Second Annual Keepers Awards
| By Chuck Terhark , Chris Clayton , Mary O'Regan |
|
(Photo by Eliesa Johnson)
The Keepers are eight Twin Cities artists so bananas- talented that METRO never wants them to leave. To keep (get it?) these future art stars from skipping town, we're throwing a party. You're invited, too. Join us at Spill the Wine tonight. But you've got to buy your tickets asap. Tickets include complimentary beer, wine and appetizers and the music stylings of Millions Billions.
For last year's premiere Keeper Awards feature, we asked local art scene bigwigs to help us put together a list of the Cities' top up-and-coming creatives. That worked out swell (read about the 2009 Keepers at metromag.com; search "Keepers"), but this year, to broaden the sweep of our Keeper search, we opened up the nomination process to everyone. We heard from artists and arts administrators, METRO readers, friends, family, the wind, a little bird and 367 close friends of a photographer who we hear will take a really nice shot of you and your dog (sadly, she didn't make the cut). In the end we whittled down the list to the eight profiled here. These are the ones to watch, the ones to embrace, the ones to namedrop at dinner parties so you sound cool and cultured. To prevent them from skipping town, we're not only bribing them with gushy words and pretty photos, but we're throwing a big bash in their honor on January 21st at Spill the Wine in Minneapolis (you can come, too. More details at metromag.com). But enough chit-chat. Here are your 2010 Keepers.
Brock Davis, 36
Ad Man
Hails from: Marietta, Georgia
Why he’s a Keeper: In the age of Tivo and Mad Men, our relationship with advertising has become decidedly love/hate: We hate them so much that we spend hundreds on devices that allow us to not watch them, but when we find one we love, we’ll actually seek it out on the Internet just to watch it. That was the case with the Jack Link's “Messin’ with Sasquatch” campaign, which grabbed our attention by the jugular, changed the way advertising works online (you can make your own video with the furry star at livingsasquatch.com) and, oh yeah, earned the Wisconsin-based jerky barons a kabillion dollars in increased sales.
But funny videos of frat boys clowning on Bigfoot aren’t the only reason we love Brock Davis, the Carmichael Lynch creative director responsible for those spots. What really sold us were his after-hours activities—first in the infectious folk-pop band Work of Saws (which disbanded early last decade, although an unreleased album may soon be resuscitated) and then last year in a Flickr photo pool called “Make Something Cool Every Day.” For 365 straight days in 2009, Davis did just that: He made photos of his family, drawings of bears wearing sunglasses and conceptual paintings of Donkey Kong, all of which were, undeniably, cool. On April Fool’s Day he made a birdhouse with a painted-on door. He made so many adorable illustrations showing off his world-class wit that, almost as a side-note, he also became Minnesota’s most in-demand designer on the t-shirt Web site Threadless.com. But mostly he made a community of spoiled fans who are suffering withdrawal now that “MSCED” is finished. But fret not, shivering masses jonesing for more of Davis’s unbridled creativity. “I just have to keep making stuff,” he says. “Making cool things is all I’ve ever wanted to do.” We just might have to stop fast-forwarding through all those commercials.
On his favorite childhood commercial: “Kool-Aid commercials. I loved how that guy would just burst into the room, not caring about anything except getting those kids some Kool-Aid. Man, I loved that Kool-Aid guy.”
On Mad Men: “They actually say a lot of wise things in that show. Like in this one episode, Don Draper says you have to ‘let creatives be unproductive until they are.’ I like that. As long as you get your work done, and as long as it’s the best work they’ve ever seen, hey, do whatever you want.”
On the future of Sasquatch: “I actually want to kill him. How crazy would that be, to see Sasquatch die on television? But people would hate us. And we didn’t invent him, so he’s not ours to kill.” —C.T.
Taja Will, 23
Dancer
Hails from: Fort Dodge, Iowa, by way of Santiago, Chile
Why she’s a keeper: Taja Will has been dancing since childhood, but she’s only been truly passionate about the medium for a few years. Ironically, she found this passion after becoming temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, the result of multiple herniated discs caused by years of cheerleading. Doctors gave Will, then a freshman at Luther College in Iowa, two options: She could spend the rest of her life popping painkillers in a wheelchair, or try to regain limited mobility by having two of her vertebrae fused together.
Neither option sounded too appealing to the 18-year-old, so she refused them both. A month later, frustrated and bedridden, she attempted to walk for the first time since her paralysis. Amazingly, she was able to put weight on her legs, and although she only made it a few steps before the pressure on her spinal nerves caused her to black out, it was a huge victory. Will spent the next five months, as she puts it, “building up my tolerance to walk and sit again.”
Her luck continued when she discovered a class at Luther that taught dance through the lens of alternative physical therapies and movement practices aimed at aligning one’s mind, body and soul. In you-and-me terms, this means students learned how movement affects the entire body, not just muscles and joints. The course helped Will regain full mobility, and became the inspiration for her extraordinary post-modern performance pieces, which infuse theater, live vocals (she sometimes sings while dancing) and her ambient music compositions.
After graduating from Luther in 2008 with a degree in opera performance (which comes in handy with the aforementioned singing), she moved to South Minneapolis and immersed herself in the edgier side of Twin Cities dance, performing with groups such as Body Cartography Project and Kinetic Kitchen. Audiences and dancers alike were taken with the young artists’s fluid, visceral style.
Last November, the Walker Art Center invited Will to perform in its highly regarded Choreographer’s Evening, an annual event where who’s who local dance professionals show off their latest work. Will danced “My Blood,” a piece about her experiences as an adopted child. Her performance was raw, emotional and among the evening’s best. As fans of brave new dance, it left us thankful that she ignored the advice of those doctors down in Iowa.
