Artist Profile: Media Mike Hazard

I am a community reporter. I praise people with pictures and poems and videos. This montage of pictures and stories tells my story.

Apple of their Eye
I feel I was born and raised to be an artist. My mom, Mary Hazard, is a scholar whose life work, “Elizabethan Silent Language,” is a magisterial multidisciplinary study of the Renaissance in England. She taught me to see that even jewelry embodies meaning. Her writing is as beautifully composed and ornate as one of Queen Elizabeth I’s outfits.

My dad, Patrick Hazard, is a writer whose peripatetic travels are blogged at My Global Eye. A champion of new media before it was old hat, he taught film in his poetry classes. He likes to joke that his “revenge on America was bringing Monty Python to this country” when he worked as an academic consultant to Time-Life Films.

On Sundays my family visited museums. On one of those weekend outings I saw a film called “Dead Birds” by Robert Gardner. It made me want to be a filmmaker. Friends now with Gardner, a legendary anthropologist and maker of anthropological films, in retrospect my life has an almost predetermined arc. My life was meant to be mine.

Bat Man
A double major in art and English at Macalester College, I love to play with images and words. This has created a life as an artist wherein I make videos (with pictures and words) and I write poetry and I photograph. Sometimes all three parts of me come together in one work. For instance, I made a video poem called “Weird Wood.” It was shown at and then collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This portrait of the late Kirby Puckett, Bat Man, is in that mix.

Mr. Positive
Making a documentary with a Fort Road legend, Carl Bentson, has changed my life. When I get down, I ask “What would Carl do?” This never fails to perk and pick me up. I earn a living working as an artist in the schools, teaching people of all ages how to make videos and photos. Whenever I show “Mr. Positive,” people are moved.

One of the things I love about my job as a teaching artist is I get to work with really great teachers. One of the greatest is Barb Nagle. She writes, “I’m a middle school teacher and I showed ‘Mr. Positive’ to my students. I am often tired of my seventh grade students being so negative and disrespectful toward each other. Many of them do not use the resources and talents they have and complain constantly about how ‘boring’ their lives are. I showed this video to see what kind of impact it would have on them. You could hear a pin drop in my room. Many of the girls had tears in their eyes and the boys were speechless, which was a miracle in itself.

“Some of my students are in foster care. I think they ‘woke up’ and developed a sense of appreciation for what they have because of this documentary. After the video, it was so quiet in my room, I didn’t say much, but I challenged my students to go out to nursing homes to volunteer; help neighbors with yard work; and be more like Carl. Many students promised they would. If it can touch my seventh graders, it can touch anyone.”

Like “Mr. Positive,” most of my films are in the public library. You might also search for michaelhazard on YouTube where I have a hundred films on line, and many are available at Amazon and the Minnesota History Center store. For more, visit my website, thecie.org.

Local Color
Walking daily with my camera and notebook, I seek the extraordinary in the ordinary. I lived near the bottom of Ramsey Hill from 1983 until 1999 when I moved downtown to Lowertown Lofts Artists Cooperative. My clinic is United Family. OK, most people don’t bring a camera to their physicals, but here is a snapshot of an extraordinary individual, my nurse Nimo.

Your Body Grows Alert When You Hurt
Nimo is real. The debate about health care is abstract. Real is when you hurt and you need care and Nimo is there. A nurse at United Family Practice Health Center, Nimo teams with Tim Rumsey, my doctor. I bring them apples.

After we clicked this picture, and she moved on to help another patient, I asked Dr. Rumsey about Nimo. “A couple years ago a woman came in the clinic in the middle of winter. It was 20 below. She did not have a coat. When she left, she was wearing a jacket. Nimo gave her the coat off her own back.” Nimo said, “Your body grows alert when you hurt.” Rumsey: “She is wise.”

Double Take
My current documentary in progress is “A Happy Collaborator.” It’s a portrait of a filmmaker, teacher of film and media activist named George Stoney. In progress since 1999, you can see the nearly finished documentary at the Docuclub at IFP Minnesota (2446 University Ave. West, Suite 100, St. Paul. Showtime is 7 p.m. on Friday, January 27, 2012. For info, call 651-644-1912).

