Last spring, I was filled with fear, concern, uncertainty. But what continued to give me hope was the idea of a renaissance that would unfold in the months and years to come. And then on that fateful day in May, sounds of a systemic revolution filled the air. The next great awakening was upon us.
As we began our January issue, we were unsure where the election would land. Unsure of the course of the virus. Unsure how all this would affect our cities, small businesses, local institutions, artists, and high-profile leaders. So we asked. And as we approached our cover, we felt a calling to connect with fellow artists.
When I was a beat reporter (back before the internet and social media), our magazine and our words were often the only way people and businesses found themselves on the popular culture radar. People I wrote about would thank me. I would always respond that the thanks went both ways. I didn’t create their stories. I recognized their stories and shared them. I was only as good as the stories I told. Their stories.
I first learned of Mary Bruno, the woman we collaborated with on our cover, several years ago from two different trusted friends and trend spotters. Here was a woman in St. Joseph who inherited vintage letterpress printers from her father, Don Bruno, who taught photography, silk screen printing, and more at the College of Saint Benedict. He had the foresight to take in orphan letterpress printers from the tradesmen who were moving to offset printing in the ’80s. He added onto the family garage to create a printshop. Don Bruno went on to teach in the art department at St. Cloud State University, while his daughter, Mary, went on to earn her BFA in printmaking. When the senior Bruno died suddenly in 2003, his heir apparent returned home with ink in her veins.
I started following Bruno Press on Instagram in the past year. Perhaps this slow trickle of visuals took root in my mind and blossomed when it came time to talk about the cover: A poster was all I could think about. I called Mary Bruno with a crazy idea. The great thing about partnering with other creatives—we all just kind of go with it. We looped in Dara Beevas, who not only would help provide the words but was already on our list of people we had planned to reach out to for our feature. It was all kismet.
I will always remember the moment when a FaceTime call came through in early December. Our creative director, Michael Norseng; Mary Bruno; and I were together in real time as her classic Vandercook printer was inked up and she was printing pages. Bruno pulled proofs, and we made changes as she swapped out type by hand. A hired videographer captured it all.
“We need to be accountable with how we walk through the world,” says Bruno. “I am a proud Minnesotan, and I want to build a stronger community by bringing people together that come from different backgrounds. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber. I want to extend my network to people that look different than I do. I want to hear about the experiences of people that I have not heard from or listened to before. I want to be better.”
A renaissance indeed. Thank you, Mary.
“‘May the revolution be healing’ is beyond a story. It is a call in all directions; a reach back to our ancestors and reach forward to the future to re-imagine what is possible and a way to be present in this moment, during this time, to hold heartbreak and joy.” —Dr. Joi Lewis
Inside the Cover Art
The Words From the Revolution poster series is a collaboration from passionate Minnesota artists. Dara Beevas, co-founder of Wise Ink Publishing, met Mary Bruno, owner of Bruno Press, at an event at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in late 2019. When they were asked to tell a story about someone who impacted their creative lives, they each spoke about the same person—Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., a Black book artist. “It was hilarious,” Bruno says. “We knew we were going to be besties.”
The new best friends kept in touch, loosely hoping to plan an event or a collaboration together, but then COVID happened and dashed their plans. And then George Floyd was murdered. “Mary reached out and said, ‘I want to do something,’” Beevas says.
But Beevas was hurting and focused on her community—and busy helping her husband, Tomme, turn their restaurant, Pimento Jamaican Kitchen, into a relief center. A few months later, Bruno came back to her with the idea to create a series of posters—tangible pieces of art that would convey pain, hope, and poetry.
Beevas knew her friend Valérie Déus, a Minneapolis-based poet, could pen the perfect words for the first poster. “We agreed on a quote from Val, and then it was time to lay out the text,” Bruno says. “I printed the background; I did this California sunset–looking rainbow roll—as we call it in the letterpress biz. We titled it Words From the Revolution and agreed we would continue it as a series.”
The second poster in this series is—you guessed it—on this cover. The quote, which Beevas suggested to us, comes from Dr. Joi Lewis, a prominent community healer and author in the Twin Cities.
“‘May the revolution be healing’ is beyond a story,” Lewis says. “It is a call in all directions; a reach back to our ancestors and reach forward to the future to re-imagine what is possible and a way to be present in this moment, during this time, to hold heartbreak and joy.”
Beevas says, serendipitously, she wanted to use a Dr. Joi Lewis quote on the second poster in the series even before Mpls.St.Paul came along and joined the process. Keep an eye out for more posters in the series, from a variety of Minnesota voices, at mcbrunopress.com.
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Behind the January 2021 Issue - Mpls.St.Paul Magazine
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