cup o' sugar

Peavey Plaza: Nicollet Mall and 11th Street

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:54:17 -0700

If you like baby pandas, you'll love Peavey Plaza. Both need your support and protection. But Peavey could also do with a really delicious falafel vendor and some stunt clowns.

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Project: Design a Livable Street | GOOD

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:27:45 -0700

via good.is

http://www.good.is/post/project-design-a-livable-street/

This looks fun! I'm in.

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Placeography. Wherever you go, there you are.

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:00:00 -0700

via placeography.org

A project of the Minnesota Historical Society, associated with the Center for World Heritage Studies and the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota. Dayton's Bluff walking tour? Ahhh yeah.

The site also has interactive map tours (modernism in msp, for example)...need more time to look this over. wow, I'm too excited to blog about it...

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International Cooking Series: French Cuisine

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:43:04 -0700

via recipezaar.com

http://www.recipezaar.com/sitenews/post.php?pid=1012#

Quel idéal de chance! Le français est la nouvelle mexicain... Since December 31st I've been conspiring to build a respectable french cooking competency in 2009. This article and recipe collection is just the starting point/reminder that I needed—even as I simultaneously make good on my promise to learn to cook Mexican beans and rice. (They warn you to pick through the dry beans for rocks and other miscellaneous oddities. With good reason I'm finding!) Bon appétit, mes amis!

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Spotted last night: Wing Young Huie

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:34:00 -0700

via wingyounghuie.com

Beyond Borders Film Festival, Parkway Theater. I lurked around for a good 5 minutes hoping to catch a moment to break in and introduce myself (saying something clever about our mutual love of lake street, etc.). alas, the man had a 6-person entourage/force field around him and the movie was about to start. I suppose I'll send him an email instead...in the meantime, i have to share these photos. i think his frogtown (st. paul) series is even more brilliant than his lake street work.

http://www.wingyounghuie.com/frogtown.html#

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Peavey Plaza, Modern Marvel

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:58:00 -0700

On Tuesday Ange Tank and I trekked to Rapson Hall at the U of M for a round table discussion on Peavey Plaza hosted by our landscape architect friend Carrie Christensen. Carrie is involved with a couple of LA organzations (HALS, MASLA) working to advocate on behalf of Peavey and its preservation as an important, historic designed space in downtown Minneapolis. Peavey Plaza's reputation has suffered over the years due to various reasons (lack of maintenance, modernism's fall from favor, etc.), and now neighboring Orchestra Hall is applying serious pressure for a complete renovation of the space. Boo to that! First of all, the space belongs to the city/the public, not OH. Second, a little foresight is all it takes to realize the plaza's future value as an iconic design artifact representing the City's massive urban renewal that went on during the late 50's through the 70's. Third, the plaza is the only public green space in that area of downtown, connecting Nicollet Mall and bookending Loring Green/Grand Rounds (the power of maps to reveal connections!).

Last year Peavey advocates' efforts yielded a designation for the plaza as a Marvel of Modernism. Current efforts focus on persuading MPLS City officials to grant it historical landmark status, which wouldn't inhibit adaptive change to the design (that's not the point, anyway), but would help ensure the process followed guidelines that would maintain the integrity of M. Paul Friedberg's original design.

I'm not a downtown girl by any means, so my experience with Peavey is extraordinarily limited...can't even say that I've ever walked through it (just past it). Still, I'm a die-hard fan of modernism (seriously, I fail to see the hard sell), especially when modernism responds sensitively to local needs/environs/culture/etc. (no, that's not an oxymoron, that's good design). I'm also a fan of public spaces like parks and plazas in general...places that bring people together, link the city to the natural world. Ben and I were recently in Mexico and visited about two dozen fabulous examples of public plazas and parks. Seeing the ways the Mexican people utilize and capitalize on their public spaces was inspiring! We saw food carts, balloon vendors, clowns, bike tricksters, capoiera, concerts, quinceañera parties, superballers (oh, wait, that was us), elderly folks, young folks, middle-aged folks...it was awesome (the power of plazas to create connections!).

Back to MPLS, here's a link to a story on Peavey Plaza on MPR from this past December.

