'Tis the season for Art Crawls

The St. Paul Art Crawl is spectacular and extensive. This two-day self-guided art tour occurs twice a year, in April and October. With a total of 200 artists’ studios and galleries to check out, we decided to visit the artists in the slightly more than four-block radius of Lowertown, St. Paul.

We parked in the lot behind the Black Dog coffee shop, on Prince and Broadway. Besides this wonderful coffee shop, the building also houses over a hundred of artists. Joe Paquet and Jeff Herinenko have a school/studio here called H&P Studios. Their work is a perfect example of perfect realism perfected. It is hyper-beautiful and hyper-real. Jeff Herinenko’s portraits give the viewer an uneasy feeling, similar to watching the ‘70s movie, “The Stepford Wives.” A perfect little girl gives you a perfect little smile, while holding a crock. Phony and saccharine, these paintings are technically adept but lacking in soul or purpose. The composition is obviously taken directly from the 19th Century French Academic painter Bougereau. One of the hardest things about being an artist is maintaining the delicate balance between craft and creativity. Here we see a perfect example of purely craft.

Joe Paquet is a landscape painter. Again, his work is brilliantly executed, but lacking. Paquet’s palette is a little washed out, leaving the paintings with a dry feeling. Beautiful vistas, but has he given us anything new to look at? Is the artist’s job to bring art to the next level? I think so. Yes, it is amazing to be able to paint as well as a photograph, but isn’t that the purpose of the photograph? Why not jump into the river of Art History and make work that is historically and socially relevant. Why not move beyond the trained monkey stage of technical trickery to more soulful art, something that says something to the viewer?

There is, of course, much work at these art crawls that is painfully lacking in technique, but very soulful. Put those two together and you’ve got a masterpiece.
A lack of galleries in the Twin Cities has created these Art Crawls. You can meet the artists and buy their art without the 50 percent mark up. The Lowertown lofts had a lot of amazing art. Patrick Maun is a photographer/installation artist who was selling his computer-generated (archival quality) photos for $20. Maun has taken beautiful photos of ice that look like milk pouring down rock. They are breathtaking. He was showing two series: the color photos were taken at the Apostle Islands, and the black and white photos were taken at Grey Cloud. While taking these “souvenirs” of his trips, he abstracts the landscape and finds natural patterns in the beautiful scenery.

The studio next door to him belongs to Rich Shelton, a well-known artist who will be showing at the Art Institute MAEP gallery soon. Shelton showed his large, full-figure digital print on canvas of an elderly couple holding hands. It is a beautiful and touching piece. The man, probably in his 70s, has the weathered face, overhauls and seed cap of a farmer. His gnarled and arthritic hands lovingly and gently hold the hands of his wife, a lovely woman of similar age with an equal amount of wrinkles. Their faces are both stern and quiet, but with a twinkle of love and kindness—faces that reveal a hard life that has been very fulfilling.

Art Crawls present many things to choose from: clothing, jewelry, things made out of tins, assemblage, paintings, sculpture, collage, photography, painful performance art, lovely music, you name it. There are a wide range of levels too: everything from very mature to just getting started, and “what in the world were they thinking?” It’s fun, it’s free, and the artists usually provide food and drink.

Even though the St. Paul Spring Art Crawl is over, more opportunities are coming up. There is the Northeast Art Crawl called the Art-A-Whirl (which even has buses to take you from building to building) May 16-18. There is a monthly gallery crawl in Northeast Minneapolis that takes place on the 13th of every month called 13th on 13th. And the Northside Arts Collective is having a Spring Art Party June 7, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 53rd and Lyndale. There is so much art to see now that it’s spring again. Thank God.