Rainbow at Fall River by Bryan Hansel.
Greetings from the North Shore, where we are captivated by the beauty of waterfalls in spring and are halfway hopeful that it will warm up soon. The ice is out on many of the lakes, good news for the fishing opener, but night temps of 32 degrees are discouraging for gardeners. On the other hand, May is actually here, and Mother’s Day is this weekend. Yay!
On Thursday morning, there will be a 50th-anniversary celebration breakfast for Friends of the Boundary Waters at the Log Cabin Building.
Friends of the Boundary Waters Birthday Breakfast is on May 7.
The breakfast starts at 9 am. This is a free event, but RSVP to sarah@friends-bwca.org if possible.
Also on Thursday, Jo Swanson, executive director of the Friends of the Superior National Forest, will give a presentation about the forest at the Grand Marais Public Library from 4-5 pm.
A volunteer crew near the Gunflint Trail. Photo courtesy of Friends of the Superior National Forest.
Swanson will talk about the 3-million-acre forest and all the opportunities it offers for every type of outdoor recreation. She will give a short history of the forest and explain how communities like Grand Marais are a key to making sure it’s still in good condition for future generations.
Friends of the Superior National Forest is a nonprofit organization dedicated to volunteer-powered stewardship of the Superior National Forest. They work to maintain trails, clean campsites, and restore natural areas throughout the forest’s three million acres—including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
The event is free and open to all.
And art-making continues.
Thursday is Art Counter Project Day at Joy and Company, a weekly opportunity for the community to make art at the shop. This week, the project is painting a mini-canvas. The event is held from 3 to 4:30 pm.
Make art at Joy and Company on Thursdays from 3-4:30 pm.
Everything you need will be supplied. The event is free, but donations are accepted.
On Saturday, Friends of the Superior National Forest will host a community hike at Pincushion Mountain.
A community hike will be held at Pincushion Mountain on Saturday.
The gathering will include a short walk to a scenic overlook and an opportunity to learn about local volunteer stewardship work in the Superior National Forest. Free and open to the public. The event will be held from 10-11:30 am.
For more details and registration, click here.
Also on Saturday, the Cook County Historical Society will hold a clean-up day at the Chippewa City Church to prepare for the upcoming season.
A spring clean-up project is planned for Chippewa City Church from 10 am to noon.
Tasks include general spring cleaning, landscaping maintenance, and checking on the progress of last year’s tree plantings.
The event will be held from 10 am to noon. The public is invited.
An Open House and Mother’s Day celebration will be held at the Tim Vahle Fine Art Gallery from 11 am to 5 pm on Saturday.
Where We Go, We Go Together, oil, by Tim Vahle.
The event will offer the public an opportunity to see Vahle’s latest work. Refreshments will be served. Open to all. The gallery is located in Birch Alley, behind the Gunflint Tavern.
The 34th Annual St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour is this weekend, May 8-10, featuring 68 potters from 28 states exhibiting at seven studios in the valley.
The St. Croix Valley Pottery tour is this weekend. Click here to learn more.
This is a must-go-to event for pottery lovers. Each studio features new work by the potters, set up outdoors, with refreshments available at each studio. It continues through Sunday. For more info and to see who is there and the work they do, click here. (Note: It’s a very detailed site and fun to look at all the examples of work on it.)
North House Folk School will hold Hide Week from May 12-18, featuring a variety of workshops, presentations and more, focusing on the crafts of hide and skin tanning, finishing, and sewing.
Hide Week is at North House May 12-18.
The featured guest instructors include Karl Karlsson of Sweden, Kevin Lewis and Darla Campbell of Ministikwan Lake Cree Nation (Saskatchewan), and Matt Richards from Traditional Tanners, based in Oregon. To find out more, click here.
Exhibits:
This is the last week to see the North Shore Luminescence Glow Show at Studio 21, an exhibit created by Sawtooth Mountain Elementary kindergarteners, 1st- and 2nd-graders. The artwork was inspired by the plants and animals that use bioluminescence right here, on the North Shore.
The North Shore Luminescence Glow Show is on view at Studio 21.
