Touch-up time! Above: Yarrow Korf checks out the sculpture on the front of the Beaver House in downtown Grand Marais. Korf and Jim Baird specialize in sandblasting and restoration of buildings, but this project has special meaning—Yarrow’s grandfather, Jim Korf, created the beaver dam. Far left: The giant walleye, also created by Jim Korf, was kept under cover as work was being done. Left: Jim Baird works on the soon-tobe chartreuse lettering for the front of the building.
Some businesses do spring cleaning—others tackle cleanup chores in the fall. That was the case for the Beaver House in downtown Grand Marais. Before closing up for the winter, the Cronberg family commissioned Yarrow Korf and Jim Baird, who specialize in sandblasting and building restoration, to give the Grand Marais landmark a facelift.
There has been a longtime collaboration between the Cronberg and Korf families. Beaver House patriarch Bill Cronberg originally worked with Northland artist Jim Korf to decorate the building at the corner of Broadway and Wisconsin. It was Jim Korf who created the huge walleye that adorns the Beaver House roof. Inside of the Beaver House, along with the amazing assortment of rods, reels, sinkers, and of course the famed Beaver Flick lures, is a tiny mock-up of the building, created by Korf in just one night. Many customers may not notice the tiny model. It sits above the busy store on a shelf in a place of honor.
As he watched the restoration work under way by Jim Korf ’s grandson, Yarrow, Tyson Cronberg recalled the famous artist. “Jim Korf was a character. And he will go down in history as one of the best artists ever.”
Tyson said his brother, Marty Cronberg, and his dad, Bill Cronberg, hired Yarrow and Jim Baird to touch up the Beaver House—the murals and lettering on the front— and to add preservative to the walls that include the fanciful paintings by the late artist Lyle Saethre.
As Yarrow and Jim Baird worked on the restoration of the mural lettering on the front of the building, Tyson explained that the letters were once bright chartreuse, something that the Cronbergs wanted to see again. Why the nearly-neon chartreuse? “That’s the best fishing color, of course,” said Tyson with a grin.
The big walleye has gotten a facelift from the Korf family before. Yarrow’s mother, Nina Korf, and Mike Jansen have worked on it previously, cleaning up the dorsal fin one year; its face another. Yarrow said many people may not know that the rooftop walleye is made of fiberglass—and its fins are made—somewhat appropriately— of fishing poles!
That is the way a lot of Jim Korf ’s works were made. He didn’t have a lot of money for art supplies, so he used whatever was at hand, with amazing results, such as the bas relieflooking beaver dam on the front of the Beaver House—which is actually made of Bondo. The intricate design was made in a plaster cast. Yarrow remembers that his grandfather didn’t have the money to do the “release” of the beaver dam properly— he tried using skin cream to get the sculpture out of the mold. When that didn’t work, the sculpture spent several weeks soaking in a spring-fed pond before it was finally freed from the cast with the amazing detail—the beaver-chewed sticks, lily pads, and frogs— intact.
Part of this fall’s facelift included touching up the beaver dam and enjoying the little joke hidden within it by his grandfather. “He always included something—some little secret—in everything he did,” said Yarrow, refusing to say just what it is, but acknowledging that the secret was sometimes a nude figure. “You have to find it yourself,” said Yarrow slyly.
There are many, many, other pieces of artwork created by Jim Korf in Cook County and beyond. There is the lifesized moose at Windigo Lodge, another project that Yarrow worked with his grandfather on, and was called on to repair in August 2010. There was a beautiful mural on the wall of Hungry Jack Lodge that was lost in the April 2008 fire, but a totem pole that wasn’t in the main lodge survived. “I always meet people who say they have a painting or know someone who has a painting,” said Yarrow.
Yarrow said Jim Korf is now “70-something” and in a care center. So it means a lot for Yarrow to be able to preserve the work done by his grandfather, as well as that of the late Lyle Saethre, on the Beaver House. “It’s an old building. It’s nice to restore some of the history of the town,” said Yarrow.
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