New Art in an Old Building

I'm excited that Saint Paul is going to augment the beautiful but out-of-date and unrepresentative murals that currently dominate its City Council chambers (which I wrote about here). They've just announced the muralists who will create new artwork that will be added to the room.

According to the Star Tribune,

The tentative plan is to display two of the new murals on top of two of the existing... murals, the other two of which would remain on display so that at any given time visitors would see two historic murals and two modern ones. The new and old art would be rotated and include interpretive text.

The four chosen artists are:

• The Latinx Mural Apprenticeship Project, organized by the Latino nonprofit CLUES. Its main team members include Aaron Johnson-Ortiz, who did the mural at CTUL, painter and collage artist Marina Castillo, Gustavo Lira (lead artist on the Mosaic of the Americas), and painter Zamara Cuyun.
• Emily Donovan of St. Paul. She is a batik artist who uses handmade dyes from foraged materials.
• Leah Yellowbird of Grand Rapids, a painter whose work references Anishinaabe beadwork. Here's an article about her and her work.
• Adam Swanson, who lives in Cloquet on the Fond du Lac Reservation, and is also a painter. He has done a number of large murals as well. I'll let his website give an idea of his work.

The selection process was run by the Ramsey County Historical Society, and the works should be complete by April, with installation in May. Longer bios of the artists can be seen on the RCHS site.