Young Artists Set To Make Their Mark

Star Tribune, Minneapolis (MN)
June 17, 2003

YOUNG ARTISTS BEGIN SUMMER WORK IN ST. PAUL

Curt Brown, Star Tribune

Judson Lohman might have been able to find a more lucrative job being a lifeguard or busing tables. But despite the sweltering sun, he was happily scraping paint off a wall at the Gopher State Ethanol plant on Monday, preparing the surface for an expanded mural of St. Paul's riverfront history.

"From my point of view, it's good to get work in what will be my profession," said Lohman, 19. "You can't beat getting experience as a professional artist."

Lohman is one of 60 fledgling artists in the St. Paul area who started turning the city into their very own artists' colony Monday. They are part of a three-year-old summer youth employment program called ArtsWork that matches young artists with more established professionals. Its goals include providing meaningful summer jobs, increasing downtown's vitality and training young people in various art forms.

The student apprentices, ages 14 to 21, earn $6 an hour and spend 25 hours a week throwing pots, writing poetry, designing jewelry, creating fabric art and continuing the mural project, which began last summer. Senior apprentices, such as Lohman, who return to the program earn $8 an hour.

For the next six weeks, visitors to downtown St. Paul can watch them in action under white tents at four locations. Young potters will work on the Ecolab Plaza on Wabasha Street, where a tent store will open soon to sell their work. Apprentice writers are clustering at the downtown Central Library across from Rice Park and promise poetry slams this summer. Other artists are taking up shop at the Minnesota Business Academy on Exchange Street and the ethanol plant, a chronic source of neighborhood complaints about noise and odor on W. 7th Street. The mural project on W. 7th and Toronto Sts. is part of a planned park slated for landscaping next summer.

"Our mural is supposed to help appease the neighbors and make them feel better," said Lohman, a 2002 graduate of St. Paul Central High School and now a sophomore art major at Ohio's Wittenberg University.

Lohman is among nearly 20 artists working at the ethanol plant under the tutelage of Youa Vang, 27, a Hmong immigrant who grew up on St. Paul's West Side and has studied cartooning and fine art at schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

"This program gives the apprentices a reality of what you can do with art," Vang said. "People think of starving artists, but a few of my students are in college now studying everything from illustration to photography. They're spreading out, and I like to catch them early and encourage them to make a career out of it."

That's not as easy as it sounds.

"It's not throwing stuff on the wall and writing about it," Vang told his pupils Monday as they made mural preparations. "You need discipline and some training."

The program is the brainchild of COMPAS, a 29-year-old statewide community arts organization based in St. Paul. Foundations and corporations support the program. COMPAS executive director Jeff Prauer said that more than 100 people applied and that the less skilled artists were turned away.

"This provides meaningful jobs for kids who have skills in the arts," he said. "It also contributes to the vitality of the city and trains kids in their respective art forms."

Curt Brown is at curt.brown@startribune.com.

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