Knowing Your Neighbor: Anne Labovitz

DULUTH, Minn. — For the past 30 years, one Duluth native has been making a name for herself in the international art community.  Last month she brought some of that artistic skill back home for all visitors of Downtown Duluth to see.

“I love Duluth and I love Lake Superior. I really wanted to tell my stories, and memories,” said artist Anne Labovitz.

Anne was first commissioned for a large scale work of art to display in the Holiday Center 5 years ago. After spending a few years going through her creative processes, the actual painting part started two years ago on what would become North Shore Blue.

“You find in, if you look carefully, and some of it’s obscure, but you’ll have places like Brighton Beach, or Spirit Mountain. You’ll have names of places you’ll have people’s names. The color activates the space and something in our bodies and our eyes. So I love to see that. And it’s been fun to watch people come in and take pictures,” said Labovitz.

Anne recognizes that not everybody will appreciate it, but thinks it will still have an impact on everyone.

“People can respond however they’re going to respond. Some people may not like it and that’s okay. Some people might walk through this space and not see it cause their not looking for it, and I do believe those, still that color goes in and it does affect us,” said Labovitz.

The record may show that this project has been 5 years in the making, but Anne will tell you it is a culmination of being a professional artist for 30 years. A career that stems from her childhood growing up in Duluth, spending time with her grandmother who was an artist, and taking art classes in school.

“The classes I liked were, I loved my art class and I loved my photography class, and my business class. And what’s kind of cool is those are two things I really use now. In that time it was kind of this place where I felt the most comfortable,” said Labovitz.

After spending two years at St. Scholastica working on a degree in Psychology, she transferred to the Twin Cities to pursue a degree in Art. Since then her artwork has grown physically, and conceptually.

“But what happened was I used to do portraits and I would put one human being on one painting, right? And then I started to think, well, what if units of people were together on one something. And then I thought, well I did that, fast forward, what if like, people that didn’t necessarily belong to the same group of, you know, family or community could also be together. So then it kind of like, oh yes you can,” said Labovitz.

Perhaps her most visible work that encapsulates bringing people together is her 122 conversations. It is on display in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. At 180 feet long and 22 feet tall, it is an artist led collaborative project. It. celebrates the relationship Duluth has with its five sister cities and the connection to their cultures. To acknowledge the work, then mayor Emily Larson declared April 19, 2019 as Anne Labovitz day in Duluth. It was around that time that Anne was commissioned to do the Holiday Center and she is proud of the end product.

“It’s what I was expecting. It’s what I was hoping for. I think it is transformative in the space. The space really is enlivened by it. It changes the way it feels. It moves. So people are responding really well and that’s nice,” said Labovitz.

Nice for those taking in the art – and for the hometown artist who created it.

North Shore Blue will be on display for all to see in the Holiday Center Atrium indefinitely. Later on this summer, Anne says an instillation of her 122 conversations will be coming to the DECC.