Makeshift Ego w/ Ben Connelly

Art in the cafe...

Laurel Statz


"The Spectator"


December 2025



Laurel Statz is a painter and Madison area native. Her work, while figurative, is influenced by abstraction and minimalism. The paintings often have a quick and instinctual nature, capturing just what’s needed. While she often times herself to eliminate extra details and over-precision, she has ventured into more detailed works as well. Laurel does not attach narrative to her pieces. Rather, she thinks of them like a journaling process for her scatter-brained psyche. The figures in the pieces are meant to be processing tools for the artist and the viewer. She hopes that seeing these figures helps the...
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Friday, September 29, 2006

Makeshift Ego band members Kari and Shane combine their own unique musical styles to create an original and mysterious sound. They write subtle, yet thought-provoking lyrics and use uncommon chord combinations and rhythms that define their sound as a little dark with a quirky edge.

Minneapolis singer/songwriter Ben Connelly's new CD, Over You, is an indy-folk beauty about love and death, an umbrella, little lights in the night, and what's beyond the stars. Connelly is touring nationwide this fall and Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine says of the new release, "Ben Connelly's music is intimate in sound and universal in message...profound and humbling."

Music