Carleton Art Professors’ Work Featured in 25th Anniversary Celebration of Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

In a new installation celebrating 25 years of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, the work of Carleton College art professors David Lefkowitz and Stephen Mohring is featured in “Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf.” On Thursday, May 23, The Walker Art Center will open two eight-hole courses, featuring individual holes created by various architects, artists, engineers, machinists, and mini-golf aficionados. The new interactive installation features everything from garden gnomes masquerading as foosball players to a scale model of a French chateau, along with mazes, gopher holes, and contours mapped from the course of the legendary Augusta National Golf Club. The result is a delight for both serious golf purists and lovers of outdoor kitsch.

Lefkowitz and Mohrig contributed Hole 3, entitled “18 Holes in One.” The hole is a physical manifestation of an overlay of all 18 legendary greens at the Augusta National Golf Course, home of the Masters Tournament. The result will thrill and challenge both the novice and seasoned mini-golfer alike. With 18 potential targets in their sites as the approach the undulating surface of the composition structure, golfers will encounter a nonlinear spatiotemporal golfing experience like no other.

Associate professor of art David Lefkowitz is a member of the Carleton Class of 1985; he received his MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He teaches painting, drawing and the Junior Seminar, “Critical Issues in Contemporary Art.” His own work in painting, installation, and mixed media (including repurposed refuse like cardboard, sticks, sheetrock and Styrofoam) addresses everyday paradoxes of perception, and larger questions that arise from them. Much of the work explores the blurry boundary between the human-built environment and the natural world. Lefkowitz’s work can be found in the collections of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Miami Art Museum, and The Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany. He is represented by the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. More online at www.davidlefkowitz.net.

Associate professor of art Stephen Mohring received his BA from Amherst College and his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Mohring teaches sculpture, woodworking, and critical theory. His sculpture has been exhibited nationally, internationally, and has received numerous awards.  He runs the college sawmill program, which he developed in collaboration with the Cowling Arboretum, producing sustainably harvested lumber for the art department. Mohring also works as the resident set designer for Ten Thousand Things, a Twin Cities based company that brings lively, intelligent theater to people with little access to the wealth of the arts. Learn more about Mohring at www.stephenmohring.com.

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, a project of the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, is an ideal setting for sculptures of various sizes, from human-scale bronzes to towering constructions in steel. Expanded in 1992, the 11-acre Garden offers visitors from around the world an unusual opportunity to view important 20th-century art out-of-doors.

“Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf” is open May 23 through September 8, 2013; 7 days a week (Sunday-Wednesday, 10 am–8pm; Thursday–Saturday, 10 am-10 pm) weather permitting. Admission is $12 adults, $10 students, and $9 members and children under 12. For more information, including directions and disability accommodations, visit www.walkerart.org.