A Landmark Perspective: Evan Hiltunen

Hints of Evan Hiltunen’s second career first arrived while visiting his foster brother in Alaska. Though he dates the start of his career in photography to March 3, 2003 (when he finally purchased a good camera), the first taste for picture taking appeared that preceding year during those four months in Alaska. Hiltunen’s sister-in-law had talked him into buying a pocket camera for the trip. He tried it out and was soon hooked.

One of his brother’s friends was a pilot who took them scud running. It wasn’t the typical aerial tour of Denali that most tourists take. The experience of shooting toward a mountain outcrop at twenty miles above the ground, then turning up at the last second was exhilarating - difficult to capture on a pocket camera, but an exercise in split-second timing.

Timing is an issue that Hiltunen is keenly aware of, as both a photographer and retired chef. Both professions require complete absorption in the moment and knowing exactly the right time to act. The timing factor is something he takes so seriously that he has deliberately opted to spend the next three to five years “living unfettered, rootless.” He has given up his house and put most of his possessions in storage, just so that he’ll be able to go off on assignment at a moment’s notice. He plans to “travel lightly,” he says, and to “do it with a purpose.”

Landmark Perspective
Hiltunen’s first career as a chef began when he left home at thirteen. He learned his way around a kitchen through what he calls, “old fashioned apprenticeship,” and at seventeen ended up being taken in by a foster family who were also “hard core foodies.” They owned a restaurant and soon Hiltunen was invited into the fold of the business.

Focusing on North Regional, Italian, and French cuisine, Hiltunen worked his way around and was eventually drawn into the fast-paced culinary lifestyle, where drink and drugs are a common way of coping with the intense pressure. By the time Hiltunen turned thirty, he knew that he was burning out and needed a change of pace.

"The higher the quality restaurant, the more extreme it is,” says Hiltunen, “there’s so much stress and people who work in kitchens tend to be perfectionists, creative, etc. At the end of the night, you’re just shaking from the adrenaline because of the pressure. There’s sometimes just a two second interval between perfection and completely destroying the food. On top of that, you’re timing and controlling what everyone else is doing…You have to have extreme focus, and a short attention span comes with that.”

After years of working in an environment where the shift progresses rapidly, frame by frame, plate by plate, it’s no surprise that Hiltunen developed a perspective that lends itself well to his art. He acknowledges that there are many artistic similarities between cooking and photography. Years of experience in the kitchen taught him a great deal about composing plates, working with colors, textures, and shapes. With photography, there may also be a mere two-second window for the perfect shot – when the sun shifts or an expression becomes veiled, the moment can be lost forever.

Hiltunen shows me a few photos that illustrate the comparison. The first is a photo of the Ferris wheel at sunset. “It took me two years at the State Fair, waiting for just the right conditions,” he tells me. The first year, he could picture the exact shot that he wanted, but it never panned out. The next year he returned to the site and waited around for a few hours until the sky hugged the massive wheel just so.

The other picture, entitled Landmark Perspective, was also the result of Hiltunen’s persistent effort to get it “just right.” Whenever he got a chance, he’d walk over with his camera and circle around the site, looking for the perfect angle, the perfect sky, and trying to minimize interference from other architectural styles in the area.

A Sense of Wonder
When asked about his artistic vision, Hiltunen responds that he’s “not making any statements about life and society” with his photography. To pursue such statements, he feels, would be akin to getting tunnel vision. Inherent to that approach is the risk of compromising the integrity of the artistic work itself. There are a lot of photographers out there “putting out aesthetically crappy stuff, but the audience doesn’t feel right about rejecting it because of the deeper meaning underlying the work. It’s like, you can’t tell someone that their baby is ugly, because the baby has meaning to them.”

On the other hand, Hiltunen says, there’s a difference between a photo that’s technically good and one that captures a certain mood or emotion. For example, you could have a picture of something like a doorknob where the lighting is perfect and the texture is well defined, but it would still be just a picture of a doorknob. The objective, he tells me, is to “bring the two things together.”