Good media, I have learned from Stoney, is made when the maker and the subject collaborate.

Frederick Manfred says in the film we made together, “American Grizzly,” “I think the reason that I write used to be to put something down and it would be there for keeps. But I think mostly it’s that I get a second life out of life. I get my own life that I live every day eating pancakes and loving my children, and some ladies. And then in the books, I live yet another life, in the lives of these people, so I get a double take out of life. I get two lives out of it. The first one vanishes and the second one gets into a book for a little while and stays there.”

Finally, I make portraits of people to see others as they are, and then you can see too. We get a double take out of life.

West End Artist Profile: Philip Rickey

by Philip Rickey

I have lived in St. Paul since 1987, and have had my studio on Drake Street in the Fort Road neighborhood since 1990. I am a sculptor and work in stone and wood. My wife, Mary, is a painter, and she and I bought and renovated the building for studios and rented the adjoining Soo Line property for parking and to store my heavy and large stone collection. Having the indoor and outdoor space has afforded me the opportunity or curse to acquire many stone blocks of various sizes, and a whole collection of logs, flitches, branches and boards inside, which my mother fondly called my “wood library.” My creative juices thrive when my ideas combine with the real material bringing about many of the sculptural or place-making ideas that I create. Mary and I each occupy a studio, and we rent the other three to artists, thus creating a small, though not cohesive artist work space.

I design large and small-scale public art and streetscape projects, and manage the estate of my father, a fellow sculptor, George Rickey, organizing exhibitions of his sculpture in both the United States and Europe. He made kinetic sculptures from simple geometric forms constructed in lightweight stainless steel sheet metal that move in the wind. I make sculptures that are only kinetic when you physically walk through, around or by their multi and serial shapes. They are heavy and stationary, yet change optically when viewed from different positions.

So I grew up in an artist’s household. My father not only created wonderful kinetic works in stainless steel and achieved fame during my childhood, but he was interested in other artists and what they did. He wrote an important book on Constructivism (1967), so throughout my life, I was surrounded by my father’s and other artist’s artwork, both contemporary and from the past, and immersed in visual activity. When I started making sculpture in high school, I went as far in the opposite direction as I could think of and began by carving Henry Moore inspired sculptures in wood. After high school, I lived in Berlin, Germany for a year before going to Cornell University, and studied stone sculpture with an important influence for my current media, stone and wood. With him, Japanese sculptor Makoto Fujiwara, I also had my first personal exposure to making works destined for a public place. Makoto, two other students and I submitted an entry for a competition in 1979 that we unfortunately didn’t win, but that experience gave me the interest in the public realm that persists today.
A number of years after moving to St. Paul, having received an MA in sculpture from the University of Iowa, I realized that I needed more experience, tools as it were, to really be able to get commissions in the public arena. This prompted me to study landscape architecture at the University of Minnesota. I now have part of an MLA degree, and that course work and the other work I did subsequently, gave me the understanding and experience to do what I do today, both managing my father’s estate and making sculpture for placement in public places.

At my Drake Street studio, I develop, carve, grind and polish my stone sculptures that are then transported to their eventual site and installed. I also work on smaller scale works in wood; sculptures that can be picked up and viewed in your hand or on a table. It is interesting to work at both scales; the private allows investigations of ideas that find their way into larger works for public spaces.
I have finished public art projects at various locations around the Twin Cities and outstate. I did the Two Rivers Overlook across from Fort Snelling by the entrance to Crosby Farm Park and the western end of the Samuel Morgan Trail, and Community Vessel in Minneapolis at East Calhoun Parkway and West Lake Street. Like the Overlook and the other public art projects I have made, it is a place, a small corner park with sculptural benches and elements. My most well known public artwork is the Paul Wellstone Memorial up north (south of Eveleth), which I designed with Bill Sanders, the St. Paul landscape architect. It is a six-acre site with different artistic “moments” along paths through the woods.

