Paul Herwig has been working for over 40 years as a professional visual and performing artist. Paul is the founding Co-Artistic Director/Manager of Off-Leash Area, a dance and theater company creating original interdisciplinary performance work, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA, which is now in its 25th year. Paul is a graduate of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq (1981-1983), and regularly performs lead and ensemble roles in the company’s productions, as well as having designed and built sets for all its 30 productions. Paul is a self-taught visual and digital artist, working in live animated projection art, and projection mapping.
Paul has received many awards, including a McKnight Theater Fellowship, 5 MN State Arts Board individual artist grants, a Jerome Travel grant, among others. His set designs an performances have been listed in the Minneapolis press’ Best of the Year lists eighteen times since 2002. In 2019, Paul was chosen among a group of US designers to exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance and Design.
Recently, Paul presented Facing the Fire (2), a public art project that wrapped the ruins of the former 3rd Police Precinct building with projections and sound. This building is located in the heart of the Minneapolis neighborhood where Paul has had a home for twenty years, and formerly housed the officers who murdered George Floyd, a traumatic event which set off an international movement for racial justice.