That poster? A bulletin for the Cedar Valley Men’s Shed.

Photo Credit: Cedar Valley Men’s Shed

Iowa’s first Men’s Shed formed in 2024. It’s part of a global initiative starting in the late 20th century to bring more craft and community to older men, boosting social health and wellness.

Meeting weekly, Cedar Valley Men’s Shed participants—averaging over a dozen and typically over age 65—connect across town for different projects. Recents include painting at an arts center, building a donation box for a nearby animal humane society, and checking out the local makerspace. Or sometimes, they’ll just link up for eggs and coffee.

“Men’s Shed now has been an interesting outlet,” says Dirks, 74. “It’s getting me involved more with the community in general.”

That’s the goal of groups like these, says Dr. Melinda Heinz: community. The assistant professor of gerontology—the study of aging—founded and facilitates the group. She studied Men’s Sheds in Ireland on a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship.

“I think we are having a moment right now with social health in the U.S.,” Heinz says. “We need to be thinking about, ‘How are we serving people who are socially isolated and lonely?’”

Photo Credit: Cedar Valley Men’s Shed

Photo Credit: Cedar Valley Men’s Shed

Photo Credit: Cedar Valley Men’s Shed

Photo Credit: Cedar Valley Men’s Shed

Heinz says people who want to start a Men’s Shed should start small. Find an easy place to meet and exchange ideas like a restaurant, senior center, or library. Then keep meeting. 

She’ll intersperse “maker” days with informational talks from guest speakers. Or sometimes the men will gather to clean up the local park. This May, they’re partnering with a local student group to run a mental health awareness walk. 

Photo Credit: Cedar Valley Men’s Shed

Many men post-retirement, Heinz says, lose the structure and purpose jobs give them. Groups like these fill that fissure. 

“Their career is their identity, right?” she says. “And then when you no longer have that, for a lot of men, who are you now?” 

That answer is plain at the Men’s Shed. They’re builders and creators; crafters and pals; doers and connectors. 

And, hammer or paintbrush in hand, they’re all these things together.

Midwest Men’s Sheds

Visit usmenssheds.org/find-a-shed for more information on these Men’s Sheds in the region.

Illinois

• Elgin Area Men’s Shed, Elgin
• Morton Men’s Shed, Morton

Iowa

• Cedar Valley Men’s Shed, Cedar Falls
• (Emerging) Men’s Shed, Clive

Michigan

• Kingdom Builders Men’s Shed & Wellness Center, Battle Creek
• Community Shed of Mid-Michigan, Midland
• Grand Traverse Men’s Shed, Williamsburg

Minnesota

• Gillespie Center Men’s Shed, Mound
• Hopkins Men’s Shed, Hopkins
• The Glenn Men’s Shed, Minnetonka
• St. Cloud Men’s Shed, St. Cloud
• (Emerging) Broadway Village Men’s Shed, Crystal

Wisconsin

• Barron County Men’s Shed, Barron
• Juneau County Men’s Shed, Mauston
• Richland Co. Men’s Shed, Cazenovia
• The Shed of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
• Tosa Men’s Shed, Wauwatosa
• Oconomowoc Men’s Shed, Sullivan

The post Men’s Sheds: Retooling Community,  ‘Purpose’ for Older Iowans appeared first on Arts Midwest.

What does that mean? Film at least 10 short, vertical phone clips of a local art, culture, or community happening, and get paid to help us amplify Midwestern creativity.

We’ll handle the editing, scripting, and posting on our channels. You’ll get credit and $300 for your footage, a short write-up, and a couple of photos.

Need Examples?

Here are some recent short-form videos made with footage from documenters across the Midwest. You can watch more on our YouTube channel!

• Senior Parkour Proves That Age Is Just a Number
• How Ohioans Turn Neighborhood Walks Into a Weekly Creative Ritual
• Mini Golf, Mega Art, Maximum Joy
• Forget Ice Fishing . . . How About Art Shanties?
• Sidewalk Joy: Mini Art Galleries to Mug Exchanges
• The Nation’s Largest Non-Profit Artist Studios is in the Midwest

Our Video Guide

You don’t need to be a filmmaker—just a curious, thoughtful observer. Think: “What moments would I want to share with someone who couldn’t be here?”

Read More

Photo Credit: Jaida Grey Eagle / Arts Midwest

The post Call for Pitches: Short-Form Video from Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota & Native Nations appeared first on Arts Midwest.