What interests Hiltunen is being able to capture a sense of wonder in the life around him. He focuses mainly on positive forms, including the synchrony of architectural lines, the human capacity for experimentation, or barometric differences revealed against the skyline. Vintage cars, breath-taking landscapes, and human forms are common subjects, but the surrealist perspective shows up from time to time as well. He enjoys working with models and appreciates the difference between those who are totally at ease in front of the camera versus those who show their authentic moments in between the poses.

Hiltunen also confesses to a fascination with photographing people who have undergone heavy tattooing and body modification, in the form of piercings and implants. He’s already got something in the works along these lines and tells me about a particular shot he’s planning out in his mind’s eye: a close-up of a man’s face with two fish hooks inserted into each cheek and stretched to eyelet holes on either side of a frame.

“I’m still learning,” says Hiltunen, “still experimenting.” Looking back at some of his earlier shows, he can see evidence of how he has progressed along the learning curve, “I would now do better printing, better framing and matting.”

Some of Hiltunen’s distinctive tongue-in-cheek terminology pops into the conversation from time to time. There’s “Guy With Camera Syndrome,” a term applied to photographers who get “right on top of” the subject. There’s also the “Mark Dayton Syndrome.” Hiltunen says, “He’s a good guy, but sometimes he just looks like he’s been caught in the headlights.”

A self-described political junkie who once also worked for the Secretary of State, Hiltunen occasionally indulges in subjects that touch on political issues. His portfolio includes visual reflections of the Native American occupation at Alcatraz (1969-1971), and shots of the “ Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” a GLBT group that was placed on the Papal List of Heretics in 1987.

“Hey,” he says, “I’ve got a solution to the voting problem, a way to make it more restrictive, so that it’s more of a privilege and people are motivated to get involved: mandatory attendance at a government-type meeting. If you want to vote, then you have to attend at least one civic meeting every two years – school board, city council meeting, whatever. It’s a way for people to understand the process and it’s not like it’s a huge commitment…. once every two years.” He pauses, then smiles and says, “Of course, I’d probably be one of the first to complain that I don’t have the time.”

No Starving Artist
Though a relative newcomer to the profession, Hiltunen’s drive and dedication to the craft have already earned him some impressive credits. His work has been exhibited in places such as Coffman Union (University of Minnesota), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. In January 2005, he was named to Rake Magazine’s “Most Recommended” list, and his work has since appeared in the Art of Recover (Minnesota State Arts Board) and Utne Magazine.

Hiltunen was scheduled for a month-long exhibition this August at the Copenhagen Cultural Center in Denmark, but circumstances intervened with an unfortunate setback. While attending the St. Paul Art Crawl earlier this year, a pick-up truck parked nearby caught fire and rolled onto Hiltunen’s car. Basic insurance didn’t cover all the damage, so Hiltunen had to pay for expenses out-of-pocket. He hopes to participate next year instead.

One of the keystones to Hiltunen’s approach to the photography business is this: he is determined “not to be a starving artist.” This means not over-extending his resources and it means finding a good balance between the “meat and potato jobs” and the “haute cuisine.”

Although Hiltunen’s long-term goal is producing museum quality pieces, he acknowledges the benefits of having a steady stream of regular assignments. Things like band shoots and taking pictures of houses contribute to his bottom line and make other pursuits possible. His approach is, above all, a pragmatic one intended to secure sustainability in a profession where there are no guarantees.

Coming from a reserved, Midwestern background, Hiltunen says it’s easy to be reticent when it comes to marketing his own work. “Pimping myself,” he jokes, “is not something that comes naturally to me…I prefer to be behind the lens.” He remarks on how many good artists there are out there who never get off the ground because they aren’t able stomach the business side of the profession. The avoidant approach is something he refuses to consider for his own future.

Again, it’s a matter of finding the right balance. “Take Salvador Dali, for instance,” he says, “he produced his best stuff in the early part of his career. The later part of his career – it was mostly marketing himself, the mustache, the lobster thing. Or Andy Warhol – all marketing, but he was a genius at it.”

Still, Hiltunen would rather be at work behind the camera. His ideal would be doing something for publications such as National Geographic or Condé Nast Traveller, “I’ve always had a wandering bug.” Hiltunen has already been criss-crossing the States for work, capturing the distinctive sights he finds along the way. He’s been spending time on reservations, attending festivals, and wandering the piers looking to match the right subject to the right market. He’ll be heading out to Santa Fe in the near future and is currently considering a trip to Morocco.

