Covering New Ground

A Talk with 410 Project Director Dana Sikkila

For the last five years, Mankato resident and artist Dana Sikkila has organized a truly impressive summer road trip. As director of the volunteer-run 410 Project art gallery, Sikkila has mapped out routes across Minnesota to collect works of art from artists all over the state, creating a new exhibit every year. In the last five years, she has covered more than 2,500 miles—and she has done it all on her bicycle. Really, it’s all there in the name: Project Bike. “It was kind of a project that was really based around my two passions: art making and biking,” Sikkila explained. “A lot of times [as an art director] you look at artwork on your computer and then it’s mailed into the gallery, and then people look at it and it’s mailed back. There’s no real connection between the gallery and the artist, let alone the gallery and the where they’re making their work. This was really diving into the very first steps of the artwork being made. The point of the project was to really highlight artists, especially artists living in the area, and showcase them being artists.” Ever y year, the project has grown and expanded, but Sikkila eventually decided to stop touring and push herself in other ways. Her 2019 ride was her last. But even though Sikkila isn’t biking across By Grace Brandt

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Minnesota with a trailer full of art behind her anymore, Project Bike is far from over.

How it began According to Sikkila, organizing a statewide art tour via bike was an idea that brewed in her head for several years before she was brave enough to put it into action. However, thanks to a grant from the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council, she was finally able to organize a trip in August 2015. For two weeks, Sikkila biked across southern Minnesota, covering 475 miles and visiting 10 artists. After interviewing them to learn about their work, she collected a piece or two from each, which she hauled home in the trailer attached to her bicycle. The work was then displayed in a month-long exhibit at the 410 Project in Mankato.

“[The first] year was a total learn-as-yougo process,” Sikkila said. Per haps the hardest part was the physical grind as she rode an average of 30-plus miles every day.

“The main struggle [was] really having to push yourself physically that many days in

a row,” she said. “My trailer, by the end, was nearly 100 pounds. And it was super hot. It gets really taxing on your body and on your brain. Then there’s having to push away how you physically feel and switch to mentally working, interviewing artists, as opposed to on your bike, when you have to keep pushing your legs. That was difficult, switching

back and forth.”

Sikkila said the project gained interest and support right away, especially through social media as people followed her updates. When she held a grand opening for the monthlong exhibit in October 2015, including an eight-minute video she had created about her travels, so many people attended opening night that her gallery couldn’t hold them all. “People wer e following [my travels] daily, and that helped keep me going,” she said. “If I didn’t get on my bike and force myself to push the pedals down, the project didn’t happen. It was totally up to me to get over the fact that I was tired. This was a bigger picture. This was about other people. I think people really caught onto that.”

Pushing forward

Because of the physical strain and the difficulties of planning such a trip, Sikkila wasn’t sure that she was going to take another trip after her first one. However, a friend talked to her about how inspiring the video had been to so many people. “The pr oject highlights the idea of selfmotivation—if you have an idea, you just have to make it happen,” she said. “You have to show people that you have to push yourself forward.”

So, in the end, Sikkila decided to once again pump her tires full of air and hit the road. From there, the project continued to gain momentum, and she kept hitting the road every summer.

Over the years, she has found artists from all backgrounds, ethnicities and ages, with the youngest participant only six years old. They live everywhere from Faribault to Eagle Lake to Red Wing. The art itself was also diverse, ranging from stained glass to sculptures to more traditional paintings.

“When I’m selecting artwork for this

space, it’s all judged on the artwork,” Sikkila explained. “But with this project, it’s different: we’re judging the artwork but also the person, because it’s really important to me to bring in people of diversity.” Sikkila’s latest trip, which took place over 11 days in July 2019, started in Grand Marais and worked all the way back down to Mankato—more than 600 miles. It featured 10 artists, including a boat maker, a quilt maker, a costume designer and more.

Sikkila said one of the best parts of Project Bike is giving local artists a chance to talk about their work and what inspires it. “Ever yone was so excited that you were there,” she said. “It was really exciting for me to give people the opportunity to talk about their work. It really makes them feel positive about being an artist. One guy, he said, ‘I’m never going to be someone who’s on TV. But this is my one chance to be highlighted for something that I’m really passionate about.’”

A tough decision

Sikkila said she usually started planning for Project Bike sometime in the winter, which is when she started considering finishing the tour for good last year. By the end of 2019, she had already successfully completed five tours, but they came with sacrifices, too. Sikkila wasn’t able to exhibit her own artwork for much of the year as she planned the tour, and she has turned down job and residence offers because she needed to be in Mankato to oversee the project. Now, she started thinking about what would be best for her to keep growing as an artist as she continued serving the Mankato community.