I am currently working on a new public project, an exciting sculptural orchestration along the streetscape in front of the University’s new Biomedical Discovery District, just north of TCF Stadium on 6th Street SE. My project animates the 500 feet landscaped street from 21st to 23rd Avenues and is about 35 feet wide. My columnar basalt ensembles are in conversation with the multilayered landscape designed by Damon Farber Associates in Minneapolis. This project illustrates my creative process as it has evolved. I first did small sketches in my journal that I carry everywhere, and thought about this site all through May and most of June before I actually began to draw any of my ideas on paper. From the beginning of my thinking about it, I considered the whole, broken into smaller parts the way a piece of music or a choreographed dance is. I could not think of any other way to animate and control the whole space over the time of such a long and narrow space. It had to be episodic. I also thought about how one would experience it over time as a pedestrian, a cyclist or a motorist, those being the three modes of movement through the site.

Since the whole site was so big, at the beginning, I could not conceive of how the different ideas would form a whole. I drew many drawings in pen and ink and also worked over some quick sketches with brush and wash creating shadows. After I had done a lot of sketches for each of the four movements (that is what I called each part, like in music) I began to work on the five foot long, one inch to ten feet, scale drawing of the site, composing with the different parts. This initial scale drawing and my pen and ink sketches of the different parts of the plan were presented to the oversight committee. Their responses were taken into account during the second iteration of designing; the action was moved inward on the site from the street to be in the middle of the pedestrian walk, and a conceptual design budget was developed. In the last and final phase, which I just completed last month, further editing and changes were made to fit the budget and a nine foot scale model was made, which gives a very good idea of what it will look and feel like when installed late in the summer of 2012. This work will be called Minnesota Suite: Spatial Choreography in Four Movements. I will be polishing many of the cut basalt stones in my side yard and in front of my Drake Street studio starting next spring.

When I work in the side lot next to the tracks, I love looking at the west side river bluffs beyond the ADM elevator. That sight is especially beautiful now in the fall as the leaves begin to change and also in the winter when the late afternoon yellow, red and orange glow from the setting sun touches the ice that billows out of the crags in the far river bluffs and turns them beautiful colors. I tell friends, half joking, that I have a river view. I can’t see the water moving, but only that layer of the bluff above the nearer urban scape and parking lots down at the end of the street. In this quiet out of the way place right near downtown, I have found a wonderful refuge to be able to make my large predetermined works for public places or my more intimate musings in both stone and wood. It has been a great place to work all these years.

Two Rivers Overlook is at a historic heart of our area. (right) Rickey’s “Minnesota Suite” is being built of the University of Minnesota campus.

Lowertown Artist Profile: Crossing the River

by Beth Barron

I decided to take a huge leap, a daring adventure. I decided to move to St. Paul from the serene, coziness of Linden Hills in Minneapolis. I picked the farthest most industrial region of St. Paul: Lowertown. Despite the shock my friends have expressed and their concern for my sanity, I am now a resident of the Lowertown Lofts Artists Cooperative. I am sure that this is the place for me. I fell in love with the building at 255 E. Kellogg Boulevard, when I visited in 1995 and could only fantasize living an artist’s life. I had a family and the thought of focusing only on my work was impossible to imagine. But a seed was planted. And last year my daughter left for college. The door opened to the world. Scenarios blew about.

I snooped around Lowertown, but the only place that appealed to me was the Artist’s Lofts and I was told that they weren’t accepting applications. I was disappointed but adventure was in my spirit and I was willing to follow any call that arose. As summer reached its peak, I got that unexpected call that a vacancy had occurred and applications were being accepted. I was one of three artists that were offered interviews. I was the lucky artist and was offered a spot. The enormous task of packing up and condensing my family’s memorabilia (and life) to a few boxes for storage began.

As I write this I am moved in, and unpacking some of the very boxes I packed two months ago. And I eagerly look forward to the day, very soon, when my work and the expression of all I might be and feel will surround me on a daily basis. I feel honored and very lucky that I get to be a part of this community. I hope I am able to share my gifts and that they will be appreciated.

