Robyn Hill Hendrix

Friendly Streets 2014

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I’m overjoyed to announce I’ve been hired as an Artist Organizer with the Friendly Streets Initiative, in partnership with the Hamline Midway Coalition and Springboard for the Arts. My 9 month appointment will include coordinating artistic projects within the FSI’s 2014 project sites to complement their local, grassroots community engagement work. It feels like a perfect continuation of the placemaking I did with Friendly Streets and Springboard three years ago, the social media consulting work I do for the Irrigate project, and all the knowledge and best practices I soaked up in the Intermedia Arts Creative Community Leadership Institute last year. And I’m sure my Land of Parcheesopoly dice and plethora of leftover sidewalk chalk from last summer’s open streets events will come in handy, too!

Background on Friendly Streets (or skip to the photos at the bottom if you want!)

Responding to neighbor concerns about the designation of Charles Avenue (which runs 2 blocks North of University Ave) as a potential bike boulevard in city plans, the Friendly Streets Initiative arose to search for ways residents could have active, effective and inclusive input into the future of the street. Working with the Hamline Midway Coalition and Frogtown Neighborhood Association, five block parties were held in the summer of 2011 that brought the civic engagement process out onto the pavement. Large images of various infrastructure and placemaking ideas were turned into a mobile gallery, and block party attendees could vote on ideas they liked best with stickers and post its. The “gallery of images” also added an interactive component to the more in depth paper surveys people were asked to fill out.

In addition, Friendly Streets partnered with Springboard for the Arts to hire ten artists (including me) to bring creative placemaking activities to the block parties. Community singing, painting, improv games, building sculptural ring toss benches, creating flags that were an ode to foreclosed homes on the block, bike flags, recycled magazine bowls, and a Q&A photo project brought fun, exciting energy to the parties while giving residents creative ways to express some of the concerns and issues they are facing. This work also informed Springboard’s continuing effort to connect artist and community through creative placemaking with the much larger Irrigate project which launched that fall.

After a successful run of summer block parties, the Friendly Streets team wrote a report summarizing the data and findings. This data combined with a tremendously strong outpouring of support from the community at additional Friendly Streets events and formal policy meetings the following year led to residents’ input being directly integrated into city plans for Charles Avenue, and construction of various improvements voted on by residents (such as bump outs and roundabouts) is set to begin in 2014.

The Friendly Streets team (headed by Lars Christiansen) was invited to bring their gallery of images and model of street-based community engagement to other neighborhoods in St. Paul facing similar challenges with regards to bicycle and pedestrian mobility, access to the new Green Line LRT and other neighborhood changes that come with heavy development projects such as the Central Corridor. Partnerships with the Frogtown Neighborhood Association, St. Anthony Park Community Council, Summit-University Planning Council, Desnoyer Park Improvement Association, and Union Park District Council are alive and flourishing. I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of it.

More info… 

From Envision MN: 10 Ways to Achieve Authentic Participation

On the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative blog: The Friendly Streets Initiative: Bringing Community Voices into the Planning Process by Lars Christiansen

On the Artist Organizer model: Artists as Organizers, A Fresh Approach to Community Development by Jay Walljasper for Twin Cities LISC

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Drinking in the Darkness

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CCLI Journal

“What if we were living our art in the service of skillful lives?” – Wendy Morris

“How can you have an existence that is simple and spacious and outrageously useful?” -Erik Takeshita

“Skepticism means you really care.” – Bill Cleveland

Two months ago…

During nap time, I sit in the dark surrounded by tiny little humans dozing away, and on a small device in the palm of my hand, I read about James Turrell, social entrepreneurship, feminism, gentrification, innovation, crowd sourcing, placemaking, crowd sourced placemaking, private-public partnerships, appropriation, social sculpture, sustainability, the “realest” tweets, vulnerability, baby boomers, millenials, thin privilege, Cindy Sherman, Theaster Gates, the many uses of chalkboard paint, rape culture, revolution on the other side of the world…and my heart beats hard, longing for action. And I sit still and listen to the children breathe in their peaceful slumber. Drinking in the darkness.

