Community Art Tour
Guide Yourself!
Community Art Tour
Walk or Bike map
Drive Map
Click on the map to follow step by step on Google Maps.
We have two maps for the tour: one for walking/biking and another for driving. Both have all the exact same stops. The main differences are:
- the driving map follows right of way for roads (which bicyclists should also be mindful of) and
- the walk/bike map crosses 94 between tour stops 5 and 6 via a pedestrian bridge on Grotto, which is not passable by car. On the plus side there is a great view of stop 3- Dale Street Bridge – from the Grotto Street bridge.
It takes about 75-90 min to walk, 45-60 min to bike, 25-40 min to drive, give or take how long you stay at each stop.
Here are the stops on the tour, plus two side adventures. Click on each stop below to see a virtual gallery, artist information, and other media.
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The Artists:
Thomasina Topbear (@tomierae) – interview spokesperson Maria Robinson (@maria_epiphany) Grover Hogan (@spourmo) Maiya Lea Hartman (@maiyaLeaArt) Chineze Okolo Winfrey Oenga (@winnieoenga) Holly Miskitoos Henning Ghor Bayou (@dtdesigntc) Alex Smith Gene Okok Charles Garcia Hibaaq Ibrahim (@moonjuiceart) Galadriel Ingram (@gchild_theartist) AND community members like you! |
During the uprisings of 2020 artists and activists gathered to turn the plywood that had sprung up around the Twin Cities into beautiful, meaningful, and necessary works of art. City Mischief, Creatives After Curfew, and VTAC came together to create a permanent space for these murals.
In September of 2020, the three groups collaborated to hold a mural making workshop. While the main event was the creation of 12 mini murals, Public Functionary provided a DJ, and part of the event was a food donation drive for Feeding Frogtown.
Thomasina Topbear of City Mischief said she was inspired by the old wall at Intermedia Arts. She wanted to “recreate a space where people could do their own murals next to each other.” Each artist had an eight-by-ten foot space to paint, and spent the weekend working alongside each other to create a combined 160-foot long piece about community, love, cooperation, culture, and healing.
Topbear’s rectangle is about missing and murdered indigenous women. “Murals are important,” says Topbear. “I wanted to provide resources where people could learn or where people who are dealing with these issues in their lives could go, so I provided 2 different websites on the mural so people could reach out for information or to seek help.”
Topbear would eventually like to find funds to fill in the top part of the wall with murals. “Murals play an important tool to bring up issues and to start conversations that need to be had,” she says, adding, “For the people painting those murals, art is very therapeutic and healing… You’re doing something that is holistic for yourself and people definitely feel that. I feel like that’s what draws people to community murals. Every neighborhood deserves a mural, especially Frogtown.”
Learn more: City Mischeif — https://www.instagram.com/citymischief/
Creaters after Curfew — https://creativesaftercurfew.com/
https://www.instagram.com/creativesaftercurfew/
Aki Shibata
Gita Ghei
Melvin Giles
Songs to accompany art:
Grover Washington — Mr. Magic (for when you need to get the creativity flowing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbsbqkgzxWM
Kirk Franklin — Smile (for when you need to move forward)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8SPwT3nQZ8
John Lennon and the practice Ono band —- imagine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgkThdzX-8
The Rondo library is the busiest library in St. Paul and has the most children. Aki Shibata, Gita Ghei, and Melvin Giles wanted to reflect and incorporate this into the mural they facilitated.
To do this, they involved the community through various workshops, meetings, and events. They planted seeds together, asked for votes on design elements, and got lots of help painting. By the time the mural was finished, over 1200 people contributed. “The community owns the art piece with us, because it was made by the community,” says Shibata.
The artists focused on the ideas of peace, love, and light — their main descriptors for the community the library serves. Giles, who has been working to promote peace in the community for over a decade through his peace poles and peace bubbles, wanted to use the space as a way to restore and reclaim the spirit of Rondo. The process “birthed something within me as an artist that I was not claiming,” he says.
