Local artist creates community Eden

BY STEVE BUTCHER

You have just purchased the abandoned lot adjacent to your house for a fraction of its assessed value. For your next step do you:

1) Install an in-ground pool?
2) Flip your new purchase to a developer?
3) Go to Disney World?
4) Open your lot to public access?
If you chose option 4, you are that rarest of creatures—the full-fledged urban philanthropist. You also have a lot in common with South Minn-eapolis resident Florence Hill.

When Hill first moved to her house on Chicago Avenue, in 1975, the burned-out barbecue restaurant next door had long since become a weed-choked Charybdis, breathing vagrants and dope-slingers. By 1990, the City finally abandoned its search for the owners and decided to sell it. “I got a notice in the mail announcing an auction,” Hill recalled. “I went downtown to ask about making a bid, and they told me that as the adjoining property owner I would have first dibs. They said that I could have it if I was willing to cover the bill for the back taxes. I wrote a check on the spot—$1,543.”

Hill, an artist with a studio in Northeast Minneapolis, grew up on a working farm in Greenbush, Minn.—the nearest city, Thief River Falls, lay 50 miles away—where she went to a one-room school. She chased fireflies and explored the peat bog near her house, where she unearthed the occasional fossil. Her childhood infused her with an appreciation for the value of land, particularly its role in shaping and preserving human interaction. She carried those memories with her when she left the area, moving first to Hopkins in 1949, and then on to the 3200 block of Chicago Avenue, to a neighborhood of like-minded artists and performers. But she soon encountered the hard reality of life on a mixed-zone street. Grime encrusted hollow-eyed buildings lurked on every block. And it was especially unnerving to find crouched adjacent to her own house a full-blown neighborhood eyesore. By handing a check to the city of Minneapolis, Hill was finally rid of a bad headache.

She soon received a visit from next-door neighbor Amy Blumenshine. A longtime activist since moving to the Powderhorn Park neighborhood in 1982, Blumenshine watched in frustration as the lot steadily decayed. She too was a product of a rural environment (she grew up in central Illinois), and she endorsed the idea of preservation. But she was also looking to do something a little more creative. “I believe in community building activities,” she said. “I saw [the lot] as a place to incorporate an aesthetic beyond just landscaping.” The stimulus was the continuing problem with crime. “In January 1990, a friend was held up at knife point on his front steps,” she recalled. “There were businesses on Lake Street that seemed to be closing all at once. I felt a need to respond; to make a statement. Something had to happen.”

With Blumenshine’s help, other Powderhorn residents stepped forward. “We had a lot of artists living in the area, so we talked about starting something for the kids,” she said. “We talked about doing some pottery, some music, some theater.” The Minneapolis Community Development Agency approved a grant request. Someone rented a Bobcat and spent a Saturday filling, grading and leveling. Knox Lumber in Hopkins donated boards that were used to support a raised flowerbed along the 32nd Street side of the property. The annual Dayton’s Spring Flower Show donated several packets of roses, lilies, dogwoods, and daffodils. Out of the extra wood came the present gate-and-bench configuration, suggestive of the entrance to a Shinto Shrine, that looks diagonally out across the 32nd Street/Chicago intersection. Thus was born ArtStop Garden.

Through the intervening years a handful of dedicated neighbors continued to build upon the garden. In addition to Hill and Blumenshine, the roster included singer/composer Barb Tilsen, organizer Denise Mayotte, photographer Tina Nemetz, and sculptor Christy Atkinson, all of whom lived within a couple of blocks of one another. Like many of the planners, Atkinson, currently associate director of education at the Walker Art Center, played a dual role—as artist and as organizer. Indeed, the “Change Spiral”, one of the garden’s three permanent sculptures, was the product of a collaboration between Atkinson and Elizabeth Crawford. Installed in 1994, its genesis provides a terrific illustration of how each garden activity generated its own dynamic.

The “Change Spiral” incorporates more than 500 tiles into a sinuous, graceful wall that rises from the ground in one continuous 25 foot long counterclockwise swirl. Atkinson envisioned the work as a bench for people to use while they waited for the No. 5 northbound bus. Every Saturday, from June through August, she and Crawford laid in a stock of cinder blocks, grout and clay, and then went around the neighborhood inviting everyone to the garden. Each respondent—mostly children, with a smattering of adults—was instructed to cut out four tiles, about 2½ inches square, and to inscribe them with the design, emblem or words of their choice. At the end of the day, the tiles were loaded into Crawford’s truck and taken to her kiln, where they were glazed and fired. The tiles were then trucked back to the garden and cemented onto the cinder blocks.

The resulting mosaic contains images ranging from the kitschy (likenesses of comic book superheroes), to the novel (Aztec-like designs that convey a sense of distant culture), to the enigmatic (“The last result of wisdom stamps it true”), to the cute (“Gary Ind. Loves U”). The intention, according to Atkinson, was to convey “something about change” in the lives of the participants. It may be impossible to quantify any change that might have happened, but the process impressed the sculpture’s two organizers. “I loved how everybody seemed to contribute something,” said Atkinson. “There were so many cool kids around there. We had some Mexican kids who came over with their parents, and we had some punks who lived nearby.” The spontaneity and style that flowed from so many sets of hands struck Crawford as “wonderfully chaotic.” Most important to her was the fact that the spiral would forever be a part of the garden’s identity, to be touched, climbed on, and enjoyed by whoever might happen along. “Its shared art,” she said. “Creating that type of interaction is a major reason why I went from exhibiting in galleries, to writing and illustrating children’s books.”

Barb Tilsen has since assumed the role of defacto garden archivist, a position she inherited via her involvement on the ArtPower planning committee. Tilsen is a longtime Powderhorn resident whose interest in the garden stemmed from her participation in Sound Beginnings, a children’s instructional program she founded in 1985. She and puppeteer Margo McCreary collaborated on a 1993 ArtStop show about a stolen bicycle. In the garden, the two performers had children fabricate puppets, and create and rehearse a story. Their props consisted of everyday bric-a-brac: a couple of sheets and a cardboard box. They then embarked on a tour of the neighborhood, stopping at front porches where their troupe went through its paces. The play’s theme centered upon issues of crime and community. But as with so much that is connected with Artstop, the subsurface motive focused on making the neighborhood a bit smaller and less threatening. “Our purpose was to bring kids together in new ways,” Tilsen said. “I think we were successful. [We wanted] to establish new relationships so people would learn to talk to one another.”

In recent years, organized activity in the garden has slackened; the last of the annual ArtPower projects took place in 2002. “The core group changed over time,” said Tilsen. “One year we lost three critical people who went on to other things. That’s when it got to be really difficult.” The fact that the garden’s many volunteers and artists never incorporated probably hastened what Amy Blumenshine acknowledged was “the dissipation of the founding energy.” But, she added, the garden “has it’s own life, and it continues to come back through hard winters and hot summers.”

It is the garden’s botanical qualities that are most pleasing to its owner. “Over the years I’ve let milkweed and phlox grow there for the butterflies,” says Florence Hill. “I’ve seen some cardinals there. I think it has gotten to the point where it has become properly disheveled. It has good karma. It’s never fenced, there are no rules, and it’s open for family picnics, or whatever someone wants to do there. Future installations are OK as long as the sight-lines are retained. To do something would take a small campaign—leaflets, notices, publicity. If you want to do anything there this year, let me know—I think it would be terrific.”

Contact Florence Hill at 612-824-5738.