Detours: Made Here features the work of Minnesota artists. Their works explore the theme “detours” — open to interpretation, artists explore what “detours” means to them.

Made Here showcases fill underused storefronts and commercial spaces with art by local artists, transforming Hennepin Avenue into a walkable urban art gallery. Since its launch in 2013, Made Here has produced more than 300 window displays and met our goal of helping business owners occupy storefronts.

View a printable map or learn more about our Arts Advisory Panel.

Showcase 100: Alan Gerlach
Title: Mill City Fragments

Machines grind to a halt. Workers turn out the lights for the last time. The giant mills that shaped our state outlive their original use and enter dormancy. They fall into disrepair for an interim period before being demolished or redeveloped. This is the usual narrative of these spaces.

I am interested in an alternative narrative – a detour from the linear history. Originating from exploration and curiosity during the interim period of the space, my practice connects fragmented histories, re-imagines objects and creates a new narrative set firmly in the present. Each object is charged with a visceral experience of history, telling a fragmented story of the people and production in its past. In this way, the objects taken from the mills become the impetus for the artwork —

Neon tubes: Pillsbury’s Best Flour sign, Pillsbury A Mill
Crushed bricks in the cast concrete mix: tailrace under Pillsbury A Mill Industrial covers on the cast hanging lights: Fruen Mill, north Minneapolis Black electrical control box: Purina Mill, south Minneapolis, demolished Photograph: basement, Pillsbury A Mill
Assorted industrial found objects: Pillsbury, Purina and Fruen mills

Showcase 101: Bobby Marines
Title: Cuartito in the ‘Burbs

A child’s hope for a “normal” upbringing.
A person’s search for a stable place to call “home.”
An immigrant’s dream of securing a brighter future for their family.

What happens when our ideal vision of life takes a detour? Is there a way to correct our course or do our detours force us to reexamine our path entirely? What is responsible for the detour and where do we go from there?

This work explores the pervasive confl ict between personal and societal circumstances. Life’s detours.

The “cuartito”(shack) is a recreation of one I lived in as a teen. It explores instability by referencing my own displacement and abandonment. The husks represent the fragility of comfort and home while also referencing my Mexican-American culture. The window represents hope and diversity.

The painting explores the same issues, but on a larger scale, by referencing the thousands of immigrant children separated from their parents at the US/Mexico border.

Altogether, this is an invitation to refl ect on our lives while considering and empathizing with those who must navigate realities diff erent from our own.

Showcase 102: Becca Cerra
Title: Altered Aesthetics

Unrealistic beauty standards, misconceptions about mental health, and disability stigmas are pervasive, sneaking into nearly every form of media we consume. My art is a necessary respite from these messages, showing beauty in unexpected and unconventional ways. My artistic practice is a catalyst for a body-positive revolution in which all bodies and minds are revered for their unique beauty.

Altered Aesthetics explores beauty within disabled bodies. Most conversations about disabilities are fraught with misinformation, stigma, and limiting perceptions. Through this project, I aim to shatter these beliefs, educate the public, and empower individuals living with disabilities.

Collaborating with four people with amputations, I have created wearable sculptures that wrap around and extend from their residual limbs to create artistic expressions. My unique sculptural (nonmedical and nonfunctional) “prosthetics” are visual homages to the body’s story. They transform the wearers’ bodies into works of art and challenge limiting beliefs, they and others may hold.

Showcase 103: Kulture Klub Collaborative
Title: This Is Our Downtown

This Is Our Downtown is a visual narrative created by the young artists of Kulture Klub Collaborative. From December 2017 to September 2018, teaching artists Wing Young Huie, John Marks, Ryan Stopera, Adja Gildersleve, and Nancy Musinguzi facilitated workshops in digital photography, 16mm fi lm, and video in an eff ort to explore the landscape and tell the stories of downtown Minneapolis. Kulture Klub Collaborative’s youth live, work, and spend the majority of their time among the epic city buildings and diverse humanity in our city center. They work to build paths for themselves and navigate through the many obstacles and opportunities downtown have to off er. Important sites such as Nicollet Mall, the Minneapolis Central Library, Government Plaza, and the newly reconstructed YouthLink were chosen by youth as the backdrop for this show illustrating their unique perspectives and contributions to the rich history of the rapidly changing downtown.