Drinking in the darkness. I didn’t get that phrase from teaching preschool. I heard it repeated ten, maybe eleven times, over the span of four and a half months, in improvised warm up exercises led by Wendy Morris at each convening of the Spring 2013 Creative Community Leadership Institute. Rub your hands together, she said. We let the rhythm spread to our shoulders, back, hips, whole body, two dozen souls inside flesh humming along. Stop. Put your hands, warmed from the friction, over your eyes. Drinking in the darkness.

I meant to write more about the Institute a while ago. Somehow the first paragraph above brought me back to that circle. It was originally just going to be a little Facebook status update. I wasn’t even thinking about CCLI. Yet suddenly that phrase came back to me, thinking about the darkened classroom where I hold a whispered vigil every afternoon, writing notes to parents and mixing tempera paint and catching up on an overwhelming backlog of “relevant” and “important” articles I’ve saved on my phone.

Skip ahead to October…

[Read more…]

Twenty-twelve.

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Happy New Year everyone! I’ve been visiting family in Portland, Oregon and eastern Washington for the past week, soaking up good family time, mountain views, and catching up with old friends while reflecting on the past year. Summing up 2012 is proving a little tricky. There’s been some tough stuff this year. Lots of transition, which is not exactly my favorite thing, thus the lack of fall art emails. I’ve been saying I’m in a bit of an “incubation period.” I’m not sure how much longer I can get away with that, but hey! I did some stuff, quite a lot actually, so here we go.

In January I took down my first solo show at the Baroque Room, selling two pieces to a retired physician who loved the microscopic, biological influence in my work and planned to have them hung at a library at Mayo Clinic.

In May I spoke to junior art majors at my alma mater Carleton College with fellow alums Dustin Yager and Mira Rojanasakul. Looking back at how my life and artwork has evolved over the past 7 or 8 years was surprisingly revelatory. That thing about not being able to connect all the dots until you look back later became very real for me and I saw continuous threads between my day jobs, studies abroad, and my artwork that helped me reexamine and rephrase the way I think and talk about what I do.

I dipped my feet in the arts festival world for the first time at Art-a-Whirl and Red Hot Art Festival. I made temporary tattoos of my artwork, which are funny, and a little bit weird (I still have some and would be happy to send you one if you missed out). At Red Hot Art, I had a TENT! I painted outdoors surrounded by green grass, live music, and lots of smiling people and dogs, which was absolutely lovely. My booth was right next to the hamburger stand, which was also lovely for the first hour or so.

Women and Water Rights was re-mounted in June at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson. It was a beautiful showcase of artwork by women concerned with global water issues. There are some photos of the exhibit here.

In July I worked with Alis Olsen and Bethany Whitehead to coordinate WARM Pop! – a one week pop up art installation for the Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota in the St. Anthony Park Pop Up Shop, which was later included as one of the projects featured inStarling Project’s Your Idea Here: A Toolkit for Unlocking the Community Potential of Vacant Storefronts. Twenty-five WARM artists participated in the spontaneous gallery show on University Avenue, which also included a mini library/resources corner with feminist art criticism and WARM history. Photos can be found here. It was a blast.

Making a move to refocus my work life towards arts and early childhood education, I had a tearful goodbye with my coworkers and clients at Wayside Family Treatment after five years of pouring so much of my heart and energy into serving women recovering from chemical dependency and their children. I still carry the grief, humour, and resilience of those women with me every day.

I was stationed at Intermedia Arts for my annual house managing duties with the Minnesota Fringe Festival. This year included live tweeting a show that didn’t exist (the company pulled out last minute, leaving an open “TBD” show page on the fringe site that attracted wild assortments of made up reviews, which I pretended were all coming true before my eyes as I live-tweeted from the technically completely empty venue during the show’s abandoned time slot). Various other good shenanigans also ensued and the Twin Cities Daily Planet posted my recap.

