The Grand Marais Arts Festival in the northern Minnesota town this year will be part of a special anniversary – the 75th year of the state’s oldest surviving art colony.
It’s telling that the Grand Marais Art Colony touts 600 members in a town of just under 1,400.
“A large number are local or from Minnesota,” says Lyla Brown, the colony’s executive director, “but we do have members from throughout the United States.” Some away members used to live here, she adds, others follow particular colony instructors whose classes they’ve attended.
Community support, though, goes beyond the membership, she says. “We all have a little bit of art in our heart.”
Perhaps its expanded membership is fitting since the Grand Marais Art Colony is the 1947 brainchild of painter Birney Quick who taught plein art classes in Grand Marais as part of the then Minneapolis School of Arts outreach program.
Birney eventually moved to Grand Marais when the Big Lake called. “When I come up here,” is his oft quoted observation, “and I see that great big straight horizon line, all the crooked thoughts in me straighten out.”
Birney seeded the colony, but it grows and blossoms thanks to the multiple artists and community supporters who nurture it.
Lyla explains the three-legged stool on which the colony continues to stand, providing classes, residencies and community engagement opportunities.
The colony offers three- to five-day classes from May through September in a variety of creative arts such as painting, drawing, literary arts, mixed media, sculpture and ceramics. “We have a number of people who come back every year to take classes,” she says. It’s almost like an annual rite of pilgrimage to come.”
The residencies are done by artists needing a studio space to concentrate on a project, she says. “Working artists come and rent a studio and dive into a project they are passionate about.” While they are here, they may open the studio and do a class or public talk, but it is not required. “We try not to put a lot of weight on artists – give them time to come and create.”
Community engagement opportunities mean events like the Grand Marais Arts Festival, this year on July 9-10. It also means a bi-annual writers gathering and “mini classes” geared toward amateurs, or “for those people who claim, ‘I am not an artist,’” say Lyla.
“The level of intimidation that many people have around art, we want to diminish that.”
Perhaps the most exciting – and challenging – development for the colony is the recent purchase of two additional buildings. Studio 21 and Studio 17, located at 21 and 17 West Highway 61 downtown, came up for sale in 2019.
The fund-raising project continues, but already this summer, the spaces will serve the colony’s expanding needs. They will host artists in residence for studio and temporary living space, plus provide extra space for classes and exhibitions.
“Founder’s Hall, our original building, is a great studio for teaching or exhibition, but you can’t have both going at the same time,” Lyla explains. People often walk into a class to see the exhibition or an exhibition might take up table space needed for a class.
Lyla, who has had a long career in international development overseas and with nonprofits in the Mid-Atlantic, is impressed by the Grand Marais commitment to artistic endeavors, supporting the North House Folk School, the Johnson Heritage Post Art Gallery and a number of retail art galleries.
The Grand Marais Art Colony, Lyla believes, earns its long-standing place among those treasures.
“The longer I’m with it, the more I think it’s a hidden gem.”