Visit Evan Hiltunen's Website


Photos by Evan Hiltunen

Hurricane Force: Mary Gray

If Mary Gray talks a mile a minute, it’s because she’s a busy woman. Her words are carried by a hurricane force momentum and driven by a purpose: to provide aid to artists suffering in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Mary Gray is the founder and CEO of MinnesotaHelpers, a non-profit organization dedicated to emergency relief operations. MinnesotaHelpers was founded last year on Sept. 3, 2005 and received its non-profit 501(c)3 status Oct. 6, 2005.

Gray invited us into her Plymouth town home for the interview. The place has served as headquarters for MinnesotaHelpers since its inception. Her home office, corridors, living room, and garage are literally overrun with pieces of art that have been shipped from Mississippi’s devastated coastline as part of MinnesotaHelpers’ Art Share program.

Many of the pieces are created from objects found after Hurricane Katrina hit the area last autumn: window shutters, ravaged dolls, and broken violins. Others simply reflect on how the creative spirit triumphs over human suffering. “Art is healing,” says Gray, and paraphrases a favorite line from Ellis Anderson’s Katrina Chronicles: “We learned early on not to wear bright colors, because the hummingbirds would flock to us because they were starving for nectar.”

Paying it Forward
Gray’s commitment to Minnesota Helpers has been considerable. The program started off as a way for Katrina victims to seek temporary shelter in Minnesota before returning to restore their own towns and neighborhoods. In the first four weeks after starting the organization, she received over 5,000 emails requesting help or offering support.

Though shocked at the volume, Gray was determined to respond to every single email. She got a mere 2-3 hours of sleep each night before going to work in the morning. On Fridays, she’d stay up all night and work through until around four o’clock Sunday morning before crashing. It’s time-consuming work, but Gray feels it’s the least she can do. Gray, who works full time at the law offices of Robin, Thompson, and Doyle, says her employers have been supportive of her efforts. They’ve worked with her on scheduling issues and, if she needs to go somewhere to give a speech, they’re good about giving her time off.

Gray has given more than just time; she has also donated her couch, her dining room set, her television set and numerous other personal belongings to families in need. During the initial relief period, she accepted furniture donations, storing items in her house wherever they would fit. There was a two month period, she tells us, when she just had a narrow path leading from the bedroom to the kitchen; the rest was filled in with things earmarked for Katrina survivors.

This isn’t the first time Gray has sacrificed to help others. After the tsunami devastated large areas of Southeast Asia, she auctioned her own piano off on eBay and used the proceeds to buy two truckloads of beanie-babies. Partnering with a local charity called First Aid for Feelings, she arranged for a shipment to be sent to children recovering from the trauma. Gray has also been an active advocate of gun safety education, meeting with Florida Governor Jeb Bush in 2000, making trips to places like the Columbine High School and Flint, Michigan, where six-year old Kayla Rollins was shot by a fellow classmate.

Gray’s son Adam, the director of Minnesota Helpers, has his hands full with this project as well. He volunteered with a first response team and was deeply impacted by the human suffering he witnessed. Three weeks after Katrina hit, he found himself in the worst-hit sections of New Orleans, watching bodies get hauled out of houses in body bags and hearing air sirens mark the mandatory curfew. Adam now works with the MinnesotaHelpers website, streamlining donation procedures, helping to keep information current, and maintaining the photo archives. He tells us with a wry smile that he has “missed more than a few dates” trying to meet deadlines.

When asked about the sacrifices she and her son have made to help those in need, Gray says, “The Red Cross can only do so much. If something happens to me, I would like to have somebody there to help me. Have you ever heard the phrase, Pay it forward?”

Gray admits to going through moments of feeling selfish, unappreciated, even angry, but then she gets motivated and “fires back up.” On a recent tour of the coastline, she says she felt “embarrassed [when people thanked me] because I felt I hadn’t contributed enough. I felt inadequate - ashamed to have a house, a job, a car….I felt so humbled.”

If It Doesn’t Bleed, It Doesn’t Lead
Gray’s biggest frustration right now is that Katrina has become old news. “If it doesn’t bleed,” she says, “it doesn’t lead.” People aren’t interested anymore – “the controversy is over and now Iraq is more of a hot topic.” Faced with dwindling support in terms of time and donations, she says that fighting apathy is the most challenging part.

