October 21, 2023

Featured In Group Exhibition: NUDE GEOGRAPHIES Curated By Praxis Directors

by Norm Halm

Saturday, October 21, 6–8PM
Opening Reception for:

LETTERS, NUMBERS & SYMBOLS
JURIED BY DALLAS CROW

NUDE GEOGRAPHIES
CURATED BY PRAXIS DIRECTORS

Exhibition dates: October 21–November 11, 2023

Exhibit books are available to order now. Photos and a virtual tour of the exhibits will be posted on our blog in the coming weeks.

Praxis Gallery & Photo Arts Center
2637 27th Ave. S. | Minneapolis, MN 55406
~ Free, secure, off-street parking ~
Praxis Gallery is located in The Ivy Arts Building Annex. Enter the parking lot from 27th Ave., our main entrance is to the left. 

September 23, 2023

Pelican Rapids, Minnesota

 

Silo, Viking Trail, Northern Minnesota

I’ve been bouncing around this country for 7-8 years. We’ve lived in 4 states from 2015-2022, moving to follow work opportunities, better life quality, maybe a pipe dream too… etc. Every time we move, it’s like the rug is pulled out from under my feet as far as my personal photography goes. I’m getting more and more project focused, and also with age, my work has become more and more about a sense of place. Getting to know a new place, at least on a level that I can photograph it satisfactorily, takes time, like getting to know a new person. Unpeeling an onion. Finding the native plants and talking to the locals. I hadn’t picked up my camera to make new pictures in almost a year since moving to Minneapolis from Dallas- and that was, honestly quite painful, despite life being really really good here so far overall. I haven’t found my new project/s here yet but I’m inspired, optimistic and grateful. Minnesota, upper Midwest, especially The Driftless Area… All new friends.

July 4, 2023

This Is July 4, 2023!

 

District 54 Schoolhouse, Viking Trail
Fergus Falls Minnesota, July 2023

There’s a lot about this country that unequivocally needs to be relegated to the past; such as discrimination against racial minorities and LGBT+ people, the oppression of women, etc. Yet there are institutions, individuals, interest groups, political parties and lobbies working hard to make America's past come back again while trying equally hard to keep an honest and actual working knowledge of that history in the dark. But I won’t concede to deliberately repeating the mistakes of our past. Will you? I vehemently reject the term woke as a pejorative because I understand it in its original context -- awake to the inequalities, abuses and overall exploitation of a system supposedly meant to uphold the virtues of freedom and equality. I will keep pursuing the untold and omitted histories (and acknowledge their through lines to the present) of those who participate/d so monumentally in breathing life into the complex tapestry of this nation despite having the odds deliberately stacked against them.

This is July 4th, 2023!

September 22, 2022

Para Siempre At San Francisco Art Commission Gallery Exhibition


I'm honored to be included in a group show of bright artists and photographers who've rendered the stunning and fabulous Juanita MORE! over the last three decades!!! I made this portrait of Juanita MORE! 20ish+ years ago, it's call "Para Siempre" or "Forevermore."

Juanita: 30 Years of MORE! is an exhibit curated by Marcel Pardo Ariza for San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. The show hangs from 09/30/2022 through 10/12/2022 at SFAC Main Gallery on 401 Van Ness Ave., Suite 126, San Francisco. The opening reception is Friday September 30 from 6-8pm.


Happy Autumnal Equinox, Everyone 




September 19, 2022

Reunion Tower, Dallas Texas

For three years, I drove by Reunion Tower at least ten times a week when we lived in Dallas. Every single time, I created this picture of it with my imagination but not with my camera! About a month ago with just a few days left in Texas, I finally busted out the tripod and actually made the picture.

There will be a lot more work to come from my time in Dallas, work that I'm very happy with: New Project Coming Soon: Turtle Creek- A Sacred Water Body In Dallas Texas

September 2, 2022

New Project Coming Soon: Turtle Creek- A Sacred Water Body In Dallas Texas

Under The Bridge
Turtle Creek, Dallas Texas

Water Portal
Turtle Creek, Dallas Texas

Turtle Creek- A Sacred Water Body In Dallas Texas will be a finished portfolio of approximately 15 photographs. Inspired by learning that Black people performed baptisms in Turtle Creek after slavery in Texas ended (somewhere downstream from an exclusive Exall Lake resort and what would later become the sundown town of Highland Park), I began photographing my own spiritual experiences there. This work envisages the sacredness of this important water body: religious/spiritual experiences of it now and in the past; how it is commodified for wealth/real estate value upstream; and how further downstream, it is deigned as squalor or overly engineered as if it's a nuisance. This isn't a documentary project. It is poetic fine art with the history and facts informing my creative process. This project is part of a broader arc of intention in my work to develop, see and photograph the world through the lens of animism.

August 26, 2022

Goodbye, Texas

Photo by Norm Halm

Today we started the drive to our new home in Minneapolis-Saint Paul Minnesota with Texas gleefully in the rear view mirror. THANK YOU for a solid three years, Dallas-Forth Worth. The lives we carved out for ourselves in the DFW metroplex was a safe haven to weather the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hindsight is 20/20 though; we couldn't have known this when we moved to North Texas the year before but we knew we had to move away from Las Vegas preemptively before any kind of economic downturn. We chose to come to Tejas, hopeful with open hearts and minds for positive change on the horizon for us and for Texas.