“It started as a little bit of a joke, because if there’s a conversation in which I don’t drop the word ‘noise’ or ‘cosmology,’ you know something’s wrong,” laughs Hiranmayena, who is a 2025 Midwest Culture Bearer awardee. “But it encapsulates the kind of things I’m interested in: how people believe and what people believe, and how the presence of noise exists in belief.”

While “noise” can be a broad term, Hiranmayena uses an Indonesian word to pinpoint his definition: ramé.

Photo Credit: Chhayachhay Chhom / Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

“[For many Indonesians] It’s a kind of noise that is desired…a centrality of human life,” he says. Think of a tailgate, a birthday party, or even a protest: “Loud and noisy, but full of love, life, and people in collective motion.”

Hiranmayena’s multi-layered career blends tradition and experimentation. He grew up performing Balinese music with his family, who emigrated to the U.S. when he was an infant. At the center of this tradition was gamelan, an ensemble of drums, gongs, flutes, and xylophones that is played by, for, and in community.

In Indonesia, gamelan are passed down from generation to generation. They are specific to each village, using locally sourced materials, designs, and tunings that are not usually standardized (attempts at standardizing is a huge critique of Hiranmayena). They feature in many ceremonies, often with multiple musical events happening simultaneously.

“Traditional Balinese music should not be conceptualized as mere entertainment (a contentious topic even amongst Indonesians); it’s an activity you do with people in your community,” says Hiranmayena. “When you have all these different musical practices in the same place, it becomes ramé.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

Today, Hiranmayena composes and collaborates regularly with gamelan ensembles across the country. He also performs in the noise/metal improvisational trio Turtles All the Way Down, the Balinese experimental duo ghOstMiSt with dancer/poet/anthropologist Dewa Ayu Eka Putri, and most recently under his solo moniker, aQarawaQ. His compositions use noise as a conduit to critique systems and point to cultural problems, from challenging patriarchy to addressing Bali’s waste crisis.

As a professor at Grinnell College in Iowa, he draws on his traditional music background to teach classes like instrument-making, in which students use local materials to create new instruments with an emphasis on sustainability and community building. He also draws on this background for another class: heavy metal.

“Heavy metal tends to be really about the layperson, about getting with your buddies and negotiating creativity on your own without an authority,” he says. “It took me a really long time to realize this, but gamelan traditionally works that way too.” 

Community. Connection. Freedom from standardization. The tenets of both metal and traditional music, he says, revolve around these. And thus noisemaking advances justice.

Hiranmayena’s next project is the ParasWani Kvlektif, bringing together a collective of multi-modal Indonesian artists to create exactly what—and how—they want. The goal? To get noisy, he says, “making sure that the voices that exist today have no holds barred on what they want to get out.”

This is the heart of what a culture bearer is, he says. “It’s not forgetting where our communities come from, but also not being afraid to change and push for social justice, even within our own culture.” 

The post Meet Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena, Infusing Experimentation into Balinese Music and Beyond appeared first on Arts Midwest.

But before she relocated, Ringler spent decades teaching sculpture and foundry in colleges and leading iron pours across the country and internationally. At these live, high-heat casting events, artists melt scrap iron in a furnace and pour the glowing metal into molds to create sculptures. 

Photo Credit: Heidi Bohnenkamp / Courtesy of Tamsie Ringler

Ringler has always loved the collective spirit that comes with iron casting and foundry,  a passion she put into practice during a decade of organizing the Community Collaboration Hot Metal Pour at Minnesota’s Franconia Sculpture Park. 

“[It’s] working together with a large group of people to make something happen and supporting the work of other people as well as your own,” the artist explains. 

Ringler is used to setting up foundries in non-traditional spaces including parking lots and sculpture gardens. “It wasn’t a jump for me to be like, well, I can do that here in Dubuque,” she explains. “There wasn’t anything like that going on here.”

So, in spring of 2025, Ringler debuted the Dubuque Iron Pour Project.  

Photo Credit: David Welder / Courtesy of Tamsie Ringler

Heavy Metal Artistry

For three weeks, eight local and regional artists (including sculptors, painters, metalsmiths, and landscapers) joined Ringler through the whole metal casting process—“from pattern to pour.”

For participant Tim Olson, the technical parts of the workshop were a learning experience. 

“It took a while for it to all make sense,” says the artist who primarily works in painting and stained glass. He cast a miniature guard shack, incorporating stained glass as windows. “I picked a pretty difficult mold without really knowing what I was getting into.”

Like Olson, most participants were new to metal casting. “It was great—I got to meet artists [from Davenport, Iowa] I’d never met before… We were all working together pretty closely because we had to help each other mix the material for the molds,” he adds. 

