With the Intention

Last night, I visited Aesthetic Apparatus for the very first time.  They are a commercial art and printmaking studio whose portfolio includes work for Surly Brewing Company, the Criterion Collection DVD series, Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current, among others.  They are ridiculously modest, as they state on their site: “…our work is a bit too commercial for ‘fine art’, and our studio is a bit too messy for ‘graphic design’.”  Even still, their work featured at the Walker Art Center in 2011 in the exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production.  I’ve rather come to dislike definitions of whether something is “fine art” or not (especially if it involves some kind of check list), preferring instead to default to, “It’s fine art if the beholder deems it so, whoever they are,” much in the way Luciano Berio defined music as, “Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music.”

Aesthetic Apparatus is located in the hipsteryist of hipster areas in Minneapolis, Seward, home to hipster hangout, the Hexagon; the neighborhood accessible by hipster bikeway, the Greenway; where you can buy hipster food from the hipster grocery store, the Seward Co-Op.  And don’t deny it, hipsters, as much as you dislike being called hipsters, as you are hipsters if someone looks at you with the intention of looking at hipsters.  Many of the clientele at last night’s event were wearing thick-rimmed glasses, had their right pant leg rolled up, held their bicycle helmet under one arm, were checked in red and black flannel, chose to drink either an IPA or a pilsner from a keg, and purchased prints of bold colors that belong in coffee shops where menus are written on chalk boards.  Perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit, but you get the idea.

In any case, Aesthetic Apparatus is right at home in Seward, and their “messy” design that’s apparently not quite “fine art” fits in well with a neighborhood that epitomizes a desire to outwit classifications, interminably failing in trying to do so because words become conscious of themselves far too quickly nowadays.  Their design is bold, vibrant, rough around the edges yet controlled and decisive, wonderfully honest, loud but not obnoxious, and perfect for people like me who have certain hipstery tendencies (although perhaps with a Bohemian touch), who can hang their art on a yellow wall where it vibrates colors in a spectrum of timbres.

To continue the evening filled with one stereotype after another, the duo, Bombay Sweets, graced us with their appearance and their sounds from 1963, because, if anything, hipsters will forever be linked to the musics of the past and through musics that sound like they’re from the past through the original hipster, Bob Dylan.  Bombay Sweets freely admits themselves that they were “born on reels of a dusty 50’s [sic] DuKane tape machine discovered at a suburban Minneapolis garage sale.”  (My friend, Zabby, and I couldn’t decide when it sounded like they came from, me preferring the 60s, him preferring the 40s, but what do you know?  Just average our thoughts and you get the 1950s!  And sorry for the bad picture to the right.  It was all I could manage.  That’s Nathan Grumdahl, one-half of the duo.  Jeff Brown would be on Nathan’s right, playing a cocktail drums setup.)

The sound of Bombay Sweets marvelously counterpointed the images of Aesthetic Apparatus, both worlds essentially representing a perfect symbiosis of bold sounds and loud colors.  The duo clearly comes from the surf tradition, and I imagine that they, too, might consider themselves too messy for graphic design and too commercial for fine art, but that is immaterial, because this Bohemian hipster listens to Bombay Sweets with the intention of listening to art.  I love their modest and imaginative setup of pedals to extend the lower sonorities of their range, and the fact that they ended their all-too-brief set in the less commonly heard 3/4 time as opposed to what we usually hear from groups like these, 4/4, made me appreciate their sounds even more.  Even more wonderfully, if you go to their press photos, you’ll see that they, too, like me, have an affinity for yellow walls.

So, do go check out Aesthetic Apparatus, if you could, and be sure to seek out Bombay Sweets, if you wouldn’t mind.  They’re the perfect combination of ingredients for a Saturday night in Seward.  Don’t forget to roll up your right pant leg as to avoid getting grease on it on your way over.  It’s terribly pragmatic.