My primary means of expression has been embroidery. With a real studio space, I look forward to what will be born. Living with my work will greatly change my habits and the medium I work in. Thank you, St. Paul, for the opportunity, the foresight and the understanding that artists need places like Lowertown to survive and thrive.

I’d like my work to be a monument to the resiliency of the human spirit and a wish for wholeness. Within each piece is emptiness, chaos, paths chosen or passed by, despair and repair. I rip and tear fabric that once belonged to someone else. I burn the cloth or use it to wipe the floor. I pick up band-aids that lie on the ground. Are they symbols of pain or symbols of healing? I find these remnants of others’ lives to be moving. I work these scraps together by hand, one stitch leading to the next.

Needle in needle out, the work is a meditation. The work is filled with intention and devotion. I listen for and feel the rhythm of the piece. I strive to attend to the mark. Sometimes taking a stitch as if it were the first and/or the last.

I will forever be compelled by the “stitch” and the metaphor of it as a “mark” to catalog time, events and emotion. The line of the stitch fascinates me, knowing as I follow those marks that my life will unfold.

I am humbled by the infinite quantity of stitches that have been sewn by generations of women. Their work is the work that inspired me to practice. I know that those stitches carry within them secrets, prayers and dreams.

Beth Barron is a new resident of Lowertown.

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West End Artist Profile: Sara Diedrich, Joseph Clegg

Sara Diedrich

I work in my home, an 1890s Victorian on the West End, teaching private voice and piano lessons. I open my door to 30-40 people every week: adults, children and families.

I was a performer for 20 years, making my living with my voice. I grew up in a musical family, in West St. Paul, taking lessons at Henly Music and at the Chimera Theater (in the old Science Museum). I was also in the band and choir at St. Joseph’s. As a young adult I sang, played guitar and piano in bands to support myself. Studying classical music in college, and performing pop, rock and folk music to make ends meet was what I knew how to do, so the move to teaching others how to sing was a logical step for me.

I graduated from college with a music degree and a K-12 teaching license and could not find a job in the St. Paul Schools. A friend’s mother ran a music school and hired me to teach guitar. That job grew into piano and voice lessons, and a second job teaching voice at a high school. I worked there for three years until I had built up enough students at home to teach here full time. I have students as young as 5 years old, and as mature as 55. I teach Monday through Friday year round.

I have a particular philosophy regarding piano lessons: I want students to love music. I want them to become adolescents and young adults who don’t want to quit playing because they love being able to perform music that appeals to them. This means teaching a lot of popular music, using YouTube tutorials, and having an open mind regarding what is “appropriate” piano repertoire.

Voice students come to lessons for all kinds of reasons. Some students need help becoming soloists for their choirs; teenagers want help preparing auditions for musicals, show-choirs and college music scholarships. Whatever the reasons, I love to help singers learn how their voice works and to develop their skills and musicianship. The students recently performed in the studio’s annual spring recital.
There is nothing more fulfilling to me than being such a positive part of so many lives. I am frequently asked if I still perform, to which I usually respond, “I don’t have time,” which is true, but I no longer want to give up my evenings and weekends to entertain people. I have a talent for teaching and I can’t imagine doing anything else.

I also do a lot of listening that is not music related. I listen to students vent over homework, family squabbles, boyfriend trouble, college preparations — you name it, they tell me about it. I am sometimes more counselor and mentor than music teacher, to the adults as well as the kids. The relationships I foster with students, and the confidence that comes to them through their individual accomplishments, are the most fulfilling parts of my job.

I have been teaching here since I bought this house in 2002. I have made some alterations to the interior to accommodate a private studio on each floor. I had to knock down some walls to fit the grand piano into the dining room. I have two Siberian Huskies, who frequently sleep under the piano during lessons, and there is a waiting area for students and parents in my living room. There is also a new studio on the second floor, in which my colleague Joseph Clegg will also teach classical voice and piano.

