On Monday we talked to three different representatives from the Northfield Art and Culture Commission:
-Teresa Jensen, who is the Library director in Northfield, acts as the official liaison for the Arts and Culture Commission, and is the IT director.
-Karna Hauck, who is a voting member of the Arts and Culture Commission and is on her third term, meaning that she has been working with the commission for almost nine years. She clarified that this is her last term but she will be able to participate as a member in the future. Karna teaches Visual Arts at the Northfield High School and has taught elementary school before. She graduated from St. Olaf and RISD and started teaching at 23.
-Rob Hardy is a Poet Laureate that is not a member of the Commission but has worked with them as a volunteer consultant. He majored in Latin and has a PhD in the Classics and said he started writing poetry as a stay-at-home dad.
During their presentation they talked about a couple of the projects they have implemented in the city of Northfield. The first one was mentioned by Karna, and it’s the Young Sculptor’s Project. This project consists of the creation of a sculpture by different students and art interests that is exhibited in front of the Northfield Public Library. https://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/638/Young-Sculptors-Project On this site you’ll be able to find a more detailed description of the project and photos of each of the sculptures made in the past years.
Another project that they talked about was the Sidewalk Poetry. This project consisted of the installation of different poems on sidewalks around the city. According to the pictures I saw, they were engraved on the pavement and looked pretty great and added so much creativity to the downtown, https://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/638/Young-Sculptors-Project here’s the link to the site that describes it better. Teresa told us a story about how them as part of the project were visiting different people in Northfield to ask if they wanted a poem stamped outside their house and a man said no because he “didn’t believe in that” or something like that, which made me think about how the arts are usually and wrongly related to feminine expressions only, and are seen as a threat to masculinity, which ends up limiting the spread of creativity and culture through art in a lot of cases.
They also talked about the importance they give to diversity and to hear ideas from different perspectives and something that caught my attention and I think is great is that they mentioned how they have to be willing to listen to community members even if some of their ideas go against what some politicians might want. They have worked with grassroot organizations, the Human Rights Commission on different occasions. Also, as part of their efforts to be inclusive, they talked about the importance of breaking barriers between the Hispanic community and the rest of the city so that their voices can also be heard. They recognized that the Commission is not as diverse as they would want it to be, but invited students to apply and mentioned a couple of artistic initiatives to participate in, one is led by a Chilean visiting professor at St. Olaf, Cecilia Cornejo. I took a film production class with her and it’s noticeable how she cares a lot about the Northfield community and the arts.
Overall, I think the discussion was great and I learned a lot. I didn’t know this Commission existed before and I think it’s great it does because Northfield has so much potential in terms of spaces and what can be done in them. I appreciate them recognizing they can do better in terms of diversity and the openness to new members I felt from all of them.