It’s a catchy name for a museum/art gallery/workshop, but, on the surface anyway, there’s a pretty mundane explanation.

Allen Christian’s early artistic efforts centered on bowling balls as a medium, carving them, painting them, and otherwise having a bit of fun with them.

That, he says, gave rise to the name of what is today, a quarter century later, an eclectic collection of human and other figures made out of just about anything, and called the House of Balls.

But, fortunately for us bottom-feeders, there is also a scatological bent to the label.  It signifies, he says, “the idea that we all possess the creative impulse and owe ourselves the balls to express it.”

Yes, it takes some balls to do what he does.

Located in the West Bank area, just a short light rail or bike/walk trip across the massive spaghetti pile of I-35W’s on and off ramps from downtown Minneapolis, the place is instantly likeable, at least for me.  It’s in a former gas station, after all.  What’s not to like?

The outside, with its large displays and open-air gallery and work areas just across the chain link fence from the Cedar Riverside train station, is itself well worth a visit.

And that’s almost all I got to see of the place!

I had not paid any attention to its hours of operation (Saturday afternoons) and I happened by on a Monday morning.  I called the phone number posted on the door and left a message.

I didn’t want to spend the day in Minneapolis waiting for a call back, so I headed north to Lake Itasca.  I wanted to revisit some of the places I had stopped at in 2003 when I paddled the Mississippi River.  Allen Christian called me back in the afternoon.  Turns out he has a real job on weekdays and wouldn’t be able to meet me at the museum for a tour until the weekend.

Bummer.  Even my loose traveling schedule wouldn’t allow me to spend the rest of the week near Minneapolis.

So we chatted a bit, trying to figure out a way to rendezvous and Allen came up with an incredibly generous solution.  He gave me the code to the keybox at the museum and told me to go there in the morning, let myself in and then call him so he could walk me through turning on the dozen or so light switches, some of them hidden in the artworks themselves, that would light up the rooms and operate the figures that were animated.

So I hustled back south to Minneapolis that evening and on Tuesday morning spent a couple hours poking about the place and taking photos.  Just getting all the lights turned on was a great adventure.

When I  finished my tour I retraced my steps and turned off all the lights, locked the place up again and called Allen to confirm I was leaving and to thank him for the hospitality.

My visit there included a pleasant phone encounter with a complete stranger who was kind enough to let me roam around his creations untethered for as long as I wished.  That and the fact that the photo below, which appears on the House of Balls facebook page, shows he is a fellow Carhenge visitor make him in my book a fast, albeit unmet, friend.

More photos are below.  I took a lot of them.  Hope you don’t get bored.  I didn’t.