Friday, January 22, 2010

It’s an Art Shanty? No, it’s a Nordic Shanty!

Today we have an excellent post from Nichole Neuman. Enjoy!

For those members who are blessed to live in warmer climates, know you are the envy of us here in the TC, where temperatures recently reached the epic -12 F. What better way to cope with the miserable cold than heading to a frozen lake to visit an ice shanty? Strike that—make that an art shanty.

For many years now, artists have built these temporary structures on Medicine Lake in Plymouth, MN for four weekends in January and February. It is an excellent way to embrace the weather and fuse artistic values and vision with our natural climate.

This year, Nordic culture will be heartily celebrated on ice with the Nordic Immersion Village Shanty, where visitors will choose a Nordic name and participate in the fun, which includes (and I quote):
∙ dressing up as Vikings
∙ herding imaginary reindeer
∙ choreographing dances to Eurovision songs
∙ learning and participating in Nordic crafts and language classes

For those in the area, members will want to put the dates of January 23rd and 24th in their calendar, for those are the Norwegian days!

More info on the Art Shanty Projects here.

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