’s equally obvious that she’s not kidding around. The Detroit-based mixed-media artist has painted murals in Saint-Nazaire,
France, and underpass supports beneath Cleveland highways. She has covered urban basketball courts in graphic pastels and, in Michigan, the shop window of a Madewell retail store in energetic abstract silhouettes. Even when she’s not painting, the cheeky, pop-art shape language of Rutt’s primary medium keeps appearing in her work: stitched on throw pillows, printed on sweatshirts, stamped onto eyeglass cloths that wink back when you polish your lenses. She’s the kind of maker whose vision is so singular that it verges on a brand—and strong brands, as we know, can shape virtually every element of our reality.
FA S H I O N S TO R Y CO N C EI V ED A N D C R E AT ED I N CO L L A B O R AT I O N W I T H EL L EN R U T T G A R M E N T S: E llen Rutt (ellenrutt.com) P H OTO G R A P H Y: Attilio D’Agostino S T Y L I S T S: E l l e n R u t t a n d C o l e D a v i s M O D E L S: C ole Davis and Uribi Alexandra A S S I S TA N T: H annah Verity
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How do you create a voice as unique as that? What kind of person can create a visual identity flexible enough to be blown up to building-size or shrunk down to fit in a frame hung on a bedroom wall? If you asked Rutt those questions, she may not have an answer for you. She’s a humble, clear-spoken presence whether she’s talking about a commission she did for a Fortune 500 company or her childhood in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield. That childhood, as she describes it, was a fairly ordinary one, if a little more creatively nurturing than most. Rutt’s mother works at Waldorf school—you know, the one where all the kids make beeswax sculptures and tell folktales during circle time and do something called eurythmy instead of P.E. class. Rutt attended throughout elementary and middle school. “It’s so cliché to say, ‘Oh, I was an artist since I was a child,’ but I feel like I probably was,” Rutt says. “I had an education that takes a more holistic approach to learning through hands-on making, and art was integrated into many aspects of that particular pedagogy. So I was farming and gardening and painting and making things and cooking all throughout my childhood as part of school. That creative part of me was always being nurtured.” And then high school rolled around, and Rutt enrolled in public school. It wasn’t exactly a smooth transition. “Everything was totally standardized, and I was just nobody,” she says. “I was so awkward. It was a very important thing for me to experience. It was fucking awful, but I’m really glad it happened.” In a way, you can still feel traces of these formative years
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in Rutt’s adult work. After spending her childhood in a classroom alongside 12 kids who she says were “like family,” and then leaving them behind, she turned to making work populated by a tiny handful of familiar, comforting shapes: a connected row of triangles that evoke a kindergartner’s construction-paper crown, Keith Haring-esque squiggles and friendly rhomboids. “Through shapes, I’m able to say more than by always being literal,” Rutt muses. “The way a round, blobby shape meets an angular shape—to me, these things embody qualities. So one shape might be short and pointy; that’s me after I’ve had too much coffee that day and I’m just so anxious and sharp. Others are sort of loose and round. In a way, they are like characters.” What’s most intriguing about Rutt’s work is how she uses that shape-language to articulate most anything that she likes. When she studied visual art at the University of Michigan—mostly for the financial aid package, she says—she was more attracted to conversations with neuroscience majors or burgeoning environmental scientists. She started bringing those conversations back into her studio, experimenting with context and collage to evoke complexity. After university, Rutt might have launched straight into the kind of intellectually curious, medium-spanning career she has now. But like a lot of young American artists, she had to make a financially necessary detour first—into a windowless cubicle. “My whole life I would say, ‘I’m never going to work a nine-to-five. I’m never going to work in a cubicle. I’m never going to have to do that!’” Rutt says. “And then I graduated from college, and I was working freelance, but I just didn’t have any of the internal or external support systems to make that work. I