Alas, the political climate deteriorated instead and so our time in Texas has run its course. We never would have moved to TX in the first place without certain protections provided by the federal umbrella, via judicial rulings and precedents, which this year have reached a fever pitch of attack by the state's rabid conservative majority legislative and executive branches. Just yesterday, Texas' trigger ban on abortion in reaction to SCOTUS' Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision went into effect, outlawing bodily autonomy outright for pregnant people, from the moment of conception, with no exceptions for rape or incest, and threatening the lives of women experiencing dangerous complications with their wanted pregnancies. This isn't a pro-life measure, it is religiofascism-- FULL STOP-- religiofascism. This is why some dissenters refer to the governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor and so many of the state legislators as "The Texas Taliban"; the state is rife with relgiofascism. Some lawmakers are even moving to introduce bills prohibiting pregnant women from traveling outside the state in case they are seeking abortion care: RELIGIOFASCISM

Even if SCOTUS hadn't signaled that marriage equality and other federally guaranteed rites could also be on the chopping block, attacks on the LGBT+ community from rabid conservative lawmakers have been ramping up in Texas and I don't want to live in any state that outlaws abortion anyway. So we're taking our talent and passion, our labor and dedication, our taxes and disposable income to a state that has already voluntarily enshrined, through the legislative process, these basic rights to privacy, into state law; we're moving to a state that isn't controlled by garbage people.

Aside from sabotaging the people of Texas by weaponizing religion and waging culture wars, helping no one, the mismanagement of the power grid alone would have been reason enough to leave for our safety. We nearly froze in our own home during the freeze of 2021. We were stuck, surrounded by impassable roads, so I boiled bricks found in the alley, wrapped them in towels and put them under our blankets to stay warm. (The irony of resorting to 19th century tactics while living in Texas wasn't lost on me.) It was 33 degrees Fahrenheit in our home for approximately 48 hours. Hundreds of other people and animals had it worse and died as a direct result of derelict leadership and the power grid failure. Perhaps thousands died if we consider how many livestock perished. Yet little has been done to fix it! Some essentially performative bills were passed; bills that posture reforms yet allow some of the governor's friends in the natural gas business off the hook with an exemption to winterize their infrastructure... By paying a menial application fee of $150, they can simply opt out of making updates that would make the grid reliable and safe. This tragedy was also an opportunity for the governor to spread disinformation against the growing wind power industry in TX, blaming the blackout on that market, even though it was proven that the failure of natural gas infrastructure played a MUCH bigger role in the grid's failure. Corruption and personal gain for good 'ol boy Greg Abbott and his oil and gas cronies-- the lives of Texans is the risk they're willing to take to keep the convoluted economic structures behind the TX power grid from changing, thus continuing to enrich his friends and himself.

The detailed grievances above impacted my household directly and are just the tip of the iceberg concerning the harms done to Texans by Texans. There are so many more cons about living in Texas that outweigh the pros of living there: Attacks on voting rights and access, including state sanctioned violations of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Lack of affordable housing and de facto segregation, especially in schools. Racist gerrymandering. More attacks on LGBT+ people. The abuse of migrants and human rights crimes committed against asylum seekers. Despite bragging otherwise, Texas republicans are soft on crime (gun violence IS crime) by making it easier for all people, including criminals, to obtain, possess and carry firearms. Mental healthcare support was cut just months before the massacre in Uvalde, TX- in a state that's already sorely lacking in access to mental healthcare services. The overarching cultural current of chauvinism including but not limited to disdain for the environment and conservation in favor of exploitation and extraction. Even MORE attacks on LGBT+ folks. Citizens and state lawmakers who sympathize with The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, the rise in white nationalism, christian nationalism and terrorist militia groups in Texas. This is still not an exhaustive list, not by far. I understand that many of these problems exist to some degree nationwide including within states that overall trend center to very liberal. But in Texas, the scourge of chauvinism, nationalism, religiofascism and white supremacy are underpins. They're part and parcel of the Texas gestalt and identity, persisting well beyond the critical threshold effectively forming a majority represented, pulling the strings at the Texas State House and in Washington D.C. Despite all of this, there are a lot of good people in Tejas, unfortunately the leadership scarcely represents that. The good people of Tejas are effectively outnumbered and the state is controlled by terrible people. 

Having now lived in both the country's largest blue state and the country's largest red state has offered a whole lot of valuable perspective. Some of my own views have softened and shifted as a result of getting to know different people in Texas, being there in person and having a direct lived experience. At the same time, some of my previously held views have only been reinforced by my experiences there. There's something to be said for fighting the good fight; for staying and "being the change" in a place. But we've done the math again and again and for my family unit, the odds are against us. The risks are too high, the prospects are too low for us in TX. So we left.

My conclusion is that Tejas and Texas are two different places and different ways of being that, unfortunately, overlap in time and geography. And that Texas' shitty conservative politics aren't the answer to California's shitty politics. I don't regret moving to Texas- I learned a lot, made friends, grew some righteous natives in my little pollinator garden, sent love into the waters of Turtle Creek and did some other good works too. I don't regret moving to Texas but I would regret having stayed there. Living and dying in Tejas just isn't an option for me; when my time comes, I need my bones to rest in a better patch of earth than Texas.