C4 (Constructive, Creative Critique Club)
Join C4 and help other ACW members move their art practice forward and get a chance to have your work critiqued by the group. We meet every other month to critique two member’s work. You must attend two critiques before your work can be critiqued.
Contact layl@claysquared.com to join.
Our mission:
Art to Change the World’s (ACW) Constructive Creative Critique Club (C4) holds space for artists by giving them autonomy in guiding their critique and feedback using a specially ACW developed menu of options which allows them to lean into their vulnerability to be curious and grow as artists.
Our next Critique will be on January 9th from 6:00 to 8:30.
Join us to examine Candy Kuehn and Catherine Palmer’s work. Contact layl@claysquared.com if you are interested in joining us.
Candy Kuehn
I am a hyper inventive geek, constantly experimenting and collaborating. Now exploring color/spirit with “I-Phonography” and my own senses, feel/smell spaces outside our physical. I have deep knowledge of fibers, pigments, dyes, photographic print processes, and iPhone apps. In the Woods with Nature’s time, light flowing, I paint with photo digital moments. I fuse color, texture, movement into meaning. I also paint motion with dyes, fabric content and drape for the body. I “app” time into digital art spaces. In the city, I find the wild places, between parking lots and freeway, backyards and the sidewalk, the river and lake walks. But the woods are home. Our family cabin is now in its fifth generation with my daughter’s children. Most my lifetime’s vacations are spent on this Minnesota/Canadian borderland forests. The work I’ll be doing and showing is the deep spirit rising from these multi dimensional environments.
Catherine A. Palmer
My work reimagines urban parking ramps as sites of human narrative and social reflection. Through expressionist paintings, I explore their eerie stillness during the pandemic, revealing themes of isolation, vulnerability, and society’s detached gaze on crises like homelessness and addiction. In parallel, my mixed media sculptures honor the unseen labor of maintenance workers, transforming discarded materials into monuments of dignity and resilience. Together, these works invite viewers to confront overlooked spaces and the lives sustained within them.
Here is our checklist artists use for each critique:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1whBmepozdO2LcDl1ZtFiwQq6U9KAhnct36yg6mUVHsY/edit?usp=sharing
Which areas do you want feedback on?
Elements and Principles:
Color
Composition
Rhythm
Scale
Texture
Proportions
Perspective
Contrast
Technique
Craftsmanship
Materials
Concepts
What does the viewer feel when they see the piece?
What content do they see?
What does the work remind them of?
Impact of piece on the viewer
Do you have any questions for the viewers?
Future plans
I want viewers to share technical ideas.
I want viewers to share conceptional ideas.
I have specific questions about which direction to go next.
How to show my work
I would like suggestions on how to hang and display my work.
I would like suggestions on price points for my work.
I would like suggestions on where I might show and sell my work.
Photo is Leo Fortune Critique
PAST CRITIQUES
Next Critique is June 30 at 6:00 PM at 699 Lowry Ave NE. ACW Headquarters.
Barbara Bridges and Kelly Frankenberg. Read about them:
Meet Kelly She creates music, film, fashion, painting, sculpture, glass, woodworking, and performance. She travels across the globe to inspire her photography and painting. Her abstract work comes from memory and her social justice art comes from her passion for unity and inclusivity and reform in a world of vast cultural diversity. Her spiritual art comes from meditation and channeling the subconscious and source energy.
Some local clients for books, illustrations, and murals have included Minnesota’s Governor’s Residence Council, Minnesota Children’s Theater, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota. Some national clients for live performances, courtroom sketches, and 3D art have included the National Architecture Convention, Fox National News, Macy’s, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Kelly’s work has appeared in film, TV, books, newspapers, magazines, on the radio, on walls, windows, pianos, mailboxes, and electrical boxes.
