I think it was 1980. I was still brand-new to Minneapolis, still finding my footing, and still half-convinced I’d landed in the wrong city by mistake. Someone from WARM must have mentioned that Forecast was having a slide night, and in those early months I said yes to everything. So I showed up with a carousel of the artwork I created at Cranbrook — the only real record I had of who I thought I was becoming.

When my turn came, I loaded the tray, lights dimmed, and I clicked through the images one by one: the early sculptures, the experiments, the things I’d built with more instinct than confidence. I remember feeling exposed — not in a dramatic way, but in that quiet way you feel when people are seeing your insides.

I didn’t hold anything back. I spoke plainly, without polish or strategy — the doubts, the experiments, the missteps, the small revelations. I wasn’t performing; I even spoke of the Germano Chalant critique. I was telling the truth of how I worked and why I couldn’t stop. And somehow that honesty, more than any single image, was what the room responded to.

When the last slide snapped off, the room stood up and clapped.

It wasn’t polite applause, or a few scattered hands. It was real. Full-bodied. Surprising. In all my years working in studios and classrooms, nobody had ever done that. It stunned me. For the first time since I’d rolled into town in that old truck, I felt the city shift a little — like a door had opened.

Afterward, Denny Sponsler came over. He didn’t rush. He didn’t do the quick “nice work” routine. He took his time, looked me in the eye, and welcomed me with genuine curiosity. That was the beginning of our friendship — and the beginning of me feeling like maybe, just maybe, I belonged here.

Not long after, I returned the gesture. I had inherited Phil’s studio in the Martin Leather Building — 426 South 3rd Street — and I’d been slowly shaping it into my own space. There was one wall, twelve feet high, that I’d scrubbed clean and painted a blinding, intimidating white. A white like a dare.

I invited the Forecast crew to have their next meeting there, but I had a condition.

When everyone gathered, I handed out markers, paint, grease pencils, even a few caulking guns.
“Before we do anything else,” I said, “I need you to destroy this wall.”

They looked at me, puzzled. Then grinned. And then the whole room — Denny, Jack Becker, Fred Harding, Howard Christopherson, Greg Oaks and the rest — swarmed that wall like kids let loose after recess.

They scribbled, splashed, wrote nonsense, argued about color, drew shapes that had no business existing, and laughed the kind of laughter that only comes from creative mischief. When they finished, the wall was gloriously ruined — alive, imperfect, and finally mine.

That was the night my Minneapolis studio became an art studio. And it was the moment Forecast stopped being a group of strangers and became a true community for me — layered onto the foundation of support I’d already found through WARM.

All doubts were gone — I choose the perfect art city.