The Matchbox Café in northeast Minneapolis is about as happening an artist's hangout as you will find in town these days. Smaller than most locker-room showers, dark and shadowy and just slightly musty, it is a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place, a small subdivided storefront next to a barber shop on one side and the Polish White Eagle Association on the other. As is common on a weekday afternoon, a smattering of artists who live in the area have descended on the Matchbox looking for some artistic camaraderie. Two young sculptors linger over sodas at the one small table just inside the door of the café, looking rather world-weary and mumbling to each other, perhaps about the aesthetic qualities of the goopy abstract paintings hung on the wall behind them. Behind the counter, meanwhile, a young woman with large forearms and a round, warm face talks to the two old-timers who sit on stools. She is an artist herself, and she seems to attract her peers to... More >>>