In Minneapolis, Artists Mobilize to Crush ICE
From screen-printed posters to apparel, beaded earrings, and even spell-casting, the message is clear: Artists want ICE out of Minnesota.
MINNEAPOLIS — A steady line formed in the hallway outside of Art Price’s co-operative screen-printing and painting studio in an old Grain Belt Beer building.
Visitors held blank t-shirts, sweatshirts, and other apparel that would soon be emblazoned with anti-ICE messages and artwork, from the Minnesota state bird, the loon, dubbed a “rebel loon” in reference to Star Wars, to the rallying cry that has reverberated across the city: “ICE Out of Minnesota.”
Based in St. Paul with a studio in northeast Minneapolis, 38-year-old Price and many volunteers have been printing designs free of charge since January 8, the day after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good. There are 12 available designs, including six of his own and one by Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota). More than a dozen volunteers scurried around the studio as the line snaked out the door on Sunday, February 1. By the next day, they’d printed more than 7,000 orders.
“I got very, very mad on the morning of January 8, and I said, ‘What do I have as a resource?’” Price, clad in a black muscle tank top with flowers braided into his hair, told Hyperallergic. “I have presses and I have ink, but I don’t have shirts. Bring me your shirts, free of charge.”
Price is one of dozens of artists around the Twin Cities who are resisting ICE’s massive and ongoing Operation Metro Surge by flexing their creative muscles. From screen-printed posters to apparel, accessories, and even spell-casting, the message is clear: Artists want ICE out of Minnesota.
The most ubiquitous protest poster is perhaps the “I.C.E. Out” design, a red-and-white graphic of a snowplow truck pushing out weapons, handcuffs, and gas masks. It comes from Burlesque of North America design studio co-owner Wes Winship, who used Minneapolis’s “snow emergency route” sign as a template.
“There’s something about the organization behind this named ICE, showing up in our city that’s spent centuries dealing with ice, removing it, and surviving through it,” said the studio’s co-owner Mike Davis, age 49. “It is, no pun intended, the perfect storm.”
They’d been working on the idea since November, when ICE activity started ramping up in the Twin Cities, but didn’t launch it until January 7. Now, they’ve printed and given away more than 12,000 posters.
Left: Protesters hold posters printed and distributed by Burlesque of North America (image courtesy Burlesque of North America); right: "ICE Out of MPLS" sign from Bench Pressed studio (photo by and courtesy Jane Shannon)
At Art Shanty Projects, a popular annual event series in which artists build temporary installations atop the frozen Bdé Umáŋ (Lake Harriet), the gingerbread house-inspired Wicked Winter Shanty has been hosting an “ICE crushing” ritual over the weekends from January 17 through this Sunday, February 8. Artist Angela Maki North described the cathartic event as an invitation to literally crush “fragile, transparent, all-the-way-to-their-core tiny little ice men.”
Visitors place the “ICE man” on a stool or the ice itself, and smash it with a hammer while others chant and hold space. The artists see it as a healthy way for people to express their anger and let go of things that no longer serve them.
“It’s an opportunity for people to kind of hold that little tiny man in their hands and think about what they would like to dismantle or destroy in the world,” North said.
Other artists are making objects that could help with safety and protection during protests.
Artist Maggie Thompson (Ojibwe) started the Umbrella Project after Minnesota police officer Kimberly Potter murdered 20-year-old Daunte Wright in 2021. During the ensuing marches, Thompson noticed protesters using umbrellas to shield themselves from rubber bullets and tear gas launched by police. She built on that tactic, creating umbrella coverlets that are tear- and puncture-resistant, though not bulletproof.
During Minnesota’s general strike on January 23, Thompson and other artists stood with a lit-up sign she designed on a bridge over a Minneapolis highway that read “No One is Illegal on Stolen Lands… ICE OUT OF OUR HOMELANDS.”
“People come here for all different reasons, and it just speaks to the ways that forces were used against tribes back in the day,” Thompson said. “And now they are being applied to immigrants and refugees.”
On January 24, one day after the strike, federal immigration agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, sending more waves of shock and anger across the country. After she heard the news, artist Mary LeGarde (Fort Williams First Nation, Grand Portage Band of Chippewa), age 25, decided to use patterns by Tayla Fairbanks (White Earth Band of Ojibwe) to make “ICE OUT” bead earrings in the style of Indigenous beadwork practiced in the Great Lakes region.
“Beading is medicine,” LeGarde said. “Those earrings are more than just beads. They have my good thoughts and my good feelings in them.”
Bench Pressed co-owner Jane Shannon, age 39, closed the shop a little early after she heard about Pretti’s killing. She and her husband, Andy Shannon, have been making “ICE Out of Mpls” signs since November. They released them shortly after Good was killed, with poster sales benefiting the mutual aid group Community Aid Network.
Back at Price’s art studio, 54-year-old Minneapolis resident Chris Barber selected the “rebel loon” design for his anti-ICE screenprint order. He liked the connection that it made between the Star Wars Rebel Alliance and Minnesota’s state bird.
“It shows people that they’re not alone,” Barber said. “We are all part of something bigger and we are all fighting for the same thing — to get ICE out of here, and to protect our families and our friends and our neighborhoods.
