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New exhibition from artist Brian Sago blends science and art

January 21, 2020 By Minneapolis Club Staff

Palimpsest, the latest installation in the Minneapolis Club’s Curtis Gallery, showcases work from local artist Brian Sago. A printmaker and photographer, Sago’s work blends science, math, botany and history, and he states that many images in the collection are inspired by dreams.

A palimpsest is a document that has been scraped clean to make way for new work, while faint images of the original remain. The 11 prints on display were created by hand-etching designs into hand-cut copper plates. “The prints in this exhibit stand as a bit of a counterpoint to the Edward Curtis prints on the opposite wall,” notes Sago, observing that both are printed using an etching press. “Knowing the exhibition space led to an interesting challenge in preparing and selecting the work,” he writes.

Sago elaborates:

The plates were made by reusing engraver’s copper, scraping down old images that had been etched into the plates, then cutting them into new, organic shapes.

It may not look like it at first, but there’s a lot of science that goes into these prints. The organic shapes were inspired by seed pods, tattered leaves and aged pieces of wood. Chemistry is required in the etching, craft-level precision in inking, wiping and printing copper plates by hand. There’s a nurturing aspect to both science and art that blends together in the 600-year-old technique of etching plates.

Plates were worked in part at Arms & Armor, a local blacksmith that specializes in reproductions of medieval tools. Many thanks to the blacksmiths there for lessons in using a plasma cutter to alter the shapes of the plates from the typical rectangle.

A native of St. Louis, Sago now teaches printmaking and photography at The Blake School.

A personal tour of the exhibit with the artist can be arranged. Contact Brian at bsago@blakeschool.org or 612-940-9470. The exhibit is open until February 29.

Filed Under: Clubhouse Tagged With: Curtis Gallery

Custom-Made Pub Tables Suit Both Work and Play

May 2, 2019 By Minneapolis Club Staff

Visitors to the Pub in recent months have probably noticed the addition of two new high-top tables designed for both work and play—ready to serve members whether they’re grabbing breakfast and complimentary coffee, charging their laptops or mingling with friends over beers. If the new additions seem uniquely suited to the space, it’s because they are: The tables were handmade by Minneapolis Club engineers Dirk Gunder and Chad Stone.

When the idea of adding bar tables to the Pub first came up, it didn’t take long to determine the best way to get them. Dirk and Chad, both graduates of the wood finishing program at Dakota County Technical College, have demonstrated their carpentry expertise in countless ways around the Club. Most applicable for this project, they built the chef’s table in the kitchen in collaboration with Chef Håkan.

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For the pub, Dirk and Chad envisioned similar live-edge wood tables. Their first challenge was finding suitable lumber, but Paul Scott, director of purchasing, soon located a solution in Webster, Wisconsin. Following a thunderstorm that downed multiple trees on his property, an enterprising farmer there had purchased a sawmill and begun his own milling operation. Dirk made the two-hour drive and hand selected four oak slabs from the same tree.

Once the lumber was in their workshop in the Club basement, Dirk and Chad determined the best configuration for the slabs, then cut them to length, power planed and sanded them. After filling knots and ensuring the surfaces were level and smooth, the next step was staining the oak to match the existing tables in the Pub.

To equip the tables to stand up to decades of use in the Pub, Dirk and Chad then applied seven coats of a specialty varnish for wooden boats. Each coat required at least 24 hours of curing time (and up to four days in the humid conditions of the basement workshop), followed by fine sanding.

With the wood finishing complete, the only steps remaining were to attach the metal legs and power outlets, and finally install the tables in the Pub along with the new bar stools (which were a project themselves, requiring reupholstering by Paul Scott to match the Pub’s existing chairs).

The final result is worth celebrating. If you don’t visit the Pub regularly, stop in soon to see and appreciate Dirk and Chad’s craftsmanship. It’s yet another thing that makes our Clubhouse so special, and so well suited as the backdrop for your extraordinary experiences.

Filed Under: Clubhouse Tagged With: Pub



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