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didn’t have the self-discipline. I was smoking way too much weed. I didn’t have connections. It was tough. And I’d moved to Detroit—a city filing for bankruptcy at the time. Who had money to pay for me to aestheticize their business? I don’t know what I was thinking.” Rutt took a job as an art director at an ad agency, designing what she describes as “home-security company brochures and ham-themed products for a meat company—and I was a vegetarian.” She could finally pay her rent, but she had trouble finding the energy at the end of the day to devote to her own work. “Finally I thought, ‘I either let this job take away everything that I value, or I don’t,’” Rutt says. “The question really was, ‘How can you be a person who you like in a situation that you hate? How can you not let it drain you?’ It’s such a gift to be able to say, ‘No, I will wake up every day extra early, so when I’m really fresh I can do some stuff before work,’ or ‘Here are the friends that I just have to let go if I really want to make art still, because they want to go to the bar and I just don’t have time to do it all.’” That hard lesson in commitment paid off in 2015, when Rutt was offered a job at Detroit’s Murals in the Market festival. It was only part time, and it came with a huge pay cut. But she saw an opportunity. “They had approached me right around the time that it felt like all my projects at this job were starting to wrap up, and I could either be put on more jobs or not,” Rutt says, “That was the moment when I was like, ‘Man, this is my exit. I see it really clearly.’” There’s something distinctly millennial about Rutt’s story. If that sounds like an insult, you don’t know her generation. Because when she took that leap out of the ad agency and into a more tenuous life of a freelancer with a part-time job as her only financial anchor, Rutt began hustling in a way that’s hard to understand if you didn’t come of age in the wake of a global financial crisis. That hustle is hard and
self-sacrificing, but what makes it unique to this generational moment is that it is not indiscriminate, even in moments of desperation. Rutt has been working not just to make a paycheck through art that can sustain her needs, but also to make the kind of art that challenges the systems that make the project of survival so dire in the first place. Rutt has helped paint murals that proclaimed “Do Not Bid!” on the side of recently foreclosed homes visible to anyone who showed up for the auction. She has composed collages of diverse Detroiters interacting with swarms of her signature shapes, a project she described to journalists as a call for inclusivity in a town where fairness too often fractures along racial lines. Even as Rutt’s work has grown less representational, she is acutely sensitive to political questions that surround the act of art-making and the ethical imperative behind even the most abstract work. How else could you make public art in a city like Detroit? “I think context for murals plays a huge role,” Rutt says. “In Times Square, if you were going to [paint a mural], it’s going to be for tourists. But when you make something in Detroit, there are so few tourists here that you really are making work for the people who live around it. So I think that it is my responsibility as an artist to not undermine the systems of belonging that exist here, that I am aware of who it is I’m speaking to.” But even when Rutt’s work takes her far from the city she loves, she still has something to say. That’s the thing about a voice as unique as hers: it keeps speaking and speaking and speaking. Perhaps one of Rutt’s most inspiring projects to date is “Nothing is Separate.” It was originally envisioned as a mural in Hilo, Hawaii, where Rutt was invited to attend the Temple Children artist residency. But
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the project fell through; the owner of the building she was meant to paint stopped responding to her emails, and she couldn’t secure an alternative space. A muralist can’t work without a wall—but Rutt isn’t just a muralist. She found some scrap wood in a shed at the back of the artist residency, and she started to paint. Shapes that had been with her for years—sharp, anxious triangles and grinning hemispheres, in the signature colors she’s painted on surfaces from Soho to Saint-Nazaire—found their way back into her artistic palette. Rutt decided she would take these shapes and haul them with her to the places all over the island “to make these impromptu compositions in the landscape, responding to that landscape, using the environment to sort of collage in space and time.” It was hard, physical work, sweating up mountainsides in the Hawaii sun. Rutt didn’t use any screws or nails to hold the shapes in place—only gravity and balance, carefully studying the contours of the geography she intended to augment. What she created looks anything but happenstance: elegantly composed murals in places where there will never be walls, on beaches and in the depths of glens, Technicolor forms leaning up against ancient-looking trees. The only thing more impactful than the project itself is the knowledge that, when the day was done—the shapes were packed up and hauled off again—the natural landscape was restored. What won’t Ellen Rutt paint? “I think it’s more a question of who I won’t paint for,” she says. “I don’t think I would paint for McDonald’s. I don’t think I would paint for the corporations who I think are contributing negatively to the quality of life for future generations. The more I work, the more clear I am about who I would prefer to say no to.” It’s not hard to picture her carrying that ethos into whatever adventure comes next, loaded on her back if she needs to, and trekking as high as she can climb.
