Nels says the Department of Art has been a great place to explore because of the focus on learning by doing – he can experiment with CNC routers, laser cutters, and 3D printing, exploring art but also engineering without the constraints and prerequisites of other routes. He enjoys creating things that move, interact, or serve some function in addition to being aesthetically pleasing – taking courses in Experimental Media and 3D Modeling and Digital Fabrication only deepened his belief that art doesn’t have to be a static, pretty object you can’t touch as in traditional art museums. He prefers works that the audience can experience physically and conceptually at the same time, akin to those found in children’s or science museums.

Mia celebrates the pleasure of pure, virtuosic draftsmanship with the first museum show of Minnesota artists and twin brothers Bly and Rowan Pope. They have worked side by side their entire lives. Their focus on drawing and meticulous, painstaking process sets them apart. Each dedicates hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of hours to a single work, drawing skillfully, obsessively, until pencil has transformed paper into a provocative image rendered with photographic precision.

What is The Cloud made of? Water molecules or pixels? Where does it reside? The sky or the ground? Last summer, HomePaige (ongoing artistic collaborator Paige Carlson) and WurldWideReb (my primary digital alter-ego) explored these questions through the creation of a 9 episode web series. Hard Drive chronicled our 18 day road trip around the western half of the US in search of a more intimate connection with our data. We visited Google data centers, an iCloud storage facility, and a supercomputer center, finding ourselves overwhelmed by the level of secrecy and the amount of resources needed to power these monuments. As a video and performance artist, the resources I use to create my artworks are often more abstract, harder to quantify or ethically analyze. I find myself placing trust in physical hard drives to store my files, finding power in my embodied acapella voice to tell stories and inspire catharsis, feeling more present when I’m offline. Yet, I stay up to date on Climate Change data and policies by endlessly scrolling Twitter, a company known for lack of transparency around their own carbon emissions. As caring individuals in love with blooming Lilacs and obsessed with our smartphones, how do we hold these contradictions?

Rose Von Muchow approached professor Tamsie Ringler about putting together a show to celebrate all of the strong women I had met through foundry. She was hesitant at first because she had no curatorial experience, but in talking with Tamsie, it soon became clear that she already possessed the relationships and tools necessary to successfully curate and install a show – she realized that all she needed to do was ask. The duo applied to the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), which provides some funding and structure for projects created by undergraduates with mentorship by faculty.