Progress 2023: Arts & Education

Lea woman is known as the

Albert Lean Jill Petersen was set to retire as a longtime educator when she decided to explore things to do in the next phase of her life.

After watching some YouTube videos of people making cookies with royal icing and getting some supplies the previous Christmas, she and her daughter decided to give it a try.

By

Petersen joked the result was bad at first, but she had so much fun doing it that she decided to keep it up.

Now, months later, she has perfected her craft, started a business, Kinda Kookie, which has grown

so much that she has had to turn away orders as word of mouth continues to spread about her cookies — which many describe as works of art.

“I’ve always been an artist, but I’ve never found a medium I felt comfortable sharing my art,” Petersen said.  Petersen said she dedicates three eight- to 10-hour days for her cookies each week, including baking the cookies — which are typically vanilla almond flavored — on Mondays and then decorating them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She limits herself to six dozen cookies a

Albert Lea artist retires Longtime professional artist moving

Jill Petersen of Kinda Kookie holds up a tray of Harry Potter-themed cookies in her kitchen in December. Petersen has found success with her cookie business in the last year after retirement from Albert Lea Area Schools and makes cookies for parties, events and individuals. SARAH STULTZ/ALBERT LEA TRIBUNE

“I’ve always been an artist, but I’ve never found a medium I felt comfortable sharing my art.”

— Jill Petersen

SARAH STULTZ sarah.stultz@albertleatribune.com

Jill Petersen makes a wreath cookie in December.

COOKIES

Continued from Front Page week because of the time it takes.

Petersen said with

about half of her business, her customers will come to her with pictures of what they want her to create, but with the other half they leave it up to her to decide what to make.

Being that she makes the cookies in her own home, her typical day starts early at 4 or 5 a.m., usually before her husband, Clayton, wakes up. She tries to wrap up

her work for the day before he comes home in the evening. She often utilizes her counter tops and much of the dining room table throughout the process.

Aside from the baking day — which Petersen said is her least favorite part of the process — what people may not realize is that it takes three different types of icings to create a cookie: one for outline, one for detail and one that fills or “floods” the majority of the top of the cookie. The longest part of the process is waiting for the flood layers of icing to dry before details can be added. She also incorporates air brushing on some cookies, as well as edible markers.

She said one of her favorite parts of the process is packaging the cookies when they are completed and preparing them to present to the customer.

In late December, she had everything from Christmas and other holiday cookies packaged on the table waiting for customers, to Harry Potter-themed cookies for a party and dinosaur-themed cookies for another celebration.

Petersen said she has always been known for being a little goofy, and the business name Kinda Kookie was a good play on words to have a little fun with that.

While she mostly takes orders, she has also done some pop-up sales at The Homestead Boutique, Whimzy and Good Shot Golf and Sporting Clays. She said she anticipates that this year for holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Christmas she will mass produce several of the same cookies and sell them instead of taking personal orders.

She also offers paintyour-own cookies, where she draws an image on a cookie with an edible

marker, and then an individual can paint the color onto the cookie.

Shari Sprague, executive director of the Albert Lea-Freeborn County Chamber of Commerce, said she first became aware of Petersen’s cookies after Petersen attended a chamber Business After Hours event at Wedgewood Cove in 2021.

Sprague said Petersen had given some beer mug cookies to a couple of her friends and she saw them and was impressed. Another person commented how they tasted good, too, so she looked up Petersen on Facebook and set up a meeting with her as soon as she could.

Sprague said she envisioned golf bouquets for the chamber’s Annual Golf Outing, a cookie bouquet auction to raise funds for Relay for Life, cookie bouquets for the chamber’s Annual Meeting and farm-themed bouquets as centerpieces for the Annual Ag Luncheon.

“Not only were the cookie bouquets for the Golf Outing and Relay absolutely beautiful, they raised a lot of money for the scholarship fund and cancer research,” Sprague said. “The bouquets she did for the Annual Meeting brought me to tears. They were beyond my expectations, even more

special and beautiful than I had envisioned.”

Petersen said she loves seeing how much her customers like the cookies, and is humored when people want to hold on to them.

“It’s funny I know several people who have cookies on their bulletin boards or in their kitchens,” she said.

“I’m like that’s gross, I gave you those cookies six months ago. But they’re so pretty they don’t want to eat them.”

Petersen said her favorite part of her new business and hobby is the people she meets.

“I’ve been invited out to Washington to attend a rodeo because of a box of cookies,” she said.

“I met Marion Ross because of cookies. Several times I’ve been out in public and someone I don’t know approaches me with, ‘Hey, aren’t you the cookie lady?’ It’s been a great avenue for meeting people, and my life has been enriched by it.”

