SD Day 7/ ND Day 0 - Sweet Art, Superheroes, and Sausages
Today I started out my last day in SD the right way by getting a fantastic brunch at local favorite the All Day Cafe. I got a beautiful monstrosity of a breakfast burrito filled with smoked pork & eggs, black bean puree, cheddar, and hashbrowns, and covered with pork green chili and crème. It was an amazing blend of the breakfast and lunch halves of brunch, and an excellent way to start the day. To accompany my meal, I got a good strong cold pressed coffee to wake me up for the day ahead.
After this big ol’ brunch, I made my way to my primary stop of the day: the South Dakota Art Museum at the South Dakota State University in Brookings. It is considered one of the finest art museums in the state, and I quickly saw why.
The first exhibit was all works by an incredible Ojibwe artist named Rabbett Before Horses Strickland who reimagines traditional Native stories about the trickster god Nanabozho in the style of great Baroque and Renaissance artists like Peter Paul Reubens and Botticelli. His paintings are huge and lushly realized with homemade paints and glazes by the artist giving them a beautiful glowing quality. The blending of traditional Native and European styles and imagery made the paintings at once strangely familiar and totally original.
While I loved all the paintings, these two really stood out to me for their haunting, dreamlike blues and their darker more melancholy imagery. I mean I don’t know if it could get any more perfectly on the nose than having the trickster god literally impaled by a giant American flag, but somehow the artist elevates this potentially heavy-handed metaphor right into the realm of high art.
The next special exhibition filled me with great, child-like joy as it was a big showcase of international contemporary art focused on superheroes and comic books basically combining almost all of the things I love to geek out about. Plus it literally started with a “Pow!!” so how can you not love that.
The exhibition had an impressively varied collection of artists working in diverse styles o I’ve decided to sort of chunk them by medium just as an easier way to talk about them. In general, it was a lot of fun to see how people took pop art staples like famous superheroes and really made them their own as they explored various themes like justice and identity that have always been in those narratives but maybe not always as the focus. Let’s start with (slightly) more traditional paintings and drawings, since those are probably the most directly linked to both classic comic book art as well as more classic museum fare.
Highlights here for me included: two portraits of Wonder Woman and Superman respectively by pop-art icon Mel Ramos (probably most famous for his wild series of works featuring pin ups girls and commercial food products); a lovingly rendered acrylic tribute to the campier days of Adam West’s Batman by Steve Seeley; a weirdly beautiful, intimate portrait of a sad Spider-Man impersonator on Hollywood Boulevard by William Wray, who actually used to draw comics and work as an animator for Ren and Stimpy before finding his way to fine art painting; painterly staged photographs of people dressed as superman in desolate backdrops by Norwegian artist Ole Marius Joergensen; charmingly sorrowful paintings of Superman’s laundry by Jennie Ottinger; a highly detailed still-life of a Superman figure with a coffee pot on its head and punnily titled Superhero Pot Head No. 3 by Frank Trankina; a mixed-media painting of Superman on an envelope stamped from Africa by Inez Storer; paintings by the Swedish artist Andreas Englundof a cranky, elderly superhero based on the artist’s own father; an gorgeously drawn scene of an aging justice league sitting around playing cards by Jason Yarmosky.
A number of the artists reimagined different superheroes in the styles of iconic artists which was really playful and fun. Some highlights included: Marcos D’Alfonso doing Captain America as Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover; Alessandro Rabatti’s Warhol-esque superhero renderings of heads of state from world currency; Foto Marvellini’s doctored Victorian photos of superheroes; Jenny Parks’ lovingly internet-inspired imagining of superheroes as cats; and wonderfully for-a-second-there-you-think-they’re-real recreations of China’s terra cotta warriors with Batman and Spiderman heads by Lizabeth Rossof.
Some of my favorite re-stylings were these adorably off-color cartoony superheroes lovingly dubbed “super losers” by the artist, Laurina Paperina:
Next up, there were some really spectacular collages taking the already great art in comics and repurposing it in new and interesting ways. My highlights of these creative cut-and-pastes were: portraits of Superman and Spiderman made out of carefully spliced pictures from their respective comics by Mike Alcantra (next to chaotic black and white, Roy Lichtenstein-esque recreations of comic panels by Mark Todd); a vibrant explosion of mixed media pop culture imagery by Maurizio Zuluaga called Deflection; and a lithograph by Enrique Chagoya wonderfully titled The Thingly Thingness of Thing in dramatic comic-style font featuring a blend of watercolor, the artist’s drawings, and a cloud of superimposed images from vintage ads and comics.
Next up were some more tactile 3-dimensional works showcasing some really creative use of materials. My favorites here included: Super cute knit superhero sweaters by Mark Newport; skateboards with multi-racial pop-art portraits of classic DC heroes on the decks by Winston Tseng; a wild yarn and fabric sculpture of Spiderman tangled in his own web by German artist Patricia Waller; lovably grumpy looking basswood carvings of different superhero heads by Dan Willner; and carved wooden speech bubbles with sweetly bummed out painted superheroes by Matt Richie.
