Linnea Doyle in her studio.

This year, Art-A-Whirl will be turning 17. For the next three days folks will celebrate the country's largest open-studio tour at 50 different locations featuring more than 400 artists' studios and pop-up galleries throughout northeast Minneapolis. The epic event was started by the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association (NEMAA), and is a great opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the Twin Cities' best artists.

City Pages recently talked to Linnea Doyle, the artist behind the metro's most whimsical robot paintings. A Minnesota native, Doyle grew up in Minneapolis and went to Washington University to study art before coming back to her home state. Doyle specializes in painting figures in a place she describes as a "reality where colors are twice as bright, love is infinitely more vivid, and the world is condensed into simple, crystallized pleasures, so just a smile ignites a connection to make any distance small."

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By Kristie Bretzke

There's something that can be said about technique. Pure and simple Kristie Bretzke, whose work is now on exhibition in "Eye of the Beholder" at XYandZ Gallery, has got technique in spades. Her paintings are exquisitely crafted, from her use of light, to her attention to detail, to her ability to draw out the personality of her subjects. She's wonderfully talented.

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Mei Pak of Tiny Hands Jewelry

Combine the crafty internet sensations Pinterest and etsy, add some distinct Minnesotan flair, bring it to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, and you've got Craftstravaganza. The seventh-annual event celebrates the handmade goods of crafters from around the country.  

At this year's event, which has added a second building to accommodate the 140 different vendors, there's no shortage of great goods from amazing talents. From screen-printing to plushies to soaps to lamps, if you can make it, you'll probably find it here. If you need a little creative nudge, there will also be a bunch of workshops to help get your craft on throughout the day.

Mei Pak is the owner of Tiny Hands, a jewelry line that combines sweet and cute with miniature food. While this is the first time that Pak has participated in Craftstravaganza, the Minnesota native isn't new to the crafting game, as she's been making tiny scented pancakes, waffles, and cupcakes since 2006.

Pak's work has been featured on countless blogs and jewelry magazines, as well as on the hit show Parks and Recreation. (In case you're wondering, everyone's favorite deputy parks director Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, wears Tiny Hands jewelry in season four's "Operation Ann" episode.) Pak has also contributed to a miniature craft-making book, and gives tutorials about how to replicate her scrumptious little goods at home.

We talked to Pak about her sweet, successful journey with Tiny Hands, Parks and Recreation, and, oddly enough, placentas.

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Photo by Kathy Easthagen

A mother and son paint their dragon mask

What would it be like if we moved away from fossil-fuel dependency toward a sustainable future? That's the crux of the "transition-town" movement, which has been gaining steam since the mid-2000s, though its roots are much older than that. It's also the theme of this year's MayDay Parade and Festival, presented by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (HOBT), which has incorporated sustainability into its parade and ceremony by featuring an all new transition town called "Bloomingtown."  More >>

WUNDR Tunnel photo by Andrew Casey

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Photo by Hilary Stein

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts kicked off its 29th annual Art in Bloom celebration yesterday with a lecture by garden designer Gordon Hayward, a floral demonstration by René van Rems, and a luncheon. There was also a Flowers After Hours fashion show where Danielle Everine, Nicole Larson, Joy Teiken, Anna Lee, Emma Berg, and Max Lohrbach all showed looks on the runway that were inspired by the garden -- or actually made from materials from the garden itself.

One of the standouts on the catwalk was Berg, who used hand-painted fabric by Lohrbach to create beautiful, flowy floral dresses, and newcomer Nicole Larson, who used flowers and branches to add unique and thoughtful touches to her garment. More >>

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Artists Joseph Madrigal and Amber Ginsburg are bringing flower power back in a big way. With their new exhibit at the Soap Factory, the duo are creating a literal blast from the past with their recreation of a terra cotta dummy bomb factory. Just what is a terra cotta dummy bomb? Back in World War I, when planes were relatively new warfare technology, the military used dummy bombs to test the accuracy of their missile drops.

In a podcast for the Soap Factory, Ginsburg detailed the origins of the project all the way back to historical narrative from 1914. Terra cotta was  popular in the early 20th Century, and after the Great Chicago Fire, people realized it could be used as fire-proof architectural ornamentation among other things. More >>

Photo by Nathan O'Brien

Pottery by Peter Jadoonath

Spring is a time of rebirth and regeneration. The bright sunshine and 60-degree highs bring hibernating Minnesotans back to life. It also marks the start of the art-fair season, a vital time for those who earn a living -- or even a modest second income -- from art. In many ways, the Saint Paul Spring Art Crawl acts as this season's opener.

This self-guided art tour serves several purposes, but exists primarily to celebrate the city's rich art scene. The Back Alley Gallery, a five-member collective featuring a wide range of work, is part of that scene. Ceramics, pottery, painting, photography, and zines will be on display in the space during the crawl, and folks can also expect to find guest contributors working in wood, fiber, and even mixtapes. In addition to a plethora of works, the gallery includes a functioning pottery studio.

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Photo by Emily Lloyd

"6 Words Minneapolis" at Shoebox Gallery

Emily Lloyd is on a mission to gather six-word memoirs from Minneapolis residents. So far, she has collected about 750, but she knows that's just barely scratching the surface.

The poet-turned-public-artist has been working on her "6 Words Minneapolis" project for about a year, gathering the super-short memoirs through social networking sites, submission posters in coffee shops, and from commenters online. She prints them on black paper with white letters, and has displayed them in libraries, at the Midtown Market, and at the Shoebox Gallery on Chicago Avenue by Lake Street.

This weekend, she'll be installing a new exhibit on Franklin Avenue near Nicollet for the Artists in Storefronts Project. We recently spoke to Lloyd about her project, and what she hopes to achieve by collecting the short-form stories of as many Minneapolis residents as possible.  More >>