At the event on Tuesday, Gina Bonsignore (President, MASLA) asked me and Tank to help out as we could in terms of spreading the word through our design and friend networks. So, there you have it. And now that the sun is shining a little brighter each day, it only makes sense if you are in the downtown vicinity to head over to Peavey Plaza and spend a few minutes appreciating it. Then, tell your friends to tell their friends...and that's how this works, see. Lastly, I heard something about a MPLS modernism walking tour scheduled some time in mid-May (May 16th?). As the date gets closer I'll get more info and share online. Sounds like a fun mini-staycation and a chance to appreciate our unique brand of metro cool a little more deeply.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Carolyn Salas' 300 point buck

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:10:09 -0700

via carolynsalas.com

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Bus driver delivers free home-cooked meals - CNN.com

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:52:00 -0700

via cnn.com

Not in the headline—it's buried in the text, but it's there...this guy arrived as an undocumented immigrant, now he's feeding 70,000 on a $2500/month salary. Contrast: last year a woman denied access to driver's education/license has an accident, hits a bus, kills a child, headline screams "illegal immigrant". I keep saying this...but the words, names, headlines we use matter.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/03/19/cnnheroes.jorge.munoz/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

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Named and Nameless/Green Revolution 2.0

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:28:00 -0800

I'm in my favorite seat in the Harvest Room at the SPSC (University of Minnesota, St. Paul Campus, to provide some add'l grounding). The window wall faces the woody hillside in front of McNeal and I'm thankful for the sunshine. My chair sits beneath a portrait of Norman Borlaug, a simple plant breeder, Iowa born, U of M graduate. But just up the hill and left of McNeal sits Borlaug Hall...named for the man who was the father of the Green Revolution, the 1970 Nobel Peace Price recipient, and credited with saving over a billion lives...more than any other human in history. He did this by using scientific methods to develop high-yield and disease-resistant crops for developing nations, then personally overseeing their delivery and adoption in more than 20 countries.
I hadn't heard of Borlaug prior to coming to grad school here at the U, but apparently I'm not alone. This 10+ year old article from the Atlantic Monthly provides some good background on our region's unsung hero, and raises some interesting discussion topics at the same time. Like what about over-population? The "greenness" of chemical farming? The loss of traditional culture?
Discussion is good, but I'll defend my affinity for Borlaug for a couple of purely subjective reasons. Never having met him, I imagine him as a humble guy (part of that whole unsung thing). Plus, he's a good Norwegian, and obviously I dig that. Add to that, I just consulted the trusted info source that is Wikipedia and learned that Borlaug met his wife Margaret in Dinkytown at a coffeeshop in 1933. That's just darn cute. They were married 69 years till Margaret's passing in March of 2007.
This Spring I'm TA'ing a class that started out meeting in Borlaug Hall. Maybe it was the fact that it always feels good to vacate McNeal, or maybe the architecture of Borlaug just really is fabulous (I don't know if that's true—the interior signage certainly does suck), or maybe it is related to this idea of the power of naming...like the notion of space vs. anti-space being defined by design intent or lack thereof, an object/entity's symbolic power/meaning owing to its name (or lack thereof). Borlaug Hall feels free of pretension, full of possibilities.
I had hoped to tie these meanderings in with some other disjointed thoughts, like how great it is that the U of M now composts the vast majority of all food-related waste...right here at the SPSC there's a uniformed student agent manning the toss cans. It's another kind of Green Revolution. Borlaug's was concerned with production, ours is reduction. His was remarkably his own, ours belongs to everyone (hence the 2.0 addendum). We're all responsible in this networked interface, contributing to the pile of scraps filling those bins (or not). I like the thought of this, of being an unsung hero in a collective of unsung heroes carefully separating my plastics from my paper. Sometimes it's ok to be nameless. But I also like the thought that this space (this campus) is designed space, and the things produced here have names. It's a gentle reassurance to those of us (like me from time to time) who get to wondering whether all our academic seed-sowing will ever yield a harvest, and whether that harvest will feed anyone beyond our campus. And whose names will imbue future buildings with possibilities.

Adding a favorite by Manolo García, birdsong (I can hear them through the windows) in keeping with the nameless choir/green theme. Also posting the flyer for the CDes Greenlight group's GreenScreen events (Yes Men is worth watching).

Pájaros De Barro by Manolo García
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Pajaros De Barro.mp3 (3849 KB)

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greenscreen poster.pdf (65 KB)

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Making art of New York's urban ruins: Miru Kim

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:51:57 -0800

via blog.ted.com

Saw this on TED.com, a simple concept, but she executes it so sensitively and relentlessly. Fascinating urban history. I like the way she talks, too.

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Still Gentle On My Mind...

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:53:15 -0800

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Gentle On My Mind by Dean Martin
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Gentle On My Mind.mp3 (2466 KB)

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Backfloating

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:37:01 -0800

Out of the blue today I received an email from the MN Women's Press asking to use one of my one-line drawings for the cover of their upcoming April 2009 issue. The selected artwork is from 2002, never one of my personal favorites, just one that I happened to scan at some point, post to my mnartists.org page, and then leave to sit unattended all these years. The tiny occurrence of this editor stumbling across this piece now and liking it enough to ask permission to use it...well it's a little mind-boggling. And humbling. And awesome.