She said a friend recently pointed out all the fun things that have happened to her since she started the cookies.

“She said, ‘You could title this current chapter of your life The Power of the Cookie,’” her friend said. “It’s so true. The rewards have been sweeter than a sugar cookie.”

Open up several of the drawers in the Petersens’ kitchen and you’ll find numerous supplies for her cookies. SARAH STULTZ/ALBERT LEA TRIBUNE

Snowflake cookies, packaged before the holidays, are ready to go out on Petersen’s table in December.

Title I para educator Shanna Drescher shows first-grade students how to add with regrouping. KIM GOODEN/FOR THE TRIBUNE

A day in the life of a paraeducator

WOMAN WEARS MANY HATS AT ALDENCONGER

By Kim Gooden For the Tribune

No two days are the same for Alden-Conger paraeducator Shanna Drescher, even though her schedule and goal vary little throughout the school year.

“When you work with kids your days are never the same,” according to Drescher, who works as a Title I para with students in first through fifth grades. “The stories they share and their personalities influence how each day goes.”

The skills being taught, what is going on in the classroom and each student’s individual needs also affect how a day goes.

Drescher’s day begins with supervision of the elementary students who get off the bus. She greets them and listens as they share both happy and sad events in their lives. Making this connection often helps build a working relationship with her students later.

“She has established relationships with kids so that they know she cares, and they respect her and listen to her directions,” said Gretchen Hintz, firstgrade teacher.

From there, she spends her morning working with Title I students on reading skills. They work on fluency, comprehension, letter names and sounds, phonics and many of the other skills needed to become good readers.

At noon she is a lunch supervisor for some of the elementary grades, assisting them with opening containers and heating lunches, and encouraging them to eat.

Drescher’s afternoons are spent working with Title I students on math skills. Some students work on basic facts. Others work on taking apart word problems and using different strategies to solve them, or on skills such as multiplication and long division.

She also assists classroom teachers with Benchmark and Progress Monitoring assessments.

Drescher works with her students in small

groups or one-on-one in the Title I classroom. There, they have access to a quiet space with fewer distractions and are able to accomplish more in the time they have. Still, sometimes the time she has with her students is not enough. She would like to work with certain groups or children longer to get them the help they need.

“There is no norm,” Drescher said. “For example, all students in a first-grade classroom won’t know their sight words. As a result, catering to each student where they’re at becomes a challenge.”

Getting students to understand that they will need the skills they’re working on in the next grade, too, is also a

challenge. And sometimes kids don’t see why they need the skills in reading or math simply because it’s hard for them.

Despite the frustrations, there are also rewards. Getting to work with kids first and foremost.

“It’s also very rewarding to see their faces light up when they understand something or when they’ve been working so hard on a skill and they come down after a test and tell me they’ve been successful because of the skills we’ve been working on,” she said.

Seeing them exit from the Title I program is also very satisfying for her.

Drescher has been in her position at Alden-Conger for nine years and is content to continue in that capacity.

She enjoys having the different grade levels to work with and finds that it makes the day go quickly. She considers herself fortunate to work with what she says are a great group of teachers who are supportive and appreciative of what the paras do every day.

The teachers she works

with feel the same about her.

support to the students of Alden-Conger is phenomenal,” added Shelly Sipple, fourth-grade teacher.

only for the students but also for myself,” Hintz said. “Her dedication and SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2023 | ARTS & EDUCATION | PROGRESS 2023 | ALBERTLEATRIBUNE.COM | PAGE 3

Title I para educator Shanna Drescher begins her day greeting elementary bus students.

“Shanna is a positive and supportive person to have in the classroom.”

— Gretchen Hintz

A.L. professional artist retires after decades

By Alex Guerrero alex.guerrero@albertleatribune.com

After a lifetime involved in art, Rory Mattson is retiring as an artist.

Mattson’s father was involved in medical arts at the Mayo Clinic, and Mattson has been around art since he was young.

When he was in fifth grade, his teacher asked him to draw a dog, something Mattson was happy to do.

“The next time the art teacher came in, she said, ‘“Where did you trace that?’” he said. “And I said I didn’t, I just drew it.”

So the teacher hung it up on the wall, a moment he described as exciting because he didn’t know people appreciated art.

After moving to Albert Lea in 1969, he discovered two other artists in the area, Bill Lauman and Chris Christensen.

“I kind of got to know them, look at their work and I thought that was pretty good,” he said. “I thought, ‘Geez, I can do that.’”

So he started painting. Mattson’s primary specialty was nature, particularly birds, butterflies, reptiles and insects, along with barns and landscapes.

“People would come by the house and they’d see a piece of art I had sitting on the table and say, ‘Oh, I’ll buy that,’” he said.