“When other people quit, you have to keep pushing,” says Gray, who just recently returned from a tour of the Mississippi coastline. “There are still cars up in trees, there. There are still people without homes, people in wheelchairs who can’t get into a FEMA trailer because they don’t have wheelchair accessibility…there are still people waiting on insurance, people who lived in what was considered a no flood zone…I have artists who are paying mortgages on a stone slab, who are now forced to carry insurance on a stone slab.”

“Katrina was the great equalizer. It didn’t matter if you were wealthy or poor. It was a wall of water thirty feet high. That’s what I told them when I gave a talk at the Rotary club – I had them look at the ten-foot ceiling. They looked at me like, ‘Where are you going with this?’ Then I asked them to imagine a wall of water three times that ceiling…”

Bringing up Hurricane Katrina now, says Gray, carries “a negative connotation.” People avert their eyes and sometimes don’t even wait until she’s out of sight before throwing her business card in the trashcan. It’s disheartening, but something she’s willing to grapple with if it brings some good to the stricken area.

Her son Adam interjects that sometimes he has witnessed attitudes that are downright exploitative or inhumane. When he was down there last, there were signs all over the area exhorting people to “Sell Your Home for $5,000.” It was like that even early on, he notes, “People were packed into cargo planes like slaves, couldn’t tell their families where they were going.” Some believed, says Adam as he shakes his head, that those areas were “meant to be wiped out.”

Art of the Storm
Before we get too deeply enmired in the politics of the past, Gray sweeps in to refocus our interview on the future. She insists that the important thing is getting the job done rather than focusing on individual beliefs and motivations. “This is not about me, not about making money, has nothing to do with my beliefs” - it’s about providing aid and comfort to those who have suffered traumatic, life-altering losses.

Since its start last September, Minnesota Helpers has evolved from an organization that provided temporary housing solutions, to supporting efforts to rebuild lives along the coast. Earlier this year, Gray’s efforts prompted the city of Wayzata to officially adopt Bay St. Louis, Mississippi as a Sister City. “They had a lot in common – both boat communities, with an artistic base.”

On her way home from the adoption ceremony, an idea occurred to Gray: Why not help Mississippi Gulf Coast artists find a way to get themselves back on their feet? USA Today once identified Bay St. Louis as among the top three best small art towns in the United States. Today, artists have been left without homes, much less studios and art materials to work with. There are no local galleries available to show their work, nor patrons who are looking to buy. Gray asked, “Who’s going to go to the town when there’s no reason to go there?”

The Art Share program was inspired by Gray’s desire to revive the community and help artists return to a self-supporting status. It would also be a way for them to express their experiences with the trauma, and to communicate that trauma to others. Gray now works with somewhere around eight art galleries in the Twin Cities area, placing art that has been shipped up from the Mississippi Gulf area. Up until a couple of months ago, not a single agency charged commission on the pieces they sold. Art Share has to date brought somewhere between sixteen to eighteen thousand dollars directly back to the artists who need those funds. Gray has been personally tracking sales and distribution so that she can let artists know exactly what’s going on with their work.

A long-time Florida resident, Gray describes how she first felt to see some of the artwork up on the walls: “I was emotionally stymied by the talent, the Southern richness..that it was hanging on the walls around me because I had asked.” It was a moment where she realized that even just “one person can really pack a wallop.”

Of course, she is not alone. Gray pulls a tremendous amount of support from her son Adam, and from volunteer Kris Stapleton, who she says, has “stuck with it and is constantly there” to help with the pick up and distribution of artwork. Invaluable assistance also comes from Ken and Mary Davidson, Cathy Gray, and Rhonda Blassingame.

Through the entire month of August, MinnesotaHelpers will be paying tribute to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina with a special exhibit at the Hennepin County Government Center. The exhibit, entitled “Art of the Storm,” will feature artwork by Mississippi Katrina survivors. Gray hopes that the event will draw attention to the ongoing plight of hurricane victims and lead to renewed efforts to assist the devastated area.