In the realm of photography, there were two series that I really loved: a collection of photos of migrant workers dressed like superheroes to elevate everyday courage and perseverance to the heights of heroism and a hilariously strange photo journal by Rémi Noël who took photos of noir-ish photos of a batman figure while on a road trip across the US giving the delightfully absurd impression that this little batman is the one doing the traveling and documenting the motels and highways across America.
Lastly two pieces I wanted to give a special acknowledgment to for their brilliance were: a piece called Le Cage et le Commencement by Canadian artist Sandra Chevrier that was just so impressive across three different mediums as she carved the wooden portrait of a woman, painted it with a photorealistic face and impressionistic hair and clothing, and then seamlessly collaged old comic books into the face to allude to the internal feelings behind the woman’s blank searching expression; and a simple, elegant, brilliantly stupid pun in the form of Justin Hager’s Batman & Robin Williams.
After the super-art, I moved onto some of the museum’s permanent collections. First up was a great collection of works by Paul Goble, a Caldecott-award winning children’s book author and illustrator. Goble was born in England in 1933, but he had a lifelong fascination with Native American art, culture, and stories, and he spent most of his adult life living in the Black Hills (even getting adopted by Chief Red Cloud), studying the stories of the Plains Indians, and rendering them as authentically as he could for young audiences in his distinctive flowing colors and simple line-work. I didn’t know his work beforehand, but they had a really gently elegant quality that I know I would have loved as a kid because I was a pretty big fan now.
The next permanent exhibition was an astounding collection of works by a great American painter and illustrator born in South Dakota named Harvey Dunn. Dunn was a member of the influential Brandywine School, and his illustrations were featured in books, Harper’s Magazine, and the Saturday Evening post among others. He was a fantastic illustrator, reminding me of N.C. Wyeth for his ability to so efficiently render emotions and actions in deceptively sparse Impressionistic brushstrokes. I’d seen a few of Dunn’s works before, but this museum actually has the largest collection in the world which explains why I hadn’t seen so many of these amazing paintings before, because some of these scenes, particularly The Prairie is My Garden (bottom right) were just awe-inspiring.
The next permanent collection was a showcase of original Marghab Linens. Started by Vera Way Marghab, a young woman from South Dakota, and her husband in 1933 on the Portuguese islands of Madeira, Marghab Linens took the world class hand embroidery that Madeira was famous for and brought it to new heights of luxury, becoming a favorite linen company of high end retailers and even finding their way into the collections of various European royal families. The Marghab pieces were made with fine Irish linen and a sheer cotton called Margandie from Switzerland, and every piece was designed by Vera and hand embroidered by the women of the Islands. The quality of the material, the deigns, and the craftsmanship was just stunning and the fact that each of these delicate things was done by hand was unreal. Vera even had the crazy idea of actually paying her skilled artisans well insisting that each woman be paid by the stitch (of which even a small placemat might have several tens of thousands). Sadly actually paying factory workers compensatory wages for their is almost as novel now as it must have seemed in the 1930s.
All the pieces were easily more beautiful than a placemat really has any right to be, but these little guys with more representational designs of fish and ships really blew me away with the ability to render such detail in just fabric.
Lastly there was one more special exhibit showcasing artist Gisela Colon’s strange luminous sculptures called Pods. These funky amorphous pieces are made with blow-molded acrylic plastic and iridescent and fluorescent pigments that capture and reflect light in different ways so the colors in each piece almost seem to pulse as you walk by. I think they’re weird and neat looking in pictures, but you really lose the hypnotic quality of actually watching the colors and shadows morph before your eyes that you get seeing them in person. I’m not sure if just seeing one individual pod I would have really understood the appeal, but being totally surrounded by them in one gallery really gives them a sort of mesmerizing otherworldliness in that they at once seem totally artificial but strangely organic. I do always like seeing something that (for better or for worse depending on your artistic taste) is genuinely unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
Stepping outside the museum, there was a really pleasant courtyard adorned with a cool sculpture called Oasis by Scott Wallace which captures in bronze the exact moment when a drop of water hits a surface and starts to ripple it out. It was a sweet small moment to commemorate in such a grand way that it really added to the serenity of this little spot snugly tucked among vibrant greenery.
Another highlight of the South Dakota State campus is the massive 165 foot tall brick tower Coughlin Campanile. The Campanile was built as a chimes tower ringing out every hour, but now its towering profile has also made it the most recognizable landmark of the university and a tourist attraction for anyone who wants to climb the stairs to the top of the tower for an unbeatable view. I was pretty tired from all my museum-ing and driving, so instead I opted to go get some coffee rather than climb a bunch of stairs.
For coffee, I stopped at the awesomely named Kool Beans Coffee (you better believe they write the “o”s with coffee beans) for a good strong cold brew to keep me going for the next 2.5 hours of driving out of South Dakota to Fargo, ND.
Right across the state line, I stopped to use the bathroom at a highway rest stop that happened to have both a glory hole and graffiti saying “KKK rules” in the same bathroom stall, so I think it’s safe to say that I might have found the single worst 3 X 5ft in the whole country.
