A Guide to Mirror Lab, Twin Cities' "DIY Music and Art Venue."
Mirror Lab is an entirely independent art and music event space for primarily experimental music and contemporary art. Prominent genres range from improvisational jazz, performance art music, electroacoustic and ambient drone music.
John Marks, director and founder of Mirror Lab, said he considers it a "DIY music venue," because there is is no hierarchy within the venue's management structure, nor is there exclusivity as to what, exactly, audiences can expect to hear from performers.
Marks said the venue provides a variety of styles and genres to the Twin Cities, whether it be improvisational jazz, electronic music or sound art performances
“I always get contacted by agents and musicians from all over the world who are interested, who catch wind that there’s this place called Mirror Lab in the Twin Cities where adventurous experimental music happens,” Marks said.
Mirror Lab is entirely a passion project from Marks and his fellow artists who manage the venue. Marks himself also performs his original synthesizer pieces and experimental short films at the venue.
Marks, who also works a day job as director of operations at the Cedar Cultural Center, said Mirror Lab is not driven by profit. Community members attending concerts may be asked to pay an entrance fee at larger events, though even this is typically optional.
“No one gets turned away for lack of funds,” Marks said. “It really is just a group of artists, some of whom have musical interests that end up compelling them to present events.”
Marks said underground rapper Billy Woods from the duo Armand Hammer recently used the space for vinyl record signing after performing at 7th Street Entry during the "GOLLIWOG" Tour.
Previous acts included a bi-monthly series called “Envelop Deep Listening,” with a rotating set of ambient and Shoegaze artists, curated by producer Jesse Whitney since 2023. Marks said a fan favorite performance included pianist Mary Prescott and multigenre artist deVon Russell Gray, who produces from jazz to electronica to classical music and hip hop.
Drone Not Drones, an annual 28-hour ambient music performance to benefit Doctors Without Borders and protest the American military industrial complex, often hosts their pre-show at Mirror Lab before the event at nearby venues such as the Cedar Cultural Center. Marks said nearly every artist associated with Drone Not Drones, such as alternative Twin Cities-based saxophonist Cole Pulice, has independently performed at Mirror Lab as well.
Last October, Wisconsin-based Drone not Drones musician John Mueller, who previously worked with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon as part of the indie folktronica band Volcano Choir, performed a piece called “All Colors Present” at the venue. The show consisted of a nearly 75 minute, minimalist drum solo from Mueller, accompanied by rotating projections of images taken by photographer Tom Lecky.
Marks said Mirror Lab's ability to grant artists freedom in artistic exploration, gives the space a valuable purpose in the Twin Cities music and art scene.
“If your music performance involves you playing one drum for 75 minutes straight, I'm not going to stop you from doing that,” Marks said. “If your visual art exhibition involves you drilling a hole in the floor … I'm not going to stop you from doing that.”
History to Now
Marks began Mirror Lab after purchasing a warehouse on Vandalia Street in St. Paul in 2012 to process photography projects in a darkroom.
Marks said he purchased the current venue space on Minneapolis' Cedar Avenue in 2015 after partnering with The White Page Gallery, a feminist art hosting collective.
The White Page Gallery also had a history of hosting contemporary art and musical performances, most notably the Detroit-based industrial noise band Wolf Eyes.
At this time, Marks and his colleagues of musicians and artists such as Jonathan Kaiser, Anat Spiegel and Thomas Myrmel cultivated Mirror Lab as an adjacent private workshop space to plan live events.
In 2020, the White Page Gallery dissolved in its current form, which gave Marks and his colleagues gave full control of the venue space.
Myrmel, who is now based in Amsterdam, said the differences in the two cities’ artistic ecosystems helped him notice a need that Mirror Lab’s independent, artist focused, approach helped fulfill in the United States.
“In the Netherlands, the whole conversation is about if you're a professional musician or if you're an amateur musician.” Myrmel said, while rolling a locally decriminalized joint in his rustic, Dutch backyard.