There will be a display of actual debris from the Mississippi coast, so that visitors can see firsthand the “green patina” (a pervasive mold) that has crept over the waterlogged gulf coast. Gray is also eager for a “touch table” that will allow visitors to handle actual items destroyed in the hurricane.

Artists participating in this exhibit include: Lori Gordon, Michelle Allee, Liz Schaffer, Vicki Niolet, Joe Tomosovsky, Ellis Anderson, Rhonda Blasingame, Hamilton Guenard, Megan Carney, Ken and Mary Davidson, Julie Nelson, Mary Shaw, Vathy Gray, Robert Brooks, Judi Macinnis, Mary Hardy, Don Beckmeier, Joey Rice, Ruth Thompson, Pat Odom, Brenda Randolf, and Marcel Anderson. Local artist Lisa Marik, who is working on the debris display, will also be featured.

A reception on August 18^th (5-8 pm) will feature the jazz music of Envy, a special documentary, and guest speakers. An impressive assortment of government officials is expected to attend.

The Hennepin Gallery is located at 300 South 6th Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“People need art,” says Gray, “80% of people will say that they’re not interested, but we all need art…Every one of us wants to enhance our environment. We decorate our cars with bumper stickers, decorate our homes..” Many of the hurricane survivors have had their immediate needs attended to, but it’s not enough – “the spirit will die. It’s about rebuilding communities, helping artists…people have got to be able to do things to help themselves.”

Visit Minnesota Helpers

Photos by Dwayne Williams

Leading Out: Henry Allen

The sun glints off an amber pendant hanging around Henry Allen’s neck. It’s a Maori koru, a plump spiral representing continual growth and regeneration. It’s also a motif that has repeated itself in Allen’s life since his childhood abroad as the son of a foreign service diplomat. Today, as the artistic director of All of the Above Twin Cities Minnesota (AATCMN), Allen uses the symbol as a conceptual tool to organize his own life as well as tap into the creativity of those who participate in his performance collaborative and work tank.

With Joy Divine, Allen co-hosts The Divine Cocktail Lounge & Supper Show every Tuesday night at Jitter’s Martini Bar & Cabaret. It’s a multidisciplinary arts event, with gallery space and stage performances. Visual artists, from photographers to architects can mingle, display, and talk about their work. From 8 to 10pm, the Divine Cocktail Lounge showcases performance artists from comedians to belly dancers. After 10, the mic is opened up to newcomers interested in trying their talents out onstage in a safe environment.

The structure of the show, in fact, resembles the structure of Allen’s symbolic spiral. Featured artists are continually changing and growing. The morphology of featured work pushes boundaries into new territory, reaching beyond the closed circle that has traditionally divided “the Painter” from “the Dancer” and “the Singer.” From the beginning of the evening to the end, from one Tuesday to the next, there is an implicit understanding of organic growth and flux in the arts.

Rotunda of Infinite Doors
For Allen, the philosophy of spiraling beginnings has been long in the works. The son of a foreign service diplomat, he spent much of his childhood abroad. Growing up in opulent mansions in countries including Brazil, Austria, Russia, Cuba, and Peru, the influences on his own personal development were wide-ranging and at times contradictory.

On the one hand, it was a life of privilege, replete with glamorous parties during which Allen would organize troupes of visiting diplomat children to perform variety shows. They had sprawling gardens and Allen was placed in charge of a menagerie of exotic animals (monkeys, toucans, goats, and owls received as gifts from visiting dignitaries). He attended American schools (where, he laments, the teachers seemed more interested in glamour than pedagogy) and traveled the globe in a way that few children have the opportunity to do.

On the other hand, it was a life of service, with a continually shifting cultural landscape to adapt to and an extended family of household servants with whom he spent much of his time. Through these servants, who often had deep spiritual beliefs and had made the decision to live their lives in service to others, Allen began to recognize the impact of what it meant to make that choice to “do your work” as an authentic being.

Allen says he felt for a long time as if he were continually passing through a rotunda with an infinite number of doors. He’d choose to go through one door, only to find that it opened up into another rotunda with another infinite set of potential paths. Though exhilarating, it was dizzying in the sense that he felt he had no direction in his life. A wise friend suggested, finally, that he stop for a while to live in the moment, “Sit on one of the benches and look up at the ceiling. Or if that’s not comfortable, try sitting on the floor.”

