Dark Skies, Ducks & Snowmen

Steer in the direction of the skid by Jim Stilling.

Greetings from the North Shore, where Jim Stilling’s advice, above, is perfect for us this time of year. Take care!

On the other hand, we celebrate winter and the snow it brings.

A snowshoe invitation by Rose Arrowsmith.

The ski trails are open on Pincushion Mountain. Photo courtesy of the Pincushion Ski and Run Club.

François, the Snowman by Maryl Skinner

Snow Gardener Thinking of Spring by Janice Latz.

This week, we’ll also celebrate the darkest times of the year during the 6th annual Dark Sky Festival, Dec. 12-14.

The Dark Sky Festival is Dec. 12-14 in several locations in Cook County this week. To see the schedule, click here.

Cook County is home to some of the darkest skies in the world. Every year, explorers, adventurers, artists, and photographers from around the world travel to Cook County to experience the northern lights and night sky. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness has been named one of only 17 certified International Dark Sky Sanctuaries in the world. At over 1 million acres, it is the largest. The Dark Skies Festival celebrates this with lots of events and opportunities to learn more about and experience the night sky.

This year, look for:

• Presentation and book release/signing with Stephanie Vermillion about her new book, 100 Nights of a Lifetime.
• NASA will be here doing an activity session and presentation on Friday and Saturday.
• UMD Star Party Planetarium on Saturday.
• Untitled Night by Morgan Thorson, an outdoor dance event on Friday.

This event also features:

• Night Sky Walks & Telescope Viewing
• Night Sky Photography sessions
• Presentations
• Documentary Screenings
• Educational Opportunities
• Family-Friendly Activities

All events are free and open to the public. For the complete schedule and more information, click here.

The Heritage Center at the Grand Portage National Monument will hold a Christmas Open House from 12:30-3:30 pm on Thursday.

The Grand Portage National Monument Heritage Center will hold an open house on Thursday.

The Open House will be from 12:30-3:30 pm. Open to all. Refreshments will be served.

This week, participants at Art Night at Joy and Company will learn how to make glow-in-the-dark star ornaments, a nod to the Dark Sky Festival.

Make a glow-in-the-dark star ornament at Art Night at Joy and Company on Thursday.

A selection of glow-in-the-dark paints will be available for participants to try as they craft an ornament of their own.  The event is free, with a suggested $5 donation, and is held from 3:30-5 pm on Thursday. Open to all.

Care Partners‘ annual Light Up A Life ceremony will take place on Thursday, Dec. 12 at the Johnson Heritage Post from 5:30-6:30 p.m.

The annual Light Up A Life Ceremony will be held at the Heritage Post on Thursday starting at 5:30 pm.

The evening will begin indoors with a brief ceremony of remembrance and connection, followed by the lighting of the Memory Tree. A short reflection will be shared by Mary Ellen Ashcroft, and special music will be provided by Erik Torch. Light refreshments will be served following the ceremony.

Light Up A Life offers community members the opportunity to remember the life of a loved one during the holiday season. Each donation helps light up our memory tree, which will be located downtown in front of the Johnson Heritage Post. Donation forms are available at area businesses and in the November and December issues of Northern Wilds. The donations help Care Partners support older adults in Cook County on the journey of aging and end-of-life. To make an online donation, click here.

On Friday, the Lady Superior Bottle Shop will hold a Swiftmas celebration at the shop from 4-6 pm.

The Lady Superior Bottle Shop will hold a Merry Swiftmas event on Friday.

The event will celebrate Taylor Swift’s birthday with a Merry Swiftmas Party. A special Taylor Swift-themed zero-proof cocktail menu will be served with  TJ Long as guest bartender. TJ, a self-proclaimed Swiftie, will be debuting his signature TJ Swiftmas mocktail at the event. The Swiftmas party is from 4-6 pm at the shop.

And, on Friday and Saturday evenings, the Borealis Chorale and Orchestra will be at Bethlehem Lutheran Church to perform their annual Christmas Concert.

The Borealis Chorale and Orchestra will be in concert at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church at 7 pm Friday and Saturday.

The public is invited to hear both new and long-loved seasonal works by celebrated composers, sung by your friends and neighbors, and led by director Karina Roth.

A few highlights of this year’s program are “Wexford Carol,” a new composition by local composer Bill Beckstrand, with Eric Anderson on trombone and a vocal ensemble. Other works will include a selection from Handel’s “Messiah, “and a small women’s ensemble singing “Candle Blessing,” a Hanukkah piece by David Ludwig.

Admission is free. A suggested donation of $10 to $20 per person is greatly appreciated and will contribute to the ongoing ability of the BCO to perform for the community.

