Coffee With Anna

By Kristine Kostuck
Staff Writer

Fargo’s Annual 8th Street Show has been a way for artists to connect Fargo-Moorhead to their art for years. Among the talented displaying their work at next week’s show is Annabeth Mladnick, who sells her paintings, which use a technique involving coffee, inexpensively.

She’ll be painting at the 8th Street Art Show. If you miss her, you can see her at the Fargo Street Fair the following week. It is worth checking out, because coffee art is uncommon.

Many artists do not paint with coffee because it doesn’t brighten up the picture and it is difficult to vary the color while shading. That doesn’t bother Mladnick, “It warms up the picture nice, and tan is a very neutral color. It fits with a lot of rooms in people’s houses.”

Mladnick’s art appeals to children. Most of her portraits are of animals, which she hopes to use in book illustrations.

For Mladnick, the idea of a picture does not come until coffee touches paper, a technique she calls her metamorphosis. The pictures usually start as a color blob: “It is just like staring at a popcorn ceiling or at the clouds in the sky. I see images in it and go from there, just like connecting the
dots.”

In the blob stage, her paintings can change course if another artist is present. They tell her what they see in the blobs, and that suggests an emotion. She adds detail to her paintings with delicate lines done in pen. Sometimes she does nudes.

Annabeth Mladnick grew up near the Cities. Her parents encouraged her talent by sending her to an after-school watercolor class. She heard about others using coffee as a wash for their pictures. She tried the technique because she usually drinks coffee while she paints. She’s just finished her freshman year at MSUM.

Despite the variety of the art scene in the Cities, Mladnick sees art in the F-M area as “blooming,” and Downtown as the perfect place for a growing artist. Art, she thinks, is something that should be shared between artists and the public, not controlled by an hierarchy, a view she shares with many of her fellow MSUM art students.

Mladnick and some friends hope to create an artist-in-residence kind of community by next fall in downtown Moorhead, initially one house and six to eight aspiring artists. The group would live together, share ideas and help each other become known in the art community. They would converse with other artists in the area and travel to galleries around the country. The Moorhead house would be open to many students, not just those who lived there.

“People here are so responsive to different forms of art. When I came to Fargo I never thought I would be involved in the community, but after awhile I noticed that there is a lot of potential here,” she said. “I see some really talented artists that do not put themselves out there. It is frustrating. I want people to get excited about what they are doing now.”

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If You Go

What: 8th Street Art Show
Where: 1302 S 8th St
When: July 7 & 8, 11am-7pm
Info: 701.729.1801