She wants the artwork asap, so tonight I pulled out my old portfolio to make sure I still had that piece in my possession (prone as I am to giving things away willy-nilly, my attachment to my projects pretty much ceasing upon their completion). Thankfully, it's here, intact, safe in its protective sleeve. And then I found all these other half-forgotten treasures...artifacts from that period of my early 20s when I could barely let a day pass without producing a handful of drawings. Makes me nostalgic (or is it the Haley Bonar on play right now, also associated with that era...?). Makes me think of how aware I was of being in that transition from child to grown-up, and feeling dang insecure about it at times...but at least cool enough to admit it.

Well then, in the spirit of a childhood spent on Mille Lacs' south shore, and a teetering adulthood that still gravitates to large bodies of water, I share these scribble memories/metaphors of sunny seasons/growing up. Chase away the winter chill. Even though this may go down as the warmest winter on record...

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Barrio Trippin'

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:19:15 -0800

Food is more than food. Denise Chávez spends the entirety of her book, A Taco Testimony, making this point. And grandmaster Octavio Paz gets right down to it in his essay on hygiene and repression ("At Table and in Bed"): "[American cuisine]...is the...contrary...of Mexican...cuisine, whose secret is the shock of tastes: cool and piquant, salt and sweet, hot and tart, pungent and delicate. Desire is the active agent, the secret producer of changes...In gastronomy as in the erotic, it's desire that sets substances, bodies, and sensations in motion; this is the power that rules their conjunction, commingling, and transmutation" (Paz, 1987, 76).

Speaking of desire, the first photo is the physical embodiment of a serious taco fixation. What follows are photo-maps of the flavors and contrasts explored in yesterday's barrio-quest to feed that desire. First stop, Lake and 5th (Lake Plaza). Sopes/picaditas (cool and piquant, check)...these were hot off the grill, the salsa freshly made (still warm) and perfectly rambunctious over the crumbly queso fresco. Then, two tacos, one al pastor (that pineappley spit of roast beast), one de barbacoa (goat). This plate of contrasts is a map of the tongue: sour, salty, sweet, bitter; a harmony of color: complementary greens and magenta flanking desaturated orange and yellow; and a tactile collage of hot vs cold, rough vs smooth, wet vs dry, dense vs feather-light. You eat tacos with your hands. That says something right there. Utensils did come in handy in addressing the chicken mole, rice, and beans, however...but mainly just to dissect the meat from the bones and pile it onto warm tortillas...which were then also eaten with hands.

Our next stop was Mercado Central at Lake and Bloomington where a young girl fed three carrots as thick as my wrists through a giant extractor, then cut the heaviness with a double-shot of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Kyle and I were feeling a little gluttonous by this time (desire breeds desire), so we also bought two pieces of cake from the panadería (vainilla con fresa for him, chocolate con durazno for me). It would have been all sweetness at this point were it not for the Subcomandante Marcos t-shirt that Kyle had nabbed for $10 (US) in a vendor stall on 5th (viva el contraste!). The kid is smart, after all. He made the connection between the mole and Jamaican jerk sauce, and despite having never read Octavio Paz, he observed all on his own—and in an utterly serious tone—that "Mexican people really know how to party". Food is more than food.

Now: Who wants to work with me to start a recycling/composting/green awareness campaign in the barrio? It is sorely, sorely needed and could tie in to other citizenship-building efforts. Is landfill remorse from styrofoam dishes and plastic h20 bottles the necessary contrast/counterpoint to this garden of gastronomical delights? Let's hope not.

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EXPOSED | Senior Fashion Show at Rapson

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:18:00 -0800

Some shots from last evening's seriously fierce (thanks, Tyra) EXPOSED senior fashion show at Rapson Hall. Props to my former students (Lauren, Laura, Elyse, you girls rocked!)...feeling very proud and very inspired. Thinking I might wear dresses and fun vintage jewelry all week. The Calpurnia Peach ladies also put out an amazing line. Looking for an excuse, any excuse, to buy their army tank screenprinted tights I saw at Design Collective...

Photos shot with my Canon SD 300, unretouched, sans flash, and always in motion. Pretty aquarelles, not too shabby considering...oh, but I want the G10...

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Sinnerman by Thomas Crown Affair
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SinnerMan.mp3 (7720 KB)

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That's how I roll...

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:14:00 -0800

Kicking off the borrow/lend/share/connect-fest with three random digi-things within easy reach...nice to meet yas. And since good fences make good neighbors, may I suggest some ground rules? I, Kristin, post things that strike my fancy. If I do it every day, great. If I'm away for two weeks, just keep an eye on the place for me, would ya? I'll thank you later with homemade lefse.

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Where Fugees At by Wyclef Jean
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02 Where Fugees At.mp3 (5344 KB)

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