Spotlight

Linoleum-block print by John A. Spelman III, titled “Untitled [Erickson’s Fish House].” | JOHN A. SPELMAN III

By Breana Roy

The Johnson Heritage Post in Grand Marais is full of new artwork, starting with a combined exhibit by Hazel Belvo and Marcia Cushmore, on display until Aug. 15. Reid Thorpe will showcase his work Aug. 20 through Sept. 12. And an exhibit by John A. Spelman III is currently on display through Sept. 5. This is also the last month to see the exhibit But It Was Still There at Studio 21 in Grand Marais. And don’t miss the Two Harbors Art Festival (Under the Spreading Walnut Tree) held Aug. 13-15, as well as Art in Bayfront Park, held Aug. 21-22 in Duluth.

By Rae Poynter

Life along the North Shore is never dull. From long, quiet winters to vibrant summers teeming with life, the dramatic contrasts found on this northern shore provide a wealth of inspiration for artists. One such artist is Sandi Pillsbury of Castle Danger, whose paintings capture the majestic beauty of the North Shore found throughout all seasons, from encounters with wildlife and spring flowers to Lake Superior seascapes. Each piece is a snapshot of a life lived in close connection with the Lake and its surrounding areas.

Pillsbury’s interest in art began when she was in 4th grade and her parents gave her a paint by number set. She describes being fascinated with how the different colors made the painting look real, and began in her a lifelong love for drawing and painting. She went on to study fashion illustration and design before moving to California and completing her BFA. It was while she was in California that she developed an interest in teaching and started to do postgraduate work at San Jose State. The death of her grandmother brought her back to Minnesota, where she finished her teaching degree through the College of St. Catherine, and it was while Pillsbury was student teaching at the St. Paul Academy that she met the head of the art department, artist Hazel Belvo.

“I met Hazel and it was life changing for me,” Pillsbury said. “I jumped in with both feet and started to help her with classes. Over lunch one day she asked, ‘What do you do with your art?’ At the time I wasn’t doing a lot of my own art because I had been teaching, and she suggested that I come up to the Grand Marais Art Colony. That began a 33-year mentorship with Hazel, which was life-changing. I found my voice as an artist, and Hazel’s classes were what honed me as an artist.”

Pillsbury taught art for many years in the Anoka-Hennepin School District and later in the Lake Superior School district. She also continued to pursue her own art, taking classes from George Morrison, Elizabeth Erickson, and Mary Pettis. Despite living in the Twin Cities, the pull to Lake Superior and the North Shore remained strong. Pillsbury’s family had a cabin at the Encampment Forest Association, which had been in the family for three generations.

“I would teach during the school year but then I’d spend a lot of the summer up here at the cabin, so I’ve been coming to the Two Harbors area since I was a baby,” she said.

Eventually she and her husband decided to find their own “cabin” on the North Shore, and they ended up finding a yearround home in Castle Danger. But after spending just one night in their home, they decided they didn’t want it to merely be a vacation place: they wanted to move there permanently, and would find a way to make it work. Pillsbury then found a teaching position in the area, and her husband was able to move to the area a few years later.

“Lake Superior and its watershed has always been a part of me and my art,” Pillsbury said. “I love living up here, I love the lake and how it’s ever-changing.”

In 2004 Pillsbury started participating in the Plein Air event through the Grand Marais Art Colony. At the time, painting outdoors was a fairly new experience, but she said that in many ways it came naturally for her. Her process has come to involve a combination of outdoor and studio work. Pillsbury typically starts a new project by doing a thumbnail sketch, which helps her zero in on the composition. After that she does a small study, usually 8x10 or 9x12 inches, and then brings those elements into the studio to paint the larger scene. The largest piece she has painted is 30x90 inches, a triptych which is hanging at Lakeview Hospital in Two Harbors.

Pillsbury’s paintings capture the ever-changing beauty found throughout the different seasons on the North Shore, from Superior sunrises to evocative clouds to encounters with wildlife right outside her front door. In some of her paintings, Pillsbury paints an underpainting in acrylic, painting areas in the opposite color of what will be painted over it. After the underpainting is done, she uses oil paint over the acrylic and adds in the details to create the finished piece. One example of this technique can be found in her painting of trillium, where beneath the different shades of green are reds and oranges, and the creamy white of the flower petals are underlaid with lavender acrylic.

