The wind shifted and some people tried to capture sketchbook pages without dripping paint or dropping a train-sized palette. On Madeleine Island, Wisconsin, books are moved by the labor of budding artists, camp chairs or logs overlooking the beautiful bay of Lake Superior.
"Yes! Use lots of color," Mara Godas, a visiting teacher from Barcelona, Spain, encouraged a student at the Madeleine Island School of Art.
Godas, one of three instructors for the weeklong painting workshop, teaches a mixture of gouache, watercolor and acrylic paint in the morning before an outdoor painting excursion in the afternoon.
A swinging brush. Cross eye. Distant kayaks come closer and we like to add a splash of red to the blue and green landscape. Later, I sat next to Susan Amadeo of Blue Springs, Missouri, under a tall pine tree on the beach, watching the sun shine on the beach.
"I will never forget where I drew or painted," he says, describing how art must slow down, pay attention and surrender completely to the moment.
Small space, big beauty
For 10 years, aspiring artists, writers, photographers and quilters have traveled to Madeleine Island School of Art, a five-hour drive from the Twin Cities. About 430 residents call the island home year-round, but the number rises to 2,500 in the summer.
The island's only small town, La Pointe, includes many shops, a history museum, a boat dock that shakes as vehicles disembark, and interesting places like Tom's Burnt Down Cafe, an outdoor cafe. Less than two miles to the school's farm-inspired campus.
Cars rumble across the gravel as students travel from across the continent — from Tucson, Arizona to Quebec City and San Francisco to the Bronx — to reach the largest and only inhabited island, Apostle Island. The remaining 21 islands include the Apostle Islands National Seashore on Wisconsin's north shore near Bayfield.
Most of the members of the Liceo Artistico stayed where they were, scattered between the red and white houses. They gathered for a meal in a barn-style dining room with a photography studio upstairs. They meet in the natural light of the dairy workshop, the routes wind through the lawn or sit at a table in a small garden.
Colleen Bell, professor emeritus of Hamline University in Minneapolis, who participated in memorial seminars there, fondly remembers waking up to a fog hanging over the grass and returning after dark to her room surrounded by fireflies and stars. You can even hear the coyotes howling at night.
"The physical beauty of this place helps me write more intensely than anywhere else," she says.
The cruise is very inspiring.
Participants come for creative moments and learn more about specific topics such as photography, writing, drawing and design, textile art and knitting. Others take the opportunity to learn from world-renowned artists such as textile designer and colorist Cafe Facet, folk art-influenced textile artist Sue Spargo and urban designer Cuzier Cone.
Students bond quickly through presentations, demonstrations, island tours and the sharing of ideas and techniques. A few unexpected lessons.
A trip to the Madeleine Island Museum allowed some scrapbook artists to wander around and discover interesting artifacts. I spent an hour painting an Ojibwe beaded dress with flowers, an ornate birch basket and a 500 year old bench.
As my eye takes in the details she moves to capture, I can listen as Chippewa Red Rock guide Rob Goslin answers visitors' questions about the trash-like artifacts that sink into Lake Superior each winter and are salvaged in the spring. .
"I wish you would tell me the story," she said. I feel like I need to know more. It comes with the gift of drawing slowly. It gives time to wonder, to think, to learn.
Spaces expand.
Madeleine Island holds her workshops from June to September. Art school founder Charles Meech found a way to extend the workshops into January and February by partnering with Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, which is in the same family as Minnesota's Grand View Resort.
It was later expanded to a spring workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This October, the school will offer workshops for the first time in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Cathy Perry, a retired Minneapolis educator who has participated in memorial workshops on Madeleine Island and Tucson, says natural areas on Apostle Island and the Sonoran Desert can create a spiritual connection that inspires creativity.
"It was a boot camp for adults," says emergency physician Shraddha Shah, who traveled from the San Francisco Bay Area last summer for an urban design workshop. "I will still keep in touch with my friends that I met during the week and we will continue to paint together."
Lisa Myers McClintick, who lives in St. Cloud woon has been a freelance writer and photographer for the Star Tribune since 2001. She is @minnelisa on Instagram.
The beautiful surroundings of the Great Lakes have long inspired the establishment of schools for artists and craftsmen. Here are some of the best within a six-hour drive of the Twin Cities.
Clearing, Allison Bay, Wisconsin: Founded in Door County in 1935 by Jensen Jensen, one of the nation's oldest public schools offers lodging and weekly workshops in its historic building for activities such as painting, weaving, woodworking, writing and photography. One- or two-day workshops are held in the fall and winter (theclearing.org).
Grand Marais Art Colony, Grand Marais, MN: Summer art classes dating back to the 1950s, this annual school focuses on coated ceramic pots, etched metal prints, catacomb textile design, skateboard art and air watercolor (grandmaraisartsolony.org).
Madeline Island School of Art, La Pointe, WI: Upcoming workshops include macro and mushroom photography, free point enhancement, textile printing, creative nonfiction, and realism in plein air painting (1-715-747-2054; madelineartschool.com) includes ).
Northhouse Folk School, Grand Marais, MN: This popular lakeside public school offers year-round workshops and festivals in woodworking, boat building, fiber arts, photography, jewelry, outdoor skills and more (northhouse.org).
Peninsula School of Art, Fish Creek, Wisconsin: Beginners can try a half-day class before attending a four-day workshop at the Door County Art Center, which began in 1965. This summer's offerings include aluminum carving, woodwork, pottery, enamel jewelry, handmade metals. And soft pastels. You can include meal plans (peninsulaschofart.org).
