Art in the Alley is officially open

Red Wing Downtown Main Street’s latest community engagement effort is garbage. Okay, not really, it’s just garbage-adjacent.

It’s Art in the Alley, and it features installations by six local artists in the alley between Heimie’s Haberdashery and Red Wing Computer.

One of those installations is Hannah Taylor’s wing-shaped wood cut, which sits right above a dumpster. When asked if she minded that her art was hanging so close to refuse, Hannah said she didn’t. The dumpster wasn’t a consideration, instead, she chose the spot because “there was a hook there already.”

"My New Home"
Artist: Hannag(Tameling) Taylor

And that’s the beauty of Art in the Alley. It’s not your typical space for art, but the artists have embraced it and, as Downtown Main Street’s Meyer Beckner said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the art helps to “beautify something that’s not so pretty in people’s perceptions.”

Art in the Alley opening August 2024

Six local artists have their work on display in the alley: Hannah Taylor, Heidi Bacon, Ashley Andrews, Mari Hanson, Chrono Ronan, and Liz Zolondek. (More about each work and artist can be found here.) And all of them worked to beautify the alley.

For instance, Heidi Bacon turned power meters and utility boxes into a monarch caterpillar, Mari Hanson adorned the otherwise-ignored mailboxes with a miniature of Brandon, downtown’s UPS man, and Ashley Andrews’s “Visible Light Spectrum” draws attention to the odd wall in the alley that has second story doors, but no longer has a staircase that leads to them. “I think the space is beautiful with or without art,” Ashley says, “Mostly I think it makes you realize that we truly already live in a beautiful town, you just have to sometimes slow down and soak it in to realize it.”

"A Very Hungry Monarch Caterpillar"
Artist: Heidi Bacon

"Visible Light Spectrum"
Artist: Ashley Andrews

"Petite Postal Place Featuring: Brandon"
Artist: Mari Hanson

None of this would have happened if Downtown Main Street hadn’t decided to do Art in the Alley in the first place. Meyer Beckner took the lead on the project, which started at the beginning of summer when he and Downtown Main Street director Megan Tsui were inspired by the Hattiesburg Pocket Museum. The Pocket Museum started in a boarded-up windowsill in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, featuring tiny art installations, and has spread to include community organized art in a newspaper box, a tiny movie theater seen through a small viewfinder in a wall, and a variety of murals and art installations.

The Hattiesburg Pocket Museum, as one can guess, is full of whimsy. Red Wing’s Art in the Alley is no different. On top of the six installations from local artists, Downtown Main Street has added their own additions to the alley. More attentive visitors to the alley will see miniatures spread around the alley, featuring things like dueling Transformers, or exercising Easter Island heads. These were made by the different members of the Downtown Main Street staff.

There’s also the keychain exchange, a small kiosk put together by Downtown Main Street’s Pam Dusbabek, where visitors can take or leave a tchotchke that acts as a sort of living art piece as it changes with each transaction.

Red Wing Keychain Exchange
Artist: Pam Dusbabek

The most noticeable of these staff displays is the vending machine. The idea behind it is that it can serve as a miniature gallery space, safe from the weather. To start, the vending machine is full of Pixar toys, but the pieces will change as Art in the Alley continues. There are plans for community members to apply to display a collection of their own, but for now it will showcase the interests of Downtown Main Street.

This all helps Art in the Alley achieve one of its other big goals: to bring more different art to Red Wing. As Meyer puts it, the organization “wanted to have art that was accessible and fun because Red Wing has such a great art scene, but a lot of it is high-end.” Not only does this change the type of art displayed in Red Wing, it gives younger and less experienced artists a chance to get their work and their names in front of a bigger audience.  

As great as the many city’s murals or the sculptures on the sculpture tour are, Art in the Alley was a chance for local artists who hadn’t had their work displayed before to get their projects in front of people, and, thanks to the unique space, experiment with different forms.

Experiment is exactly what Chrono Ronan did. Chrono’s project is entitled “The Bird in Boots,” which is a large sculpture of exactly that, a large stork-like bird in bright red boots. Chrono’s main artistic outlet is drawing, and “The Bird in Boots” was originally drawn as a character for a children’s book she hopes to write and draw some day.

"The Bird in Boots"
Artist: Chrono Ronan

But rather than being put into a story, the bird is now three-dimensional. Chrono used plastic bottles to give it shape, wire, duct tape, and garbage bags to give it structure, and carpet glue and sawdust to keep it from disintegrating, and spray paint to give it color. Amazingly, the whole thing took only a week.

Art in the Alley is, first and foremost, about the artworks. But a less visible community element of the project is everyone else who allowed this art to be hung. The local business owners, Andrea Hanson, Paul Siewart, and Indigo Properties, had to give approval for the space, and the community judges, including Curt Gruhl of the Wings Foundation, the Red Wing Ambassadors, Mayor Mike Wilson, and Burnside Elementary art teacher Leah Harris picked the pieces that are on display.

And Meyer says that the community at large has been very supportive. In the setup stages he was worried someone would see him looking around the alley and yell at him, but instead he’s witnessed a lot of positive curiosity.

"Best Friends Are Found Here"
Liz Zolondek

Liz Zolondek’s submission to the alley is a mosaic of pictures of new pet parents with their newly adopted pets, taken during tenure as director of the River Bluff Humane Society. Her main goal in making the work was to show joy. It does that, and just like the rest of the pieces in Art in the Alley, it helps people see joy and beauty in the often-ignored spaces of downtown Red Wing.