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THE A RT OF LEG AC Y An introduc tion to the Anderson Center and Direc tor Stephanie Rogers. by EILEEN G’SELL / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
To those unfamiliar with southeastern Minnesota, the Driftless region sounds a bit like the name of an Eastwood ghost town or Tolkien Hither Land—but in fact it boasts some of the most spectacular terrain in the country. Here, amidst bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River valley, reigns—or perhaps hides—the Anderson Center, a residency space and community arts center offering musical performances, poetry readings and local outreach year-round. Under the new stewardship of Executive Director Stephanie Rogers, the center would seem more firmly rooted, more “driftless,” than ever. “It’s quieter here,” reflects Anderson, an introspective person who selects
her words carefully. “In Minneapolis, the noise of the city was wearing on me. I’m not sure if anyone is ever able to fully tune that out. It’s important that rural communities have access to the level of talent that our residents bring in, but it’s also amazing to see artists from big cities have their jaws drop when they see that there’s a third floor to the house, a library on every floor. There’s just so much space.” A Georgian Revival house on the National Register of Historic Places, the center is a majestic abode of antique furniture, painted ceilings and staircases that, well, just won’t quit. With only five people living and working in the space at a time, the residency is
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“intimate,” in Rogers’ words. “It’s very intentionally set up to have a sense of a cohort. Everyone comes in at the same time. A full month really gives the chance for the group to create deep bonds and the chance for people to get really into their projects and make major progress.” Assuming the helm in early 2018 from poet Robert Hedin, who transformed the historic estate in the city of Red Wing into a residency in 1995, Rogers emphasizes the legacy she has graciously inherited. “His impact and vision are huge, and I have tremendous respect for the work that Robert and his wife, Carolyn, did,” she asserts. “It was a huge job, and he didn’t take a salary. He went to work for 20 years to support artists and the community.” From the Anderson barn, a refulgent space appointed for events and readings, Rogers looks up to the rafters upon explaining the distinctive nature of her new home of 16,500 members. Having grown up in Chillicothe, Missouri, Rogers gravitated toward the small town. But an hour away from the Twin Cities, “it’s definitely not a suburb,” she emphasizes. “Part of why I wanted to be here is that most of my professional life has been working with really diverse communities and arts organizations in major metro areas, but my whole upbringing was in a much more rural environment. In 2015 and 2016, it became clear that there is a massive rural-urban divide in this country—how we think of each other in terms of class divisions, to say nothing of racial divisions, has received a lot of attention. I care a lot about both rural and urban communities, which puts me in a unique position here to make a difference.”
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Attracting writers and visual artists from around the world for residencies, the Anderson Center proves cosmopolitan in scope but very anchored in its environs. “Pursuing my MFA on the East Coast,” Rogers reflects of her time studying photography at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, “one of the things that struck me is how the cross-pollination of ideas can happen in such a densely populated area. In the Midwest, that kind of access usually just isn’t possible. But I do think that in those urban environments you lose something as well. The psychological impact of being in nature and what that does for us as human beings is well documented. The Anderson Center is a lifeline in both ways for all sorts of people.” Integrated into the Red Wing community, the organization’s residents each conduct an outreach program during their stay, interacting with citizens every season. “There’s a lot of talk about arts access, and there are definitely geographical barriers for small communities and towns,” Rogers says. “When I was a kid, I thought the Impressionists were the pinnacle of artistic achievement in high school because those were the only books in our local library. I was well into high school the first time I went to an art museum, despite the privilege I had being a middle-class person from a well-educated family. Just the fact that I have a career in this field is amazing.” After running the Third Place Gallery in Minneapolis—a Chicago Avenue hub renowned for its collaborative artistic output—Rogers was well prepared for the directorial role at the Anderson Center four years later. “It became clear to me through running the gallery that I get as much joy and satisfaction in
