We took a stroll through the rain a few blocks away to the California Building, located at 2205 California Street NE. According to the small brochure/guide being handed out near the enterance: "In 1980, the California Building became the first art studio building in Northeast Minneapolis. A former grain mill turned studio building holds working spaces for emerging mid and late career artists in a variety of disciplines. The building owners, John Kremer and Jennifer Young purchased the property in 1991, and have a long commitment to arts, community, & arts sustainability in Northeast Minneapolis."
This place is huge - 6 floors crammed with artists studios, most of them open to the public on this rainy evening. Despite the weather, there were quite a few people out enjoying it all and trying to take it all in. So much stuff to see - We checked out most of the stuff on the first 5 floors which took us quite some time actually. Here are just a very few of the cooler pieces we saw throughout the California Building.
A Brooklyn Bridge painting. I'd love to own this but it's priced at $1,800.00 - a bit out of my range.
An evil looking Cat-Demon-Lady painting...
A platform-booted Demon Dog creature...
A cool skull mosaic mirror. Made me think of Jim Power "The Mosaic Man" in NYC. In fact I saw a few works throughout the Art-A-Whirl that made me think of his work in the East Village. I thought to myself that he'd probably enjoy the hell out of this event and fit right in.
A classic - defaced with a psychadelic-looking fish.
The guy who does these had several of these detailed sculptures located throughout the building. They're made with bits of odd plastic, wire, metal, circuit boards, wires and other odd items and they are all pretty cool, but I liked this one the most.
And to wrap things up, a cool, carved/etched wood relief of a downtown Minneapolis street scene, our beloved rock and roll haven First Avenue featured prominently near the foreground of the piece...
Art-A-Whirl 2011 runs through Sunday, May 22, click the link for more details.
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