I am very excited to have Joseph teaching here in the studio. He brings a different approach to vocal teaching. He is a fantastic musician who has as much experience as I do, but has worked more in opera and can better serve the many tenor and baritone singers who frequently request lessons. St. Paul is a very supportive community for music and education. Not only do I feel valued by my students and their parents, I feel that I am giving something important back to my community through my work.

Joseph Clegg

I recently moved to St. Paul to begin a studio partnership with Sara Diedrich. I have been involved in performing vocal music for 20 years, and I have taught voice lessons for more than 10 years.

I was first involved in music during Middle School in Winona, Minnesota, where I was a choir member. In addition to sports, I wanted a way to meet friends, and be involved in group activities. Early on, I found that I could sing a very broad range of notes, and because of that I often sang in multiple voice sections during songs. I found that vocal and piano music were a great emotional outlet during the often tumultuous times of being an adolescent. I have been involved in music ever since, gaining more solo experience during high school, where I sang in chorus and lead comedic roles in our yearly musicals. In addition, I remained a concert choir member and took private voice lessons on the side. I enjoyed seeing the results of practice and dedication take form during this time.

My educational background includes a degree in Music Education from Minnesota State University, Mankato (K-12 and General Music), and a Master’s Degree in Opera Performance from Wichita State University. I have taught choir and general music in the Minnesota public school system. In addition, I have taught private voice and chamber choir as a Teacher’s Assistant during graduate school. I continued my work as a vocal educator at the private Arboretum Music School in Waunakee, Wisconsin during my three-year stay in Madison.

My goal as a music educator is to encourage students, give them practical tools to improve, and have each one find the best, personalized way that they can learn. I believe that no two students will learn in the same manner, and that finding what applies to each individual is most important.

I use a technical approach to singing that involves getting to know your own voice as a musical instrument. Each person possesses a different vocal tract and resonator system. Through working with breathing techniques, voice and range building, and vowel coloring, I seek to find the most natural and effortless sound possible with each student. I also offer beginning piano lessons.

While writing my profile I learned that I was accepted into the Minnesota Opera Chorus for a three show contract this upcoming season. I think performing strengthens me as a teacher, and I love singing opera. Here at the studio, we have no music genre preference. Students who wish to improve in popular music, music theater or classical music are all welcome. There are certain core fundamentals in singing, and taking voice lessons here will help students grow and improve in any form of vocal music. For further information see stpaulmusiclessons.com.

Editor’s Note: More information on St. Paul Music Lessons is available at stpaulmusiclessons.com or by calling the studio at 651-291-0072.

West End Artist Profile: Dan Bruggeman | 8.11

As a young man, I spent my summers working on a family farm in northern Iowa. Clearing ditch weeds, detasseling corn and bailing hay, I was fascinated by the concept of the “sectioned” rural landscape that I encountered. In the rural Midwest, regardless of the topography, the land has been surveyed and roads have been built to define each square mile. Within each of those squares is 640 acres that define the farm economy. As I contemplated this fact, it occurred to me that the imposition of this geometric grid upon the landscape was an assertion of human authority/dominion over nature unlike any other.

Though I now live in an urban area, my interest has not strayed from an early curiosity about the relationship between humans and their environment. My studio is in an old manufacturing building about a block from the Schmidt brewery near West Seventh. I’ve been painting there for about ten years. Last winter, I hired an arborist to help me identify the trees that surround my studio. I was curious about these trees, which seemed unlikely survivors amidst the compacted and gravelly soil of this semi-industrial area near the Mississippi River. The trees run in irregular lines along the railroad tracks and the roads at the boundaries of the property. After surveying the more than two-dozen trees, the arborist concluded: “These are mostly nuisance varieties: white poplar, cottonwood and ‘junky’ buckthorn. If you want to get rid of them, I wouldn’t blame you.”

Regardless of the quality of their pedigree, I was drawn to these trees. Quite to the contrary, I had been painting them and gathering the debris from around them to add to my collection of artistic subjects. I’m that eccentric guy you may have seen walking with my head down, occasionally picking things up from the ground and contemplating them, as if they were treasures.

