This is a guest post by David Jordan Harris, Executive Director of Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council. Rimon is an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.
Singer songwriter Elisa Korenne
P’Chotchka is a tongue-in-cheek variation on a presenting style developed in Japan. In P’Chotchka eight artists each speak about eighteen ideas or images that have inspired their work. The images are projected on a screen. Things move fast because there’s a time limit. The artists can speak no longer than eighteen seconds per image. Eighteen images times eighteen seconds times eight artists. The result is a lively smorgasbord of ideas.
Rimon has selected the artists from more than two hundred individuals and institutions it has supported through Rimon Artist Salons, granting, and commissioning programs. In addition to Levy, Fresco, and Horwitz, other participants include songwriter and performer Elisa Korenne, architect Kent Simon, glass artist Lucy Rose Fischer, writer Margie Newman, and videographer Matt Peiken.
Here’s a quick snapshot of the talent. Adam Levy is a prolific writer and vocalist for the indie art rock band The Honeydogs. He merges his commitment and passion for social work with making music. Dylan Fresco is a Fringe Festival favorite, wearing many hats that include actor, singer, guitarist, and ukulele serenader. Elisa Korenne, based in New York Mills, MN, composes pop-rock songs and creates song-and-story performance pieces about oddballs in history.
Kent Simon applies his architect’s eye for innovative and elegant design to a mix of projects which have included a prize-winning sukkah. Lucy Rose Fischer creates fanciful designs on hand-blown glass by painting upside down, inside out, and backwards. Sylvia Horwitz’s photographic work has taken her from powwows in Grand Portage to archeological digs in Israel and street protests in Argentina.
Margie Newman is working on a memoir about her life as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her outstanding reading series Ghost Stories brought together five women from different cultural communities in Minnesota that had each experienced a historical trauma. Matt Peiken is the founding producer of 3-Minute Egg, the first daily video program that focuses on Minnesota’s fertile arts scene.
P’Chotchka is part of a year-long celebration of Rimon, which was recently selected by Slingshot as one of North America’s 50 most innovative Jewish non-profits. The price of admission for the benefit event is $54 ($25 tax-deductible) and includes food and a beverage. For more information or to order tickets by May 30, visit Rimon’s website at www.rimonMN.org or contact David Jordan Harris, Rimon Executive Director at [email protected] .