We Are Here, oil, by Charlotte Durie.

Movie Night at the ACA Dec 14. Brought to you by the Grand Marais Film Society.

This is definitely a family-friendly film and open to all.

Tickets are $5 at the door.

In Duluth, Alison Aune Hinkel will feature her Swedish Tomtar (Elves) and more at the Duluth Folk School.

Alison Aune Hinkel will have her Swedish-inspired Christmas items at the Duluth Folk School on Saturday.

She will be there from 10 am to 3 pm. The Duluth Folk School is in the Lincoln Park Arts District.

On Sunday, Drury Lane Books will host a Full Moon Reading by the bonfire from 6-8 pm.

There will be a Full Moon Reading at Drury Lane Books on Sunday.

This is an open community bonfire where all are encouraged to share a favorite piece of prose or literature. There are no limits to the topics shared; fishing and hiking poems, rants and heated slams, philosophical musings, saccharine love poems, shadow work and gothic prose, a touching moment from a novel, a silly story – all are welcome.

Due to beach rock, accessibility can be difficult. Content does vary, and parental discretion is advised.

 Exhibits:

The Johnson Heritage Post has just opened a pretty spectacular exhibit by artist Kim Dayton entitled “Celestial Navigation.”

Kim Dayton is exhibiting her work at the Johnson Heritage Post.

 The exhibit features her photographs as well as her watercolors celebrating celestial objects, and presenting a dreamy journey through the night skies. The exhibit continues through Dec. 29.

The Heritage Post is open Mondays, and Thursdays through Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm and Sundays from 1-4 pm. It is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Open to the public. Free.

The Holiday Art Underground continues at Betsy Bowen’s Studio Gallery featuring a wide variety of art and artists.

The Holiday Art Underground sale will be held at Betsy Bowen’s Studio from Nov 29 through Dec 30.

Look for woodcut prints, paintings, pottery, fiber arts, jewelry and more. The gallery is open from 11 am to 5 pm Thursday through Saturday.

 There are only a few more weeks to see the exhibit “Dreaming Our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiņ Artists and Knowledge Keepers” at the Tweed Museum of Art.

“Dreaming Our Futures” features more than 100 works by 29 Indigenous artists. The exhibition premiered at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota and traveled to the Rochester Art Center before coming to the Tweed Museum of Art.

The Welcoming, 2004,  oil on canvas, by Joe Geshick, Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. The painting is on view at the Tweed Museum of Art through Dec. 20.

The exhibition was curated by Brenda J. Child (Red Lake Ojibwe), Northrop Professor of American Studies, University of Minnesota, and Howard Oransky, Director of Katherine E. Nash Gallery, with Christopher Pexa (Bdewákaŋtuŋwaŋ Dakota, Spirit Lake Nation), Associate Professor of English, Harvard University.

The exhibit continues through Dec. 20.

Opportunities:

The Hub will start its Winter Market series with a market on Jan. 4. Cook County artists and artisans are invited to participate. This is a one-day sale indoors at the Hub. The cost is $10 per artist. To find out more, email Gina Joyce at Maraismade@gmail.com  or call 952-820-5969. The deadline to sign up is Dec. 20. If there is not enough interest so soon after the New Year, the next market will be Feb. 1.

Artists at Work:

Even in Darkness by Marti Mullen.

Weaver Lisa Larson is the Artist of the Month at the Johnson Heritage Post.

Black Hornbill, ink on watercolor paper by Ralph Keating.

Jim Sanneurd works on a sculpture installation. Image by M Baxley.

Mug by Keely Young Dixon.

Ode to a Spruce Tree, oil, by David Gilsvik, 

Before the big snows by Marcia Roepke.

Jamie Rex with her beautiful handknit hats.

Mural at the Downtown Duluth YMCA by Adam Swanson.

Dreamscapes, an encaustic painting exhibit, opened at the Zeitgeist Cafe.

“Blue Days,” acrylic, by Kathy Weinberg, was juried in and accepted into Abstractum 2025.

Mural by Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch.

Online Findings:

David Welch  Skateboards on Ice

David Welch removed the wheels from the bottom of an old longboard and replaced them with skate blades. Photo by Matthew Baxley. Read about it and see the action here.

Watch Amika – One with a Friendly Spirit, with Lonnie Dupre

Note: It has been over 20 years since Lonnie Dupre and John Hoelscher completed the first and only circumnavigation of Greenland; a 5000-mile journey all non-motorized by dog team and kayak.

In 2022 Dupre went back to Northwest Greenland to film the Polar Inuit culture by traveling from village to village by dog team. Lonnie re-connected with his past Polar Inuit friends to find out how their culture has changed due to global warming over the last two decades.

