Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive: The Art and Life of Junauda Petrus

Junauda Petrus, creative activist, writer, playwright, and multi-dimensional performance artist has written three visceral and exquisite poems for Nicollet Lanterns. Minneapolis-born, West-Indian descended, and African-sourced, she describes her work as centering around Black wildness, Afro-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, spectacle and shimmer.

Petrus has received a Givens Foundation fellowship, Jerome Travel and Study grant, Many Voices Mentorship with the Playwright’s Center, and Naked Stages Residency at the Pillsbury House. With filmmaker Mychal Fisher, she presently writes and directs an experimental and poetic web series funded by a 2016 Jerome Foundation Film grant about Black teens coming of age in Minneapolis. She is the co-founder with Erin Sharkey of Free Black Dirt, an experimental arts production company.

Read the interview with this multi-faceted artist here.

Installation of New and Returning Public Art Underway

Prairie Tree has alighted on Nicollet Mall! The sculpture by Ned Kahn, first of three new pieces, was recently installed. The mesmerizing work, located on the northeast corner of the intersection with 11th Street near WCCO, is composed of 2,304 shiny wind vanes mounted overhead that oscillate with every puff of wind.

What did it take to install Prairie Tree? Click here for a photo essay documenting the process.

If you’ve been anticipating the return of the Sculpture Clock by Jack Nelson, the only remaining work from the 1960s design for the Mall, your wait is almost over. The kinetic sculpture will be installed within the next three weeks at the southeast corner of the 11th Street intersection; its usual spot. During a recent visit to the restoration studio, I had one final opportunity to get close-up and produced this video.

 

 

4_CLOCK SCULPTURE_9-18-17 from Regina M Flanagan on Vimeo.