This Is Our Downtown and …

Anything is possible.
Sometimes it feels like we are alone, together.
We are fi nding ways to live on our own terms.
We are cultivating a culture of community.
We are resilient.
We contribute to the collective identity.
We are part of the Heritage/History.
We have our own stories.
We are eclectic and vibrant.
We are consistently changing and growing.
We are Transforming.
We have a limitless space for inclusivity.

Showcase 104: Philipo Dyauli
Title: Cultural Migration

A personal journey of a young black man from Africa to the United States. At the age of 12, I found myself in a state of culture shock with a new language, people, food and SNOW. Detours in life can sometimes be unexpected, especially when moving across the world to a foreign land. Learning new customs, language and traditions became part of the adventure. And because of the hardship to new experiences, my heritage and culture flows through the canvas.

My inspiration to paint comes from an early interest in visual and pop art such as fi lm, graphic design and illustrations. The support I receive from my family and the Twin Cities’ vibrant community drives me to new creations each time I am in the studio.

These paintings attempt to show parts of my homes in Minnesota and Tanzania by incorporating lifestyle and traditions including wildlife, farming, clothing and food. The desired outcome is to show how Minnesota became a life changing detour for an immigrant student from Africa.

Showcase 105: Kao Lee Thao
Title: Muse

Muse is a layered kaleidoscope of abstract patterns that beacons viewers to be mesmerized by the depth that shapes her visual landscape.

My work is infused with an expressively fluid style, connecting our surroundings to patterns and motifs echoed throughout human existence. As a Hmong American artist I balance between two worlds but as these worlds collide unique forms emerge. My abstract work is a symbol of my journey in America united with Hmong textiles and the meaning behind each symbol.

I began my journey when my mother crossed the Mekong River escaping the jungles of Laos while I was cradled in her womb. My family fled to America in 1976 with only $5 in their pocket to begin a new life. Due to persecution, Hmong woman hand sewed our written language with natural elements into costumes and traditional patterns keeping it a secret. While the written language has been lost the patterns and customs still remain.

We take Detours in life that shape our journey but our connections can raise awareness to our multicultural community.

Showcase 106: Heather M. Cole
Title: My Daily Commute

My life took a detour when I was in my early twenties. I became disconnected and overwhelmed while at college and needed to take medication to deal with depression and later anxiety. I quit school. I was denied medical insurance. I’ve lost a job. There was one pill to get through the day and one pill to get through the night. Because of this, in spite of this and through this, I am where I am today. Here.

I am living with mental illness.

“The Center for Disease Control reports that half of us will experience at least one episode of mental illness in our life time. One in fi ve adults experience a mental health condition each year.

— Minnesota Public Radio, “Call to Mind” 10/16/2018

Showcase 107: Quinn Rivenburgh
Title: Healing Is a Spiral, the Only Way Out is Through

Mental illness often means making detours away from expected or assumed paths in life. Perhaps we had a vision of how life would turn out, but then our lives grew along a different route due to circumstances outside our control.

In my work as a therapist, I help my clients see that healing is a spiral, rather than a linear process. It is about detouring away from our ingrained patterns, building new roads and bridges to our most fully lived lives.

I’ve worked with people with dementia and Alzheimer’s, survivors of sexual violence, people with substance use challenges, survivors of suicide attempts, and people with trauma histories. I operate from a wounded healer framework, meaning that I am not “well” while others are “sick;” we are all connected in the quest toward fully lived lives.

Featured in this papercut are the words of fabian romero, a two spirit mestiza and Purepécha poet, fi lmmaker and artist, prioritizing a collaborative Indigenous research methodology. fabian has generously consented for these words to be highlighted.