Gile’s bubbles inspired the design of the mural. With input from the community, various shapes, symbols, and images were painted into each bubble. The mural also includes various languages, and patterns inspired by traditional fabrics from many of the communities in Frogtown and Rondo. “That’s why it’s so colorful,” says Ghei, “It has the variety of humanity that’s in that library.”
These images and patterns allow anyone passing the mural to see a part of themselves reflected in it. It also allows them to see new things. “People are going to start asking questions and start conversations,” says Shibata.
Shibata, Ghei, and Giles emphasize the importance of the relationships they built in this process. Making the mural took over a year, and the work continues — they hope the mural will continue to grow with bubbles inside the library, and a history walk.
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The Artists:
G.E. Patterson Hawona Sullivan Janzen Mica Anders |
After being closed for nine months, the Dale Street bridge has been reopened. G.E. Patterson, Hawona Sullivan Janzen, and Mica Anders were commissioned to make the bridge more than just a functional walkway and bridge — it is a work of art that reflects and showcases the Rondo community.
The artists spent six months asking people in the community what they wanted to see on the bridge. The overwhelming response was, “We want people to know that we’re here,” and “We want people to know the story.”
The bridge has Dale Street etched into the concrete, creating a sense of permanence and a sense of place. “I am Rondo” and “We are Rondo” are written on the bridge in 12 languages, ranging from Dakota to Hebrew to Hmong to Oromo. 16-foot tall metal tree silhouettes frame the bridge. As you walk along it, you can dance along to a lindy hop leaf pattern or read Janzen’s poetry — backwards or forwards:
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We were here And then you came And then them And then them And then them again Then we And you And them Become us Now we are all Rondo |
Rondo |
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The Artist: “I create my art to heal the hearts of people and their communities by evoking a positive spirit” Song to Accompany the Art: |
“Music Lives Here,” proclaims the sign on the Walker West Music Academy. Founded in 1988 by Rev. Carl Walker and Grant West, the school has always sought to be a safe space for all children in the neighborhood to pursue music. Ta-coumba Aiken has long admired the school, and its commitment to all of the youth. He was able to take that admiration for the school and its founders, as well as the spirit of the community and put it into a 76-foot long metal mural. “Music lives there is the heart of the community, not just the Walker West,” says Aiken. “It’s more referring to the life, the harmony and disharmony of it all.”
Created in five-by-three and five-by-four foot pieces, Aiken uses his moving lines to encourage people to see what they will see. “You see a weaving that you identify as a person or a flower,” says Aiken. “You’ll see instruments that just come out of a swirl and turn into a bass, a guitar, and a drum. You’ll see big spaces and loops and all of a sudden you realize that’s someone singing with their hands around their mouth or yelling out.”
Aiken carries deep respect for Walker and West and what they were able to create. “I wanted to carry on their legacy,” he says. “I didn’t want to put their faces on it, because that would be forgotten. But if I put their spirit on it, then their spirit will live forever.”
Ta-coumba T. Aiken is a public artist and public arts activist. He creates art to help communities find their Visual Voice through collaborative community engagement and creative discovery.
He is a Trustee at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has served on the advisory boards of the Gordon Parks Gallery at Metropolitan State University and on the MADE HERE advisory board for Hennepin Theater Trust.
He is the recipient of the Knight Arts Challenge grant in collaboration with The Walker West Music Academy and is presently working on the Bigger’s SEED Project as co-lead artist with Seitu Jones. His artworks are exhibited in organizations, such as McKnight Foundation reception hall, Augsburg University (Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion), Hennepin Theatre Trust Gallery, and etc. His public art projects cover the Twin Cities area, including Shadows at the Crossroads at Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; Music Lives Here at The Walker West Music Academy; murals on selby avenue, and so much more.
