Weekend picks: MCAD-Jerome Fellowship exhibit; One Voice Mixed Chorus; Viet Nguyen’s ‘Reincarnation Soup’ at Stages of Equity fest; ‘Springboard on Ice’; and Beth Bergman’s solo show

When it’s this freezing and horrible, you have two choices: You can hide from the world under an electric blanket and wait until the weather cheers up, or you can embrace the cold and go out to see all the art and nature and beauty there is to see in this terrible beautiful world. Below are just a few ideas to get you started.

I was lucky enough to stop by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on the opening day of the 2022/23 MCAD-Jerome Fellowship Exhibition, which has a reception this Friday. You can see my thoughts about that show below. Also this week, One Voice Mixed Chorus heads to the Cowles Center for a concert of music about change and transformation, and solo performing artist Viet Nguyen presents his “Reincarnation Soup” at the Stages of Equity Festival. This weekend, catch Brownbody on the ice (and take a lesson yourself) at the “Springboard on Ice” event. Finally, Beth Bergman, who ran the art store Wet Paint for 33 years, has a solo show this weekend at Form + Content.

2022/23 MCAD-Jerome Fellowship Exhibition

This year’s cohort of visual artists who received the 2022/2023 Jerome Fellowship make up a varied and intriguing exhibition, currently on view at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Among them is Moira (Miri) Villiard. You may remember her beautiful “Illuminate the Lock” piece, “Madweyaashkaa: Waves Can Be Heard,” in 2021, which was projected on the St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam. In the MCAD-Jerome exhibition, Villiard employs painting, digital design, drawing and mixed media in a compelling body of work with a strong message around critiquing societal responses — and unraveling historical causes — to homelessness, mental health and addiction. Villiard’s paintings are vivid and poignant, and her digital work often brings together design and text in visually clever ways that aid the message she’s telling.

Another artist in the show, Peng Wu, has been involved with numerous installations at places like the Weisman Art Museum, the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, often with a socially engaged practice element incorporated as part of the work. Wu has set up a warm, inviting, domestic space, with a table filled with hand-crafted ceramics. There’s a friendly feeling in the exhibition — like you are walking into a friend’s house for tea. At the same time, Wu instills a sharp critique. For example, in the center of the table stands a ceramic copy of the “Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Scholars at the Lanting Pavilion,” owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (currently on loan to the British Museum). Its place at the table calls attention to that particular masterpiece’s beauty, but also questions why such important cultural works left their countries of origin, often without much transparency. It’s a slice at the colonialism that continues to pervade Western museums.

Wu also has included a poem he wrote in the style of the poetry written by Chinese immigrant detainees of Angel Island in San Francisco. The poetry was discovered by park patrol in 1970, over 30 years after the center had closed. In front of Wu’s poem (inscribed in Chinese characters) are three busts, each eroded in ways that are both horrific and beautiful. There’s a performative element to Wu’s work, both captured on video and displayed, and also as it asks the viewer to participate.

Roshan Ganu’s work in the exhibition, meanwhile, is enclosed in a separate room, in part because it’s contingent on multiple projection screens, as well as a tapestry of video image, sound, and mirrors. I loved Roshan Ganu’s “पौर्णिमा: Gazing Into The Full Moon Night” at SooVAC back in 2022, and there were similarities here, with the way she creates an experience of sound and light. (I noticed the moon imagery reappear in this installation as well.) For the new installation, Ganu derives material from a residency she participated in Egypt. The work creates a dream-like experience, where figures swim through time and space.

Finally, Erika Terwilliger has transformed used catering trays and dryer vents into massive sculptures through hours and hours of meticulous and difficult physical labor for her exhibition. The poetry of bent metal is both playful and foreboding.

The opening reception takes place Friday, Jan. 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. at MCAD, and the show is up until March 2 (free). More information here.

One Voice Mixed Chorus: ‘Dark Night, Star Bright’

Two early 20th-century greats — Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and Black classical composer Florence Price — make up a program this week in a concert performed by One Voice Mixed Chorus, led by the choir’s new artistic director, Kimberly Waigwa. But this won’t be strictly classical. Among the selections, the choral group that centers voices of lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual and straight allies — will also sing work by 1990s-era British pop group Take That! and more, in an evening that focuses on change, uncertainty, and venturing into the unknown. Saturday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Jan 21, at 2 p.m. at the Cowles Center ($20-$35). More information here.

Stages of Equity: ‘Reincarnation Soup’

As part of North Hennepin Community College’s fourth-annual Stages of Equity Festival, solo performing artist Viet Nguyen brings his long-running show, “Reincarnation Soup,” to Brooklyn Park. The one-person piece has been performed at Fringe festival shows around the continent, and earned high praise from local critics here at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. In it, he blends memory, trauma and the complicated relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam together with multiple characters and big questions. It’s just one of the offerings in the Stages of Equity Festival, which runs through April of this year. While you are at the college, check out the exhibition featuring “Plein Aire Graffitti” by Peyton Scott Russell in the Joseph Gazzuolo Gallery. “Reincarnation Soup” takes place Friday, Jan.19, at 7:30 p.m. (come at 6:30 p.m. for pre-show bites) at the Fine Arts Center Theatre (free). More information here.

Springboard on Ice

Brownbody, the Black-led performing arts company that brings together the best of figure skating, modern dance and theater, teams up as they have in past years with Springboard for the Arts for a mini ice rink experience. This is a participatory affair, where you can try your hand at ice skating (all levels welcome), and catch a performance by the group (the performance will take place at the beginning of the program, between 1 and 1:30 p.m.) Skates will be available for free rental, and Springboard will have free, hot drinks from Flava Coffee & Cafe on hand. Saturday, Jan. 20, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and the following two Saturdays (free). Note: You’ll need to sign a waver. More information here.

‘Seven Vignettes: New Works by Beth Bergman’

A graduate of Macalester College with a degree in studio arts, Beth Bergman was a founding member of the Women’s Resource Center of Minnesota, and showed her work at the gallery in the late 1970s and early 1980s while paying the bills with a corporate job. Her life took a turn in 1984 when she bought Wet Paint, an art supply business, from former owner Hugh Huelster. Bergman spent 33 years running Wet Paint, but since her retirement at the end of 2016, has shifted her focus to her art. This week, Form + Content opens “Seven Vignettes: New Works by Beth Bergman.” The new works bring together painting, drawing and printmaking techniques for collage pieces that tease shape, texture and negative space with vibrant color and an architectural sensibility. The opening reception takes place Saturday, Jan. 20, from 2 to 5 p.m. with an artist talk with Bergman and Shannon Brunette taking place Sunday, Feb. 11, at 2 p.m. at Form + Content (free). More information here.