Along the way, the group also helped Ringler make relief molds for the project’s outdoor community pours.

Supported by grants from the Iowa Arts Council, the Starseed Foundation, and local businesses, the Dubuque Iron Pour Project offered free workshops—including one at the Boys and Girls Club—and a public iron pour at the Dubuque Art Museum.

“I didn’t really think of this type of work as being a kind of community project, you know, the way it turned out to be,” says Olson. “I definitely want to do it again.”

Photo Credit: Jedrzej Niezgoda / Courtesy of Tamsie Ringer

Photo Credit: David Welder / Courtesy of Tamsie Ringler

Photo Credit: Dubuque Boys & Girls Club / Courtesy of Tamsie Ringler

Photo Credit: Dubuque Boys & Girls Club / Courtesy of Tamsie Ringler

Casting Community

Ringler kept the iron pour small this year, but hopes it can happen yearly. 

In 2026, she hopes to host a conference centering art and climate, along with more public iron pours and workshops.

“It takes a community of people to make [iron pours] happen. But I think we’re also all craving that, right? Because it’s difficult to get together in community,” she says. 

Thanks to Ringler, that community is taking shape in Northern Iowa—one pour at a time.

Photo Credit: Laura Feldberga / Courtesy of Tamsie Ringler

The post Dubuque Iron Pour Project Brings New Heat to Iowa’s Creative Scene appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Shih’s residency introduced her to Jacob Baker’s (d. 1939) “Dream House,” an assemblage sculpture at the John Michael Kohler Art Center’s (JMKAC) Art Preserve in Sheboygan. She also learned about the Dickeyville Grotto in southwest Wisconsin, created by Father Mathias Wernerus between 1924 and 1931.

Grottoes are typically hand-built concrete forms that have been embellished with collected objects. Baker’s numerous “Dream Houses,” for example, are covered in everything from small toys and furniture knobs to mirrors and crockery fragments.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the John Michael Kohler Art Center

Grotto materials reflect local industries, pastimes, and decorative trends. Many examples include colored glass, figurines, fossils and rocks, and other found objects. “This accumulation, as well as the objects incorporated, creates a documentation of the maker’s life, faith, and home,” says an exhibition statement for JMKAC’s A Beautiful Experience: The Midwest Grotto Tradition. 

Madeline Buol, one of the few known women grotto builders, used figurines, stones, and shells that she gathered during her travels. She began building a grotto outside of her home in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1943. 

Buol wrote a memoir that describes “some of the places that she visited that inspired her and places where she gathered components,” says Chava Krivchenia, one of the curators of A Beautiful Experience. “There are these moments where you’re able to identify objects in her assemblages, and they trace histories from the Midwest or her personal life. Moments like that were very moving.”

Midwest grotto-makers often used the art form to channel spiritual beliefs. Father Paul Dobberstein, for example, immigrated to Wisconsin from Germany in 1893 to study at a seminary. After moving to West Bend, Iowa, his keen interest in geology converged with his desire to express his faith, resulting in the Grotto of the Redemption.

 

Shih’s ceramics explore themes of domesticity and the Chinese diaspora, and she found local inspiration in a long-gone Milwaukee landmark called the Toy Building. Demolished in 1939, it featured pagoda-like awnings and elaborate signage.

The artist combined inspiration from Baker’s “Dream House” and the Toy Building to create her first-ever mosaic piece. She used crowdsourced fragments along with a unique collection of potsherds excavated from a 19th-century Chinese fishing village in Monterey Bay, California, thanks to a connection at Stanford University. For Shih, grottoes provide an unexpected link to Chinese heritage and have spurred techniques in her work.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Artist and the John Michael Kohler Art Center

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Artist and the John Michael Kohler Art Center

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Artist and the John Michael Kohler Art Center

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Artist and the John Michael Kohler Art Center

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Artist and the John Michael Kohler Art Center

JMKAC is a unique force when it comes to preserving and exhibiting vernacular artworks by self-taught artists. In 2021, its Art Preserve became the first museum dedicated solely to art environments. In partnership with the Kohler Foundation, JMKAC is dedicated to saving and restoring one-of-a-kind sites, like the Tellen Woodland Sculpture Garden near Sheboygan, Wisconsin..

When grottoes have faced demolition, the Kohler Foundation saves and conserves pieces, often adding them to JMKAC’s permanent collection. Shows like A Beautiful Experience highlight these treasures for everyone to enjoy.

