Local Art Seen and More: Friday Night Past

A tryptich of winter scenes by Carolyn Olson.

Friday evening I left the office and over to another excellent exhibition at Trepanier Hall, the former Y now home to the American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO). The show is titled Northern Women: Below Zero Windchill Creations. It featured work by Wendy Savage, Karen Savage-Blue, Joyce LaPorte, Roberta Marie, Laurel Sanders, Carolyn Sue Olson and Ellen Sandbeck.

A portion of the room displayed a continuation of Karen Savage's Minnesota Landscapes series. The them being winter, these included frozen lakes among other things. Karen is now well past the midway point on her 365 days of painting landscapes.

Carolyn Olson's distinctive people serve as a signature for her paintings. She had a triptych of winter activity along with other winter scenes, including people shoveling snow off the roof of a house, which we had plenty of this past season.

Tree Frog Snowflake

Ellen Sandbeck's paper cutouts of snowflakes were especially dazzling. Nearly all of us have produced snowflakes when we were young, folding paper and cutting out designs with scissors. But no one does snowflakes like Ellen. And just like real snowflakes there are no two alike.

Ellen's snowflakes feature that same reproduction of design that you see in a kaleidoscope, except in one case it's a morning glory and in another it is a shrew or tree frog or elk skull. Her skills in this form of reproduction are highly polished now, and I am sure that she will give us no end of surprises in the future.

From here I was off to the ball game. Duluth Huskies had a home game and readers of the Reader were offered free tickets as a way for our local weekly rag to say thank you for being Reader readers.

Across the bridge Phantom Galleries, Superior had a double opening in the New York Building. Susan Loonsk's "Mostly Birds" filled the walls, and Jennifer Murphy's "Of Tidal Pools" spread out on pedestals of various heights, showcasing many unusual 3-D ceramic works that had an 'other worldly" feel for me.

I was sorry to miss Carlton Daze this year. And equally sorry to miss the film festival in Wrenshall again. But the weekend was full nonetheless. Here are a few more images from the weekend.

Meantime... have a great week.