Great Streets X MCAD
The Great Streets Project aims to creatively help revitalize business districts and economic developments. This revitalization project has been made possible through Great Streets Program funding in conjunction with the City of Minneapolis and Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). This community-run endeavor would not have been possible without the support of the Whittier Alliance and Futsal Society.
As one of the key creative partners of the Great Streets Project, MCAD looked to its mission to collaboratively transform society through equity, empathy, and imagination. By working closely with local artists–Studio Thalo, Anita White, and Isabel Gloss–and the Whittier neighborhood, MCAD joined the movement to address the community needs for the former Kmart site and enliven the surrounding environment.
Visit mcad.edu/greatstreets to learn more.
Si aad u hesho turjumaada somaliga booqo mcad.edu/greatstreets.
Para traducción al español, visite mcad.edu/greatstreets.
Design by Nathan Riebel
WHAT HAPPENS ON THIS SITE? Studio Thalo
For the Great Streets project, we set up a table at the Whittier Really Really Free Market on September 2nd to engage community members around their ideas, concerns, and questions related to the transformation of the Kmart site. We provided writing, drawing, and collaging materials for people to express their ideas on paper, and we also had conversations with folks who just wanted to sit and talk. People named that Kmart had provided community resources in the past, and that whatever happens next must support the needs and safety of the people who are already here. This is crucial given the history and current reality of new development displacing communities. Several folks emphasized that the re-opened portion of Nicollet Avenue could be purely for pedestrians (and potentially public transit), envisioning spaces to gather around food, music, art, and other forms of cultural exchange. We heard how a truly public space doesn’t have loitering restrictions and is accessible for all bodies. Youth and adults alike expressed the need for free food and housing for our unhoused neighbors. We listened, observed, and took notes to inform our nal design.
Most of our collective’s artwork features representative gures surrounded by design elements and words that emphasize the “heart message” we hear through our engagement. For this design, we drew nine gures that re ect the di erent communities in the area. We chose to center the question “How do people who live and work in this community have a say in what happens on this site?” Within the limits of our role in this much larger process, we felt it was essential to amplify a message that prompts even further discussion, engagement, and imagination.
Our hope is that the city of Minneapolis will provide easy and accessible ways for people to give input on what will happen on this site.
Studio Thalo is an artist collective and studio space made up of Bayou Bay, Olivia Levins Holden, and Nell Pierce. We have worked together as community muralists since 2015, and in 2018 we began to translate those skills into Graphic Recording. As Graphic Recorders, we show up to community conversations and events as listeners and artists, and we create art to capture the heart of what we hear. We incorporate phrases and imagery inspired directly by the people we witness, and we hope for our art to serve as visual reminders and re ections of the values, voices, and visions within a given community. All of us live in South Minneapolis and have been part of public art projects along Lake Street throughout the last decade.
Radical Empathy: Bearing Witness and Drawing People Anita White
A statement about sharing my work in the community. My journey through getting to know the Whittier community and its residents opened my eyes to what a long struggle it has been for decades to heal and reveal the Kmart site to what it needs to be in order to serve the community e ectively. I found that by drawing people we took time to have conversations and reveal inner feelings and visions for what people felt was needed at the Kmart site as we move forward to a better place for our Whittier community.
As I sat and drew Whittier residents, each person opened up to me about their hopes, dreams, and visions for the Kmart site. I was impressed by the thoughtful visions each person had. Ideas ranging from a park, a path for disabled people, a bus shuttle and a green space. All felt that the street needed to be opened again.
In addition to drawing people directly in the moment, I created two other pieces for this project. A memory piece titled A Pool of Memory about my friend Kim recalling how she and others protested the Kmart Site being put in there in the rst place over 50 years ago. I also did a piece that depicts a large compassionate female gure holding the current desolate Kmart site, the trash, and the Homeless Unhoused Tent Encampment.
Anita White's background as a documentary drawer spans from 1970 to 2023. In this role, she utilized the medium of drawing not only to seek beauty but also to navigate and process challenging personal experiences, including caregiving, hospitalizations, and the loss of loved ones. Throughout these trials, Anita has consistently turned to drawing as a means of immediate expression.
Her journey as a medical illustrator at Hennepin Health Care was profoundly in uenced by her late husband Josh's numerous medical crises. Through the act of drawing, she found a way to cope with the overwhelming challenges she faced, realizing that nothing was too daunting to be conveyed through her art. In 2017, Anita embarked on a project titled "Drawing through Crisis with Courage and Humor," which documented her experiences in the emergency room, hospitalizations, medical procedures, and the individuals who provided support during these trying times.
In addition to her medical drawing work, Anita bears witness and records proceedings in Immigration Court, where photography is prohibited. Her role in documenting these critical moments serves the needs of the Human Rights Observation Team, enabling them to capture the essence of the courtroom in real-time.
These experiences equipped Anita to work with Whittier Residents and share their insightful visions. It is a profound honor and privilege to get to know these community members. Anita hopes that these visions, grounded on native land, will collectively shape a brighter and more promising future.
Women of Whittier Businesses Isabel Gloss
Women of Whittier Businesses captures the portraits of a small group of valuable members from the Whittier community. Each photograph shows women who either own or work in a business in the neighborhood and provide goods and services to the people of Whittier. The portraits are accompanied by another image, depicting sections of each business’s space. This includes plants, dresses, and wide-angle shots of the stores.
I chose to focus on Women of Color to highlight the importance of their work in the Whittier neighborhood. Often overlooked and disenfranchised, Women of Color are vital to the livelihood and functioning of any community, and I hope these photographs accurately represent the power that these women own.
Subjects of the portraits include: Muhim of Muhim’s Cafe, Cara Dalton of Flowers by Miss Bertha, Francisca Borrome of Novedades Kristal, Nonnii Hoang of Cali Nails, and Kim Loan of Mai Hoa Beauty Salon.
Each photograph was shot using Medium Format Color Film.
Thank you, Muhim, Cara, Nonnii, Kim, and Francisca for participating. Thank you to the Whittier Alliance for assisting. Thank you to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for bringing me on to this project.
Isabel Gloss is a photographer and visual artist working in Minneapolis. Gloss sources her Mexican heritage, gender, and sexuality to create her work, with a focus on social equality and justice. In her professional work, she emphasizes quality, consistency, and accessibility. In 2021 she was the recipient of Hennepin Theater Trust's "It's the People" grant in which her work was featured on billboards in the Twin Cities. As a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she achieved many awards and grants, such as the Hearst Merit Scholarship, the MCAD Presidential Correspondence Award, and the Morrison Leadership Scholarship. Gloss specializes in digital + lm photography, graphic design, social media, and marketing.
