Shanty for the Chic

Minnesota-style gallery opens on Medicine Lake

By MATT PEIKEN
St. Paul Pioneer Press; January 16, 2005©

If Saturday's wind chill, at 14 below, didn't pose enough threat to creating public sculpture, there were two Hennepin County Sheriff's deputies approaching on foot.

"I don't want to get in trouble for art," Maxwell Kelsey said from the middle of Medicine Lake in Plymouth. There, Kelsey and two friends from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design were just beginning to build a frozen wall with a powered pump, a jury-rigged water dripping system and a roll of black cloth.

About 50 yards away, half a dozen handmade wooden ladders were anchored upright into the frozen lake. A short jog from there stood a giant spire of white-wrapped wood. There was a shiny silver box that looked like a giant present. Further toward the shore was a Porta-Potty covered with singed roofing shingles.

One deputy, seeking guidance, described the scene this way in a cell phone call back to his department: "Some of them look like icehouses, some of them don't. There are ladders sticking out of the ground, and I don't know what some of these things are."

They and other objects to come over the next five weeks collectively make up the Art Shanty Projects, an exhibition of art and whatnot. On Saturday's opening day, bundled-up painters, sculptors and amateur architects drove onto the ice, about a half-mile from rows of traditional icehouses, and created their temporary contraptions with augers, drills, saws, wrenches, axes and buckets.

This is not your standard Minnesota icehouse.

Think of this as a Frozen Man Festival -- the winter equivalent to the annual Burning Man Festival held in the southern Nevada desert. Here, artists are operating on the lake under the assumption they can build whatever they want, wherever they want to, without regulations that would restrict them on land.

"We're trying to push the definition of icehouses," said Peter Morales, working with fellow St. Paulite David Wyrick on a "light darkhouse" made with green, blue and clear tarps.

"We have four walls, maybe a roof. We'll see," he said. Morales and Wyrick planned to drill a fishing hole.

Perhaps the most important hole here is inside the working Porta-Potty, dubbed the "Space Halo Stardust Rocket." Seamus Leonard and Cheri Anderson conceived it as statement about water pollution. Inside is a relative sanctuary, spray-painted gold and blue and laced with constellations of faux stars. The artists hope children stop by to make ice bowls and other decorative props.

"You have these guys fishing, doing their thing, and here we are," Leonard said. "What better place to build community?"

Peter Haakon Thompson, a Minneapolis photographer, built the original art shanty last winter as a refuge for friends and a retreat from his own art. He hosted bonfires and other informal gatherings, and some artists visiting him expressed interest in making their own shanties. About 40 people, working alone and in groups, answered ads calling for artists. The Soap Factory, a Minneapolis gallery, sponsored the Art Shanty Projects as its winter show.

"There's really not anywhere, like land, where you can just squat and build a structure. That's what's great about a frozen lake," Thompson said. "Part of it is just having people come out and experience the ice and what they can do while they're there."

Though Saturday was the exhibition's official opening day, Thompson hauled his house to the lake the previous weekend, serving as the beacon for other artists as they trickled to the lake over the following few days.

Some of the artists planning to build on the lake won't arrive until next weekend.

"Awesome, this is awesome," said B.J. Lampus as she perused Thompson's heated icehouse, which features Plexiglas windows on each side.

"You know, we could make one of these," said her brother, Jeffrey Lampus.

"Yeah, we're artistic. We're creative," his sister said.

"We could turn two icehouses into a pair of dice," he told her. "I'll be the six and you be the one."

Steve Cornils, who lives on the lake shoreline, went out early in the morning Saturday to take pictures, but his camera froze.

"What a wonderful way to use this environment as a gallery," Cornils said. "Just the verve to do this is incredible."

Mike Hoyt was attempting to erect his paintings, encased in ice, when the deputies approached. Until they could figure out how to handle the unfolding scene, they at least wanted to see reflectors on everything.

"We don't need anyone on snowmobiles running into one of these things in the dark," one officer said.