Andy Sturdevant’s Professional Website
“Your home on the worldwide web for information about Andy Sturdevant.”
Thank you for visiting the professional website of Minneapolis-based writer and artist Andy Sturdevant. That’s me. Scroll down all the way to the bottom to send me an email. Otherwise, all of the information on this website is presented on a single page for your ease of browsing. If there is a piece of information that you came to this website to find, and you don’t see it below, I encourage you to email me and ask.
About books I have written
I am the author or co-author of four full-length nonfiction books, and contributor to one more:
The Outer Periphery: Amateur Spacecraft Designs from the U.S. Patent Office, 50 Watt Books, 2024
Closing Time: Saloons, Taverns, Dives, and Watering Holes of the Twin Cities (with Bill Lindeke), Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2019
Midwest Architecture Journeys (contributor), Belt Publishing, 2019
Downtown: Minneapolis in the 1970s (with Mike Evangelist), Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2017
Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow, Coffee House Press, 2013
About Birchwood Palace Industries
Birchwood Palace Industries is a small press operated out of my attic, and in recent years, has been the focus of the majority of my creative efforts. There you can find books, zines and pamphlets I have self-published for sale, along with printed works by other artists.
Some popular titles published by Birchwood Palace include the Directory of American Menu Hotlines, described by musician Daniel Lopatin as “a true work of art,” and featured in this piece by Luke Pyenson in Taste magazine in 2024. Other notable titles include Videoland: A Visual Catalog of American Video Store Logos, 1980-1995 and Private Worlds: A Visual Catalog of Progressive Toy Designs, 1970-1990.
Birchwood Palace also publishes Paper Palace, a bi-monthly mail subscription service for pencil-and-paper games and arcane, meandering trivia, delivered directly via the United States Postal Service to your mailbox for the low, low price of $30 a year.
More about me, in a third-person format
For the convenience of communications and marketing professionals who may need to use it, this information is presented in the third person.
Andy Sturdevant (he/him) is a writer, artist, and designer living in Minneapolis. He is the author of four full-length nonfiction books, including the Minnesota Book Award-nominated book Closing Time: Saloons, Taverns, Dives and Watering Holes of the Twin Cities (with Bill Lindeke). Andy has written about art, history and culture for a variety of Twin Cities-based publications and websites, including ArchitectureMN, Mpls. St. Paul, MinnPost, MAS Context, mnartists.org, Apology, The Smudge, The Growler and others. He is the recipient of grants from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and Forecast Public Arts, awards from the Minnesota Media & Publishing Association and the Minnesota Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and has worked as writer-in-residence at the Laurence McKinley Gould Library at Carleton College in Northfield, MN and Northeast Library in Minneapolis, MN. He is the founder and publisher of Birchwood Palace Industries, a small press dedicated to short-form nonfiction and reference works.
Andy has also created art installations, publications, performances and public events, sometimes all coexisting in one project. Some of this work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Northern Spark Festival and the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf College, as well as in museums, galleries and spaces in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere. He has organized, led or participated in a variety of engaging and accessible multipurpose public programs, including walking tours, panels, lectures and other events. These venues include St. Olaf College, Preserve Minneapolis, Hennepin County Library, Minnesota Historical Society, Coffee House Press, Cunningham Group, The Soap Factory and many others.
He was born in Columbus, Ohio, raised in Louisville, Kentucky and has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 2005. He graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Art in 2004 from the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville.
Andy is Artist Resources Director at Springboard for the Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also a notary public, and is licensed to perform weddings and civil services in the state of Minnesota.
He lives in a 100-year-old stucco bungalow in south Minneapolis with his spouse and his son.
Selected writings, 2010-present
Birds, Melissa Borman, designed by Justin Allen with text by me, Summer 2021. Based on her series Birds, started after Melissa inherited her mother’s collection of bird figurines, the series showcases backdrops and figurines of ceramic bird figurines.