Leading Out of What is Already There
At thirteen, Allen left home (then Brazil) to attend a private boarding school in Connecticut. The school had a distinctly athletic bent to it; a tradition that Allen could not fully partake in, having been diagnosed with Osgood Schlatter’s disease (similar to juvenile arthritis). Since film had long held an ongoing fascination for him, Allen turned instead to the performing arts. There was something about “holding up the celluloid. It was a sensual experience for me – the sound of film going through the gears, the smell of the light bulb.” Though little else about the school captivated his imagination, Allen was attracted to the power of live theatre and participated in nine shows over a three-year period.

While he admits that the educational institutions he attended were privileged, Allen remains unimpressed with his schooling. He considers himself to be essentially an autodidact and firmly believes in the idea of education as something that leads out of individual growth. A strong supporter of the Waldorf perspective on education, which emphasizes nurturing the creative spirit and sense of self, Allen once worked with the City of the Lakes Waldorf School in Minneapolis, where his son attended school for eight years.

“Have you seen The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie?” he asks me, and then quotes one of his favorite lines from the movie, “To me, education is a leading out. The word education comes from the root ‘ex,’ meaning ‘out,’ and ‘duco..’ ‘I lead.’ To me, education is simply a leading out of what is already there.” In response to the idea that education might involve “a certain amount of putting in,” Miss Brodie retorts, “That would not be education, but intrusion...from the root prefix ‘in,‘ meaning ‘in,’ and the stem ‘trudo’...‘I thrust.’ Ergo, to thrust a lot of information into a pupil's head.”

Today, Allen has his MFA from the National Theatre Conservatory, but the pivotal moments he references come directly from life rather than academia. One of these was an exchange he recalls having with his father during the three and a half hour drive to college. Eighteen at the time, he asked his father (whose personality he describes as a combination of Fidel Castro, Benito Mussolini, and Mel Brooks), “Do you like what you do?” His father replied, “I loathe it.” “Then why do you do it?” His father thought for a moment, then said, “Well, son, that’s the price you pay when you want your family to be proud of you…”

When he pursued the topic and asked his father what he had wanted to be as a child, the response was, “I don’t remember.” Yet moments later, tears trickled down his father’s cheeks as he recalled that he had wanted to be a photographer and reporter for National Geographic. Allen says, “It was a turning point for me in terms of career choices. My father’s failure is my triumph.”

Now Allen makes a careful distinction between “a job” and “work.” A job “is something that you can’t wait to get home from,” while work is “something that you are living for.” Since his single stab at a “job,” where he says he ultimately felt stuck, Allen has focused on doing work that is meaningful and allows him to be authentic. Invaluable experiences with organizations like the Waldorf school, Steppingstone Theatre, Wild Rumpus, and Wells Fargo have proven that it’s possible to choose a life in service and do the work out of a love for the task itself. “There are fat months and lean months,” says Allen, but in the end it’s worth it.

Labels are for Food Cans
One of the big influences on Allen’s life was a grandmother in Florida who used to say, “Labels are for food cans.” It’s a message Allen has taken to heart in virtually every aspect of his life, both personally and professionally. His response is to create bridges between categories where none existed before, positioning himself in a place of perpetual new beginnings, new stories, and new ways of thinking and doing.

Allen’s son Cameron is also a continuing thread in our conversation. Allen survived testicular cancer with a fifty percent possibility of being sterile and seems now to truly appreciate his role in life as a parent. He talks about holding his son when he was a newborn and asking himself, “What can I offer you as a parent?” The answer that came to him was not materialistic, but spiritual: “your whole self, to walk authentically in the world.”

That thought has not only informed Allen’s decision about what messages he should pass on about work, money, and materialism, but also life in a Rainbow family. Though Allen “came out” at the age of eighteen, he was married to a woman for seven years. While he accepts that labels like “gay” or “bi-sexual” are generally easier for people to understand, Allen says that, “I recognized very early that what attracted me to another being was not what’s between their legs. It’s their character, compassion, integrity.."