Back then, he charged between $10 and $20. But over time and as he improved, he built a display and participated in the Art in the Park show, of which he had a “real good” response.

He also applied to the Heritage show at the Dayton auditorium in the Twin Cities.

“It was one of the top three nature art shows in the Midwest,” Mattson said. “I applied for it almost as a joke, and a week later they called me and said [I’d] been accepted.”

He then drove up there and hung his work. While walking around he saw artists like Dave Maass and Jim Killen, whom Mattson described as his hero.

“The best watercolors

I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he said.

Killen actually saw Mattson’s work and praised him with the caveat his presentation was bad. So Killen suggested he find the best framer he could, and Mattson called Steve Tubbs to frame pieces.

That first year at the Heritage show he sold three pieces. The second year he sold nine framed works in the first 45 minutes of the show.

Marion Ross Performing Arts Center manager hangs up the hat

By Alex Guerrero alex.guerrero@albertleatribune.com

After a decade managing the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center, Neil Lang retired as building manager at the end of 2022, bringing with him a decade of memories with local, regional and national performers.

Lang started his role in early 2012, after his wife, Barbara, told him the city was looking for someone to run the day-to-day operations. The duo thought it would be a good fit, and Lang said it had been.

“I told the board that I’m interested, it’s right down my alley,” he said.

Lang started the role at age 69, and knew he wanted to put a number on how long he’d be there. He decided on 80, a number he reached last August.

He described the decision to retire as “bittersweet” because of his passion for the work.

“It’s time to spend more time with my family, especially weekends, cause it ties up a lot of weekends,” he said.

One of his first acts was to set up an online ticket sales system, which he and his wife did with WizTix. They also made sure patrons could pay with credit cards, a process he called “an undertaking.”

Any entertainers he brings in weren’t guaranteed anything, a fact he admitted made it hard to bring in big name performers. Instead, the theater offers an 80% to 20% split on ticket sales. Performers were also responsible for setting their own prices.

he locked up. Between his phone, computer and building, Lang estimated work was anywhere from six to 30 hours per week. His favorite shows were classic country and ’40s music, but his favorite part about the role was meeting some of his favorite musicians, such as Anderson.

Lang was also involved in the theater portion of the center, and it was his job to see every performance had the needed supplies. And when his wife directed musicals, he helped with equipment and did troubleshooting for any sound issues, and typically signed up to do the sound booth with lighting or sound effects

years, starting out with Denny Charnecki from Austin who performed shows for him.

“He’s done a lot of shows over the years and made lots of contacts for me, too,” he said. He described himself as more involved in music and band, and first got involved in music with accordion lessons at age 9. From there, he learned to play a family guitar back in the late ’50s, and started a band after a week of marriage in 1961.

“Played all the clubs and bars and entertainment places in a 50-mile radius of Albert Lea,” he said.

But as he got older, the desire to haul equipment faded. And when he heard about the position, he thought it was a good fit.

“I get to be involved in music, plus we’ve put a lot of shows on,” he said.

Lang wanted to thank everyone in Albert Lea who came to a concert he helped bring in.

Sensing a trend, he kept Tubbs as framer until Mattson retired, roughly 35 years. Mattson called hiring Tubbs the second best decision he made after picking up a brush.

After that show, he started applying for others in the Midwest and participated in shows in Topeka, Madison, St. Louis, Kansas City, La Crosse, Tulsa and Des Moines, among other places.

“It just worked out like everything else in my life,” he said, referring to what he considered a lucky streak.

The idea of retirement came about while he was doing five to seven shows each summer, and then another two to three around the state.

“Over time it was really good to do a load of shows cause I’d get some fair shows and so on,” he said. “But over time I started limiting the shows because

it’s a pain in the neck to haul your display and everything.

“I’d spend two to three days on the road, and you’ve got hotels and motels,” he said.

But when the pandemic hit, he saw the circumstances as not too bad for the 80-year-old. And he said his wife was tired of helping him haul and set up his work. He donated all of his supplies to the Albert Lea Art Center last year, but he still plans to paint as a hobby.

“I can’t tell you how much the city of Albert Lea has supported me,” he said. “… It’s just a great little community, I love it dearly. Everybody who’s bought my art, thank you 100 times.”

Mattson’s primary medium is watercolor, and painting for him was a hobby he did solely for himself.

Lang felt the most famous performer he brought to Albert Lea was country music singer Bill Anderson, someone Lang described as a “legend.”

“He’s been in Nashville since the early ’60s, writes songs for many, many artists,” he said. “I got him to agree to come. Of course, he filled the place, it sold out in just a few hours.”

Tickets were $35 for the show, and the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center can only seat 250 patrons at a time.

