Seeing this summer’s schedule for the Cromulent Shakespeare Company, which begins this weekend, brings to mind the times we packed up the kids (now adults) and a picnic to enjoy an evening of the Bard’s wordplay in the park. We still have the T-shirt bestowed upon Craig for gamely portraying Juliet’s nurse in a brief sketch that amused or maybe just embarrassed our two children (“She’s dead,” was his oft-repeated line; the T-shirt is now a cleaning rag).

The Great Blue Heron on the cover of the summer issue of MOQ was painted by Minneapolis artist Susan Heath. We asked Susan to tell us more about what inspires her and to share her thoughts about art, artmaking, and being a nature-loving artist in the city.

Urban farmers come in several forms. There are those agrarian devotees who plant a large portion of their backyard each spring with an eye toward canning, freezing, and drying much of their winter food supply. Other serious local growers cultivate a patch of land at a community garden or volunteer their time and energy on outlying farms as part of a Community Sponsored Agriculture program. Still others plant small plots as much for art as for agriculture.

By Evelyn Ashford
My teenage son is to pesto what a humvee is to gasoline -- a seemingly bottomless receptacle. So last spring, when I received a postcard from the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden inviting me to pull, take home, and cook with wild garlic mustard -- including a recipe for pesto -- I didn’t hesitate. Free food! In addition, they were offering garlic mustard to partner restaurants Lucia’s in Minneapolis and Heartland in St. Paul, which would feature the herb on their menus.

Plenty of urban adventurers in recent years have sought out the myriad subterranean caves and tunnels carved into the forgiving sandstone that undergirds our fair city, but Greg Brick brings a geologist’s eye and a historian’s respect to the topic that makes Subterranean Twin Cities (University of Minnesota Press, $18.95) a valuable primer on urban caving (not that we’re headed down under anytime soon). The book also offers an entertaining glimpse into our city’s past, albeit from a rather unusual perspective.

By Craig Cox
As it does every few years, members of the Minneapolis City Council have lately taken an acute interest in the health of our independent Park and Recreation Board, suggesting that euthanizing the 126-year-old body would leave taxpayers with a leaner, more agile local government.

Two exhibitions currently showing at the Groveland Gallery and Annex both feature landscapes, but they present strong contrasts in style, palette, and subject.

Michael Banning’s Corridor Views: Industrial Landscapes of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, in the main gallery, focuses on the structures that distinguish the urban scene (buildings, bridges, railroad tracks), in the natural settings that are prominent features of our cities: the Mississippi River, the lush canopy of trees. These oil paintings emphasize the grays and blues of the city in harmony with the greenery of nature, accented with reds and other more vibrant colors. Many of them seem almost photorealistic from a slight distance, revealing their precise brush strokes only upon close examination.

Yesterday, secretary of the interior Ken Salazar released the country’s first ever State of the Birds Report, providing a sweeping overview of the status of America’s native bird populations and the factors influencing their numbers and well-being. While the online summary did not give a state-by-state breakdown, it did provide information by habitat type, and the section on urban birds had much that applies to the Twin Cities.

In the summer of 1968, Richard Stryker enrolled in a painting class at the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), and has been painting ever since. He subsequently earned a degree in art history at Colorado College, where he learned that the avant-garde artists of the early 1900s approached painting as “a new sport with no rules or boundaries,” he says. That playfulness shows through in Stryker’s art, including Spring Tree No. 3, featured on the cover of this issue.

When you visit Susan Hensel Gallery, to peruse the current exhibition, Reader’s Art 9: Small, Smaller, Smallest, you will find a basket of white cotton gloves next to the door. Slip on a pair and examine these anti-tomes as books are meant to be experienced: by turning the pages.