When Allen and his wife divorced seven years ago, their son’s attitude was positive and open, “You mean I get to have two houses? Yippee!” At eleven, Cameron isn’t troubled by the fact that his father dates other men, nor does he really question why his mother is heterosexual while his father isn’t. Because there aren’t a lot of storybooks geared towards the GLBT community, Allen improvised stories for his son about non-traditional relationships, like two princesses who fall in love. It’s a part of life, part of the human experience. “Fat people fall in love too,” Allen points out, and there aren’t a lot of storybooks out there on that subject either.

Once an actor whose weight exceeded that of those who traditionally get cast in romantic leads, it’s another boundary he’s worked to move beyond. At a maximum weight of 336 lbs, there was a time when Allen had difficulty landing the acting parts that he connected to. Neither directors nor audiences felt comfortable seeing an overweight man in a romantic role, and so he’d inevitably wind up as a supporting character. Over time, he’s lost the weight, but remains mindful of the invisible barrier in perception.

As if drawn by a “deep sense of fate,” Allen recently joined the board of directors with Outward Spiral, a theatre company whose mission is to move beyond conventional views and represent queer and outsider perspectives. The symbolism of the spiral, he tells me, is pure coincidence, but the connection is genuine.

Creativity in life and in work is what lies at the heart of Allen’s performance collaborative and work tank through AATCMN. Through an exploration of personal biographies, he helps clients tap into their creative spirits and move away from inertia and interpersonal barriers. He’s not a life coach, but more of a creative consultant who works to draw out the talents and interests that are already present in an individual. He also focuses on issues of trust, cooperation, and teambuilding in group contexts.

The emphasis in his work is on stepping out of the label and becoming an authentic human being. The mission of AATCMN is "to debut artists with integrity and passion" and to "awaken the creativity that exists in every human being, and teach how to apply it to one's life and work." Facilitating that potential for transformation in others is tremendously rewarding, says Allen, and the process itself is a magnificent thing to behold.

Visit AATCMN

Photos by Dwayne Williams

Connecting Art to Life: Elissa A. Jones

Spend a little time on the website for the Lisan Gallery of Art and Design and it won’t take you long to find the driving force behind it. “LIFE IS SHORT,” says owner Elissa A. Jones, and no matter “how corny that sounds,” she’s here to do something with hers.

With gleaming hardwood floors and vibrant walls, the gallery interior exudes warmth. Feeling that the draw of art is essentially emotional and intuitive, Jones designed the space to be “warm and fuzzy” – in other words, personal. Her business depends upon the personal network of customers and artists who contribute to the store’s bottom line.

Since its opening in January 2006, Lisan Gallery (883 Smith Ave. S., West St. Paul) has become an artery of human creativity and support. “I started with about twenty-one artists, who I mostly found on Craigslist - Craigslist is my answer to everything,” Jones laughs, “Gradually people saw that I was serious about this and started telling their friends and cousins.” Now, with around fifty artists contributing pieces to the gallery, she finds that there is some truth to the “six degrees of separation scenario.”

Connecting the Dots
Taking a sip of her strawberry colored soda at the coffee shop next door, Jones tells me that the path to here and now hasn’t been a matter of going from A to B. After graduating from high school, she went to a small bible college, which she admits, she chose for the wrong reason. “I was not ready for school at that point,” she says, “but I was expected to go to college.” Coming from an extremely liberal background, she settled on a conservative school not likely to curry favor with her parents. To her dismay, Jones soon discovered that the majority of the women were not there to get a good education, but to get a nice husband.

Jones eventually switched to Bemidji State University, where she majored in English Literature and minored in Theatre Construction. She interned at the Paul Bunyan Playhouse for a year and a half, helping with everything from set painting to costumes, and served as master carpenter with them one summer. Though she enjoyed the vitality of the theatre community, her satisfaction in school began to sputter and eventually, she left BSU.

Unsure of her direction, Jones transferred into Alexandria Technical College in 2001 primarily (she winces), because her boyfriend was going to school only forty-five minutes away in Moorhead. At the time, she didn’t have a driver’s license and that winter there were nine and ten-foot snow banks outside of her apartment. She felt cut-off from the world around her. Not long afterwards, she and her boyfriend broke up.