Though her work is rooted in Minnesota’s North Shore, Pillsbury’s art has attracted interest from around the country. A videographer from New York discovered her paintings and flew to Minnesota to create a video about her work and the relationship between her art and her surroundings on the North Shore. She then had the opportunity to send some of her paintings to a private showing in New York City. All four of the paintings she sent sold in January 2020.

Throughout her career as an artist on the North Shore, Pillsbury has been active in the local arts community. She has been one of the curators for the 20/20 Lake Superior Studio and Art Tour since its inception, and this year will be one of the jurors at Plein Air in Grand Marais. Looking ahead, Pillsbury says that she hopes to teach once again at the Grand Marais Art Colony.

“I really love the Grand Marais Art Colony, and I don’t know where I would be as an artist without that experience,” she said.

Pillsbury’s work can be found on her Facebook page, or at: sandipillsbury.com.

By Christine Novotny

In 2020, I grew my first crop of flax up at the Cook County Community Garden in Grand Marais. Flax is the fiber used to make linen yarn. Flax is a bast fiber, which means that its fibers come from the inner bark of the plant. Other bast fibers include ramie, jute, hemp and nettle.

Flax is a beautiful, durable fiber. It has natural luster, incredible tensile strength, and is 20 percent stronger when wet. It also is highly absorbent and dries much faster than cotton, which makes it an excellent nextto-skin fabric. The flax plant can be traced back to the fertile crescent and was cultivated by the Egyptians for textiles—famously shrouds for mummification. Flax eventually spread throughout Europe and was brought to North America in the 1600s by French colonists. Early American textiles were made with linen, and farmers continued to grow flax on their homesteads. The dominance of flax in the United States diminished as cotton production grew through the enslavement of African people and the invention of the cotton gin—the beginnings of fiber industrialization. Cotton remains the choice fiber of the United States, but growing concerns over cotton’s high use of chemical herbicides and water intake has roused interest in linen once again.

As a weaver, I love working with linen because of its luster, crispness and absorbency. The textiles created with linen will last over a century with proper care. As an environmentalist, I appreciate linen’s low water consumption (almost half the amount of cotton), and its ability to outcompete weeds with its dense seeding, negating the need for harmful herbicides. These qualities inspired me to grow and process flax myself, under the mentorship of experienced growers and flax aficionados.

Flax is an annual plant, well-suited for Grand Marais’ short growing season. Last year, I seeded my flax bed at the end of May and harvested it by hand at the beginning of September, which is a typical timeframe for harvest—roughly 100 days. Flax grows well in moderate soil, and its high seeding rate and tall stalks naturally suppresses weeds. Once flax is planted, it needs very little tending or watering. It has beautiful blue flowers that bloom in the morning, follow the sun throughout the day, and drop their petals in the evening. It’s a gorgeous, lush crop that can grow up to 4 feet tall, with the length of one fiber spanning all the way from the blossom end to the roots.

After I pulled the flax from the ground, I had to ret the flax to loosen the fiber from the stem. I chose to dew ret the flax, which means I laid the flax stalks on my lawn and let the morning dew and rain wash over the plant for several weeks. The fibers are attached with pectin, and the retting process literally rots the pectin away so that the fibers can be extracted from the stalk. After the plants are done retting, they are removed from the field and dried until ready to process.

I’ve spent the last few months building processing tools for extracting the flax fiber and spinning it into yarn. The flax stalks have to be broken to remove the woody part of the plant and the outer layer, called chive. Then the broken straw is scraped with a wooden knife to remove the chive that still clings to the plant. Finally, the bundle of flax with its fiber exposed, is hackled, which involves combing the flax fiber through a bed of nails that splits the fiber and removes the shorter fiber pieces, called tow. What’s left is beautiful long fibers called line linen. The staple length of the fiber can be anywhere from 2-4 feet long. These long fibers are revered for their strength and shine. Both the line and tow fiber can be spun into yarn for weaving.

I’ve been processing my 2020 flax by hand this summer as I watch my 2021 crop grow. Every year I will learn something new that will improve my fibers: the proper time to harvest them, how to know when they are properly retted, techniques for breaking and scutching that will remove the most plant debris but leave the most fiber. I look forward to seeing these little blue flowers bloom year after year, growing closer to the plant and the process of creating our textiles.

Through demonstration and education, I hope to instill wonder and curiosity in others to remain connected to the textiles in our lives, and the fibers that create them.