Today, urban and semi-industrial neighborhoods betray their origins within the rigid geometry of city plans imposed upon a once natural setting. The paintings in my recent exhibit at Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis are a meditation on process, place, history and natural objects. For nine years, since the acquisition of my dog, Mia, I have paid careful attention to the ground on our daily walks. As I walked, I sought to transcend a mindless activity by forcing myself to be conscious of the objects in my path. Eyes downward, I could not help but notice feathers, eggshells or a carpet of fallen leaves on the roadside — all confined within the rigid geometry of the city. I was forced to consider the context from which these objects arrived at the location where I had discovered them. I would collect the objects I found and arrange them on a big table in my studio. It made sense to paint these objects, just as they appeared on my worktable, on top of maps and other scientific illustrations that I have collected over the years.

What emerged are paintings that reflect a merging of opposites. For thousands of years, plants, animals and their byproducts have fallen and collected upon and into the soil. We have constructed our community upon this surface, and, consequently, we define ourselves upon the layers of organic matter that we inhabit. At some point, we will join the objects that precede us into the earth; meanwhile, we reside above ground. Ground is the contact point between our being and the earth. It serves as a physical and metaphorical repository for our lives and a gathering point for all things that have submitted to civilization and the pull of gravity.

The black pigment used to paint the animals at Lascaux was made of manganese dioxide and ground quartz; and almost half the mixture was calcium phosphate. Calcium phosphate is produced by heating bone to four hundred degrees Celsius, then grinding it.

We made our paints from the bones of the animals we painted.

(top) Ayd Mill 1 (acrylic on board).
(left) Lexington (acrylic on board).
(right) Oxford (acrylic on board).

West End Artist Profile: Mark Granlund | 6.11

I have been working with West Seventh residents and businesses for the last few years to beautify the avenue, as the Arts and Gardens coordinator for the St. Paul Department of Parks and Recreation. I’m responsible for the public gardens and public art collection in St. Paul. Collectively, these responsibilities add up to a program called Blooming Saint Paul. I have worked with the West Seventh Business Association, Fort Road Federation and Kent Petterson, to provide sponsorship opportunities for hanging baskets, planting tree rings and providing mulch for public gardens on city property.

The Blooming Saint Paul program helps neighborhoods and citizens with local beautification projects and recognition. One part of this program is the Blooming Saint Paul Awards. Beginning May 1, St. Paul gardens can be nominated for a Blooming Saint Paul Award. These awards go to exemplary gardens and plantings in the city. There are seven categories of awards: residential, business/institutional, environmental, art in the garden, volunteer garden on city property, vegetable garden and gardening advocate. In 2010, several awards were won along West Seventh. The Fire Department won for their green roof, Mississippi Market won for their rain garden and Kent Petterson won the gardening advocate award. I have enjoyed being part of the great improvements and civic pride that are happening in the West End.

I am also an artist who paints, of all things, flowers. My artwork, for several years, has focused on botanical subjects. As an accomplished watercolorist and drawer, I have won awards for my botanical paintings and have exhibited them in many venues throughout Minnesota. Most of the subjects for my art are growing in my yard and neighborhood, located in St. Paul’s Midway. Tulips, lilies, tomatoes and cabbage are some images I have created. My favorite botanical medium is watercolor. I create my paintings with a layered approach — developing different aspects of the painting with each layer until the last layer gives the breath of life. I have also taught art classes for many years. I was instrumental in starting the education department at the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in the late 1990s and developed the successful botanical art program there.
I have always been a good drawer, even in elementary school, and doodled and painted my way through high school. When I decided to go to Bethel College, in Arden Hills, Minnesota, the only course of study I was really interested in was studio art. At Bethel, I had a fun and excellent teacher named Dale Johnson who encouraged me to go to New York City to get my Masters of Fine Arts degree, which I did at City University of New York–Brooklyn College in 1988.