Catalog, Your Games And Your Gains by Pedram Baldari and Satisfaction Not Guaranteed by Nooshin Hakim Javadi, Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, July 2021. These two shows, presented concurrently, addressed the fallout from U.S. interventions in Iran.
“Last Call for Liquor Lyle’s,” Heavy Table, March 2021 | Another dispatch from the restaurant closure beat.
“Like Clockwork,” Mpls St Paul magazine, February 2021. A sketchbook highlighting seven noteworthy clocks in the metro area, including Spruce Tree Centre in the Midway St. Paul.
“Remembrances of Businesses Past: Octo Fishbar,” BRIX Report, January 2021 | Ah, one of my favorite burgers in town, R.I.P.
“The Optimism of Midcentury Concrete,” Architecture MN, Summer 2020. Brutalism as a marker of civic pride. “I remember people of my parents’ generation hated concrete when I was growing up in the 1980s. Many unfairly compared midcentury concrete buildings to old Richardsonian brick piles. The central library in my hometown, for example, paired a Beaux Arts building with a three-story brutalist addition, and people complained about ‘the new side’ endlessly.”
“Air Era,” Architecture MN, Summer 2020. An interview with the architecture team restoring the 1962 Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Fraunces, a Google Font by Undercase Type, Summer 2020. Editing and additional writing for this Google Font project, viewable on the project page, under direction of the brilliant Phaedra Charles.
“Future Then,” Apology, Fall 2019 | An overview of the tacky, wacky logos of independent Apple Computer retailers in the 1980s, before Jobs, Ive and Co. got more serious about enforcing the brand’s graphic identity.
“Groundscraper City: Touring the Subterranean Structures of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 1978–1983,” MAS Context, Fall 2019 | An excerpt from Midwest Architecture Journeys, with the key difference is that this piece also features beautiful photographs by David Schalliol.
“Fast Casual” (with Nate Sturdevant), The Smudge, June 2019 | A collaboration with my brother, a professional chef and barkeep, on the origins of the glop they serve at places like Chili’s. It also includes a description of Nate’s mostly successful efforts to recreate Chili’s original chili recipe.
“An Illustrated History of the M,” Minnesota Museum of American Art, June 2018 | An overview of the twelve buildings that have housed the museum for the past 120+ years, commissioned on the occasion of the museum’s re-opening at the Pioneer-Endicott Building downtown St. Paul. I also led a bus tour of most of the extant sites.
“Urban Fabric: Allianz Field revitalizes a material approach that has a blemished local history,” Architecture MN, date | This was awarded a gold medal in the print columns category at the Minnesota Media and Publishing Association’s 2019 Excellence Awards.
“Little Rock: The long and varied history of the hardiest landscape material,” Architecture MN, January 2018.
“The Pink Man Files, Vol. 3,” Samual Weinberg and Lucia Weilein. And this.
“License to Steel: Musings on the corrugated metal craze in multi-family house,” Architecture MN, September 2017.
“A so-called ‘fake Spotify artist’ breaks his silence,” City Pages, June 2017 | Definitely one of the stupidest pieces I have ever written, and not coincidentally, another all-time favorite. Maybe an hour elapsed between the time I read this story, wrote the interview in response, and then pitched it to Keith Harris at City Pages, who posted it about 15 minutes after I sent it.
“100 Washington Square: The consummate modernist dream of an office tower,” MinnPost, January 2017 | Ethan Jones, the photographer whose work prompted the piece, later assembled a collection of his photographs of 100 Washington Square.
“Visiting the missile sites designed to protect the Twin Cities from a Soviet attack,” MinnPost, November 2016 | A cheerful piece on nuclear Armageddon written the day after the 2016 election.
“What if Canada had acted on its 1921 Defense Scheme No. 1 and invaded the U.S.?,” MinnPost, November 2016 | Another gloomy counterfactual published about the same time.