Whether he is creating art for an individual, private collection, corporate collection, communities, municipalities or countries, his intent is to give the audience a lasting experience that is subtle and dynamic at the same time.
Side Adventure 1: Golden Thyme Coffee & Cafe – a neighborhood staple for coffee, music, and connection.
The Artist:
Marvin Roger Anderson,
and the Rondo Commemorative Plaza Design team
Located in the Rondo Neighborhood, approximately four blocks from the Victoria Station on the Green Line on Old Rondo Avenue, the completed project will be a place to remember the history of this predominately African American Community that was once a thriving neighborhood prior to the construction of Interstate 94.
To serve its commemorative purpose, RAI believes that the completed project should incorporate interactive historical displays that provide visual, written and oral information; signs, images, music, and art representative of the old Rondo community before the construction of Interstate 94.
The final design will also serve as a social center for gatherings to celebrate and learn about Rondo from older citizens who grew up there through community dialogues and live musical presentations. This will require benches, a small stage or raised platform, lighting and a sound system. The plaza will incorporate the most stunning environmental designs and landscaping – grass, flowers, shrubbery and pathways.
Read More Here
Article from Architecture MN – https://www.aia-mn.org/rondo-commemorative-plaza/
Side Adventure 2: Lafond & Grotto (and surrounding areas) – Sidewalk Poetry
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The Artist: Art Title: Song to Listen to: |
When you walk into Frogtown farm you’ll likely pass through an archway by Gita Ghei. As she designed each entrance, she kept in mind the history of the land she was on. From 1863-1967, the “Home for Wayward Girls” stood where the farm is now. At each entrance, Ghei incorporated imagery from the girls that lived there.
This entrance, coming from Milton and standing at the human sundial, is titled Mariposa. Two iron wings frame the sidewalk as you enter. “It has kind of a curtain, as a walkthrough,” says Ghei. “I was thinking of an old fancy house where you walk into the big drawing room and there’s the curtains on each side.” Below the sculpture Ghei planted hops plants, to climb up the strings and create a living curtain. “They are just now starting to grow,” she says. “Hopefully this year we’ll get some real hops — if anyone’s making beer, they can grab a few!”
The image of the butterfly also evokes the idea of transformation — transformation of the space, repurposed by the community, and of the people who have lived here.
Between the hops roots and the butterfly wings are a variety of fantastical garden flowers. “I placed the flowers at the level of really little kids so they might be able to peer into them,” says Ghei. “There are pumpkins and sunflower seeds. One of them is a giant marigold pod!” You can also see lichen, an algae that live symbiotically with plants, at the height of small children, symbolizing the interdependent bond between people and plants.
At the top of the sculpture you’ll find the butterfly’s antennae and bike wheels, reminding us all of the ways we can live in symbiosis with the earth.
As you walk through the farm, you may notice that the archway at the playground entrance is incomplete — this summer, Ghei plans on hosting workshops with youth from the community to finish the final archway collaboratively.
Gita is a multiethnic metal sculptor specializing in public art and teaching. She is self-taught, with a degree in ancient studies and archaeology; she learned her trade of lost wax casting in an an art foundry. Gita celebrates strength in diversity in people and nature, and she utilizes solar electric and passive light stencils. Her art inspires responsibility for public space and reverence for life creative and sustaining forces. She maintains a studio mentorship program (and hopefully a future teen operated gallery!) for teens to learn metal casting and to collaborate on community art projects.
Note: The last stop on the tour is the Frogtown Park and Farm. If you would like to make a complete circuit and begin and end at the Victoria Theater, travel south down Milton Ave until you get to University Ave. Turn left onto University Ave, travel 1.5 blocks, and the Victoria Theater will be on the left, just past the intersection of Victoria Ave and University Ave.
Many thanks to Alia Jeraj, Dantes Ha, Aki Shibata, and Chava Curland for creating this tour!
Thank you to Our Funders!
thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
