Staff photo/Jane Howard Lyle Saethre in front of his mural of the Omar Ellquist log cabin on Maple Hill. Saethre has been painting murals of historic North Shore scenes all over Grand Marais.
Lyle Saethre was almost done with his painting of the old Omar Ellquist log cabin on Maple Hill near County Road 60 and the Lindskog Road when he realized something was wrong. He had lilac bushes blooming, but the trees weren’t early summer trees. Back to the drawing board, or rather, the mural
board on the south side of the old Chevy building in downtown Grand Marais, where Threads, the clothing store, is located.
According to Lyle, Omar built his cabin in 1927 and lived there as a bachelor until about the 1950s when he got married.
The cabin is still standing, and its roof is still intact. It was probably well-made, because Omar was a cabinetmaker for Hedstrom Lumber Company, specializing in doors, doorframes, and windows. That’s where Lyle met him. He and his wife, Delores, went to visit Omar and his new wife in their cabin shortly after they were married.
Why did Lyle want to paint Omar Ellquist’s cabin on a wall in Grand Marais? Because an old building like that might eventually fall down, and he wants it to not be forgotten. “I want to do historical things,” he said.
Lyle is almost 82 and according to an interview with him called Lyle
Saethre Paints the Town
on youtube. com, he only felt about 40 years old a year ago.
“Everybody’s forgetting about our heritage even around here. Theydon’t even know about a lot of these things that went on. Thiswas a busy community about 100 years ago. I’m planning on keeping this up until I can’t do it anymore. …I’ll be taking jobs painting until I’m 90 at least. Well, that’s 10 years. Maybe I’ll slow down by then.”
Those who have been around Grand Marais in the last few years might have noticed murals of North Shore scenes popping up – outside Bill Bally’s blacksmithing shop, on the side of a semi-trailer, all around the Beaver House, on the roof of the Municipal Liquor Store, on the south side of the Chevy building.
When asked how long he has been painting, Lyle said, “I had a 50-year gap. …My mother kept all my paintings.” When his 50-year gap started, he was in about fifth grade. About 20 years ago, Lyle’s daughters discovered his old paintings and encouraged him to start painting again.
After that, Lyle, an electrician by trade, was doing some electrical work for Nita Anderson at her art studio, 8 Broadway in downtown Grand Marais. He admired her artwork and said he wished he could paint like that. You can, she said. She gave him some art lessons in exchange for some of his electrical work.
Lyle was inspired. When he and Delores went to Texas in the wintertime, he took classes in watercolor, oil, acrylic, and chalk portrait painting. He opened his trailer home to others so they could have a place to come and paint.
Lyle has a spot in the back of the Chevy building where he stores and displays some of his portraits. “It’s just a bunch of baloney,” he said about it. He keeps a guestbook there that has names, addresses, and messages from people who have watched him paint. Theguestbook signers hail from many Minnesota locations as well as faraway places like California and even India. The messages say things like, “So inspiring,” “Thanks for making the video for my dad. …He was a painter, too,” and “Minnesota Conservation Corp/St. Croix State Park says hello!”
It seems that Lyle makes friends wherever he goes. He can’t use acrylic paint when he’s painting in public because of it. Acrylics dry on the brush within about 20 minutes, he said, and it often takes more than 20 minutes before he’s done talking to people between brush strokes.
Sometimes 30 or 40 people will stop to talk to Lyle when he’s painting. Some of them beg him to let them paint just a letter or two of the words identifying the painting so they can say they helped in the creation of the mural.
Lyle’s friendliness has earned him a special nametag like the one worn by staff at Blue Water Café. It says, “Blue Water Café – Lyle – Personal Relations.” He pays attention to his appearance when he goes to Blue Water for coffee, taking care to alternate among his numerous pairs of suspenders. He has suspenders with moose, suspenders with fish, suspenders with birds. Some of them were gifts, like the tape measure suspenders that a guy brought to him one day, saying he should wait until he got home to open the package.
Lyle’s work isn’t just in Grand Marais. A woman from out east came to town, saw his paintings in local studios and bought a bunch of them to take back with her. He painted murals – water, moose, ducks, hills — on his grandson and granddaughter’s bedroom walls in Woodbury. “Seems to me there’s another one someplace,” Lyle said. Yes! He painted a waterfront scene of what Two Harbors looked like 60-80 years ago, and it sits in a doctor’s office in Two Harbors.
What kinds of projects does Lyle envision for the future? “I have drawings,” he said, “but don’t tell anybody!” He waits for people to ask him to paint something, and he is willing to do more murals around town. Lyle wishes he could offer other people a place to come and paint.
Where did Lyle get his artistic ability? He could only name one relative – his uncle Axel Berglund – who painted, and he could only recall one painting he saw by Axel.
Lyle also carves, and said he has carvings all over the place at his house. “I got Best of Fair for some,” he said.
Lyle stays plugged into the community with his cell phone. His number is a prefix away from WTIP Radio’s number, and almost every day he gets a call from someone trying to enter the Pop Quiz. Sometimes they blurt out their guess before saying anything else, and Lyle has been tempted to say thank you and quickly call WTIP with their answer. No, that wouldn’t be right, he said.
At the end of the interview, Lyle headed off to Blue Water. “I think I deserve a cup of coffee,” he said.
At press time, Lyle Saethre was hospitalized
at St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth
after suffering head injuries from a fall
on November 3, 2009. Friends may
check on his condition on the www.
caringbridge.org website.
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