Luminate blog

Why Northeast Minneapolis

January 29, 2014

Northeast Minneapolis is a diverse area of the city. There is a wide range of cultures, industries, and people within a small area. We were drawn to large warehouses many of which were vacated in the late 90′s or early 2000′s from large businesses consolidating or going under. In the last five to ten years many of these spaces were divided up into smaller spaces and turned into small business hubs. Access to space is rather affordable for being in the city, which provides opportunity to start ideas and take risk. There is a strong culture of doing, making, and getting ideas to happen. Within a couple blocks of our studio there is a chocolate factory, a bike builder, coffee roasters, a distillery, a leather goods company, a brewery, letterpress printers, set builders, a photography studio, advertising agencies, among many other businesses.

This rich mix of businesses has been great to be a part of and helps fuel our creative energy. We were able to build an office space for Westwerk, a design agency in our building in exchange for branding and website. This proved to be a wonderful relationship that we were able to build as part of the Northeast community.

Material and Making

January 20, 2014

It takes many processes and craft skill sets to produce objects, most of these processes are developed around each specific material and require time and skill to excel at. When we set out to create something our focus always...

Starting small

January 13, 2014

Joe and I started Hennepin Made officially in 2011 with the decision to build a studio in Northeast Minneapolis, though, our collaboration together had started a few years earlier. Shortly after I returned from studying in Australia, I began teaching...