Art Hounds: Tiny tourism dioramas, Bluff Country studios and an anti-gallery

Art Hounds

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.

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Dioramas of the Twin Cities’ most beloved landmarks

Shari Aronson is the creative Co-Director of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz, whose work was featured on Art Hounds last week.

Continuing the chain of paying it forward, Shari recommends a “charming project” by Felicia Cooper called “The Agency for Tiny Tourism,” which is on view at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre. Cooper was selected by the National Humanities Center’s 2025 Being Human Festival.

She conducted interviews asking people about their favorite Twin Cities landmarks and also led workshops to make dioramas of those landmarks. Visitors to the free exhibit can get a new view of the Twin Cities on Friday evening from 7 to 10 p.m., with additional showings Saturday and Sunday.

Shari said: Everybody loves a diorama and peeking into a miniature world. I also am really curious to see which sites people depicted.

— Shari Aronson

A love of natural stone and kiln-fresh pottery

Kevin and Pam Bishop of Glenville enjoy the Bluff Country Studio Art Tour that spans southeast Minnesota each spring. Kevin is a custom wood furniture builder, and Pam calls herself an admirer of the arts. The art tour this year includes artists in 22 locations on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Bishops each have a favorite artist. Kevin likes the work of Ryan Palmer, whose studio in Lanesboro is called Livingstone Carver.

Kevin said: He does very unique work, sculpting natural stone, and we’re totally enamored with the outcomes of what stone can be with some correct tooling and knowledge of what you’re working with.

Pam recommends visiting Lanesboro potter Sue Pariseau.

Pam said: She’s got a really unique place where she designs and creates her pottery.

What I really appreciate is every year she does a special invite so that we can open the kiln as part of the weekend and get to see what’s been in the kiln, and have the first choice of what we want to maybe purchase while we’re there. But as important as that is just being with other artists.

— Kevin and Pam Bishop

Graffiti, chance and found object art

Kylie Linh Hoang is the assistant curator at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Last week she attended the standing-room-only opening of graffiti artist SHOCK’s gallery show at the Chambers Hotel in downtown Minneapolis.

The exhibit “Daydreaming at Midnight” runs through May 10. It’s a unique space for a show, dressed up with couches and plants for an “anti gallery space” feel, says Hoang, and the work on display derives from a unique artist residency.

As Hoang describes it, SHOCK was on his way home from St. Louis when his car broke down in Springfield, Ill., on a holiday weekend, so he set about doing some graffiti work at an abandoned flour mill. The building owners took a liking to his work and invited him to create an art installation in the space.

Kylie said: They couldn’t pay him, but they did tell him that he could take whatever he wanted from the building, because it was going to be demolished. And so a lot of the work in this show is their assemblages and paintings on found materials from that mill.

And so you’ll see things that were see things painted on, like doors from the facility, signs from the facility. He also created a number of lamps from materials found at the facility. He taught himself how to wire lamps. It’s a very cool assemblage of multimedia work.

— Kylie Linh Hoang