During election hoo-ha I felt blessed and humbled to play a very tiny part in helping promote and donating artwork to a fundraiser put on by Artists in Storefronts and Cult Status Gallery to commission world famous feminist political art group the Guerrilla Girlsto create a billboard and poster campaign to help defeat the marriage and voter id amendments. Click here to listen to the KFAI Fresh Fruit radio interview that organizers Joan Vorderbruggen and Erin Sayer let me join on behalf of WARM. And the best part of all: both hateful amendments that would have disenfranchised voters and injected discrimination into our state constitution were voted down! Minnesota did us proud.

I turned 30, celebrating with good friends, food and drinks at Moto-i and a Boundary Waters canoe trip with my parents. Part of the bday festivities even got podcasted (ep. 13, NSFW) when my friend Noah ended up in the hot seat at Joseph Scrimshaw’s Obsessed show.

In October I celebrated the successful first year of Irrigate with my Springboard for the Arts colleagues at the fall Art Happens Here event (which included capturing a video of Mayor Coleman and a bunch of other happy souls doing a cake walk), plus we got to go to the swanky Minnesota Monthly Best of 2012 event when Irrigate was named best public art project in the Twin Cities. Irrigate artists are using performance, music, spoken word, writing, theatre, visual arts, and other creative endeavors in unique ways to improve economic vitality on University Avenue, create new community narratives and enhance neighborhood identity amidst light rail construction. See the video from the first year of the project to see what I mean.

We helped make some stuff happen! Jazz Hands!
(With Springboard for the Arts makers’n’shakers Noah Keesecker, Laura Zabel, Jun-Li Wang, Peter Haakon Thompson and Rachel Summers)

Saving the best for last, I was just recently selected as a a 2013 fellow in the Creative Community Leadership Institute at Intermedia Arts. It is a program that “provides comprehensive, professional-level training and support for local community-engaged artists and community developers…The Creative Community Leadership Institute matches people who work at the intersection of the arts and community development with the tools and experiences to address the social justice issues affecting our communities. Based on the fundamental belief that the future health of communities demands innovative, cross-sector leadership at every level, this program builds a dynamic core of capable leaders and partnerships over an intensive five-month program of hands-on workshops and on-site experiences.” I hope it will be a good match for me as I continue to explore the ways I’d like to connect my artistic practice with my passion and experience in early childhood education and social services.

I finished out the year learning about ninja legos (“Ninjago”) from my 5 year old cousin, cooking balsamic beef brisket with my cousin and aunt, eating the traditional Orange Julius pepperoni cheese dog while shopping with my mom, listening to disco star wars music while playing Settlers of Catan with the best of old friends from high school, and just generally trying to rest up and replenish so that I can jump into another year of hard work.  Thanks to each and every one of you who supported me, cheered me on, and made me laugh in 2012. Special thanks to creative friends and fam in all pursuits doing work that inspires me every day. Here’s to celebrating all the things that change and all the things that stay the same.

Cheers,

Robyn

Work in Progress

Digesting Inspiration

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Giant Steps: So much food for thought, my brain has a tummyache.  In a good way.

What is Giant Steps?  Giant Steps is a remarkable one day conference for creative entrepreneurs of all types, founded by Susan Campion of Camponovo Consulting and M.anifest.  It brings together creative professionals, artists, foodies, business owners, consultants, freelancers, nonprofit and/or arts administrators, musicians, dancers, photographers, filmmakers, and anyone else who wants to be at the table.

Better put: it is a fountain of insight from people you normally might not think to or have the opportunity to interact with in a professional way.  The variety of background and experience of people on the panels and as participants ran the gamut, from hip hop artists, to a eco-and health- conscious sex shop owner.  From Robyne Robinson (Fox news anchor, jewelry artist, recent political candidate, former gallery owner…), to a guy who started painting athletic shoes for fun as a teenager and turned it into a business.  You see a professional dancer on the same panel as the owner of a company two people big that makes bitters in Milwaukie.  Local spoken word artist Desdamona moderated a panel that included photographer Wing Young Huie who has documented the everyday faces of Lake Street, Frogtown, University ave, etc, along with Sameh Wadi owner of Saffron, a middle eastern restaurant in Minneapolis which has now branched out into the food truck biz.  Another plenary included stories from David “TC” Ellis about growing up with Prince, being on the streets, and eventually getting sober and founding “Hip Hop High.”   On the same panel we heard from May Lee-Yang, a Hmong writer and theater performer who made the excellent point that when people say Hmong actors aren’t as good as Guthrie actors, she responds “Yeah, no shit!” because the Hmong community doesn’t even have a long history of written language, much less have a history and background of theater to build from.  You start where you’re at.

