As Prince said, sometimes it snows in April. Yesterday, as snowflakes tumbled in gale-force winds, I found myself longing for a gorgeous day in early fall: blue sky, leaves tinged with orange, grass deep green instead of stubbly half-brown tundra. Minnesota’s weather, while always interesting, may not always be pleasant. I’m confident in saying, though, that late summer / early autumn is most reliably beautiful. The weather – along with all of the fun fall activities (see: -the Meander) – is part of the reason our new -community artist in residence will come to Granite Falls in August, September, and October. What will they do when they get here? A few weeks ago, in this column, you read a brief overview of what a CAIR program is. Essentially, cities host an artist who teams up with local organizations, community members, and government to create new projects that foster cohesion, equity, collaboration, and play. These differ from usual artist residencies (in which an artist works on projects more or less alone) – in that the emphasis is on community-building rather than on, say, having the time and space to finally finish one’s novel. CAIR programs have a lot of different names: for instance, Minneapolis calls its version Creative City-Making. They also range widely in shape. In Pittsburgh, one residency is only three weeks long; artists work out of a retrofitted shipping container on the banks of the Allegheny to collect stories about the river. Pittsburgh has also hosted visual artists, who created Snapchat filters that used augmented-reality technology to offer new perspectives on familiar locations. In Japan, a centuries-old paper factory hosted an American artist who learned traditional materials and techniques to create a contemporary art project – a map of the town – in her style, along with drawings of gifts like plants and produce that were given to her by the residents as she worked.
