One week left to submit your audio idea to be broadcast from the Foshay!

Northern Spark approaches quickly, and we’re still seeking audio submissions for Station Identification, our one-night project on the observation deck of the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis, MN. We’ll be broadcasting live all night from 9pm June 4th to 6am June 5th, so we’ve got plenty of air time to fill. Some ideas:

• Come to the Foshay the night of and tell a story, sing, or do whatever it is you do.
• Send us some music you’ve been working on. (We’ll be streaming it so you don’t have to worry about downloads!)
• Send us that amazing audio recording you made with your smartphone and have no idea what to do with.
• Anything really, just as long as it’s sound!

The deadline is in one week (Monday, May 30th). See the call for submissions for more info, or email your idea to “notioncollective” at gmail. 

(photo: Daytime view from the Foshay observation deck by Jennifer Arave)

[ reposted from The Notion Collective ]

"Everyone thought I was nuts when I started building the Padelford. But this river has been wonderful to me. What could be a better life than to go to the river each day and call it work?"

Captain Bill Bowell, founder of the Padelford Packet Boat Company.

Bill Bowell passed away last Tuesday, at the age of 90. After visiting the Padelford with a group of artists on Friday, David Wiggins told me about the Captain William Bowell River Library in Dubuque, Iowa. It contains over 2,000 books about the Mississippi from Bill’s personal collection. I think Shanai and I have a destination for our next weekend road trip planned.

Paul Verret, president of the St. Paul Foundation, had this to say about Bill: “He was the world’s best curmudgeon. He had the courage to start (the Padelford Co.) when nobody thought he could succeed … when nobody gave a hoot about the river. He showed people that paying attention to our riverfront was a way to help re-create this town.”

We’re sorry we never got to meet the guy, I think we would have had a lot to talk about. At the very least, I hope our little Megalops project inspires some people to keep giving a hoot about the river.

We Work Here

How To Be Happy In The Twin Cities

Some helpful hints from Erica. Perhaps it would be more accurately titled “How To Be Happy In The Twin Cities When It’s %#@$#& Cold Outside And The Sun Goes Down At 4PM.” I’d say for the last two years the Art Shanty Projects accomplished most if not all of the things on her list for me.

"If Obama ignited this fire to unite, then the recession is keeping it hot in 2009. As historian and Great Depression expert Robert McElvaine put it on PBS’s Newshour earlier this year: “Community-oriented values tend to come out during tough times.” This civic-minded ethos, we’re happy to report, has trickled down to the Twin Cities art scene, which has spent much of the year finding interesting—and yes, sexy—new ways to rally around art. Take the West Bank Social Center, an indie community arts center of sorts that opened last June above the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Like a clubhouse minus the secret knock, this free-wheelin’ venue offers gratis Wi-Fi and coffee for anyone who stops by (a few wandering creatives use it as their makeshift office), and often calls on the public to curate its events, which have varied from group naptime sessions set to European art cinema, to a discussion about death and memorial tattooing featuring death and dying expert John E. Troyer and tattoo artist Awen Briem."

West Bank Social Center featured in Metro Magazine’s Metro 100 (via wbsc)