Behind the WintertIde Biennial: An Interview with Jim Gerlich of the Cedarwoods Foundation

Jim Gerlich is a NEMAA member and portrait photographer who works with Hasselblad cameras. He also runs the Cedarwoods Foundation, which specializes in funding youth programming, arts organizations and animal welfare centers in the Twin Cities.

Thanks to the Cedarwoods Foundation, NEMAA is proud to be launching the first ever Wintertide Biennial Arts Exhibition, which will open January 24th at Public Functionary.

Click here for all the info about Wintertide!

In anticipation of this weekend's kickoff, we gave Jim Gerlich a call to talk about how the idea for Wintertide came about.

[transcript follows]

NEMAA: How are you today, and how did you get involved with NEMAA?

Jim Gerlich (JG): Just fine... Well, I shared a studio in Northeast Minneapolis with Patricia Punykova, and when the Solar Arts Building opened we got a studio over there.  She spent her time doing her artwork, which is glass work, and it kind of took over the space as the things I was doing got completed. I had been doing portraits with the Hasselblad setup, and everything got stolen!

NEMAA: Oh no! So what is the Cedarwoods foundation? What do you work on?

JG: The foundation is a family foundation established in 2011. We have three areas of funding: we do projects with youth in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, we support the arts, and we work on supporting animal welfare and well-being.

NEMAA: Well that’s an interesting list… Tell me about the Wintertide show. How does it fit into the picture, and how did it come about?

JG: I guess the genesis of Wintertide show came about last year at the NEMAA Fall Fine Arts show. It's great that everyone should be able to show their work. But I know quite a few artists in the Twin Cities, and I noticed that some of the very best artists didn’t seem like they were submitting their work. I hit on the idea of a show for top-tier artists, representative of the very best artists and art that the Twin Cities area has to display.

So I approached NEMAA with the idea of bringing those people out of the woodwork, and enticing them to show the best that Twin Cities’ art has to offer.  NEMAA said "yes," and that they’d been thinking of doing something along similar lines.

NEMAA: Did you have a particular model in mind? Why the biennial format?

JG: Well, we had several conversations, but I pretty much put it in NEMAA’s hands. They took the lead, and I supported their lead. Then we selected Public Functionary to have the show, and so here we are. It turns out that we’ve had more than double the submissions we’d expected! So my only regret is that we’re not going to be able to show more work. I know there will be some very good works that are not going to be shown because of the limitations of the gallery space.

NEMAA: Have you seen the work yet? Do you know who is going to be included?

JG: No, I haven’t seen anything. I’m going to see everything when everyone else does, on opening night.

NEMAA: How are you hoping that the Wintertide show might change the landscape of the Twin Cities’ art scene?

JG: I think we might give more recognition of the quality of Twin Cities artists. We’ll have to debrief when the show is completed and see what worked and what didn’t work and go on from there. I guess my advice is to go to the opening and see what you think!

Award Winners from the 2014 Fall Fine Arts Show

The Fall Fine Arts show opened last week with a glorious party full of music, food, drink, and amazing art from NEMAA members. Thanks very much to all our volunteers who helped make the show a success, and to the generous donors who helped with the silent auction (pictured at right).

We awarded three prizes as judged by our guest panel, as well as an honorable mention award. These are just four of the over 140 artworks on display at the show.


1st- Selma Fernandez Richter
    "Untitled #1" - photograph



2nd- Presley Martin
    "Generations" - graphite and kaolin on wood



3rd- Bill Lindau
    "Tzeitel in the Woods" - Mixed media


 
Honorable Mention- Nancy Grist
    "Molly" - reclaimed pine, East wall



There is also a “people’s choice award” that you can vote for during the run of the entire show.

There are two weekends left to check out the pieces in the Fall Fine Arts show, up on the Third Floor of the Solar Arts Building (right above the Indeed Brewery).

This weekend looks beautiful, and there’s no better time to see some amazing Northeast art.

Gallery Hours | Thursdays/Fridays 5-9 pm (September 25, 26, October 2, 3) 
Saturdays/Sundays 12-5 pm (September 20, 21, 27, 28, October 4, 5)

Four Things about the Solar Arts Building: Home of the 2014 Fall Fine Arts Show

The opening night of the Fall Fine Arts Show is here, and for the third year in a row the show is going to be up in the Solar Arts Building (right off 15th and Monroe).