The exhibit is open on Friday from 1-5. Free. The public is invited.
The North Shore Artists’ League exhibit, Stories Beneath the Snow, continues at the Johnson Heritage Post. This is a fun and eclectic show, featuring works from a wide selection of media.
Winter’s Sigh, oil, by James Ellis, is one of the pieces in the Artists’ League show.
Hidden Beneath, fused glass, by Nancy Seaton.
Winter of 2026, acrylic, by Sally Dawson.
Spring Thaw, pastel, by Linda Ricklefs Baudry.
After the Storm, machine-pieced and quilted by Mary Matthews.
The exhibit continues through May 17.
The Heritage Post is open from 10 am to 4 pm Thursday through Saturday and from 1-4 pm Sunday. Free.
Betsy Bowen’s Art Gallery features works by a selection of local and regional artists, including books and prints by Bowen.
A selection of works at Betsy Bowen’s Gallery.
The gallery is currently open from 11 am to 5 pm Thursday through Saturday.
At the Duluth Art Institute, the Member Show 2026 continues, featuring work by more than 40 local and regional artists in every medium.
The Duluth Art Institute has opened its Member Show 2026.
The Art Institute explains the exhibit this way:
“America is not a singular voice, but a chorus—layered with histories, shaped by movement, memory, and multiplicity. Art becomes the vessel through which these truths surface, each work an offering, each artist a witness.
From this understanding, we grounded our 2026 classes and exhibitions in the theme: We Hold These Truths.
This year’s Annual Member Show invites artists into that inquiry—not to resolve it, but to deepen it. Through their work, they offer reflections drawn from identity, origin, experience, and process, contributing to an evolving conversation about what American art has been, is, and might become.
These works form a living dialogue about who we are and what we hold to be true within our community. Here, we witness what happens when expression stops being polite, or when a truth unfolds rather than being announced.”
Here are a few examples:
We Hold These Truths in the Webs We Weave, digital print, by David Battocchio is one of the works in the Member Show.
Outliving Optimism, acrylic, by Shelley Breitzmann.
Entoprocta, scissors-cut paper by Ellen Sandbeck.
Pieces of Me, graphite on paper, by Jason Routley.
Click on the QR code above to see the show virtually.
The exhibit continues through July 10.
The exhibit, Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, continues at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Sonja, 1928, oil on canvas, by Christian Schad (German, 1894–1982), photo by Jörg P. Anders.
“In the first half of the 20th century, Germany experienced the last years of the German Empire, World War I and the revolution that followed, the liberal Weimar Republic, the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. Modern art played an important role in the discourse of the period, and politics influenced the arts.
This exhibition features more than 70 paintings and sculptures from the collections of the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), the distinguished modern art museum of the Berlin State Museums. It traces the German experience in the visual arts over four decades.
Beginning with the Expressionist reaction and opposition to the conservative artistic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the exhibition moves on to the New Objectivity movement, the modern style of the 1920s. Between the wars, German artists participated in international experiments with abstraction. Painters and sculptors critiqued social currents, but most were silenced under the Nazis. This exhibition concludes with an epilogue that examines the ambiguous aftermath of World War II.” (Minneapolis Institute of Art.)
The exhibit continues through July 19.
Artists at work:
Dandelion Skies, linocut, by Susan Noble.
Remembering when getting ready for the Fishing Opener meant a trip to the Beaver House for custom-made tackle, a woodcut print by Betsy Bowen.
Mackerel, free-motion machine embroidery and hand stitching by Rachel Brown.
Making an Entrance, acrylic, by Elizabeth Kuth.
Mugs by Sam Taylor.
White Pines, acrylic, by Tim Young. He has work at Betsy Bowen’s Gallery.
Sneak Peek time by Ron Benson.
Lake Louise, oil, by Tom Haukaas.
Discussing fish and politics, acrylic, by Reilly Fitzgerald.
Walrus Hunt 1964, stone cut by Inuk artist Parr, 1893-1969.
May the 4th be with you, illustration by Hayes Scriven.
Online findings:
Cougar kittens have been found in northern Minnesota.
Turn up the sound to hear their purring.
