We’re Muslim Don’t Panic is a dance piece created by Amirah Sackett in collaboration with hip-hop dancers Iman and Khadijah. The crew worked with us for our event Where Art Thou? on Thursday, April 25th from 5-9 PM. The Piece was recently featured  in a music video for Brother Ali’s song Mourning in America. This piece was one of many that  helped to create our vision of a culturally stimulating event. Reflecting on our event, we’ve asked Amirah a few questions about art and their lives. Below is an email conversation between Walker Art Center Teen Arts Councilmember Stanley K. Breen and Amirah Sackett, creator [...]

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WHO IS WACTAC > The Walker Art Center Teen Art Council, aka WACTAC, is made up of a group of high school aged young people from around the Twin Cities metro area. They represent diverse communities, interests, and skills. Applicants must be incoming high school freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors. Note to incoming freshmen and sophomores: Although the application process is open to all high school students, the majority of applicants selected are juniors and seniors. WHAT IS WACTAC > WACTAC members work collaboratively with each other, Walker staff, and artists to produce and market public programs as well as [...]

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Suns of Cudd sheetrock, wood, fluorescent light 2011 Variable Brett and Erin Smith are a brother and sister collaborating artist duo, who are working with us for the Where Art Thou? event this upcoming Thursday,  April 25th from 5-9 PM. Both having backgrounds in industrial design, product design and visual arts, they are helping us make our dream of building a giant fort in the Cargill Lounge come true. Gearing up towards this event, we’ve brought up a few questions for them to answer about art and their lives. Below is an email conversation between Walker Art Center Teen Arts [...]

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  Museum Mixtape takes current pieces on display at the Walker Art Center and pairs them up with musical accompaniment from the best artists of the past and present. Museum Mixtape’s second addition pairs up Jack Pierson’s “Frankie & Johnny” with “Howl At That Moon” by Bomba De Luz. “Howl At That Moon” is remeniscent of styles lost in time. It posesses an old school acoustic sound as if it were an homage to singers past. It brings along feelings ubiquitous with summer and all it has to offer. Embodying the warmth and haziness found in Pierson’s “Frankie & Johnny”, Bomba De Luz’s sound couples with the piece to represent the summer [...]

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This week I drew inspiration from one of the Walker’s newest exhibits Painter Painter. If you haven’t seen the exhibit already then you should definitely check it out. These are a couple of my fave pieces. They are extremely simple but extremely complex at the same time. Both pieces use the white canvas in new and innovative ways and the paint adds an enchanting texture. The Artwork: Both pieces by Dianna Molzan, untitled   The Fashion: As I was exploring fashion inspiration I decided to take more of a street-wear approach. Molzan’s pieces are very raw but clean while also being messy. [...]

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On March 21 teens from around the Twin Cities worked with visiting artist Abraham Cruzvillegas in anticipation of the opening of his solo show, The Autoconstruccion Suites. The night was centered around a game that Cruzvillegas created for dOCUMENTA13. It is a game that originated in his own practice and research. The games asks participants to break apart themes of their lives into, at most, 34 words. The words can represent common emotions, interesting things, loves, desires, places, people, reasons, dislikes or descriptions; anything important to the participant can be represented by a word and integrated into the game. Each of these words [...]

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  Flier: Art by maddie graham, design by ben sands ♥♥ WACTAC is making a zine, and we want you to send us things! We’re focusing on themes of TRANSFORMATION, CULTURE, and IDENTITY. The deadline to submit your art is April 6, 2013. DO NOT FORGET TO SUBMIT!!!

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Have you ever visited a museum and felt as though something was missing?  Like that one piece of art needed a bass-bumpin friend? Or that an appropriate soundtrack was the only thing that would do an artwork justice? Museum Mixtape fills the void that awkward silence has created when visiting the gallery. Here’s what this is all about: Museum Mixtape takes current pieces on display at the Walker Art Center and pairs them up with musical accompaniment from the best artists of the past and present. Museum Mixtape 1 takes Thomas Hirschorn’s Necklace CNN and pairs it up with All Gold Everything, by Trinidad [...]

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  Every month WACTAC members team up with the Walker’s acclaimed design department to create original fliers for teen events. The MARCH TEEN ART LOUNGE WITH ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS flier was designed by WACTACer Emma Johnston! She drew inspiration from Cruzvillegas’ works seen below: ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS, AUTOCONSTRUCCION, 2008 ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS, CANON ENIGMATICO A 108 VOCES, 2005      

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  Kyle Abraham and his company, Abraham.In.Motion, visited youth at North Community High School for an experience that was part lecture, part performance, part dance class, and part discussion about high school life, inspiration, and professional dance. Students at North High got on stage and learned some choreography from the company.   Students cheered as their peers broke it down on stage. After the Q&A with the company students lingered behind to talk more with Kyle and the rest of the company. Kyle talked about his own high school experience and related the themes of his work to the everyday [...]

