Record of a Rolling Garden
Leslie Barlow, 2024
14-run lithograph on White Somerset Satin
Edition of 20
Paper: 26 ¾ x 21 ⅜ in.
Image: 22 ½ x 18 in. (approximate)
Click here for availability or Email our Gallery Director Alex Blaisdell alex@highpointprintmaking.org
Highpoint Editions is proud to release Record of a Rolling Garden, a new lithograph by Minnesota artist Leslie Barlow. This 14-run lithograph is Barlow’s first print with Highpoint Editions and features two of the artist’s friends at the now-closed Roller Garden roller rink in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. With this print, Barlow explores nostalgia, belonging, resilience, and how the vibrant and complicated history of roller skating has unified the Black community. Barlow’s style of storytelling with colorful and nuanced portraiture shines through in this richly layered lithograph.
From the Artist
Through my time working with Highpoint Editions, I fell in love with the photo lithography process. The image this print is based off is from a photo taken on my birthday in 2020. Depicted are two of my friends posing at the St. Louis Park roller rink, the Roller Garden, at a time when they were closed to the public but renting the whole place on an hourly basis to small masked-up groups. There was birthday cake, we got to play our own music, and everyone showed up in style.
I began rollerskating with some frequency back in 2017, but in 2020 the recreation took on a whole new meaning for me. "When the reality of racial injustice became too taxing, skating was the revolutionary way to reclaim their joy," said Amanda Alcantara in the article How Black and Brown Women are Reclaiming Rollerskating Culture. Skating was not only a safer activity to do in the height of Covid, but it allowed for a physical release of the built up anger, anxiety, and pressure.
Some of my favorite childhood memories include school field trips to the Roller Garden. I returned to that beloved rink over the years with different friend groups, and at different points in my life. It always had that same smell, same greasy food, same dinosaur and mural that greeted you in the entryway. It was one of those places that you could lose time, and lose yourself.
After that October 2020 birthday, I only got to skate at the Roller Garden a couple more times. Like many businesses, they struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic, and after 52 years in operation by the Johnston/Sahly family, the Roller Garden closed its doors in May 2021. The place wasn't perfect, and had a complicated history, but it was heartbreaking to see it go. Skaters poured out their memories and desires to save it on social media, but in the end we all came to the realization we'd have to forge other spaces. As the 2018 documentary United Skates says, "You can take the goddamn building, but you can't take the spirit." — Leslie Barlow
Leslie working on a film for one of the 14 lithographic plates used to print Record of a Rolling Garden.
Leslie Barlow (b. 1989) is a visual artist, educator, and cultural worker from Minneapolis, MN. Barlow believes art and art making is both healing and liberatory, through the power of representation, witnessing and storytelling. Her life-sized oil paintings are inspired by community and personal experiences, and serve as both monuments to community members and explorations into how race entangles the intimate sphere of love, family, and friendship.
Barlow is a recipient of the 2021 Jerome Hill Fellowship, 2019 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, the 20/20 Springboard Fellowship, and five MN State Arts Board grants between 2016 and 2023. Her work can be viewed in collections around Minnesota including at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota Historical Society, Weisman Art Museum, Minnesota Museum of American Art, and US Bank Stadium. Barlow earned her BFA in 2011 from the University of Wisconsin-Stout and her MFA in 2016 from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In addition to her studio practice, Barlow has taught at the University of Minnesota, Metro State University, and Carleton College. Barlow also supports emerging artists at Public Functionary as Director of PF Studios, is a member of the Creatives After Curfew mural collective, and is the creator/producer of ConFluence, an arts and science fiction convention.
Barlow is represented by Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis, MN.
For availability and to purchase Record of a Rolling Garden, email our Gallery Director Alex Blaisdell alex@highpointprintmaking.org