Although I have focused on painting, I have also always written. My most recent art project is “The Book of Bartholomew,” a series of illustrated short stories about twenty-somethings finding their way in this world. These stories are available online and I am illustrating these stories with several other Twin City artists, including the West End’s Mary Esch, who has illustrated two stories. One of Bartholomew’s main traits is his desire for fresh local food. I have developed a spin-off from this project called 20food.net, where six twenty-somethings blog about their experiences of growing, finding and cooking fresh local food for the first time.

If you are interested in beautifying your neighborhood through gardens, plantings or public art, you can contact me at mark.granlund@ci.stpaul.mn.us or 651-632-2454. If you are interested in the Blooming Saint Paul program, you can find more information at stpaul.gov/naturalresources and click on the “Arts and Gardens” button at the top. You will also find a Blooming Saint Paul Award nomination form at the website. Please nominate a garden or planting in your neighborhood! The award nomination deadline is July 8, 2011.

If you are interested in seeing my art, go to my website: markgranlund.com, read my stories at bookofbartholomew.com and see what twenty-somethings are doing about food at 20food.net.

Pictured: Jack-in-the-pulpit, watercolor. Tiger striped tulip, watercolor. Tomatoes, watercolor.

Book Review: Giving Back to Our Animals | 6.11

Animal Healing, The Power of Rolfing® Structural Integration
by Kelly Jones Hicks

Unconditional love from a pet is a gift we pet owners receive multiple times a day. It’s the biggest perk of pet ownership. Whether we are conscious of it or not, their very presence in our lives encourages healing on many levels. And they remain loyal despite our rainbow of moods, looking only for food and love. In turn, don’t we want them to have fun, age with ease and feel no pain during their brief sojourn with us? Toward that end, I’ve recently discovered Rolfing® Structural Integration, a form of bodywork that produces amazing healing results on a physical, spiritual and emotional level for both humans and animals.

Briah Anson, M.A., author of “Rolfing®: Stories of Empowerment,” has written a new book on the Rolfing® process and the benefits for animals. In “Animal Healing, The Power of Rolfing® Structural Integration,” Briah Anson presents over three dozen profiles of 56 different animals, both domestic and wild, going through the Rolfing process. Briah makes a convincing case that Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) can produce profound lifestyle benefits to animals from birds to horses.

Any animal suffering from movement limitations resulting from injury, disease, surgical trauma and even old age experience relief and recovery. Rolfing SI also contributes to the rehabilitation from secondary or tertiary responses to trauma — the muscle spasms, soreness and compensatory patterns that linger long after the wounds heal.

Examples of the creatures profiled include cats, dogs, horses, birds, llamas, eagles, an owl, a cougar, and an endearing moose named Mike. Each chapter includes a description of the animal from the owner’s perspective as well as a description of Briah’s analysis. Photos accompany the stories so readers can really see the animal’s reaction to the Rolfing SI treatment — deep relaxation. Most chapters include before and after photos, which are powerful testaments to the work.

The book is organized around types of recovery. One chapter covers animals that have experienced rehabilitation from issues derived from birth defects, acute spinal injuries, and hip dysfunctions. Rescue animals experience trauma as they transition from shelters and kennels to new homes. You’ll read about the dogs, cats and even guinea pigs that have moved from impatience and anxiety to ease and calm after a few Rolfing sessions.

Another chapter tackles animals as athletes, while the Rolfing process unleashes the competitive potential of show horses. Many injuries and traumas could not be resolved using conventional veterinary medicine.
Briah volunteered over two years at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, where she worked with several injured eagles to help rehabilitate and heal them. You can see these eagles at the Eagle center today. Just ask for Angel, Harriet, Donald or Columbia.

From puppies to geriatric canines, bigger-than-life cats and a cougar, the effects that Rolfing SI has on these animals is life-changing and significant.

Rolfing Structural Integration was developed over 60 years ago by biochemist and physiologist, Dr. Ida P. Rolf. Briah Anson, M.A., has been performing Rolfing SI for over 30 years. She is a pioneer who has taken this transformative bodywork for humans and applied it to animals, producing five educational videos on this work. She currently has a private practice in St. Paul. Read more about Rolfing SI and animal healing at briahansonrolfing-animalhealing.com.