What you take away from listening to these incredible people fills the spectrum:  Perseverance. Humility.  That it is possible to accept failure and move forward from it.  You can push through, and be a better person for the obstacles you’ve gone through.  Finding balance.  Staying true to your needs and vision.  Figuring out when to say yes, when to say no, and when you need a contract in writing.  How to do your friggin’ taxes.  How to think about currency, assets, and value in a new way.  How to get famous using the internet (apparently; I didn’t actually go to that breakout session, ha).  How to share your message.  How to explain why your message and project matters – who cares?  Why here, and why now?  Building relevancy.  Finding a collaborator who will push you to get to the next level, rather than just giving you praise & validation.  Making something together that’s better than what you could have made individually on your own.  Maintaining vision.  Remembering infinite growth is probably not really your goal.  Think more about slow growth.  Local growth.  Growth doesn’t have to mean expansion; it can mean digging in deeper to what you’re already doing, like Danny Schwartzman’s decision to literally dig in and build a garden behind Common Roots café and start a catering service out of their Lyndale Ave. location instead of expanding to a whole new restaurant in St. Paul.

Other highlights & quotes:

“Take the leap because sometimes that freefall is what you need.”  -I’ve actually lost track of who said this; I think it was either Robyne Robinson or David “TC” Ellis

Hearing TC Ellis talk about trying to get Prince to give him a hand getting into the music biz by rapping in his face every time he ran into him at the club.

“Every time I thought I was bored I was actually really afraid of something [that I needed to do].” – Dawn Mikkelson.  This one hit me so hard!  So true.  She went on to say “I’m scared of it, that means I need to do it.”  I was having a lot of insight like this in the spring.  It’s so easy to become complacent again, or to move forward but then get caught up in things and lose focus or direction.

Many quotes from Robyne Robinson:  “I got 240 rejection letters before I got my first job.”  “If nobody wants this I’ll take it and make it into something incredible.”  “Fear is the mind-killer.”  “I did everything I could possibly do to get my foot in the door.”

“One of the challenges is I have too many passions.” – I Self Divine

“You’re blessed if you know what you want to do early in life.  And you’re also cursed because then you have to do it.” –Wing Young Huie

“Inspiration is for amateurs.” – Chuck Close, quoted by Wing Young Huie

“When you’re saying ‘I need money’ maybe what you really need to say is ‘I need barley.’” – My awesome friend Noah Keesecker from Springboard presenting with Betsy Altheimer, warping our brains about how to think about assets, value, and currency exchange.

We were asked to create our own “dollars” that represented one item or skill we could share, and then find someone in the room who would either buy that thing/skill with a real dollar bill, or trade their own invented “dollar.”  I traded “one funky drawing that doesn’t make sense” for “supporting verbage: a good reason or rationalization for doing something.”  We were then asked to shout out our perception of how much value we held in our hands after everyone traded; answers got up well into the hundreds or perhaps above a thousand.

Anyway, continuing with quotes from the day:

“I don’t get out of bed without a contract.” – Nick Kosevich (the guy who makes bitters)

(Paraphrased) “You have to figure out how to get taken seriously even though you’re talking about buttplugs, and at the same time remember not to take buttplugs too seriously.” – Jennifer Pritchett, owner of Smitten Kitten

Also, ran into friends & colleagues I knew would be there, but also artists I’d never met in real life before (like Kate), as well as someone I’d met 9 months ago at a Springboard community art projects workshop who I also ran into again at Seward coop two days after the conference, and lots of new people who I hope to reconnect with in person and online in the future.

