Art Hounds: Murals, molten metal and memories

Artists work on street art.
An artist works on a piece during the Downtown Minneapolis Street Art Festival.
By Tony Nelson, courtesy of Jessica Case

Former St. Paul art critic Diane Hellekson came out of retirement to rave about Kathryn Nobbe’s exhibition “Indelible Vestiges: Mother, Her Mother, Me.” The exhibition attempts to capture the the blurred reality between the present and past through memory through a vareity of multimedia elements.

“There’s old shoes that look like little ghosts walking alongside the gallery.” Hellekson said. “Indelible Vesitages” is open through Sept. 9 at Form + Content Gallery at 210 Second St. N. in Minneapolis. Special performances designed to complement the installations punctuate the run, including a spoken word event 4-6 p.m. on Aug. 19.


West Coast transplant Juliet Parisi lives in Eagan, Minn., now, where she uses alcohol-ink and mixed media to turning everyday chaos into something beautiful. No wonder she is drawn to Caponi Art Park’s annual “Hot Art” event, where participants carve sand molds that are then used to create molten metal castings with help from Igneous Metal Arts.

“They toss in scrap iron, like radiators, bits of pipe, iron sheets,” Parisi said, “toss it into a huge cauldron and they melt it down to hot, molten lava.”

People work on metal
Igneous Metal Arts melts down scrap iron during Caponi Art Park's "Hot Art" event.
Courtesy Cheryl Caponi

The 2023 event is Saturday, Aug. 12 at noon at Caponi Art Park in Eagan.


Minneapolis musician Barb Brynstad is in the band Turn Turn Turn. Every year, she looks forward to the Downtown Minneapolis Street Art Festival. The event features mural art, food trucks and hosts a variety of different musical acts.

“Something I really love about this event is that you can actually watch artists creating these unique, beautiful pieces,” Brynstad said. The 2023 Downtown Minneapolis Street Art Festival runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Aug. 12-13.

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