Residency brings ‘Freeway Stories’ to Lanesboro | Arts & Entertainment

Lanesboro Arts is thrilled to welcome St. Paul-based social practice artist Hawona Sullivan Janzen as the Lanesboro Arts Artist-in-Residence from August 5 to September 1, 2024. During her residency, Hawona will invite people to share their stories and relationship with highways, freeways, and interstates to create a project entitled “250 Stories: Lanesboro takes to the Road.”

“250 Stories” is an off-shoot of Hawona’s “Freeway Stories” project, which invites people across Minnesota to share their major roadway stories. The goal is to create a series of yard signs that weave together elements from storytelling events in which Minnesota stories are shared — first in the community that shared them, then across the landscape in excerpts to build a collective transportation narrative. In Lanesboro, Highway 250 is slated for reconstruction in 2027. It is the main thoroughfare through downtown Lanesboro, and thus there are ample stories to be told about this roadway.

The general public is invited to participate in a series of free storytelling workshops and events, starting with a Welcome Potluck on Thursday, August 8. Community members can sign up to share their Highway 250 story one-on-one with Hawona on August 10 and 17. Hawona’s residency will culminate in a 250 Stories Capstone and yard sign walking tour on August 28.

Residency events

• Thursday, August 8, 5-7 p.m. — Welcome Potluck at the Cottage House Inn Meeting Room
• Saturday, August 10, 2-5 p.m. — One-on-One community conversations at Lanesboro Public Library
• Tuesday, August 13, 5-7 p.m. — Workshop: Your Story As Our Story at the Sons of Norway Lodge
• Thursday, August 15, 5-7 p.m. — Workshop: Cell Phone Stories on the St. Mane Theatre Stage
• Saturday, August 17, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. — One-on-One community conversations at Lanesboro Public Library
• Tuesday, August 20, 5-7 p.m. — Workshop: 250 Lives at the Cottage House Inn Meeting Room
• Wednesday, August 28, 5-7 p.m. — Lanesboro Highway 250 Stories Capstone at the Sons of Norway Lodge

Hawona Sullivan Janzen is a St. Paul-based writer, historian, and social practice artist who believes that art is the only thing that can save us from ourselves. A 2023 graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program in interdisciplinary art and social practice, she is a recipient of awards from MRAC, the Jerome Foundation, McKnight Foundation, and Minnesota State Arts Board. Her poetry has been read on National Public Radio, featured in Martin Luther King Jr. Park for the “Rondo Family Reunion” project, installed on 100 lawn signs hosted in residents’ front yards for the “Love Letters for the Midway” public art project, and sandblasted into the Dale Street Bridge.

She is author of several works for the stage, including “Hydro’s Phobia,” produced at Pillsbury House Theatre in 2020, “Freeway Stories,” a play exploring the full impact on the lives of people with connections to the Rondo community commissioned by MixedBlood Theatre, and “Clean,” a jazz opera performed at the Soap Factory Gallery in Minneapolis.

Supported by the Jerome Foundation, the Lanesboro Artist Residency Program awards two to three residencies per year to early career artists with projects that activate the people and places of Lanesboro while instigating positive change. The program’s place-based and community-engaged focus is geared toward early career artists that are driven to explore ways in which their work can be applied to the community and how Lanesboro’s rural community can inform their work. For more information, visit lanesboroarts.org or call 507-467-2446.