Midsummer Dreaming by Bryan Hansel.
Greetings from the North Shore, where the fireweed is blooming like crazy along Hwy. 61 right now. It’s our tried-and-true way to measure the progression of summer here. In mid-summer, the bright, pink blooms of this native plant that we see today, are halfway up the flower stalk. Come fall, the flowers will be on the very top–nature’s way of letting us know that a new season is on its way.
Meanwhile, let’s enjoy summer while it’s here.
North House Folk School offers the public lots of ways to learn about craft and meet the artisans over the summer with craft demonstrations every Thursday through Sunday from 10 am through 4 pm. The artisans set up in the commons and are available to answer questions as they work. This week, fiber artist Cheryl Larsen will be demonstrating how to print on fabric with metal using everything from rusty nails to screens. Next week, Mary MacDonald will demonstrate weaving. The demonstrations are open to all and are free.
Here’s a video of Larson working on her metal-printed fabrics.
North House is also offering studio tours at the Betsy Bowen Gallery and Studio Building, 301 1st Ave. W. Visitors will meet North House Folk School’s resident artisans, see some of their work and their workspace. These open studio showcases are always free, The studio tours are from 5-7 pm on Aug. 18.
.On Friday, the Johnson Heritage Post will open a new exhibit entitled “Yearning” with work by Alexa Carson.
The Johnson Heritage Post opens a new exhibit entitled “Yearning” with an opening reception from 5-7 pm on Friday, Aug 19.
The gallery exhibition celebrates the natural, wild world. Carson’s work communicates the inherent value and beauty of the natural world and its inhabitants. The opening reception is Friday, Aug. 19, from 5-7 pm. Complimentary refreshments will be served. The exhibit continues through Sept. 11.
The Grand Marais Art Colony will hold two community events on Saturday featuring pottery and printmaking.
Potter Coreena Affleck will hold a Blackware Drum Firing outside the Art Colony’s Ceramics Studio from 10 am to 2 p.m. Saturday. This method of firing is a traditional way of creating a beautiful black luster on pots and is commonly used by native cultures in the Southwest.
A blackware vessel by Coreena Affleck.
All skill levels are welcome to participate in or observe the firing behind the Ceramics Studio, located in the Art Colony’s 3rd Ave. West location.
Affleck will have a number of pre-made ceramic pieces for purchase ranging from $35 – $65. If you wish to bring your own piece to fire, you can do so for a $15 firing fee. Visit the Art Colony website for more details on how to prepare your piece. Each participant should also bring one small bundle of wood. Click here to find out more.
The Art Colony will also host “Tree-Cookie Printmaking with Michael Marks” at Studio 21. Bring the family and make a relief print using cross-sections from a tree. These “Tree Cookies” will give you an introduction to the world of printmaking by inking and hand-printing the tree rings onto paper or fabric. Pre-register or drop in for a one-hour time slot at 10 am, 11 am, or noon. This event will take place at the Art Colony’s new Printmaking Studio at 21 W Highway 61. For more info, click here.
Also on Saturday, the Cook County Market is held in the Senior Center parking lot (The Hub). The Market is open from 10 am-2 pm Saturdays.
The Cook County Market is held in the parking lot of The Hub from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays, featuring a wide variety of arts and crafts and live music.
Look for pottery, weaving, jewelry, woodworking, glass art, natural balms and soaps, Lake Superior stones, rock art, hand-dyed clothing, paintings, and more. Live music! All welcome.
On Saturday night, the annual fundraiser for the Violence Prevention Center, Lunafest, will be held at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts at 7 pm. The 11th annual Lunafest is a traveling film festival featuring short films made by women about women.
Lunafest, a fundraiser for the Violence Prevention Center, will be held at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts.
This year’s event will include light refreshments, live music, a silent auction, the presentation of the Joan Drury Award, as well as the beloved films! Lunafest’s 2022 lineup features eight short films by and about women, which challenge our perceptions about the world and our place in it, spark conversations, strengthen connections, and inspire us to be better versions of ourselves. The stories explored in the films reflect the diverse perspectives of the filmmakers and their subjects.