“I sat down and asked, ‘What is the purpose of doing it again? And how can the project can expand from here?’” she recalled. “So then we made the decision that it really needed to close out.” T o truly commemorate the last trip, Sikkila hired a professional film crew, Kaboom Productions, to follow along during the entire tour. Other years, she has worked with film makers to create a short video of the trip, but this last tour will have a true full-length documentary.

“It was by far the most intense one we’ve done so far, because of the elaborateness of the filming process and managing people,” she said. “It was a great experience, but Kyle [my riding partner] and I were still biking the same amount each day, filming and biking

Filling up this summer

Sikkila said she isn’t sure what to do with her summer yet once the airport display is ready to go, but she is content with not having any large plans or projects in the works. She will have an exhibition of her own art in Minneapolis this summer, and she’s also interested in pursuing her PhD. “At first, I really identified myself as, ‘I’m Dana from Project Bike,’” she recalled. “Now I’m like, ‘Now what?’ But I think during the tour, I was solidifying in my mind that my brain was ready to be challenged in a different way. Everything’s really up in the air right now, but I think I’m okay with that. Something will come up, that’s for sure. It’s just taking all the energy that I put into Project Bike and seeing how that can transfer to something else. My brain’s always thinking of new things.” each night until midnight. We’d sleep a few hours and get back up and bike again.”

While a shorter version of the documen tary aired last October during Project Bike’s exhibition at the 410 Project, the full version will premiere in May.

A new road

The tour may be over, but Sikkila said she wants the project to keep going forward. One major milestone will happen in June, when the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will open a display case retrospective of Project Bike. The retrospective will span five display cases in Terminal 1 and run for six months. It will include pieces of art that Sikkila collected from rural Minnesotan artists, televisions running documentaries about the tour, pictures, maps and even Sikkila’s bike and trailer. Accor ding to Sikkila, the airport approached her last year about putting up the display, and she has been working as the project’s curator. Originally, the airport offered her a small display case and asked for some pictures, but Sikkila insisted on showcasing not just herself but the artists who had worked with her throughout the years.

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Sikkila grew up in Litchfield and moved to Mankato for college. A self-described “problem child” in high school, she said she never wanted to attend college but was convinced by her mother to try at least one semester. She chose to study scene making at MSU-Mankato, and she quickly fell in love with her new environment. Ultimately, Sikkila switched majors to study printmaking and sculpture, earning a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. She returned to MSUMankato some time later to earn a Master’s of Art in printmaking, as well as a nonprofit leadership certificate. It was during this time that Sikkila got involved with the 410 Project, even showing her first exhibit there when she was 21. And while she continued to make art, she also grew interested in helping manage a place where other artists could thrive. “Making work is really impactful, but giving people a way to make their work and show their work is also impactful,” she said. “I [saw how] the 410 Project could be really beneficial to the community, more than just people showing their work.” Besides volunteering as the 410 Project’s director since 2012, Sikkila also teaches as an adjunct faculty member in the MSU Department of Art. CONTINUED FROM pa ge 21

“They’r e like, ‘Who are you? Can we trust you?’” she recalled. “It took about a year, and I really pushed hard with them, and I was like, ‘I can do this, you’ve got to trust me.’ So they ended up agreeing to giving me the biggest display cases that they had.”

One of the most difficult parts of the project, Sikkila said, has been choosing which artists to feature in the display. She had space for only 12 artists but has worked with so many over the years that it was a challenge to narrow them down. “That was excessively har d, because we gained really close relationships with all these artists,” she said. “It was really showcasing artists that I feel like their artwork is speaking just a little bit bigger than just the object itself—people who have really engaging stories that I feel other people could relate to.”

The exhibit opens June 26. While it was hard to stop touring, Sikkila said she’s excited to see the next phase of Project Bike. “It’ s kind of bittersweet, but I feel like it was something that, if it didn’t come to an end, these opportunities wouldn’t have been,” she said. “Instead of touring, it’s just doing something else with it, which is really exciting. The project really started from nothing, and now it’s going to be in one of the largest viewing spaces in the state. It’s a really great conclusion honoring the project and all of its efforts.”

Grace Brandt is a wandering reporter whose home base is Mankato.

The 410 Project The 410 Project is a volunteermanaged art gallery and experimental space in Mankato. Unlike many other galleries that are funded by the state or local universities, 410 Project’s upkeep is paid for through community donations. “People kind of see us as the underdog [because] we’re just a

group of people down here, [who] know this is important and want to contribute to our community,” Sikkila said. “We’re a space for artists run by artists.” Besides offering a space where artists can present their work, the 410 Project also hosts classes, workshops and lectures. These events—and their consistently low prices of $5-10—are made possible by grants that Sikkila writes. “We never want money to be a barrier for anyone to come in here and participate in anything,” she explained. “[The Project] runs completely out of a labor of love.” The 410 Project is located at 523 South Front Street in Mankato. To contact them, email the410project@hotmail.com.

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