Kellyfrankenberg@gmail.com Artist, illustrator, writer, teacher Minneapolis, MN
Meet Barbara: has been an artist and a teacher/college professor for over 40 years. Her social practice sculptures have been exhibited in Maine, Miami, the Virgin Islands, Maryland, Chicago, Mexico, Spain, Canada, and throughout Minnesota. Bridges taught K-12 art in Minnesota, Maine and the Virgin Islands and trained teachers in higher education at the University of Minnesota and Bemidji State University.
Barbara creates social practice art from fabricated components in a variety of media and rescued “power objects.” She manipulates the objects to create meaning and provoke discussions and reflection on a wide variety of social topics.
She is an intervenor. Cambridge educated philosopher, Tim Ingold, holds a unique theory on art making. Dr. Ingold suggests that artists are simply interveners on any particular materials and/or objects the artist manipulates. Any object already has a story, the artist simply recombines these objects to create a new narrative.
Barbara received the Vision Award from the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District in 2023.
Barbara is founder and director of Art to Change the World. Read More Please contact Barbara if you would like to buy any of her art drb@bridgescreate.com
Critique on February 7th 2025:
Anna Karena and Liisa Lê
Anna Karena is an intuitive artist who never begins with a plan and just makes marks layer after layer until something begins to emerge. Once an image begins to form, she then follows that lead to its logical conclusion. Most people are very surprised where the painting ends up compared to where it began.
Liisa Lê is a Minneapolis-based painter and wildlife photographer whose work centers on Minnesota’s wetlands and crane populations. With a background in painting and art conservation, she returned to art-making in 2023 after a 20-year career preserving cultural works. Her oil and acrylic paintings combine traditional and contemporary methods, often drawn from plein air studies and her own wildlife photography. Focusing on Sandhill and Whooping Cranes, her art advocates for wetland conservation and environmental stewardship. Her work has been exhibited across the Midwest and held in private collections in the US and internationally. She is currently developing The 1000 Crane Peace Project, a series aimed at inspiring ecological awareness and human well-being
On April 6th 2025
Leo Fortune and Deb Ripp
Leo Fortune (they/them), an emerging Minnesotan based artist and longtime public school educator, explores the power trees and spirals have to connect us to our authentic selves, to each other and to the world. They began coloring outside of the lines at the age of three. Then, they spent most of their life disconnected from themself and consequently, their art. A year ago, at the age of 41, they came out as a neurodivergent queer trans human. Their art practice reignited and exploded. They know first hand the power that comes with being authentic. Leo harnesses their life story of being painfully disconnected to empower others to keep reconnecting and embracing their true self. They hold space in their art for others to be safely vulnerable. They deeply believe that a world with people that are truly connected to their own love will change the world for the better.
Debb Ripp: I am a native Minnesotan born in Mankato and based in the Twin Cities. I welcome you to come visit my studio in the Dow building and the Creative Zone of St. Paul. The Dow building is on the Green Line of the Twin Cities Light Rail System~ Tobersonstudios, 2242 University Ave. W. #201, St. Paul. MN 55114
Tobersonstudios is home to a broad range of spirited images by Debra Ripp in various media. Toberson is the dog head figure on the homepage; he is an original insignia character in Debra’s work, the guide to all of her imagery. ~
I am a Mixed Media artist which means I am willing and love to explore all possible media, anything that will make the image emerge stronger and obtain the voice it is meant to have. My favorite thing is to vacillate between media and observe how the image can transform and mature as it is manifested in different clothes, so to speak.
__________________________________________________________
2024 Critique Events
Debra Ripp is a mixed media collage and three dimensional assemblage artist. She works and lives in the Twin Cities. She is a former member of WARM and has been an ACW member for approximately three years. She has a BFA from the University of Minnesota and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She has a variety of experience in teaching and has experimented with many mediums. Currently she is busy building a three dimensional folktale using upcycled materials.
“I am a Mixed Media artists which means I am willing and love to explore all possible media, anything that will make the image emerge stronger and obtain the voice it is meant to have. My favorite thing is to vacillate between media and observe how the image can transform and mature as it is manifested in different clothes, so to speak “
Her Critique with the CritClub will take place on August 16th,2023 at 6:30pm.