The post Century-Old Midwest Grotto Traditions Inspire Contemporary Creativity appeared first on Arts Midwest.

But in business (and, arguably, art and culture) he clearly has. 

Photo Credit: RAYGUN

“The space has become so much more than just a t-shirt shop,” Draper says, nodding to his 10 RAYGUN stores that are “kind of what the internet would be if it came to life.”

Inside his expanding (hello, Chicago!) shops are, yes, t-shirts, but also clothing for practically the whole family, a home and kitchen section—basically anything that has space to slap a design on it.

But not just any design. RAYGUN has a distinctive flair, beloved by Midwesterners, famous politicians, and the O.G. internet. Its products, which are unpretentious and simple, are full of Midwestern inside jokes, over-the-top positivity, and general silliness. Draper calls his style “midimal.” It’s pop art with a meme-y, whimsical twist.

“It’s just the kind of stuff that comes up with me and my friends, me and our coworkers, just giggling about stuff in the group chat,” says RAYGUN graphic designer Ali Peters says.  

‘Memes in Real Life’ 

In the early 2000s, Draper’s college buddy suggested they start selling t-shirts. Why not? 

“It started just as a project like my senior year of college, and then something kind of clicked. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is it. This is something that I could totally do by myself.’” 

And he did: For RAYGUN’s first three years, Draper ran the show alone. Full stop. 

“It was just me. So, I ran the store, designed everything, printed everything, rang up every sale, cleaned the bathroom, unclogged the toilet after you clogged the toilet,” Draper says with a laugh. 

And, slowly, he grew up along with the world. He brought on a growing team that unionized, opened more locations, and kept expanding existing ones—all while the Internet blossomed, too. 

“I think the landscape has changed in a bunch of ways that make (RAYGUN) easier to digest,” Draper says. “One would be the fall of traditional media replaced by little snippets online and especially meme culture. And if you think about it that way, a lot of our t-shirts are essentially, they’re like fungible tokens. They’re like memes in real life.” 

Photo Credit: RAYGUN

Photo Credit: RAYGUN

Photo Credit: RAYGUN

Peters, who has been designing with RAYGUN for two years, says much of what she creates stems from what’s happening in the news, right now. She’ll often see customers in shock at their products, saying, ‘This just happened yesterday,’ or ‘I just heard about this.’ 

“I think that’s kind of been an interesting part of designing here, is just being able to be on the front end of things as they’re happening and bring them to the Midwest and take a fun approach to it,” says Peters, who grew up in rural western Iowa. 

Her creative process: See it, laugh about it, put it on a t-shirt. RAYGUN is bold and right here, right now. 

“I’ll just kind of be playing with and experimenting with [designs.] And Mike is just like, ‘OK, f*ck it. Send it.” 

The post How an Iowa T-Shirt Shop Became ‘The Greatest Store in the Universe’  appeared first on Arts Midwest.

“That is how I like to learn,” says Howard, who premiered PIEOWA, her first documentary film production, at age 63. “Just dive in and figure it out.” 

Producing and promoting a documentary about pie is the latest in a latticework of professional experiences that Howard says prepared her to showcase baked goods on the big screen. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Beth Howard

Howard’s desire to document the power of pie pre-dates her four books and a TEDx talk on the topic. Pie is a through-line in her personal narrative. The Ottumwa native once quit a stressful corporate job to become a pie baker in Malibu, touting her Iowa roots as her main credential.  

In 2009, the sudden death of her young husband, Marcus, sent her to Iowa in search of solace.

Howard began selling pastry out of the iconic American Gothic House in rural Eldon before sharing that story in “Making Piece: A memoir of love, loss and pie,” released in 2012. 

While writing through her grief, pie became both medium and muse.

Four years of sharing slices proved Howard’s thesis: a hand-crimped crust is a shortcut to building community.

“I think we’re lonely, and pie is this thing that brings people together,” Howard says. “Usually, if it’s a whole pie, you sit around and share it. You don’t just get one piece for yourself.” 

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Beth Howard

During her first year as a widow, she and a TV producer friend set out in Marcus’s RV to make a pilot for a TV show about pie. Although she scrapped that original project, their quest returned Howard from the West Coast to her home state. 

More than a decade later, she still couldn’t shake the idea. In 2023, Howard formed “Camp Dough Productions” and decided to bootstrap an on-screen exploration of pie. 

Originally, she envisioned a coast-to-coast project that would satisfy her wanderlust. Working with a tiny budget, Howard would have to focus. 

