Sunday's at Nina's Cafe

Nina's Café on Selby has easily become our café of choice for a Sunday morning "relax over coffee, but get something fun done," session. In my case, this often means spending some time with my sketchbook, and in Chris's case, this means working on his business plan for the brewery. Ok, it also often means ARE study time too... But seriously, we need to have some fun too:) In the winter we find ourselves here more often then not these days as we look to get out of the apartment.

And important lesson was learned on this morning is if we don't want to be sketched while we are working on the business plan, then we should sit at a table more a the perimeter of the space so Jodi can draw the architecture and other people instead (see sketch above).

Sometimes we don't get to stay for too long, just enough time to have a quick cup of coffee and be on our way.

Back to the very beginning, this was one of the first sketches I did this summer on one of our first business plan/sketching outings.

Minnesota Museum of American Art - with Metro Sketchers

 

For someone who just doesn't know that much about fiber arts, the Minnesota Museum of American Art has a great show going on entitled "Repetition and Ritual: New Sculpture in Fiber".  Maybe I've never really been drawn to fiber arts because it reminds me of a craft sport like "extreme quilting" that one would create. Nonetheless, take something like fabric and yarn and get out of the box by making it sculptural; allow it to hold its own weight and suddenly, ah-ha, this makes perfect architectural sense.

 

This piece by Emily Barletta drew me in because of the barnacle like connection to blood cells and vessels.  The inspiration of human biology gave her pieces all had a common thread  that tied them together (no pun intended). Upon reading her bio you would understand why - how could an artist go through major surgery and not have it influence her work?

 

Anyways, enough art rambling. Here is the original piece:



And with a few seconds to spare, I was able to get in one more quick sketch of another amazing piece:

And the original:

As always, be sure to check out the work of all the Metro Sketchers as featured on the blog and facebook page.