Doors open at 6:30 pm and the event begins at 7 pm. Tickets will be available at the door: $25 for adults & $15 for students. Limited free entry will be available at the door as needed. Proceeds from this event will benefit the Violence Prevention Center, which provides free and confidential services to those affected by domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking in Cook County.
Exhibits:
A summer-long exhibition at Studio 21 kicks off the 75th-anniversary celebration of the Grand Marais Art Colony. The 7–5 exhibition, a visual acknowledgment of the Art Colony’s eclectic place within the Great Lakes region, features seven regional artists highlighting the Art Colony’s various program areas.
The Grand Marais Art Colony has opened its 75th-anniversary exhibition at Studio 21 featuring a variety of art and artists. It continues through September.
This signature exhibition will be open 10 am – 4 pm, Thursday through Saturday at Studio 21, located at 21 W Hwy. 61 in Grand Marais.
Invited artists include: Mary Brodbeck, printmaking; Magdalene Dykstra, mark making; Jonathan Herrera Soto, print; Anthony Ingrid, ceramics; Danny Saathoff, sculpture; and Leslie Smith III, mixed media.
Sivertson Gallery has just received new work by Duluth painter Adam Swanson.
Adam Swanson has new work at Sivertson Gallery. Pictured are Alter Ego, top, and Bounced and Rolled. Both are acrylic.
The Yellow Bird Galery in Grand Marais has a wide variety of artwork from local and regional artists, including this piece by Minneapolis painter, Luke Hillestad,
Grotto by Luke Hillestad, oil, 68 inches by 51 inches, Yellow Bird Gallery, $19,000.
Hillestad is a Kitch painter living in Minneapolis working in the tradition of the ancient painter Apelles. Hillestad aims toward the primal beauty of humans at their most noble, with narratives that center on themes of death, kinship, ritual, and wilderness. He studied extensively in Europe.
Ron Piercy has a series of new paintings at his gallery in Tofte, the Art Art Gallery. The works are entitled Impressionistic Landscapes.
Impressionistic Landscape, acrylic, and cold wax, by Ron Piercy, at Art Art Gallery in Tofte.
The gallery is located at 8210 W. Hwy 61 in Tofte. The gallery includes other works by Piercy as well as local and regional artists. Lutsen raku potter Maggie Anderson is also showing her work at the gallery. The gallery is open from 11 am through 5 pm. Wednesday through Saturday.
Split Rock Lighthouse is featuring exhibitions of local and regional photographers this summer with each photographer having a one-month show. This month, Adam Bjornberg’s photographs of ships and boats are on view. The exhibit will continue through the end of the month. The photographer will be at Split Rock on Aug. 20.
“Sailing Oberstar,” a photograph by Adam Bjornberg is one of his photographs currently featured at Split Rock Lighthouse. The exhibit, entitled “Photography at the Rock,” features works by local and regional photographers each month.
The Duluth Art Institute is featuring a number of exhibits this summer, including a large-scale installation by Beth Livensperger.
Artist Beth Livensperger is exhibiting large-scale installations at the Duluth Art Institute featuring her take on women in the office. The work shown above e is titled: “Your Mother Does Not Work Here.”
A press release by the Art Institute describes the exhibit this way, “Beth Livensperger’s large-scale collages depict women navigating the banal yet psychologically-charged space of office interiors, foregrounding female relationships across generations, from adversarial to supportive. In these pieces, receptionists are trapped behind tiny desks, a lone employee drowns in paperwork, and a manager delivers bad news to a subordinate. Men are relegated to bit parts—with visible hints that they still call the shots.”
Here is a video of an interview with the artist. (Note: The dog stops barking after a few minutes.)
The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is currently exhibiting “Woodland Pop!” an exhibit of new expressions of the Woodland Style by young Ojibwe artists and “I, Voyageur,” a photo essay by Naomi Harris. The art gallery also has an extensive Permanent Collection. Pictured below is one of their holdings.
This piece by Alonsa Augsente is entitled “Thunderbirds doing Tai Chi.” It is part of the Permanent collection at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.