Seeing a postcard with RAYGUN’s “Faces of Iowa” design, which includes an outline of the state depicted as fresh apple pie, sparked a realization. “When I saw the word PIEOWA, I went, ‘That’s it!’” she says. “I’m going to do the State Fair, and RAGBRAI, and so many other stories.” 

Making a documentary challenged Howard to transform something raw into a finished product. This time, instead of flour and sugar, she was mixing footage. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Beth Howard

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Beth Howard

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Beth Howard

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Beth Howard

PIEOWA blends segments about beloved Iowa events with interviews of famous Iowans, including actor Tom Arnold and State Auditor Rob Sand. Amateur and professional bakers like Rachelle Long, whose Chellie’s Sugar Shack sweet potato pies make a mouthwatering cameo, also showcase their skills on-screen. 

Since PIEOWA’s premiere, audiences across the state have been eating it up. 

Ben Godar, director of Des Moines Film and programmer of Varsity Cinema, credits familiar faces of Iowans and a heartwarming message with making PIEOWA one of the longest-running movies since the venue’s re-opening in late 2022. 

“I added a couple more [screenings], and a couple more, and a couple more,” he says. “People just kept coming.”    

A September film festival screening at Hollywood’s famous TCL Chinese Theater was a ‘pinch-me’ moment for Howard, who started her career in Los Angeles. She’s grateful for the warm reception, especially during a polarizing political moment. 

“[Pie] is a subject that makes people feel so good, and they’re just hungry for that,” she says. “No pun intended.”  

The post One Iowan’s Quest to Put Pie on the Big Screen appeared first on Arts Midwest.

The Lanesboro, Minnesota, artist started taking traditional courses in 2000, from cooking and rosemaling to knife-carving and skinnfell.  

“I haven’t done any weaving there,” Susag says matter-of-factly, with a hint of a laugh. “So that’s about the only thing I haven’t done.” 

“There” is Vesterheim Folk Art School (part of the historic Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum) in Decorah, Iowa. Susag, who also teaches, is one of many students learning the art of making new things—but keeping it old-school. 

Photo Credit: David Susag via Instagram

Vesterheim opened a new forging studio this spring where learners can hammer superheated metal into, say, tools or wall hooks. Think: fire, hammers, and lots of clanking.

Susag has forged chisels and scorp tools for his wooden bowl turning practice, which is perhaps his magnum opus. From craft to craft.

“There’s so much of this that’s so interconnected,” he says. And he knows what he wants and needs in a finished product; he’s even bought his own at-home gas forge.

“When I’m making a knife, I can kind of make the shape traditional, but I can also make it to fit my hand.”

Greg Walton, an education program coordinator at Vesterheim, says the DIY nature of folk art has been a pinnacle of Decorah since it was settled by Norwegians in the mid-1800s. The town is full of Scandinavian flair and is often called “Iowa’s Norway” (not to be confused with the actual city of Norway, Iowa.)

“It’s just been kind of a way to keep the tradition alive, as well as keeping a living thing going and seeing how the folk arts of the past can still influence people to do some artistic exploration themselves,” Walton says.

He calls folk art, especially forging, meditative and “something to keep the creative ideas flowing.” And it’s not supposed to be perfect (which is discouraged, if not impossible). There’s wonder in the handmade.

“Sometimes we’ll have very intricate spoons—and they’re ‘just’ spoons,” Walton says. “But in reality, they were able to tell the amount of work that someone put into it, and their ability to learn from their previous mistakes, and the dedication that went in to make something so beautiful.”

Photo Credit: Isaiah Solheim | Vesterheim

Photo Credit: Isaiah Solheim | Vesterheim

Photo Credit: Isaiah Solheim | Vesterheim

Photo Credit: Isaiah Solheim | Vesterheim

Photo Credit: David Susag via Instagram

Susag admits it’s a challenge, bringing things into being like this. 

“Putting [metal into] the forge, watching it, pulling it out, hitting it to a shape that you want or hope that you want, and then you put it back in,” he says. It’s the ultimate satisfaction. “You start it out with just a square piece of metal and then you end up with an ax or a knife blade or a hook tool for bowl turning.” 

Woodworker Alex Clarke from Madison, Wisconsin, recently forged her first large fork at Vesterheim. She’s interested in forging nails and furniture hardware. 

“Blacksmithing is a really incredible craft that humans have been doing for a very long time,” Clarke says. And, perhaps most importantly: 

“Hitting hot metal is fun!” 

The post This Iowa Folk School is Making Hot Metalworking Cool Again appeared first on Arts Midwest.