An Artful Weekend: Arts Festival, Authors & Paints

This is the weekend artists and art lovers look forward to every year — the Grand Marais Arts Festival, which features 80 artists exhibiting their colorful and creative work in tents along the shore in downtown Grand Marais. The festival runs from Saturday at 9 a.m. through Sunday at 4 p.m.

Paintings, pottery, photography, weaving, metalwork, jewelry, multi-media works. sculpture, prints and more are featured in this outstanding festival, which brought in an estimated 15,000 visitors last year.

Artist booths are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. The Art Colony has also organized a wide variety of fun art activities during the event, including lots of activities for kids in the Art Colony’s booth including an art-making table, screen printing T-shirts and more. And David Hahn will be there to draw your portrait.

And, new this year, the Art Colony will host “An Artful Evening,” a fundraiser for the Art Colony in Harbor Park from 5-7 p.m. Saturday. The event will feature tempting food from local restaurants, craft beer and wine and live music, as well as a silent auction. Tickets are still available. Call 387-2737 or click here.

Other fun activities include Mila Horak’s Paint-by-Number Mural Project in Harbor Park. Horak has developed a design for another mural to be installed on the outside wall of Birchbark Books & Gifts  and everyone is invited to come paint it. Horak will set up a tent in Harbor Park and everyone is invited to come paint a number or two. Free.

Other events during the Arts Festival include the Clothesline Art Sale, a Scratch Block Aluminum Pour by Greg Mueller, Making Textured Prints and paper-making, as well as interviews with the artists on WTIP Community Radio on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon.  For the complete schedule, click here.

Meanwhile, there are lots of other fun things to do this weekend, too.

North House Folk School will have two instructors in residence this weekend who will be doing demonstrations from Thursday through Sunday and teaching a mini-course on Saturday. The instructors are Allen Holzhueter, who will be showing and teaching spinning and knitting techniques, and Carla Hall, who will be in the blacksmith shop doing demos all weekend. Her mini-class will be on forging a hook.

For more info, call 387-9762. And on Friday, the Youth Series at North House continues. On July 13, the course will be Making Ice Cream.

There will be a Raku Firing at the Maker’s Market on Thursday from 5-8 p.m.,weather permitting.

Participants can purchase a tea bowl, glaze it and then watch as its fired in a raku kiln. The Maker’s Market is located in the alley next to the Beaver House in Downtown Grand Marais. All invited.

Also on Friday, author Kim Woodward Osterholzer, will discuss her recent book, “Midwife in Amish Country,” at the Grand Marais Public Library at 3:30 p.m.

Osterholzer’s book is a memoir of her experience as a midwife who’s caught over 500 babies since 1993, and in her presentation, she recounts her lively, entertaining, and life-changing adventures learning the heart and art and craft of midwifery. The event is free and open to the public.

Continuing the book theme, author and adventurer Lonnie Dupre and author Jack Blackwell will be on WTIP’s The Roadhouse on Friday night. Dupre will discuss his recent book. “Alone at the Top: Climbing Denali in the Dead of Winter.” Blackwell has written a book about his grandfather Alec Boostrom entitled “Boundary Waters Boy.” Blackwell will bring Sawbill Outfitter’s Bill Hansen into the studio with him, as Hansen knew Boostrom, too. It should be an interesting discussion. The Roadhouse airs from 5-7 p.m. on Friday.

To cap off the authors/books being highlighted this weekend, Bart Sutter, former Duluth Poet Laureate, musician and author, will be featured at a Writer’s Salon at Drury Lane Books at 7 p.m. on Saturday. He will discuss his latest book “Nordic Accordion: Poems in a Scandinavian Mood.”

In “Nordic Accordion” Sutter fulfills the covenant he made with his elders long ago—to dramatize, critique, and honor their struggles, their culture, their peculiar ways. The book explores the experience of Scandinavian immigrants, their ancestors, and their descendants. At the heart of the book lies a cycle of dramatic monologues by old women about their half-pagan younger years as cowherders in the mountain pasture camps of Sweden. “This,” says David Ray of Sutter’s work, “is poetic storytelling at its best.” The event is free. All invited.

Also this weekend, the Cook County Market continues in the Senior Center’s parking lot from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday. The Market features a great selection of arts and crafts by local artisans as well as produce from Round River Farm in Finland.

And the 8th annual Caribou Highlands Hopped Up Beer Festival is this weekend, featuring craft beer, live music and more.

Also on Saturday, juggler Sean Emery will be at the Grand Marais Public Library at 10:30 a.m. Emery is an eccentric and talented entertainer, wowing the crowd with jaw-dropping juggling stunts that will have you asking yourself how did he do that??! Show length is 45 min. This program is suitable for all ages.

Exhibits:

 This is the last weekend to see Through Our Hands V: Sun, Moon Stars, featuring a wide variety of beautiful work by the Northwoods Fiber Quild. The exhibit is at the Johnson Heritage Post.