FYI: Grand Marais Public Library to close temporarily for repairs
Work will begin soon restoring the library from this spring’s flood damage. There will be several parts going on, but the one coming up the fourth week of August will cause us to downshift to pickup window service and a short closure. The impacted dates are Aug. 22 – 27.
Upcoming:
On Friday,Aug. 26, author and photographer Betty Hempstad, author of “Wildflowers in the Boundary Waters; Hiking through the Seasons,” and chair of the transformation of Chik-Wauk Lodge into the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center,will give a presentation at the Nature Cente.
Betty Hemstad will give a presentation at Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center next Friday. Aug. 26.
She will present a virtual history tour of her experiences during the last 50 years as a summer resident on the Gunflint Trail. The event will be held from 2-3 pm on Friday, Aug. 26 at Chik-Wauk. The presentation is free.
The 15th annual Radio Waves Music Festival Sept. 9-11
The Radio Waves Music Festival is back this year at Sweetheart’s Bluff for 3 days, Sept. 9-11. To find out more and see the music schedule, click here. Illustration courtesy of AvaCreative.
WTIP Community Radio will hold the 15th Annual Radio Waves Music Festival will return to Sweetheart’s Bluff in the Grand Marais Rec Park, Sept. 9 -11. The music festival will start at a 3 pm on Friday, Sept. 9, with musical acts continuing all day Saturday and throughout the morning on Sunday. New acts, as well as Radio Waves’ favorites, are set to perform over the weekend. For details, click here.
Unplugged 2022 at North House Folk School Sept. 22-24
A little over a week later, North House Folk School will hold Unplugged, with special guests to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Look for two unforgettable nights of music, Sept. 22-23, along with a free family concert Saturday morning, Sept. 24.
North House Folk School celebrates its 25th anniversary with a special Unplugged this fall.
The musician lineup this year: Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Anaïs Mitchell (Hadestown, Bonny Light Horseman), Phil Cook (Megafaun, Gayngs), Sean Carey (S. Carey, Bon Iver), JT Bates (Bonny Light Horseman, Bon Iver), Mike Lewis (Bon Iver, Happy Apple), Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, and Joe Rainey Sr. (Iron Boy Singers). Together they’ll be pulling songs from their diverse catalogs for two unique nights of music. The Sept. 23 concert is sold out. For tickets for the Sept. 22 concert and more info, click here.
Online Findings:
Overall winner and category winner: Ecology and Environmental Science. “Tadpoles overhead” by Bert Willaert, Belgium. Tadpoles of many anuran species come in high numbers, but not many make it to adulthood. Here a group of common toad (Bufo bufo) tadpoles is seen from below. To see more work, click here.
Midsummer Dream Photos and a Tip for Editing Photos in Lightroom
A Northstar Firebird at sunrise by Bryan Hansel. Hansel led a photography workshop recently entitled “Midsummer Dream Photos and a Tip for Editing Photos in Lightroom.” The students photographed boats and other summer icons. To read his account and learn more, click here.
Artists At Work:
Knitting on the Beach: Dappled Fern Dibers has organized knitting on the beach sessions on Mondays during the summer. Open to all. Free.
Dappled Fern Fibers, a new yarn shop in Grand Marais founded by Dorothy Broomall and friends and now managed by Broomall, celebrated its first year this month. Besides offering a wide variety of hand-dyed yarns and related fiber supplies as well as classes, the shop also organizes events like Beach Knitting Mondays, pictured above, to create community here.
Broomall said she envisions Dappled Fern as a place to make, gather, and be – the shop functions as a landing place in town with free weekly events like Monday Beach Knitting, Website Wednesdays (a co-working group for local artists and small business owners), and the Saturday Fiber Circle For more information about the shop and what it offers, click here.
Dance Out Loud, pastel, by Linda Ricklefs Baudry.
Neil Sherman paints the Tall Ship, the Nao Trinidad, during its visit to the Grand Marais Harbor on its way to the Festival of Sail in Two Harbors recently. Photograph by Allison Healy.
Self Portrait, created in the early 1990s by Betsy Bowen.
Single-sheet arbled paper by Steven Vander Horck. It can be found at Joy & Co,
Apollo’s social media outlet, watercolor, by Bryan Hansel
Torrent 2, oil, by Paula Gustafson.