“The nexus of New Age Minneapolis in 1984: Uptown,” MinnPost, June 2016 | Writing after-the-fact updates of old guidebooks and directories is a favorite approach to examining about the recent past. Also related is this companion piece from 2015 on Rev. Ivan Stang’s “High Weirdness by Mail.”
“Raised in the City: Westerberg’s walk — and other Replacements sites in south Minneapolis,” MinnPost, March 2016
“In sticker art, a universe exists between art for art’s sake and commercial promotion,” MinnPost, May 2015 | This piece received a first place award for Arts & Entertainment coverage at the 2016 Page One awards, chosen by the Minnesota Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
“On our Twin Cities’ rivalry and the perfectly cromulent ‘Springfield/Shelbyville’ jokes,” MinnPost, February 2016
“Two eccentric downtown buildings reflect the lofty idealism that fired the ’20s,” MinnPost, October 2014 | I still think the Ivy Tower is one of downtown Minneapolis’ great weirdo structures. Years later, a restaurant named Constantine opened in the basement, and one night I broke the record for number of cheeseburgers consumed by a customer in one sitting (nine). The kitchen staff made me a commemorative certificate I will scan and put up here on my “awards and press” page someday.
“Walking the two Lyndales is no easy feat — but it offers a unique view of our ‘neon rivers,’” MinnPost, September 2014
“Interview: Roman Mars,” Pollen, April 2014
“Love is where you find it,” mnartists.org, October 2013 | Another older favorite. This is a piece about “Crossings,” a painting by artist John Bowman that still hangs at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis. A few years after this piece, 331 Club owner Jon Oulman organized a retrospective of Bowman’s work across several venues, and published a booklet with interviews and an essay by me. Incidentally, the editor of this and my all mnartists.org pieces was Susannah Schouweiler, the first great editor I ever had.
“A Speculative Wes Anderson Filmography (2014-2065),” Bright Wall/Dark Room, Spring 2013 | I guess the thought of Sofia Coppola taking the reins of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise grows more plausible every year.
“Non-automotive inter-gallery transit in Minneapolis: Summer 2013,” BANQUET, May 2013 | Definitely not my strongest graphic work, but still an intriguing look at getting around without a car just before Uber conquered the world.
“Skateboarding videos create ‘a mental and visual map’ of the city,” MinnPost, March 2013.
Book of Trees, Both Native and Introduced, Paula McCartney, Spring 2013.
“Ghost crawl: A walk through the Warehouse District gallery scene twenty years later,” Rain Taxi, Fall 2011 | My interest in the Minneapolis art scene of this period was prompted by a piece in the late, great Rake magazine by former Utne Reader editor Catherine Madison that I read the first year I lived in town, and which is a well I’ve returned to many, many times over my writing career.
“Dome Light,” mnartists.org, April 2011 | This profile of artist Martin Woodrich, filed in the early morning hours on the first day of April, remains perhaps my favorite piece ever to appear under my byline. This 2009 piece on Farm Accident, the secret gallery at the top of the IDS Tower, is similar in both spirit and execution. I still get asked about both of these pieces more regularly than you might imagine.
A nice photograph of me
A high-resolution photograph suitable for publication can be downloaded here. Photo should be credited to Corey Anderson.
Contact me
Before we leave: how is your last name pronounced?
My last name is pronounced “STUR-de-vont,” so that the last syllable rhymes with “Vermont” or “nonchalant.” It is often mistaken for a Dutch name, but is in fact an Anglo-Norman portmanteau made up of a typically guttural Germanic word (“sturt”) and a slick Romance word (“avant”). Nearly all Sturdevants, Sturtevants and Sturdivants in North America are related to one another, their common ancestor having arrived in New England from northeast England in the 17th century. That said, I am only very, very distantly related to the well-known Minnesota political reporter and author Lori Sturdevant, the family that owns and operates Sturdevant’s Auto Parts in South Dakota and western Minnesota, and Dr. Clifford Sturdevant, whose 1968 textbook Sturdevant’s Art and Science of Operative Dentistry remains the gold standard in the field.