Showcase 108: Kathleen Richert
Title: What Kind of Sh*rt Is This?

As a textile artist, I think about clothing as complex three-dimensional forms made from two-dimensional materials. They may be garments we encounter day-to-day, such as shirts, trousers and dresses; they may be costumes, which take many fantastical forms; they may cleave to the strictures of historic accuracy such as museum reproductions. I work in all these areas, but often they start out as a fl at patterns and fl at lengths of fabric. Using time-honored processes, I mold the materials into the configurations in my mind’s eye.

The current iteration of Made Here bears the theme Detours. I thought about how that theme relates to clothing. A detour redirects the usual path. A detour takes you somewhere you didn’t anticipate. It might work out well…but it might not. I began to think about ways that clothing might take unanticipated direction, either by form or by function. Selecting mens shirts as he base form, I created a series of shirts that detour from the expected. They are perfect for a window, because you don’t need to try them on to understand where they depart from the norm.

Showcase 109: Kathleen Zimmerman, Patrick Moe, Elizabeth Hendrickson

Title: Light Takes a Detour

All of us encounter obstacles in our day to day lives. It may be something unexpected and annoying, or catastrophic and overwhelming. These obstacles force us to take a detour, to change direction, and to look at things from a diff erent angle. This piece is a visual manifestation of those changes.

Moving from left to right, each plane encounters an obstacle and is aff ected in a unique way depending on its position and proximity to the bulb. What begins as a uniform fi eld of parallel lines evolves into a vibrant jumble of color created by all the varied rotations of the planes. Just as we are aff ected by obstacles and forced to change our course of action, the eff ects of the detours we take stay with us even after we have left them behind.

1. 10 South 10th Street (The FAIR School Downtown)

FAIR School Downtown is the Downtown Minneapolis premier community school. Rooted in arts, equity, innovation and creativity, The FAIR School provides rich programming, relevant instruction, and fosters high achievement, cultural understanding, global citizenship, and a robust network of partnerships that help engage and empower students in personalizing their learning experience.

2. 900 Hennepin Avenue (Hennepin Theatre Trust)

Colin Michael Simmons is a photographer and visual artist who has had his work featured on the cover of City Pages and other publications. Colin worked for Saturday Night Live as a photographer and archivist in 2012 and 2013.

2. 710 Hennepin Avenue (Pantages Theatre)

Coco Connolly, established Minneapolis artist whose background includes art director at Carmichael Lynch Advertising Agency, owning her own design studio, and creative manager for Target Corporation. She has won national and regional awards for her advertising and design work and her work has been recognized in Communication Arts, Print and Creative Quarterly magazines. Coco has been a featured speaker at venues in Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Washington DC for the American Institute of Graphic Artists. She has also been a guest speaker at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, sharing her love of art and design with High School students. Pursuit of her personal work has been ongoing. From three-dimensional work to book forms, with an abundance of drawing and painting in between. She’s taught watercolor workshops in the Midwest and Italy, and in the Twin Cities leads art activities with kids at Children’s Hospital and Ronald Mcdonald House for Breanna’s Gift foundation.

5. 528 Hennepin Avenue (The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts)

Coco Connolly, established Minneapolis artist whose background includes art director at Carmichael Lynch Advertising Agency, owning her own design studio, and creative manager for Target Corporation. She has won national and regional awards for her advertising and design wor

k and her work has been recognized in Communication Arts, Print and Creative Quarterly magazines. Coco has been a featured speaker at venues in Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Washington DC for the American Institute of Graphic Artists. She has also been a guest speaker at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, sharing her love of art and design with High School students. Pursuit of her personal work has been ongoing. From three-dimensional work to book forms, with an abundance of drawing and painting in between. She’s taught watercolor workshops in the Midwest and Italy, and in the Twin Cities leads art activities with kids at Children’s Hospital and Ronald Mcdonald House for Breanna’s Gift foundation.