Fiber Guild members will be giving demonstrations on the lawn outside the Heritage Post on Saturday, during the Grand Marais Arts Festival. Their work is available for purchase in the Heritage Post’s gift shop.

Three new art exhibits open at the Duluth Art Institute on Thursday night and continue through August. The exhibits include “Chholing Taha: Every Spirit Tells a Story,” Payton MacDonald’s “Sonic Divide: States,” and  Jonathan Thunder’s “Suspension of Belief.”

Payton MacDonald’s work, “Sonic Divide: States” is a film features which 30 comissioned scores from 30 different composers performed during MacDonald’s mountain bike journey along the Great Divide. Each musical work was scored specifically for his voice or found percussion instruments, like logs, rocks, or the bicycle itself. The exhibit includes four paintings by Duluth painter Kenneth D. Johnson, which accompany the film.

The Tweed Museum of Art continues its exhibit: In Solidarity: Revolutionary Women of Print.

The Thunder Bay Art Gallery‘s exhibit.  “Uprising: The Power of Mother Earth,” a retrospective of Christi Belcourt’s work, including her collaboration with Isaac Murdoch, continues through the summer.

The exhibit is spectacular and worth a trip to Thunder Bay to see it. The exhibit continues through Nov. 25.

Upcoming:

The Grand Marais Playhouse‘s Summer Theatre Festival opens next Thursday, July 19, with the musical “Shreck.” It plays in repertory with the award-winning comedy, “Mom’s Gift.”  Stay tuned for details.

Belvo/Cushmore: Paintings & Drawings 2018, an exhibit of work by Hazel Belvo and Marcia Cushmore, opens at the Johnson Heritage Post with a reception on Friday, July 20, from 5-7 p.m.

The exhibit continues through Aug. 12.

The West End Garden Club’s annual flower show will be next Saturday, July 21, at the Birch Grove Community Center featuring unique floral displays created by garden club members. The flower show is from 1-5 p.m. and features refreshments. Free. All invited.

The Stars of the North Music Festival, a collection of area and regional musicians coming out to support the Youth Music Program will be in Harbor Park July 27-29. Stay tuned for details.

Music:

Here’s the music schedule for this week:

Thursday, July 12:

• Frozen Britches, Cascade Lodge Pub, 6 p.m.
• Eric Frost, Lutsen Resort, 6:30 p.m.
• Ladies Music Club, Wunderbar, 7 p.m.
• Gordon Thorne & Friends, North Shore Winery, 7 p.m.
• Plucked Up String Band, Gun Flint Tavern, 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, July 13:
• Harbor & Home, Voyageur Brewing, 4 p.m.
• Portage, Grandma Ray’s, 6 p.m.
• Minnesota Mice, Wunderbar, 8 p.m.
• Gene Lafond & Amy Grillo, Eagle Ridge Resort, 8 p.m.
• Josh Cleveland and the Cedar Street Band, Gun Flint Tavern, 8 p.m.
• Timmy Haus, Caribou Highlands, 8 p.m.
• The Millers, Bluefin Grille, 9 p.m.
• Cook County’s Most Wanted, Grandma Ray’s, 9 p.m.

Saturday, July 14:

• Chris Gillis & Thomas Stamps, Fundraiser for Arrowhead Animal Rescue, Wunderbar, 4-8 p.m.
• Cherry Dirt, Cascade Lodge Pub, 6 p.m.
• J Squared and the Makers, Papa Charlie’s, 6 p.m.
• Michael Monroe- Log Cabin Concert, rural Grand Marais, 7 p.m., reservations at www.michaelmonroemusic.com
• Brothers in Arms, Grandma Ray’s, 8 p.m.
• Briand Morrison, Lutsen Resort, 8 p.m.
• Big Wave Dave & the Ripples, Caribou Highlands, 8 p.m.
• Timmy Haus, Papa Charlie’s, 9:00 p.m.
• Josh Cleveland and the Cedar Street Band, Gun Flint Tavern, 9 p.m.

Sunday, July 15:

• Briand Morrison, Mogul’s Grille, 10 a.m.
• Black River Revue, North Shore Wintery, 3 p.m.
• SplinterTones, Skyport Lodge, 4 p.m.
• Open Stage with Joe Paulik, Wunderbar, 6 p.m.

Monday, July 16:

• Open Mic Night, Grandma Ray’s, 7 p.m.
• Eric Frost Band, Gun Flint Tavern, 7 p.m.
• Shane Martin, Bluefin Bay, 9 p.m.

Tuesday, July 17:

• Bug Dope, Gun Flint Tavern, 7 p.m.

Wednesday, July 18:

• Gordon Thorne, Bluefin Bay, 9 p.m.

Photographs:

We found some great photos this week. Here’s a selection:

First, wildlife:

 

Flowers:

 

A birch tree:

Rainbows:

 

Lightning:

 

Cloudscapes:

 

 

Waterfalls:

 

 

 

Lake Superior:

 

 

And finally, this:

Have a great weekend, everyone! Enjoy the art and artists!