The Polar Inuit and their sled dogs are unsung heroes of countless Arctic expeditions. Their ingenuity and innovation through trial and error and creative ways of improvising have always amazed Lonnie on past expeditions.

“The Polar Inuit people make it seem easy to live in a place, that otherwise appears inhospitable to us. Traditions have been passed on for thousands of years. By dressing in furs and by forming a symbiosis with their sled dogs, they managed to live off the land, completely in tune with their environment of ice and snow.  These people are not run by a clock; they do things when the time seems right,” Dupre says.

Dupre was frightened at how drastically global warming has affected the land and culture. Permafrost melting is undermining the foundations of houses. Ice caps and glaciers have receded so much that new maps are required to identify the distorted coastline. Sea ice in the Inglefield Fjord that was once 7 feet thick in mid-winter is now 18 inches. At this current rate of melt, the fjord will be ice-free in 7 to 10 years. In the mountainous and ice cap terrain, the Inuit rely on sea ice to travel between villages and for hunting. Once gone, the Inuit will become landlocked, held prisoners in their own villages unable to travel for 8 months out of the year.

Amka is an Inuktun word for “one with a friendly spirit.” This 40-minute film dives into the inner thoughts of the Inuit Hunters and Polar Explorers amidst change: their passions, the inseparable companionship with their sled dogs, the fragility of Greenland in the wake of global warming, and the humble people who carved out special lives in a land of snow and ice. 

Through this documentary, the aim is to introduce people to this little-known place of beauty in NW Greenland and make it dear in others’ hearts too.

Peter Henrickson on helping to restore the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

Peter Henrikson works on a truss for the Notre Dame Reconstruction Project in France. Listen to his interview about his experience here.

 Online Music:

NPR’s Best Songs of 2024. Click here to see a list.

Thursday, Dec 19:

• Gordon Thorne, North Shore Winery, 6-8 pm
• North Shore Swing Band, Up Yonder, 7-9 pm

Friday, Dec 20:

• Joe Paulik, Bluefin Grille, 7-9 pm

Photographs:

Here is a selection of photographs we found this week:

Wildlife:

Amboseli National Park by Layne Kennedy.

Hmmm. Time to go back to sleep by David Johnson.

Winter snacking by Bill Marchal.

White-tailed Buck by Paul Sundberg.

The Great Grey by David Johnson.

Mule deer on a hillside in Badlands National Park by Bryan Hansel.

Winter Bulls by David Johnson.

Potpourri:

Yum! Carmel rolls by Lin Salisbury.

Snow rollers, not plows, were used during the years before cars. Photo from Vermont’s Northern Journal. Posted by Tor Torkildson.

Oops! by Jake Carr.

In the night by Mary Lou Sorenson.

Bentleyville by Nancy Lindberg.

A coffee break for Santa? Photographer unknown.

Memoryscapes:

The James R Baker arrived in Duluth a few years ago. Photo by Jeffrey Doty.

A favorite photo from an earlier season by Sierra Parsons.

A fun favorite from a December past by Thomas Spence.

Peoplescapes:

Snowshoeing to an Overlook in a Foot of New-Fallen Snow by Ken Harmon.

I’ve never liked winter. Downhill skiing makes it easier by John Myers.

Beauty by Andy Keith.

Landscapes, Snowscapes, Skyscapes & Waterscapes:

A walk on Park Point beach before the snow by Tor Torkildosn.

Shore of Lake Superior Dec 6 by Gary Arands.

A sunset in Iowa by James Joerke.

At Temperance River State Park by Chuck Olsen.

The start of winter by David Welch.

Slices of orange for Mary Beams and all orange-utangs by Frank Mouris.

Snowy and Moody Shoreline of Lake Superior, by Ken Harmon.

Beautiful moonlit winter night by Mary Lou Sorenson.

Low and Moody by Hayes Scriven.

Jack is Back! By Roxanne Distad.

Amnicon State Park by Tim Beaulier.

Grand Marais sunset by Frank Lehto.

The crack of dawn by Gary Arands.

Winter in the Superior National Forest by Thomas Spence.

A snowy birch by Rose Arrowsmith.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Note: Welcome to the season of giving.  If you would like to support ArtScene, click on the icon below.  Your contributions make a big difference in keeping ArtScene alive and well.  I received the 2025 Maddie Simons Arts Advocate Award from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council last week, an incredible honor. Your support helps me keep doing the work.

Thank you!

 A special thank you goes out to Jeremy Lopez (Live Music schedule, tech advice, music suggestions), Yvonne Mills (proofreading), and Kari Carter (caption corrections.)  And a big thank you to Visit Cook County for its awesome Events Calendar.