Upcoming performances: Will dances with the Body Cartography Project at the Southern Theater this month (1/28–30). This spring, she’ll show a piece at the renowned Movement Research dance center in New York City. —C.C.
For last year's premiere Keeper Awards feature, we asked local art scene bigwigs to help us put together a list of the Cities' top up-and-coming creatives. That worked out swell (read about the 2009 Keepers at metromag.com; search "Keepers"), but this year, to broaden the sweep of our Keeper search, we opened up the nomination process to everyone. We heard from artists and arts administrators, METRO readers, friends, family, the wind, a little bird and 367 close friends of a photographer who we hear will take a really nice shot of you and your dog (sadly, she didn't make the cut). In the end we whittled down the list to the eight profiled here. These are the ones to watch, the ones to embrace, the ones to namedrop at dinner parties so you sound cool and cultured. To prevent them from skipping town, we're not only bribing them with gushy words and pretty photos, but we're throwing a big bash in their honor on January 21st at Spill the Wine in Minneapolis (you can come, too. More details at metromag.com). But enough chit-chat. Here are your 2010 Keepers.
Brock Davis, 36
Ad Man
Hails from: Marietta, Georgia
Why he’s a Keeper: In the age of Tivo and Mad Men, our relationship with advertising has become decidedly love/hate: We hate them so much that we spend hundreds on devices that allow us to not watch them, but when we find one we love, we’ll actually seek it out on the Internet just to watch it. That was the case with the Jack Link's “Messin’ with Sasquatch” campaign, which grabbed our attention by the jugular, changed the way advertising works online (you can make your own video with the furry star at livingsasquatch.com) and, oh yeah, earned the Wisconsin-based jerky barons a kabillion dollars in increased sales.
But funny videos of frat boys clowning on Bigfoot aren’t the only reason we love Brock Davis, the Carmichael Lynch creative director responsible for those spots. What really sold us were his after-hours activities—first in the infectious folk-pop band Work of Saws (which disbanded early last decade, although an unreleased album may soon be resuscitated) and then last year in a Flickr photo pool called “Make Something Cool Every Day.” For 365 straight days in 2009, Davis did just that: He made photos of his family, drawings of bears wearing sunglasses and conceptual paintings of Donkey Kong, all of which were, undeniably, cool. On April Fool’s Day he made a birdhouse with a painted-on door. He made so many adorable illustrations showing off his world-class wit that, almost as a side-note, he also became Minnesota’s most in-demand designer on the t-shirt Web site Threadless.com. But mostly he made a community of spoiled fans who are suffering withdrawal now that “MSCED” is finished. But fret not, shivering masses jonesing for more of Davis’s unbridled creativity. “I just have to keep making stuff,” he says. “Making cool things is all I’ve ever wanted to do.” We just might have to stop fast-forwarding through all those commercials.
On his favorite childhood commercial: “Kool-Aid commercials. I loved how that guy would just burst into the room, not caring about anything except getting those kids some Kool-Aid. Man, I loved that Kool-Aid guy.”
On Mad Men: “They actually say a lot of wise things in that show. Like in this one episode, Don Draper says you have to ‘let creatives be unproductive until they are.’ I like that. As long as you get your work done, and as long as it’s the best work they’ve ever seen, hey, do whatever you want.”
On the future of Sasquatch: “I actually want to kill him. How crazy would that be, to see Sasquatch die on television? But people would hate us. And we didn’t invent him, so he’s not ours to kill.” —C.T.
Taja Will, 23
Dancer
Hails from: Fort Dodge, Iowa, by way of Santiago, Chile
Why she’s a keeper: Taja Will has been dancing since childhood, but she’s only been truly passionate about the medium for a few years. Ironically, she found this passion after becoming temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, the result of multiple herniated discs caused by years of cheerleading. Doctors gave Will, then a freshman at Luther College in Iowa, two options: She could spend the rest of her life popping painkillers in a wheelchair, or try to regain limited mobility by having two of her vertebrae fused together.
Neither option sounded too appealing to the 18-year-old, so she refused them both. A month later, frustrated and bedridden, she attempted to walk for the first time since her paralysis. Amazingly, she was able to put weight on her legs, and although she only made it a few steps before the pressure on her spinal nerves caused her to black out, it was a huge victory. Will spent the next five months, as she puts it, “building up my tolerance to walk and sit again.”
Her luck continued when she discovered a class at Luther that taught dance through the lens of alternative physical therapies and movement practices aimed at aligning one’s mind, body and soul. In you-and-me terms, this means students learned how movement affects the entire body, not just muscles and joints. The course helped Will regain full mobility, and became the inspiration for her extraordinary post-modern performance pieces, which infuse theater, live vocals (she sometimes sings while dancing) and her ambient music compositions.
After graduating from Luther in 2008 with a degree in opera performance (which comes in handy with the aforementioned singing), she moved to South Minneapolis and immersed herself in the edgier side of Twin Cities dance, performing with groups such as Body Cartography Project and Kinetic Kitchen. Audiences and dancers alike were taken with the young artists’s fluid, visceral style.
Last November, the Walker Art Center invited Will to perform in its highly regarded Choreographer’s Evening, an annual event where who’s who local dance professionals show off their latest work. Will danced “My Blood,” a piece about her experiences as an adopted child. Her performance was raw, emotional and among the evening’s best. As fans of brave new dance, it left us thankful that she ignored the advice of those doctors down in Iowa.
Upcoming performances: Will dances with the Body Cartography Project at the Southern Theater this month (1/28–30). This spring, she’ll show a piece at the renowned Movement Research dance center in New York City. —C.C.
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