This weekend four Twin Cities venues are showcasing an unusually large roster of local artists in fields ranging from poster design and furniture restoration to such stalwart formats as painting, sculpture and maybe even a bit of graffiti-on-canvas.
Circa Gallery
In a match made in design heaven, Circa is collaborating with Minneapolis store OmForme on what's sure to be a smart pairing of Circa's elegant modernist paintings and OmForme's chic furniture. As its sleek website helpfully explains, OmForme means "to transform" in Norwegian. In practice, that means upcycling dowdy castoffs into dazzling delights. The Minneapolis firm specializes in bringing sass to banal mid-20th century furniture, you know, those pretentiously velvet-covered Louis-the-whatnot chairs that no one dared sit on in Aunt Sylvie's boudoir. Now decked out in rainbow hues and saucy prints, all that boring furniture sparkles with personality. OmForme calls this transformation a "rebirth of the forlorn" and dubs it the "Lazarus Effect." Clever.
Opening 5-8 p.m. Sat., June 6. Free. Circa Gallery, 210 N. 1st St., Mpls. 612-332-2386 or www.circagallery.org
Gallery 360
Traditionalists say the proper way to celebrate a 15th anniversary is with a gift of crystal, a watch, a ruby or a rose. At Gallery 360 it's a show of 15 gallery talents, many of them veterans of the Twin Cities scene. Painters, sculptors, photographer and ceramists, they'll be showing their new stuff at the charming south Minneapolis storefront that has been staging "art in every degree" for a decade and a half. They are: Sarah Wieben, Mary Bergherr, Nicholas Harper, Maureen Welter, Clinton Rost, Kelli Hoppmann, Al Wadzinski, D.C. Ice, Matthew Rucker, Dick Brewer, Sharon Ulrich, Natasha D'Schommer, Barbara Keith, David Cunningham and Ellen Thomson.
Party 7-10 p.m. Sat., June 6. Free. 3011 W. 50th St., Mpls. 612-925-2400 or www.gallery360mpls.com
Bloomington Theatre and Art Center
Steve Sack, the Star Tribune's Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, blasts off as a sculptor in "Cartoonival." The same pungent sense of humor that won him a 2013 Pulitzer takes 3-D form here. Carefully crafted of wood, wire, papier mâché and paint, his manic characters include crazy cats and colorful carnival characters — muscle men, mermaids and modern gargoyles posing as garden gnomes. Best known as a scribbler, Sack broke into the third dimension in 2010 and can't stop now.
Opening 6-8 p.m. Fri., June 5. Free. Artist's talk 7 p.m. June 23, free. 1800 W. Old Shakopee Road, Bloomington. Ends July 10. 952-563-8575 or www.btacmn.org
