The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Michael Thomsen was born into a line of circus people and performers and, in a way, he's continuing in the family business. Thomsen grew up in Austin, Minnesota, "in the shadow of the Hormel meatpacking plant." His first job as a kid involved sorting through the junk drawers and closets of the recently deceased for his grandfather, the proprietor of a successful carnival midway business who worked as an auctioneer in the off-season. "I loved going through those old drawers," he says. "It is powerful to touch all those small, personal things-keys, playing cards, watches, little odds and ends. After all that handling, they have life in them. In fact, some of the things I pocketed back then still show up in my work."

Thomsen's creations-lying somewhere between collage, sculpture, and painting-are self-contained marvels of both engineering and art, peopled by found objects and laden with dream symbols. In Thomsen's wonderlands, you get to be Alice. Turn a nondescript crank on the side of Clock and the tinny melodies of a hidden music box emerge; peer closely into the crystal ball at the center of Roundabout and you'll find a tiny painting tucked inside. The imagery of Thomsen's work hails straight from the carnival lurking in the recesses of our childhood wishes and fears. Menace lives cheek by jowl with the sublime. Harlequins and fortunetellers, cherubs and horned beasties, mirrors and gears-they all bark for your attention. "To me, the little worlds in these pieces have the same balance of light and dark that the outside world has," Thomsen explains. "Everything's there-the good and bad, ugly and beautiful. The real world doesn't always make sense to me so, in these pieces, I arrange things in a way that reflects how I see things, by the rules that make sense to me."

_{Excerpted from a profile published in access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.}