Her studio is at the Dow Building at 2242 University Ave W. St. Paul #201.
There will be signs at the side door and back door with a phone number to call to be let in. Email her: tobersonstudios@gmail.com
Parking is available on the street.
Kelly Frankenberg is an illustrator, writer, painter, photographer. She holds a MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans, and a BFA in Illustration from MCAD. She’s taught Art and Writing through Community Ed, Herzing University, and the former Minneapolis Media Institute and other teaching programs. She’s done work for the Minnesota Governor’s residence Council, Minneapolis’s Children’s Theater, Fox National News, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and various other clients. She’s performed live painting at the National Architecture Convention, , Macy’s, Mall of America, and has murals around Minnesota including commissions by the Islamic Center of Minnesota, Minneapolis Pianos on Parade, and her work is on doors, windows, mailboxes, and electrical boxes.
She has a story in an anthology commissioned by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, “Queer Voices,” an excerpt in Jane Seymour’s book, “The Road Ahead: Inspirational Stories of Open Hearts and Open Minds,” and self-published a memoir, “Diary of a Gay, Pregnant Bride.”
Kelly wrote a screenplay and filmed the feature film with things inside her house.
Traveling to 50 states and over 50 countries, she uses her travel photography to paint realistic and abstract landscapes.
Currently serving as assistant director of ACW, she exhibits her work in galleries and festivals and looks for more ways to collaborate and change the world with art.
Join Club Critique , June 21st, 6pm Read More:
Kelly’s Home, 684 McFaddens Trl, Eagan, MN 55123 (Dodd and cliff road may still be closed, if so, take Diffley to hwy 3 to red pine lane).
See you Wednesday, May 10, at 6 PM at Layl McDill’s Studio on 2505 NE Howard St NE, Minneapolis, MN 55418 for her Club Critique session. Bring a friend who might be interested in joining! Interns welcome.
Barbara Bridges
2323 Monroe St NE , Minneapolis 6:00 PM
Maine Seafood Chowdah will be served.
Elements and Principles, Meaning and the Message and Cultural Appropriation will be discussed.
You can Still Join Club Critique: Details and Members: https://www.arttochangetheworld.org/gritique-minutes
Barbara Rogers Bridges has been an artist and a teacher/college professor for over 40 years. Her social practice sculptures have been exhibited in Maine, Miami, the Virgin Islands, Maryland, Chicago, Mexico, Spain, Canada, and throughout Minnesota. Bridges taught K-12 art in Minnesota, Maine and the Virgin Islands and trained teachers in higher education at the University of Minnesota and Bemidji State University.
Barbara creates social practice art from fabricated components in a variety of media and rescued “power objects.” She manipulates the objects to create meaning and provoke discussions and reflection on a wide variety of social topics.
She is an intervenor. Cambridge educated philosopher, Tim Ingold, holds a unique theory on art making. Dr. Ingold suggests that artists are simply interveners on any particular materials and/or objects the artist manipulates. Any object already has a story, the artist simply recombines these objects to create a new narrative.
Barbara is founder and director of Art to Change the World. Read More Please contact Barbara if you would like to buy any of her art drb@bridgescreate.com
Greg Volker is a sculptor, potter, musician and builder. Born in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up in St Louis Park, Mn. Attended the University of Minnesota for his BFA and left Minneapolis for San Francisco in 1990 to attend graduate school at San Francisco Art Institute. He spent 28 years in SF, Oakland and Sonoma Valley and in 2018 he moved back to Minneapolis.
As well as his own work he has assisted and installed public works for other artists like Andy Goldsworthy, Dawn Freyling, Chuck Splady and John Roloff.
Website: gregvolkerarts.com IG,FB @ Greg Volker Arts
Artist, Minneapolis, MN