Jones had all but decided to quit again and move out to Texas with some friends, when she got her grades for the term. “They were the best grades I’ve ever had, so I decided to go back.” She studied interior design and became increasingly invested in the program as her studies continued. She connected with a group of friends with whom she still remains close and became something of a “Mother Hen” for her circle in the post 9-11 climate of fear. In 2003, she walked away with a degree, not to mention invaluable experience working with the National Kitchen and Bath Association and a local art gallery in Alexandria.

Things Fall Apart
Though Jones now finds herself at the center of a robust social and professional network, she is acutely conscious of how quickly things can fall apart. Just two years ago, her mother began complaining of a terrible stomachache. Her mother’s physician told her there was nothing to worry about - “it’s just gas.” The stomachache worsened, however, and she was eventually diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Jones’ mother was admitted to the hospital for a full hysterectomy. Jones, then twenty-six and working as a visual display person for Marshall Fields, remembers those days as a blur of shuttling between work and hospital, with little hope that her mother would recover. Before she died (three weeks after diagnosis), her mother said to her, “I have no regrets. I’m proud of you. But I’m going to miss seeing what you do with your life.”

Two months later, Jones’ stepfather of fifteen years had a brain aneurysm while attending a basketball game. He insisted on driving himself to the hospital, but died in surgery. Shortly thereafter, Jones’ biological father, George (whom she describes as her best friend) broke his foot and spent six weeks recovering from surgery. By this time, Jones was living with George and, going through what she called “separation anxiety.” She stuck close to make sure that he was going to be ok.

It was a devastating period for Jones and her mother’s words kept popping into her head – “I’m going to miss seeing what you do with your life.” Jones decided to quit her job at Marshall Fields and took some time off to re-evaluate. Having never contemplated what life would be like without her mother, she used her time to work through priorities, travel, and reinvest in friendships. After eight months, she was back in the Twin Cities with a plan in hand.

On her way to a friend’s house in West St. Paul one day, Jones happened to notice a vacancy notice in a business node nestled into Smith Ave. The space and area appealed to her, so she wrote down the telephone number and gave the building owners a call. Using funds from her inheritance, Jones signed the lease in October 2005 and started moving in the following month.

Making Connections
“I think of my gallery as more of a service than a shop,” says Jones. “As a general rule, artists don’t speak up for themselves, don’t know how to market themselves. I want to build something where artists are coming to me to represent them and where people from the community come to get information on art and events, etc.. I want to help make that connection between the artist and the community happen.”

The challenge, for Jones, is to nourish that connective tissue between artist and client, at the individual, community, and corporate levels. Situated at the intersection of West St. Paul, Lilydale, Mendota Heights, Inver Grove Heights, and St. Paul proper, her customers defy conforming to a single profile. Her response to this has been to create a two pronged plan that gives her the flexibility to work with corporate clients (furnishing signature pieces to retail/office spaces) while simultaneously being a “neighborhood store” where people can come to look for a gift for grandma or get help with planning their wedding décor.

Though she has worked in retail and had the word “upsell” impressed upon her since the age of fifteen, Jones is not interested in pressuring customers into a purchase; she wants them to come to that decision on their own terms and to feel good about the artwork that they’re taking home with them. “There’s a lady who come in here about once a week,” she tells me, “just to look at this one piece. I don’t want to push her into buying - I don’t want her to buy something for six hundred dollars and then later on have buyer’s remorse.”

Jones tells me a story about a teacher who was once coaxed into buying a three thousand dollar Oriental Rug while on a trip to Chicago. The teacher ended up feeling so guilty about blowing the money (without first consulting her husband) that she simply folded the silk rug up, stuck it in a bag, and left it in the back of her closet for the next four years. “Art should be a part of your life,” she says, “not in the back of your closet.”

Driving home the idea that Art is a part of Life, on July 13^th, the Lisan Gallery of Art and Design will be holding a silent auction to raise money for the Three Day Walk for Breast Cancer (supporting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the Philanthropic National Trust). Jones will be taking part in the walk, which coincides with the two-year anniversary of her mother’s death, and hopes to raise $5,000 in pledges. Talking to artists about her own mother’s experience “has opened me up to artists in a way I couldn’t have predicted. I’ve been flooded with stories and situations about their daughter-in-laws and mothers…”

Lisan Gallery of Art and Design

Photos by Valerie Borey