It’s been a fun September in Cook County. There has been music, music, music and now for the last week, artists everywhere!
It has been really neat to see all the plein air artists taking part in the Grand Marais Art Colony’s 2012 Plein Air event. Over the last two weeks, it seemed as if there was someone setting up an easel, packing up gear or contently daubing paint on canvas everywhere I went.
There were painters on the waterfront, of course, capturing our amazing harbor—the rocking sailboats, the sturdy lighthouse, the rugged outcroppings, the waves and the waterfowl. There were easels set up in the Coast Guard parking lot and in Boulder Park, at the marina and along the breakwall right next to Highway 61.
But I also saw painters next to a cheerful field of sunflowers on County Road 13. Near the cemetery west of Grand Marais. At Cutface Creek and at Cascade River. And what seemed to me to be odd locations throughout the city of Grand Marais.
The Plein Air exhibit is open for viewing at the Grand Marais Art Colony until September 30. I plan to stop by to see just what was captured by the 53 artists that took part in this year’s Plein Air Grand Marais. I want to find out just what that fellow on the side of the highway next to Java Moose was painting!
The artists may think I’m crazy, but seeing them here in Grand Marais, up the Gunflint, all along the shore, makes me feel like a kid again. When I was growing up in Grand Marais, it seemed as if there were artists everywhere, all summer long.
I spent my early years about six miles outside of Grand Marais on County Road 7 near the farm where Palmer and Nelda Westerlind now live, where my grandparents lived. It was a great place to grow up— no neighbors, but wonderful grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and lots of opportunity to be outside. My cousins and I spent hours on end outside, wandering the fields, watching the cows, splashing in creeks, and enjoying the freedom of being country kids.
There were many occasions when a car would pull up and a stranger would knock on my grandparents’ door, asking permission to paint the farm. And then an eccentric person would prop up an easel and plunk down a rickety stool to paint away, oblivious to the stares of the kids who couldn’t figure out what was so interesting. There must be literally hundreds of paintings around the country of my grandpa’s ancient farm implements and the lop-sided barn. I wonder if any have curious kids peeking out of the hayloft.
Thank you artists of Plein Air 2012 for an enjoyable trip down memory lane. Come back soon!
When I come up here (Grand
Marais) and I see that great
big straight horizon line, all
the crooked thoughts in me
straighten out.
Birney Quick
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