The first annual Grand Marais Art Colony Tour d’Art was a grand success, with 57 art enthusiasts visiting four art-filled homes in Cook County. Many of the pieces were works by local artists, including this light fixture by Tom Christianson and the painting over the mantel by Hazel Belvo.
The Grand Marais Art Colony’s first Tour d’Art, held September 28, 2013, was a grand success. The event featured four homes from Schroeder to Grand Marais whose owners, according to Executive Director Amy Demmer, designed their dwellings around their art collections rather than placing art as an afterthought.
Fifty-seven art enthusiasts traveled in Arrowhead Transit buses from home to home. House No. 1 was designed by an architect friend who had traveled with the homeowners to New Zealand, where they were inspired to side the exterior in metal. The homeowners incorporated art and household objects from their travels around the world, ranging from rugs purchased in Iran during a tour of service in the Peace Corps, to a piece of Wisconsin’s last standing wood silo, built in 1880 by 400 Norwegian carpenters. Artwork by indigenous artists in the U.S. and abroad includes stone carvings, masks, weavings, paintings, hats, and beadwork. Outside the windows, Lake Superior splashes against the bedrock.
Homeowner collections on the Art Colony tour of homes included an eclectic assortment of art, including paintings, carvings, textiles, and sculpture.
The second home featured the work of sculptor Paul Granlund, who produced more than 650 pieces in a career that spanned over 50 years. A self-portrait of the sculptor sits inside the front door, and sculpted figures dance both inside and outside the home, which overlooks Lake Superior. Wood ceiling panels stained in tones of green, blue, and tan are placed on the diagonal. Metal kitchen cabinet pulls shaped like houses were created by Granlund. On exhibit were works by other artists as well.
The third home demonstrated the owner’s passion for art and beauty, featuring works by numerous local artists ranging from a mural by Liz Sivertson to metal lamps by Tom Christianson. Themes of red and aqua are threaded throughout, with a kitchen rich in red facing a wall-size rock fireplace that continues into the master bedroom on the other side. This home also faces the lake and is surrounded by English woodland-style gardens. A description of the home refers to the owner’s “whimsical style of decorating with art” and aptly states, “Her home will invite you in and excite your imagination.” The owner considers the house itself to be art. With a twinkle in her eye, she told visitors she has what she considers to be local artist Marsha Cushmore’s best painting. She considers her library to be a work of art as well. “Nothing is more artistic than books!” she said.
The owners of the last home, one of whom is a retired architecture and art history professor, have an art collection that includes samples of numerous periods and genres. On display during the tour were samples of relief prints and engravings spanning centuries. Their collection is so large that they rotate some of the artwork. On their walls were paintings by Birney Quick and Byron Bradley, who together founded the Grand Marais Art Colony in 1947. “I don’t like it to feel like a museum,” the owner said, however. “It’s a home. Objects talk to each other. …Things are located where they’re comfortable – or where I think they’re comfortable!”
Joining the tour was Duluth gastroenterologist Myrna Bachir, who brought her parents, Dr. Joseph and Natalie Bachir, up from Bruce, Wisconsin for the event. They are originally from Syria. Myrna Bachir heard about the tour from the Duluth Art Institute, of which she is a member.
Back at the Art Colony, a wine and cheese reception was followed by a presentation by local artist and Minneapolis College of Art and Design Professor Emeritus Hazel Belvo, who talked about the artwork of local artists she had curated for the exhibit surrounding them in the main hall.
“Artists come here because they’re inspired by nature,” Belvo said. She talked about how the artists whose work she had chosen demonstrated natural themes in their work, from Bonnie Cutts’ paintings of brain cells to Nancy Seaton’s glass totems – “a perfect example of inspiration from nature” – to plein air paintings by Neil Sherman, whose work she called “very poetic.” One of her own paintings, a vibrant red tree trunk inspired by the Little Cedar Spirit Tree in Grand Portage, is called “The Matriarch” and exhibits her interpretation of the tree as a personage.
Ken Bloom, director of the Tweed Museum at the University of Minnesota- Duluth, concluded the event with a discussion on collecting art. “I do have some experience collecting art,” he said. “Fortunately, I’m spending other people’s money!”
The day’s tour demonstrated four very different ways of collecting art, Bloom explained – as a story of where the owners have been and who they’ve met along the way, as the legacy of a sculptor that “generously” included work by others as well, as an “extraordinarily personal” expression of community, and as an academic sampling of various types of art.
“Everyone is collecting something,” Bloom said, and collecting art is about developing relationships. He pointed out that works on paper – such as paintings — are extremely vulnerable, and textiles are even harder to preserve. In the western art world, the least functional works of art, such as paintings, tend to make the most money. Prices are affected by supply and demand, he said, and for a good profit on the sale of art, “two glasses of wine and chocolate – that’s the secret!”
The tour of homes was a fundraiser for the Grand Marais Art Colony, which seeks to support artists, promote art education, and nurture art in the community. Cook County has the highest number of full-time artists in Minnesota per capita, Executive Director Demmer said, and it ranks very high nationally as well. She expressed appreciation to the event sponsors, Betsy Bowen Studio, Kah-Nee-Tah Gallery & Cottages, Last Chance Studio and Gallery, Sivertson Gallery, and Stephan Hoglund Studio.
The next Art Colony Tour D’art is scheduled for October 4, 2014. Said Demmer, “We all need more art in our lives.”
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