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The Art Work WTC 2001, Joann Verburg I really like this Joann Verburg piece. The overall tone is very pastel. I like the subtle and dreary greys and greens and then the little pops of pink. The fact that the newspaper is in the middle of the picture and is less colorful than anything else draws our attention to it and we notice the “twin towers” on the front. The Fashion Sexy Sweaters    The solemn tone in the picture can also be brought about by acid washed denim or a washed  out photo. For “the fashion” I found a couple [...]

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by: Natalia Salinas As I sit criss-cross applesauce in the middle of the white floor, the Walker staff member watches me through the corner of his eye. I smile when I read the encouraging sign: “YOU ARE WELCOME TO OPEN THE DRAWERS”, contradicting every other sign in the museum asking you to please not touch the artwork. The piece, named In Memory Of My Feelings, consists of a set of drawers. In each drawer, you find a t-shirt that contains the beginning of a phrase from a standard sentence-completion personality test. The small description next to it says that the [...]

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For the Student Open House last November, a few WACTAC members put together a zine using Cindy Sherman’s artwork. Our goal was to create a loose narrative out of her images, so we started by collecting our favorite pieces and adding words or captions to them. I talked about the process with WACTACers Chloe and Asiya who were primarily involved with the project at the very beginning. Asiya said that working with the images first made it easier to create a plot instead of just thinking about words. “At first it was really hard to come up with a plot [...]

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Setting: Teen Arts Office, 5:39PM, Artificial lighting, Usher coming from some distant sound system Interviewee: Asiya Youngmark, WACTAC Member   Let’s talk about the December teen art lounge,   What was your first reaction to Julia?   When I first met her, I was surprised because her physical app earance doesn’t seem to go along with the kind of person who makes cute little books. She has the sweetest character; the way she dressed didn’t reflect the way she acted, which really showed her complexity as a human, and consequently engaged me in her work and what she was about. [...]

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By Emma Johnston Cindy Sherman takes photographs, but she does not consider herself a photographer. Her art is in story and character. She completely assumes the role of another, anonymous and fictitious, but utterly believable. Sherman’s piece, untitled like all her work, but referred to as Centerfold #94, is a perfect example of her ability to disappear and become the character, and in doing so, tell a story, inspire curiosity and incite emotion. Initially, a viewer can tell much about this girl. She seems to be of fairly modest living, perhaps a farm girl, given her loose cotton clothes, the [...]

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By Asiya Youngmark Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council Member After reading the article “Why Museums Suck” by LA Youth’s Howard Hwang I was taken aback. I never thought someone could hate museums so much, but I also never thought a fifteen year old youth could write such a good article. Hwang makes his point very plain and clear, which I think is important when making an argument. He also provides important insight on museums from a teen’s point of view, something that is highly underrepresented in today’s public art dialogues. I have to give him high props because Hwang [...]

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By Eli Edleson-Stein Program Coordinator, Teen Programs Last week I read an article by Howard Hwang, a high school student living in Los Angeles. The article, published in 2001 in a youth produced newspaper, was titled, Why Museums Suck. While the article was written nearly a decade ago, it has roused a good dialogue in the blogosphere about the museum’s role in community engagement, especially with youth. As a youth worker based in a contemporary art museum my interest was piqued. Too often conversations about youth are dominated by the voices of adults. Howard provides a voice that conveys youth in [...]

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Soft moans and  ligaments torment,  colors block and  dissipate. Entrails thumbed with too much pressure,  we hope that these animals are only dancing.    Long ropes remember time— rise and set like constellations, the earth rotates, the sky revolves.   Beneath the stars it’s easy to revert to origins   Separated enough to avoid conviction but close enough to recognize the coldness of rape to take in a cumulative breath And hope that these animals are only dancing.   Caging the monster releasing the genius   bodies fitting together  and shadows dancing; In this kingdom sometimes it’s easier to concentrate  [...]

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Is fashion art? Or perhaps art is fashion. What do the two really have in common? I have toured the wonderful galleries of the Walker Art Center in search of fashion inspiration. With the pieces I have found I will attempt to personally answer the question connecting these two worlds of fashion and art. The Artwork: Two Men Dancing, Robert Mapplethorpe   The image of these two young men dancing reminds me of a school dance or prom, especially since they have crowns. They must have been crowned prom kings. For this photo I found a few sporty, juvenile looks [...]

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Is fashion art? Or perhaps art is fashion. What do the two really have in common? I have toured the wonderful galleries of the Walker Art Center in search of fashion inspiration. With the pieces I have found I will attempt to personally answer the question connecting these two worlds of fashion and art. The Artwork: As the Crow Flies/How I miss the Avant-garde, Alan Rupersberg What I find enticing about Rupersberg’s piece is his exotic use of color. This really draws extra attention to the black letters creating his message. Like Rupersberg, fashion designer Jeremy Scott uses bright colors to make a pop statement. I [...]

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TEEN ART LOUNGE DECEMBER 20 | 5 PM – 8 PM Come hang with artist Julia Gualtieri in the art lab, where you can explore various collaborative drawing exercises and book forms. Why collaborative drawing? Because tapping into our collective imaginations always yields surprising results—and drawing as a group is a fun way to interact with other people. RSVP to the Facebook event or check out more info on the Walker site. The current background of our blog is from a past collaborative drawing session!

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