One of the reasons that NEMAA is delighted to partner with the Solar Arts Building again is that the Solar Arts Building has such a unique history. I talked with Mike Schardin, who has been working on remodeling and managing the Solar Arts Building for the last three and a half years.

Here are four things I learned about the history of this place:


1. There are solar panels on the roof (duh)

This might seem obvious, but the Solar Arts building gets its name from the solar panels installed on the roof. When they bought and rehabbed the century-old building back in 2010, the owners wanted to be as "eco-friendly" as possible.

"We cleaned up the ground," Schardin told me. "We sandblasted the entire bldg, had all the old lead paint removed, and then we topped the building with over 100 solar panels. We put in an all-new heating and cooling system that’s 90% efficient. Then we did all new fixtures for lights, and all LED lighting."

 2. The building is exactly 100 years old

[The old boiler door from the building's original life as a factory.]

The three-story building celebrated its centennial this year. When it was built at the height of Minneapolis' industrial era, it was the home of the Twin City Cord & Tire Company. It was abandoned for many years before the current owners purchased the building in 2010.

"After the Cord and Tire Company, it switched hands a few times," Schardin told me. "The last was Nicollet Electric. They had it for a while, but then the building was abandoned. It was sitting there and bringing crime and vagrants into that community. So when we bought the building, the community was excited. We fixed it up it brought some new vibrancy into the community."

According to this great article over at Minnesota Originals, the Solar Arts Building  operated for a while as Sears' warehouse (just like the Midtown Global Market on Lake Street, only much smaller). 

3. Each floor has a function

As anyone who's seen it well knows, the first floor is devoted to the rapidly-growing Indeed Brewing Company (honestly my favorite Minneapolis craft brewer). Just like a century ago, the first floor is devoted to manufacturing. Incidentally, Indeed Brewing makes most of their revenue from canning and distribution, not their taproom.

The 2^nd floor has 36 artist studios. You can check out some of the Solar Arts' artists on their Facebook page, and I'm sure some of them will be at the Fall Fine Arts opening. (There is also a monthly "First Thursday" open studio night at Solar Arts Building that you can check out.)

As Mike tells it, the 3rd Floor (where the Fall Fine Arts Show is held) is a work-in-progress. "Over the last 2 years, we’ve been working on turning it into an event space," Mike told me. "NEMAA takes it over in September and puts on the beautiful Fall Fine Arts Show. It’ll be there for the next 6 years. We have also been working with the city on issues like parking and numbers and safety, and we finally got the space approved for events like for galleries,  corporate sessions, and weddings. Though we have not yet signed an agreement, we’re working with Chowgirls Catering to help with all the events and manage the space. We’re really excited about having a well known Northeast company as part of our community there."

[Train tracks outside the Solar Arts Building.]

4. Inside you'll find Johnny Cash's personal bar

To remodel the 3rd floor, the building owners installed a few historically significant pieces of furniture. Mike was really excited to tell me the story about two of them that they installed to accentuate the historic brick interior.

"We found a cool 108-year old table," Mike explained this week. "It's the original boardroom table from the Duluth Railroad Company, which makes sense because we sit right on a rail line. It's all metal and weighs 4,000 pounds. It was made by the Metal Arts Company, in the early 1900's. That's a company that grew quickly at that time because they received the government contract to build metal furniture in all the libraries across America."

As a country music fan, I found the second of Mike's "character pieces" even more intriguing. 

"We also have Johnny Cash’s bar from his house," Mike told me. "It was handcrafted in 1860 in France by an French artist. It sat in a castle for 100 years. Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash were once on a trip in France, and talked the guy at the castle into selling it to them. They had it shipped to Hendersonville, Tennessee, and it served as a bar in his house for 16 years. Then they donated it to the House of Cash Museum, but in 2009 the museum closed. They  put it to auction and we bought it, and it sits in the 3^rd floor of the Solar Arts Building. From what I've heard, Cash and Waylon Jennings would sit up all night writing songs by that bar. It's pretty cool. The carving on it is priceless itself, very ornate and mind blowing."

Those are just a few things to think about when you check out the Fall Fine Arts Show. The opening is tonight from 6 - 9, and the show will be up for three weeks (through October 5th), Thursday through Sunday.

[Mike is the guy in the sun costume.]