Luckily, this terrible rest stop was not an indicator of the whole state, because when I made it to Fargo I was really impressed by what a hip, fun college town it was. My first stop was to an excellent German restaurant (because you don’t go to the midwest and not get German food) called the Wurst Bier Hall. The place had a great classic beer hall aesthetic with wood paneling and a long bar table that took up most of the seating. The menu was a relatively no frills collection of sandwiches and sausages, but everything they had was done to perfection. All the sausages were either made and smoked in house or bought from other local sausage makers in the neighboring states, so either way it was very small business and craft focused. The french bread was made in house and had that perfect blend of fluffy of in the middle, crispy on the outside, and they even gave it a light brushing with olive oil which took the whole wurst to another level. I went with the classic brat wurst which was a hefty 6 oz. sausage that I got topped with sweet peppers, and it was a real contender for one of the most satisfying bar meals I’d ever had. The meat was so juicy, smoky, and packed with flavor, it was a real treat. To wash it all down, I got a great local porter called the Sodbuster Porter from Fargo Brewing Company, which was rich and dark and a perfect complement to the meal. If the way to a man’s heart is through the stomach, Fargo made one hell of a first impression.
After dinner, I made my way to my Air BnB and had a real nice chat with my host who was a sweet, sort-of-nerdy guy going for a second graduate degree and happy to have a break from studying for some friendly conversation. Then I went to my room and started working on my blog and watching lots of the second season of Luke Cage (like most of the Marvel Netflix shows it’s all high highs and low lows and no in-betweens).
At some point later in the night, I ended up having a conversation on Tinder with a girl who somehow also wanted to geek out about Talking Heads. She was bored and asked if I wanted to hang out, so we ended up spending some surprisingly wholesome platonic time just hanging out in my car and listening to music (she was particularly amused by my album of songs that Bernie Sanders recorded in the 80s) while she told me all the really fascinating ins and outs of working in a historic movie theater and getting to learn how to run the old-school projector. I got a hankering for some ice cream so we ended up going to an all night diner a-grammatically named The Fryn’ Pan. I got a delicious Oreo milkshake, and I was under the impression that she was also going to get something but she wasn’t feeling that hungry so then we both started laughing at how because of this misunderstanding I’d basically asked a girl I just met to sit and watch me drink an entire milkshake. Not exactly the smoothest move in the book, but it was still a fun way to the end the night, and I was happy to have made a friend and learned some things about the city I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Favorite Random Sightings: a frame shop called You've Been Framed; a baby and dad wearing matching hats that said “The Legend” and “The Legacy”; a surprisingly prevalent billboard advertisement for underwear with the slogan “Protect Your Parts”; a big sign that said “Corn-Fused?”
Regional Observations: While big chunks of South Dakota are flat, dry plains, all of a sudden around the Northeast corner there are lakes and rivers everywhere and they add a really pretty disruption to the flatness:
Albums Listened To: World Tour EP by Lady Lamb and the Beekeepers(some nice indie folk to start the day); The World’s Room by the Old Blind Dogs (a traditional Scottish band); Worry. by Jeff Rosenstock (impressively all the songs bleed into each other like a punk rock Abbey Road)
Joke of the Day:
A barber gave a haircut to a priest one day. The priest tried to pay for the haircut, but the barber refused, saying, "you do God’s work." The next morning the barber found a dozen bibles at the door to his shop.
A policeman came to the barber for a haircut, and again the barber refused to pay, saying, "you protect the public." The next morning the barber found a dozen doughnuts at the door to his shop.
A lawyer came to the barber for a haircut, and again the barber refused payment, saying, "you serve the justice system." The next morning the barber found a dozen lawyers waiting for a free haircut.
South Dakota Superlatives:
Favorite Coffee: Coffea Roasterie in Sioux Falls
Favorite Restaurant: Tally’s Silver Spoon in Rapid City (long live Pork and Pinot Tuesdays)
Favorite Bar: a tie between the Firehouse Brewery in Rapid City and Monk’s House of Ale Repute in Sioux Falls
Favorite Beer: Gandy Dancer’s Raccoon Toaster Double Bock
Favorite Open Mic: The Blind Lion Speakeasy in Rapid City (they also were a front runner for favorite bar but since I only went to one mic I didn’t want to double count them, but it’s a great place)
Favorite (man-made) Attraction: Toss up between the Termesphere Gallery in Spearfish and the National Music Museum in Vermillion
Favorite (natural) Attraction: Badlands National Park (but Wind Cave is a strong runner up)
Thoughts on the Comedy Scene: I can’t really judge since I only got to go to one mic in Rapid, but it seemed like a strong, supportive (albeit small) community with some really strong joke writers. Material tended towards more personal story based jokes, but again that’s a tendency based on one night so take it with a grain of a salt. Anecdotally, I’ve heard great things about the Sioux Falls comedy scene, and one of my favorite Boston comics, Alan Richardson (check him out!) has actually done extended runs out there, so it seems like the kind of scene where if they like you they’ll really take care of you.
Songs of the Day:
I’m always a big fan of small musicians with huge voices
I like that for such a mild mannered band every live clip I see of them, the crowd is always crazy into it.
such a tight band to cycle through so many different genres like that. plus you gotta love a punk glockenspiel