MCBA Outlook Gallery
October 12, 2024 – January 25th, 2025
Free and open to the public

VIEWABLE FROM THE STREET (AND FROM INSIDE THE SHOP DURING OPEN HOURS)

Tall Paths is a site-specific installation featuring three geometric patterned scrolls inspired by storage facility doors in fields of rural Minnesota. As the work progressed, the scrolls came to also suggest landscapes bisected by roads. The title, Tall Paths, refers to the practice of mowing corridors through meadows to achieve dual desires of walking paths and wildlife sanctuaries. Through this work, I imagine roads as paths with life on either side evidenced by industry, homes, motels, and storage units. This installation simulates “crankies,” or scroll books, where the viewer “reads” repeated forms in motion like a traveler reads dots alongside a freeway as a moving image.

Emmett Ramstad’s art practice explores body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space through sculpture, installation, performance, and social engagement. Recent achievements include a McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship; a Creative Support for Individuals Grant for Together, an exhibition featuring 10 Minnesota artist families on view at The Minnesota Museum of American Art until October 27; and three solo exhibitions featuring paper toweling and tissue boxes about celebration, grief and empathy. Ramstad’s work is in collections at the Walker Art Center Library, Weisman Art Museum and can also be viewed in the first-floor single stall bathroom of Open Book.