Imbolc Waxing Wild Moon]
The museum had lots of visitors today. Many, the ones I toured among them, were there on a school outing. Others, a surprisingly large number, came for the foot in the door show. Foot in the door is an installation done by the museum every 10 years. Any one in the state can enter an object so long as it fits in a one foot by one foot by one foot cube. If you work meets that test, you’re in the show.
That makes for a scene like one I witnessed at the ticket counter. An older man and his wife came up to the counter. He said, “I’ve never been here before, but my son has a piece in the museum. I want to go see it.” He said that with a feeling of pride. A lot of the people going through this show looked to me like first time museum goers. I overheard a woman say in the gallery, “A person that knew about art could tell. Some of these people have real talent.” She was right.
Foot-in-the-door fully occupies two large galleries, a smaller one and still spills out over into the halls. There is so much to see that three or four visits would only give you a first pass. A treat.
The kids I toured today from St. Francis were a Spanish class and wanted to see Spanish art. On both tours, though, I took them to foot-in-the-door, too. These are living, working Minnesota artists, many young folks. I told them if they wanted, at the next show, they could have a piece in the show. They loved the crazy variety. The boys were taken by the fact that there was .45 revolver entered. They took pictures of it with their cell-phones. Another kid liked the alarm clock. Still another liked, as I did, a cubic foot of broken eggs glued back together.
These kids really took to cubism and surrealism, grasping quickly the rather tricky shift in artistic purpose that these two art movements put into the world. It surprised me some, but they really enjoyed the quirky nature of synthetic cubism and the irrational nature of surrealism. Both fit the teenage moment.
