This original painting by Don Lessard is one of many works in the Holiday Art Underground show at Betsy Bowen's Studio which opens tonight at 5 p.m.
If you want to find locally made arts and crafts for gifts this year, this is the weekend to do it. Four different holiday art festivals will be held, and they all offer a wide selection of work from artists working in every medium.
The Holiday Art Underground show offers a wide variety of artwork.
First up is the Holiday Art Underground which opens at Betsy Bowen’s Studio in Grand Marais tonight (Friday) with a”sneak peak” reception from 5-9 p.m. The opening continues all weekend. More than 40 regional artists contribute work to this show which includes paintings and woodcut prints, pottery and jewelry, photography, felting, handmade furniture and sculpture. There are also books, cards, calendars, aprons and more. Tonight, Pete Kavanaugh will play, there will be treats from Lola’s Sweet Life Bakery and Patty Dougherty and Teresa Borak will host the Guatemalan Café, where they’ll serve chili and all the fixin’s as a fundraiser for Guatemala doctors.
Mary McDonald will demonstrate weaving during the Northwoods Fiber Guild's sale on Saturday.
On Saturday, the fun starts at 9 a.m. in Grand Marais with the Northwoods Fiber Guild’s Holiday Sale and Open House at the Grand Marais Art Colony. This popular event features high quality handmade fiber articles, clothes and gifts. Everything from knitted sweaters, mittens, hats and shawls to felted bags and handmade paper pins will be featured here, as well as a great selection of handmade ornaments, to name a few. Homemade cookies and bars will be served and weavers and spinners will demonstrate their art. There’s also a hands-0n-crafts table, always popular with children as well as adults. The sale runs until 2 p.m.
The Evangelical Free Church has its holiday sale on Saturday, too, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Besides crafts, there is a big bake sale and lunch.
Meanwhile, in the East End, two holiday craft fairs will be
"Baby Fox" by Hovland photographer Sandy Updyke.
held — the Hovland Holiday Artisans Sale at the Hovland Town Hall from 10 a.m.nto 4 p.m. and the Grand Portage Craft Sale at the Grand Portage Lodge conference room from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Artists in Hovland include watercolorist David Hahn, ceramic sculptors Dan and Lee Ross, photographers Weslie Suprenant and Sandy Updike, author Cameron Norman, jewelry-makers Terry Lewis and Denise Axtell and woodworker Bruce Updyke.
The Grand Portage holiday sale will feature the work of a number of Native American artists, including beadworker Marcie McIntire.
If you’re attending the event in Grand Portage on Saturday, stop by the Grand Portage Gift Shop in the Lodge which also features local artists’ beadwork including earrings, necklaces, bracelets, keychains as well as handmade beaded moccasins.
For movie lovers, a PG movie will be screened at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. as part of the First Saturday Morning Movie series, where movies will be shown at the ACA every month through May. The movies will be screened again on Monday at 7 p.m.
Other shops and galleries have fun things for holiday shopping, too.
Detail from Michael Sweere's birch tree landscape mosaic.
Sivertson Gallery, for example, has two new pieces by Michael Sweere, a mosaic artist who lives in the Twin Cities. He crafts his pieces from recycled antique glass, plates and dishes.
The 1910 Rock Shop has new paintings by Jim Miller and stacked shale lamps by Howard McKenzie, agate puzzles, handmade “rock” soaps and basalt, thomsonite, agate and lintonite jewelry.
Kah Nee Tah Gallery in Lutsen is featuring 17-inch metal abstract trees by Susan Seeger of Elk River and a large wood-burned image of a wolf by Brenda Gossel of North Branch.
Drury Lane Books has a new children’s Christmas book, “Merry Christmas Splat,” by Rod Scotton. For a fun, quick read on a cold winter’s eve, Lee Stewart recommends “The Uncommon Reader,” by Alan Bennett. It’s a (fictional) account of how Queen Elizabeth’s corgis get out and end up in a bookmobile. When she retrieves them, she feels obligated to borrow a book and she gets hooked on reading, with humorous results. The bookstore also copies of the newly published “The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder’s Journey through the Land of Ghosts and Shawdows,” by Kent Nerburn.
Also, Cook County Higher Education will hold an open house from 2-4 p.m. Saturday in its new space at 300 W. 3rd. The public is invited. Refreshments will be served.
For music this weekend, Wildwood plays at the GunFlint Tavern on Friday night, Al Oikari and Friends on Saturday night. The hip-hop band, Froze Over, is at Papa Charlie’s on Saturday night starting at 9 p.m.
The Pincushion Warblers, Nathan Baker and Barbara Jean Johnson, perform at the Tavern on Sunday.
Then on Sunday, the Pincushion Warblers with Barbara Jean Johnson and Nathan Baker play at the Tavern starting at 6:30 p.m.
Also, the musical holiday traditions continue on Sunday, Dec. 6 and Monday, Dec. 7 with the Christmas Concert at Bethlehem Lutheran Church at 7:30 p.m. with BJ Muus conducting.
In other art news, Stephan Hoglund has been selected to be one of the jewelers featured in an international jewelry book, “500 Gemstone Jewels” which will be published next April.
Nina Simonowicz has done it! She participated in the National Novel Writing Month challenge and produced a novel of 54,944 words in November. The first draft has the working title “Lily White Thighs.” (“It’s pretty irrelevant (to the story), but it just cracked me up,” she wrote in an e-mail.) Congratulations! Nina. Participants were supposed to write at least 50,000 words last month, and she exceeded that, for sure. There’s no word yet on when or if her novel will be published.
Ann Rosenquist has hand-printed silk scarves at the 1910 Rock Shop and her daughter, Saffron Straub, has recycled glass mobiles at the Holiday Art Underground show.
The Good Harbor Hill Players are developing a Winter Solstice Pageant again this year and the public is invited to help with the show. Workshops will be on Wednesday, Dec. 9 & 16 at North House Folk School. The performance is Monday, Dec. 21 at 6 p.m. on the North House campus, followed by a potluck and bonfire. Call 387-9762 for more info.
Telephone Sheep by Jean-Luc Cornec.
And last, but not least… who would have thought you could make sheep from telephones and telephone cords? Check it out. These were created by artist Jean-Luc Cornec in the lobby of the Museum of Communications in Frankfurt, Germany. (Thanks to Max Linehan for sharing these photos.)