“After numerous sessions with Angel, I maximize our connection,” Brian Anson.

Metal Work: Making the Sparks Fly


I am passionate about both architecture and metal work. Architecture is about creating the stage; metal work is about refining the details. When metal work is thoughtfully and meaningfully executed, it simply makes the stage a better place in which to live.

Why custom metal work?

• I get to take an intriguing idea, think about its form in metal, play with it, develop and refine it, choose appropriate materials, and then execute a unique product of art.
• I have always loved metal work that is hand made, hand worked, and one of a kind (especially one that has no modern welds).
• When one deals with smaller projects, it is easier to control quality, scale, proportion, and detail.
• There are no bounds for being inventive and creative and it leads to interesting puzzles that are solvable.
• Some of the challenges of metal work are to consider and determine how joinery occurs, fastening happens, and what finish is appropriate.
• When hot, metal work has the innate capacity to be malleable and plastic, allowing for opportunities of great expression in forming the work.
• Metal work can be sustainable, resourceful, and recyclable; this I have always found intriguing. Metal that some people consider waste or junk may often be reformed and reconfigured into new beautiful forms.
• Metal work, when done well, has the power to evoke powerful human emotions and awe.
• I love to tell stories; it is always easy to tell a great story working in metal.

(left) Dragon head, recently featured in the exhibition “Iron 2010” at the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee (blacksmith: Tom Latané).

My background

I am a licensed architect with a niche practice in custom metalwork design. I established my own business in 1993 (Yust Architectural Services), serving residential, commercial, and industrial clients. I have lived in West Seventh for almost 40 years.

My career has been influenced by my exposure to music, art, history, museums, travel, and community. Growing up in Wichita, Kansas, my parents were much older than my peers’ parents and both were teachers; my father taught piano and my mother taught high school Latin and art. Our family outings were to museums, galleries, historic sites, and classical music events.

After graduate studies in architecture at the University of Minnesota, I worked many years for one of my professors and mentors, Valerius Michelson, who had been clerk of the works at Saint John’s University with Marcel Breuer. Michelson was a first generation modernist (like his hero, Le Corbusier) and he always referred to me as an arts and crafts architect; a comment that I always took as a compliment.

Integrating the art and craft of metal work with architecture allows me to create designs that bring together my interests in art, architecture, and history. I delight in collaborating with metalsmiths to create work with artistic integrity. My designs include custom gates, railings, hardware, grave markers, signs, pot racks, door handles, cemetery arches, hinges, finials, fountains, sculptures, flag standards, planters, hooks, mug racks, par fitness equipment, and kitchen utensils. Examples of my work in West Seventh are noted.

Projects in the High Bridge Neighborhood

Architectural Designs | Historic restorations:

• Schroeder residence, 194 McBoal
• Martin Weber house restoration, 202 McBoal
• Charles Yust residence, 151 Goodrich
• Yust Architectural office, 476 West Seventh

• Michael Justin studio & garage, 183 Goodrich
• Padgett’s Red Barn artist studio, 274 Goodrich

• CSPS Hall elevator addition, 385 Michigan
• Day by Day back room, 477 West Seventh

Architectural Designs | Metal Work Designs:

• Front fence at Schroeder residence, 194 McBoal (blacksmith: Myron Hanson).
• Shutter strap hinges at Padgett’s Red Barn artist studio, 274 Goodrich (blacksmith: Myron Hanson).
• Park fitness equipment, Pleasant Park by Open School, Harrison Avenue and Garfield Street (blacksmiths: Myron Hanson and Marty Hicks; woodcarver: Fred Livesay).
• Door handles at Saint Mark’s Lutheran Church, 550 West Seventh (blacksmith: Tom Latané).
• Exterior sculpture and bike rack at United Family Practice Center, 1026 West Seventh (blacksmith: Myron Hanson).