Horse + Hero, print, by Noah Prinsen.
Lost in Song, a watercolor, by Wiliam Wise was one of the pieces in the recent exhibit of the Lake Superior Watercolor Society at the Johnson Heritage Post.
Island Light, print, by Rick Allen.
Online Music:
To see more of Wynton Marsalis’ outstanding series on rhythms in music, the blues, and being an American. Click on the follow-up videos after watching this one.
Live Music:
Thursday, Aug. 18:
- North Shore Swing Band, North House Folk School, 6 – 8 p.m.
- Gordon Thorne, North Shore Winery, 7 – 9 p.m.
Friday, Aug. 19:
- MYsterious WAYs, Birch Terrace Supper Club, 5 – 8 p.m.
- Pete Kavanaugh, Bluefin Grille, 7 – 9 p.m.
- Space Monkey Mafia, Gunflint Tavern, 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, Aug. 20:
- Brothers in Arms, Birch Terrace Supper Club, 4 – 7 p.m.
- Fish Heads, Cascade Restaurant & Pub, 6 – 8 p.m.
- Jim McGowan, Lutsen Resort, 6:30 – 9 p.m.
- Billy Johnson, Gunflint Tavern, 7:30 – 10:30 p.m.
- Space Monkey Mafia, Gunflint Tavern, 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, Aug. 21:
- Briand Morrison, Harbor Park, noon to 1:30 p.m.
- Roxanne Berglund, Harbor Park, 1:30 to 3 p.m.
- Billy Johnson, North Shore Winery, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
- New Salty Dog, Skyport Lodge, 4 to 7 p.m.
Monday, Aug. 22:
- Michelle Miller, Harbor Park, noon to 1:30 p.m.
- Jim McGowan, Bluefin Grille, 7 – 9 p.m.
Thursday, Aug. 23:
- Eric Frost, North Shore Winery, 5 – 7 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 24:
- Pete Kavanaugh, Bluefin Grille, 7 – 9 p.m.
- The Robert Cray Band, Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua, 7:30 p.m.
Featured Photos
WILDLIFE
A frog and a toad by Bryan Hansel
The Last Drop Photo by Audubon Community Nature Center
White tree frog, Red Salvia, Courtesy Getty Images.
My monster garden grasshopper auditioning for role in a pollinators’ production of Jurassic Park by Maryl Skinner.
A portrait of a Bison by Josh Shandera.
Fishing Spider by Ericri Anderson.
Goldenrod Crab Spider by Bryan Hansel.
A PEOPLESCAPE
Rachel Andrus, Marlet Mom, Creaking Tree Farm, photo by Ian Andrus.
FLOWERSCAPES
Daisy Season by Rachel Rae Klesser
Spider Down Under by Matthew Baxley
A view of Judie Johnson’s Curbside Flower Garden by Joan Farnam.
Indian Pipes by Sam Zimmerman.
A BOATSCAPE
THE FULL MOON:
Moon over Poplar Lake. by Kari Kennedy.
Full Sturgeon Moon by Paul Sundberg.
Sturgeon Moon over the Grand Marais Harbor by David Johnson.
SKYSCAPES, CLOUDSCAPES, WATERSCAPES & LANDSCAPES:
Saganaga Lake 2 by Cathy Quinn
A ghost ship Nao Trinidad reflected in the windows of the fish house Photo by Paul Sundberg
Stewart Creek Bridge by Alison Gimbel
The night sky in the Northwoods by Bryan Hansel.
Sunrise at Cutface by Paul Sundberg.
A welcome rain by Betty Hemstad.
Poplar Lake Sunset by Sarah Hamilton.
Early morning, Superior National Forest, by Thomas Spence.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
This week’s contributors include Paula Gustafson, art news; Rachel Rae Klesser, art news; Vicki Biggs-Anderson, events, Jeremy Lopez, live music info, music videos, copy editing and layout and design; and Matthew Baxley, music videos and photographs. I would like to extend a special thanks to everyone who has reached out to show their support for this blog, either through subscribing or supporting our work financially. Most importantly, thank you to all the creators featured in this week’s blog post.
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Our next issue will be out Sept. 1.
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