Strange New World: Otherworldly Arts Collective opens gallery in Northeast

Banner image: Jayce the Maker, My Left Pocket. Polymer clay. Photo by Travis Abaddon.

 

Sometimes you have to create the right time.

Danielle Pebbles, who co-founded the Otherworldly Arts Collective with fellow artists Jon Reese (@pseud0ersatz) and Renee Chartier (@opaquepastels), had thought about opening a gallery later in life. She’d seen artists take that path as they got older and finally had time and space. But a series of events in her and fellow collective members’ lives prompted the group to reevaluate last year.

“We met one day and I was like, ‘I don’t want to be at the end of my life before we start doing something like this,’” Pebbles recalled. “Let’s try it. If it fails in two years, okay, but I don’t want to be at the end of my life still waiting for it.”

It had been a difficult period for Pebbles and many of the collective’s permanent staff, no less because everyone was coming off of the height of the pandemic, which Pebbles calls a zombie apocalypse. After a few years of scaled-back shows and events — including annual themed exhibitions Gods & Monsters, SafeWord, The Unicorn Art Show, and the Drop In Skate Deck Art Show at various locations — the time felt right to look for a permanent home. 

The group opened its gallery, called ALTR, last month in the Strong Scott Building. Bustling on the Saturday of their most recent opening, the building is also home to Norseman Distillery and several other studio spaces in Northeast Minneapolis. 

 

Scenes from Beyond the Veil in late October, Otherworldly Arts Collective's opening exhibition in their new space, featuring a group show and a seance to benefit the Ladies of the Lakes, a 501c3 who bill themselves as "a razzle-dazzle gaggle of drag nuns that strive for inclusion and love in our community." Photos by Travis Abaddon.

 

A new space for new worlds

ALTR began its first line-up of programming with a seance-themed show for Halloween, and is currently home to MiniARTure, an exhibition of small-scale work curated by Jackie Platt. As OAC settles into its new home, the focus has been on doing shows that spark joy during a busy time for the collective’s members. 

“All of us were burning the candle at both ends with our shows going on outside of this space and the shows we were planning for this new space,” said Pebbles. “We were thinking about, ‘How do we do this without overwhelming ourselves and becoming resentful of this space?’” 

Platt, who also works as the group’s accountant, says miniature art has become a special interest lately. 

“Everything that’s in scale is super interesting to me. The question is, how do I take this object and recreate the same level of detail as if it were full scale?” To showcase the many different ways that artists approach this quandary, the show hosts a group of over 40 artists all working in various miniature formats. 

 

Jenna McLeod, Totally Outrageous Sleepover. Mixed media. Top photo by Travis Abaddon; bottom photo by Bridget Kranz.

 

It’s fitting that one of the first shows in the new gallery space — a home for OAC’s immersive style of curation — is home to small worlds of its own. Not all of the work in the show is three-dimensional. There are miniature drawings, paintings, and embroidery hung on the walls. But there is a fair amount of sculptural work, creating fantastical worlds at a small scale that the viewer can get down and peer into. 

The show, at its core, is fun. There are small prints of made-up mythological animals. There’s an itsy bitsy spider with legs peeking out from under a cowboy hat. On the second night of its opening, people of all ages were in the gallery and even the youngest visitors were enjoying the show. 

“Fun” is also how OAC member Juan Garcia describes the feeling of opening ALTR. “Seeing everyone’s faces while they’re looking at everything is so much fun,” he said, looking around the crowded room while helping visitors at a dedicated merch table that sold artists’ creations alongside the work on the walls. 

 

Top: Work by Jenna McLeod. Middle: Work by Jen Van Kaam. Bottom: Visitors getting up close to enjoy the work in MiniARTure. Photos by Travis Abaddon. 

 

Getting comfortable and prioritizing access

Comfort and accessibility were two of the group’s priorities when creating their new home. Accessibility was at the top of the list, partially due to Garcia’s personal experience navigating inaccessible spaces while recovering from a serious injury. It narrowed the search quite a bit, as many buildings open to artists are older and may not be ADA-compliant. 

On top of being in an accessible building, the group wanted to create a space that was comfortable for all visitors. The hope is that people will venture out to explore shows that may be new to them without the often added discomfort of getting used to an entirely new place. 

“My joke is that Minnesotans are really uncomfortable when we can’t find parking. I feel like it’s a leftover of getting your car towed and going to the impound lot,” said Pebbles. “Once you experience that, you need to know where you’re going to park. If it’s not easy, people will just leave.”

Luckily, there’s plenty of parking both on and off the street at the new location. Beyond the parking and elevators, balloons and signage welcomed people to the building and the event.

 

Danielle Pebbles and her niece at Beyond the Veil. Photo by Travis Abaddon.

 

What’s next for OAC’s annual shows

“The first step is getting people comfortable with this space, over and over again,” said Pebbles. “By adding one of our bigger shows here, hopefully it will get people comfortable to come to maybe a show that they’re less familiar with.” 

The collective is exploring if and how to transition these perennial events. Pebbles says Gods & Monsters and Drop In will likely continue as is. The former has unique space requirements and the latter is an ongoing collaboration with Rogue Citizen and Modist Brewing, which hosts the event. The collective is exploring how to thoughtfully move SafeWord — which showcases a wide variety of erotic-themed artwork — into its new location, working closely with the building’s owners, fellow tenants, artists, and a licensed sex therapist. 

 

Top: Work by Monica Helland from Drop-In Skate Deck Show. Courtesy of the OAC Instagram. Bottom: Work by Emily Brown for The Unicorn Art Show. Courtesy of the artist's Instagram.

 

The collective’s longest-running show, The Unicorn Art Show, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. This year will also mark the last Unicorn Art Show, Pebbles says. It’s been an integral part of the collective’s programming for the past decade plus, and now feels like a natural stopping point.  

“The Unicorn Art Show is so large and it has had such a huge following for so long,” she said. “We wanted to do the last show with Jackson Flats and their residents because they’ve been with us for so long. We also have an outdoor aerial show that we do with it, we’ve had mermaids in kiddie pools. It has its own community of fantasy enthusiasts and we may not be able to support it in this space.”

 

Coming up at ALTR

Another perk of the new space is that OAC can now host other arts collectives that don’t have their own exhibition space. Rogue Citizen is putting on the next show, a one-night exhibition on December 13. Called Living Wage, the exhibition will showcase works created in an hour all priced starting at $23, the average living wage in the United States. 

Pebbles also hopes to create a space for artists to socialize and share their skills, something she was involved in prior to the pandemic. 

“The goal is for Otherworldly to have a good presence in the arts community,” said Platt. “We’re happy to have this space and we’re excited to be able to host other people.”

As visitors enjoyed the miniature characters and worlds created by the artists in MiniARTure, the collective continued building a new world of its own. ◼︎ 

 

The next show at ALTR, Living Wage, in which six artists will show 40 paintings made in one hour each, priced at a minimum of the American living wage of $23. 

MiniARTure is on view at ALTR with gallery hours November 14, 6 – 10pm, & November 16, 12 – 5pm. The gallery is located in the Strong Scott Building at 451 NE Taft St, Suite #22 in Minneapolis.

To learn more, visit oacmn.com or follow them on Instagram @otherworldlyartscollective.