Besides ticket sales, he had to put bands together for artists without one, a situation he said happens.

“Tony Booth, he was in here,” he said. “I had the son of Earl Haggard, he was in here — the son of Conway Twitty.”

Besides booking and sales, he helped ensure every band had every piece of equipment they needed. During shows he was responsible for lighting and any sound enhancements. And after shows

when she was in the play. He was also involved in helping Hope Church host services at the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center.

“They’re fantastic people, very trustworthy and easy to work with,” Lang said.

And in 2015 he helped set up a new public announcement system for plays, entertainers and (the now discontinued) Met: Live in HD programming. Lang also looked into the purchase of a screen projector.

“Pretty much everything that goes on here I’ve been pretty involved with,” he said. He said you needed to have passion to do the job, and that passion has kept him in the music business.

“I don’t know any other way to explain it except it’s good for your soul,” he said.

Lang has been in the music business over 60

“Without them it just does not happen,” he said.

And even though he’s retiring, he said he would be willing to help whoever takes over the position, which hadn’t been filled as of the beginning of December. He also hopes the next manager continues with concerts.

“Before that all that came here was plays pretty much,” he said.

And he enjoyed the experience and met what he described as “wonderful” people.

“Over the years I’ve learned a greater respect for all kinds of music and developed better people skills as far as working with people,” he said. “Some people are easy to work with, others are not easy to work with. … In my position you have to try to get along with all of them and satisfy them, which always isn’t easy to do sometimes.”

During retirement Lang wants to take more short trips with his family.

“Thank you for the opportunity to serve,” he said.

Neil Lang sits next to a statue of Marion Ross in front of the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center. Lang played a major role in bringing musical acts to the center. PROVIDED

“It’s time to spend more time with my family, especially weekends.”

— Neil Lang

Neil Lang poses for a picture with performer Bill Anderson.

Rory Mattson hard at work painting a bird. PROVIDED

Mattson has been involved in art since he was a child, when his dad worked as a medical artist.

Rory Mattson is set up for a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a previous year.

KIDS SAY

WE ASKED STUDENTS IN FOURTHAND FIFTH-GRADE CLASSES AT SIBLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, “WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT ALBERT LEA?”

HERE WERE THE RESPONSES:

“I like how we have such great schools.”

— Elise Austin

“The city pool, the public library and the food.”

— Abigail De

“School.”

— Goy Rout

“My favorite thing about Albert Lea is it’s a really safe town and there’s a very pretty lake. I love to ride my bike around it. I love to go to the ice skating arena and the YMCA. I feel like it’s going to be a fun life if you live there.”

— Narjis Ibrahim

“It’s a safe community.”

— Miles Krause

“Riding my bike around Albert Lea and going to the city pool.”

— Magnus Johnson

“I like the public library and I like the lake.”

— Arayah Finch

“I like it cause it snows. I really like to play in the snow.”

— Julian Garza

“That it has schools like Sibley Elementary. Every time I go to Albert Lea I see schools and different buildings. I love seeing new, interesting things and I love coming to school.”

— Naw Flora Hsee

“Sibley.” — Plosoe Moo

“That there’s different places to go.”

— Sienna Brink

“My favorite thing about Albert Lea is the people.”

— Terra’na Price

“That it has a lot of nice people in it.”

— Hunter Reisdorfer

Our

“I liike all of the fun stores and nice people.”

— Lia Sorenson

the world.

“I like that we have a good community and that we want to take care of our community.

— Rosalynn

Jepson

See more on Page 6

“Through

collective efforts we are committed to teaching & learning for all.”

KIDS SAY

“The thing I like about Albert Lea is how everyone’s kind and caring.”

— Kennady Goodmanson

“I like Albert Lea that it’s a safe place to live.”

“Something I like about Albert Lea is going to Walmart with my family because I can get stuff.”

—

Kelly Lin

“I like all the nice and friendly people.”

—

“I like how they have the city pool and the fair.”

— Ehtee Kaw

“Everything — the weather and the area.”

— Deng Bichiok

“What I like about Albert Lea is all the people here.”

— Anuar McCormick

“All the people I can meet — like friends and stuff.”

— Brityn Eaton

“All of the football games we get to watch.”

—

Iianah Figueroa

“The school and my friends.”

— Bryan Hsee

“All the sports that we have.”

— Oakley Spooner

“What I like is the kind people, nice schools, nice teachers.”

— Bentleigh Schoppers

“Most of the people here are pretty nice.”

— Maxx Godfredson

“My favorite thing about Albert Lea is my house.”

—

Shawn Hall

“I like how nice people are in Albert Lea.”

— Abby Henderson

— Mason Schroeder

Reese Miller