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supporting other artists’ work, helping them find an audience and seeing them achieve their artistic goals, as I do with my own work. I don’t privilege one over the other.” Rogers’ background across creative disciplines and professional sectors further contributed to her interest in the role—one demanding a plethora of practical know-how along with creative acumen. “Many people my age graduated college right before the recession was hitting,” she reflects. “I’ve been a professional house painter, a graphic designer. I have worked in a veterinary clinic, in for-profit, nonprofit and university settings. I’ve been an adjunct professor. I’ve done freelance project management work. I have been running my own business as an independent artist, as well as working with other small businesses with their websites, bookkeeping and big public-art projects. All of it adds up to having the skill set required to direct this type of nonprofit.” A Missouri-Minnesota hybrid, Rogers spent half her early life north at summer camps in the North Woods, working there while in college at St. Olaf, not far from Red Wing. “Minnesotans have incredible public funding for the arts—more public funding per capita than any other state in the country. And private foundations—most notably, the Jerome Foundation, the Bush Foundation and the McKnight Foundation—contribute to that. I think most people would attribute this to the strong presence of Scandinavian immigrants in this region—that sense of civic responsibility, of giving back.” Despite her 34 years, Rogers speaks of the original Anderson family—of Quaker Puffed cereal acclaim—as though they are friends with whom she regularly toasts at a local pub. Whether it’s the first
female ambassador in the U.S. State Department or the founder of the first Red Wing hot lunch program, the Andersons were not the type of tony folk to hole up in the Hamptons. “These were people who had a sense that there’s a duty to give back. They were leaders in Red Wing. Living here, I meet a lot of people who remember them. When you realize how many major inventions and creative innovations have happened here, it gives one a sense of humility, but it is also motivating, for me, to live up to that standard.” Rogers admits that it’s still too early to tell how directing the center has affected her own artistic output, but it is quite clear that she is making an impact on the town. While the center has long been known for its literary clout, she sees opportunities to expand support for the visual arts—including a printmaking space and a revamped dark room. This fall, a series of authors will visit and Rogers is working to include a Dakota writer or poet in the mix. “There is a Native American community within the city limits of Red Wing. Prairie Island Indian Community is part of the city. We know that representation matters here.” A younger steward, though inarguably experienced, Rogers represents a seismic shift in arts leadership across the state. “All three arts organizations in Red Wing are now run by young women who are millennials or Gen Xers,” she shares. “Four years ago, they were all run by baby boomer men.” For her part, she’d like to put the region more firmly on the national map. “Humility is valued in the Midwest, but especially in Minnesota,” she says. “The Anderson Center has very quietly been doing incredible things for 24 years. One of my goals is—to a little less quietly—invite more people in.”
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A Spaghetti That Grows on Trees
By Amelia Martens
You want to be an artist in space. We throw fog across the exact number of female astronauts and drive you to art class. We buy a globe so you know what Earth looks like from the outside. You are outside. In the car of a thousand questions, it is too loud to explain how we want you to merge and not merge. We want you to be everything, and elsewhere on Earth: your body is so undervalued, some other mother is forced to leave her daughter by the roadside, abandoned in a wasteland of toxic preferences. We do not show you the numbers; instead, we fill your bookshelves with famous and should-be-famous women. Look, look, look—we say did you know—and we did not know. And we do not know. And what injustice are we doing by not telling you. There is a layer of atmosphere that wants to burn you on exit and re-entry. Look, look, look—the stars, you say, send a message of dead light in a blink and miss it code. Look again, you say—see this planet, no one knows yet—look—new trees.
AMELIA MARTENS is the author of “The Spoons in the Grass Are There to Dig a Moat” (Sarabande Books, 2016), and four poetry chapbooks, including “Ursa Minor” (elsewhere magazine, 2018). She is the recipient of a 2019 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council; her work has also been supported by a Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship to Rivendell Writers’ Colony and by the Kentucky Foundation for Women. The title of the poem above comes from Bradford Angier’s book “How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A complete Guide to Food, Shelter and Self-Preservation That Makes Starvation in the Wilderness Next to Impossible.” She met her husband in the Indiana University MFA program; together they have created the Rivertown Reading Series, “Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art” and two awesome daughters.
VOLUME 18 ISSUE 2
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