“You come to Minneapolis, that's not a discussion. Everyone has a day job,” Myrmel said. “There is no way to be an artist in Minneapolis or in the States in general without having some form of day job.”
Myrmel said The Netherlands offers more generous grants and funding for the arts, and, unlike in the United States, musicians aren't obligated to fit band practice or recording sessions between exhausting shifts.
"The only time that you can work together with other musicians is after 6 or after 8 at night. Everyone comes to that already tired," Myrmel said. "You think less clearly, you work less clearly and you just don't have the time to get your instrument to the same level because you just don't have the hours. So that creates a very different arts ecosystem."
Myrmel said another advantage for Mirror Lab's artistic community is the affordability for independent artists who haven't been able to support themselves full time with their work.
“You could always go and rent the Ice House. You can always go and rent the Clown Lounge. But who's got the money to do that?,” Myrmel said. “If you're an artist, then you want to try something out, and do that for an audience of 20 to 50 people, then Mirror Lab is a great place for that.”
Despite leaving Mirror Lab's artistic network and relocating to Amsterdam in 2023, Myrmel recently premiered a spoken word and experimental electronic classical music piece called “The Ballad of Minnehaha,” in response to the ICE occupation of the Twin Cities.
Marks said during the past February, collaborators and curators of Mirror Lab were active in mutual aid work and rapid response observer training work for the South Minneapolis community.
“The Venn diagram between art and activism in the Twin Cities, and in Minnesota, is really just a circle,” Marks said.
Marks said he found value in creating art during social and political conflict, because of how he has seen works' ability to connect individuals in Minneapolis' community.
"While there were questions around whether or not spending time and resources in purely creative, individualized practices was meaningful during that time, I think that the power that the arts’ creativity has in moments like that really is the ability to speak universally and to bring people together,” Marks said.
Slán Leat
Print by Kara Faye Gregory for her Slán Leat showcase. The pieces are enlarged by photographing four quadrants of the canvases, and connecting the four prints to reassemble the original work at a larger size. Minneapolis, Minn., April 19, 2026. Zach Lebowitz.
The most recent multimedia art and sound installation at Mirror Lab, is Slán Leat by local artist Kara Faye Gregory.
"It's an immersive installation." Marks said. "Although all the natural light in the space is blocked out, the walls are painted black there's projection that gets kind of dispersed around the room."
The projection displays seemingly miscellaneous white lines in an oscillating cobweb pattern, reflecting off a curtain of foil at the far back wall of the venue.
Gregory said this reflection is of a geometric design, which was the catalyst of the project. It is intended to appear covering the entire space, namely onto seven framed artwork prints on the venue’s walls.
During the showcase, Gregory plays audio of an original ambient piece, made using the sounds of the artistic process of constructing the very art on display, alongside Gregory playing ambient keyboard notes.
Gregory said each step of her creation process, including burning this shape into a relief pattern, rolling ink onto the relief to then print on the floor like a giant stamp and then dunking photographs of the prints into a sink filled with water to press onto plexiglass, were all recorded, then warped and pitched, to comprise the sound loops for patrons to listen to as they observe her art.
“Every aspect of this is supposed to be the print,” Gregory said. “That goes back to what I'm trying to talk about, of my original frustration with memory, and how working on this has helped me have a new appreciation for how …. those memories will inevitably change.”
She said the exhibit was inspired by the loss of her father at age 22, and she hopes to express how her memories of him have, themselves, been reshaped as she continues to grow as a person.
“It doesn't have to be a negative thing,” Gregory said. “That can be a new and kind of beautiful thing. Because the important part is you're remembering the person and you're keeping that memory alive”.
“And that memory is growing and changing with you because you don't have that person to grow and change with you,” Gregory said.
The name of the exhibition, Slán Leat, means “Goodbye,” and directly translates to the phrase “Safe with you,” in the Irish language, the language of Gregory’s heritage.
Mirror Lab will be showing Slán Leat during open hours from April 11, and the venue will host a closing party for the exhibit Friday, April 25.
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