I think my brain is still digesting.  Which is okay; I don’t want it to fade away too quickly.  I’m content with ruminating on all of this for a long while.

Giant Steps Trailer

Placemaking Block Party Details

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The first block party for the Central Corridor Friendly Streets Initiative is tomorrow!  I made a little logo for my group’s project:

Nine other artists and I were selected to work with Jun-Li Wang from Springboard for the Arts to develop creative placemaking activities at summer block parties in the Hamline Midway and Frogtown neighborhoods of St. Paul, MN.  The events are designed as a way for residents in the Central Corridor to come together and collectively address some of the issues & concerns surrounding light rail construction and the overall changes in the neighborhood.

The website with all the details: http://hamlinemidway.org/friendly-streets

You don’t specifically have to live right near the block to come to the block party; the goal is to bring in people from throughout the community.  There will be free food and art activities at each event.  My team’s project is called the pLaYMaGinAtiON sPaCE and combines a visual art component with theater/drama/role play games.  We are presenting it on three dates: July 8th, July 29th and August 19th.  Other team’s projects include building ring toss benches, making paper mache bowls using recycled materials, bike tune-ups with bike flag stencils, a “vacant hearts” activity that addresses the many foreclosed homes in the area, and a “what I wish/what I will” photography project.  All the artists involved are phenomenal people to work with and I am so excited to see all of these activities brought to fruition in the next few weeks.  Two or three projects are scheduled for each block party.

Here’s a full list of the dates:

Block Party 1:

  • Friday July 8 from 3:30-7:30pm
  • On Charles Avenue between Syndicate and Griggs
  • Hosted by Erin at 1126 Charles

Block Party 2:

  • Friday July 22 from 3:30-7:30pm
  • On Charles Avenue between Pascal and Albert
  • Hosted by Kimberly at 1414 Charles

Block Party 3:

  • Friday July 29 from 3:30-7:30pm
  • On Charles Avenue between Milton and Victoria
  • Hosted by Cossandra at 891 Charles and Emily at 825 Charles

Block Party 4:

  • Friday August 5 from 3:30-7:30pm
  • On Charles Avenue somewhere between Western and Rice
  • Exact location and host TBD

Block Party 5:

  • Friday August 12 from 3:30-7:30pm
  • On Charles Avenue somewhere between Kent and Mackubin
  • hosted by Jeff at 529 Mackubin

Block Party 6:

  • Friday August 19 from 3:30-7:30pm
  • At 533 N Dale Street
  • hosted by Greater Frogtown Community Development Corporation

making new stuff, art a whirl recap, & fun news!

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Made some new stuff this weekend.  Also spent a lot of time lying in bed reading Judy Chicago’s book Women & Art: Contested Territory.  Had dinner with my friend Jade, discussed art, relationships, and life choices.  Feeling a little bit more clear-headed now after several days of feeling stressed and getting strange dizzy spells (I blame my stupid never-satisfied metabolism, grr!).  Of course, staying up until midnight blogging again (why does the motivation always come at 11:30pm, huh?) instead of going to bed is probably going to set me back to ground zero when I get up for work tomorrow morning.  The holiday pay will make up for feeling completely scatterbrained, right?

New on the table:

new puddles of paint

And I finished one of them:

Untitled (for now), Watercolor, 8" x 10"

Last weekend was Art-a-Whirl in NE Minneapolis.  I did some studio crawling on Friday and Saturday, art swapped, chatted with lots of WARM artists (some of whom I hadn’t actually met in person before, yay!) and on Sunday I helped with the photo booth at Suzanne Shaff Photography in the California Building (Suzanne is fairly new to the area, & I’m helping her out w/web and social media stuff).  We saw the tornado that hit North Minneapolis from the windows on the 6th floor, and promptly panicked and hid in the stairwell for a little while until the sirens stopped.  Pretty freaky.  Ooh and I met Amy Rice!  Love her work 🙂

Also received the happy news this week that I am one of eleven artists selected as Placemaker Artists in Springboard’s Friendly Streets project with Jun-Li Wang!  I don’t know a lot of details yet, but here’s the description they had in their call for artists which is a nice summary of what we’ll be working on:

Placemaking is people coming together and actively working to turn generic public spaces into community places where people can create connections with one another. By “activating” spaces with elements that encourage human interaction – from physical objects such as art, furniture and plantings, to activities such as parties and games, a generic space can be turned into a place where community gathers, happens and thrives. Springboard for the Arts believes artists play an instrumental role in creating place and creating community.