Cougars, also known as mountain lions or pumas, are known to periodically move into or through Minnesota. Neighboring North Dakota and South Dakota (and Nebraska) have established populations in the western portions of their states. Young males and less commonly, young females, from these populations tend to wander in or through Minnesota in search of new territory and a mate.
Cougars went extinct in the state more than a century ago, and no suspected wild female cougar or kittens had previously been documented here. For Minnesota, this is the first confirmed evidence of cougar reproduction in modern history!
In order for a wildlife species to be considered a “resident” of Minnesota, there needs to be a self-sustaining breeding population. This would require multiple breeding individuals over a period of years. Monitoring efforts will be essential to determine if Minnesota becomes a home to a population of these big cats once again.
To learn more about cougars and verified past sightings, click here.
Giving Myself Permission– Following the Spirit, Episode 6
Filmed by Patrick Knight
Online Music:
Live Music:
Thursday, May 7:
- Gordon Thorne, North Shore Winery, 6-8 pm
Saturday, May 9:
- Between Howls with Socktopus, Up Yonder , 8-11 pm
Monday, May 11:
- Tim Fast, Voyageur Brewing Company, 5-7 pm
Tuesday, May 12:
- Eric Frost, North Shore Winery, 4:30-6:30 pm
- Open Stage hosted by Pete K, Up Yonder, 6-8 pm
- Community Singing, Log Cabin at the Grand Marais Community Center, 7 pm
Thursday, May 14:
- Gordon Thorne, North Shore Winery, 6-8 pm
Photographs:
Here is a selection of photographs we found this week:
Wildlife:
That’s what I call a good catch by Jeremy Church.
Taking a stroll by David Johnson.
Heron fishing the tide this morning by John Cannell.
The splash by Paul Ostrum.
Oystercatcher in Iceland by Layne Kennedy.
A grizzly from the car by Heidi Pinkerton.
Ducks in color by Matthew Pastick.
A Western Tanager in Duluth by Laura Erickson.
Out on a joy ride today by John Cannell.
A bison in Roosevelt National Park by Lee Ross.
Wood Duck and Water by Bill Marchel.
Spring by Adam Malmanger.
Stand-up Comedy by Paul Ostrum.
White-breasted Nuthatch by John Gregor.
Sunset with ducks by Michael Furtman.
Karate Grouse by Paul Ostrum.
Our new friend, He, stops by every morning and evening for snacks. He is magnificent by Jim Boyd.
Male grouse showing its stuff by Paul Ostrum.
Potpourri:
Cilla Walford with her collar of chicks.
Looking Back: The Viking Lounge, East Bay Hotel, Grand Marais, courtesy of Don Davison.
Best Friends — a birch and a cedar tree grow together by Bryan Hansel.
Wildflowers are showing up by Paul Ostrum.
Bloodroot, slowly unfolding by Lee Ross.
Just a girl, her cat, and her broom, ready to make magic by Brigette Binesikwe Nies.
Smelting in Duluth by Gus Schauer.
Guess what this is by Trish Francis.
Not long for this world by Don Davison.
Bad Bunny arrived at the Met Gala disguised as an 80-year-old.
Hepatica is blooming now, Dawn Parendo.
Landscapes, Skyscapes & Waterscapes:
Fog along the shore by Carl Anderson.
Lake Superior sunrise by Chuck Olson.
Storm clearing over Lake Superior by Layne Kennedy.
The water around town is very high, by Chris Artist
Flower Moon over Lake Superior by Chuck Olson.
Lake Superior at night by Nicholas Narog
Reach for the sun, by Janice Latz.
A dawn of a new day by Paul Pluskwik.
In May by Bryan Hansel.
Gnarly Gooseberry by Hayes Scriven.
Flower Moon by Sierra Parsons.
Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!
PS: We are here for you every week. Please consider supporting NorthShore ArtScene today to keep it coming to your inbox. Just click on the icon below to make your contribution.
Thank you!
A big Thank You! to Jeremy Lopez for his Live Music schedule and tech support, and Yvonne Mills for her great proofreading. Thank you, both! And to Visit Cook County for its outstanding Events Calendar.