The setting is the Central Corridor Friendly Streets Initiative, a project addressing the design and use of the residential streets immediately north of University Avenue during construction and operation of light rail. The Initiative will host a series of block parties this summer to introduce residents to concepts and methods such as creative placemaking and traffic calming to make streets more user friendly.

I took a workshop on developing successful community projects with Jun-Li in November and am really excited to be working with her again & building on those skills.  I am also really excited for the Northern Spark festival coming up next weekend!  I am going on the Megalops at 11:00 with an assortment of friends, and who knows where the night will take me from there.  It’s another one of those “so much going on that it’s completely overwhelming and impossible to see it all” type of events.  Sometimes I wonder if our art community here, as loveable as it is, occasionally tries to do too much at once.  Maybe I’m just being selfish because I don’t want to miss anything.  How can one possibly choose between listening to sound art radio stuff on top of the foshay tower, playing laser tag at the soap factory, taking in the short film festival at the central library, watching the egg & sperm ride and video projections near St. Anthony Bridge, not to mention all the stuff going on at the Walker’s Nightshift?  And that’s just a small portion of all the events going on.  AAAHHHHHH…………………………………..

new work in progress, with a side of something silly

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Really really in love with this new painting I’m working on.  Based on one of the drawings from my art house coop sketchbook project…

watercolor work in progress

Hoping to have it done in time for the SMARTS Call for artists for the 2nd annual Arts of the Community Exhibition.  I might title it something like “Incubation” or “Incubators” or something incubating-related.  Which makes me think about hatching baby chicks in 6th grade…

Oh gosh, while I am posting and babbling randomly I guess I should put this in to.  I made a silly picture:

SnuffleARTagus

Springboard put this “I <3 Art Because…” sign in their spring workshop flier for people to fill in & post photos of.  I had gotten into a goofy tweet conversation with Springboarder Noah about artimals (cuz in his pic he is an Aartvark…other good ones included the hippopARTamus and the plARTypus).  The workshop flier sat on my art table for several more days, and I couldn’t think of anything that I could say about loving art that would be better than being a SnuffleARTagus.  And the empty paper towel & tp rolls in my recycling were calling to me.  So there you go.  I made a goofy picture.  Somehow I always end up taking weird photos of myself in my bathroom.  I guess the lighting is really good in there.

Incidentally, Noah is teaching all ten of Springboard’s Work of Art workshops this spring, and they are awesome & super helpful so if you are an artist in the Twin Cities wondering what you need to move your career forward I highly recommend that you check them out.  You can buy in bulk and save money!  They are packed full of good info like how to price your artwork, marketing, copyright laws, using social media, etc.  And Noah tells funny weird stories and does strange things like making a really big deal out of not liking strawberries when you bring them to class and then taking a video of himself eating the strawberry and not liking it.  Practical art career guidance + meeting & networking w/other artists + sense of humor = win!

Hmm I did not intend this post to be mostly about Springboard.  I intended it to be about how excited I am about my watercolor painting.  Mleh.  Gonna go eat something and go back to painting now.

what I’ve been up to…

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art and tea

The painting on the table is a new one inspired by the mountain ash berries I used to play with when I was a kid.

taking inventory of my stash

enjoying autumn colors

and watching the snow

Trying to find room for contemplation in the midst of life’s chaos.  Feeling saddened by the sudden loss of Alex’s mother and wishing I could have had the chance to meet her.

This poem has been on my mind.

i carry your heart with me by E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

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